Comment du Jour

Europe and  USA work Towards Afghan Peace Process 

Afghanistan’s long and tortuous road to peace and reconciliation still seems a near mirage as an entrenched terrorist insurgency seems to rebuff political and security gains made by the Kabul government and international military assistance.  Still the UN mission in the war torn South Asian country seems cautiously optimistic and offered a renewed hope for a still complex peace process.

Addressing the Security Council, Nicholas Haysom, the UN’s representative for the Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) stated that,  “significant developments” had brought renewed hope for the peace process including  the new National Unity Government and a dialogue between Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. 

While Taliban terrorists had suffered setbacks, other factions of the militants were willing to negotiate with the central government.

Ominously, Nicholas Haysom warned that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) “had also established a foothold in the country” which while not yet significant,  had a “potential to offer an alternative flagpole to which otherwise isolated insurgent splinter groups could rally.”    

  There were elections which saw the first-ever transfer from one democratically elected government to another, and equally, the ending of the long running International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) which has been replaced by a new NATO mission, Operation “Resolute Support”. 

Since the multinational intervention in 2001 toppled the ruling Taliban Islamic fundamentalist regime, security in Afghanistan rested on American forces as well as ISAF.   In turn both the USA and ISAF have been training Afghan security forces and police to various levels of success as to be able to independently carry the country’s security burden.

The ISAF mission ended in 2014 with the Afghan national army assuming full responsibility for combat operations. 

Today the new NATO mission “Resolute Support” deploys a multinational force of 13,000 of which the USA fields 6,800 troops, Germany 850, Italy 500 and the United Kingdom 470, among others.   Just one year ago, ISAF still maintained a 51,000 contingent which included 33,000 Americans.  Despite the ongoing insurgency, the mission has been considerably downsized.

To be sure, the situation has changed.  British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant stated, “We must not lose sight of how far Afghanistan has come in the last year,”   in  light of the presidential election and the Kabul government’s responsibility for security.

What the Kabul government calls the Transformation Decade (2015-2024) nonetheless faces a peace process which the UN envoy called “fragile and vulnerable to external destabilization,” and a moribund economy as well.

 Afghanistan still depends heavily on development aid with the USA and Japan being the top donors. 

Now the new “fighting season” in Afghanistan will test the mettle of the Afghan army and shall equally challenge the political will of countries, especially the USA, to keep a small but significant troop commitment as a security “insurance policy” to guard the past gains which were won through so much blood, sweat, sacrifice and treasure.

Comment du Jour

Vienna Tops Global List for Lifestyle


 Austria's  capital Vienna has topped a recent survey for Quality of Life.  

Why am I not surprised??

The international group Mercer has put together an international listing of cities where issues like political stability, health care, transportation, and education are compared.  Vienna gets the top spot followed by Zurich, Auckland, NZ, Munich and Vancouver.

                                                 And of course there's Austria's Music!!



In the USA, Boston, San Francisco and Honolulu are the best ranked cities.

Comment du Jour

Happy Lunar New Year!!!

Year of the Ram!!!

Bloomingdales puts on the Ritz for Lunar New Year!

Comment du Jour

Happy Valentines Day!!

Daum Glass Hosts Midtown Expo/Party

Daum, the premier French glassmaker, hosted a Park Avenue Party to celebrate their new collection. 

A bit of accordion  music and wine helped put patrons in the mood.  

The famed Daum animal sculptures.  The oval Jungle Vase (with a limited edition of 99)
was presented.  The vase shows tropical birds resting on lush greenery.  

Comment du Jour

Ukraine Crisis Overlooked Amid Mid-East Flurry

While America seems transfixed on a spate of six separate Mid- East crises, there’s been far less attention paid on the brewing storm in Europe.  Thus as politico/military efforts are focused on trying to sort out Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran, Washington policymakers have been blindsided by fast unraveling events in Ukraine.   

We had better take notice of a very dangerous situation.

Though there’s been some reporting on the seesaw struggle between Russian-backed separatists and the Kiev government over territory in eastern Ukraine, the UN Security Council has remained laser focused on this dangerous situation where more than 5,000 people have been killed and over a million people have been displaced from their homes.  

France’s UN Ambassador Francois Delattre warns the country is slipping into a “spiral of violence,” with the renewed rebel attacks.  

Ukraine’s current political fault line between East and West is historic.  The eastern parts of Ukraine tend to be Russian speaking,  Orthodox, and tend to look to Moscow as their political mentor.   The western part of Ukraine, tilts to Western Europe, especially Poland, and is Catholic.  

The Kiev government and the majority of the population want closer ties with the European Union, not Moscow.

At the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine, formerly a constituent republic of the old USSR, became an independent country but with this built-in ethnic divide.

Last year, events unraveled, first with the Ukrainian majority ousting a corrupt Moscow-centric government, and then bidding to join the European Union.  This was a line too far for Russia.  Vladimir Putin mobilized his military proxies.

Just a week after the successful Sochi Winter Olympics, Putin went for a geopolitical encore and took back the disputed Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.  During the spring and summer of 2014, Moscow-backed separatists seized large swaths of Ukrainian territory which bordered Russia and proclaimed “independent People’s Republics.” During the same period in July, separatist forces shot down a Malaysian civilian  (flight MH 17) airliner killing all 298 passengers and crew. 

In September a cease-fire was established.  The Minsk Protocol’s short-lived benefits however were soon overshadowed by renewed fighting and what diplomats see as a “deepening political stalemate.”  UN Under Secretary-General Jeffrey Feltman warns bluntly, “Ukraine as well as its neighbors and the broader region, cannot afford the current, violent status quo.”

While Western economic sanctions against Russia have tightened, the real threat to Moscow is not Western rhetoric nor political posturing but the dramatic drop in petroleum prices.  Given that Russia is a major energy producer and exporter, and has based its budgets on oil prices being over $100 per barrel, prices have now fallen to below $50.  In other words, Moscow’s primary revenue has been nearly cut in half, causing a tumble in the national currency the Ruble and a recession.

But Ukraine’s economy is far from robust; the country has long been on the intravenous of IMF loans.  Last year Ukraine’s already weak economy saw negative 8 percent GDP growth. The local currency the Hryvnia fell by 50 percent.

 In the current flare-up, almost 50 civilians were killed and another 150 wounded when Russian-backed rebels fired rockets which hit the city of Mariupol.

During an emergency meeting of the Security Council, British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant advised, “In the last few weeks, Russia has transferred to the separatists hundreds of additional heavy weapons, not just rocket systems, but also heavy artillery, tanks and armored vehicles.  Hundreds of Russian regular forces and Special forces continue to operate on Ukrainian territory in clear violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

“Russia arms the separatists, it finances them, it advises them and it fights covertly alongside them. What it has not managed to do is to get its separatist proxies to stick to Russia’s deceitful narrative, ” he added.   

American UN Ambassador Samantha Power stated, “The Russian Federation had then denounced the attacks while continuing to play the international community as fools and condemning Ukraine.”  Putting the case succinctly Ambassador Power added, “This offensive was made in Moscow.”

Naturally Moscow begs to differ.  While Russia asserts that, “force alone could not solve the conflict, “ it demands that the Kiev government open a “dialogue” with the separatists.  Yet one must concede that  complex cultural and religious emotions are intertwined with Moscow’s geopolitical ambitions in Ukraine.

Maybe Lithuania’s UN delegate Raimonda Murmokaite put it best when she stressed,  “The onus is on Russia to put an end to this senseless war.” Indeed so.

Comment du Jour

        New York Stands in Solidarity with the Free Press in France

And also with the two Paris Police officers killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack

These Scenes are at the door of the French Consulate in New York

Comment du Jour

Paris Terror Reflects Deeper Malaise

The appalling attack on the offices of a satirical magazine in Paris by Islamist militants which killed twelve, was a deliberately focused and targeted hit not only to stun and intimidate a free press but a free society as well.  In recent months France has seen a spate of attacks not only on the media, but on Christmas markets, and Jewish synagogues.  Ten journalists, among them cartoonists, and two police officers died in the fusillade which President François Hollande called a terrorist attack “of exceptional barbarity.”

Charlie Hebdo, a satirical left-wing weekly, is hardly a mainstream French publication.  The journal has used a broad brush to criticize and satirize all aspects of French society, religion and politics.  It has often published irreverent cartoons on Islam, vulgar depictions of Orthodox Jews and mocked the Catholic Church as well.   

Political cartoons still form a vital and vibrant part of the French political discourse, much more so than in the USA.

The publication courts controversy by choice. Yet the heinous attack, recalling threats against a Danish newspaper a few years ago for satirical cartoons against Islam, is in no way remotely justified.   The jihadi terrorists were the emissaries of hate.  This was not senseless violence but targeted barbarism.

Mainstream French Muslim religious groups have soundly renounced the violence.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon labeled the media massacre at Charlie Hebdo a “horrendous, unjustifiable and cold blooded crime...it was also a direct assault on a cornerstone of democracy--on the media and freedom of expression.”

Christophe Deloire of the French media watchdog Reporters without Borders stated,  “This terrorist attack marks a black day in the history of France.”

Now the gruesome staccato of violence follows a predictable tone: Horror, Outrage, Rationalization, and Forgetfulness.  In other words, the initial horror stemming from an attack spurs righteous outrage.  But before long, rationalization seeps into the mix, the soufflé rises with moral relativism, and the matter is quickly blurred.  That is until the next attack.

Over the past year there has been an uptick in violence from radical Islamic factions; some are formal groups, others are lone wolf operatives.  The common thread is an assault on a tolerant society, which while initially stunned by the action, soon falls into a pattern of rationalization as to why it actually happened.  

Syria’s civil war has served as a catalyst for some of the troubles as much as did the sanguinary conflict in Algeria in the past.  Syria has become a magnet to foreign fighters, thousands from Western Europe, who have flocked to the Middle East to fight the authoritarian Assad regime. 

The two suspect Kouachi brothers who attacked the magazine fit a predictable pattern; though born in France of Algerian origin, the brothers were involved with radical mosques, having supported fighters going to Iraq to join Al Qaida, going in and out of prison, only then to simmer in the quiet hatred and disenchantment with Western society.  

Increasingly we see the development of a religious/ideological/fantasy template for many disenfranchised European Muslim youths who are supporting or joining the “International Brigades” in the Middle East.  The fighters range from the fantasists, to the crackpots, to the deadly serious.  This fraternity of jihadis has become a cult of intolerance and death. They represent a fringe trying to hijack a religion.

Many of these radicalized Europeans who return to Western Europe are filled with the white heat of hatred not so much for flawed Middle East lands, but rather for the comfortable and secular European societies where they live.  France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the USA have seen this morbid backlash.

While the violent minority carries out such attacks, there has been a growing climate of Islamic militancy in France, reflecting political disenchantment.

Then there’s a spark.  The Gaza conflict this past summer provided the political ignition point where pro-Palestinian protests saw simmering anti-Semitism and equally anti-French sentiments spill over into the streets of Paris.  In Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris, Jewish businesses and a Synagogue were attacked to the polite aversion of the public’s attention.   

Importantly there were vigils across France and Europe in support and solidarity with the free press.  The majestic bells of Notre Dame cathedral have signaled a respectful remembrance with those who have died in this latest outrage.  

Days later, three million people, among them forty world leaders, marched in France   in support of the free press and to honor the seventeen people killed in the attacks.  

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls stated succinctly, “ We face an unprecedented terrorist threat.”   Given this grim reality we express solidarity with the Free Press and Solidarity with France.   The threat has not yet past.