Syrian air and ground forces were pounding insurgents outside Damascus in a ferocious offensive a day after a car bomb north of the capital killed at least 11 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The arrival of the U.S. personnel specialized in the six Patriot systems to be deployed on the Turkey-Syria border under a NATO agreement has highlighted fears that Syria’s civil war could suck in other nations in the region.

Turkey formally asked NATO for the missiles in November to bolster security along its 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria, which has been torn by a 21-month insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey repeatedly has scrambled fighter jets along the frontier and responded in kind when Syrian shells came down inside its borders, fanning fears that the civil war could spread to destabilize the region.

About 400 U.S. personnel and equipment from the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Air Defense Artillery, based at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, will arrive in Turkey over the next several days by U.S. military airlift, the U.S. European Command said on its website.

The U.S. troops, who began arriving at Incirlik air base in Turkey, will man two U.S. Patriot batteries out of a total of six batteries that have been promised by NATO allies.

Germany and the Netherlands are also providing two Patriot batteries and up to 400 troops each.

The German and Dutch missiles are expected to be loaded onto ships in European ports early next week but will take several weeks to get to Turkey.

A small advance team of German and Dutch soldiers will also fly to Turkey early next week to prepare the ground for the Patriots, with the bulk of the troops arriving later.

Syria’s chief ally Iran, however, has called the Patriot deployment “provocative,” seeing it as a blunting of its own offensive capabilities.

Ankara has responded by telling Tehran to use its clout with Assad to resolve the civil war in his country.

Oil Ties between UAE and Turkey grow strong Turkey to generate electricity.

The agreement between Abu Dhabi-based TAQA and Turkey’s state-run power company EUAS marks the biggest Arab investment in the Turkish energy sector, a senior energy ministry official told AFP.

“This is a very serious investment, a significant investment,” Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said at the signing ceremony in Ankara.

“This is the second-biggest investment made in Turkey after the two nuclear power plant projects,” he added.

The government plans to build three nuclear power plants in hopes of preventing a possible energy shortage and reducing dependence on foreign energy supplies.

Turkey struck a deal with Russia in 2010 to build the country’s first power plant at Akkuyu in the southern Mersin province.

Ankara is officially in negotiations with China, Japan, South Korea and Canada to build the second nuclear reactor.

With the latest agreement, the coal reserves at Afsin-Elbistan basin in southern Turkey will be put to use for electricity production.

“This agreement gives our company an exclusive right to negotiate with the Turkish government on this project for the next six months,” an official from TAQA told AFP.

The negotiations will lead to the signing of a “host government agreement” in the second quarter of 2013, establishing more detailed terms, he added.

TAQA and Turkey’s EUAS have been selected as the government-related entities responsible for implementing the project.

Under the intergovernmental agreement, the project partners will modernize and expand the existing 1,400 MW Plant B and develop several new power plants and associated mines in sectors C, D, E and G of the Afsin-Elbistan region.

And preparatory work on Plant B and the feasibility study for the planned 1,440 MW Plant C and associated mine development will start immediately.

The Afsin-Elbistan basin where two thermic power plants are already in operation has the potential to power new plants with a total installed capacity of 8,200 megawatts.

The region contains 4.4 billion tons of coal reserves, which account for approximately 40 percent of Turkey’s lignite resources.

Turkey places priority on the development of its lignite in an attempt to reduce its dependence on imports of natural gas.

With a new power plant that will be established in this region, Turkey is hoping to cut nearly $1.2 billion worth of natural gas imports, which account for a large part of the country’s current account deficit.

Turkey, which produces most of its electricity from natural gas, is heavily dependent on imported energy.

And it is under severe pressure from its Western allies to reduce imports of gas from neighboring Iran owing to Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.

Iran is Turkey’s second-biggest natural gas supplier after Russia.

But government officials repeatedly said that Turkey would keep buying natural gas from Iran which supplies 18-20 percent of the gas it consumes.

Simon James Odell

A month ago I was introduced to an English man by the name of Simon James Odell for a Web development project that I had come up with.

When we met in November he sold himself very well by telling me that he was an entrepreneur and  the worlds best software developer and that walked the earth.  He also passed himself off as the creator of  a platform he liked to call “Diamond” an offshoot of PERL which was nothing special just a ripoff of an open source software.

Gaining my trust I showed him a website that I wanted to replicate but with unique added features that would put us over the top in the e-sales and marketing space.  Shortly thereafter he started to show me still shots on his laptop that was far from my expectation of what a real web developer could do.  Everything was hard coded (nothing dynamic that I had wanted).  Simple pages with a kindergarten level interface that he knew was beyond basic.

When I saw his work he quickly realized that I was on to him and within a week my senses told me this guy was a fake.

Realizing that I had figured out his ineptitude and that he was less than qualified to deliver on the project Simon Odell asking me for a payment of  25,000 dirhams, a work visa, and 10% of the project.   This way he could outsource the entire project to others without me finding out.  Boy was he naive to think that.

Every day he would email me stress test results as if to prove his worth but I didn’t  fall for it even though I played along in amusement and that I gave him the benefit of the doubt so he could show me something tangible. 

After a few weeks of seeing that the project was going nowhere and that his platform was nothing special I got involved given the time constrained that we had.  I gave him design templates and a clear blueprint of the webs functionalities and even graphic design layouts because his designs were horrible to say the least.

By then I was on to him and in December I presented me with a contract that he signed.

Funny how his demands for remuneration went from 25,000 dirhams to  accepting 6,000 dirhams which in his mind was better than taking nothing from me.

Being the nice guy that I am I paid the amount upfront, 3000 dirhams in a check that was made out to his father because he was legally not allowed to work in the UAE and a week later another 3000 dirhams in cash.  I knew, that even during this one week in between the two payments he could not deliver on a slightest additional feature beyond what he kept showing me on his laptop.

Realizing that I had to get him off his laptop I decided to get a dedicated server for 1,000 dirhams so I could see how much of his work actually was real.

The message he left on our server

What he did was beyond unethical practice.  He changed the password on me so I could not access the server and see what he was doing.  Interestingly enough in the contract I made it clear that he could not engage in anything malice against us, which he breached.  But he had other ideas and locked me and my team out of the server entirely and if I did get access to it, it was setup in a way that all of the files would be whipped out.

By December 27th when James Odell knew that he could not honor his agreement on time he started sending threatening emails and tried to start an argument in order to wiggle his way out of the deal but I would not give in and made it clear that I would take the case to the Police if he did not fulfill the terms of the contract or alternatively repay the 6000 dirhams that was given to him upfront.   It wasn’t about the money, it was all about the principles of this relationship that obviously he had no regards for.

Then he really turned unprofessional to the point that he wouldn’t even reply to telephone calls and instead started sending insulting and abusive emails name calling and trying to act all tough telling me that he had worked 300 hours on his program and that the money was his to keep and that I could not do a thing about it because he was English and the English according to him were above the law in the UAE.   Adding insult to injury his take on the law was, so long as I was not an Emirati, he was safe and had nothing to worry about.

I really felt sorry for this guy and in the end I replied by sending him an email stating that I considered him a charity and that he could keep the money since he was so desperate.

And so the con ended.  He took  the 6,000 dirhams, had fun during the Christmas holidays in Abu Dhabi where he lives on his fathers sofa and we have moved on with our project hiring some new and incredibly talented developers that will have our project up and running in under 30 days and on schedule.

But the moral of this story is, “BE CAREFUL of the people who arrive in the UAE without a track record and don’t be fooled by their looks, their words and their passport.  Put them through a challenge and if they pass the test then you can trust them with other vital activities that relate to your business.  I am just glad I didn’t expose more of my vision to this guy and did not sign a deal beyond what he was really worth, peanuts.

The breach of contract – Simon Odell

TEHRAN — Jailed Iranian human rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh has halted her hunger strike after the Iranian judiciary agreed to drop a travel ban against her daughter, her husband said Tuesday.

Sotoudeh had endured nearly seven weeks without food, drinking salt and sugar solutions, to protest her 12-year-old daughter Mehrave being banned from leaving the country. The couple claimed their daughter was being punished for the alleged crimes of her mother, who has defended dissidents.

While the daughter was not planning to leave the country, Sotoudeh and her husband Reza Khandan feared the travel ban was a sign that authorities were planning to bring charges against the girl.

Khandan went with a group of female activists to the Iranian parliament on Tuesday, where they met with reformist lawmaker Mohammad Reza Tabesh, who in turn negotiated with the deputy speaker and speaker Ali Larijani to obtain an agreement from the head of the judiciary, Khandan said.

“They agreed to close the dossier of Mehrave and she is no longer banned from leaving the country and there are no charges against her,” Khandan said Tuesday.

The family reunited Tuesday evening in the administration department of Evin Prison, the husband said. Sotoudeh, who had earlier been restricted to talking to her children behind a glass partition, was allowed to hug her son and daughter.

“There she stopped her hunger strike and started eating in front of us,” he said.

Sotoudeh’s weeks on hunger strike left her feeble and reduced her weight to less than 95 pounds, Khandan told the Times as her protest wore on this month. Reports of her deteriorating health led Iranian lawmakers to plan a visit to investigate; the U.S State department raised concerns about her health last week, saying that Iran had a history of letting prisoners die from hunger strikes.

The attorney is serving six years in prison after being convicted of spreading propaganda against the government and acting against national security. Human rights groups contend she was jailed to halt her outspoken defense of dissidents, including a client who was abruptly executed without notice.

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights called again Tuesday for Sotoudeh to be released along with other detained human rights activists. Iranian authorities often target the families of human rights defenders, “a disturbing trend apparently aimed at curbing the freedoms of expression, opinion and association,” spokesman Rupert Colville said in a Tuesday briefing.

Source: LA Times

“We do have a plan to close the Strait of Hormuz,” state media quoted Gen. Hasan Firouzabadi as saying Saturday. “A Shiite nation (Iran) acts reasonably and would not approve interruption of a waterway … unless our interests are seriously threatened,” Press TV quoted him as saying.

The comments by Firouzabadi, the chairman of Iran’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, come days after the European Union enforced a total oil embargo against Iran for its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program.

A halt in crude oil imports from Iran is intended to increase pressure on the Islamic Republic to stop enriching uranium to the 20 percent level, an issue at the center of an international dispute.

Western powers fear material produced at that level — well above the 3.5 percent enrichment needed for energy-producing reactors — can be turned into weapons-grade material in a matter of months. Iran insists its reactors are only for energy and research.

Iranian lawmakers have prepared a bill that would order the country’s military to stop tankers headed to countries that have joined the oil ban.

But Iran’s parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, was quoted by Iranian media on Saturday as saying that the proposed bill has not yet been studied by parliament.

Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard has warned in the past that Tehran would order the closure of the Strait of Hormuz if the country’s oil exports are blocked.

The measure was approved unanimously sending a clear signal that the theocracy’s actions to continue on its path of enrichment, one that could in fact endanger world security, would not be tolerated.

This closes all loopholes of a previous bill that was passed and empowers President Obama to impose sanctions on any country or company that enters joint ventures with Iran to develop its oil or uranium resource, or provides technology or resources to help Iran with such development.

It also includes measures against anyone who provides goods that “materially contribute to Iran’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program or its terrorism-related activities.”

This leads us to today, where the West and Iran met in Baghdad for what can be called a final showdown or on a softer tone, a last attempt at negotiating what seems to be an improbable deal given the distance between the parties and their demands.

On the one hand the Islamic regime wants 3 guarantees while the West has one demand, stop enriching Uranium at undisclosed locations hidden from IAEA inspectors.

But what are the 3 guarantees that Iran is adamant about?

First and foremost Iran wants the West to acknowledge its inalienable right to produce nuclear enrichment for peaceful purposes on its soil.  But hold on a second, everyone knows that under the NPT agreement and the rules of the IAEA which Iran is a signatory of it has such rights to develop peaceful nuclear energy so why make it an issue?

Well, this attempt is simply to assure Tehran that it does not have to depend on foreign countries to provide it with key components to nuclear enriched materials, technology and expertise.  This feeling of dependency has always been a sticky point in Iran – West relations.  But it goes beyond that.

For the past 10 years both the IAEA and the international community have been communicating such a right with the condition of full disclosure and transparency.  But Iran has consistently refused such a candid approach and at every opportunity has shown the world that it has pushed further on its enrichment even passing the 20% mark which puts it closer to weapons grade enrichment and readiness.

Second, Iran wants all sanctions lifted, including the one that was just passed by the United States congress.  The sanctions have had a crippling effect on the regime domestically and it feels that such sanctions if sustained would  ultimately lead to paralysis of the economy and therefore could lead to a domestic revolt.  Already unemployment is at 30% (unofficial records), the bazaar has come to a halt and inflation has had its effects on the average Iranian working 2 or even 3 jobs just to make ends meet.

And the last demand that is less spoken of is that the regime in Tehran wants assurances that the West will not engage in “regime change” because it knows full well that under a more democratic political atmosphere the people of Iran will most certainly be in a position to change the power dynamics of the country and therefore bring an end to 33 years of despotic rule.  And by all indications of the 2009 presidential hijack of an election, Iranians are ready for “change”.

So now the question is can will these conditions be met by the West and will the Europeans bow to Iran’s demands in light of the economic pressures in Europe or will they stand on principles and demand Iran change its course.

We will have to wait for the outcome come daybreak but in my view neither side is any closer today than they were when the talks first initiated back in early 2010.

With increased pressure by the United States on India to curb ties with Iran, the UAE has moved in to fill the gap that would feed the Indian appetite for oil as the country moves forward with it’s growth plans.

Once again Iran has demonstrated its lack of vision, lack of willingness to cooperate with the International community, and remains to take a hostile position that does not serve it’s national interest as economic conditions in the country continue to decline.

Unemployment and underemployment is unofficially at around 25% and inflation continues to make it harder and harder for the middle class to keep costs under control.

According to AFP news agency, anonymous US officials confirmed that the US-administered Al-Dhafra air base  in the UAE had received an unspecified number of F-22 Raptors.

The fighter jet, manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, includes stealth capabilities and is considered one of the most advanced aircraft in the US Air Force.

The move comes as diplomatic relations between the UAE and Iran have soured over three Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf.

Responding to the news on the deployment of F-22s in the region, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin Mehmanparast claimed the move could “endanger the security of the region”.

“We do not approve of the presence of foreign forces in the region and believe that their presence undermines regional security,” he told the semi-official Mehr news agency.

Iranian authorities have bolstered the Islamic Republic’s military presence on Abu Musa and insisted its ownership over the three islands is “non-negotiable” as per the 1971 agreement that was signed by Iran, England and then the Emirate of Sharjah.

FACTS about the history of the Islands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Musa#Ownership

The ownership of Iran on Abu Musa has been disputed by UAE. The dispute between Iran and UAE started in 1974, three years after the latter’s establishment. The island had been under Persian control until the early 20th century.  After 1908, the UK controlled the island along with the other British-held islands in the Persian Gulf, including what is today the UAE. In the late 1960s, Britain transferred administration of the island to the British-appointed Sharjah, one of the seven sheikdoms that would later form the UAE.

A map from 1891 showing Abu Musa part of Iran. two dotted lines shows Transatlantic telegraph cables

After Britain announced in 1968 that it would end its administrative and military positions in the Persian Gulf, Iran moved to reattach the island politically to the mainland. In November 30 1971 (two days before the official establishment of UAE), Iran and Sharjah signed a Memorandum of Understanding. They agreed to allow Sharjah to have a local police station and Iran to station troops on the island according to the map attached to the Memorandum of Understanding.

Sheik Saghar Welcoming Iranian Troops to Abu Musa and Visiting Iran‘s Artmis Navy Ship-1971

One day before the UK officially left the region, Iran stationed its troops on the island and was welcomed with the Sheik of Sharjah‘s brother; Sheik Saghar; officially.

In 1980, the UAE took its claim to the United Nations.  But it was rejected by the UN security council, and the issue was closed.  In the same year, Saddam Hussein attempted to justify the Iran-Iraq War by claiming that one of the objectives was to “liberate” Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs in Persian Gulf. In 1992, Iran expelled foreign workers who operated the UAE-sponsored school, medical clinic, and power-generating station.  In 2012 a visit to the island by Iranian president Ahmedinejad provoked a diplomatic incident. Iran’s historical claim to ownership over the islands roots back to the Parthian and Sassanid Empires, among others. Iran considers the island to have been occupied by the UK and refers to the the agreement between Iran and emirate of Sharjah at 1971.

The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis and escort ships have entered the area of an Iranian naval exercise east of the Strait of Hormuz.

Captain of a US vessel in the Persian Gulf who wanted to remain anonymous has said that in the event of war, US naval forces would “smash” the Iranian coastal installations within hours. “The Iranian Navy is coastal and can only protect the country’s interests in the coastal waters but in open waters they are no match for us”.

The Russian naval commander agrees with the US statement that “there can be no comparison between the fire power of America and Iran given Iran’s limited offensive military hardware.”

While painting a different picture, Seyyed Mahmoud Musavi, the Iranian Navy’s deputy commander for operations, said that the Iranian Navy was ready to confront foreign naval groups in a real war scenario, while the Iranian Navy held maneuvers in the Persian Gulf.

Despite the tense situation and strong rhetoric on both sides, Kapitanets believes that it is in neither countries strategic interest to go to war and will therefore show restraint.

“The US’s actions are certainly provocative, but the matter is unlikely to go as far as direct military confrontation,” he said. “Certainly, the situation in the region is very complicated, but it is unlikely to grow into military action.” The Iranians say the exercises are within the norms of international law and should be respected. “We are ready to confront the violators who disregard the security perimeters set for the drills in line with international law,” said Musavi.