KHORASAN GROUP, DIFERENTE Y MAS PELIGROSO QUE ISIS Y AL QAEDA

What is Khorasan Group, and why are we at war with it?

 Gregory Korte, USA TODAY5:22 p.m. EDT September 23, 2014

USA TODAY - WASHINGTON — The United States is at war with an enemy that few had even heard of before Monday's airstrikes in Syria.

It calls itself the Khorasan Group, and U.S. officials say it was actively plotting to conduct an attack in the United States.

"The Khorasan Group is a group of extremists that is comprised of a number of individuals who we've been tracking for a long time," said Ben Rhodes, President Obama's deputy national security adviser. He said it includes former al Qaeda operatives from across the Middle East. "We believe that that attack plotting was imminent and that they had plans to conduct attacks external to Syria."

USATODAY

Air strikes in Syria could last years

While the name is new, the Obama administration said it's made up of al-Qaeda-linked fighters throughout the Middle East, including elements of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria.

One senior administration official described the group as many of the same people the government that has been tracking and that it is not a band of new terrorists.

A second official described them as experienced and dangerous, adding that the group has actively recruited Westerners.

Both officials were speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the Khorasan Group.

The group is specifically responsible for the additional aviation security measures put in place in Western Europe and the United States in early July, the official said.

As recently as last week, White House and intelligence officials would not confirm that the group existed.

The first mention of it in the Western press came in a July 15 story by the Los Angeles Times, which described it as a ruthless arm of the Pakistani Taliban known for its use of beheading and torture to root out locals suspected of spying for the Americans. "These well-trained fighters often went barefoot, their faces covered with black cloth, with a black band around their heads that read, 'God is great'" the newspaper reported.

The Khorasan Group is separate from the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq — so much so that Obama on Tuesday sent two different notifications to Congress under the War Powers Resolution. One covered Khorasan; the other covered ISIL.

U.S. Army Joint Staff Director of Operations Lt. Gen. William Mayville Jr. shows before and after images of airstrikes in Syria during a briefing at the Pentagon on Sept. 23. U.S. and Arab nations staged joint airstrikes overnight against Islamic State targets in Syria and unilateral airstrikes against an al-Qaeda group in Syria. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images)

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Next Slide

The name "Khorasan" refers to a region in Iran, but its members have come from Islamic countries from Pakistan to Yemen. They're in Syria, the officials said, precisely because ISIL-controlled territory provided a safe haven.

In fact, officials said, Khorasan posed such a threat that it's likely U.S. forces would have targeted the group in Syria even without the simultaneous attacks on ISIL.

"We have been very focused on this group and their exploitation of the safe haven and Syria," the second official said.

Follow @gregorykorte on Twitter.

PARA SEGUIR EL DEBATE FEDERAL/CONFEDERAL EN EUROPA

JOAN SUBIRATS

http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2014/09/20/catalunya/1411228041_959586.html

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/09/21/opinion/1411313205_314248.html

CRECIMIENTO DE LOS MULTIMILLONARIOS EN AMERICA LATINA

Andres Oppenheimer: Latin America’s billionaires beat world record

BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER

AOPPENHEIMER@MIAMIHERALD.COM

09/20/2014 8:00 AM 

 09/21/2014 12:28 PM

When I saw a new report published this week showing that the percentage of billionaires in Latin America grew faster than in any other part of the world, I was skeptical: It’s hard to believe that the number of mega-rich is soaring at a time when the region’s economy is hurting.

But there it was, in cold numbers. The 87-page report, titled “Wealth-X and UBS Billionaire Census 2014,” says the billionaire population in Latin America and the Caribbean grew by a whopping 38 percent this year, compared with only 18 percent in Asia, 10 percent in the United States and 1 percent in Europe.

The report says there are currently 153 billionaires in Latin America and the Caribbean, up from 111 last year. Interestingly, economically bankrupt Venezuela was the country with the biggest billionaire population percentage growth this year: a 200 percent rise over the past year, the figures show.

Most of the Latin American billionaires are concentrated in the cities of Sao Paulo (36), Mexico City (21), Santiago de Chile (18), Rio de Janeiro (12), Lima (9), Buenos Aires (7), Caracas (6) and Bogota (3), the report says.

Intrigued by the sudden rise in billionaires in a region where economic growth has fizzled from nearly 6 percent annual rates a few years ago to a paltry 2 percent growth this year, I called the authors of the report for an explanation.

David Friedman, President of Wealth-X, a Singapore-based company that sells wealth data to luxury brands and other clients that cater to the rich, told me that the reason behind the increase of Latin America’s billionaires is that they’re subdividing their wealth within their families.

Latin America’s billionaires are the oldest in the world — their average age is 67, four years older than the world average — and they are beginning to pass on their fortunes to their children, he said.

In fact, compared to other parts of the world, very little new wealth is being created in the region. While Latin American billionaires saw their wealth grow by only 3 percent this year, U.S. billionaires saw their money grow by 10 percent, and European billionaires by 8 percent, the report says.

“Much of the wealth in Latin America is actually vestiges of old wealth, concentrated in a few families, and is not original wealth creation,” Friedman told me. “The challenge for these families’ next generations will be to move from wealth transfer to wealth creation.”

The report shows, indeed, that a sizable part of Latin American billionaires inherited their wealth, rather than creating it themselves by innovating or diversifying their businesses.

While 92 percent of the billionaires in Los Angeles have at least partially made their own fortunes, only 57 percent of billionaires in Mexico City can claim the same, the X-Wealth report says.

Several other studies unrelated to this report have also warned about Latin America’s lag in innovation.

A recent World Bank report titled “Latin American entrepreneurs: many firms, but little innovation,” says that Latin American firms introduce new products less frequently, and invest less in research and development than those in most other world regions.

While 90 percent of the companies in Poland or the Czech Republic report having introduced a new product in the past year, fewer than 40 percent of Mexican firms say the same, according to the World Bank study.

My opinion: Granted, it would be easy to blame Latin America’s billionaires for being lazy and fearful to invest in new ventures, when many of their governments have laws that seem aimed at stifling new investments.

And it would also be unfair to say that most of Latin America’s billionaires are government cronies that make their fortunes thanks to high-level corruption. Some are — I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case of Venezuela’s 200 percent increase in billionaires — and some are not.

But Latin America badly needs to create new wealth through innovation (self-disclosure: I am about to publish a book on this subject next month). We live in a world in which companies like Apple or Google are worth more than several Latin American countries’ entire economies, and where a smartphone application such as WhatsApp is worth more than the overall annual exports of many countries in the region.

Unfortunately, the record numbers of Latin American billionaires are no cause for celebration. Rather, they should be viewed as a warning sign that Latin America urgently needs a wave of private sector innovation and a better business climate to speed up the region’s mediocre growth and help reduce poverty.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article2190879.html#storylink=cpy