Iraq shut down crude exports to Turkey through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline on Wednesday due to a leak, two sources at Iraq’s North Oil Company said.
“There was a leak from the pipeline … because the pipe was old. The North Oil Company has decided to stop pumping oil to the export pipeline,” said a senior NOC official who asked not to be named.
Iraq exported 461,000 barrels per day of crude from its northern fields in August, most of it through the Kirkuk pipeline to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The bulk of Iraq’s total exports of 2.189 million bpd in August moved through the southern export terminals at Basra.
An NOC production engineer confirmed the Kirkuk-Ceyhan shutdown and said it was not immediately clear when exports would resume. “Exports from Kirkuk were halted due to a leakage resulting from a crack in the export pipeline passing through (the town of) Shirqat this morning,” the engineer said.
“NOC workers are working to fix the damaged section and it’s difficult to give an accurate time when exports could be resumed.” Shirqat is near the border of Nineveh and Salahuddin provinces about 300 km (190 miles) north of Baghdad.
Production at the northern fields has not been stopped and crude was being pumped into storage tanks in Kirkuk and elsewhere, the senior NOC official said.
via Iraq shuts down crude exports to Turkey | Al Bawaba.
Reaction shows Turkey not seriously interested in membership, Brok says
German MEP Elmar Brok has condemned Turkey's warnings and threats against EU member Cyprus.
Ankara’s response to Nicosia’s natural gas and oil exploration off the Mediterranean island’s southern coast shows Turkey is not seriously interested in becoming a European Union member, a German center-right MEP, said on Thursday.
In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Elmar Brok, who is foreign policy spokesman of the Christian Democrats in the European Parliament, condemned Turkey’s warnings and threats against EU member Cyprus which is set to take over the bloc’s rotating presidency in mid 2012.
“This clearly shows that Turkey is not serious about its membership candidacy,” Brok told German radio.
Cyprus has signed a production-sharing contract with Noble Energy. The Houston-based firm has a concession to explore for hydrocarbons in Block 12, an area within Nicosia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The Greek-speaking government has signed EEZ agreements with Egypt and Israel with a view to exploit any possible energy reserves in the area.
Turkey, which does not recognize the Republic of Cyprus in the island’s south, opposes any drilling, insisting the profits from any discoveries must be distributed between the two communities on the island.
The dispute has also deepened Turkey’s rift with Israel, once a close economic and military partner.
“[Turkey’s] objective is to become a regional power without any EU commitments; or it would not [act in ways that] provoke the bloc’s future presidency – what is more without any reason for doing so,” Brok said.
Turkey has defied statements from the US, EU and Russia and sent Piri Reis, an aging seismic research vessel, near Block 12 where drilling has already started.
Brok’s remarks followed a vehement protest by DISY MEP Eleni Theocharous to Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule during a plenary session in Strasbourg.
“Can such behavior from a candidate member be tolerated? Will you Mr Fule make mention of Turkey’s behavior in your [Turkish progress evaluation] reports? How much longer can you tolerate such behavior against a small and powerless state? Must the rest of Cyprus be occupied before the European Parliament does something about this?,” Theocharous said.
Fule said the tiff will not affect Cyprus’s scheduled presidency, while condemning Turkey’s reaction to the drilling.
“There are rules and laws. If Turkey chooses not to respect them and it wants to freeze its ties with the EU during Cyprus’s presidency, that is its own problem,” Fule said.
Ankara earlier this month warned it would freeze relations with Brussels if Cyprus is given the EU presidency next year.
ekathimerini.com , Thursday September 29, 2011 (15:12)
via ekathimerini.com | German MEP slams Ankara over Cyprus drills.
ELKINS PARK, Pennsylvania — For the 26 months that Josh Fattal was held captive in Iran, his mother and brother were ever-present voices calling for his release. But his father, Jacob Fattal, never said a word.
It’s now clear why: The family feared that their Jewish faith — and Jacob Fattal’s ties to Israel — could make Josh’s unbearable situation worse because of Iran’s hard line against Israel.
Jacob Fattal is an Iraqi-born Jew who lived in Israel before moving to the United States and raising a family, according to reports in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the Philadelphia-based Jewish Exponent.
In 2009, his son Josh Fattal was hiking with friends Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd in Iraq’s relatively peaceful Kurdish region when they were detained by Iranian authorities. The trio says they got lost and accidentally crossed into Iran, but authorities in Tehran charged them with spying.
Shourd was released about a year later. Fattal and Bauer, both 29, spent more than two years in Evin prison before being freed last week under a $1 million bail deal.
“We’re very happy; it’s the greatest gift we could have dreamed of receiving for Rosh Hashanah,” Jacob Fattal told Haaretz on Monday, a few days ahead of the Jewish New Year. “The problem was their being American, not Jewish. The Iranians used them as a political weapon for two years.”
No one answered the door Tuesday at the Fattals’ home in Elkins Park, a heavily Jewish suburb of Philadelphia where Josh and his brother Alex grew up. A message left for Jacob Fattal at his office was not immediately returned.
Aviva Daniel and Yael Nis, Josh Fattal’s aunts in Israel, told Israel’s Channel 2 on Tuesday that they only told a few people in Israel about Fattal’s Israeli connection — and swore them to secrecy.
“I believe the (Israeli) media knew, and cooperated, and kept it a secret,” said Nis. “We are really thankful for that.”
Nis asked various synagogues in Israel to include Fattal’s name in their regular prayers on behalf of people needing health and safety — without saying why.
“We prayed and our prayers were answered,” said Nis. “It is a miracle from God.”
Daniel said Fattal had visited Israel “a few times” over the past few years for family occasions. He speaks only a few words of Hebrew, Daniel added.
Ian Lustick, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in Middle East politics, said it’s likely that both the Fattal family and the Iranians downplayed Fattal’s faith throughout the detention in order to leave the door open for a possible resolution.
While the family clearly made attempts to keep his faith out of the public eye, Lustick said, the Iranians probably knew that at least one of the detained hikers was Jewish but kept it quiet. If the family had trumpeted the fact that Fattal was Jewish, he said, it would been much more difficult to resolve the standoff.
“There was a kind of objective alliance between people in this country who didn’t talk about it publicly … and the Iranians also downplayed it,” Lustick said. “Really what happened was there was a general desire to find a way out.”
He added, “If you didn’t have officials in Iran who had always been keeping that information out of the news, then pretending to keep the secret in the United States wouldn’t have worked.”
Elliot Holin, rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami around the corner from the Fattals’ home, said Tuesday that the extended Jewish community in the Philadelphia area was aware of the delicate faith issue.
Though the Fattals belonged to another synagogue, Holin said, the hikers’ names were mentioned each week in Kol Ami’s Sabbath prayers for the past two years. When news of their release came, a member of the synagogue blew the horn known as the shofar during last Friday’s services.
Worshippers clearly felt an “incredible sense of relief and gratitude,” said Holin.
“You could see tears in people’s eyes,” he said.
Shourd has been living in Oakland, California, since her release. Bauer, who grew up in Onamia, Minnesota, proposed marriage to her while they were in prison.
___
Associated Press writers Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem and Patrick Walters in Philadelphia contributed to this story.
A researcher at the Hebrew University has published results of genetic research studies which show that Palestinians and Jews have a common ancestry in the Kurdish population of Iraq and Turkey.
Ariella Oppenheim, Ph.D. researcher at Hebrew University, who conducted the DNA studies, said that the results show also that the Ashkenazi Jews of Central Europe are more genetically related to the Palestinians than to the Jewish population of the Middle East.
Oppenheim’s study also included a study of the chromosome of the Kohen priests traced by geneticists to a hypothetical “Y-chromosomal Aaron.” Oppenheim’s study showed that many Palestinians also carry the Kohen chromosome and thus may be considered of the Kohen genetic line.
According to a documentary in which Oppenheim featured, the Palestinian city of Yatta, south of Hebron in the West Bank, which has a population of about 50,000 people, has 90% of its people with Jewish ancestry. According to a report by Mark Ellis of God Reports,
In some of the dry and dusty Palestinian and Bedouin villages they still circumcise their boys after the seventh day. Hidden away in some Palestinian homes are Jewish mezuzahs and tefillin. Some older residents an recall lighting candles on the Sabbath.
A report by Steve Hageman of the Turkish World Outreach, according to Mark, says,
Many of the Palestinians know it [that they have Jewish roots], but it’s not politically correct to acknowledge this publicly among Muslims…There are two houses of Israel in the Holy Land: one aligned with the West and primarily secular or Jewish and the other aligned with the East and primarily Islam.
A Jewish Rabbi Dov Stein explains Oppenheim’s startling revelation,
It becomes clear that a significant part of the Arabs in the land of Israel are actually descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Islam over the centuries. There are studies which indicate that 85% of this group is of Jewish origin.
A documentary by Jewish filmmaker Nissim Mossek captured on camera a Palestinian home where the Jewish mezuzah (a parchment of scripture placed on the doorposts by pious Jews) is kept away from sight under a shelf and the tefillin (or phylacteries) hidden in a dresser. Palestinians who recognize their Jewish ancestry practice their religious way of life in secret.
Another line of explanation of the genetic links between Palestinians and Jews comes from Ancient History and explains that the genetic kinship between the Jews and the Kurds of Iran and Turkey may have it origins in deportation of the population of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Euphrates-Tigris region of Mesopotamia by the Assyrians in the eighth century BC
Camp Bastion’s ‘Kill TV nights’ are intended to update troops on mission’s progress, says MoD
By Kunal Dutta
An image from the Channel 4 documentary showing soldiers preparing to watch videos of an Apache attack on a Taliban target
Disturbing footage of Apache attack helicopters killing people in Afghanistan is being shown to frontline British soldiers in “Kill TV nights” designed to boost morale, a television documentary will reveal.
The discovery of the practice comes in the wake of the damning verdict of the Baha Mousa inquiry into the conduct of some in the military. It casts fresh questions over the conduct of soldiers deployed abroad and has provoked a furious response from peace campaigners.
Andrew Burgin from Stop the War last night described it as the “ultimate degradation of British troops”, comparing it to the desensitisation to death of US soldiers in the final stages of the Vietnam War.
The footage, seen by The Independent on Sunday, shows ground troops at the British headquarters in Helmand province, Camp Bastion, gathered for a get-together said to be called “Kill TV night”.
Described as an effort to boost morale among soldiers, it shows an Apache helicopter commander admitting possible errors of judgement and warning colleagues not to disclose what they have seen. “This is not for discussion with anybody else; keep it quiet about what you see up here,” he says in the film. “It’s not because we’ve done anything wrong. But we might have done.”
Last night, the MoD confirmed the speaker to be Warrant Officer Class 2 Andy Farmer, who is based with the Apache squadron in Wattisham, Suffolk.
Much of the footage is along the lines of the now infamous video of a US Apache helicopter strike on civilians in Baghdad in 2007, first released on WikiLeaks last year. In one clip an Afghan woman is targeted after a radio dialogue between pilots refers to her as a “snake with tits”.
Another clip from a recent “Kill TV” night shows the cross-hair of an Apache helicopter taking aim at an insurgent. WOII Farmer gives a running commentary: “OK, so he’s walking along… then thinks… I’m gonna go off and get my 70 vessel [sic] virgins ’cause daylight’s coming quite quick.”
As the missile hits the target and kills the person, he says “Goodnight princess”, adding “this is where you see he’s actually had the clothes ripped off him by the blast”.
He defends the decision to celebrate the deaths of Afghans. “People look at it and say you know… young lads are laughing at the enemy being killed,” he says. “Well, I don’t know if the Taliban do something similar but I’m sure they rejoice when they kill one of us.”
When asked by the interviewer in the film what he thinks goes through the head of a Taliban fighter when they see an Apache coming, WOII Farmer replies: “Hopefully a 30mm bullet”.
Later in the film, he is defiant about the moral consequences of war: “We’re out there do to a job. We’re not there to tickle the Taliban, we’re out there to hurt them because they have no qualms about hurting us.
“Of the engagements that I’ve taken part in… I have absolutely no dramas with it. None at all. I don’t really care whether they think it’s a fair fight. If they’re [the Taliban] gonna pick up a weapon and take us on, then best of luck to them.”
But peace campaigners have a different view. Mr Burgin said: “The fact that British soldiers are reduced to watching what are effectively snuff movies shows the complete failure of the project in Afghanistan. It’s nothing to do with democracy, but a failure of war that is trickling down and resulting in a mental degradation among ground troops.
“Afghanistan is a dreadful situation and it is no better than it was a decade ago.”
The controversy is believed to have prompted a rethink of the way in which the MoD will limit access to soldiers by documentary makers in the future, according to senior sources.
Last night an MoD spokesman denied any wrongdoing. “Regular briefings occur within the Joint Helicopter Force to all their deployed personnel to provide an update on the operations that they have supported,” he said. “This in some cases shows footage taken from the Apache.”
The footage is included in a three-part series, ‘Fighting on the Frontline’, that starts on Channel 4 tonight
Turkish officials’ latest decision to deploy a missile defense shield comprising an early warning radar system on their territory, which is in fact an effort made on behalf of NATO and the United States, is a major strategic mistake.
Turkish officials have repeatedly declared their opposition to the Zionist regime and have demanded the highest level of punishment for the perpetrators of the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which left nine Turkish citizens dead on May 31, 2010.
But paradoxically, they have also agreed to allow NATO to establish an early warning radar system in Turkey, exactly in line with the U.S. policy of protecting Israel, which is currently in a precarious situation in the region.
This is a clear example of Turkey’s double standards on sensitive foreign policy issues.
Other countries in the region have harshly censured the move, and it will have serious repercussions for Turkey’s Islamist government.
In response to the withering criticism, Turkish officials say their decision will have no impact on Iran and other neighboring countries.
However, Iran cannot remain silent on such a sensitive decision because the move is meant to curb Iran’s missile capabilities.
This new stance shows that the Turkish government is totally oblivious to Iran’s position on foreign policy issues.
If implemented, the decision will greatly damage Turkey’s relations with Iran, which is a neighboring regional power, and thus Tehran will make every effort to inform Ankara about its detrimental consequences.
Hopefully, these efforts will persuade Turkey to halt the process and reassume its former position as a regional power.
MP Mohammad Kowsari is a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian Majlis.
