Street by street, Egypt activists face Old Guard

The Associated Press reports:

After the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, a group of young activists quickly moved to bring the can-do spirit of Egypt’s revolution down to the level of their neighborhood.

They began installing electricity poles in Mit Oqba’s dim streets. They got gas pipes extended to the area. They did what local officials had long promised but never done, with the aim of showing 300,000 low-income residents the benefits of an uprising meant to end the corruption and stagnation under Mubarak.

Then the activists’ parents started getting intimidating warnings: Your children are going to get beaten up by thugs. An official who helped them get papers signed for extending the gas pipes was suddenly transferred to another post.

The activists had run into a collision course with powerful local members of the former ruling party. It was a lesson about the new Egypt: The old regime is still in place and fighting change.

“The regime is not just Mubarak and his ministers. There are thousands still benefiting,” said Mohammed Magdy, one of the activists in Mit Oqba.

Mubarak was ousted five months ago, along with top figures from his nearly 30-year regime. But the military generals who now rule have been slow in — or have outright resisted — dismantling the grip that members of his former ruling party hold on every level of the state, from senior government positions down to local administrations. In the meantime, public anger that real change has not come is growing explosive.

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Ex-newspaper editor appointed as Egypt’s Information Minister

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The former editor in chief of the Wafd party’s newspaper was sworn in as the new Minister of Information by the head of the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi on Saturday.

The appointment of Osama Heikal surprised many politicians and activists, who believed that the ministry, which had not filled the job for five months, might keep the position vacant. Many online activists and bloggers quickly highlighted what they called Heikal’s “support” to Mubarak’s regime through an article he wrote one day before the Jan. 25 revolt that ended with ousting Mubarak.

“I don’t think that any devout Egyptian would want his country to witness a similar fate to Tunisia’s [referring to the Tunisian revolution]. No one wants a clash between people and the regime. What we should understand is that people want change and the quieter those changes come the better this will be for Egypt,” Heikal wrote in an editorial dated Jan. 24.

The editorial added that angry demonstrations represent a coup against “our values.”

After working as the newspaper’s reporter for military and presidential affairs for 18 years, Heikal was elected as head of Wafd’s newspaper last January. After his appointment as minister, Heikal stressed that the Egyptian state media will focus on “reporting the full truth without any exaggerations or exclusions and that all sects of the country’s society will have an equal place to appear in state media.”

Despite its status as an opposition party, Wafd and its newspaper have in recent years been criticized for taking the side of the former Mubarak regime against other independent newspapers and writers more critical of the former president. Egyptian information ministers during Mubarak’s rule have always been regarded as watchdogs who controlled and manipulated state media according to the ruling party’s interests.

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America’s ‘detainee 001’ – the persecution of John Walker Lindh

Frank Lindh writes:

John Phillip Walker Lindh, my son, was raised a Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam when he was 16 years old. He has an older brother and a younger sister. John is scholarly and devout, devoted to his family, and blessed with a powerful intellect, a curious mind, and a wry sense of humour.

Labelled by the American government as “Detainee 001” in the “war on terror”, John occupies a prison cell in Terre Haute, Indiana. He has been a prisoner of the American government since 1 December 2001, less than three months after the terror attacks of 9/11.

John is entirely innocent of any involvement in the terror attacks, or any allegiance to terrorism. That is not disputed by the American government. Indeed, all accusations of terrorism against John were dropped by the government in a plea bargain, which in turn was approved by the US district court in which the case was brought.

Despite its proud history as a stable constitutional democracy, the US has, for 10 years, been affected by post-traumatic shock, following the horrific events of 11 September 2001. I can find no other explanation for the barbaric mistreatment and continued detention of a gentle young man like John Lindh.

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U.S. is deferring millions in Pakistani military aid

The New York Times reports:

The Obama administration is suspending and, in some cases, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military, in a move to chasten Pakistan for expelling American military trainers and to press its army to fight militants more effectively.

Coupled with a statement from the top American military officer last week linking Pakistan’s military spy agency to the recent murder of a Pakistani journalist, the halting or withdrawal of military equipment and other aid to Pakistan illustrates the depth of the debate inside the Obama administration over how to change the behavior of one of its key counterterrorism partners.

Altogether, about $800 million in military aid and equipment, or over one-third of the more than $2 billion in annual American security assistance to Pakistan, could be affected, three senior United States officials said.

This aid includes about $300 million to reimburse Pakistan for some of the costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border to combat terrorism, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in training assistance and military hardware, according to half a dozen Congressional, Pentagon and other administration officials who were granted anonymity to discuss the politically delicate matter.

Some of the curtailed aid is equipment that the United States wants to send but Pakistan now refuses to accept, like rifles, ammunition, body armor and bomb-disposal gear that were withdrawn or held up after Pakistan ordered more than 100 Army Special Forces trainers to leave the country in recent weeks.

Some is equipment, such as radios, night-vision goggles and helicopter spare parts, which cannot be set up, certified or used for training because Pakistan has denied visas to the American personnel needed to operate the equipment, two senior Pentagon officials said.

And some is assistance like the reimbursements for troop costs, which is being reviewed in light of questions about Pakistan’s commitment to carry out counterterrorism operations. For example, the United States recently provided Pakistan with information about suspected bomb-making factories, only to have the insurgents vanish before Pakistani security forces arrived a few days later.

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Panetta says defeat of Al Qaeda is ‘within reach’

The New York Times reports:

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who arrived in Kabul on Saturday, said the United States was “within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda” and that the American focus had narrowed to capturing or killing 10 to 20 crucial leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Mr. Panetta, who took over as defense secretary from Robert M. Gates on July 1, made his comments aboard his plane before arriving on an unannounced trip to Afghanistan.

They were Mr. Panetta’s first public remarks in his new post and among the most positive from a senior American national security official about the decade-old war against the terrorist organization, founded by Osama bin Laden, that was responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Panetta, who as director of the Central Intelligence Agency ran the American commando raid that killed Bin Laden in Pakistan on May 2, said that vanquishing Al Qaeda was one of his most important goals as defense secretary.

“Obviously we made an important start with that in getting rid of Bin Laden,” Mr. Panetta said. “We’re within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda. And I’m hoping to be able to focus on that, working obviously with my prior agency as well.”

Mr. Panetta, who rarely spoke on the record as C.I.A. director but has a more public role now, offered few details to bolster his assessment. But intelligence officials have said that computer files retrieved from Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, showed that the organization was in dire need of money and struggling under persistent American drone strikes on its leadership.

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Israel’s campaign of violence against non-violent political opposition

Israel is now a nation governed by its reptilian brain. In response to the slightest challenge, it lashes out as though in each and every moment, its life were under threat.

Israel now only has one way of responding to criticism: to accuse its critics of being violent. By claiming critics are by their nature violent, violence then becomes the state’s necessary and unavoidable form of defense.

Israel has no political answers to its political critics — only the use of force, tear gas, detention, deportation and the occasional bullet in the head.

Having presented the arrival of a few hundred European tourists as a violent threat, Israeli paranoia thereafter needed some form of ‘proof’ for justifying its fears, thus today the Israeli press if filled with headlines like this:

Foreign pro-Palestinian activists clash with IDF in West Bank

Joseph Dana questions whether their is any basis for the reports. And in the video below showing “clashes” yesterday between non-violent protesters and the IDF, it’s clear that objective and accurate reporting would describe such events with very different language and headlines like this:

IDF attacks unarmed protesters in the West Bank

Dana writes:

According to media reports carried by all major news outlets in Israel, four ‘air flotilla’ passengers were arrested/detained Saturday in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh during an unarmed demonstration this morning. Haaretz, in its headline story, is citing reports by Channel 10 (Heb), that four ‘air flotilla’ activists have been taken for questioning after they had been arrested in the demonstration. The Jerusalem Post, citing unnamed ‘organizers’, claims that air flotilla passengers are clashing with security forces in Nabi Saleh. The paper does not cite the name of the organizations that the ‘organizers’ are representatives of. Ynet is reporting that activists might be involved in demonstrations in Nabi Saleh and Qalandiya but they provide nothing to substantiate their claims. None of these reports seem to based on facts on the ground in Nabi Saleh.

Kobi Snitz, an Israeli activist with the Anarchists Against the Wall, told me by telephone from Nabi Saleh that he has not seen any ‘air flotilla’ passenger in the course of the day. He told me that four people were indeed arrested, but they were all Israeli Jews from Tel Aviv. In fact, the Israeli activists are being charged with assaulting soldiers despite clear video footage to the contrary according to Snitz. Snitz did comment that there were international activists present in the demonstration but ‘they were definitively not arrested or taken in by Israeli forces.” Other villagers in Nabi Saleh told to me that they were unaware that ‘air flotilla’ passengers were present in their demonstration today. I have not been able to reach anyone present at the Qalandiya demonstration at the time of this writing.

News outlets often make mistakes and +972 is no exception. However, it is strange for a story that is based almost entirely on unsubstantiated reports to become the headline of every major newspaper website in Israel. When rumors of arrests of air flotilla passengers began this morning, Yossi Gurvitz contacted the IDF spokesman for a confirmation of the story. He was given a categorical rejection of claims that air flotilla passengers were targeted for arrest in the West Bank. No comment was given about air flotilla activists involved in demonstrations in Nabi Saleh.

Shir Hever notes:

The hundreds of activists being deported from Israel’s airport, or denied the right to board the planes to begin with, are mostly European citizens, who have the same right which every Israeli enjoys when visiting Europe. As an Israeli citizen, I can take a plane to any European country without worrying about being denied entry. I don’t need to lie at the airport. Tens of thousands of demonstrators who fly to G8 meetings to protest them are also not denied entry. Still, European citizens visiting Israel and even more so if they are visiting the OPT, are interrogated, placed under surveillance and political controls.

The European Union has a reciprocity policy regarding countries whose citizens enjoy a free visa, and expects these countries to offer the same treatment to European citizens that Europe awards their citizens. So far, European governments (as well as the Canadian and US governments) do not concern themselves too much with the rights of their own citizens in Israel.

A proper response by France, Germany and the UK to the current mass deportations would be to suspend the visa agreement with Israel and demand that every Israeli citizen apply for a visa (like citizens of most countries in Africa and Asia), until Israel gives its reasons for expelling each and every activist who wishes to visit the OPT. Such a response is sure to remind the Israeli public that control over the Palestinian population in the OPT also carries responsibilities, and abusing those responsibilities carries consequences.

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Palestinians are preparing for September, but is Israel?

Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel write:

In a little more than two months, the United Nations General Assembly is scheduled to discuss the Palestinian Authority’s request for recognition of a Palestinian state within the June 4, 1967 boundaries. But for now, the Palestinian public is preoccupied with a range of other issues that have nothing to do with the occupation, the settlements or a popular uprising.

On Sunday, a World Cup preliminary qualifying match between Palestine and Afghanistan, played at Al-Ram stadium north of Jerusalem, ended in a 1-1 draw. In a previous round the Palestinians won 2-0, thus keeping their hopes alive, and now need a win against Thailand to move into the next round.

That same day, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced that civil servants would receive only half their salaries because funds promised by Arab donor states have not arrived. And on Tuesday, Hebron held elections for its chamber of commerce. Nearly 2,000 residents voted in what was perceived as a cross-clan battle of generations over the city’s economic future. Not a word was said about an intifada or the occupation.

Also on Sunday, however, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, headed by Dr. Khalil Shikaki, conducted a simulation exercise relating to the September vote. The participants, past and present senior figures from the PA and Fatah, assumed the roles of representatives of the PA and the U.S. administration, and other key international figures. Three Israelis were also invited (including one of this column’s co-authors ), who, alongside a Palestinian academic, played the Israeli government. Senior Hamas figures in the West Bank were invited to participate but refused because of the Israeli presence. The proceedings were held in Arabic.

In the first scenario, on the day of the UN vote, the United States and the European Union present separate initiatives to have the matter struck from the General Assembly agenda. Washington suggests recognizing a Palestinian state without setting its borders or capital; the EU suggests postponing the vote by a year, recognizing that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will be based on the 1949 armistice lines, and stipulating that if the parties do not reach an agreement within a year, the EU will recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 boundaries, with Jerusalem as its capital. The Palestinian team rejects both initiatives. The Israeli team accepts the U.S. proposal and rejects the EU proposal.

The second scenario predicts an outburst of violence the day after the UN vote: The Israeli army kills seven Palestinians at a demonstration at Qalandiyah, north of Jerusalem. In response young, albeit unarmed Palestinians hold another demonstration there, and block the road to the Beit El settlement. Simultaneously, Islamic Jihad launches Grad rockets from Gaza into Be’er Sheva.

The second scenario seemed a bit far-fetched at first. However, a poll Shikaki released 10 days ago casts things in a different light: It showed that 65 percent of respondents support the UN initiative. Moreover, 52 percent say they will take part in “peaceful” demonstrations and processions to Israeli checkpoints after the vote; 76 percent want the PA to be active in Area C (which is under full Israeli control ) after the state is recognized – for example, by building airports, roads and housing, and deploying security forces – even if this means a confrontation with Israel. Fully 75 percent support the deployment of Palestinian security forces at the Allenby Bridge across the Jordan River, even if this means the West Bank’s only access to the outside world will be closed for a few months. In other words, it is hard to say who will set the tone: the public or the leadership.

The third scenario has dozens of Palestinians killed and hundreds wounded by Israeli fire in West Bank demonstrations a few weeks after the UN vote. Meanwhile, rockets are being fired at Sderot and Ashkelon, the Palestinian security services are preparing to deploy in Area C and the Allenby Bridge, and the Israel Defense Forces has begun to take action against PA forces.

In this simulation the Israeli side proposes a cease-fire followed by direct negotiations on the basis of the 1967 boundaries, in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish state. The PA rejects this outright as unacceptable.

The Palestinian team’s curiosity was piqued when the “Israeli” side established a national unity government with opposition leader Tzipi Livni. Seeming somewhat enthusiastic, the Palestinians noted that this might change the picture, since Livni is trusted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his aides. However, the enthusiasm faded when it became clear that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman would remain in the government (Lieberman was played outstandingly by a Palestinian ).

The simulation was broken off prematurely due to lack of time. Still, a number of interesting conclusions can be drawn from it. First, a new intifada is not inevitable. A flare-up may occur in September or shortly afterward, but much depends on the behavior of the IDF and the police; minimizing the casualties will help contain a confrontation. While there were relatively few participants earlier this year in the Nakba Day (commemorating 1948 ) and Naksa Day (commemorating 1967 ) protests, the September events will be on a larger scale.

The second conclusion is that the Palestinian leadership, like the Israeli government, does not want a violent, all-out confrontation.

Third, public opinion on both sides, along with the Arab and Israeli media, will play a crucial role (even more than in the past ) vis-a-vis the leaders’ policy at this critical time – which may also reflect something about the character of the leaders on both sides.

The fourth conclusion is that bringing Livni into the government, even one led by Benjamin Netanyahu, could substantially change the relationship with the Palestinians.

And the final conclusion: It’s very possible that Netanyahu will decide to undertake the same measures he is avoiding at present (i.e., a renewed construction freeze in the settlements, or negotiations on the basis of the 1967 boundaries ) after blood is shed.

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Israel to deport pro-Palestinian ‘fly-in’ activists within 48 hours

Pathetic reporting from Haaretz.

Out of 120 pro-Palestinian activists attempting to enter Israel only four were willing to pledge that they would not participate in violent protests. So the remaining 116 wanted to keep open their option to use violence?

Wrong. They merely refused to submit themselves to a political litmus test now required by anyone attempting to enter the so-called democratic state of Israel.

Immigration and Population Authority officials told Haaretz on Saturday evening that all foreign pro-Palestinian ‘fly-in’ activists who were refused entry into Israel over the past few days would be deported back to their home countries within 48 hours.

At this point, there are 120 detained activists. Eighty-five are being detained at the Givon facilty in Ramle and the rest are being held at the Ela detention facility.

Four activists from Germany and Holland were released and permitted to enter Israel after they pledged not to participate in violent protest activities.

According to police, anyone “who wanted to protest in a legitimate and non-violent manner was permitted to enter” Israel.

The 120 detained activists are less than half of the more than 300 who were originally questioned by police. Police said that the detained activists were those who refused to promise not to participate in violent protests.

Some activists refused to talk to investigators and only presented their passports.

Leftist organizations said that a number of ‘fly-in’ activists succeeded in entering Israel and participated on Saturday in small demonstrations at the Qalandiya checkpoint and in East Jerusalem.

At this stage, it is not clear that the Immigration and Population Authority will be able to fulfill its intention to deport the activists within 48 hours as foreign airlines that operate in Israel have said that they would have a hard time flying large groups of activists home.

A senior official for one of the large European carriers told Haaretz on Saturday that “the airlines will have a hard time dealing all at once with large groups of pro-Palestinian activists that Israel wants to deport.”

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Murdoch’s Watergate

Carl Bernstein writes:

The hacking scandal currently shaking Rupert Murdoch’s empire will surprise only those who have willfully blinded themselves to that empire’s pernicious influence on journalism in the English-speaking world. Too many of us have winked in amusement at the salaciousness without considering the larger corruption of journalism and politics promulgated by Murdoch Culture on both sides of the Atlantic.

The facts of the case are astonishing in their scope. Thousands of private phone messages hacked, presumably by people affiliated with the Murdoch-owned News of the World newspaper, with the violated parties ranging from Prince William and actor Hugh Grant to murder victims and families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The arrest of Andy Coulson, former press chief to Prime Minister David Cameron, for his role in the scandal during his tenure as the paper’s editor. The arrest (for the second time) of Clive Goodman, the paper’s former royals editor. The shocking July 7 announcement that the paper would cease publication three days later, putting hundreds of employees out of work. Murdoch’s bid to acquire full control of cable-news company BSkyB placed in jeopardy. Allegations of bribery, wiretapping, and other forms of lawbreaking—not to mention the charge that emails were deleted by the millions in order to thwart Scotland Yard’s investigation.

All of this surrounding a man and a media empire with no serious rivals for political influence in Britain—especially, but not exclusively, among the conservative Tories who currently run the country. Almost every prime minister since the Harold Wilson era of the 1960s and ’70s has paid obeisance to Murdoch and his unmatched power. When Murdoch threw his annual London summer party for the United Kingdom’s political, journalistic, and social elite at the Orangery in Kensington Gardens on June 16, Prime Minister Cameron and his wife, Sam, were there, as were Labour leader Ed Miliband and assorted other cabinet ministers.

Murdoch associates, present and former—and his biographers—have said that one of his greatest long-term ambitions has been to replicate that political and cultural power in the United States.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, on the phone-hacking scandal

Marina Hyde writes:

Say what you like, this does finally give meaning to David Cameron’s “we’re all in this together” catchphrase. Whether the members of Britain’s necrotic establishment are wading in it, or are up to their necks in it, will be a matter for you to call. But what an irony that Murdoch tabloids, infrequently righteous in their crusades, have finally been shown what major corruption looks like. It’s not a couple of swingers daring to live an unconventional lifestyle in a Wilmslow terrace – it was in the mirror all along.

Yet the solemn announcement that the News of the World is dead (long live the Sun on Sunday!) does not indicate the Murdoch-controlled culture that has debased this septic isle for decades has been dismantled. This week, people have beheld MPs saying what they actually think about Britain’s most obscenely powerful unelected foreign tax exile, and marvelled as if they had seen unicorns. That gives you some idea of the scale of the clean-up, and unless all manner of establishment drones get brave and stay brave, revulsion over the corruption of public life by Murdoch and his soldiers will go the same way as that pertaining to bankers or MPs’ expenses.

People are right to be revolted. It is revolting. Indeed, there are so many threads that we should don rubber gloves and follow merely one of them for a flavour of the whole. So, do open your textbooks at “war”.

Rupert Murdoch was the only figure powerful enough to be able to state explicitly, without consequence, that he was backing war on Iraq to bring down the price of oil. So his “free press” all cheer-led for said war, and began commodifying their version of it, even confecting their own military award ceremonies as though the medal system were inadequate.

The whitewashing report into the death of a scientist who questioned the basis for that war was mysteriously leaked to Murdoch’s papers – another WORLD EXCLUSIVE – while others in his pay hacked the phones and emails of those casualties of war being repatriated in bodybags, to be monetised as stories all over again. Any complaint about this must be taken before an industry court presided over not by the kangaroo of Rupert’s native Australia, but an even less engaged selection of backscratching editors, including his own.

Polly Toynbee writes:

David Cameron’s press conference was nearly a masterclass in damage limitation. How firm he sounded with his three-point actions, announcing two inquiries and the demise of the “failed” Press Complaints Commission. Yes, he would have accepted Rebekah Brooks’s resignation. How shocked he was. It was “simply disgusting”. Here was a wake-up call on the “culture, practice and ethics of the press” and, for now, the crucial BSkyB deal would be delayed. He strove with every sinew to show he gets it, he really does get the public outrage at the hacked phones of a murdered child and dead soldiers. But as the questions rained down, you could see the crisis slipping from his control. This was too little, too late, not quite grasping the changed rules of the old politico-media game.

He said “frankly” once too often, a word that rings alarm bells from politicians on the ropes. “We’ve all been in this together,” he confessed. All the parties, “yes, including me”, had cosied up to Murdoch, turning a blind eye to court political support. But paddling hard to stay afloat, he could not say the Murdoch bid should be stopped. He could not apologise for hiring a man who had already resigned over phone hacking. Every time he said he gave Andy Coulson “a second chance”, that soundbite sounded weaker. What may some day do for him was his denial that he ever received private warnings, one from the Guardian, not to take Coulson into Downing Street, as further revelations were imminent. “I wasn’t given any specific information … I don’t recall being given any information.” Denials about who knew what often turn embarrassments into serious political danger.

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Pakistan hits back at US commander over journalist’s murder claim

The Guardian reports:

Pakistan has lashed out at America’s top-ranking military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, on Friday, saying that its relations with the US have been further damaged by his remarks blaming the Islamabad government for the killing, torture and murder of a Pakistani journalist.

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff shocked Islamabad by saying publicly what US officials had confirmed only in private: that the Pakistani government had “sanctioned” the killing of Syed Saleem Shahzad, the investigative reporter for Asia Times Online whose mutilated body was found on 30 May in a canal 40 miles from the capital. He had been writing about jihadist infiltration of the Pakistani military.

Pakistan’s information minister, Firdous Ashiq Awan, told a news conference Mullen had made an “extremely irresponsible and unfortunate statement”.

“This statement will create problems and difficulties for the bilateral relations between Pakistan and America. It will definitely deal a blow to our common efforts with regard to the war on terror,” she said, without going into details.

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Witness saw teen severely beaten in Syrian jail for failing to praise president

The Associated Press reports:

Inside a filthy detention center in Damascus, eight or nine interrogators repeatedly bludgeoned a skinny teenager whose hands were bound and who bore a bullet wound on the left side of his chest. They struck his head, back, feet and genitals until he was left on the floor of a cell, bleeding from his ears and crying out for his mother and father to help him.

Ibrahim Jamal al-Jahamani, a fellow prisoner who said he witnessed the brutal scene in Syria in May, heard the interrogators demand that the 15-year-old proclaim strongman Bashar Assad as his “beloved” president.

The youth, later identified as Tamer Mohammed al-Sharei, refused. Instead, he chanted an often-heard slogan from anti-regime street protests calling for “freedom and the love of God and our country.”

Tamer’s refusal apparently was the final straw for the interrogators.

“Guards broke his right wrist, beating him with clubs on his hands, which were tied behind his back,” al-Jahamani told The Associated Press after his release from detention, referring to the beatings as torture.

“They also beat him on the face, head, back, feet and genitals until he bled from the nose, mouth and ears and fell unconscious,” he recalled.

“He pleaded for mercy and yelled: ‘Mom, dad, come rescue me!’” al-Jahamani said. “He was lying like a dog on the floor in his underwear, with blood covering his body. But his interrogators had no compassion that they were savagely beating a boy,” al-Jahamani added, his voice breaking with emotion.

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Suicide: For some South Florida veterans, it’s the biggest threat

The Los Angeles Times reports:

During 27 years in the Army, Ben Mericle survived tours in Bosnia, the Gulf War and Iraq. But it was only after coming home to West Palm Beach in 2006 that he came close to dying — by his own hand.

“I just wanted to disappear,” said Mericle, 50, recalling the many times he considered mixing a fatal cocktail from his prescribed medications and the prodigious amounts of alcohol he was drinking.

“I had so much anger. I wasn’t sleeping, had nightmares when I did, flashbacks. It was survivor’s guilt.”

Some do not survive, leading Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to identify the “emergency issue” facing the American military: a rise in the number of suicides.

On Wednesday, President Obama announced he will reverse a longstanding policy and begin sending condolence letters to the families of service members who commit suicide while deployed to a combat zone.

“This decision was made after a difficult and exhaustive review of the former policy, and I did not make it lightly,” Obama said in a statement. “This issue is emotional, painful, and complicated, but these Americans served our nation bravely. They didn’t die because they were weak. And the fact that they didn’t get the help they needed must change.”

Last year, 301 active-duty Army, Reserve and National Guard soldiers committed suicide, compared with 242 in 2009, according to Army figures.

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Dangerous middle-aged Englishwoman enters Israel — security forces on high alert

Haaretz reports:

A group of 25 people suspected to be pro-Palestinian activists arrived at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Friday night, and were expected to be denied entry to Israel.

The suspected activists arrived on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt late Friday night, after their flight’s departure was delayed due to runway improvement work being conducted at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Friday evening from 19:00 to 22:00.

The activist aboard the plane were not on the list of 342 blacklisted passengers submitted by the Transportation Ministry to foreign airlines on Thursday, and as such were able to board the plane.

Earlier in the day, police called Friday’s operations at Ben-Gurion Airport “successful” as most of the activists were identified and taken for questioning during the afternoon hours.

Not including those passengers who arrived on the Lufthansa flight, a total of 310 arriving passengers were questioned by the Immigration and Population Authority. Sixty-nine of those passengers were found to be “fly-in” activists and were denied entry to Israel. The others were found to be regular tourists and were permitted entry.

At this time, four of the 69 activists have been deported to their home countries. The rest have been sent to detention facilities until they can be deported.

Ten of the activists arrived on an easyJet flight, while another 20 came on an Alitalia flight. The rest arrived on other flights.

Israel has thus far been successful in preventing the entry of 200 passengers wishing to come to Israel as part of the Welcome to Palestine campaign, which had organized a “fly-in” to the Middle East this weekend for solidarity visits in the Palestinian territories.

Israel Police estimate that the bulk of events related to the pro-Palestinian ‘fly-in’ have ended.

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James Murdoch could face criminal charges on both sides of the Atlantic

The Guardian reports:

James Murdoch and News Corp could face corporate legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic that involve criminal charges, fines and forfeiture of assets as the escalating phone-hacking scandal risks damaging his chances of taking control of Rupert Murdoch’s US-based media empire.

As deputy chief operating officer of News Corp – the US-listed company that is the ultimate owner of News International (NI), which in turn owns the News of the World, the Times, the Sunday Times and the Sun – the younger Murdoch has admitted he misled parliament over phone hacking, although he has stated he did not have the complete picture at the time. There have also been reports that employees routinely made payments to police officers, believed to total more than £100,000, in return for information.

The payments could leave News Corp – and possibly James Murdoch himself – facing the possibility of prosecution in the US under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) – legislation designed to stamp out bad corporate behaviour that carries severe penalties for anyone found guilty of breaching it – and in the UK under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 which outlaws the interception of communications.

Tony Woodcock, a partner at the City law firm Stephenson Harwood, said section 79 of the 2000 Act enabled criminal proceedings to be brought against not only a company, but also a director or similar officer where the offence was committed with their “consent or connivance” or was “attributable to any neglect on their part”. Woodcock said: “This could embrace a wide number of people at the highest level within an organisation, such as a chief executive – not just the individual who ‘pushed the button’ allowing the intercept to take place or someone (perhaps less senior) who encouraged or was otherwise an accessory to the offence, such as an editor.”

While the UK phone-hacking scandal has been met with outrage in the US, the hacking itself is unlikely to prompt Washington officials into action. But because NI is a subsidiary of the US company, any payments to UK police officers could trigger a justice department inquiry under the FCPA.

The 1977 Act generally prohibits American companies and citizens from corruptly paying – or offering to pay – foreign officials to obtain or retain business.

The Butler University law professor Mike Koehler, an FCPA expert, said: “I would be very surprised if the US authorities don’t become involved in this [NI] conduct.”

The Guardian also reports:

Police are investigating evidence that a News International executive may have deleted millions of emails from an internal archive in an apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yard’s inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal.

The archive is believed to have reached back to January 2005, revealing daily contact between News of the World editors, reporters and outsiders, including private investigators. The messages are potentially highly valuable both for the police and for the numerous public figures who are suing News International (NI).

According to legal sources close to the police inquiry, a senior executive is believed to have deleted “massive quantities” of the archive on two separate occasions, leaving only a fraction to be disclosed. One of the alleged deletions is said to have been made at the end of January, just as Scotland Yard was launching Operation Weeting, its new inquiry into the affair. The allegation directly contradicts NI claims that it is co-operating fully with police in order to expose its history of illegal newsgathering.

The alleged deletion of emails will be of particular interest to the media regulator Ofcom, which said it had asked to be “kept abreast” of developments in the Met’s hacking investigation, so it can assess whether News Corp would pass the “fit and proper” test that all owners of UK television channels have to meet.

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Shares in Rupert Murdoch’s companies tumble as investors take fright

(See Hugh Grant’s article in the New Statesman and for more background on the hacking scandal see this post.)

The Guardian reports:

Investors in companies controlled by Rupert Murdoch have been dumping the shares amid fears on both sides of the Atlantic over the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.

Shares in broadcaster BSkyB are down 5% in the last week, wiping some £666m off the value of the business, while News Corp had lost 2.6% – slicing some $400m off the value of the News of the World’s ultimate parent company. Many hedge funds which had bought into BSkyB in the hope of making a quick profit from the bid have been selling the shares on fears that the deal now faces substantial delay.

The British prime minister’s former communications director and former editor of News of the World, Andy Coulson, is now under arrest.

To get a sense of the political impact these events are having on David Cameron’s leadership, a scathing commentary in the Tory-friendly Daily Telegraph by Peter Oborne sums up the situation:

In the careers of all prime ministers there comes a turning point. He or she makes a fatal mistake from which there is no ultimate recovery. With Tony Blair it was the Iraq war and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. With John Major it was Black Wednesday and sterling’s eviction from the Exchange Rate Mechanism. With Harold Wilson, the pound’s devaluation in 1967 wrecked his reputation.

Each time the pattern is strikingly similar. Before, there is a new leader with dynamism, integrity and carrying the faith of the nation. Afterwards, the prime minister can stagger on for years, but as increasingly damaged goods: never is it glad, confident morning again.

David Cameron, who has returned from Afghanistan as a profoundly damaged figure, now faces exactly such a crisis. The series of disgusting revelations concerning his friends and associates from Rupert Murdoch’s News International has permanently and irrevocably damaged his reputation.

Until now it has been easy to argue that Mr Cameron was properly grounded with a decent set of values. Unfortunately, it is impossible to make that assertion any longer. He has made not one, but a long succession of chronic personal misjudgments.

He should never have employed Andy Coulson, the News of the World editor, as his director of communications. He should never have cultivated Rupert Murdoch. And – the worst mistake of all – he should never have allowed himself to become a close friend of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of the media giant News International, whose departure from that company in shame and disgrace can only be a matter of time.

We are talking about a pattern of behaviour here. Indeed, it might be better described as a course of action. Mr Cameron allowed himself to be drawn into a social coterie in which no respectable person, let alone a British prime minister, should be seen dead.

It was called the Chipping Norton set, an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners, located in and around the Prime Minister’s Oxfordshire constituency. Brooks and her husband, the former racing trainer Charlie Brooks, live in a house scarcely a mile from David and Samantha Cameron’s constituency home. The two couples meet frequently, and have continued to do so long after the phone hacking scandal became well known.

PR fixer Matthew Freud, married to Mr Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, is another member of this Chipping Norton set. When Mr Cameron bumped into Freud at Rebekah Brooks’s wedding two years ago, he and Mr Freud greeted each other with exuberant high-fives to signal their exclusive friendship.

The Prime Minister cannot claim in defence that he was naively drawn in to this lethal circle. He was warned – many times. Shortly before the last election he was explicitly told about the company he was keeping. Alan Rusbridger – editor of The Guardian newspaper, which has performed such a wonderful service to public decency by bringing to light the shattering depravity of Mr Murdoch’s newspaper empire – went to meet one of Mr Cameron’s closest advisers shortly before the last election. He briefed this adviser very carefully about Mr Coulson, telling him many troubling pieces of information that could not then be put into the public domain.

Mr Rusbridger then went to see Nick Clegg, now the deputy prime minister. So Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg – the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister – knew all about Mr Coulson before last May’s coalition negotiations. And yet they both paid no attention and went on to make him the Downing Street director of communications, an indiscretion that beggars belief.

So the Prime Minister is in a mess. To put the matter rather more graphically, he is in a sewer. The question is this: how does he crawl out and salvage at least some of his reputation for decency and good judgment?

Rupert Murdoch’s effort to save his own skin has been bold (even if predictably cynical). To get a sense of what shutting down News of the World means, keep in mind that its circulation of 2.7 million is more than twice the size of America’s largest circulation Sunday newspaper, the New York Times (1.3 million).

Stephen Glover writes:

Rupert Murdoch’s decision to close the 168-year-old News of the World certainly takes one’s breath away. For a moment one is tempted to marvel at the media tycoon’s decisiveness. Despite inexorably losing sales over the past couple of decades, the title is still Britain’s highest selling newspaper, and profitable. To shut such an operation seems a very big deal indeed.

But it actually isn’t – except for those who will lose their jobs. The paper’s closure after next Sunday is a piece of corporate window dressing designed to persuade us that News International is at long last taking the phone hacking scandal seriously, and that Murdoch should be allowed to proceed with the acquisition of the whole of BSkyB. We would do better to ask ourselves: what exactly has changed?

It is a fair bet that in a matter of weeks, News International will launch a paper called The Sun on Sunday, appealing to readers of the News of the World. The internet domain name for such a title was registered by persons unknown only two days ago.

What looks like an act of commercial self-sacrifice may turn out to be no more than an inconvenience to the company. News International’s decision to give all the revenues of next Sunday’s final issue to “good causes” is piece of calculated piety intended to make it appear caring.

My scepticism goes deeper. In his announcement to staff yesterday, the company’s British head, James Murdoch, spoke as though the News of the World were a separate entity from News International. He rightly said the paper had behaved abominably, and had “made statements to Parliament without it being in the full possession of the facts” – ie it lied.

But the News of the World is part of News International, and all its rampant illegal practices, and the subsequent cover-up, are ultimately the responsibility of Rupert and James Murdoch, and Rebekah Brooks, its chief executive.

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Transparency is the new objectivity

The Economist reports:

With the professionalisation of journalism in the early 20th century came a more detached style of reporting. In effect, a deal was struck between advertisers, publishers and journalists, says New York University’s Jay Rosen. Journalists agreed not to alienate anyone so that advertisers could aim their messages at everyone. That way the publishers got a broader market and the journalists got steady jobs but gave up their voices. Objectivity is “a grand bargain between all the different players”, says Mr Rosen. When radio and television emerged, America’s private broadcasters embraced impartiality in their news reporting to maximise their appeal to audiences and advertisers and avoid trouble with regulators.

These days different countries have different preferences. In Europe overt partisanship in newspapers is widespread and state-run television channels often have partisan allegiances: Italy’s three state channels are each aligned with specific parties, for example. The political independence of the BBC in Britain is unusual, and is in any case contested by critics who complain that it is too left-leaning. In India 81 of the 500 satellite-TV channels that have sprung up in the past 20 years are news channels, most of them catering to specific political, religious, regional, linguistic or ethnic groups. Only a few take an objective, pan-Indian approach, says Daya Thussu of the University of Westminster.

If impartiality is already the exception rather than the rule, the internet is now eroding it further. In America it undermines local news monopolies by reducing advertising revenue and providing access to a wide range of alternative sources, thus undoing Mr Rosen’s grand bargain. In Britain and other countries where news broadcasters are required to be impartial, at least in theory, the convergence of television and the web makes such rules seem outdated. Mark Thompson, the director-general of the BBC, said at a seminar last December that he thought the case for polemical, opinionated news channels was “persuasive”, though the BBC’s own news coverage would remain impartial. The internet has also compressed the news cycle, with headlines delivered instantly by smartphone or Twitter, creating a demand for immediate analysis and opinion.

Moreover, the internet makes it easier than ever to find and synthesise different views, says Krishna Bharat, the creator of Google News. The idea for the site occurred to him in the months after the attacks of September 11th 2001, when he became frustrated by the inefficiency of visiting lots of different websites to get a broader picture of the news. When news comes from multiple sources, a mix of strong opinions becomes more desirable. “It’s time to embrace the fact that certain news sources have a point of view, and that’s why they have the following they do,” says Mr Bharat. “I think there’s a place for all of them.” By undermining many of the traditional arguments for objectivity, the internet may thus cause a wider “Foxification” of news and a return to the more opinionated and partisan media landscape of the 18th and early 19th centuries. “Almost every country that has an open society is going to have some kind of opinion television programming,” says Mr Shine.

This does not mean that all news organisations should take overtly political positions. Mr Rosen is just one of many media watchers who think it is time to release journalists from the straitjacket of pretending that they do not have opinions—what he calls the “view from nowhere”. Journalists signal their impartiality by quoting people on opposing sides of an argument and avoid drawing conclusions, even when the facts are clear. “There have been times in the past when CNN has been criticised for being neutral—not only non-partisan, but not really having positions,” says Mr Whitaker. But lately, he says, “we have been stronger in taking a point of view when we think it is supported by our reporting and by facts.”

One way forward, suggests Mr Rosen, is to abandon the ideology of viewlessness and accept that journalists have a range of views; to be open about them while holding the reporters to a basic standard of accuracy, fairness and intellectual honesty; and to use transparency, rather than objectivity, as the new foundation on which to build trust with the audience. He cites the memorable phrase coined by David Weinberger, a technology commentator, that “transparency is the new objectivity”. In part, this involves journalists providing information about themselves. For example, on AllThingsD, a technology-news site owned by Dow Jones, all the journalists provide an “ethics statement” with information about their shareholdings, financial relationships and, in some cases, their personal life (two journalists are married to employees at large technology companies). “People are more likely to trust you if they know where you are coming from,” says Mr Rosen.

Transparency also means linking to sources and data, something the web makes easy. Bloggers have long used the technique to back up their views. Ezra Klein, a blogger at the Washington Post, has suggested that news organisations should publish full transcripts of interviews online. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, a fan of radical transparency if ever there was one, makes a similar argument. “You can’t publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results. That should be the standard in journalism,” he said last year. Mr Weinberger has observed on his blog that transparency prospers in a linked medium: “Objectivity is a trust mechanism you rely on when your medium can’t do links. Now our medium can.”

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The internet’s private enterprise

Carne Ross writes:

On the internet, as elsewhere, information is money, and information is power. So why have we given it away so lightly?

Something extraordinary has taken place over the last few years. Voluntarily, and without coercion or, indeed, payment, internet users have handed over vast amounts of highly personal data – their preferences, where they live, who their friends are and what they do – to private companies, whose primary goal is to profit from that data. And every day, we hand over more, willingly.

On Facebook, we think we are sharing only with our friends the information – the news, the messages, the photos – that we place on “our” pages. But thanks to Facebook’s confusing privacy settings, users are propelled to default and “recommended” settings that make public almost everything – and in so doing, also permit Facebook to make use of your information. Yet more obscure are the complicated and multi-caveated user and privacy agreements most never bother to read. It is only here that Facebook admits that the content (your “intellectual property”) belongs to the company. They own it; once it’s on the site, you don’t.

Google’s professed aim, apart from its famous motto to “do no evil”, is to organise and share all the world’s information. Less loudly avowed is its parallel objective: to make large amounts of money from that venture. This is not a cynical view: profit is – and must be – the goal of all share-held enterprises. If Google did not promise good returns to its shareholders, its share price would collapse and it would cease to exist. (Facebook has not yet been floated on the stock market; it is widely assumed that it soon will be, for perhaps $50bn.)

Both Google and Facebook offer their services to users apparently for free. But the services are not of course free. Both companies sell the information that users provide – in search data, or personal profiles. Apparently, these companies mostly sell their (your) information to advertisers who mine the data in order to target consumers more effectively. But, despite fervent declarations about transparency, in fact, it’s very hard to find out exactly to whom they sell the data or what the “data miners” do with it. McDonald’s or the CIA? We’re not told, even though it is information about us that they are trading.

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Pakistani generals ‘helped sell nuclear secrets’

The Guardian reports:

The story of the world’s worst case of nuclear smuggling took a new twist on Thursday when documents surfaced appearing to implicate two former Pakistani generals in the sale of uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in return for millions of dollars in cash and jewels handed over in a canvas bag and cardboard boxes of fruit.

The source of the documents is AQ Khan, who confessed in 2004 to selling parts and instructions for the use of high-speed centrifuges in enriching uranium to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Extracts were published by the Washington Post, including a letter in English purportedly from a senior North Korean official to Khan in 1998 detailing payment of $3m to Pakistan’s former army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, and another half-million to Lieutenant General Zulfiqar Khan, who was involved in Pakistan’s nuclear bomb tests.

Both generals denied the allegations. “What can I say. [These are] bits of old info packaged together. [There is] not an iota of truth in the allegations against me. [There is] no reason on earth for anyone to pay me for something I could not deliver,” Karamat wrote in an email to the Guardian. Lt Gen Khan told the Washington Post that the documents were “a fabrication”.

The issue is seen as critically important by western governments. Seven years after Khan, the godfather of the Pakistani nuclear programme, made his public confession on Pakistani television, there is still uncertainty over the extent to which he was a rogue operator or just a salesman acting on behalf of the Pakistani state and its army. Western officials are also unsure whether the covert nuclear sales are continuing.

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