Author Archives: News Sources

America builds wealth without common wealth

Umair Haque suggests that to measure the welfare of America, it’s time to focus less on GDP — a measure of the national income — and consider instead an equation that says “real human welfare equals natural capital, plus financial capital, plus intellectual capital, plus human capital, plus social, emotional, and organizational capital.” If one was to assess these different kinds of capital:

You might see social capital — the wealth of relationships — crashing. According to Ohio State University’s Pamela Paxton, declines in trust among individuals of half a percent per year from 1975 to 1994. A life rich in relationships and connections seems to be a more and more elusive goal.

You might notice human capital — the wealth in people — splintering. Perhaps the most essential component of human capital is education. Yet, the Brookings Institution found that, for the first time, older generations have attained more higher education than younger ones. That points to an inflection point in human capital, marking a peak in American educational attainment.

Human capital is also composed of mental and physical health. Both mental illness and obesity rates have risen steadily for the last century in America. And rates of happiness in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan have flatlined — and by some measures, fallen — over recent decades.

You might see intellectual capital — the wealth of ideas — struggling to develop. Intellectual capital is often assessed simply by looking at the sheer number of patents, but I’d choose a higher bar: the creation not merely of patents, but of new industries, sectors, and markets. Fewer industries were created in the noughties than in any decade since 1930: just two, by my count — search and nanotech. Though patent applications have skyrocketed, patent quality has dropped. They are now less expressions of true intellectual wealth than tools for strategic control.

You might see organizational capital — the wealth that harmonizes and synchronizes the other kinds of wealth — cratering. Organizational capital is the toughest kind of capital to measure and observe. I’d roughly gauge it by looking at the creation rate of new jobs, because new jobs often represent new roles, gains in the division of labor, the raw stuff of organizational capital. America is often said to be the most dynamic economy in the world, but the net creation rate of new jobs has dropped steadily since 1970. I’d also look at an alternative measure of organizational capital: political decision-making. Here, we find more “gridlock”: filibusters in the Senate have risen exponentially over the last three decades to an unprecedented high.

Here’s what the glimpse I’ve given suggests: the state of the Common Wealth is in crisis. In terms of an authentically good life, we’re going nowhere fast.

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Iran-U.S. tensions over Gulf send oil prices soaring

The Guardian reports: The price of oil jumped by $4 a barrel on Tuesday as tension between Iran and the US fuelled fears of disruptions to supply.

Brent crude spot prices rose from $107 to $111 after Iran threatened to take action if the US navy moves an aircraft carrier into the Gulf.

US light crude, which dropped below $100 a barrel before Christmas, hit $102.23 a barrel – a rise of $3.40 on the day.

Analysts said the jump in prices was likely to continue as long as Tehran appeared ready to use force against US warships patrolling the strategically vital strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf.

Iran’s army chief, General Ataollah Salehi, warned a US aircraft carrier not to return to the Gulf or risk attack by new surface-to-sea missiles tested by the military in recent days.

Tehran’s latest tough rhetoric over the waterway is part of a feud with the US over new sanctions designed to discourage the Iranian state from developing nuclear weapons.

Salehi spoke as a 10-day Iranian naval exercise ended near the strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials have said the drill aimed to show that Iran could close the shipping route, as it has threatened to do if the US brings into force strong new sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme.

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Don’t mention the Word of the Lord to the party that loves Jesus

Brad Reed writes: Since this past Christmas season coincided with the final campaign push before the Iowa caucus, every Republican candidate for president worked extra hard to out-pander one another in claiming that God is supportive of his or her particular flat-tax plan.

But you have to wonder watching some of the Republican debates and press conferences if the GOP hopefuls have actually read the New Testament. Say what you will about Jesus, but he didn’t seem like the sort of guy who would support showering rich people with tax cuts, gutting social programs for the poor and middle-class, or launching multiple wars with Middle Eastern countries. Yet these are the sorts of things that his purported acolytes have been endorsing throughout the year, all the while claiming to be Jesus’ number-one fan in the whole world.

In this article we’ll tackle the five most cringe-inducing moments of the GOP primary, where candidates and their supporters have wantonly broken the Lord’s Commandments with seemingly gleeful abandon.

1. Candidates fall all over themselves to kiss the asses of rich people and trash the downtrodden.

Jesus once said that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Well, the Republicans must want to compensate for this by making rich peoples’ time on Earth as heavenly as possible through a wonderful blend of tax cuts and blatant ass-kissing.

The entire Republican economic philosophy can basically be boiled down thusly: Rich people are magical wealth-creating leprechaun fairies who sprinkle their sparkle dust over all of us worthless dirtbags to bless us with the gift of employment. But if any nasty populist ever says anything relatively nasty about rich people, they will vanish from the realm and take their magical job-creating powers with them and none of us will ever work or have food to eat ever again. [Continue reading…]

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Turning war into ‘peace’ by deleting and replacing memories

Imagine soldiers who couldn’t be traumatized; who could engage in the worst imaginable brutality and not only remember nothing, but remember something else, completely benign. That might just sound like dystopian science fiction, but ongoing research is laying the foundations to turn this into reality.

Alison Winter, author of Memory: Fragments of a Modern History, from which the following is adapted, writes:

The first speculative steps are now being taken in an attempt to develop techniques of what is being called “therapeutic forgetting.” Military veterans suffering from PTSD are currently serving as subjects in research projects on using propranolol to mitigate the effects of wartime trauma. Some veterans’ advocates criticize the project because they see it as a “metaphor” for how the “administration, Defense Department, and Veterans Affairs officials, not to mention many Americans, are approaching the problem of war trauma during the Iraq experience.”

The argument is that terrible combat experiences are “part of a soldier’s life” and are “embedded in our national psyche, too,” and that these treatments reflect an illegitimate wish to forget the pain suffered by war veterans. Tara McKelvey, who researched veterans’ attitudes to the research project, quoted one veteran as disapproving of the project on the grounds that “problems have to be dealt with.” This comment came from a veteran who spends time “helping other veterans deal with their ghosts, and he gives talks to high school and college students about war.” McKelvey’s informant felt that the definition of who he was “comes from remembering the pain and dealing with it — not from trying to forget it.” The assumption here is that treating the pain of war pharmacologically is equivalent to minimizing, discounting, disrespecting and ultimately setting aside altogether the sacrifices made by veterans, and by society itself. People who objected to the possibility of altering emotional memories with drugs were concerned that this amounted to avoiding one’s true problems instead of “dealing” with them. An artificial record of the individual past would by the same token contribute to a skewed collective memory of the costs of war.

In addition to the work with veterans, there have been pilot studies with civilians in emergency rooms. In 2002, psychiatrist Roger Pitman of Harvard took a group of 31 volunteers from the emergency rooms at Massachusetts General Hospital, all people who had suffered some traumatic event, and for 10 days treated some with a placebo and the rest with propranolol [a beta blocker]. Those who received propranolol later had no stressful physical response to reminders of the original trauma, while almost half of the others did. Should those E.R. patients have been worried about the possible legal implications of taking the drug? Could one claim to be as good a witness once one’s memory had been altered by propranolol? And in a civil suit, could the defense argue that less harm had been done, since the plaintiff had avoided much of the emotional damage that an undrugged victim would have suffered? Attorneys did indeed ask about the implications for witness testimony, damages, and more generally, a devaluation of harm to victims of crime. One legal scholar framed this as a choice between protecting memory “authenticity” (a category he used with some skepticism) and “freedom of memory.” Protecting “authenticity” could not be done without sacrificing our freedom to control our own minds, including our acts of recall.

The anxiety provoked by the idea of “memory dampening” is so intriguing that even the President’s Council on Bioethics, convened by President George W. Bush in his first term, thought the issue important enough to reflect on it alongside discussions of cloning and stem-cell research. Editing memories could “disconnect people from reality or their true selves,” the council warned. While it did not give a definition of “selfhood,” it did give examples of how such techniques could warp us by “falsifying our perception and understanding of the world.” The potential technique “risks making shameful acts seem less shameful, or terrible acts less terrible, than they really are.”

Meanwhile, David DiSalvo notes ten brain science studies from 2011 including this:

Brain Implant Enables Memories to be Recorded and Played Back

Neural prosthetics had a big year in 2011, and no development in this area was bigger than an implant designed to record and replay memories.

Researchers had a group of rats with the implant perform a simply memory task: get a drink of water by hitting one lever in a cage, then—after a distraction—hitting another. They had to remember which lever they’d already pushed to know which one to push the second time. As the rats did this memory task, electrodes in the implants recorded signals between two areas of their brains involved in storing new information in long-term memory.

The researchers then gave the rats a drug that kept those brain areas from communicating. The rats still knew they had to press one lever then the other to get water, but couldn’t remember which lever they’d already pressed. When researchers played back the neural signals they’d recorded earlier via the implants, the rats again remembered which lever they had hit, and pressed the other one. When researchers played back the signals in rats not on the drug (thus amplifying their normal memory) the rats made fewer mistakes and remembered which lever they’d pressed even longer.

The bottom line: This is ground-level research demonstrating that neural signals involved in memory can be recorded and replayed. Progress from rats to humans will take many years, but even knowing that it’s plausible is remarkable.

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The gloves are off but the U.S. and Iran are just swinging

Tony Karon writes: US President Barack Obama doesn’t want, or intend, to go to war with Iran. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t do so. Neither Mr Obama nor his Iranian counterparts imagine that their game of brinkmanship could lead to a conflagration that neither seeks, but both sides could make political choices that amount to opting for war rather than compromise.

Iran spent last week test-firing surface-to-surface missiles in war games near the Strait of Hormuz, apparently seeking to signal its ability to close off the sea lane through which some 40 per cent of global oil supplies travel. A couple of Iranian officials even threatened to do just that if Iran is blocked from selling its own oil on global markets – although other, more senior officials quickly walked back that threat.

Nevertheless, the US Navy vowed to prevent militarily any closure of the Strait, creating a media firestorm in the news-starved holiday season Western media.

President Obama, of course, was spending his Christmas break in Hawaii, but he took time off from golf and snorkelling to sign into law a dramatic escalation of US sanctions against Iran – and any company from any country doing business with Iran’s central bank. The new measures threaten to exclude any bank or firm that trades with Iran from doing business in the US, which remains the hub of global finance. That legislation could be used to effectively stop Iran selling oil on world markets.

The plummeting of Iran’s currency since Monday suggests that the measures are having an impact, although few analysts expect them to change the stance of Iran’s leadership. On the contrary, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will hope to rally nationalist sentiment by blaming economic hardships on Western pressure over a nuclear programme that remains popular.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: Iran’s army chief on Tuesday warned an American aircraft carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf in Tehran’s latest tough rhetoric over the strategic waterway, part of a feud with the United States over new sanctions that has sparked a jump in oil prices.

General Ataollah Salehi spoke as a 10-day Iranian naval exercise ended near the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf. Iranian officials have said the drill aimed to show that Iran could close the vital oil passage, as it has threatened to do if the United States enacts strong new sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program.

The strait, leading into the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea, is the only possible route for tankers transporting crude from the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf to markets. A sixth of the world’s oil exports passes through it every day.

Oil prices rose to over $101 a barrel Tuesday amid concerns that rising tensions between western powers and Iran could lead to crude supply disruptions. By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for February delivery was up $2.67 to $101.50 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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The NDAA’s historic assault on American liberty

Jonathan Turley writes: President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment, to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country … and citizens partied in unwitting bliss into the New Year.

Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely (see the text of the statement here).

Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.

The latest claim is even more insulting. You do not “support our troops” by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the president. The “American way of life” is defined by our constitution and specifically the bill of rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.

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Egypt: from Nasser’s ideological hotchpotch to an Islamist landslide

Magdi Abdelhadi writes: Egypt’s secular half, along with a sizeable Christian minority, is bracing itself for an Islamist parliament, the first in the country’s history. While many are stunned and terrified at the prospect, some still pin their hopes, paradoxically, on the very institution that’s largely to blame for the country’s democratic deficit – the army. They think only the soldiers can thwart, or at least to slow down, the Islamist steamroller.

No one knows for sure how that potential stand-off might evolve, if it were to happen at all. Optimists rule out a descent into bloodbath (as happened in Algeria in 1990 when the military cancelled parliamentary elections the Islamists were poised to win). Others predict a Pakistani scenario (the emergence of an Islamist-inclined officer like Zia-ul-Haq, acceptable to both the army and the Islamists) or, just as bad, a repeat of Egypt’s recent past when the military fabricated a pretext to suspend all politics in 1954.

By mid-January, when the final election results are known, we should have a better idea. So, far the Islamists have won two-thirds of the seats in the first and second phases of the vote – gains they are expected to consolidate in the third stage. Speculation and fears aside, the Islamist landslide should not have come as a surprise to close readers of Egyptian recent history.

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Internet finds voice as citizens cry freedom

Stratis G. Camatsos writes: July 1956: Writers, journalists, and students started a series of intellectual forums, called the Petőfi Circles, examining the problems facing Hungary. Later, in October 1956, university students in Szeged snubbed the official communist student union, which led to students of the Technical University to compile a list of 16-points containing several national policy demands. Days after, approximately 20,000 protesters convened organised by the writer’s union, which grew to 200,000 in front of the Parliament, all chanting the censored patriotic poem, the “National Song”.

December 1964: The Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California at Berkeley was started by students who had participated in Mississippi’s ‘Freedom Summer’, and it provided an example of how students could bring about change through organisation. Later, in February 1965, the United States begins bombing North Vietnam. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organised marches on the Oakland Army Terminal, the departure point for many troops bound for Southeast Asia. In April 1965, between 15,000 and 25,000 people gathered at the capital, a turnout that surprised even the organisers.

December 2010: Mohamed Bouazizi proclaimed that there was police corruption and ill treatment in Tunisia. This sparked revolutions well into 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt, a civil war in Libya resulting in the fall of its government; civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen, major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Oman, and less in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.

The parallels between all three of these iconic uprisings are that the protests have shared techniques of civil response in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches and rallies. All of them were based on a common ideal or symbol that led the way for organisation. All were themselves the epitome of the principle of freedom of expression.

The differences between the three rest with the tools used to mobilise and organise. As the former two were based on word of mouth and media such as newspapers and TV, the latter one saw the largest uprising to have used the social media to communicate and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship. It was truly a behemothic moment for the internet, as its potential was finally reached. [Continue reading…]

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SOPA opponents may go nuclear

CNET reports: The Internet’s most popular destinations, including eBay, Google, Facebook, and Twitter seem to view Hollywood-backed copyright legislation as an existential threat.

It was Google co-founder Sergey Brin who warned that the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act “would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.” Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman argue that the bills give the Feds unacceptable “power to censor the Web.”

But these companies have yet to roll out the heavy artillery.

When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA, you’ll know they’re finally serious.

True, it would be the political equivalent of a nuclear option–possibly drawing retributions from the the influential politicos backing SOPA and Protect IP–but one that could nevertheless be launched in 2012.

“There have been some serious discussions about that,” says Markham Erickson, who heads the NetCoalition trade association that counts Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo as members. “It has never happened before.”

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Ron Paul, the anti-war candidate

Mary Meehan writes: Voters who are weary of endless war may have no choice at the presidential level next November. This is a very large group to be denied a vote on a key issue.

A CNN/ORC poll released in November found that 68 percent of Americans opposed the war in Iraq and 63 percent are against the one in Afghanistan. Yet, we keep hearing that only hawks have a chance to be elected president.

Or, in the case of Barack Obama, reelected. Although President Obama has withdrawn U.S. troops from Iraq, the war in Afghanistan grinds on. Mr. Obama expanded the drone warfare that has killed many civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He ordered military action in Libya without even consulting Congress.

President Obama also supports war-related violations of the Bill of Rights, such as the misnamed Patriot Act and the indefinite detention — without trial — of terrorism suspects. And his administration failed to prosecute U.S. officials from the previous administration who authorized or practiced torture.

All of this makes many people think about voting for Rep. Ron Paul, the anti-war Republican congressman from Texas. Establishment political observers insist Dr. Paul has no chance to win the Republican nomination. They have been shocked, though, by recent headlines such as “Ron Paul rising in Iowa polls” and “Can Ron Paul win New Hampshire?”

BuzzFeed reports: Ron Paul — poised to finish strong in the Iowa caucuses – has begun to implement a quiet, complex plan to force a long battle with Mitt Romney for delegates to the Republican National Convention in August. His advantages: Experience, organization, and the legacy of the 2010 Tea Party revival, which convinced Republicans that anti-government figures like Paul just aren’t as weird as they’d thought.

Paul is following the roadmap set by Barack Obama’s 2008 strategy: Start early, learn the rules, and use superior organization and devoted young supporters to dominate the arcane but crucial party procedures in states your rivals are ignoring — states where caucuses and conventions that elect the delegates who will ultimately choose the Republican candidate. The plan begins in places like Minnetonka, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb where Paul has based his state headquarters, and where staffers have already begun running “mock-auses” — practice runs for Minnesota’s February 7 caucuses.

Paul’s rivals dismiss his chances. “Ron Paul’s not going to be our nominee,” Mitt Romney said flatly in December. But Paul’s organization is girding for the long haul, and while the 76-year old Texan is vanishingly unlikely to be the nominee — primaries in big states like New York and California could shut him out — observers in the caucus states say they expect Paul to win, and perhaps sweep, dozens of delegates from unexpected corners of the map. Those delegates, in turn, will give him at least a prominent position at the Republican National Convention, and a plausible shot at emerging as a kingmaker if a strong mainstream challenger to Romney emerges.

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West Bank theatre founder wanted by Israel after amnesty deal revoked

The Guardian reports: A former Palestinian militant who renounced violence in favour of “cultural resistance” is in custody after Israel apparently revoked an amnesty deal, in a move seen by his associates as part of a campaign of harassment against a radical West Bank theatre.

Zakaria Zubeidi, a former of leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, is being held by Palestinian security forces after being told he would be arrested by Israeli authorities if he did not hand himself in.

“I am in a Palestinian Authority jail in Jenin,” he told the Guardian by phone. His account could not be confirmed by either Israeli or Palestinian sources.

Zubeidi, 33, was one of Israel’s most wanted militants during the Palestinian intifada in the early years of the last decade, suspected of making bombs used in suicide attacks. In 2007, he was included in an amnesty offered by the Israeli government to around 200 militants, and handed his weapons over to PA security forces.

He became the director of the Freedom theatre in Jenin, which claims to use art as “a form of resistance to oppression”. The Freedom theatre aims to challenge Israel’s “violent military occupation” through its productions and workshops, but it has also tackled taboo issues in Palestinian society. According to Zubeidi, “I continued my struggle against occupation through cultural resistance”.

He had adhered to the conditions of the amnesty deal and had been given no explanation of why it had been rescinded, he told other media outlets.

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New York firebomb attacks hit mosque, Hindu site

Reuters reports: New York police are investigating as bias crimes four Molotov cocktail attacks on Sunday night including one against a mosque with 75 people inside and another against a Hindu place of worship.

No injuries were reported.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday assigned state law enforcement officials to assist the New York City investigation, saying the attacks “go against everything we stand for as New Yorkers and Americans,” and the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the attacks.

The arson attacks occurred over two hours on Sunday night in the borough Queens, police said. The first firebomb hit a convenience store, causing damage behind the counter, and the second hit a private house.

Residents of the home escaped without harm but the fire caused extensive damage, police said.

The third targeted the Imam al-Khoei Foundation, a Shiite organization that provides education, funeral services, counseling and helps organize Islamic pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia, according to its website.

The fourth attack hit a private home where Hindu services are held.

About 75 to 80 worshippers were inside the mosque and some of them attempted to put out a small fire at the top of the door until the fire department arrived, imam Maan Alsahlani said.

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Liberation Square: A thrilling account of Egypt’s revolution

Laura Miller reviews Liberation Square by Ashraf Khalil: The overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt last year served as dramatic proof that the Arab Spring wasn’t just a passing, or purely Tunisian, phenomenon. Egypt’s revolution heralds the coming obsolescence of the late-20th-century-style militarized pseudo-democracy in the Middle East, and its influence has extended as far as Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park. Future generations will surely study Tahrir Square and what happened there intensively, but anyone in search of an expert account today need look no further than Ashraf Khalil’s “Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation.”

Khalil is a Cairo-based journalist who reports on the Middle East for a variety of Western publications. While it’s impressive that he has published “Liberation Square” before the one-year anniversary of the uprising, it’s not unusual. Reporters routinely crank out quickie books on major news events, and these tend to be rushed and lumpy creations, nearly as ephemeral as the newspaper stories on which they’re based. What’s remarkable about “Liberation Square” is how good it is, how well written, how perfectly calibrated in its amounts of background, commentary and prognostication — and above all how thrilling it is to read.

“Liberation Square” is also far from impartial, though I doubt there are many readers who will fault it for that. As a longtime Cairene, Khalil is able to quickly and vividly sketch the mindset of his countrymen as, a mere year ago, they faced the demoralizing prospect of Mubarak’s son, Gamal, continuing his father’s nepotistic, kleptocratic style of governance into the foreseeable future. He knows the jokes they told and the shame they felt — as a nation of famously “clever, resourceful and resilient” people, inheritors of an ancient and storied civilization — at being dominated by a pack of bullies, liars and incompetents.

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Tehran’s domestic politics are torn ahead of March election

Yasmin Alem writes: The Iranian regime is at a crossroads. The parliamentary elections on March 2, 2012 are arguably one of the most consequential electoral events in the 32-year history of the Iranian theocracy. The legislative poll could serve as a barometer measuring the regime’s legitimacy, assessing the state of its internal conflicts and projecting its political future. But what distinguishes this election from previous ones?

Part of the significance is timing. The upcoming poll will mark the first election since the uprising that followed the 2009 disputed presidential election. What Iranian leaders often referred to as the “pillar of the Islamic Republic”, the electoral mandate, nearly became the cause of its undoing two years ago.

City council elections, slated for the winter of 2011, were postponed as the regime paved the ground to repress dissent, marginalise opponents and ponder the future.

It is precisely for this reason that from a security point of view, the 2012 vote is peculiar. Alarmist rhetoric of the ruling elite reveals the stress levels in Tehran. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has openly called the March vote a potential “security challenge”. His protégé, the minister of intelligence Heydar Moslehi, has described it as the “most sensitive elections in the history of the Islamic Republic”.

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Top ten myths about the Arab Spring of 2011

Juan Cole lists the myths: 1. The upheavals of 2011 were provoked by the Bush administration’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq Bzzt! Wrong answer. None of the young people who made this year’s revolutions ever pointed to Iraq as an inspiration. The only time Iraq was even brought up in their tweets was as a negative example (“let’s not let ourselves be divided by sectarianism, since that is what the Americans did in Iraq.”) Americans are so full of self-admiration that they cannot see Iraq as it is, and as it is perceived in the Arab world. Iraq is not a shining city on a hill for them. It is a violent place riddled with sectarian hatred, manipulated by the United States, and suffering from poor governance and dysfunctional politics. I did interviewing with activists last summer in Tunisia and Egypt. The youth do not want to be like Iraq! They want to be like Turkey, or, now, Tunisia.

2. President Obama was wrong to ask Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down. This position has been taken by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. It is a crazy thing to say. Mubarak could not have stayed in power, with nearly a million people in the streets and order breaking down in the country. If anything Obama was far too slow to act, and there was danger of Egypt turning seriously anti-American if he had not stepped in when he did. Trying to keep a dictator in power who has worn out his welcome is always a big mistake on the part of a great power, as was seen in the case of the shah of Iran.

3. Muslim radicalism benefited from the revolutions in the Arab world. So far, at least, the beneficiaries of the upheavals have been both secular, left-leaning dissidents and Muslim religious parties. Neither is violent. In Tunisia, the new president, Moncef Marzouki, is a staunch secularist. The al-Nahda (Ennahda) religious party got about 40 percent of the seats in parliament. But neither sort of movement is radical or violent. Likewise, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is now peaceful and talks moderately, and is attacked for it by the radicals such as Ayman al-Zawahiri. Muslim radicals have not been able to take advantage of these largely peaceful movements in the way they could of George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, which really did fuel the spread of violent extremism. Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman of Yemen argues that if democracy can be achieved in the Arab world, it will finish off violent extremism, which only flourishes under dictatorship. [Continue reading…]

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Internet freedom in the wake of the Arab Spring

Jillian C. York writes: For several years, discussions about global Internet freedom have focused primarily on what are widely considered the world’s two most restrictive countries: China and Iran. But while China’s ‘Great Firewall’ is indeed the most sophisticated system of censorship and Iran’s persecution of bloggers unprecedented, the Arab world — the 22 Arabic-speaking states and territories stretching from Morocco to Saudi Arabia — is the most Internet-restrictive region on earth.

In 2010, four Arab countries (Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) were named to Reporters Without Borders’ Enemies of the Internet [PDF] list, while two more (the UAE and Bahrain) were designated as ‘under surveillance.’ Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 2011 [PDF] report (released early in the year) saw two of the region’s countries (Tunisia and Egypt) slide backwards, and The OpenNet Initiative claimed in their most recent regional report that “Internet censorship in the Middle East and North Africa is on the rise, and the scope and depth of filtering are increasing.” Meanwhile, a glance at the Threatened Voices project’s map shows China and Iran immediately followed by Egypt and Tunisia when it comes to repression of bloggers.

Therefore, when Egyptians and Tunisians kicked off 2011 with a bang, ousting entrenched leaders Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, observers were hopeful that the two countries–both of whose pro-democracy movements had strong contingencies of free expression advocates–would move in the right direction toward Internet freedom.

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