Category Archives: Opinion

‘A chilling warning to others’ in Egypt

In his second letter from Egypt’s Tora Prison, Al Jazeera’s Peter Greste writes: Journalists are never supposed to become the story. Apart from the print reporter’s byline or the broadcaster’s sign-off, we are supposed to remain in the background as witnesses to or agents for the news: never as its subject.

That’s why I find all the attention following our incarceration all very unsettling. This isn’t to suggest I am ungrateful. All of us who were arrested in the interior ministry’s sweep of Al Jazeera’s staff on December 29 are hugely encouraged by and grateful for the overwhelming show of support from across the globe. From the letter signed by 46 of the region’s most respected and influential foreign correspondents calling for our immediate release; to the petition from Australian colleagues; the letter writing and online campaigns and family press conferences – all of it has been both humbling and empowering.

We know we are not alone.

But what is galling is that we are into our fourth week behind bars for what I consider to be some pretty mundane reporting.

I’ve produced work in the past that has involved lots of detailed investigation, considerable risk, and not a small amount of sweat, that I wished the authorities would have been even a little bit offended by. Yet too often it has slipped out with infuriatingly little response.

This assignment to Cairo had been relatively routine – an opportunity to get to know Egyptian politics a little better. But, with only three weeks on the ground, hardly time to do anything other than tread water. So when a squad of plainclothes agents forced their way into my room, I was at first genuinely confused and later even a little annoyed that it wasn’t for some more significant slight.

This is not a trivial point. The fact that we were arrested for what seems to be a set of relatively uncontroversial stories tells us a lot about what counts as “normal” and what is dangerous in post-revolutionary Egypt. [Continue reading…]

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The fall of Falluja reveals the tragic futility of America’s strategy in the Middle East

Graham E. Fuller writes: When is a war “worth it?” It’s a timeless question that still begs a decisive response.

The debacle of Iraq has now drifted off the scope Americans’ attention — US troops are no longer dying there and new challenges beckon Washington elsewhere. Been there, done that. The American part of the war may be over, and we have grown weary hearing about it, but the Iraqi part of the war still continues. And with the recent and symbolic fall, again, of Falluja to al-Qa’ida and other jihadis we are forcefully reminded of the price that we paid in the American cleansing of Falluja ten years ago — for naught. Falluja, massively damaged, seems back to square one.

What about the Iraqis — was the war worth it for them? The figures are pretty well known by now — upwards of half a million Iraqis died, either in the violence of war or subsequent civil strife. That’s roughly equivalent to 5 million US citizens dying in a war. Add at least one million Iraqis displaced from their homes and villages, many now in exile — equivalent to ten million Americans displaced. Saddam was one of the most brutal dictators the world has seen in modern times, but one wonders–Iraqis must wonder — whether anything Saddam could have done could ever have remotely approached such human and structural devastation as the war. And the psychological damage — constant fear, death, mayhem, ongoing massive insecurity, anarchy and civil conflict –is not yet over.

Still, if you talk to some Iraqi Shi’a, the shift of power from the hands of a Sunni minority under a brutal dictator into the hands of the Shi’ite majority was a long term political godsend for them; they are today “better off” — at least politically, than before the war. But that’s a political abstraction.

Was it “worth it” to individual Shi’ite families who suffered loss of husbands, brothers, wives and children, homes and livelihoods? Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when asked about the deaths of half a million Iraqi children deprived of medicine under the US sanctions on Saddam, said it was “a hard choice… but it was worth it.” That is the comforting Olympian strategic view, uncomplicated by ground realities for real human beings.

What strategic gains can we tote up for the US alongside Iraqi losses? For the US, virtually nothing gained; indeed, it’s been a serious net loss in geopolitical terms. Few Iraqis are grateful. An Iraq that has always displayed strong Arab nationalist tendencies will not likely now change its colors or learn to love Israel.

Iran is now recognized as the real winner of the Iraq war. The Iraqi internal struggle has spread across into Syria, presenting the US with choices nearly all of which are highly unpalatable. Saudi Arabia has now felt the need to unleash a vicious sectarian conflict that destabilizes the Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, even Pakistan. [Continue reading…]

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The re-Judaizing of Israel

Uri Avnery writes: Of all revolutionary movements of the 20th century, Zionism was the most successful and enduring. Communism. Fascism and dozens of others came and went. Zionism endures.

But is Israeli society really Zionist, as it claims loudly and repeatedly?

Zionism was basically a rebellion against the Jewish existence in the Diaspora. In the religious sphere, it was a reformation more profound than that of Martin Luther.

All prominent Jewish Rabbis, both Hasidic as anti-Hasidic, condemned Zionism as a heresy. The People of Israel were united by their absolute obedience to God’s 613 commandments, not by any “national” bonds. God had strictly forbidden any mass return to the Land of Israel, since He had exiled the Jews for their sinful behavior. The Jewish Diaspora was thus decreed by God and had to remain, until He changes His mind.

And here came the Zionists, mostly atheists, and wanted to bring the Jews to the Land of Israel without God’s permission, indeed abolishing God altogether. They built a secular society. They held abysmal contempt for the Diaspora, especially for the Orthodox “ghetto Jews”. Their founding father, Theodor Herzl, held that after the foundation of the Jewish State, no one outside it would be considered a Jew anymore. Other Zionists were not quite so radical, but certainly thought along these lines.

When I was young, many of us went even further. We disclaimed the idea of a Jewish State, and spoke instead of a Hebrew State, connected only loosely with Diaspora Jewry, creating a new Hebrew civilization closely connected with the Arab world around us. An Asian nation, not identified with Europe and the West.

So where are we now?

Israel is re-Judaizing itself at a rapid pace. The Jewish religion is making a huge comeback. Very soon, religious children of various communities will be the majority in Israeli Jewish schools. [Continue reading…]

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West’s 30-year vendetta with Iran is finally buried in Davos

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes: The Iranian nuclear deal is on. Hassan Rouhani’s charm offensive in Davos has been a tour de force, the moment of rehabilitation for the Islamic Republic. His words were emollient.

“The world hasn’t seen a speech like that from an Iranian leader since the Revolution,” tweeted Ian Bremmer from the Eurasia Group.

Anybody betting on oil futures in the belief that Iran’s nuclear deal with great powers is a negotiating ploy – to gain time – should be careful. There is a very high likelihood that the sanctions against Iran will be lifted in stages, leading to an extra 1.2 barrels a day on the global market just as Libya, Iraq, and the US all crank up output.

“One of the theoretical and practical pillars of my government is constructive engagement with the world. Without international engagement, objectives such as growth, creativity and quality are unattainable,” said Rouhani.

“I strongly and clearly state that nuclear weapons have no place in our security strategy,” he said.

Behind closed doors in Davos, the Iranian leaders made a sweet sales pitch to oil executives. BP said it is eyeing the “potential”. Chevron and ConocoPhillips have been approached, assured by Iran’s leader that there are “no limitations for U.S. companies.” Total’s Christophe de Margerie hopes to restart work at the South Pars field. [Continue reading…]

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New York Times: End the phone data sweeps

In an editorial, the New York Times says: Once again, a thorough and independent analysis of the government’s dragnet surveillance of Americans’ phone records has found the bulk data collection to be illegal and probably unconstitutional. Just as troubling, the program was found to be virtually useless at stopping terrorism, raising the obvious question: Why does President Obama insist on continuing a costly, legally dubious program when his own appointees repeatedly find that it doesn’t work?

In a 238-page report issued Thursday afternoon, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a five-member independent agency, called on the White House to end the phone-data collection program, for both constitutional and practical reasons. The board’s report follows a Dec. 16 ruling by Federal District Judge Richard Leon that the program was “almost certainly” unconstitutional and that the government had not identified “a single instance” in which it “actually stopped an imminent attack.”

Two days later, a panel of legal and intelligence experts convened by Mr. Obama after the disclosures by Edward Snowden echoed those conclusions in its own comprehensive report, which said the data sweep “was not essential to preventing attacks” and called for its end.

The growing agreement among those who have studied the program closely makes it imperative that the administration, along with the program’s defenders in Congress, explain why such intrusive mass surveillance is necessary at all. If Mr. Obama knows something that contradicts what he has now been told by two panels, a federal judge and multiple members of Congress, he should tell the American people now. Otherwise, he is in essence asking for their blind faith, which is precisely what he warned against during his speech last week on the future of government surveillance.

“Given the unique power of the state,” Mr. Obama said, “it is not enough for leaders to say: trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached.”

The more likely reality is that the multiple analyses of recent weeks are correct, and that the phone-data sweeps have simply been ineffective. If they had assisted in the prevention of any terrorist attacks, it is safe to assume that we would know by now. Instead, despite repeated claims that the bulk-data collection programs had a hand in thwarting 54 terrorist plots, the privacy board members write, “we have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation.”

That reiterates the findings of Judge Leon — who noted that even behind closed doors, the government provided “no proof” of the program’s efficacy — as well as the conclusion of a report released this month by the New America Foundation that the metadata program “had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity.”

No one disputes that the threat of terrorism is real and unrelenting, or that our intelligence techniques must adapt to a rapidly changing world. It is equally clear that the dragnet collection of Americans’ phone calls is not the answer.

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Britain’s police state extends its powers

Henry Porter writes: There are two striking images of modern Britain in this week’s news. The first is the story that crime in Britain is at a 32-year low, which confirms evidence in statistical trends that, like most western countries, we are becoming a more orderly and law-abiding society.

The second is provided by the police, which, while suffering a thoroughly deserved collapse in their own reputation, seeks to draw a picture of chaos and misrule that demands ever harsher and more invasive policing techniques. Five years after the financial crash, the police are making the case for deploying water cannon to deal with expected “austerity riots”, when it is blindingly obvious that Britain has passed through a very difficult period without widespread disorder (the riots that began in Tottenham two years ago were mostly a failure of policing, not a response to economic conditions) and, moreover, the economy and employment have both picked up.

But the far more worrying development is the unscrutinised rollout of the police automated numberplate recognition system (ANPR) for tracking vehicles, which, according to Nick Hopkins’ report, currently stores 17bn images in its archive and is set to increase its capacity by 2018 to read and store 50-75 million separate vehicle sightings a day.

This is a very powerful surveillance system and the important thing to remember is that the decision to cover Britain’s motorways and town centres with cameras that track the movements of innocent citizens is that it was never debated by parliament. [Continue reading…]

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The threat of institutional anti-extremism

James Harkin writes: Moderation, just like extremism, is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. Last month the British and US governments suspended deliveries of “non-lethal aid” – vehicles, communication devices, intelligence assistance – to its preferred group of moderate Syrian rebels, the Free Syrian Army. That was because the FSA was as dead as a dodo and our aid had been confiscated by a newer coalition of rebel groups called the Islamist Front.

This month the same Islamist Front, together with Syria’s home-grown al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra – and with the presumed acquiescence or encouragement of Turkey and other Nato countries – helpfully led attacks on the most ruthless al-Qaida group in northern Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis). At least 50 Isis members, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, were summarily executed; some of their families have been kidnapped and brutalised. Meet the new moderates.

Our confused approach to Syria is simply the internationalisation of a familiar problem – our definition of extremism and how to beat it. One result of the London terror attacks in 2005 was a mushrooming of well-meaning, generously endowed initiatives designed to combat extremism. Most went beyond traditional anti-terror techniques to focus on the alleged causes of terrorism, and how to rescue young men on the pathway to radicalisation. More Malcolm Gladwell than Andy McNab; the point was to tip, nudge and channel young men at risk of indoctrination towards more benign alternatives. Then there were all those attempts to “turn” Islamist militants or English Defence League activists. Occasionally came news of a coup – after delicate negotiations a firebrand had jumped ship, leading to a new career in anti-extremism and a round of media congratulation. Like a former drug addict playing the awareness circuit, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), with the help of his new friends at the “deradicalisation” thinktank the Quilliam Foundation, is now said to be carving out a new role teaching tolerance to children.

This is nice work if you can get it. But just how helpful is it to label the average EDL supporter or conservative Muslim as a dangerous extremist? To put it another way: do we have a problem with specific acts of violence or intimidation, or with radicalisation per se? If our problem is radicalisation itself, we’re in serious trouble. No liberal, democratic state should be in the business of steering people away from radical or fundamentalist beliefs – as long as their plans don’t congeal into plans to perpetrate terrorism.

Then there’s the question of strategy. Attempts to counter Islamist extremism often take the form of puffing up the importance of allegedly moderate counterweights whose leaders may be corrupt or not representative of anyone but themselves. The UK government’s much-criticised preventing violent extremism strategy spent large sums of public money footing the bill for tours by peaceable-sounding Islamic scholars. This was grossly patronising to believers: it is not up to us to tell Muslims how to be Muslim. Neither was it clear what the money was supposed to achieve. A friend of mine who teaches in an inner-city London school scored £5,000 from the Prevent programme because it was there for the taking: with no idea how to spend it she made a comic documentary about jihad and took the whole class to see the Chris Morris satire Four Lions.

If this kind of woolly subsidy existed anywhere else in the public sector it would have been hammered with endless demands for evidence-based assessment of its output – because there is little or no evidence it works. No matter: institutional anti-extremism is better dug in than ever, an enormous intellectual gravy train of research centres and thinktanks for the feeble minded. [Continue reading…]

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In honor of radicals

Andy Fitzgerald writes: America has a propensity for dismissing people and ideas with labels. Terms like “socialist” and “communist” are frequently hurled at those who dare to promote substantial programs that address poverty, or suggest that government provide what many other “developed nations” deem fundamental services – like universal healthcare. Anyone who openly identifies with such positions is assumed to have nothing legitimate to contribute to public debate, irrespective of the plausibility, merit, and true ideology informing their arguments.

It’s a similar scenario with “radical” – a word often used to evoke associations with extremism, instability and an absolutist approach to politics. But the popular usage belies the important role many radicals have played in promoting democracy and justice throughout history, not to mention the continued role radical ideas and activism have to play in unfinished projects.

A recent op-ed in the Chicago Tribune illustrates the common abuse of the term in the media. The columnist, Dennis Byrne, rightly criticizes a tendency in America to privilege individual liberty over community solidarity, but he then attempts a “balanced” perspective by presenting examples of “radicalism” on both sides of the aisle. On abortion, Byrne writes: “Radical individuals on the right and the left demand the supremacy of a woman’s body. … For [those who are pro-choice], a woman’s rights are nearly absolute.”

Squaring the false equivalence circle he adds: “Similar absolutist views are held on the right by those who interpret the Constitution’s Second Amendment to mean that government regulation of firearms should be extraordinarily limited, if not nonexistent.”

But the mischaracterization of radicals extends beyond mainstream media and politics. While discussing feminist activism with several friends, one retorted, “there are radicals in every group”. I challenged the presumption that radicals were inherently a liability to social movements, given the positive history of radicalism in America.

Indeed, it was “radicals” who were responsible for sowing the seeds of two of America’s most important social movements: worker rights and racial justice. The labor movement, in its nascent days, was a radical movement. A confrontational approach to management was necessary to win many of the concessions now sorely taken for granted: the minimum wage, the eight-hour day, even the very possibility of forming a union.[Continue reading…]

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The White House and the aristocratic institution of unpaid internships

Michael Lind writes: What do you call an employer that refuses to pay its workers any salary at all? Answer: The White House.

President Barack Obama has called for an increase in the U.S. minimum wage. And yet his administration expects hundreds of young people each year to work at the White House for an hourly wage of zero.

According to a White House website, White House interns are expected to work “at least Monday-Friday, 9 am-6pm.” Nice touch — “at least.”

In return for a full week’s worth of work and possible overtime, the White House provides its interns with no pay and no housing help. The latter is significant, because the Washington, D.C., metro area has among the highest costs in the U.S.

The problem with the unpaid internship program, which Obama inherited from previous Oval Officers and which has continued, is not sweatshop exploitation — it’s blatant class discrimination. [Continue reading…]

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Egyptians care more about the survival of society than who governs

Rami G Khouri writes: In the past three years since the overthrow of the Hosni Mubarak’s government, on my regular visits to Cairo I have watched with fascination, pride and hope the birth of Arab citizens and the sudden emergence of a public political sphere – an open, pluralistic space where people from different ideological and cultural perspectives could freely compete for political power and legitimate, democratic control of the government. I have witnessed very different things in Cairo this week, during and after the referendum on the new Egyptian constitution that was drawn up in recent months by the interim government that was installed by armed forces commander Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, and that also has led a tough campaign to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood.

The constitution was approved by an astounding, and totally expected, 98 percent of voters, for most of those who opposed it boycotted the process altogether, either from conviction or intimidation. The vast majority of international and local observers found almost nothing seriously wrong with the mechanics of the voting, so the 98 percent approval accurately reflects the sentiments of those who voted. Yet many observers criticized the wider political environment that did not permit a serious debate about the merits or the constitution or the unilateral political process that created it.

The frenzied mass support for Gen. Sisi and against the Muslim Brotherhood is genuine, and reflects a peculiar combination of Arab events and sentiments that are only found today in Egypt. This is why I suspect that what we witness these days in Egypt cannot be analyzed by using political criteria, but rather requires the tools of the anthropologist. There is no real political or ideology involved here. There is mainly biology driving events these days, primarily the anthropological need of tens of millions of Egyptians to get on with their lives and – as they see it – prevent the collapse of this society that has functioned without interruption for over 5,000 years. The citizen and public political sphere that were being born in the past three years have momentarily receded from modern history, for they have been overshadowed by the herd and its need for self-preservation, the biological cell’s need for water and protein, and Egyptian society’s need for order. [Continue reading…]

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Collective punishment: easier to condemn in Gaza than Yarmouk

The Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus has been under siege by forces of the Assad regime since last July and 28 of the residents have already starved to death. Yet the pro-Palestinian movement which never fails to raise its voice in outrage about the effects of an Israeli siege on Gaza, is reluctant to takes sides when it comes to Syria.

Talal Alyan writes: While you were insisting on neutrality about Yarmouk, the Syrian regime dropped barrel bombs on it. Mohammad Al Far. Husam Abo Ahmad. Mohammad Tafori. Mohammad Suhaib Al Qides. Ala’a Fri’j. These men are all dead. Mohammad Taha would later die too when he, along with a larger demonstration, approached a regime checkpoint in frustration after the carnage rained on them from above.

The Pro-Palestinian movement was delayed in picking up on the tragic unraveling of Yarmouk. It took the work of a great deal of dedicated activists to force it into the forefront of the solidarity movement’s agenda. What couldn’t be predicted, however, was that, in the place of silence, an ugly neutrality would hover over the new-founded concern. And that said the neutrality was often an unconvincing veil for something much more vile. Perhaps, in our naivety, we believe that when Yarmouk became visible, it would be nearly impossible to omit the clear fact that the siege was being imposed by the Syrian regime. Instead, it was the oppositional fighters in the camp who fell under the spotlight. A chorus emerged, one familiar enough to evoke a surreal sense of Déjà vu.

Yarmouk had transformed into Gaza. But this time, it was our side that was rationalizing the blockage, entertaining and validating the motives offered for collective punishment, instead of flatly rejecting it as a cruel practice. [Continue reading…]

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What happened to AIPAC’s seventy senators?

AIPAC-senators

In 2005, AIPAC’s Steven Rosen when prompted by Jeffrey Goldberg to assess the level of the lobby’s influence famously said: “In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”

The “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013” sponsored by Democratic Senator Robert Menedez has the support of fifty-nine senators. That’s a dangerously large majority but just short of a veto-proof sixty-seven votes and well short of Rosen’s seventy.

Does that mean that AIPAC is refraining from pulling its weight or is it just not as powerful as Rosen declared?

I called my Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, to tell her that if she follows through and casts a vote in favor, she won’t have my vote in November. Interestingly, her staffer was at pains to underline the fact that this is still in process and hasn’t gone to a vote. I got a strong sense that Hagan, perhaps like many other senators both Democratic and Republican, would be content demonstrating her loyalty to AIPAC without actually casting a vote.

In the report below, Republican Senator Roy Blunt essentially says that every senator’s hands have been tied by Senate leader Harry Reid and far from striking a defiant tone, Blunt seems content to be rendered powerless.

If the bill got just one more supporter, would Reid bow to pressure and let it go to a vote? And can’t AIPAC with all its influence turn just one more senator in its favor?

I get the sense that for everyone involved — including AIPAC — this is all political theater. They want to act tough, but at the end of the day, they probably don’t want to be held responsible for sabotaging the most significant diplomatic opening in a decade.

National Journal reports: Senate Iran hawks have lots of votes to back their sanctions legislation. What they lack is a plan to get the bill to the floor.

Fifty-nine senators — including 16 Democrats — have signed onto sanctions legislation from Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez and Republican Sen. Mark Kirk. The measure would punish Iran with sanctions if it reneges on an interim nuclear agreement or if that agreement does not ultimately abolish any nuclear-weapons capabilities for Iran.

That count has climbed rapidly since the bipartisan pair introduced their legislation in late December. But now it’s unclear whether that support will be enough to clear the bill’s next major hurdle: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid is siding with the White House, which has put intense pressure on lawmakers not to act on sanctions, arguing it could result in both a nuclear-armed and hostile Iranian state. And without Reid’s backing, supporters of the Menendez-Kirk bill are unsure how to move the measure to the floor.

“I assume that if the Democrat senators put enough pressure on Senator Reid he might bring it to the floor,” said Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. “But, you know, we are at a moment in the Senate where nothing happens that Senator Reid doesn’t want to happen; and this is something at this moment that Senator Reid doesn’t want to happen.”

And for now, sanctions supporters are still mulling their strategy.

“We are talking amongst ourselves. There is a very active debate and discussion ongoing about how best to move forward,” said Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a cosponsor of the bill. “There are a number of alternative strategies, but we’re deliberating them.”

While Reid has, at least for now, foiled their policy plans, sanctions supporters are still scoring the desired political points on the issue. They can report their efforts to their constituents while blaming Reid for the inaction.

Jon Stewart, comparing these senators to egg-throwing Justin Bieber, is perfectly clear about which “constituents” they are trying to represent: AIPAC and Israel. (It’s a shame that Daily Show writers, having crafted a strong piece then felt compelled to add some “balance” by treating Rouhani’s tweet with scorn: “World powers surrendered to Iran’s national will.” If he can placate his hawkish critics just with a tweet, I’m sure Obama is envious.)

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In Egypt the old state has won, to great applause

Sarah Carr writes: A referendum on the constitution is rarely about the document itself, but more than any previous plebiscite this vote is about sticking two fingers up at the Brotherhood and expressing varying levels of confidence/adoration in the army and more specifically the person of Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fatah el Sisi.

Voters repeatedly linked a “yes” to the constitution with a “yes to Sisi” yesterday. His picture was everywhere, and in some quarters he is regarded as the second coming. One man actually said this, that Sisi was “sent” to protect Egypt. I remembered 2011, and the Islamists and their rhetoric, a “yes” vote is a vote for Islam. It’s still all about interchangeable deities in the end.

One interesting aspect of all this is that Mubarak was noticeably absent from the military effigies (Nasser, Sadat, Sisi) plastered everywhere, but his spirit permeated everything. He bequeathed the current situation to Egypt, after all, the us vs. them mindset, the suspicion of political or cultural otherness, that idea that Egypt, and Egyptian identity, must be a fortress against interlopers and the ease with which the threat of such interlopers, real or imagined, can steer the country’s course.

This referendum is part of that legacy. It is another brick in the wall of the security state and its relentless homogeneity. In January 2011, there was a small crack put in that wall and we were given a glimpse of a new possibility, of new faces, and new political forces. But through a tragic and increasingly inevitable combination of their own inexperience, blind trust and the public’s unwillingness to back an unknown entity, they were eventually shut out of the public space and we were reduced to the same old tired binary of Islamists and the old state — just like Mubarak promised us.

Now the old state has won, to great applause, and there is absolutely no room for difference, all in the name of stability and progress. [Continue reading…]

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An Iran hawk’s case against new Iran sanctions

Jeffrey Goldberg is arguably the most influential liberal Zionist in America, so it’s worth taking note when he speaks out against the efforts of the Israel lobby and its lackeys inside the U.S. Senate.

For years, Iran hawks have argued that only punishing sanctions, combined with the threat of military force, would bring Tehran to the nuclear negotiating table. Finally, Iran is at the table. And for reasons that are alternately inexplicable, presumptuous and bellicose, Iran hawks have decided that now is the moment to slap additional sanctions on the Iranian regime.

The bill before the U.S. Senate, which has 59 co-sponsors at last count, will not achieve the denuclearization of Iran. It will not lead to the defunding of Hezbollah by Iran or to the withdrawal of Iranian support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. What it could do is move the U.S. closer to war with Iran and, crucially, make Iran appear — even to many of the U.S.’s allies — to be the victim of American intransigence, even aggression. It would be quite an achievement to allow Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, to play the role of injured party in this drama. But the Senate is poised to do just that.

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Don’t trust Jonathan Pollard

M.E. Bowman writes: Jonathan Jay Pollard liked to imagine his life was greater than it was. He told fanciful tales to peers while at Stanford in the 1970s, including that he was a Mossad officer and that he had once been captured and tortured by Arabs.

After graduation, he lied to superiors and friends about his exploits and his qualifications. By the mid-1980s, he had used his position as a civilian naval intelligence analyst to become an enthusiastic and willing spy for profit by passing state secrets to Israel.

The Department of Justice was prepared to file a variety of charges against him, but in a plea agreement all except the most serious were dropped. Mr. Pollard pleaded guilty to espionage in 1987.

At the time of his arrest and trial, I was the liaison officer for the Department of Defense to the Department of Justice, and the coordinator of an investigation into the damage Mr. Pollard’s treachery had done to the American intelligence community.

Every few years, there is an orchestrated attempt to forge popular support for Mr. Pollard’s release. It is now happening again. In addition to calls for clemency coming from across the Israeli political spectrum, Lawrence J. Korb, the assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon at the time of Mr. Polland’s arrest, has said that his punishment was disproportionate to his offense. R. James Woolsey, a former director of central intelligence echoed that sentiment at a security conference in November. Last month, when Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Israel, there was a rash of hopeful reports in the Israeli press that he was considering releasing Mr. Pollard in exchange for Israeli concessions.

Mr. Pollard’s apologists portray him as a sort of dual patriot: loyal to the United States, but also motivated to help Israel. In fact, he was primarily a venal and selfish person who sought to get rich. [Continue reading…]

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