Mossad vs Assad? 'CIA death squads behind Syria bloodbath'

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"Targeting of Christian Syrians and Black Libyans: The 'Clash of Civilizations' is on the march," by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

A Christian exodus is being planned for the Middle East by Washington, Tel Aviv, and Brussels. It has been reported that Sheikh Al-Rahi was told in Paris by President Nicolas Sarkozy that the Christian communities of the Levant and Middle East can resettle in the European Union. This is no gracious offer. It is a slap in the face by the same powers that have deliberately created the conditions to eradicate the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East. The aim appears to be either the resettling of the Christian communities outside of the region or demarcate them in enclaves. Both could be objectives. This is meant to delineate the Arab nations along the lines of being exclusively Muslim nations and falls into accordance with the Yinon Plan.

Concluding the IFAD-ICARDA workshop on knowledge and technology transfer in Aleppo, Syria, today

On Thursday, 29 October 2009

The Workshop on Knowledge and Technology Exchange for Enhanced Quality of IFAD/ICARDA Operations in the NENA region concluded its deliberations in Aleppo, Syria today with a “Retreat” that discussed the Medium Term Management Plan 2010-2012 of IFAD’s Near East and North Africa Division (PN). The participating staff of IFAD and IFAD-supported projects deliberated the operational priorities of PN, including means of improving implementation and impact of country programmes and ways to expand and strengthen the lending and grant programmes while improving efficiency in portfolio and project development. The participants also discussed PN’s Contribution to IFAD-wide results by means of enhancing partnerships, expanding co-financing and intensifying knowledge sharing and dissemination.

The participants then broke into four separate roundtables working group discussions focusing on four aspects of the division’s work, namely, the Annual Work Programme and Budget (AWPB), Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), Procurement and Financial Management.

The AWPB Working Group predominantly consisted of country program managers of IFAD supported projects. Along with IFAD staff in the Working Group, the participants identified a number of constraints, including the quality of AWPBs. The group expressed the need to develop a model of reference for greater consistency. Another major impediment to AWPB planning and implementation is the often incongruence of financial administration between government and IFAD funds particularly due to the fact that government funds are usually not flexibly tuned to the annual format of AWPBs. The group recommended approaching governments with the idea that they should administer their funds through a local project account for the implementation period with the flexibility necessary to carry over government funds.

Another pressing and fundamental issue is the lack of synergy or fine tuning between AWPB and the Logframe. Implementing the AWPB often reduces the projects into its activities without enhancing appropriate linkages of these activities for impact. The group recommended that the Logframe should be the steering course of AWPBs and that it should be updated continuously. This also was linked directly to another issue, the flexibility of AWPB. The AWPB should be adjustable more frequently and less constrained by current restrictions. Often there are also stalls in the planning and delivery of AWPB particularly due to the national procedures for approval and the participants emphasized the need for early proactive planning. The group also recommended that capacity building in preparation for implementation of AWPB should be a concentrated continuous effort. The fact that the planning of the project is imbedded in the AWPB under the overall Logframe makes it fundamental to implementation and impact making capacity building all the more crucial.

Finally the last issue raised was that knowledge management and innovation is not reflected in the AWPBs. This lack of reflection reduces the effectiveness of knowledge management and innovation support to the project. This support can go someway in enhancing capacity of project management units and supporting innovative management and intervention, which all fundamentally contribute to greater impact of projects.

The M&E working group discussed the impediments to more effective M&E systems in the IFAD-supported projects. Chief among them are dissymmetric perceptions with regard to the importance of M&E. Some Governmental officials tend to pay more attention to physical progress (i.e. output) than to measurements of outcomes and impacts. Another reported issue is pertaining to the M&E design itself whereby too many indicators, some of them are not relevant to the country context, are being monitored. Furthermore, there seems to be a disconnect in some Project Management Units between M&E staff and the rest of the project staff. A list of suggestions for M&E improvement was proposed:

• Sound and pertinent M&E system should be devised at the project design stage and not during start-up as it seems to be the case in most of the projects


• Empowering M&E staff through capacity building aimed at fostering the Monitoring for Evaluation approach


• Work with the Governments to foster awareness related to the necessity to measure impact

The Procurement working group addressed the need for capacity building at the PMU level with a view to strengthening the skills of PMU staff in managing procurement. The group made a series of recommendations to improve procurement performance by resolving the most common procurement challenges currently facing the on-going IFAD–assisted projects.

During the day, the workshop participants toured research stations within the ICARDA headquarters compound, where they were able to inspect some laboratories, facilities and filed experiments in areas of soil conservation and water harvesting. The participants had the opportunity to interact with the researchers at these well equipped facilities and discuss practical solutions to problem facing IFAD’s going projects. This includes a wide range of released technologies and services offered by the GIS department that are suitable to improve interventions in the agro-climatic zones where IFAD is active.

Nadim Khouri, Director of PN closed the workshop with a presentation in which he highlighted the major achievements of three decades of cooperation between the IFAD and ICARDA, during which the Fund provide US$37 million in grants to the centre. He highlighted the sectoral distribution of these grants, of which 76 percent was allocated for applied research and technology transfer, 12 percent for management of natural resources, nine percent for value chain and three percent for capacity-building. He emphasized the importance of further enhancing cooperation with ICARDA building an even stronger strategic alliance between the two institutions. He again thanked the Government of the Arab Republic of Syria and ICARDA for hosting this important learning event.


On Wednesday, 28 October 2009

Participants at the IFAD-ICARDA workshop on Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Aleppo Syria have dedicated this day to field visits to sites of three IFAD-supported projects in Syria, the closed Jebel el-Hoss Agricultural Development, the on-going Idleb Rural Development Project and the on-going Badia Rangeland Development Project.

Participants who visited the Badia Rangelands Development Project reported that implementation of the project activities are being carried out by some 200 herder cooperatives. Each cooperative has about 100 members. The cooperatives collaborated with the BRDP in rangeland rehabilitation. The process works like this: the cooperative identifies the land that they would like to rehabilitate and discuss it with the management of the BRDP. Cooperatives usually allocate 500 Ha for rehabilitation. The characterisation of the plot of land takes place and the most appropriate method for rehabilitation is selected either through direct seeding of palatable range varieties or through the cultivation of forage trees. Where range reserves are being established, the cooperative provides the land and manages the grazing rights in the reserve; whereas the project provides the land preparation, cultivation and guarding for a period of 4 years.

The results are impressive. Despite the extended drought over the past years, and thanks to the selection of appropriate range varieties, implementation of high quality land preparation and cultivation practices, and very proactive project management, the results are generating more demand among cooperatives for replication. Key elements that we need to consider in the course of replication or adaptation of this methodology are:

• the land tenure and the grazing rights and whether these are vested in homogeneous social units (tribes, sub-tribes);
• the “representativity” of the herders’ cooperatives, their legal status and whether they include all users of a given geographic area; and
• strict government enforcement of environmental rules and support to environmental development.

Participants in the field trip to the IFAD-supported Rural Development Project in Idleb were able to examine some of the major achievements of the project in helping about 42,000 beneficiaries in 140 of Syria’s poorest villages improve their food production and incomes.

At the total cost of almost US$45 million, the project has already reclaimed some 20,000 ha of rocky mountainous land plots turning them into productive small agricultural holdings. It has been highly successful in increasing the area cultivated with fruit trees and different seasonal crops, supporting agricultural extension and developing water resources and water harvesting techniques. The project has been particularly successful in reaching out to landless and poor rural women and men with microfinance and vocational training helping them develop their own micro enterprises and, thereby, generating incomes for themselves and contributing to job creations for others.

A good example of the many micro enterprises supported by the project is the mushroom farm of the 45 year old small producer, Abdulaziz Ismael, who received vocational training and technical support from the project. With an initial investment of US$2000, Abdulaziz has been able to initiate a mushroom farm in his underground garage. The Mushroom farm has come to represent a reliable source of income for Abdulaziz and his family, which consists of six members, granting it a comfortable standard of living.

As one of the most successful microfinance experiences in the Arab region, the so called “Village Funds” developed and supported by the Idleb project in 22 villages are yielding some extraordinary results with 100% repayment of all small loans by micro-entrepreneurs and a zero failure rate of on-going enterprises. IFAD will be developing some of the success stories of this project and its Village Funds in various communication products that will tell some of the most amazing successes of poor rural women and men in charting a better future for their families.

The Workshop on Knowledge and Technology Exchange for Enhanced Quality of IFAD/ICARDA Operations in NENA continues

The “Knowledge and Technology Exchange for Enhanced Quality of IFAD/ICARDA Operations in the Near East and North Africa Workshop” was opened by Mahmoud El Solh, Director-General of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) and Nadim Khouri, Director of the Near East and North Africa Division of IFAD in Aleppo, Syria, last evening (Monday, 26/10/09). About 70 workshop participants, including staff members of the two institutions and other experts and resource persons from IFAD supported projects in NENA, attended the opening ceremony.

In his opening speech, Mahmoud El Solh, Director General of ICARDA said the workshop will deepen the strategic partnership between ICARDA and IFAD. “This is our opportunity to learn from IFAD colleagues on the sustainable agricultural development aspects because our research agenda should target such aspects, El Solh said.” “At the same time,” he added, “I am happy to see so many Country Programme Managers who can see what ICARDA has to offer of technologies that may facilitate their work in development.” He affirmed that there are many technologies that are winning grounds quickly, some others are really new and some technologies that need more fine tuning to meet the needs of the ultimate target group, which is the resource poor farmers.

On his part, the Director of IFAD’s Near East and North Africa Division, Nadim Khouri, thanked the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic and ICARDA for hosting and organizing the workshop. He said “the objective of this learning event is to update our knowledge on enhanced rainfed agricultural production systems.” “About 80% of cultivated land in the world is rainfed while about 60% of the food produced is produced by systems that do not rely on irrigation,” he said. Large numbers of resource-poor rural people live in dry areas, with limited opportunities to enhance their capacities to improve food production and standards of living. He added: “We understand that poor people have their own strategies to move out of poverty and the best strategy we can have is to understand their strategies and help them realize them and multiply their assets.”

Khouri further stated: “We basically have US$ 300 million that are going to come out of IFAD funds for the region over the next three years.” On the basis of 1:1 dollar cofinancing, IFAD could attract a similar investment from co-financiers of its projects, bringing the total external funding to US$ 600 million. Kouri said: “Normally, the largest co-financing comes from the recipient countries and beneficiaries of development projects themselves. So if our investment starts with US$300 million by the end we will have about US$1 billion basically entrusted in us and our partners to decide how to allocate in the next three years.”

Khouri emphasized that helping the most vulnerable, IFAD’s target group, requires greater efforts to make best use of available resources, knowledge and technologies to enhance the quality of the Fund’s interventions in the region, which is facing increasing challenges under climate change conditions. The learning event should help the staff of the Near East and North Africa Division further enhance their capacity to reflect upon the newly acquired knowledge and to boost the impact of IFAD’s operations.

The opening ceremony was followed by a dinner reception, which provided and initial opportunity for the experts and staff members of the two institutions and participating resource persons from IFAD-supported projects to meet and exchange views on various issues under consideration.

Most of the participants expressed satisfaction that the workshop will strengthen country capacities in the NENA region on the latest agricultural packages available from research. Many indicated that it would also would help align ICARDA operations with the Country Strategic Opportunities Papers (COSOPs) and IFAD loan projects. The workshop should also help foster a strategic partnership between IFAD and ICARDA country programmes and take stock of joint initiatives and assess future collaborations.

On Tuesday, 27 October 2009


The first day for the workshop started with a PowerPoint presentation by the Director General of ICARDA, Mahmoud El Solh on research outputs and approaches to enhance food security and improved livelihoods in dry areas. The presentation dealt with constraints leading to food insecurity and poverty in Dry Areas; technologies towards food security and better livelihoods; approaches for technology transfer; and ICARDA’s Strategic Plan 2007-2016 on Agricultural Research for Development in Dry Areas. He underlined that the severest impact of climate change will be in the NENA region. He underlined the need for new technologies to face the challenge of ever scarcer water resources. In this regard, El Solh highlighted the importance of developing more drought tolerant varieties of crops; improved management of water resources; and alternative solutions to traditional irrigation including the use of supplementary irrigation methodologies in rainfed areas.

Following a plenary discussion, a group photo was taken for all participants who then broke into four working groups dedicated to discussing in depth the following areas of work:

• Group 1: Improved agricultural productivity and food security – Crops
• Group 2: Improving agricultural productivity and food security – Livestock
• Group 3: Water and natural resource management and climate change
• Group 4: Value chains, microfinance and market diagnostics

Each of the four groups attended and discussed presentations by ICARDA scientists, IFAD experts and resource persons. Following a couple of hours of discussions, the working group formulated their findings and presented brief reports to the plenary.

Focusing on crops, the first group presented what has been identified as the main challenges in this area. This includes, among others, the challenge of enhancing research for development and expanding its coverage to larger scale projects as well as the challenge of scaling up innovation and technology dissemination and outreach. The group also identified a number of constraints to overcome, such as the need for expanding the lack of awareness and “buy-in” at the national level; lack of capacity to indemnify products and creating enabling system of support linked to markets and a disconnect between National Agricultural Systems (NARs) and the national priorities. The group also highlighted the weakness of marketing systems and trade issues as well as the need to develop alternative crops, including alternatives to the cultivation of poppies, and the need for policy reforms to enable small farmers to compete for market opportunities.

The report of the second group, which focused on livestock, indicated that the discussion was based on the experience of the IFAD-supported Mashreg-Magreb project, which has developed animal feed technologies and helped establish community development organizations and approaches. The group outlined the needs for improved feeding technologies and alternative fodder and feed resources, improved milking and cheese processing with a focus on shifting market demand. Among others, a range of approaches were discussed for enhanced adaptation rate of such technologies.

Addressing water and natural resources issues, the third group affirmed that a new water productivity concept has emerged with the climate change challenge and increase severity of water scarcity. It recommended that new policies and strategies at different levels should be accommodated to improve farmers and nomads productivity ensuring good life quality and livelihood. Land productivity and water productivity concepts are to be seen together during the design and implementation phases of projects. The group also underlined the importance of mapping of resources and management of natural resources using GIS, indicating that ICT is important to have a role in transfer of technologies to farmers and nomads within search Institutes and projects. The development of technologies for scaling up and adoption requires engagement of research and development projects to fill in the gaps in production.

Dealing with value chains, markets and diagnostics, the fourth group focused its discussions on the analysis of the value-added chains of Onions and Pomegranate and the constrains facing small producers. It concluded a series of recommendations, including, among others, the possibility of increasing the use of seed capitals and start-up capital to introduce and develop the activity, institutionalization of small farmer groups and their role in processing, transfer of resources and empowering of small growers in the value-chain.

Following this first half a day of brain storming, the workshop participants moving their debates to the field visiting three ICARDA supported projects.

IFAD and ICARDA hold a regional knowledge and technology transfer workshop in Aleppo, Syria

Monday, 26 Ocober 2009

With emphasis on rainfed agriculture, a three day regional information exchange and knowledge sharing workshop starts in Aleppo, Syria this evening. Some 70 staff members of IFAD, IFAD-supported projects in the Near East and North Africa region (NENA) and the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) are expected to participate. The “Knowledge and Technology Exchange for Enhanced Quality of IFAD/ICARDA operations in the NENA region” workshop aims at strengthening PN’s capacity to incorporate the latest research-generated agricultural Science and Technology (S&T) packages and other up-scalable innovations in its future operations in the region.

The learning event will take place at ICARDA headquarters with several field sessions at the sites of IFAD-supported development projects and ICARDA research stations. It will provide learning opportunities for the participants to identify and discuss major needs and priority areas that could benefit the design of development projects for NENA countries. The field work should provide ample opportunity to demonstrate the technological packages in the areas of:

• improving agricultural productivity and food security
• adaptation to climate change and natural resource management
• upgrading pro-poor untilization of value chains and markets
• diagnostics for targeting pro-poor research and development investments

The workshop will reach its objectives through wide application of several KM activities & tools, including round table discussions, focus groups (World Café), informal meetings, and direct interviewing of beneficiaries from IFAD and ICARDA projects. The participants will select specific themes (out of a list of 22 themes extending from themes like rangeland rehabilitation and water harvesting to the themes like biodiversity, gene management and biofuels) as the main focus of their work during the workshop. Designated staff will facilitate plenary sessions, contribute as resource persons, lead the field visit groups, and generate success stories from the field. The event will end with a divisional PN retreat that will examine a number of deliverables including the Divisional Management and Medium Term Plans.

Besides the benefits of cross fertilization and lifting of the overall team spirit, the workshop is expected to yield concrete deliverables, including:
• 20 learning notes on available technologies and approaches in rain-fed agriculture
• 6 success stories (human stories) from the field
• validated Divisional Management Plan 2010 and a PN Medium term plan 2010-2012
• strengthened networking and systematic knowledge sharing mechanisms between the country programme and IFAD HQ
• Outlines of 2-3 specific projects that would build on ICARDA’s knowledge and expertise in areas relevant to IFAD’s thematic priorities in the NENA region

More Warmongering from Bush and Cheney's Warmongering Court "Jew," David Wurmser

What an amazing misuse of the collective "we."

US 'must break Iran and Syria regimes'

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 2:09am BST 05/10/2007

America should seize every opportunity to force regime change in Syria and Iran, a former senior adviser to the White House has urged.

"We need to do everything possible to destabilise the Syrian regime and exploit every single moment they strategically overstep," said David Wurmser, who recently resigned after four years as Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser.

"That would include the willingness to escalate as far as we need to go to topple the regime if necessary." He said that an end to Baathist rule in Damascus could trigger a domino effect that would then bring down the Teheran regime.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the first since he left government, he argued that the United States had to be prepared to attack both Syria and Iran to prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East that could result in a much wider war.

Mr Wurmser, 46, a leading neo-conservative who has played a pivotal role in the Bush administration since the September 11th attacks, said that diplomacy would fail to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power. Overthrowing Teheran's theocratic regime should therefore be a top US priority.

... Limited strikes against Iranian nuclear targets would be useless, Mr Wurmser said. ... "If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don't shoot a bear if you're not going to kill it" ...


"If we decided from no preparation to doing something in Iran, while it would cause a lot of heartburn among many people in the Pentagon, we could do it.

"I would never underestimate the raw capability of the United States in any off-the-shelf situation. If that's what we decided to do, things can be done."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=B2QZ1SL21V1X3QFIQMFSFF4AVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2007/10/05/wiran105.xml

Goodbye Aquinas and Just War Theory, Hello Maimonides and Law of the Jungle

EDITOR'S NOTE: Last summer the Israeli state executed a 33 day long planned attack against Lebanon destroying it's civilian infrastructure, bombing civilian neighborhoods, killing 10 civilians for every militant and finishing it's brutality by littering the countryside with cluster bombs which continue to kill and maim civilians--mostly children--to this day. Thankfully, there was just enough Christian decency left in the increasingly Judaized world for a significant percentage of the population to recognize, if only briefly, the barbaric nature of the Israelis' actions. This is a serious problem to the Judaic agenda which holds fixed principles, particularly Christian principles, and universal standards to be intolerable. Last year's brutality against Lebanon will certainly not be the last such action from the Israelis and they intend to continue their brutality without incurring any further public relations disasters. So, what to do?

Israeli, US intellectuals chart new rules of war for insurgencies

Last summer, at the height of the Second Lebanon War, two intellectuals specializing in security affairs met for a conversation. For the Israeli of the pair, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya's Boaz Ganor, it was an opportunity to vent his frustration.

"We talked about the frustration we had over how the world was relating to the war, mainly the claim that Israel wasn't responding with 'proportionality,'" Ganor told The Jerusalem Post this week.

... "We decided we had to establish an international team" - experts have been consulted from Canada, Australia and elsewhere - "that will relate to Hague and Geneva, which are very good, but will try to fine tune them for the new situation," Ganor said.

With monthly video-conference calls between Israel and Syracuse, New York, the team has begun to lay the groundwork for the document they hope to present in Washington D.C. in October - the 100th anniversary of the Hague Convention.

... "The primary goal is to protect civilians," Ganor said emphatically. "That's the sacred principle behind this.

Its implications are far from simple. As Ganor explains: "Take the mista'arvim [the IDF infiltration units that dress as Arabs and enter Arab towns to conduct operations] for example. On the face of it, it's a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions, which demand clear separation between fighting forces and civilians, with 'a badge and a flag.' On the other hand, it's by far the most selective and safe means of arresting or even assassinating someone ..."

Full Article:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1177591142883&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull