Monthly Archives: September 2007

OPINION NEWS: Muslim Brotherhood; Egypt’s crackdown on the press

I will stand up for the Muslim Brotherhood
By Mona Eltahawy, The Forward, September 19, 2007

…as that same secular, liberal Egyptian Muslim, I believe I must defend the Brotherhood’s presence on Egypt’s political stage. If I don’t, then I am just as guilty as the regime that has for decades sucked the oxygen out of the body politic — and with Gamal Mubarak being groomed to take over the presidency from his aging father, the regime seems set to rule for another generation.

Besides the state, the Brotherhood is the last man standing in Egypt. We’re down to the state and the mosque. The Muslim Brotherhood must remain on Egypt’s political stage, not least so that its ideas are out in the open and can be challenged.

I was in Egypt in 2005 when the Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats in parliamentary elections, and I remain unconvinced that the majority of Egyptians would vote for them in free and fair elections. Less than 22% of Egyptians turned out to vote in 2005, which to me says most Egyptians want neither the state nor the mosque. They want a real choice. [complete article]

Egypt extends crackdown to press
By Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor, September 18, 2007

Ibrahim Eissa, an Egyptian editor and columnist whose newspaper, Al Dustour, has become a byword for the kind of journalism that courts controversy and attacks government limits on free speech, doesn’t look like a man facing a year in prison.

He’s smiling and almost jolly in his downtown Cairo office as he attacks the verdict against him – for the crime of defaming President Hosni Mubarak – and predicts he’ll lose his appeal.

“If you make the decision to be an opposition journalist here, you have to have the demeanor to carry yourself through all sorts of situations,” he says. “But am I hearing that there’s some kind of deal out there to keep me out of jail? No. The regime has given up on me. The regime is panicking and sees anyone that writes the truth about them as dangerous.” [complete article]

NEWS: Surveillance dragnet

U.S. airport screeners are watching what you read
By Ryan Singel, Wired, September 20, 2007

International travelers concerned about being labeled a terrorist or drug runner by secret Homeland Security algorithms may want to be careful what books they read on the plane. Newly revealed records show the government is storing such information for years.

Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the government routinely records the race of people pulled aside for extra screening as they enter the country, along with cursory answers given to U.S. border inspectors about their purpose in traveling. In one case, the records note Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore’s choice of reading material, and worry over the number of small flashlights he’d packed for the trip.

The breadth of the information obtained by the Gilmore-funded Identity Project (using a Privacy Act request) shows the government’s screening program at the border is actually a “surveillance dragnet,” according to the group’s spokesman Bill Scannell. [complete article]

FEATURE: Bush’s choice for attorney general

Big terror trial shaped views of Justice Pick
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, September 20, 2007

On Jan. 17, 1996, after a nine-month terrorism trial and a rambling 100-minute lecture from a blind sheik found guilty of conspiring to wage war against the United States, Judge Michael B. Mukasey had had enough.

With a few terse, stern and prescient remarks, he sentenced the sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, to life in prison. Judge Mukasey said he feared the plot could have produced devastation on “a scale unknown in this country since the Civil War” that would make the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which had left six people dead, “almost insignificant by comparison.”

Long before most Americans had given deep consideration to the terrorist threat from radical Islam or to whether the criminal justice system is the right forum for trying people accused of terrorism, Judge Mukasey received an intensive education on those topics.

The vivid lessons Judge Mukasey took away from the trial — notably that the urgency of the threat requires tilting toward protecting national security even at some cost to civil liberties — have echoed through his speeches and writings. Now, as President Bush’s choice for attorney general, he is poised to put those lessons into practice. [complete article]

NEWS: The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn’t want you to know about

Case dismissed?
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, September 20, 2007

The nation’s biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance programs.

The campaign — which involves some of Washington’s most prominent lobbying and law firms — has taken on new urgency in recent weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco is poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed.

If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community — or risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to the government without a judicial warrant. [complete article]

NEWS: Bin Laden declares war on Musharraf

Osama bin Laden declares war on Musharraf
By Isambard Wilkinson, The Telegraph, September 20, 2007

Osama bin Laden has declared war on the Pakistani president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, on the day the embattled leader set the date for the election that will determine his political future.

Gen Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terror, will seek re-election on Oct 6, despite legal challenges in the Supreme Court and slumping popularity.

Al-Qa’eda, which Washington officials say has rebuilt in Pakistan’s tribal areas and may be linked to a wave of violence targeting Pakistani security forces, revealed that bin Laden will release a new message soon declaring war on him. [complete article]

See also, Al-Qaeda’s Zawahri appears in new video (Reuters).

NEWS: EU and UN call on Israel not to cut services to Gaza

EU calls on Israel to reconsider sanctions against Gaza Strip
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, September 20, 2007

The European Union joined on Thursday a United Nations call for Israel to reconsider its move to declare the Gaza Strip “hostile territory” and appealed for it not to cut key services to the Hamas-run territory.

Israel announced the move on Wednesday, saying it would disrupt electricity and fuel supplies to the coastal strip as a step to prevent continued rocket fire at Israeli civilians.

Following the cabinet’s decision, Israel Defense Forces officials on Thursday morning began formulating plans to limit services to the civilian population in Gaza. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: How to counter terrorism

How to counter terrorism
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 19, 2007

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone is on a mission to promote to promote “religious enlightenment.” The programs he oversees as commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, are designed to shape Iraqi detainees and “bend them back to our will.” It sounds like Stalinism.

The idea of rehabilitating jihadists isn’t new; this just sounds like a somewhat mangled version of a program that was devised in Yemen and has been applied with great success. Yet the philosophical approach is profoundly different. Contrast Stone’s aim of bending wills in what he calls “the battlefield of the mind,” with the approach masterminded by former judge Hamoud Abdulhameed al-Hittar, who is now the Minister of Human Rights in Yemen.

This is how Hittar lays the foundation for his work:

Dialogue is a part of human nature. The first step in the creation of human beings was dialogue.

The Qur’an addresses the idea of dialogue with people we don’t agree with. The Pharaoh called himself a god. He said that he was the creator of Mankind. And even then, God granted a dialogue with the Pharaoh. This is an example for us to talk with people, regardless of how bad they are. No matter how much we agree or disagree with them, we should not avoid talking with them.

It is under this principle, that we dialogue with the people from Afghanistan [returning jihadists]. In the tradition found in all religious scriptures, as transmitted by Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Jonas, etc., dialogue is a necessity.

Continue reading →

NEWS: Iran will retaliate against attack

In case of war, Iran has plans for airstrikes on Israel, general says
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2007

A senior Iranian military official said today that his country had drawn up plans to launch airstrikes against Israel in case of war between the two countries, according to an interview published by an Iranian news agency.

Gen. Mohammed Alavi, a deputy commander in the Iranian air force, told the semi-official Fars News Agency that his country could attack Israel with long-range missiles as well as fighter planes in case of war between the two countries.

Israeli and U.S. officials have threatened the possibility of preemptive attacks on Iran to block it from obtaining advanced nuclear technology that could be used to build atomic weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is meant to augment civilian energy needs.

Military analysts say Iran could retaliate against any U.S. or Israeli air raids by hitting targets in the Persian Gulf, disrupting oil flows or launching attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — When for weeks the Bush administration has been doing nothing to dampen speculation that Iran has been targeted for bombing, and after Israel’s recent mysterious attack on facilities in eastern Syria, it is completely disingenuous for the White House to claim that Iran’s comments on retaliation were “totally unprovoked.”

Israel itself has downplayed the Iranian threat:

Israeli officials are treating Iran’s latest claims that it has 600 Shihab-3 missiles aimed at targets throughout the country the same way it treated Teheran’s claims last month to have crossed a key nuclear threshold: by listening carefully, but not believing everything they hear.

Is this the response we would expect from a nation that supposedly lives in the shadow of an existential threat?

OPINION: Who will start the war on Iran?

Why Bush won’t attack Iran
By Steven Clemons, Salon, September 19, 2007

During a recent high-powered Washington dinner party attended by 18 people, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran.

Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Carter, said he believed Bush’s team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was NSA to Presidents Ford and the first Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.

The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski’s or Scowcroft’s position. Scowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski’s fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Here’s the inside story from someone who knows more than the insiders. Steve Clemons always comes up with interesting stuff. He is of course far too modest to divulge whether he was one of the high-powered people at the dinner party he describes, but he was obviously there in spirit if not body, casting his vote with Scowcroft. By the end of the piece though, the insider’s insight — that Bush won’t initiate an attack on Iran — becomes what Clemons should concede: a moot point.

Clemons says that “a classic buildup to war with Iran, one in which the decision to bomb has already been made, is not something we should be worried about today.” He nevertheless concedes that we should be worried about an “accidental war” — one not preceded by a classic buildup. This sounds like a distinction that probably concerns high-powered dinner-party pundits more than anyone else.

What should concern us all is whether those who are trying to build up the momentum for war can effectively be disempowered. In that regard, the role of the press is crucial and just as happened in the buildup to the war in Iraq, with all too much frequency the press is letting us down by parroting unsubstantiated accusations and failing to challenge their precious political sources.

OPINION: Iraq – who wins?

The victor?
By Peter Galbraith, TomDispatch, September 19, 2007

Iran’s role in Iraq is pervasive, but also subtle. When Iraq drafted its permanent constitution in 2005, the American ambassador energetically engaged in all parts of the process. But behind the scenes, the Iranian ambassador intervened to block provisions that Tehran did not like. As it happened, both the Americans and the Iranians wanted to strengthen Iraq’s central government. While the Bush administration clung to the mirage of a single Iraqi people, Tehran worked to give its proxies, the pro-Iranian Iraqis it supported — by then established as the government of Iraq — as much power as possible. (Thanks to Kurdish obstinacy, neither the U.S. nor Iran succeeded in its goal, but even now both the US and Iran want to see the central government strengthened.)

Since 2005, Iraq’s Shiite-led government has concluded numerous economic, political, and military agreements with Iran. The most important would link the two countries’ strategic oil reserves by building a pipeline from southern Iraq to Iran, while another commits Iran to providing extensive military assistance to the Iraqi government. According to a senior official in Iraq’s Oil Ministry, smugglers divert at least 150,000 barrels of Iraq’s daily oil exports through Iran, a figure that approaches 10 percent of Iraq’s production. Iran has yet to provide the military support it promised to the Iraqi army. With the U.S. supplying 160,000 troops and hundreds of billions of dollars to support a pro-Iranian Iraqi government, Iran has no reason to invest its own resources.

Of all the unintended consequences of the Iraq war, Iran’s strategic victory is the most far-reaching. In establishing the border between the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire in 1639, the Treaty of Qasr-i-Shirin demarcated the boundary between Sunni-ruled lands and Shiite-ruled lands. For eight years of brutal warfare in the 1980s, Iran tried to breach that line but could not. (At the time, the Reagan administration supported Saddam Hussein precisely because it feared the strategic consequences of an Iraq dominated by Iran’s allies.) The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished what Khomeini’s army could not. Today, the Shiite-controlled lands extend to the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain, a Persian Gulf kingdom with a Shiite majority and a Sunni monarch, is most affected by these developments; but so is Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, which is home to most of the kingdom’s Shiites. (They may even be a majority in the province but this is unknown as Saudi Arabia has not dared to conduct a census.) The U.S. Navy has its most important Persian Gulf base in Bahrain while most of Saudi Arabia’s oil is under the Eastern Province. [complete article]

NEWS: Iraq unravelling

Future look of Iraq complicated by internal migration
By James Glanz and Alisa J. Rubin, New York Times, September 19, 2007

A vast internal migration is radically reshaping Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian landscape, according to new data collected by thousands of relief workers, but displacement in the most populous and mixed areas is surprisingly complex, suggesting that partitioning the country into semiautonomous Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish enclaves would not be easy.

The migration data, which are expected to be released this week by the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization but were given in advance to The New York Times, indicate that in Baghdad alone there are now nearly 170,000 families, accounting for almost a million people, that have fled their homes in search of security, shelter, water, electricity, functioning schools or jobs to support their families.

The figures show that many families move twice, three times or more, first fleeing immediate danger and then making more considered calculations based on the availability of city services or schools for their children. Finding neighbors of their own sect is just one of those considerations. [complete article]

NEWS AND OPINION: Hamas becomes an ‘enemy entity’

Israel pressures Hamas ahead of Rice’s arrival
By Steven Erlanger and Helene Cooper, New York Times, September 19, 2007

Under international law, Israel is considered an occupying power in Gaza, even though it has removed its troops and settlers. Denying civilians access to the necessities of life is considered collective punishment and a violation of international law under both the Hague and Geneva conventions although the amounts involved could be subject to dispute. Electricity, water and gasoline are considered by many, like the Israeli rights lobbying organizations B’Tselem and Gisha, as well as Oxfam and other groups, to be necessities. But the United States argued, when it bombed power plants in Belgrade during the Kosovo war, that electricity furthered Serbia’s war effort; Israel argued similarly when it bombed Gaza’s main power station in July 2006, after the capture of one of its soldiers.

“Regardless of how they might cloak it, cutting off electricity to a civilian population is collective punishment and a violation of international law,” said Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem. “It doesn’t really make a difference whether it’s cutting off the supply from Israel or bombing the power station.”

Israel says it would not cut off water, but most of Gaza’s water is indigenous, pumped from wells with electricity; electricity also is important for sewage treatment, Ms. Michaeli said. She condemned the Qassam rockets and said that Israel was legally obligated to defend Israelis, but not by violating international law. [complete article]

Hamas denounces curbs on Gaza as ‘declaration of war’
Haaretz, September 19, 2007

Hamas denounced as a “declaration of war” the Wednesday decision of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s security cabinet to declare Gaza a “hostile entity” and to approve curbs in electricity and fuel supplies to the population of the strip.

“They aim to starve our people and force them to accept humiliating formulas that could emerge from the so-called November peace conference,” said Hamas spokesman Barhoum, referring to a U.S.-sponsored meeting expected to be held in two months.

“It is a declaration of war and continues the criminal, terrorist Zionist actions against our people.” [complete article]

It depends who is doing the torturing
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, September 19, 2007

According to the findings of Palestinian human rights organizations, hundreds of Hamas activists have been arrested, and are still being arrested, in blatant violation of Palestinian law, and by some security forces who do not have the authority to make arrests. Reports from Nablus speak of security personnel who are waiting, with the advent of Ramadan, outside the mosques in order to arrest Hamas activists after evening prayers. Disturbing testimony is piling up that speaks of the severe torture of some detainees – a few of whom required hospitalization. Revenge and intimidation are the name of the game. Some of those released testified that they had been forced to sign a promise to keep completely silent about their experiences during their detention. The arrests are part of a whole complex of offensive tactics: shootings of Hamas activists; attacks, including arson, on Hamas offices; threats to Hamas representatives on local councils, to journalists and members of parliament; and infringement of freedom of the press (including blocking the distribution in the West Bank of the two Hamas newspapers). [complete article]

NEWS: Dividing Jerusalem

Uproar over plan to split Jerusalem
Al Jazeera, September 19, 2007

Israel’s deputy prime minister has sparked uproar with a proposal to divide Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians as part of a peace deal.

The proposal by Haim Ramon, reported on Wednesday, was made in a letter to a member of the Jerusalem city council.

In his letter, Ramon suggested that Israel cede control over the occupied and annexed eastern sector to the Palestinians. [complete article]

NEWS: Living with a nuclear Iran

Abizaid: World could abide nuclear Iran
By Robert Burns, AP, September 17, 2007

Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran, a recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Monday.

John Abizaid, the retired Army general who headed Central Command for nearly four years, said he was confident that if Iran gained nuclear arms, the United States could deter it from using them.

“Iran is not a suicide nation,” he said. “I mean, they may have some people in charge that don’t appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon.”

The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

“I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear,” he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States. [complete article]

NEWS: “Something big went down”

Israeli nuclear suspicions linked to raid in Syria
By Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper, New York Times, September 18, 2007

The American and Israeli officials said the Israeli government notified the Bush administration about the planned attack just before the raid. It is not clear whether administration officials expressed support for the action or counseled against it.

The raid has aroused intense speculation in Washington and Jerusalem, but details remain extraordinarily murky. Officials said access to new intelligence about suspected North Korean support to Syria has been confined to a very small group of officials in Washington and Jerusalem.

The details of the Israeli intelligence remain highly classified, and the accounts about Israel’s thinking were provided by current and former officials who are generally sympathetic to Israel’s point of view. It is not clear whether American intelligence agencies agree with the Israeli assessment about the facility targeted in the raid, and some officials expressed doubt that Syria has either the money or the scientific talent to initiate a serious nuclear program.

But current and former American and Israeli officials who have received briefings from Israeli sources said Monday that the raid was an attempt by Israel to destroy a site that Israel believed to be associated with a rudimentary Syrian nuclear program. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — According to the Wall Street Journal‘s Bret Stephens, “the least unlikely possibility” of what happened when Israeli fighters struck something in eastern Syria was that we could have “just lived through a partial reprise of the 1981 Israeli attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor.” There was an Israeli attack; there wasn’t a nuclear reactor.

“What’s beyond question is that something big went down on Sept. 6.”

It was big. It went down.

The Jerusalem Post‘s Caroline Glick believes “it is far from clear that either Israel or the US understand the significance of Israel’s operation in Syria.”

Was the operation an act of God? Maybe so. Perhaps that’s why 78% of Israelis — who have no knowledge of what was hit — nevertheless expressed their support for the attack.

FEATURE: Robbing the world of its past

It is the death of history
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, September 17, 2007

In a long and devastating appraisal to be published in December, Lebanese archaeologist Joanne Farchakh says that armies of looters have not spared “one metre of these Sumerian capitals that have been buried under the sand for thousands of years.

“They systematically destroyed the remains of this civilisation in their tireless search for sellable artefacts: ancient cities, covering an estimated surface area of 20 square kilometres, which – if properly excavated – could have provided extensive new information concerning the development of the human race.

“Humankind is losing its past for a cuneiform tablet or a sculpture or piece of jewellery that the dealer buys and pays for in cash in a country devastated by war. Humankind is losing its history for the pleasure of private collectors living safely in their luxurious houses and ordering specific objects for their collection.” [complete article]

NEWS: Blackwater operates outside the law

What happens to private contractors who kill Iraqis? Maybe nothing
By Alex Koppelman and Mark Benjamin, Salon, September 18, 2007

An incident this past weekend in which employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm that has become controversial for its extensive role in the war in Iraq, allegedly opened fire on and killed several Iraqis seems to be the last straw for Iraqi tolerance of the company. Iraqi government officials have promised action, including but not limited to the suspension or outright revocation of the company’s license to operate in Iraq.

But pulling Blackwater’s license may be all the Iraqis can do. Should any Iraqis ever seek redress for the deaths of the civilians in a criminal court, they will be out of luck. Because of an order promulgated by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the now-defunct American occupation government, there appears to be almost no chance that the contractors involved would be, or could be, successfully prosecuted in any court in Iraq. CPA Order 17 says private contractors working for the U.S. or coalition governments in Iraq are not subject to Iraqi law. Should any attempt be made to prosecute Blackwater in the United States, meanwhile, it’s not clear what law, if any, applies. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: Neoconservative terrorism

Neoconservative terrorism
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 17, 2007

If neoconservatives experienced the same level of fear that they seem intent on promoting, then it is possible that they might be suffering from what could be called pre-traumatic stress disorder. The fact is, they are far too calm and calculating to be victims of any kind of trauma, and given their focus on fueling widespread fear, the best way of understanding what they do is to say that they are artful practitioners of a particular form of terrorism. That is to say, their intent is to use blind emotion as the means for forcing the adoption of a political agenda that cannot withstand critical analysis.

For conventional terrorists, acts of violence are the means through which a small organization lacking a grassroots constituency can exert broad political influence by employing the instrument of broad-based fear. Neoconservatives, on the other hand, while no greater in number than say the membership of al Qaeda, have much more direct access to the levers of political influence and thus have no need to employ the crude techniques of the average terrorist. Nevertheless, like every terrorist, they see fear as the indispensable tool for furthering their political aims.

Their latest campaign, aimed at stoking hysteria in the Islamophobic West, is what The Observer describes as:

… a series of piecemeal leaks from US officials that gave the impression of being co-ordinated, a narrative … laid out that combined nuclear skulduggery and the surviving members of the ‘axis of evil’: Iran, North Korea and Syria.

Central to this narrative is an event wrapped in mystery: Israel’s strike on unknown targets in Syria and a “suspicious” North Korean freighter, Al Hamed, whereabouts unknown, cargo unknown, ownership unknown.

This is classic smoke and mirrors — there are no substantive allegations and thus nothing to refute. Everything is suggestive — suggestive of the possibility of a strike on Iran, or the outbreak of a long-feared war between Israel and Syria. Yet among the competing theories about what purpose lay behind Israel’s sudden strike — and one has to assume this occurred with Washington’s foreknowledge, consent and support — one detail provides a clear indication that whatever the physical target might have been, the target audience was not in Damascus. Dion Nissenbaum writes:

Hours before the Israeli strike, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly sent word to Syria that it had no hostile intentions. Syrian leaders complained bitterly this week that Olmert’s message was a diversion meant to get Syria to drop its guard before the strike.

Syria’s leaders would of course bitterly complain — after all they were being treated like fools — yet what Olmert seems to have done was in effect to provide Syria with a heads up whose purpose was to make it clear that Israel had no intention of starting a war. A game was in play, Syria’s sovereignty would be treated with contempt — as it has so often been before — but the audience for this performance was located outside the region, in Washington, Europe, and at the UN. If Syria was to protest too loudly, it would compel itself to retaliate. In the interlude, a contrived silence keeps the peace, but at the same time the authors of this peace are framing it quite intently as a prelude to war.