Carl Bildt hailed a decision taken by the Arctic Council in Kiruna on Wednesday to grant India, China and five other nations permanent observer status at a summit boycotted by Greenland over what it felt was a snub by Sweden. … Read More
“Avatar” sequel will use underwater motion-capture
Over the weekend, “Avatar” producer Jon Landau revealed a few tantalizing details into the sequels (and possible prequel) of the James Cameron fantasy story that has become the highest grossing film of all time. Speaking to the NAB Technology Summit on Cinema, Landau revealed that the sequels will continue to push the boundaries on special effects, making use of “performance capture in water”:“We have kept a team of digital artists on from ‘Avatar’ in order to test how we can create performance capture underwater. We could simulate water [in CG], but we can’t simulate the actor’s experience, so we are going to capture performance in a tank.” “We want to take advantage of the technologies brilliant people are putting out to make the next two movies even more emotionally engaging and visually tantalizing, and to really wrap up the story arc of our two main characters”Though Cameron has been aiming for December 2014 and 2015 releases, a date has not yet been set.Continue Reading… … Read More
Elite Nepalese Sherpa falls to his death on Everest
An elite Nepalese mountaineer responsible for setting up climbing routes on Mount Everest plunged to his death over the weekend, the first loss of the summit season, an official said Monday. Mingmar Sherpa, 47, was a member of a team known as the “icefall doctors” who maintain the…
Benjamin Netanyahu Finds a “Secret Ally” in Bashar Assad’s Syria
What a difference a few years
can make. Five years ago, Israel had a (US-paid-for) ally to the
south in Egypt and a nuisance to the north in Bashar Assad’s Syria.
No longer. As editor-in-chief Aluf Benn writes in an op-ed in
Haaretz, Benjamin Netanyahu has become
“Assad’s secret ally”:
With the Syrian regime becoming destabilized, its
borders breached and the struggle for its future rupturing the
region, Israel had the back of the tyrant from Damascus. It made no
deterrent military moves, did not openly support the Syrian
opposition and did not even use the horrors in Syria for obligatory
propaganda like “Arabs murder Arabs and the hypocritical world does
not care, and we are criticized for much less.” Netanyahu made do
with general statements about the “breakup” of Syria and warnings
against chemical weapons and missiles falling into the hands of
terrorists.
Alliances between states do not require meetings between leaders,
exchanges of ambassadors and declarations of support and affection.
Mutual interests that the parties understand and act upon are
sufficient.
Benn provides four driving factors in Netanyahu’s shift toward
Assad: trying to create a division between Syria and Iran, which
Netanyahu considers an existential threat to Israel, Israel’s
troubles with the previously more friendly countries of Turkey and
Egypt, weakening Hezbollah, and preventing Al-Qaeda from gaining a
stronghold to the north of Israel. Worth mentioning too is that
some Syrian rebel leaders have signaled Israel would
remain an enemy in any new order in Syria. Read Benn’s op-ed
here.
Parting question: if Barack Obama’s support for borders based on
the pre-1967 map of Israel (something also supported in principle
by Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David summit, and by George W.
Bush, the first president to openly support ;a two-state
solution) was enough to brand him as anti-Israel by
some on the right, what would they brand neoconservatives like
John McCain and Lindsay Graham who are
itching to intervene in Syria on behalf of rebels with
potential ties to Al-Qaeda, some of whom have openly expressed
hostility to Israel? … Read More
Arab League decision to recognize Syrian rebels denies peaceful solution – Lavrov
“We have learned the results of the Arab League summit in Doha with regret, I can tell you frankly,” Lavrov said at a media briefing on Thursday. “We consider the main meaning of the decisions made that the Arab League has refused a peaceful settlement for Syria.” … Read More
Giving Syrian opposition seats at Arab League is ‘illegal, indefensible’ – Moscow
“In terms of international law, decisions on Syria made by the [Arab] League are unlawful and indefensible, since the government of the Syrian Arab Republic remains the legal representative of the UN member-state,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aleksandr Lukashevich said in a statement. Arab leaders gathered on Tuesday for the League’s annual two-day summit in the Qatari capital Doha. To the outrage of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, Syria’s opposition National Coalition formally took the country’s official seat at the gathering.In November 2011, the Arab League suspended the republic’s membership in the organization. Moscow called the Arab League’s decision to invite the Syrian opposition to the summit and give them Assad’s chair “yet another anti-Syrian step.” The head of the opposition Coalition’s delegation, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, urged Arab leaders to beef up assistance to the opposition, including the provision of military aid and the foreign imposition of a no-fly zone over the country’s north. The Russian Foreign Ministry compared such a scenario to the Libyan conflict. Khatib also called on “Arab and friendly” states for support in granting the National Coalition a seat at the United Nations and other international organizations. There was no firm consensus among summit participants that individual members of the League had the right to provide military aid to “anti-government armed groups in Syria,” the Russian diplomat pointed out. The Doha summit’s decisions, “approved despite objection by a range of member-states, are perplexing, to say the least,” Lukashevich said, calling the move “open support for forces that, unfortunately, stand for a military solution” to the Syrian conflict. Lukashevich also argued that the League’s decisions contradict the principles for a peaceful political settlement laid out in the Geneva Communiqué. The document was enacted on June 30, 2012, by major world powers with the participation of the Arab League’s Secretary General and some of the organization’s members, including Qatar, Lukashevich pointed out. The Communiqué said that an agreement must be reached between the Syrian government and opposition groups. “But not that some structure, whose legitimacy would be approved by external forces, would be set as opposition to the legal Syrian government,” the Russian diplomat said. Lukashevich said the latest moves “undermine the mandate” of the UN and Arab League mediator for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi. Russia has maintained that the only way to stop the bloodshed in conflict-wracked Syria is through a political dialogue with both the government and opposition involved in the negotiations. The Arab League’s decisions have come under fire in Damascus as well. State-run Syrian news agency SANA said that the organization compromised its “values for the sake of Gulf Arab and Western interests when it gave Syria’s seat to the opposition Syrian National Coalition,” Reuters reported. … Read More
