Iran: Leaks abound relating to Iran. Is Washington “genuis punditocracy” putting pressure on Israel relating to nukes and sanctions? EA’s Scott Lucas’ reaction is here : he wonders whether the policy may be “too clever by half” but guest writer Gary Sick praises President Obama’s “strategic leaking”.
We have a guestcommentary from Babak Siavoshy of Georgetown University which defends Mir Houssein Mousavi’s “5-Point Plan”. Meanwhile, five expatriateIranian intellectuals have followed Mousavi’s statement with their own 10-point list of demands from the Iranian Government.
Saeed Habibi from the Committee of Human Rights Reporters is in hiding in Iran. Britain’s C4 News interviewed him last night, see have the video here.
All the latest news is on our timeline blog which also includes links to other stories from EA and other news media.
Israel: There was a hullabuloo in the Channel 1 studio last Thursday when Jamal Zahalka was removed following a heated argument with host Dan Margalit. See the programme video here. Zahalka subsequently accused the state media of “surrendering to the state”.
With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.
And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.
When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.
But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans — and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois — the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes. Read the rest of this entry »
CHRIS WALLACE: General, welcome to “FOX News Sunday.”
JONES: Thank you, Chris. Good to be here.
WALLACE: Is Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban inside Pakistan, dead?
JONES: Well, we think so. The Pakistani government has believed — believes that he is, and all evidence that we have suggests that. But there are reports from the Mehsud organization that he’s not. But we think — we think that it looks like he is. Read the rest of this entry »
I am still concerned that the Obama Administration’s release of four Bush-era memoranda documenting the authorisation of torture (or, as Politico insists, “interrogation techniques”) is, in part, a deflection from ongoing issues over Executive power and surveillance/rendition/indefinite detention. And I suspect we’ll be pursuing those matters in days to come.
But for today, as former members and acolytes of the Bush Administration absolve themselves in the press:
This was torture sanctioned by President Bush and his chief advisors. This was torture that was illegal, immoral, and ineffective. This was a torture that did not win the “War on Terror” but damaged US foreign policy and American standing with other countries and peoples.
This was a brute exercise of power, sanctioned by (but not actually responding directly to) the brutal attacks upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001. Read the rest of this entry »
A disturbing picture is emerging of one of the countries at the center of the Global War on Terror, a terrifying confluence of events which constitutes a “perfect storm” of instability. This country, which President Bush formerly praised as a “leader” in the fight against militant Islamism in Central Asia, now appears to be increasingly ungovernable, what we in the West commonly refer to as a “Failed State.”
A porous border facilitates the funneling of arms and resources to a booming narco-insurgency next-door, an insurgency which takes the lives of innocent civilians, militants, soldiers and police on a daily basis. In the halls of power and government, corrupt western-educated oligarchs continue to, in the midst of catastrophic economic collapse, wildly pillage the state treasuries while their rural fundamentalist constituencies, and the militant industries they patronize, fuel money and weapons to the neighboring insurgency, often with the explicit help of state intelligence services. And yet even though the citizens have recently achieved some modest democratic gains, the central government seems oblivious to their cries for justice against members of the criminal ex-regime. Meanwhile, a brutal domestic terrorist outbreak, flush with recently unemployed recruits, continues without mercy, killing over 50 civilians and security services in a series of suicide attacks over the last month.
Over the weekend the AP noticed that under President Obama, usage of the term ‘war on terror’ was fading out:
Since taking office less than two weeks ago, President Barack Obama has talked broadly of the “enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism.” Another time it was an “ongoing struggle.”
He has pledged to “go after” extremists and “win this fight.” There even was an oblique reference to a “twilight struggle” as the U.S. relentlessly pursues those who threaten the country.
But only once since his Jan. 20 inauguration has Obama publicly strung those three words together into the explosive phrase that coalesced the country during its most terrifying time and eventually came to define the Bush administration.
In response to Mike’s post, why does Mumbai make the threat from asymmetric attacks any greater than it already is? It has always been there and it always will be unless we choose to live in a complete police state.
Take the case of the airports–because of the attack at Glasgow you now can’t drive up to a terminal to drop a passenger off or pick someone up. Yet, there’s absolutely nothing to stop someone from walking in with a backup containing an explosive and either leaving it in the terminal or detonating it amongst the passengers lined up to go through security. It’s a “soft target.” Now airports could institute a measure requiring everyone entering the terminal to be searched but then someone could blow themselves up in the parking lot so that would require a perimeter around the airport with every car being searched but then someone could blow them self up at the checkpoint …. and on …. and on. The only real solution would be to shut down air travel. So society wide there is an illusion of security created by the state to encourage people to go about their daily lives but in reality there is little that could be done to stop a determined terrorist. It’s about containment, not elimination, a point I make in the conclusion to my book (gratuitous plug).
By the way, for an interesting examination of the faults with U.S. airport security see this from the current issue of The Atlantic.
Iran: Leaks abound relating to Iran. Is Washington “genuis punditocracy” putting pressure on Israel relating to nukes and sanctions? EA’s Scott Lucas’ reaction is here : he wonders whether the policy may be “too clever by half” but guest writer Gary Sick praises President Obama’s “strategic leaking”.
From William Fisher of IPS News 
CHRIS WALLACE: General, welcome to “FOX News Sunday.”
I am still concerned that the Obama Administration’s release of four Bush-era memoranda documenting the authorisation of torture (or, as Politico insists, “interrogation techniques”) is, in part, a deflection from ongoing issues over Executive power and surveillance/rendition/indefinite detention. And I suspect we’ll be pursuing those matters in days to come.
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