Author Archives: News Sources

The heady days of revolution in Syria give way to a grim reality

Amal Hanano writes: One night in mid-March, activist Rami Jarrah and I – in our typical Damascus versus Aleppo rivalry – were bickering. Our dispute was about the date of the “real” anniversary of the revolution. But as we argued, and later as we discussed the sad events of the day in Syria, there was a lightness, a slight joyfulness that we did not discuss. Yet it lingered and I knew why. We couldn’t believe we had really made it – the revolution had survived an entire year.

The feeling of elation was nothing compared to what we had felt the day the students of Aleppo University took over the campus, or the evening the brave people of Homs reclaimed Clock Square. Still, it was a revolution high.

Moments like those have become scarce, dissolving into memories. Those days when hope was enough – when a witty sign from Kafranbul could lift millions out of despair; when the spirit of the Syrian people seemed unbreakable – are over.

Now the lows exceed the highs. Now we talk about what has been lost more often than what will be gained. And the losses have been heavy: some of the people we once spoke to daily are no longer in Syria; some have abandoned the revolution; many have died. Peaceful protests have dwindled as the bombs drop onto our cities and villages. Civilians are caught in the crossfire; thousands have become refugees – outsiders just like us.

And everyone is depressed.

We are now silent witnesses, watching as our country is reduced to a headline and the opening act for the United Nations General Assembly. Syria cues endless analysis from pundits and continuous hand-wringing by world leaders. The UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi says without shame: “There is no prospect for today or tomorrow to move forward.” And our dead are a steadily growing but meaningless number.

As we crashed from euphoric highs, cracks in the revolution have appeared. Power struggles on the front lines and between the political groups exposed us as a fractured opposition. Bickering on social media sites turned activists against each other as loyalties were questioned. In contrast, the regime was steadfast, unflinching in its kill, burn and bomb strategy. Somewhere along revolution road our narratives had crossed and we wondered, was this the beginning of the end? Was the revolution dying? Or worse, the question I asked people: was the revolution dead?

On September 16, yet another massacre was reported from the village of Kafr Awayd in Idleb province. I thought I had become immune to the images of slaughtered children. I thought we had learnt lessons of detachment from Houla and Qubeir. But this time there was a little girl in a blue dress and white tights, a girl we could only imagine as pretty because she was missing her head. While I watched a man carry her like a rag doll in front of the camera, I realised we had not seen the worst yet. [Continue reading…]

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Obama risks handing ‘loaded gun’ drone programme to Romney

At the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Alice K Ross writes: President Obama’s personal involvement in selecting the targets of covert drone strikes means he risks effectively handing a ‘loaded gun’ to Mitt Romney come November, says the co-author of a new report aimed at US policymakers.

‘If Obama leaves, he’s leaving a loaded gun: he’s set up a programme where the greatest constraint is his personal prerogative. There’s no legal oversight, no courtroom that can make [the drone programme] stop. A President Romney could vastly accelerate it,’ said Naureen Shah, associate director of the Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project at the Columbia Law School.

The president ‘personally approves every military target’ in Yemen and Somalia and around a third of targets in Pakistan, the report says. The remainder of strikes in Pakistan are decided by the CIA, so are even further from formal decision-making processes and public scrutiny.

‘We are asking President Obama to put something in writing, to disclose more, because he needs to set up the limitations of the programme before someone else takes control,’ Shah told the Bureau. [Continue reading…]

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New Justice Department documents show huge increase in warrantless electronic surveillance

For the ACLU, Naomi Gilens reports: Justice Department documents released on Thursday by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.

The documents, handed over by the government only after months of litigation, are the attorney general’s 2010 and 2011 reports on the use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” surveillance powers. The reports show a dramatic increase in the use of these surveillance tools, which are used to gather information about telephone, email, and other Internet communications. The revelations underscore the importance of regulating and overseeing the government’s surveillance power. (Our original Freedom of Information Act request and our legal complaint are online.)

Pen register and trap and trace devices are powerfully invasive surveillance tools that were, twenty years ago, physical devices that attached to telephone lines in order to covertly record the incoming and outgoing numbers dialed. Today, no special equipment is required to record this information, as interception capabilities are built into phone companies’ call-routing hardware. [Continue reading…]

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AIPAC may end up paying the price for Netanyahu’s overreach

Dave Lindorff writes: Netanyahu blinked. That’s the takeaway from the goofy address by the right-wing, Chicago-raised, MIT-educated Israeli prime minister to the United Nations General Assembly Thursday.

Prior to that address, Netanyahu had been virtually campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, hinting repeatedly on US television interviews of a pre-election attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, criticizing incumbent US President Barack Obama, and demanding that Obama and the US draw a “red line” on how far Iran could go in refining nuclear fuel before it would be considered essential for the US to join Israel in destroying Iran’s military infrastructure.

It was the most blatant attempt by a foreign leader to interfere in a US election in memory, but it was a bust.

American Jews have historically supported the Democratic Party by wide margins, and despite Netanyahu’s threats and bluster, and President Obama’s smack-down — a refusal of Netanyahu’s request for a meeting during his trip to the US –that support didn’t budge. In fact, a number of leading Jewish Democrats, including powerful Congressman Barney Frank and Henry Waxman, publicly told the Israeli leader to back off and stay out of US politics. In endorsing Obama’s refusal to meet with Netanyahu, Rep. Frank said, ”The Israelis have to consider American public opinion. America’s not ready to go to war until it’s absolutely necessary.” He added, “I think it’s a mistake from Israel’s standpoint if they give the impression they’re trying to push us into going to war. I don’t think any pressure’s going to work.”

Analysts are now suggesting that Netanyahu has backed off, even complimenting President Obama and giving him a valentine — an endorsement before election day of sorts–saying in his UN address, “I very much appreciate the president’s position, as does everyone in my country.” This was a reference to Obama’s rather tame if ambiguous warning to Iran in his own UN address that the US would “do what we must” to ensure that Iran doesn’t get a nuclear bomb.

Since Iran insists that it is not trying to develop a nuclear bomb, and since the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has declared that building and stockpiling such weapons would be “a big sin,” there should be no need for the US to do anything, then.

The important point though, for the US, for Israel, and for Iran, as well as for the world at large, is that a combination of overreach by Netanyahu, a bumbling Republican presidential candidate and campaign, and a widespread weariness among most Americans over this country’s more than a decade of pointless, losing wars in the Middle East, have combined to seriously and perhaps terminally blunt the influence of the right-wing pro-Israel lobby in the US, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). [Continue reading…]

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Mitt Romney’s real agenda

Tim Dickinson writes: It was tempting to dismiss Mitt Romney’s hard-right turn during the GOP primaries as calculated pandering. In the general election – as one of his top advisers famously suggested – Romney would simply shake the old Etch A Sketch and recast himself as the centrist who governed Massachusetts. But with the selection of vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the shape-shifting Romney has locked into focus – cementing himself as the frontman for the far-right partisans responsible for Washington’s gridlock.

There is no longer any ambiguity about the path that Romney would pursue as president, because it’s the same trajectory charted by Ryan, the architect of the House GOP’s reactionary agenda since the party’s takeover in 2010. “Picking Ryan as vice president outlines the future of the next four or eight years of a Romney administration,” GOP power broker Grover Norquist exulted in August. “Ryan has outlined a plan that has support in the Republican House and Senate. You have a real sense of where Romney’s going.” In fact, Norquist told party activists back in February, the true direction of the GOP is being mapped out by congressional hardliners. All the Republicans need to realize their vision, he said, is a president “with enough working digits to handle a pen.”

The GOP legislation awaiting Romney’s signature isn’t simply a return to the era of George W. Bush. From abortion rights and gun laws to tax giveaways and energy policy, it’s far worse. Measures that have already sailed through the Republican House would roll back clean-air protections, gut both Medicare and Medicaid, lavish trillions in tax cuts on billionaires while raising taxes on the poor, and slash everything from college aid to veteran benefits. In fact, the tenets of Ryan Republicanism are so extreme that they even offend the pioneers of trickle-down economics. “Ryan takes out the ax and goes after programs for the poor – which is the last thing you ought to cut,” says David Stockman, who served as Ronald Reagan’s budget director. “It’s ideology run amok.” [Continue reading…]

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Turkish pilots killed by Assad, not crash: leaked documents

The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya might not be the most reliable source, but if the following story is genuine, Turkey’s role in the war in Syria may be about to significantly escalate.

As political tensions mount between neighboring Syria and Turkey, newly-leaked Syrian intelligence documents obtained by Al Arabiya disclose shocking claims shedding light on the dreadful fate of two Turkish Air Force pilots.

Contrary to what was publically claimed, the documents reveal that the pilots survived the crash, but were later executed by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad!

This disclosure is the first in a series of revelations based on a number of newly-leaked and highly classified Syrian security documents which will be aired in a special program produced by Al Arabiya over the next two weeks; the channel’s English portal – http://english.alarabiya.net – will be carrying a subtitled version of the program on daily basis as well as publishing downloadable copies of the leaked documents.

The documents were obtained with the assistance of members of the Syrian opposition who refused to elaborate on how they laid hand on the documents.

Al Arabiya said that it has verified and authenticated hundreds of these documents and that it is has decided to disclose the ones with substantial news value and political relevance. [Continue reading…]

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Medieval Aleppo souks destroyed by fire as battle rages

The Guardian reports: A huge fire has destroyed parts of the medieval souks in Aleppo, Syria, following raging battles between rebels and government troops.

The city is a Unesco world heritage site and the labyrinth of narrow alleys and shops was once a major tourist attraction and is one of Syria’s largest commercial hubs.

Over the past two months, the city, home to 2.5 million people, has become a focus of the insurgency against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, with near daily fighting and shelling.

Activists posted online videos which showed the fire around wooden doors and shops and a pall of smoke hanging over the city on Saturday.

Ahmad al-Halabi, an activist based in Aleppo, said residents were struggling to control the blaze with a limited number of fire extinguishers and low water supply: “It’s a disaster. The fire is threatening to spread to remaining shops,” he said. “It is a very difficult and tragic situation there.”

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The root of Europe’s riots

Ha-Joon Chang writes: Throughout the 1980s and 90s, when many developing countries were in crisis and borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund, waves of protests in those countries became known as the “IMF riots”. They were so called because they were sparked by the fund’s structural adjustment programmes, which imposed austerity, privatisation and deregulation.

The IMF complained that calling these riots thus was unfair, as it had not caused the crises and was only prescribing a medicine, but this was largely self-serving. Many of the crises had actually been caused by the asset bubbles built up following IMF-recommended financial deregulation. Moreover, those rioters were not just expressing general discontent but reacting against the austerity measures that directly threatened their livelihoods, such as cuts in subsidies to basic commodities such as food and water, and cuts in already meagre welfare payments.

The IMF programme, in other words, met such resistance because its designers had forgotten that behind the numbers they were crunching were real people. These criticisms, as well as the ineffectiveness of its economic programme, became so damaging that the IMF has made a lot of changes in the past decade or so. It has become more cautious in pushing for financial deregulation and austerity programmes, renamed its structural adjustment programmes as poverty reduction programmes, and has even (marginally) increased the voting shares of the developing countries in its decision-making.

Given these recent changes in the IMF, it is ironic to see the European governments inflicting an old-IMF-style programme on their own populations. It is one thing to tell the citizens of some faraway country to go to hell but it is another to do the same to your own citizens, who are supposedly your ultimate sovereigns. Indeed, the European governments are out-IMF-ing the IMF in its austerity drive so much that now the fund itself frequently issues the warning that Europe is going too far, too fast. [Continue reading…]

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The Archbishop, Oedipus, and the Golden Ass

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: In late August, at a leadership summit in Johannesburg, anti-apartheid hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu refused to share a platform with Tony Blair. Citing Blair’s role in the immoral invasion of Iraq, he suggested that the former British prime minister belonged in the dock at The Hague, not on the international speakers’ circuit. Blair accused the Archbishop of repeating a “canard” and invoked the authority of “independent analysis” to assert that his mistake was honest and that he had been misled by bad intelligence.

If true, this should absolve him of moral responsibility for the war. One can make a reasonable argument that one’s honest mistakes or good intentions release one from moral culpability for the unintended consequences of one’s actions. But do they also exempt one from remorse?

In Sophocles’ immortal work, when Oedipus, the king of Thebes, discovers that the man he once killed in self-defence was his father and that the woman he married and sired four children with is his mother, the consciousness of his own innocence does little to ameliorate his guilt. Fate as an excuse offers little solace when the consequences of one’s actions are so terrible. Oedipus puts out his own eyes.

Tony Blair on the other hand has used an impenetrable wall of humbug to insulate himself from remorse and preserved his eyes for Mammon. With his government pedigree as a calling card and his prodigious capacity for bullshit as a resource, he trots the globe, selling snake-oil for exorbitant sums.

He has divested himself of guilt by adopting the logic of dreams which Freud (as noted by Slavoj Zizek) illustrated with a joke about a man who is accused by his neighbour of returning a damaged kettle. His defence: “In the first place, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second place, it already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and in the third place, he had never borrowed it at all.”

In the first place, Blair genuinely believed Iraq posed an imminent threat; in the second place, Saddam was a tyrant who needed removing regardless of the WMDs; and in the third place, Iraq is so much better off than before the invasion.

By choosing one, Blair might have convinced some; by marshalling all three, he has indicted himself. Blair piles on less out of stupidity than necessity. Obfuscation is necessary because none of Blair’s arguments stand up to scrutiny. [Continue reading…]

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The value of free speech

In commenting on President Obama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly and his defense of freedom of expression, Paul Pillar notes: [T]he president’s presentation overlooked the single most important reason to safeguard free speech: it is one of the best ways to get closer to the truth — and to what is effective and to what works. John Stuart Mill, in his essay On Liberty, identified this as the primary reason for safeguarding freedom of thought and discussion:

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

Mill went on to explain further reasons for ensuring free expression and how the subject is not just a simple matter of something being true or false:

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct.

An address by a head of government at the United Nations is not the same as a discourse by a political philosopher, and it probably would have been unwise to try to work this kind of reasoning into the president’s speech this week. But we should keep in mind this most fundamental set of reasons not only for why freedom of speech is something we cherish but also why it should be cherished, even when it appears to collide with, say, someone’s religious faith.

We should keep it in mind partly because the ills of restricted expression that Mill described sometimes infect our own public discourse, notwithstanding the constitutional guarantees of the First Amendment. This does not always take the form of false dogma imposing itself, although we see that in, for example, creationist attempts to affect school curricula. More often it involves the political correctness involved in automatic acceptance of a “general or prevailing opinion” — as it might relate to, for example, a foreign alliance or a perceived foreign threat — and quickness in shouting down those who challenge such an opinion.

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How can we ban hate speech against Jews while defending mockery of Muslims?

William Saletan writes: The Arab spring has freed hundreds of millions of Muslims from the political retardation of dictatorship. They’re taking responsibility for governing themselves and their relations with other countries. They’re debating one another and challenging us. And they should, because we’re hypocrites.

From Pakistan to Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Nigeria to the United Kingdom, Muslims scoff at our rhetoric about free speech. They point to European laws against questioning the Holocaust. Monday on CNN, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad needled British interviewer Piers Morgan: “Why in Europe has it been forbidden for anyone to conduct any research about this event? Why are researchers in prison? … Do you believe in the freedom of thought and ideas, or no?” On Tuesday, Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador, speaking for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, told the U.N. Human Rights Council:

We are all aware of the fact that laws exist in Europe and other countries which impose curbs, for instance, on anti-Semitic speech, Holocaust denial, or racial slurs. We need to acknowledge, once and for all, that Islamophobia in particular and discrimination on the basis of religion and belief are contemporary forms of racism and must be dealt with as such. Not to do so would be a clear example of double standards. Islamophobia has to be treated in law and practice equal to the treatment given to anti-Semitism.

He’s right.

Saletan goes on to describe many of the cases of hate speech that have gone before (mostly) European courts.

How can you justify prosecuting cases like these while defending cartoonists and video makers who ridicule Mohammed? You can’t. Either you censor both, or you censor neither. Given the choice, I’ll stand with Obama. “Efforts to restrict speech,” he warned the U. N., “can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.”

That principle, borne out by the wretched record of hate-speech prosecutions, is worth defending. But first, we have to live up to it.

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Syria refugees to reach 700,000 by year’s end

Reuters reports: Up to 700,000 Syrian refugees may flee abroad by the end of the year, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday, nearly quadrupling its previous forecast for the exodus from the deepening crisis.

Most faced what was likely to be a bitterly cold winter living in tents with little prospect of returning to their homeland, it said. The agency urged Western donors to help raise nearly $500 million to finance aid operations in four neighbouring countries that have kept their borders open so far.

About 294,000 refugees fleeing 18 months of conflict in Syria have already crossed into Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, or await registration there, the UNHCR said.

“This is a significant outflow taking place, 100,000 people in August, 60,000 in September and at the moment 2,000 or 3,000 per day or night,” Panos Moumtzis, Regional Refugee Coordinator for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a news briefing.

“The most important part is the preparing for winter months. The winter period is very harsh in that region,” he said.

The UNHCR’s previous forecast – of 185,000 refugees – was surpassed in August. It had been made in June.

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How to help Iran build a bomb

William J Broad writes: Advocates of airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have long held that the attacks would delay an atom bomb for years and perhaps even buy Israel enough time to topple the Iranian government. In public statements, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, has said that an attack would leave Iran’s nuclear program reeling, if not destroyed. The blow, he declared recently, would set back the Iranian effort “for a long time.”

Quite the opposite, say a surprising number of scholars and military and arms-control experts. In reports, talks, articles and interviews, they argue that a strike could actually lead to Iran’s speeding up its efforts, ensuring the realization of a bomb and hastening its arrival.

“An attack would increase the likelihood,” Scott D. Sagan, a political scientist at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, said of an Iranian weapon.

The George W. Bush administration, it turns out, reached an even stronger conclusion in secret and rejected bombing as counterproductive.

The view among Mr. Bush’s top advisers, recalled Michael V. Hayden, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was that a strike “would drive them to do what we were trying to prevent.”

Those who warn against attacking Iran say that such a move would free officials in Tehran of many constraints. An attack, for instance, would all but certainly lead to the expulsion of international inspectors, which, in turn, would allow the government to undo hundreds of monitoring devices and safeguards, including seals on underground storage units. Further, an Iran permitted to present itself to the world as the victim of an attack would receive sympathy and perhaps vital imports from nations that once backed trade bans. The thinking also goes that a strike would allow Iran to further direct its economy to military ends.

Perhaps most notably, an attack could unite what is now a fractious state, these analysts say, and build an atmosphere of mobilizing rage. As the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland wrote earlier this year, “It’s difficult to see a single action more likely to drive Iran into taking the final decision.”

History, the analysts say, demonstrates that airstrikes and military threats often result in unbending resolve among the beleaguered to do whatever it takes to acquire nuclear arms. [Continue reading…]

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How the Pentagon thinks Israel might strike Iran

Mark Perry writes: While no one in the Barack Obama administration knows whether Israel will strike Iran’s nuclear program, America’s war planners are preparing for a wide array of potential Israeli military options — while also trying to limit the chances of the United States being drawn into a potentially bloody conflict in the Persian Gulf.

“U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing on Iran has been extraordinary and unprecedented,” a senior Pentagon war planner told me. “But when it comes to actually attacking Iran, what Israel won’t tell us is what they plan to do, or how they plan to do it. It’s their most closely guarded secret.” Israel’s refusal to share its plans has persisted despite repeated requests from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a senior Pentagon civilian said.

The result is that, at a time of escalating public debate in both the United States and Israel around the possibility of an armed strike on Iran, high-level Pentagon war planners have had to “fly blind” in sketching out what Israel might do — and the challenges its actions will pose for the U.S. military. “What we do is a kind of reverse engineering,” the senior planner said. “We take a look at their [Israeli] assets and capabilities, put ourselves in their shoes and ask how we would act if we had what they have. So while we’re guessing, we have a pretty good idea of what they can and can’t do.”

According to several high-level U.S. military and civilian intelligence sources, U.S. Central Command and Pentagon war planners have concluded that there are at least three possible Israeli attack options, including a daring and extremely risky special operations raid on Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow — an “Iranian Entebbe” they call it, after Israel’s 1976 commando rescue of Israeli hostages held in Uganda. In that scenario, Israeli commandos would storm the complex, which houses many of Iran’s centrifuges; remove as much enriched uranium as they found or could carry; and plant explosives to destroy the facility on their way out. [Continue reading…]

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