Guantánamo: An oral history

On the 10th anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees, Vanity Fair set out to compile an oral history of Guantánamo.

Pierre-Richard Prosper: On Thanksgiving weekend, I received a phone call informing me that we had just captured approximately 300 al-Qaeda and Taliban. I asked all our assistant secretaries and regional bureaus to canvass literally the world to begin to look at what options we had as to where a detention facility could be established. We began to eliminate places for different reasons. One day, in one of our meetings, we sat there puzzled as places continued to be eliminated. An individual from the Department of Justice effectively blurted out, What about Guantánamo? The individual then began to make clear that Guantánamo now is an empty facility, that there’s a basic structure there, that it’s a place that had been used to hold Haitian and Cuban migrants, and that U.S. courts in the past have given the executive branch great deference in what it did in Guantánamo.

William Howard Taft IV: At the time we selected Guantánamo we were adhering to the Geneva Conventions, and no decision had been made not to. I can’t say as to everyone, but on our side [the State Department] we were expecting and certainly quite comfortable with the use of the Geneva Conventions. It was the normal way our military had operated for 50 years.

December 27, 2001: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announces that War on Terror prisoners will indeed be sent to Guantánamo. Guantánamo, he will later say, is to be the place of confinement for “the worst of the worst.” A Red Cross presence at U.S. detention facilities has long been routine. It is not what the administration has in mind for Guantánamo, however. Manuel Supervielle was the chief military lawyer—the staff judge advocate—at Southern Command, in Miami.

Manuel Supervielle: I called Geneva, and I said, I need to speak with head of operations. I introduced myself, and I said, You may have heard the news that they’re going to be receiving some detainees in Guantánamo in the not too distant future. Would you all be interested in sending a team down there to observe?

There’s a really long pause, and the guy says, Well, yes, thank you, that’s very kind of you. He sounded quite startled. I don’t think he was expecting a phone call from U.S. jag [Judge Advocate General] at SouthCom.

During that first week of January I had a conversation with Jane Dalton [counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs]. I remember saying to her, By the way, I called the I.C.R.C. a few days ago, and asked them if they wanted to come to Guantánamo. She said, You did what? In a much more excited way than that. She said, Manny, what were you thinking? I said, Look, you all have given us guidance to follow the principles of the Geneva Conventions. Would you not agree that the most important principle is transparency? The discussion mostly turned on her anticipating a very negative reaction from D.O.D., from general counsel [Jim Haynes].

January 9, 2002: Getting Guantánamo ready for an influx of detainees requires a crash effort by the military. Meanwhile, the administration lays the groundwork to abandon the Geneva Conventions. Over the next decade, Carol Rosenberg, of The Miami Herald, will spend more time at Guantánamo than any other reporter. She is there when it opens.

Carol Rosenberg: There were 40 cells made from chain-link fencing sitting on a cement slab and next to a dump, and inside it there were Seabees—Navy engineers—slamming new cages into the ground and building them as fast as they could in one corner. And Marines in another corner were rehearsing how to handle potentially fanatical, suicidal, dangerous terrorists, with one Marine playing the role of the prisoner being shackled and manacled and pushed up against the fence and handled the way a Marine would handle someone who’s the enemy, and other Marines practicing the roles of guards.

William Howard Taft IV: In early January we got a draft memorandum from the Department of Justice, which was arguing that it was not necessary for the military to comply with the Geneva Conventions in this particular conflict. It was quite a lengthy memo, and was sent to us for comment. We disagreed with it and wrote a fairly lengthy memo back.

January 11, 2002: A group of 20 prisoners arrives at Guantánamo from Afghanistan. They are housed in open-air cages—hence the name Camp X-Ray. The International Committee of the Red Cross makes its first visit six days later. The number of detainees will grow into the several hundreds during the next several years. Army Private Brandon Neely witnessed the arrival of the first detainees.

Brandon Neely: The main gate to Camp X-Ray opened, and the bus pulls up. I’m standing 20 feet away. You could hear the Marines on the bus yelling at the detainees. You know, shut up. Look down. You’re now property of the United States of America. [Continue reading…]

Julian Assange: The United States betrayed Madison and Jefferson

Michael Hastings writes: It’s a few days before Christmas, and Julian Assange has just finished moving to a new hide-out deep in the English countryside. The two-bedroom house, on loan from a WikiLeaks supporter, is comfortable enough, with a big stone fireplace and a porch out back, but it’s not as grand as the country estate where he spent the past 363 days under house arrest, waiting for a British court to decide whether he will be extradited to Sweden to face allegations that he sexually molested two women he was briefly involved with in August 2010.

Assange sits on a tattered couch, wearing a wool sweater, dark pants and an electronic manacle around his right ankle, visible only when he crosses his legs. At 40, the WikiLeaks founder comes across more like an embattled rebel commander than a hacker or journalist. He’s become better at handling the media – more willing to answer questions than he used to be, less likely to storm off during interviews – but the protracted legal battle has left him isolated, broke and vulnerable. Assange recently spoke to someone he calls a Western “intelligence source,” and he asked the official about his fate. Will he ever be a free man again, allowed to return to his native Australia, to come and go as he pleases? “He told me I was fucked,” Assange says.

“Are you fucked?” I ask.

Assange pauses and looks out the window. The house is surrounded by rolling fields and quiet woods, but they offer him little in the way of escape. The British Supreme Court will hear his extradition appeal on February 1st – but even if he wins, he will likely still remain a wanted man. Interpol has issued a so-called “red notice” for his arrest on behalf of Swedish authorities for questioning in “connection with a number of sexual offenses” – Qaddafi, accused of war crimes, earned only an “orange notice” – and the U.S. government has branded him a “high-tech terrorist,” unleashing a massive and unprecedented investigation designed to depict Assange’s journalism as a form of international espionage. Ever since November 2010, when WikiLeaks embarrassed and infuriated the world’s governments with the release of what became known as Cablegate, some 250,000 classified diplomatic cables from more than 150 countries, the group’s supporters have found themselves detained at airports, subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, and ordered to turn over their Twitter accounts and e-mails to authorities.

Assange was always deeply engaged with the world – and always getting into trouble. Born in a small town in Queensland, he spent much of his youth traveling around Australia with his mother and stepfather, who ran a theater company. As a teenager, he discovered computers – his first was a Commodore 64 – and became one of the world’s foremost hackers, going by the name Mendax, Latin for “nobly untruthful.” After breaking into systems at NASA and the Pentagon when he was 16, he was busted on 25 counts of hacking, which prodded him to go straight. But as he traveled the world, working as a tech consultant through much of the 1990s, he continued putting his computer skills to use ensuring freedom of information – a necessary condition, he believes, for democratic self-rule.

“From the glory days of American radicalism, which was the American Revolution, I think that Madison’s view on government is still unequaled,” he tells me during the three days I spend with him as he settles into his new location in England. “That people determined to be in a democracy, to be their own governments, must have the power that knowledge will bring – because knowledge will always rule ignorance. You can either be informed and your own rulers, or you can be ignorant and have someone else, who is not ignorant, rule over you. The question is, where has the United States betrayed Madison and Jefferson, betrayed these basic values on how you keep a democracy? I think that the U.S. military-industrial complex and the majority of politicians in Congress have betrayed those values.” [Continue reading…]

Web protests piracy bills, and senators change course

The New York Times reports: Online protests on Wednesday quickly cut into Congressional support for online antipiracy measures as lawmakers abandoned and rethought their backing for legislation that pitted new media interests against some of the most powerful old-line commercial interests in Washington.

A freshman senator, Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, was first out of the starting gate Wednesday morning with his announcement that he would no longer back antipiracy legislation he had co-sponsored. Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who heads the campaign operation for his party, quickly followed suit and urged Congress take more time to study the measure, which had been set for a test vote next week.

By Wednesday afternoon, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and one of the Senate bill’s original co-sponsors, called it “simply not ready for prime time” and withdrew his support.

Their decisions came after some Web pages were shut down Wednesday to protest two separate bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, written by Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, drafted by Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Protests organized in the real world drew far less attention. A rally convened in Midtown Manhattan outside the offices of Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand, who co-sponsored some of the proposed legislation, drew a few hundred protesters.

Members of Congress, many of whom are grappling with the issues posed by the explosion in new media and social Web sites, appeared caught off guard by the enmity toward what had been a relatively obscure piece of legislation to many of them. The Internet sensibility of the Senate was represented a few years ago in remarks by the late Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, who called the Internet “not a big truck” but a “series of tubes” — an observation enshrined in the Net Hall of Shame.

In reaction to the pending legislation, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia went dark. Google’s home page had a black banner across its home page that led to pointed information blasting the bills.

Such new-media lobbying was having an impact.

“As a senator from Florida, a state with a large presence of artists, creators and businesses connected to the creation of intellectual property, I have a strong interest in stopping online piracy that costs Florida jobs,” Mr. Rubio wrote on his Facebook page. “However, we must do this while simultaneously promoting an open, dynamic Internet environment that is ripe for innovation and promotes new technologies.”

James Allworth and Maxwell Wessel write: SOPA and PIPA are prime examples of big companies trying to do everything they can to stop new competitors from innovating. They’re also examples of how lobbying in the United States has become one of the most effective ways of limiting this sort of competition.

The argument over this legislation has essentially been characterized in the press as having two sides. The first side, which is generally represented by big content, is that piracy (and any new technology that facilitates it) is an existential threat to any business based on intellectual property. That’s actually a line that has been used a few times before — most famously by Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA, when he testified in front of congress that the VCR was to the movie industry what the Boston Strangler was to women.

And on the other side of the argument? Well, they have been mostly characterized as the “technology industries.” They’ve been making the case that SOPA and PIPA will chill innovation and threaten free speech.

But “content” vs “technology” doesn’t do justice to describing the two sides. Tim O’Reilly, the CEO of O’Reilly Media — a very well-known publishing and media company that derives a large portion of its revenue from the sale of books — has been one of the most ardent critics of SOPA and PIPA. On the other hand, GoDaddy.com, the largest of the web’s domain name registrars, was very much in favor of SOPA — at least until a boycott caused them to back down. Similarly, there are plenty of other technology firms that have supported SOPA.

So if “content” vs “technology” doesn’t capture what’s going on in this fight, what does? Well, SOPA makes much more sense if you look at the debate as big companies unwilling to accept change versus the innovative companies and startups that embrace change. And if we accept that startups are created to find new ways to create value for consumers, the debate is actually between the financial interests of “big content” shareholders versus consumer interests at large.

Prosecutors aim new weapon at Occupy activists: lynching allegation

MSNBC reports: Sergio Ballesteros, 30, has been involved in Occupy LA since the movement had its California launch in October. But this week, his activism took an abrupt turn when he was arrested on a felony charge — lynching.

Under the California penal code, lynching is “taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer,” where “riot” is defined as two or more people threatening violence or disturbing the peace. The original purpose of the legal code section 405a was to protect defendants in police custody from vigilante mobs — especially black defendants from racist groups.

Whether its use in this case will be upheld by California’s courts is uncertain. But the felony charge — which carries a potential four-year prison sentence — is the kind of accusation that can change the landscape for would-be demonstrators.

“Felonies really heighten the stakes for the protesters,” said Baher Azmy, legal director at Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. “I think in situations where there are mass demonstrations and a confrontation between protesters and police, one always has to be on the lookout for exaggerated interpretations of legal rules that attempt to punish or squelch the protesters.”

Electoral reform in Lebanon

Elias Muhanna writes: Lebanon’s peculiar brand of democracy, dysfunctional and widely unpopular, is a perennial source of national vexation, debated over Sunday lunches and in the press.

Since the Taif agreement of 1989, which helped end the civil war, half of Parliament has been reserved for Christians, the other half for Muslims, with each half distributed among 11 of Lebanon’s 18 officially recognized sects (Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Sunni, Shiite, Druze, Alawite, etc). Each of Parliament’s (pdf) 128 seats is sect-specific: only members of that sect can run for it. (Voters, however, can cast their ballot for every seat in their district regardless of their own religious affiliation.) The president must be a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of Parliament a Shiite. Hundreds of bureaucratic appointments are also subject to sectarian apportionment under the Constitution.

The imposition of religious representativeness in politics is a scourge. In the best of circumstances, it is vulnerable to the demagoguery of religious leaders; in the worst, it breeds civil violence and paralyzes the government. But others fear that a more open system would not provide the guarantees of power-sharing among religious minorities that the current model entails.

In recent months, the focus of these long-standing divergences has centered on the intricacies of Lebanon’s electoral law. The next parliamentary elections are less than a year and a half away, and a loose coalition of civil society groups, independent politicians and Lebanon’s president – the former army general Michel Suleiman — has recently proposed implementing a system of proportional representation to replace the current majoritarian, or “winner-take-all,” model.

Israel’s ‘national suicide’

Mark LeVine writes: Say what you will about Israel’s High Court of Justice, it knows how to name a decision.

In titling last Wednesday’s legal decision, upholding the controversial Citizenship Law that prevents Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens from living in Israel “Human rights are not a prescription for national suicide”, the court’s majority well summed up the existential predicament Israel faces today – indeed, has always faced – as it attempts to be both Jewish and democratic.

“National suicide” is, of course, an incredibly loaded term in the Israeli context. In the historical shadow of the Holocaust, Chief Justice Asher Grunis’s appellation immediately raised the spectre of an existential threat to the Jewish people, or nation (Am Yisrael), being posed by the mere possibility of Palestinian Arabs joining Israeli society through marriage.

Right-wing lawmakers such as National Union chairman Ya’acov Katz have declared that the law would protect Israel from “the threat of being flooded with two-to-three million Arabs from outside its borders”. But such claims are utterly nonsensical. The true number, as Grunis and the five other Justices who joined the 6-5 majority surely know, would be in the low thousands.

So why would they argue that allowing Palestinian spouses to become Israeli, which as the decision’s title clearly admits is a basic human right, constitutes an act of “national suicide” for Israeli Jews?

To answer this question, we need to consider other possible meanings of the national suicide claim. We could imagine that the justices believe that recognising such marriages would accelerate the already “dangerous” trend towards demographic equality between Jewish and Palestinian citizens, based on higher fertility rates among Palestinians.

The only problem with this oft-repeated claim is that it’s false; the growth rate among the Palestinian population of Israel has actually slowed in the past decade, while those of religious Jews has exploded.

Simply put, the threat of a Palestinian “demographic bomb”, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has called it, is little more than a contrivance to justify the further exclusion of Palestinians from full citizenship rights within Israel.

But accurate or not, the average Jewish Israeli is likely not spending much time parsing the logic or statistical foundations of the High Court’s decision – because they understand the deeper meaning of the argument underlying the decision’s title: to extend full human rights to Palestinians will lead inevitably to the “national” – that is, political – suicide of Israel as a Jewish state.

Why?

Because to recognise that Jews and Palestinians can become one in the most intimate way possible – through love, sex and children – is to open Israeli Jews to the possibility that there is nothing essential that separates them from Palestinians, that as human beings with deep roots in this land, Palestinians have the same human rights as Israeli (or diaspora) Jews.

Once people accept this reality, Zionism – which, at its core, is based on the exclusive Jewish claim of rights to and sovereignty over the Land of Israel – loses whatever remains of its moral and political legitimacy.

Such a recognition, then, would spell the death knell, not of Israeli Jews as people, but of Zionism as a viable political ideology.

UK deputy PM: Israel is vandalizing the peace process

The Daily Telegraph reports: Nick Clegg tilted Britain’s Middle East policy sharply towards the Palestinians on Monday with an attack on Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank.

The Deputy Prime Minister drew a hostile reaction from Israel by saying the government’s continued construction on internationally recognised Palestinian land was “an act of deliberate vandalism” that undermined the basis of the Middle East peace process.

In some of the most critical language ever used by a senior European politician in government, Mr Clegg accused Israel of making the likelihood of a negotiated settlement to the conflict impossible to deliver.

“It is an act of deliberate vandalism to the basic premise on which negotiations have taken place for years and years and years,” Mr Clegg said.

AFP reports: The number of Israeli settlers living in the West Bank at the end of 2011 rose by 4.3 percent compared with the previous year to 342,414, an Israeli lawmaker said in a statement on Sunday.

Citing official data obtained from the interior ministry, Yaakov Katz of the far-right National Union party said the number of settlers in the West Bank had increased despite a 2010 partial settlement freeze, which he claimed continued to slow Jewish construction in the West Bank in 2011.

Katz said there were now more than 700,000 Israelis living in areas occupied by Israel in 1967, including east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

He said some 300,000 Jews now live in east Jerusalem, along with another 20,000 in the Golan Heights, both beyond the so-called Green Line, the armistice line agreed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The figures given by Katz for overall settlement population and the number of settlers in east Jerusalem far exceed those usually cited by watchdog groups.

Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now put the number of settlers in east Jerusalem in 2010 at 200,000, with another 18,000 in the Golan Heights, and 311,000 in the West Bank.

Katz said another 60,000 Jewish Israelis were studying at institutions in West Bank settlements in 2011, meaning there are “currently 720,000 Jews residing beyond the Green Line.”

Iranian Revolutionary Guard/Quds Force could be planning attack in Turkey

Today’s Zaman reports: Intelligence units have warned that the Quds Force, a special unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, plans to send a group to Turkey to carry out a series of demonstrations that may include a bomb attack on the Embassy or Consulate General of the United States.

The Turkish Security General Directorate (EGM) has warned police departments in all 81 Turkish provinces that they must be vigilant and remain alert to the existence of such a threat. The intelligence pertaining to the possibility of such an attack was delivered in a secret letter to the information department at Turkey’s General Directorate of Security. The written statement indicates that a team linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard will be sent to Turkey and that it may be planning to bomb the US embassy or consulate general in the country. The Quds Force is infamous for its role in attempting to export Iran’s revolution to other countries through the instigation of chaos and by acting as the overseas branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp.

However, facts about the force are well-guarded and scarce. The statement further details that the team intends to stay in five-star hotels in the city where the plan is to be carried out and that as a result, caution should be exercised when dealing with non-Turkish individuals staying at such lodgings. The statement also noted that groups linked to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah may also take part in the plotted demonstrations or attacks.

Intelligence data regarding the plan have been assessed by Turkish security forces to be an effort by Iran to stir to action illegal Turkish political groups following Turkey’s decision to host a NATO early-warning radar system and recent developments in Syria that have seen the establishment of a training camp for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a step interpreted as a response to Turkey’s criticism of the Syrian regime for its brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests.

On nuclear programs and nuclear weapons programs

Ali Gharib reports: A consensus seems to be developing on Iran’s nuclear program among those hired by major news organizations to keep an eye on their own reporting. Much of the discussion so far has focused on the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear program, the most comprehensive publicly-available evidence on the issue. In the document, the IAEA expressed “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme.” As a White House official said at the time, the IAEA report neither indicated that Iran has a nuclear weapons program nor that Tehran has made a decision to build a bomb.

A spate of ombudsmen and public editors of major news organizations have come out and bolstered the more accurate reading of the IAEA report — one that raises worries but does not conclude that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. First Washington Post ombud Patrick Pexton said so, urging extra caution because overstating evidence about the program can “play into the hands of those who are seeking further confrontation with Iran.” He was followed by New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane, who wrote that hewing closely to available facts matters “because the Iranian program has emerged as a possible casus belli.” Now, they’re both being joined by Edward Schumacher-Matos, National Public Radio’s ombudsman, and Public Broadcasting System (PBS) ombudsman Michael Getler.

The Organization of News Ombudsman declares in its mission statement: “The ombudsman refrains from engaging in any activity that could create a conflict of interest.” It also says: “The ombudsman is an independent officer acting in the best interests of news consumers.”

If that was really true then news ombudsmen would neither be appointed by nor paid by the news organizations whose output they monitor. In reality, their function is more a kind of refined public relations — they simply provide newspaper editors, journalists, and the companies inside which they operate, an additional layer of protection.

If NPR and others now studiously try to avoid blurring the distinction between Iran’s nuclear program and a nuclear weapons program whose existence has yet to be established, the most likely effect of doing so will be to provide these news organizations with an extra piece of cover in the event that the media once again comes under scrutiny for the role it might have played in starting a war.

The semantic distinction between “nuclear program” and “nuclear weapons program” is significant, but since these terms have already frequently been used as interchangeable and since in wording they are so similar, it is debatable how much will be gained at this point if some journalists diligently avoid substituting one for the other. Too many news consumers will fail to notice the difference and when hearing “nuclear program” will still think “nuclear weapons program” — the former sounds too much like an abbreviation of the latter.

A more neutral and less ambiguous alternative to “nuclear program” would be “nuclear activities.”

The New York Times and NPR rise to defend the 1 percent

In a magazine feature for the New York Times, NPR’s Adam Davidson explains that credit cards are among the many amazing ways through which in America, thanks to Wall Street, the rich share their wealth with the poor!

Elsewhere, the Times offers a more “nuanced” picture of the one percent — heaven forbid that the wealthy might fall victim of crude stereotypes unfairly foisted upon them during cruel class warfare.

To my mind, both these institutions — NPR and the NYT — represent the most disgusting feature of America’s liberal elite: that it can profess an interest in the welfare of every American and at the same time defend the status quo.

Doug Henwood writes: For a while, I’ve been thinking about writing a piece on how NPR is more toxic than Fox News. Fox preaches to the choir. NPR, though, confuses and misinforms people who might otherwise know better. Its “liberal” reputation makes palatable a deeply orthodox message for a demographic that could be open to a more critical message.

The full critique will take some time. But a nice warm-up opportunity has just presented itself: a truly wretched piece of apologetic hackery by Adam Davidson, co-founder of NPR’s Planet Money economics reporting team, that appears in today’s New York Times magazine.

In the print edition, the thing is called “A World Without Wall Street.” For some reason, the paper’s web editors decided to call it “What Does Wall Street Do For You?” Maybe they thought that the question would draw in readers, who might find the declarative title of the print edition an appealing little fantasy and just turn the page.

Davidson concedes, with a mocking tone (that’s part of his straining at cool), that Americans have long hated Wall Street. But he rejects the usual complaints—that financiers are a bunch of bloodsucking parasites who periodically drive the real economy into a ditch—with the disclosure that finance is “a fundamentally beneficial business.” It brings together borrowers and lenders, a task that it does “extremely well”—“most of the time.”

Now I will be the first to argue that critiques of finance that let the “real” sector off the hook are incomplete, and even dangerous. (For more: “How to misunderstand money.”) The world of production can be a very nasty place. Corporations make money by paying workers less than the value of what they produce. They’re constantly maneuvering to cut costs, which means cutting pay, speeding up the line, dumping toxic waste in rivers, and a host of other familiar misdeeds. Like financiers, they’re in business to make money, and they’ll do nothing that doesn’t make money unless they’re forced to. Yes, they often provide useful products in the course of their pursuit of money. But it’s wrong to get carried away in painting them as the Good Guys, by contrast with the moneychanging Bad Guys.

But Davidson’s defense brief is incredibly wrong. I’d say “dishonest,” but I suspect he really doesn’t know better. [Continue reading…]

Striking to protest SOPA and PIPA

War in Context will be going dark on January 18 (8AM till 8PM US Eastern Standard Time) to protest the SOPA and PIPA, two bills promoted by the American entertainment and publishing industries currently making their way through Congress.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation provides more information on how PIPA and SOPA violate White House principles supporting free speech and innovation:

Over the weekend, the Obama administration issued a potentially game-changing statement on the blacklist bills, saying it would oppose PIPA and SOPA as written, and drew an important line in the sand by emphasizing that it “will not support” any bill “that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Yet, the fight is still far from over. Even though the New York Times reported that the White House statement “all but kill[s] current versions of the legislation,” the Senate is still poised to bring PIPA to the floor next week, and we can expect SOPA proponents in the House to try to revive the legislation—unless they get the message that these initiatives must stop, now. So let’s take a look at the dangerous provisions in the blacklist bills that would violate the White House’s own principles by damaging free speech, Internet security, and online innovation:

The Anti-Circumvention Provision

In addition to going after websites allegedly directly involved in copyright infringement, a proposal in SOPA will allow the government to target sites that simply provide information that could help users get around the bills’ censorship mechanisms. Such a provision would not only amount to an unconstitutional prior restraint against protected speech, but would severely damage online innovation. And contrary to claims by SOPA’s supporters, this provision—at least what’s been proposed so far—applies to all websites, even those in the U.S.

As First Amendment expert Marvin Ammori points out, “The language is pretty vague, but it appears all these companies must monitor their sites for anti-circumvention so they are not subject to court actions ‘enjoining’ them from continuing to provide ‘such product or service.’” That means social media sites like Facebook or YouTube—bascailly any site with user generated content—would have to police their own sites, forcing huge liability costs onto countless Internet companies. This is exactly why venture capitalists have said en masse they won’t invest in online startups if PIPA and SOPA pass. Websites would be forced to block anything from a user post about browser add-ons like DeSopa, to a simple list of IP addresses of already-blocked sites.

Perhaps worse, EFF has detailed how this provision would also decimate the open source software community. Anyone who writes or distributes Virtual Private Network, proxy, privacy or anonymization software would be negatively affected. This includes organizations that are funded by the State Department to create circumvention software to help democratic activists get around authoritarian regimes’ online censorship mechanisms. Ironically, SOPA would not only institute the same practices as these regimes, but would essentially outlaw the tools used by activists to circumvent censorship in countries like Iran and China as well.

The “Vigilante” Provision

Another dangerous provision in PIPA and SOPA that hasn’t received a lot of attention is the “vigilante” provision, which would grant broad immunity to all service providers if they overblock innocent users or block sites voluntarily with no judicial oversight at all. The standard for immunity is incredibly low and the potential for abuse is off the charts. Intermediaries only need to act “in good faith” and base their decision “on credible evidence” to receive immunity.

As we noted months ago, this provision would allow the MPAA and RIAA to create literal blacklists of sites they want censored. Intermediaries will find themselves under pressure to act to avoid court orders, creating a vehicle for corporations to censor sites—even those in the U.S.—without any legal oversight. And as Public Knowledge has pointed out, not only can this provision be used for bogus copyright claims that are protected by fair use, but large corporations can take advantage of it to stamp out emerging competitors and skirt anti-trust laws:

For instance, an Internet service provider could block DNS requests for a website offering online video that competed with its cable television offerings, based upon “credible evidence” that the site was, in its own estimation, promoting its use for infringement….While the amendment requires that the action be taken in good faith, the blocked site now bears the burden of proving either its innocence or the bad faith of its accuser in order to be unblocked.

Corporate Right of Action

PIPA and SOPA also still allow copyright holders to get an unopposed court order to cut off foreign websites from payment processors and advertisers. As we have continually highlighted, copyright holders already can remove infringing material from the web under the DMCA notice-and-takedown procedure. Unfortunately, we’ve seen that power abused time and again. Yet the proponents of PIPA and SOPA want to give rightsholders even more power, allowing them to essentially shut down full sites instead of removing the specific infringing content.

While this provision only affects foreign sites, it still affects Americans’ free speech rights. As Marvin Ammori explained, “The seminal case of Lamont v. Postmaster makes it clear that Americans have the First Amendment right to read and listen to foreign speech, even if the foreigners lack a First Amendment speech right.” If history is any guide—and we’re afraid it is—we will see specious claims to wholesale take downs of legitimate and protected speech.

Expanded Attorney General Powers

PIPA and SOPA would also give the Attorney General new authority to block domain name services, a provision that has been universally criticized by both Internet security experts and First Amendment scholars. Even the blacklist bills’ authors are now publicly second-guessing that scary provision. But even without it, this section would still force many intermediaries to become the Internet police by putting the responsibility of censorship enforcement on those intermediaries, who are usually innocent third parties.

The Attorney General would also be empowered to de-list websites from search engines, which, as Google Chairman Eric Schmidt noted, would still “criminalize linking and the fundamental structure of the Internet itself.” The same applies to payment processors and advertisers.

These are just some of the egregious provisions in PIPA and SOPA that would drastically change the way we use the Internet (for the worse), and punish millions of innocent users who have never even thought about copyright infringement. As Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian explained, PIPA and SOPA are “the equivalent of being angry and trying to take action against Ford just because a Mustang was used in a bank robbery.” These bills must be stopped if we want to protect free speech and innovation on the web.

Please take action now and tell your Congressional representatives you oppose the blacklist bills.

Turkey slams Perry for ‘terrorist leaders’ remarks

Today’s Zaman reports: The Turkish Foreign Ministry on Tuesday slammed US presidential hopeful Rick Perry for his remarks in which he questioned Turkey’s NATO membership and called Turkish leaders “Islamic terrorists,” saying the statements are groundless and inappropriate.

The ministry said in a statement released on Tuesday that Turkey strongly condemns Perry’s remarks and said those who run as candidates for a position like the US presidency, which requires the utmost responsibility, are expected to have “more information about the world” and be more careful in their statements.

Perry, the governor of Texas, said in a debate with other Republican contenders in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on Monday that Turkey was a US ally in the past, but not anymore. “Obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then, yes, not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it,” Perry claimed.

“Turkey became a NATO member when Mr. Governor was two years old,” the statement said in reference to Turkey’s becoming a NATO member in 1952. “It is one of the countries that has contributed much to the transatlantic alliance and will continue to be so. Turkey is among the countries that are on the front line in fighting terrorism. It holds the co-chairmanship of the Global Counterterrorism Forum [GCTF] with the US,” the statement further said in response to Perry.

In response to Perry’s accusations against Turkish leaders, the Foreign Ministry added that Turkish leaders are well-respected not only in the US, but in Turkey’s region and the world. Noting that Perry’s “unfortunate” opinions are not backed by Republican Party grassroots, which was revealed by weak support for him in recent polls, the statement said this shows the “common sense of the US voters.”

Preventing a nuclear Iran, peacefully

Shibley Telhami and Steven Kull write: The debate over how to handle Iran’s nuclear program is notable for its gloom and doom. Many people assume that Israel must choose between letting Iran develop nuclear weapons or attacking before it gets the bomb. But this is a false choice. There is a third option: working toward a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. And it is more feasible than most assume.

Attacking Iran might set its nuclear program back a few years, but it will most likely encourage Iran to aggressively seek — and probably develop — nuclear weapons. Slowing Iran down has some value, but the costs are high and the risks even greater. Iran would almost certainly retaliate, leading to all-out war at a time when Israel is still at odds with various Arab countries, and its relations with Turkey are tense.

Many hawks who argue for war believe that Iran poses an “existential threat” to Israel. They assume Iran is insensitive to the logic of nuclear deterrence and would be prepared to use nuclear weapons without fear of the consequences (which could include killing millions of Palestinians and the loss of millions of Iranian civilians from an inevitable Israeli retaliation). And even if Israel strikes, Iran is still likely to acquire nuclear weapons eventually and would then be even more inclined to use them.

Despite all the talk of an “existential threat,” less than half of Israelis support a strike on Iran. According to our November poll, carried out in cooperation with the Dahaf Institute in Israel, only 43 percent of Israeli Jews support a military strike on Iran — even though 90 percent of them think that Iran will eventually acquire nuclear weapons.

Most important, when asked whether it would be better for both Israel and Iran to have the bomb, or for neither to have it, 65 percent of Israeli Jews said neither. And a remarkable 64 percent favored the idea of a nuclear-free zone, even when it was explained that this would mean Israel giving up its nuclear weapons.

The Israeli public also seems willing to move away from a secretive nuclear policy toward greater openness about Israel’s nuclear facilities. Sixty percent of respondents favored “a system of full international inspections” of all nuclear facilities, including Israel’s and Iran’s, as a step toward regional disarmament.

If Israel’s nuclear program were to become part of the equation, it would be a game-changer. Iran has until now effectively accused the West of employing a double standard because it does not demand Israeli disarmament, earning it many fans across the Arab world.

And a nuclear-free zone may be hard for Iran to refuse. Iranian diplomats have said they would be open to an intrusive role for the United Nations if it accepted Iran’s right to enrich uranium for energy production — not to the higher levels necessary for weapons. And a 2007 poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that the Iranian people would favor such a deal.

We cannot take what Iranian officials say at face value, but an international push for a nuclear-free Middle East would publicly test them. And most Arab leaders would rather not start down the nuclear path — a real risk if Iran gets the bomb — and have therefore welcomed the proposal of a nuclear-free zone.

Fighting a forbidden battle: How I stopped covering up for a hidden wrong

Jesse Lieberfeld is one of the winners of Carnegie Mellon University’s 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. Day Writing Awards. The 17-year-old Jewish high school student writes:

I once belonged to a wonderful religion. I belonged to a religion that allows those of us who believe in it to feel that we are the greatest people in the world—and feel sorry for ourselves at the same time. Once, I thought that I truly belonged in this world of security, self-pity, self-proclaimed intelligence, and perfect moral aesthetic. I thought myself to be somewhat privileged early on. It was soon revealed to me, however, that my fellow believers and I were not part of anything so flattering.

Although I was fortunate enough to have parents who did not try to force me into any one set of beliefs, being Jewish was in no way possible to escape growing up. It was constantly reinforced at every holiday, every service, and every encounter with the rest of my relatives. I was forever reminded how intelligent my family was, how important it was to remember where we had come from, and to be proud of all the suffering our people had overcome in order to finally achieve their dream in the perfect society of Israel.

This last mandatory belief was one which I never fully understood, but I always kept the doubts I had about Israel’s spotless reputation to the back of my mind. “Our people” were fighting a war, one I did not fully comprehend, but I naturally assumed that it must be justified. We would never be so amoral as to fight an unjust war. Yet as I came to learn more about our so-called “conflict” with the Palestinians, I grew more concerned. I routinely heard about unexplained mass killings, attacks on medical bases, and other alarmingly violent actions for which I could see no possible reason. “Genocide” almost seemed the more appropriate term, yet no one I knew would have ever dreamed of portraying the war in that manner; they always described the situation in shockingly neutral terms. Whenever I brought up the subject, I was always given the answer that there were faults on both sides, that no one was really to blame, or simply that it was a “difficult situation.” It was not until eighth grade that I fully understood what I was on the side of. One afternoon, after a fresh round of killings was announced on our bus ride home, I asked two of my friends who actively supported Israel what they thought. “We need to defend our race,” they told me. “It’s our right.”

“We need to defend our race.”

Where had I heard that before? Wasn’t it the same excuse our own country had used to justify its abuses of African-Americans sixty years ago? In that moment, I realized how similar the two struggles were—like the white radicals of that era, we controlled the lives of another people whom we abused daily, and no one could speak out against us. It was too politically incorrect to do so. We had suffered too much, endured too many hardships, and overcome too many losses to be criticized. I realized then that I was in no way part of a “conflict”—the term “Israeli/Palestinian Conflict” was no more accurate than calling the Civil Rights Movement the “Caucasian/ African-American Conflict.” In both cases, the expression was a blatant euphemism: it gave the impression that this was a dispute among equals and that both held an equal share of the blame. However, in both, there was clearly an oppressor and an oppressed, and I felt horrified at the realization that I was by nature on the side of the oppressors. I was grouped with the racial supremacists. I was part of a group that killed while praising its own intelligence and reason. I was part of a delusion. [Continue reading…]

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his own words

Israel hit by cyber-attacks on stock exchange, airline and banks

The Guardian reports: Hackers disrupted online access to the Tel Aviv stock exchange, El Al airlines and three banks on Monday, in what the government described as a cyber-offensive against Israel.

The attacks came just days after an unidentified hacker, proclaiming Palestinian sympathies, posted the details of thousands of Israeli credit card holders and other personal information on the internet in a mass theft.

Stock trading and El Al flights operated normally despite the disruption, which occurred as Israeli media reported that pro-Palestinian hackers had threatened at the weekend to shut down the Tase stock exchange and airline websites.

While apparently confined to areas causing only limited inconvenience, the attacks have caused particular alarm in a country that depends on high-tech systems for much of its defence against hostile neighbours. Officials insist, however, that they pose no immediate security threat.

Taliban make formal declaration of victory

The New York Times reports: Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s one-eyed leader, seems to have taken a page from George W. Bush’s playbook.

Just as the former president declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq years before the war there ended, the Taliban made their own victory declaration this weekend, even though roughly 130,000 coalition troops were still fighting in Afghanistan — and keeping the Afghan government firmly in power.

No matter, suggested the Taliban, which calls itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, in a statement bluntly titled: “Formal Proclamation of Islamic Emirate’s Victory.” The American push to open talks is proof that the insurgents are winning, the Taliban reasoned.

“It is but sheer determination, religious and ideological adherence and unequalled sacrifices displayed by true Afghan Mujahid nation for the last decade that today regional and world powers are after to reach mutual understanding about the country,” the statement said in the Taliban’s typically fractured English.

The coalition declined to comment on the Taliban’s statement.

Most American and Afghan officials would surely dispute the Taliban’s logic. But taken as a statement of intent, the Taliban’s declaration offers an instructive glimpse into their thinking. For them, a seat across the table from the Americans – and, if a settlement is reached, a formal role in the Afghan government — may be the victory they’ve been fighting for.

Syria: beyond the wall of fear, a state in slow-motion collapse

Ian Black reports: Sipping tea in a smoky Damascus cafe, Adnan and his wife, Rima, look ordinary enough: an unobtrusive, thirtysomething couple winding down at the end of the working day in one of the tensest cities in the world.

But like much else in the Syrian capital, they are not what they first seem: normally, he is a software engineer and she a lawyer; now, they are underground activists helping organise the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

It is dangerous work. Over the past 10 months, thousands of Syrians have been killed – perhaps twice the 5,000 figure given by the UN – as Assad has pursued a ruthless crackdown that shows no sign of ending. But his opponents are equally determined to carry on.

Adnan and Rima are unable to work or contact their families. They have false identities. Adnan changes his appearance regularly. He has just shaved off his beard. It clearly works: a friend at a nearby table fails to recognise him.

Most of their friends are on the run from the mukhabarat secret police. “It used to be scary but we’ve got used to it,” said Adnan. The revolution destroyed the wall of fear. At school, we were taught to love the president – Hafez – first. And it didn’t get any better when Bashar took over. Now, everything has changed. Assad’s picture is defaced everywhere and we are certain that at some point we will topple the regime.”

On the face of it, Damascus is calm. The bloodiest frontlines of the revolution may be in Homs, Hama, Idlib and Deraa, but the appearance of normality in the capital is deceptive. Intrigue, fear and anger are just below the surface.