Transcending an imaginary divide
By Olivier Roy and Justin Vaisse, IHT, December 22, 2008

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would convene a conference of Muslim leaders from around the world within his first year in office.

Recently aides have said he may give a speech from a Muslim capital in his first 100 days. His hope, he has said, is to “make clear that we are not at war with Islam,” to describe to Muslims “what our values and our interests are” and to “insist that they need to help us to defeat the terrorist threats that are there.” This idea of trying to reconcile Islam and the West is well-intentioned, of course. But the premise is wrong.

Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative.

Instead, Obama, the first “post-racial” president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the U.S. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like. [continued…]

Arabs are looking for deeds, not words
By Rami G Khouri, Daily Star, December 24, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama faces major challenges and opportunities in his foreign policy, and he is getting plenty of unsolicited advice. Here’s my contribution on an issue that he – in an interview with The Chicago Tribune earlier this month – defined as a priority for his administration: improving the US image in the Muslim world.

Obama plans a major speech in an Islamic capital to emphasize that the United States is not waging war against Islam or Muslims. This is a simplistic approach that he should drop quickly, because it reflects the failed strategy of President George W. Bush that treated Muslims as simpletons who could be swayed by nice words, rather than as adults who react to how people and countries actually behave. [continued…]

Afghan and U.S. officials plan to recruit local militias
By Dexter Filkins, New York Times, December 24, 2008

Taking a page from the successful experiment in Iraq, American commanders and Afghan leaders are preparing to arm local militias to help in the fight against a resurgent Taliban. But along with hope, the move is raising fears here that the new armed groups could push the country into a deeper bloodletting.

The militias will be deployed to help American and Afghan security forces, which are stretched far and wide across this mountainous country. The first of the local defense forces are scheduled to begin operating early next year in Wardak Province, an area just outside the capital where the Taliban have overrun most government authority. [continued…]

Ending chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan
By Barnett R. Rubin and Ahmed Rashid, Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2008

U.S. diplomacy has been paralyzed by the rhetoric of “the war on terror” — a struggle against “evil,” in which other actors are “with us or with the terrorists.” Such rhetoric thwarts sound strategic thinking by assimilating opponents into a homogenous “terrorist” enemy. Only a political and diplomatic initiative that distinguishes political opponents of the United States — including violent ones — from global terrorists such as al Qaeda can reduce the threat faced by the Afghan and Pakistani states and secure the rest of the international community from the international terrorist groups based there. Such an initiative would have two elements. It would seek a political solution with as much of the Afghan and Pakistani insurgencies as possible, offering political inclusion, the integration of Pakistan’s indirectly ruled Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into the mainstream political and administrative institutions of Pakistan, and an end to hostile action by international troops in return for cooperation against al Qaeda. And it would include a major diplomatic and development initiative addressing the vast array of regional and global issues that have become intertwined with the crisis — and that serve to stimulate, intensify, and prolong conflict in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Afghanistan has been at war for three decades — a period longer than the one that started with World War I and ended with the Normandy landings on D-day in World War II — and now that war is spreading to Pakistan and beyond. This war and the attendant terrorism could well continue and spread, even to other continents — as on 9/11 — or lead to the collapse of a nuclear-armed state. The regional crisis is of that magnitude, and yet so far there is no international framework to address it other than the underresourced and poorly coordinated operations in Afghanistan and some attacks in the FATA. The next U.S. administration should launch an effort, initially based on a contact group authorized by the UN Security Council, to put an end to the increasingly destructive dynamics of the Great Game in the region. The game has become too deadly and has attracted too many players; it now resembles less a chess match than the Afghan game of buzkashi, with Afghanistan playing the role of the goat carcass fought over by innumerable teams. Washington must seize the opportunity now to replace this Great Game with a new grand bargain for the region. [continued…]

The Mideast’s ‘two-state solution’ is now a three-way stalemate
By Tony Karon, Time, December 24, 2008

President Bush had hoped to leave office with Israelis and Palestinians having agreed on a two-state peace solution. Instead, he’ll leave behind a situation more akin to a three-state standoff primed to explode in a new bout of violence. And the embattled Palestinian leader upon whom the Bush administration has been depending in its peace efforts looks likely to see his role diminish even further.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who made a valedictory visit to the White House on Friday, has seen his political authority steadily enfeebled since Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections almost three years ago, and then seized military control over Gaza 18 months later. Today, it is with Hamas that Israel has to deal — via Egyptian intermediaries — when it seeks to stop Palestinian rocket fire onto its territory. Abbas may enjoy the good offices of a lame-duck U.S. President, but he has been reduced once again to a powerless spectator as Israel and Hamas tussle over whether the tahdiyah truce, declared dead after six months by the militant group last week, will be revived.

And there may be worse to come for Abbas. Although Hamas has continued to recognize Abbas as the legitimate President of the Palestinian Authority, that may be about to change. Abbas’ presidential term expires on January 9. Although his own Fatah party makes a case that the term could legitimately be extended by another year, Hamas is having none of it. In the second week of 2009, it will no longer recognize Abbas as President, thereby formalizing the political divorce between the two Palestinian entities. Abbas has long since withdrawn recognition of the duly-elected Hamas government in the West Bank, which is controlled by his security forces in concert with the Israelis; now Hamas will formalize its de facto denial of Abbas’ authority in Gaza. [continued…]

Obama Mideast watch: Ross vs. Kurtzer
By Scott McLeod, Time, December 23, 2008

Middle East watchers are trying to follow a behind the scenes contest for Barack Obama’s ear when it comes to the region. The winner could become the incoming administration’s single most influential advisor on the area–perhaps Obama’s Middle East czar. Obama has properly emphasized that as president he will set the policy, and his subordinates will be tasked with implementing it. Yet his choice of Middle East guru– a special envoy, or whatever the title may be– will be an important signal of his inclinations. And given the complexities of the Middle East, and the complex intersection of those complexities with American politics nowadays, it’s hard to exaggerate the influence such a position could have as the question of war and peace hangs in the balance in Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran.

Judging from press reports such as here, here and here, the contest includes among others two Obama campaign advisors with very different perspectives: Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton’s Arab-Israeli negotiator, and Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel. Ross and Kurtzer are both Jewish; during the campaign, they sought to rally American Jewish voters wary of indications that Obama was lukewarm toward Israel. Each has influential supporters in the Beltway’s foreign policy establishment.

My take is that Ross would be a significant disappointment, Kurtzer an excellent choice. The contest, in fact, is more a tussle between two approaches to Middle East policy making than between individuals. [continued…]

Obama’s best pick?
By David Macaray, Counterpunch, December 23, 2008

On Friday, December 19, President-Elect Obama made his fifteenth and final appointment to the cabinet. In a move that was cheered by the AFL-CIO and greeted, predictably, with groans and whining from the business community, he chose Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA) to be his Secretary of Labor.

While Obama has taken considerable flak from leftist intellectuals and the progressive wing of the Democratic party for many of his earlier cabinet choices—being accused of everything from “selling out” to Establishment interests to being inordinately “cautious” (after hammering us with his Time for Change campaign theme)—his choice for Labor Secretary has to be seen as a bold and decisive move.

Of course, it’s impossible to say in advance how any political appointee will perform in office. But based on what we know of Ms. Solis’ personal background and what can be ascertained from her voting record and history of social activism, she could very well turn out to be exactly what the doctored ordered—providing the doctor ordered a dramatic shift in how America views its “working class.”

Solis is not only the daughter of poor Latin American immigrants, she could very well be the first Labor Secretary in history who has firsthand knowledge of what it actually means to “work” for a living. Her father, a Mexican, was a shop steward with the IBT (International Brotherhood of Teamsters), in Mexico, and her mother, a Nicaraguan, was a former assembly line worker. [continued…]

What we will remember from 2008
By Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, December 22, 2008

Will the election of Mr Obama as US president or the collapse of Lehman Brothers prove to be the more significant event? That depends partly on whether you believe history is shaped more by the actions of remarkable individuals or by “vast, impersonal forces”. The global financial crisis has left me in a fatalistic mood – so I am opting for the vast, impersonal forces.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15 was the signature moment of the credit crunch. It has already triggered events that seemed unthinkable 12 months ago – massive state-funded bail-outs of some of the world’s leading financial institutions, the disappearance of investment banks, renowned companies such as General Motors on the edge of bankruptcy, interest rates slashed to close to zero. As one gloomy Parisian banker put it to me recently: “This is not just another boom-and-bust cycle. This is the failure of a system. It is the collapse of the Berlin Wall.” A trifle melodramatic perhaps – but the financial crisis is already threatening the economic and political stability of governments all over the world. [continued…]

Light at the end of a dark tunnel
Nouriel Roubini interviewed by the Financial Times, December 22, 2008

FT: Is there a risk that the capitalist system doesn’t recover from this shock?

NR: We’re going to avoid the Great Depression and a severe recession even if there is a risk of protracted slow economic growth. So I don’t think this is the end of capitalism, of market economies, but it suggests that really there are significant market failures, that markets don’t self-regulate each other.

FT: Are you advising the future Obama administration?

NR: I’m not directly advising the administration. I’m of course in touch with a number of members in the economic team.

FT: What could be the next shoe to drop?

NR: There are many of them. I think the process of deleveraging is going to continue. You could have a thousand if not more hedge funds going bust all at the same time.

Another source of stress is emerging market economies. There are about a dozen of them that are on the verge of a potential financial crisis: Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine in emerging Europe…Pakistan, Indonesia or Korea in Asia. Places like Ecuador that just defaulted. Argentina and Venezuela in Latin America. Some of these countries could get in trouble and there could be contagious effects to other financial markets in other emerging markets. [continued…]

(See the video of this interview.)

How Bush can transcend the shoe thrower
By Mark Bowden, Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2008

As a holiday gesture, President Bush ought to ask the Iraqi government to pardon Muntazer al-Zaidi — the Iraqi journalist who tried to hit him with his shoes.
[Commentary] AP

Sometimes a small outrage affords an opportunity for a grand gesture. The president was not harmed by the stunt. He had the grace to joke immediately afterwards that the missiles were a “size 10.” Video of the shoe-throwing, which went viral on the Internet and has been seen now by just about everyone on the planet, has mostly elicited laughter.

But already the consequences have been no joke for Mr. Zaidi. By most accounts, he has been roughly treated in prison, where he was taken after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s guards were seen beating him after he threw the second shoe. He now faces as many as 15 years in prison, one for every one of his 15 minutes of fame. [continued…]

Conflicting reports on Iran-Russia missile deal
By Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, Los Angeles Times, December 23, 2008

Iran has left little doubt that it wants to buy a sophisticated antiaircraft weapons system from Russia. The confusion in recent days has been over the question: Has Moscow said yes?

Under pressure from Israel, which views Iran as one of its major threats in the Middle East, Russian officials have promised not to sell S-300 mobile long-range defensive weapons to Tehran. But a flurry of recent conflicting reports has muddled the matter.

On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman was cagey. Hassan Qashqavi told reporters that he had not “received any report” regarding the missiles from “relevant” officials.

“You know we have cultural, economic and political as well as defensive cooperation with Russia,” he said. “I cannot confirm or deny the news. You all know that we have several agreements with Russia. Some of the agreements have been implemented, some not.” [continued…]

No war and no peace
By Paul Woodward, The National, December 24, 2008

While a frenzy of war talk has animated the media on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, Washington has assured Islamabad that its satellite surveillance of the region reveals no evidence that India is preparing for war. But if physical preparations are absent, the rhetorical signs are more ambiguous.

An editorial in Pakistan’s The News International said: “Continued rumblings from the Indian side of the border keep tensions high. Sonia Gandhi, the chief of the Congress Party, has been the latest to warn Pakistan that her country is capable of delivering a ‘befitting reply’ to those who harbour terrorists. She has stressed India’s love for peace is not a weakness. The tone from Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee also remains threatening, demanding action even as Pakistan maintains that it lacks evidence on the basis of which it can take any.

“The tensions have been elevated to their highest level in six years. But the war hype is also being taken forward by hawks in both countries. The media has played its part. Evening papers, even though few people any longer believe their hysterical headlines, warn of Indian invasion. On the Indian side, many of the television channels and publications have been no less high-pitched; indeed in many cases they have gone further than their Pakistani counterparts. In cyber space chat rooms, Indians and Pakistanis banter and bully each other, comparing military readiness. Some of these exchanges are mock-serious; others seem to be in earnest. Tales of patriotic feats by citizens are told in many places, as if a mental preparation for war is taking place. Hawkish elements everywhere seem to be revelling in the current climate.” [continued…]

Cheney’s admissions to the CIA leak prosecutor and FBI
By Murray Waas, December 23, 2008

Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

Cheney denied to the investigators, however, that he had done anything on purpose that would lead to the outing of Plame as a covert CIA operative. But the investigators came away from their interview with Cheney believing that he had not given them a plausible explanation as to how he could focus attention on Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s trip without her CIA status also possibly publicly exposed. At the time, Plame was a covert CIA officer involved in preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and Cheney’s office played a central role in exposing her and nullifying much of her work. [continued…]

Taliban taunts US over 30,000 extra troops
By Ben Farmer, The Telegraph, December 21, 2008

Plans to double the number of US troops in Afghanistan will see them suffer the same defeat as the Soviet army, the Taliban claims.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Washington could send up to 30,000 more troops over the next six months. The senior US commander in the country, General David McKiernan, had previously asked for more than 20,000 soldiers to counter the increasingly violent Taliban insurgency.

But Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman claiming to represent the fugitive leader Mullah Omar, said: “Russians also sent that many troops but were badly defeated.

“When the US increases its troop levels to that of the Russians, they will also be cruelly defeated.”

He added: “More troops – that means there will be more targets for the Taliban.” [continued…]

It’s Hamas who decides
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, December 22, 2008

What suspense, what panic ensued at the end of the week. Will Hamas extend the cease-fire or won’t it? How exactly should Khaled Meshal’s “no” be interpreted, along with Mahmoud Zahar’s “maybe” and Ismail Haniyeh’s vague mutterings? In the communities of the western Negev, quotes from Al Jazeera have become more important than what Tzipi Livni or Ehud Barak have to say.

It is not the state that will determine what happens, it is the organization. And the organization decided – no more cease-fire. Ostensibly, a clear and agreed-on modus operandi has been created between Israel and Hamas. Hamas shoots – Israel closes the crossings; Hamas is quiet – Israel opens the crossings. Both sides know that military options are limited. Hamas will not bring Israel down with a few dozen Qassam rockets and Israel recognizes that at least at this stage it cannot propose more than a limited return of fire and continued sanctions.

But Hamas has a major advantage in this violent dialogue. The initiative of whether to extend the cease-fire or shoot has passed to them. Israel has been left in the position of reacting, and Hamas has scored some successes. [continued…]

Hamas: Israel can invade, by all means
Jerusalem Post, December 21, 2008

Despite increasing calls among Israeli ministers of a need to launch a military operation to tackle the escalating threat of rocket attacks on the southern border, Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip seemed unperturbed, with one senior member even daring Israel to take the action.

“For three years we’ve been hearing comments about an Israeli invasion into the Gaza Strip. Israel is like a teenager who begins to smoke, chokes, then stops,” Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, said during an interview with a Nazareth radio station. “If they want to [invade] – by all means.

“Even in the days of the ceasefire, Israel didn’t allow vital supplies into the Gaza Strip, and this is a callous violation,” he continued. “Israel promised to open the crossing but that never happened on the ground.” [continued…]

Will Obama press Israel to allow nuclear inspection of Dimona reactor?
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz, December 20, 2008

One Israeli official who should be busy during the presidential reign of Barack Obama is Shaul Horev, director general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission. The new president and his choice for secretary of state, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, intend to revive international arms-control efforts, which have been on hold during the eight years of President George W. Bush’s administration. Such initiatives inevitably arouse suspicion and testiness among Israeli officials, who are anxious about the erosion of their country’s deterrent capability.

In their campaigns, Obama and Clinton promised that arms control would once again play a central role in American diplomacy. Their associates and supporters, some of whom are candidates for positions in the new administration, have repeated this message relentlessly to Israeli colleagues and acquaintances.

Last Sunday, Jim Hoagland, who writes a column on foreign affairs in The Washington Post, wrote that Obama should learn from president John F. Kennedy and call for worldwide nuclear disarmament. Hoagland’s columns generally express the consensus of the U.S. foreign affairs establishment. Kennedy was the last American president to have tried to stop the Israeli nuclear project. He threatened that there would be serious ramifications vis-a-vis U.S. support for Israel if the reactor in Dimona was not opened to frequent visits by inspectors. The pressure that Kennedy applied on the matter of Dimona was apparently one of the factors in David Ben-Gurion’s resignation in 1963. Kennedy’s assassination several months later led to a relaxation of that pressure and Israel was able to complete construction of the reactor in the Negev. [continued…]

Can Obama restore the US image in the Middle East?
By Steven Kull, Harvard International Review, December, 2008

… if “not being Bush” is not enough to turn around US relations with the Middle East, what will it take? A further analysis of polls, as well as focus groups I have conducted in five Middle Eastern countries, suggest that there are numerous questions about US policy in the Middle East that people there will be looking to the Obama administration to answer. The three most central ones are: (1) will the United States continue to have a dominating military presence in the region? (2) will the United States play an even-handed role in the Israel-Palestinian conflict? (3) will the United States support democratization in the region? [continued…]

Despite the optimism, Iraq is close to the edge
By Toby Dodge, The Observer, December 21, 2008

George W Bush, barely a month away from leaving office, flew to Baghdad last weekend for an eight-hour visit. On Wednesday, it was Gordon Brown’s turn. The arrival of president and prime minister in the Iraqi capital is part of a concerted effort to draw a line under the debacle that Iraq has become for the American and British governments. After nearly six years of occupation, Bush was keen to stress the progress he claimed had been made.

“The Iraq we’re standing in today is dramatically freer, dramatically safer and dramatically better,” he told American troops. Brown was a little more circumspect, simply declaring: “We leave Iraq a better place.” The startling actions of Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi in throwing his shoes at Bush indicates that all is not as positive as Bush would have the world believe. There is a grave danger that by overstating the good news from Iraq, both Bush and Brown are making a return to civil war more likely. [continued…]

Iraq threatens to expel Iranian rebels
By Ernesto Londono, Washington Post, December 22, 2008

Iraqi officials say they intend to expel members of an Iranian exile group living in a camp north of Baghdad that is protected by the U.S. military. The expulsion, which the Shiite-led government has long sought, is expected to become feasible once the U.N. mandate that regulates the presence of U.S. troops — and which gave the Iranian opposition group protected status — expires at the end of the year. [continued…]

Al Shabaab on the rise as Ethiopia withdraws from Somalia
By Paul Woodward, The National, December 22, 2008

Two years after invading Somalia, ousting the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) government in Mogadishu and subsequently propping up the increasingly weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Ethiopia has reiterated its commitment to withdraw its forces in the next few days.

“This week, Ethiopian troops have begun to make preparations for their withdrawal. This has not, however, prevented continuing clashes with al Shabaab forces,” an Ethiopian foreign ministry statement said, referring to an ICU splinter group that has now taken control of much of the country, AFP reported. [continued…]

Forest plan in Brazil bears the traces of an activist’s vision
By Alexei Barrionuevo, New York Times, December 22, 2008

Twenty years ago, a Brazilian environmental activist and rubber tapper was shot to death at his home in Acre State by ranchers opposed to his efforts to save the Amazon rain forest.

After his death at age 44, Francisco Alves Mendes, better known as Chico, became a martyr for a concept that is only now gaining mainstream support here: that the value of a standing forest could be more than the value of a forest burned and logged in the name of development.

This month, Brazil took what environmentalists hope will be a big step forward in realizing Mr. Mendes’s vision. The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva introduced ambitious targets for reducing deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions in a nation that is one of the world’s top emitters of this heat-trapping gas. [continued…]

What motivates the torture enablers?
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December, 2008

It is instructive to watch Major Matthew Alexander and Federalist Society kingpin David Rivkin discuss the torture issue on the Riz Khan Show:

We’ve seen this scenario played out several times in the last week, as broadcasters and newspapers around the country see the Levin-McCain Report as an opportunity to debate torture, despite the logical fallacy of this approach. (Perhaps for Christmas proper we’ll be treated to arguments for and against genocide, and on the fourth day of Christmas we’ll read the arguments for and against the practice of infanticide.) We’ve been treated to Christopher Hitchens against Michael Smerconish, Duncan Hunter against Jim Moran, and now the Alexander versus Rivkin encounter.[continued…]

The homicides you didn’t hear about in Hurricane Katrina
By Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch, December 21, 2008

What do you do when you notice that there seems to have been a killing spree? While the national and international media were working themselves and much of the public into a frenzy about imaginary hordes of murderers, rapists, snipers, marauders, and general rampagers among the stranded crowds of mostly poor, mostly black people in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a group of white men went on a shooting spree across the river.

Their criminal acts were no secret but they never became part of the official story. The media demonized the city’s black population for crimes that turned out not to have happened, and the retractions were, as always, too little too late. At one point FEMA sent a refrigerated 18-wheeler to pick up what a colonel in the National Guard expected to be 200 bodies in New Orleans’s Superdome, only to find six, including four who died naturally and a suicide. Meanwhile, the media never paid attention to the real rampage that took place openly across the river, even though there were corpses lying in unflooded streets and testimony everywhere you looked — or I looked, anyway.

The widely reported violent crimes in the Superdome turned out to be little more than hysterical rumor, but they painted African-Americans as out-of-control savages at a critical moment. The result was to shift institutional responses from disaster relief to law enforcement, a decision that resulted in further deaths among the thirsty, hot, stranded multitude. Governor Kathleen Blanco announced, “I have one message for these hoodlums: These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will.” So would the white vigilantes, and though their exact body count remains unknown, at least 11 black men were apparently shot, some fatally. [continued…]

Katrina’s hidden race war
By AC Thompson, The Nation, December 17, 2008

The way Donnell Herrington tells it, there was no warning. One second he was trudging through the heat. The next he was lying prostrate on the pavement, his life spilling out of a hole in his throat, his body racked with pain, his vision blurred and distorted.

It was September 1, 2005, some three days after Hurricane Katrina crashed into New Orleans, and somebody had just blasted Herrington, who is African-American, with a shotgun. “I just hit the ground. I didn’t even know what happened,” recalls Herrington, a burly 32-year-old with a soft drawl.

The sudden eruption of gunfire horrified Herrington’s companions–his cousin Marcel Alexander, then 17, and friend Chris Collins, then 18, who are also black. “I looked at Donnell and he had this big old hole in his neck,” Alexander recalls. “I tried to help him up, and they started shooting again.” Herrington says he was staggering to his feet when a second shotgun blast struck him from behind; the spray of lead pellets also caught Collins and Alexander. The buckshot peppered Alexander’s back, arm and buttocks. [continued…]

Ambush raises unsettling questions in Afghanistan
By Kirk Semple, New York Times, December 21, 2008

It was one of the most humiliating attacks the Afghan security forces had ever suffered. On Nov. 27, Taliban insurgents ambushed a supply convoy in the northwest province of Badghis, killing nine Afghan soldiers and five police officers, wounding 27 men, capturing 20 others, destroying at least 19 vehicles and stealing five, Afghan officials said.

The Afghan authorities quickly learned that the man suspected of having orchestrated the attack, Maulavi Ghulam Dastagir, had only weeks before been in police custody on charges of aiding the Taliban.

Mr. Dastagir had been personally released by President Hamid Karzai after assurances from a delegation of tribal elders that he would live a peaceful life, officials said this month.

The ambush, and the presidential pardon that allowed the insurgent to go free, have become the subject of a governmental inquest and the source of profound embarrassment for the Afghan government.

The case has also underscored the vulnerabilities of the Afghan security forces as the Taliban have multiplied their presence around the country and, in only the past few years, have gained strength in regions that were once relatively peaceful, like the northwest. [continued…]

US opens fire on Brown’s ‘war fatigue’
By Sarah Baxter and Nicola Smith, The Sunday Times, December 21, 2008

As the United States prepares for a troop surge in Afghanistan in the new year, Robert Gates, the defence secretary, and senior commanders are concerned that the British government lacks the “political will” for the fight.

General John Craddock, the Nato commander, said last week that Britain must put more troops into Helmand province to defeat the Taliban insurgency.

In an interview with The Sunday Times at Nato’s supreme headquarters in Mons, Belgium, he said Gordon Brown’s announcement last Monday that more troops would bolster Britain’s 8,100-strong force in Afghanistan by March was not enough. Although planning is under way to send up to 3,000 extra troops to Afghanistan next summer if required, Brown committed only 300 in his Commons statement.

“I don’t think 300 more, if you are talking about Helmand province, will do the trick. We’ve got to hold down there until we’ve got some Afghan street forces who can take over,” Craddock said. [continued…]

‘Baghdad Clogger’ suffered brutal beating after arrest
By Afif Sarhan, The Observer, December 21, 2008

The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President George Bush was viciously beaten after being taken into custody, according to a police officer who accompanied him to prison.

Wrestled to the ground and then buried under a frantic mound of security officers, Muntazer al-Zaidi was last seen being dragged into detention. Controversy has since raged over what treatment was meted out to the man hailed a hero in many parts of the Arab and Muslim world for his protest against the invasion of Iraq. Yesterday there were further demonstrations in the Middle East calling for his immediate release.

Witnesses to his arrest and imprisonment have told the Observer Zaidi was badly beaten, during and after his arrest last Sunday, and that he risks losing the sight in one of his eyes as a result. [continued…]

Bush attacker ‘incensed by bullet-riddled Koran’
By Marie Colvin and Ali Rifat, The Sunday Times, December 21, 2008

The young Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President George W Bush had been incensed by a story he covered about an American soldier who used a copy of the Koran for target practice, according to his family.

Muntathar al-Zaydi, 28, who became an overnight hero in the Arab world, worked as a reporter for the popular al-Baghdadiya satellite TV station.

In May he was sent to report on an incident in Radwaniyah, west of Baghdad, in which Islam’s holy book was found riddled with bullets from an American sniper.

“He talked incessantly about the subject,” recalled his elder brother Uday. It was one of a number of assignments that appear to have radicalised Zaydi during his brief journalistic career. [continued…]

Somalia crisis talks in Ethiopia
BBC News, December 21, 2008

Ethiopia is hosting a series of talks on the deepening crisis in its neighbour, Somalia.

Foreign ministers from east Africa are meeting in the capital, Addis Ababa, to be followed by talks by the African Union’s peace and security council.

The emergency meetings come after Ethiopia decided to withdraw its troops from Somalia by the end of December. [continued…]

White House philosophy stoked mortgage bonfire
By Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Stephen Labaton, New York Times, December 21, 2008

Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, “faced with the prospect of a global meltdown” with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.

There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.

But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone.

He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent — and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards. [continued…]

An outreach to Muslims
By Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Washington Post, December 20, 2008

Since democracy, a deeply held value of Americans, has become an aspiration for most Muslims, democracy should be central to Obama’s message — and to his choice of where to deliver it. Two key Muslim-majority countries are many years into a steady democratic transition. The first is Indonesia, which with more than 200 million people is the most populous of all Muslim lands. An additional attraction is that Obama spent much of his childhood there. A visit would be a homecoming of sorts.

The second country is Turkey. With more than 70 million people in territory lying in Asia and Europe, it is literally and metaphorically a bridge between East and West, North and South.

The political and sociocultural choices that Indonesia and Turkey have made are in clear accord with the essence of modernity. By their example, Indonesia and Turkey have laid to rest both Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” proposition and the idea that Islam and democracy are incompatible.

While the rest of the Muslim world has a long way to go toward democracy, Indonesia and Turkey should be celebrated as role models. Nothing would speak louder and clearer to that notion than an early visit by the universally popular Barack Obama. [continued…]

Ethnic divide in Iraqi city a test for nation
By Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, December 20, 2008

Darawan Salahadin, dressed in a black shirt and blue jeans, strolled out of his home in the Kurdish part of his ethnically fragmented neighborhood, passing concrete barriers and a checkpoint guarded by a Kurdish fighter. He entered the Arab section and walked swiftly to his tan, flat-roofed school.

In the classrooms were only Kurdish students. The Arabs would arrive as Kurds left, and then the Turkmen students would get their turn. The school has three names, one in each community’s language, and three sets of teachers and principals.

“I have no Arab and Turkmen friends. I have only Kurdish friends,” said Salahadin, a slim 17-year-old with thick, gelled black hair. “I can’t speak Arabic or Turkmen. So I don’t know them.”

The school’s divisions illustrate the tensions rippling through this neighborhood and all of Kirkuk, ground zero of Iraq’s most vexing conflict over land, oil and identity. The battle over who will rule Kirkuk is a significant test of whether the Iraqi government can solve the country’s internal disputes as the U.S. military draws down.

In contrast to security improvements elsewhere in the country, Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen residents of Kirkuk remain targets of political violence as their leaders vie for control of what they see as their ancestral lands. Last week, at least 57 people died in a suicide bombing on the outskirts of the city, the deadliest assault in Iraq in six months. [continued…]

Iraqi shoe-hurling journalist said to ask for pardon
By Timothy Williams and Atheer Kakan, New York Times, December 20, 2008

The Iraqi television journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush during a news conference this week has apologized to the Iraqi government in a letter to the prime minister and asked for a pardon, an Iraqi government official said Thursday.

The government did not release the letter, and a lawyer for the reporter said that during a conversation with him on Wednesday the reporter did not tell her about it. But the lawyer, Ahlam Allami, also said the reporter, Muntader al-Zaidi, had told her he had never meant to insult the Iraqi government or Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki when he hurled his shoes at the president during a news conference with the two leaders on Sunday. [continued…]

24 officers to be freed, Iraqi says
By Campbell Robertson and Tareq Maher, New York Times, December 20, 2008

Iraq’s interior minister said all 24 of his officers who had been arrested in a security crackdown this week would be released. And in a bold gesture of defiance, he publicly condemned his own government’s investigation, calling the accusations false and motivated purely by politics.

The minister, Jawad al-Bolani, in a series of interviews and at a news conference on Friday, insisted on the innocence of the officials detained on charges of aiding terrorism and having inappropriate ties with political parties, including Al Awda, an illegal party that is a descendant of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. [continued…]

How Bush failed Somalia
By Matthew Yglesias, The American Prospect, December 18, 2008

Americans don’t spend much time thinking about Somalia. And what time we do spend has in recent months been focused on somewhat amused accounts of the uptick in pirate activity off the Somali coast. But the piracy is but a symptom of the larger problem of lawlessness and anarchy in Somalia. To Americans who have paid no attention to East Africa in the time between the departure of U.S. forces from Somalia in 1995 and the recent spate of pirate attacks, this situation may appear merely endemic to the region. But it’s not. The Somali situation was, in many ways, improving as of two years ago. At which point the Bush administration initiated a new adventure that, like most Bush administration deeds, was ill-conceived and worked out poorly. In this case, it destroyed the country, has been responsible for the deaths of untold thousands of people, has created the pirate problem, and is breeding a new generation of anti-American jihadists.

And nobody in the United States seems to have noticed.

In part, this is because Somalia is an obscure corner of the world. And in part it’s because the crucial events took place almost exactly two years ago — during the Christmas season when most journalists were on vacation and most people weren’t following the news. [continued…]

Will Bush officials face war crimes trials? Few expect it
By Marisa Taylor, McClatchy, December 19, 2008

Emboldened by a Democratic win of the White House, civil libertarians and human rights groups want the incoming Obama administration to investigate whether the Bush administration committed war crimes. They don’t just want low-level CIA interrogators, either. They want President George W. Bush on down.

In the past eight years, administration critics have demanded that top officials be held accountable for a host of expansive assertions of executive powers from eavesdropping without warrants to detaining suspected enemy combatants indefinitely at the Guantanamo Bay military prison. A recent bipartisan Senate report on how Bush policies led to the abuse of detainees has fueled calls for a criminal investigation.

But even some who believe top officials broke the law don’t favor criminal prosecutions. The charges would be too difficult legally and politically to succeed.

Without wider support, the campaign to haul top administration officials before an American court is likely to stall.

In the end, Bush administration critics might have more success by digging out the truth about what happened and who was responsible, rather than assigning criminal liability, and letting the court of public opinion issue the verdicts, many say. [continued…]

Blair is steeped in the ways intelligence works
By Dana Priest, Washington Post, December 20, 2008

After Dennis Blair’s assignment as military liaison to the CIA 13 years ago, he groused about all the cloak-and-dagger politics at Langley headquarters. “You’d go to a meeting and think everyone had agreed” to a particular course of action, and then the meeting would end and “someone would come up to me in the hallway and say, ‘Forget what you heard in there’ ” — what we really want to do is something different, Blair once explained.

Secret agendas have never been “Denny” Blair’s style. The reserved former four-star admiral, who is widely understood to be President-elect Barack Obama’s choice as director of national intelligence, is well known in Washington as an intellectual who values straightforwardness and has mastered the byzantine interagency process during his various government stints.

In choosing a man so steeped in Washington’s ways, the Obama administration is signaling its intention to streamline the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is widely seen as too large, too cumbersome and still too disjointed, according to transition officials. [continued…]

Madoff scheme kept rippling outward, across borders
By Diana B Henriques, New York Times, December 20, 2008

By the end, the world itself was too small to support the vast Ponzi scheme constructed by Bernard L. Madoff.

Initially, he tapped local money pulled in from country clubs and charity dinners, where investors sought him out to casually plead with him to manage their savings so they could start reaping the steady, solid returns their envied friends were getting.

Then, he and his promoters set sights on Europe, again framing the investments as memberships in a select club. A Swiss hedge fund manager, Michel Dominicé, still remembers the pitch he got a few years ago from a salesman in Geneva. “He told me the fund was closed, that it was something I couldn’t buy,” Mr. Dominicé said. “But he told me he might have a way to get me in. It was weird.”

Mr. Madoff’s agents next cut a cash-gathering swath through the Persian Gulf, then Southeast Asia. Finally, they were hurtling with undignified speed toward China, with invitations to invest that were more desperate, less exclusive. One Beijing businessman who was approached said it seemed the Madoff funds were being pitched “to anyone who would listen.” [continued…]

Afghanistan: Soviet failures echo for US
By Mark Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor, December 19, 2008

Recent headlines from Afghanistan have read like a history lesson from the Soviet 1980s.

That war “devolved into a fight for control of … the road network,” concludes a 1995 US Army study. Militants are now stepping up attacks against American supply routes, destroying some 200 trucks in Pakistan this month.

Anti-Soviet militants controlled “the rural areas,” says a former Soviet official. Today’s militants have a “permanent presence” in 72 percent of the country, according to a Dec. 8 study.

There are differences between then and now. Yet 20 years later, many problems are similar: The US and NATO control neither the countryside nor the militants’ hideouts in Pakistan, and as civilian casualties increase, Afghan anger is mounting. [continued…]

Pakistanis protest US supply line into Afghanistan
AP, December 18, 2008

More than 10,000 Pakistanis protested Thursday against allowing U.S. forces to ship supplies through Pakistan into Afghanistan in a sign of growing pressure on Islamabad to harden its foreign policy.

It was one of the largest rallies against the government since it took office in March. Militants have attacked trucks using the critical Khyber Pass route several times in recent weeks.

The protesters — backers of Jamaat-e-Islami, a hard-line Islamist party — also decried U.S. missile strikes targeting al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border and Pakistani military offensives against Islamic insurgents in the area. [continued…]

The global political awakening
By Zbigniew Brzezinski, IHT, December 16, 2008

A new president is assuming office in the midst of a widespread crisis of confidence in America’s capacity to exercise effective leadership in world affairs. That may be a stark thought, but it is a fact.

Though U.S. leadership has been essential to global stability and development, the cumulative effects of national self indulgence, financial irresponsibility, an unnecessary war and ethical transgressions have discredited that leadership. Making matters worse is the global economic crisis.

The resulting challenge is compounded by issues such as climate, health and social inequality – issues that are becoming more contentious because they have surfaced in the context of what I call “the global political awakening.” [continued…]

The Madoff economy
By Paul Krugman, New York Times, December 19, 2008

The revelation that Bernard Madoff — brilliant investor (or so almost everyone thought), philanthropist, pillar of the community — was a phony has shocked the world, and understandably so. The scale of his alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme is hard to comprehend.

Yet surely I’m not the only person to ask the obvious question: How different, really, is Mr. Madoff’s tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?

The financial services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of the nation’s income over the past generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet, at this point, it looks as if much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it. And it’s not just a matter of money: the vast riches achieved by those who managed other people’s money have had a corrupting effect on our society as a whole. [continued…]

Iran’s power rooted in Shi’ite ties
By Gareth Porter, Asia Times, December 19, 2008

As president-elect Barack Obama’s national security team assesses the challenge of Iran’s role in the Middle East, it confronts a paradox: Iran is seen as having ambitions of regional hegemony, but it lacks the military power normally associated with such a role.

That paradox is explained by the fact that Iran’s position in the Middle East depends to a significant degree on its cultural, spiritual and political ties with other Shi’ite populations and movements in the region. That characteristic of Iranian foreign policy, which Iranian officials and think-tank specialists emphasized in interviews with this writer, poses some unique problems for the United States in opposing Iranian influence in the region.

The pivotal development in the new Iranian position in the region has been the emergence of Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated regime. [continued…]

Hamas formally ends truce with Israel
By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2008

Hamas declared a formal end to its cease-fire with Israel on Thursday, ruling out an extension of a 6-month-old pact that had begun to fray weeks ago with tit-for-tat attacks across Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip.

Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the militant group that controls Gaza, said the truce would expire early today. He said it was not being renewed because “the enemy refused to comply” with promises to lift a crippling blockade of the Palestinian enclave.

The decision’s immediate effect was unclear. Hamas stopped short of threatening an escalation of rocket and mortar attacks, and Israeli officials said they were reluctant to launch a major military offensive in the densely populated territory. The border remained quiet in the first hour after the truce lapsed. [continued…]

A short path, from Gaza to Somalia
By Daniel Levy, Haaretz, December 19, 2008

As the defined period for the Gaza cease-fire comes to an end today, preceded by a new cycle of violence, Israelis are being treated to a predictable dose of political posturing and chest-thumping. “We must do something, exact a price,” we hear. Yes, the rocket fire needs to stop, but there is no military answer to this predicament.

To recap: For most of the six months of the cease-fire, relative quiet prevailed, and life returned to near-normal for the residents of Sderot and environs (though not for Gazans, who remained under siege). Then on November 4, an Israeli operation sparked a new round of dangerous, if controlled, violence – characterized by occasional Israeli strikes and incursions, matched by Palestinian rockets and shooting across the border.

The cease-fire, while far from ideal, was an improvement over what had preceded it. Of course, Hamas sought to upgrade its military and defensive capacities during this period, as Israel should have been doing on the other side of the border – it would have been absurd to expect otherwise. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail and the cease-fire will be extended – it is in the interests of both sides. The military alternative is not an attractive one – from Israel’s side, escalation leading to partial or full reoccupation of Gaza, from Hamas, rockets and perhaps armed attacks from the West Bank in response. It also has no obvious exit strategy. [continued…]

The rise of the Shabab
The Economist, December 18, 2008

The Shabab has learnt from its mistakes in 2006, when it was overwhelmed in a few days by the Ethiopian army. It is now more pragmatic and more aggressive. This time round, it is apparently not picking fights with wealthy qat merchants. Men can chew what they like—but won’t be “clean enough” to get a lucrative job in Kismayo’s port. Education is encouraged. Girls can go to school. Charcoal burning is forbidden for the sake of the environment.

But the Shabab has also tightened its own security. Alleged spies for the transitional government or for Ethiopia are routinely beheaded with blunt knives. Mr Turki, the jihadist leader who lives mostly in the bush near the Kenyan border, sleeps in different houses when he is in a town. Public floggings and executions strike fear. So do masked faces. “Before, we knew who killed our relatives,” says a Kismayo merchant. “Now we don’t even know that.”

Most tellingly, the Shabab has learnt how to get hold of money faster. It concentrates its fighters in towns where there is money to be earned. The aim is to create an army that puts Islamist identity above divisive clan loyalties. Shabab commanders say a pious state will emerge once weaker militias have been disarmed. Some reckon that the Shabab shares some of the ransoms earned by pirates who operate out of the central Somali port of Haradheere. Those in Puntland, farther north, are apparently beyond the Shabab’s reach. [continued…]

Arrests in Iraq seen as politically motivated
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Qais Mizher, Washington Post, December 19, 2008

Iraqi politicians said Thursday that the arrests of government officials accused of supporting a group linked to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party was an attempt by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to demonstrate his power.

Members of parliament charged Thursday that the prime minister was using Iraq’s security forces to instill fear in his rivals ahead of provincial elections set for next month. Critics noted pointedly that a special counterterrorism task force that reports to Maliki made the arrests.

“Forces under the direct control of the prime minister engaged in these arrests. This is not something normal in a democratic process,” said Mithal al-Alusi, an independent Sunni lawmaker. [continued…]

Retired admiral picked as spy chief, officials say
By Michael A. Fletcher and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, December 19, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama has settled on a former commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific to fill the nation’s top intelligence job, congressional officials knowledgeable about the decision said yesterday.

If he is confirmed, retired Adm. Dennis C. Blair will become the nation’s third director of national intelligence, succeeding Mike McConnell as leader of the federal government’s 16 intelligence agencies. He had been the rumored front-runner for the job for several weeks, as Obama moved cautiously to make appointments to the nation’s most sensitive intelligence posts.

“It’s definitely Blair,” said one congressional official who had been briefed on the selection and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The Obama transition team declined to comment. [continued…]

Is a US-Iran deal on the Middle East possible?
By Gareth Porter, Asia Times, December 18, 2008

Would a negotiated agreement between Iran and the Barack Obama administration be feasible if Obama sent the right signals? The answer one gets from Iranian officials and think-tank analysts is, “Yes, but … ”

The Iranian national security establishment has long salivated over the prospect of an agreement with Washington. But there’s a big difference between Iranian and US ideas of what such an accord would look like.

Washington is fixated on what it would take to get Iran to agree to stop enriching uranium. On the other hand, Iranians interviewed here indicate that an agreement would only be possible if it represented a fundamental change in the US-Iran relationship.

Iranian officials and analysts see the problem of US-Iranian relations as a seamless web of issues on which agreement must be reached as a whole. And in addition to the bilateral issues of normal diplomatic and economic relations, they see a new US-Iranian understanding on the Middle East
as essential. [continued…]

Somalia on the edge
By Paul Woodward, The National, December 18, 2008

As the fight against Somali piracy intensifies, warships from Italy, Greece, Turkey, India, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, France, Russia, Britain, Malaysia and the United States, may soon be joined by naval forces from China. A Chinese merchant ship became the fourth vessel to be attacked in two days.

“The crew of the China Communications Construction Co. ship fought pirates for five hours before coalition helicopters chased them off, Noel Choong, head of the Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau, said by phone today. He said a Turkish cargo ship, a Malaysian tug, and a yacht were seized off Somalia yesterday, the same day the United Nations Security Council backed military action against piracy,” Bloomberg reported.

Naval operations have thus far been of limited success since the asymetry between a warship and a fibreglass skiff is one that counts to the pirates’ advantage. As an Italian naval officer told The New York Times, “going after them in a 485-foot-long destroyer, bristling with surface-to-air missiles and torpedoes, was like ‘going after someone on a bicycle with a truck.’ [continued…]

35 Iraq officials held in raids on key ministry
By Campbell Robertson and Tariq Maher, New York Times, December 18, 2008

Up to 35 officials in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior ranking as high as general have been arrested over the past three days with some of them accused of quietly working to reconstitute Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, according to senior security officials in Baghdad.

The arrests, confirmed by officials from the Ministries of the Interior and National Security as well as the prime minister’s office, included four generals. The officials also said that the arrests had come at the hand of an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. [continued…]

Report says Iraq may ban Blackwater
By Scott Shane, New York Times, December 18, 2008

The State Department’s inspector general has warned in a new report that Blackwater Worldwide, the security contractor, may not be licensed by the Iraqi government to continue to protect American diplomats in Baghdad next year, forcing the Obama administration to make new security arrangements. [continued…]

The torture report
Editorial, New York Times, December 18, 2008

Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.

Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

The report shows how actions by these men “led directly” to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons. [continued…]

“Leaked Obama transcript” explains Rick Warren decision
By John Aravosis, Huffington Post, December 18, 2008

The following conversation may, or may not, have occurred between President-elect Barack Obama and the chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, US Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA):

BARACK OBAMA: So who we gonna have do the invocation at my inaugural?

DIANNE FEINSTEIN: Oh my God, you’re gonna love this, B.

BO: Okay Di, hit me.

DIFI: Ready? Rick. Warren.

BO: You mean conservative evangelical Christian leader Rick Warren?

DIFI: Yup.

BO: Rick Warren who wants to ban all abortions and basically said that I support a holocaust?

DIFI: Uh huh.

BO: The guy who compared gay marriage to pedophilia and incest, and helped lead the fight for Prop 8 in California?

DIFI: That’s him.

BO: The man who said he agrees on everything with far-right nut James Dobson.

DIFI: Yesiree.

BO: But Di, the guy has devoted his entire life to destroying everything I stand for, everything I believe in, everyone who worked so hard and so long to put me into office.

DIFI: I know, isn’t it brilliant!

BO: I don’t get it.

DIFI: Okay, think about it. You’re so post-partisan that you’re willing to embrace and promote someone who loathes you, didn’t vote for you, and will do everything in his power to destroy your presidency. It’s like the Lieberman thing, but even bigger!

BO: So you mean, by promoting a guy who represents none of my goals, ideals or hopes that the majority of the country voted for, and by devastating my own supporters on what was supposed to be a day of celebration and national rebirth, I’m actually promoting “change” by publicly undermining it?

DIFI: Exactly!

BO: But won’t I be screwing the gays, women, and pretty much everyone else who got me elected?

DIFI: Never stopped me.

BO: But doesn’t this make me no better than the guy I’m replacing or the guy I just beat?

DIFI: Never stopped me. [continued…]

Russia, testing U.S. sway, offers Lebanon 10 warplanes
By Robert F Worth, New York Times, December 18, 2008

Lebanon’s defense minister announced in Moscow on Tuesday that Russia had offered to give the country 10 MIG-29 fighter jets that would significantly upgrade its antiquated air force and serve as a slap to the United States.

The United States is Lebanon’s main military partner, but American plans to help rebuild the country’s army and air force are moving slowly. And Russia, which is increasingly challenging the United States in regions where American influence has been paramount, has made other gestures toward reasserting itself in the Mediterranean.

Lebanon’s military had no official comment on the offer. It is far from clear whether the jets would be delivered. The deal would depend on the Lebanese government’s approval and would have to be discussed with the country’s allies, said a former Lebanese military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic sensitivities. [continued…]

The most important number on Earth
By Bill McKibben, Mother Jones, November/December, 2008

Sooner or later, you have to draw a line. We’ve spent the last 20 years in the opening scenes of what historians will one day call the Global Warming Era—the preamble to the biggest drama that humans have ever staged, the overture that hints at the themes that will follow for centuries to come. But none of the notes have resolved, none of the story lines yet come into clear view. And that’s largely because until recently we didn’t know quite where we were. From the moment in 1988 when a nasa scientist named James Hansen told Congress that burning coal and gas and oil was warming the earth, we’ve struggled to absorb this one truth: The central fact of our economic lives (the ubiquitous fossil fuel that developed the developed world) is wrecking the central fact of our physical lives (the stable climate and sea level on which civilization rests). For a while, and much longer in the US than elsewhere, we battled over whether this was true. But warm year succeeded warm year and that fight began to subside. Instead, the real question became, is this a future peril, the kind of thing you take out a reasonably priced insurance policy to guard against? Or is it the oh-my-lord crisis you drop everything else to deal with? Will Hitler be happy with the Sudetenland, or is the world going to spend every cent it has, not to mention tens of millions of lives, fighting him off? Trouble, or TROUBLE? These last 12 months, we’ve found out. [continued…]

“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” Target Atmospheric CO₂, James Hansen et al.

Playing power politics with Iran
By Ray Takeyh, Boston Globe, December 17, 2008

In the midst of the global financial crisis, Western politicians have found a ray of light, namely that reduced oil prices will compel Iran to come to terms with the international community on its nuclear infractions. Such perceptions misread Iran’s history and the mindset of Tehran’s current rulers.

The West confronts an Iranian regime that has reconceptualized its national interests – choosing strategic gain over economic growth. Neither economic distress nor additional sanctions are likely to alter Tehran’s course. The most effective means of addressing Iran’s proliferation tendencies is to alter its strategic calculus.

On the surface, the theocracy’s challenge is daunting. The inflation rate stands at 30 percent, while approximately 14 million Iranians live below the poverty level. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s populist policies have also taken their toll, as he has mismanaged the economy and raided the oil stabilization fund designed to cushion the state from periods of price fluctuation. Still, Iran’s leaders remain more sensitive to their strategic environment than economic predicament. The displacement of Iran’s historical nemeses in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the decline of America’s influence in the Middle East have generated a recognition that it is a propitious time for the Islamic Republic to claim that mantle of regional leadership. Iran has a rare historical opportunity to emerge as the pivotal power in the Persian Gulf, a role that Iran’s monarchs and mullahs have aspired to for decades. [continued…]

Encountering peace: The emerging bi-national reality
By Gershon Baskin, Jerusalem Post, December 15, 2008

Palestinian affairs expert and longtime journalist Danny Rubenstein came to visit me a couple of evenings ago. He was researching the issue of the transfer of cash to Gaza that Defense Minister Barak had allowed. After clarifying this issue our conversation went on to discuss what Danny called the emerging “bi-national reality” that has developed in the West Bank and has become more entrenched, perhaps beyond the point of no return. Danny is one of the real experts. He’s been covering Palestinian affairs since 1967, has written several highly respected books on Palestinians, their national movement and leaders. He has contacts in every part of Palestine, with all sectors of the society. His conclusion concerning the “bi-national reality” is drawn from observations over the past months after traveling north, south, east and west – all throughout the West Bank, spending hours listening to people and observing the reality on the ground.

I told Danny that I am not ready to give up the hope that our leaders will find the wisdom and the courage to implement the “two-state solution” before it is too late. In my heart, I had to wonder if Danny wasn’t right. Perhaps it is already too late. Perhaps the events of Hebron, of the forced removal of the settlers from the building that they claim and the riots that broke out afterwards when they went on the rampage against Palestinians in Hebron demonstrates in the most bloody terms that these two communities might be too locked into a entanglement that is already beyond the possibility to untangle. [continued…]

All Hamas demands is Israeli respect
By Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star, December 17, 2008

Reasonable people would expect that Israelis and Palestinians alike prefer a cease-fire to active warfare, especially since mutual attacks have never resolved the core conflict. Hamas’ decision to extend the cease-fire is not going to be made on the basis of what makes its people more or less comfortable, or what entices Israelis into opening the gates a little bit wider to allow more consumer goods to enter Gaza. The basis on which Hamas makes such decisions reflects its wider worldview of the character and aims of Israel, and the nature of its confrontation with Israel.

Like other Islamist groups, Hamas calculates on the basis of a longer time frame than the next election, shifting public opinion, or whether or not it will be invited to tea at the White House. The single most important factor in the mind of the Islamist leaders is whether the agreement to renew the cease-fire reflects mutual respect and an acceptance of the principle of equal rights for Israel and Hamas.

If the deal proposed is seen to have forced Israel to change its position and respect the terms of the agreement, Hamas will extend. If it merely comprises vague Israeli promises in return for Hamas and other militant groups stopping their rocket attacks against Israel, the deal will collapse. Hamas’ view is that mutual requirements, rather than the unilateral requirement of Israeli security, must be assured for a cease-fire to happen. The driving force for such a posture is the Islamist sense that the battle to defend and reclaim the land will be a long one, and it will require a heavy price in lives and suffering before Israel negotiates sincerely and views the Palestinians as humans worthy of the same rights as Israelis. [continued…]

NATO supply route imperiled as Pakistani truckers refuse to carry goods
By Abubakar Siddique, RL/RFE, December 16, 2008

As a truck driver, Gul Mohmamad regularly ferries containers full of food and other supplies along the Khyber Pass route to Western forces in the Afghan capital.

It’s an increasingly dangerous occupation, with Taliban forces attacking trucks on the road and increasingly in the terminals.

“We don’t have any security here. When we are parked here outside the terminal we are afraid of being attacked,” Mohmamad says. “We have the same fears and problems when we are driving on the roads. That is why we cannot perform our duties properly.”

In response to the increased danger, an alliance of some 3,500 truck and fuel tanker owners announced on December 15 that it would no longer make deliveries for NATO along the alliance’s main overland supply route. [continued…]

Pakistan groups banned but not bowed
By Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, December 18, 2008

Pakistan submitted to the will of the international community and cracked down on the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure – LET), already banned as a terror outfit and linked to the Mumbai attacks last month, and the Jamaatut Dawa, last week labeled by the United Nations Security Council as a front for the LET.

One of the more sensational arrests was that of Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, the LET’s operations chief who had been characterized as a villain in dozens of Indian Bollywood movies; his picture was released for the first time ever to the media.

The Pakistani electronic media, though, were unimpressed by the international pressure, and hit back. They showed footage of the massacre of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002; of atrocities committed by Indian forces against Muslims in Indian-administered Kashmir and called the Mumbai attack a reaction from within Indian society. [continued…]

Pirates outmaneuver warships off Somalia
By Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times, December 16, 2008

Rear Adm. Giovanni Gumiero is going on a pirate hunt.

From the deck of an Italian destroyer cruising the pirate-infested waters off Somalia’s coast, he has all the modern tools at his fingertips — radar, sonar, infrared cameras, helicopters, a cannon that can sink a ship 10 miles away — to take on a centuries-old problem that harks back to the days of schooners and eye patches.

“Our presence will deter them,” the admiral said confidently.

But the wily buccaneers of Somalia’s seas do not seem especially deterred — instead, they seem to be getting only wilier. More than a dozen warships from Italy, Greece, Turkey, India, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, France, Russia, Britain, Malaysia and the United States have joined the hunt.

And yet, in the past two months alone, the pirates have attacked more than 30 vessels, eluding the naval patrols, going farther out to sea and seeking bigger, more lucrative game, including an American cruise ship and a 1,000-foot Saudi oil tanker.

The pirates are recalibrating their tactics, attacking ships in beelike swarms of 20 to 30 skiffs, and threatening to choke off one of the busiest shipping arteries in the world, at the mouth of the Red Sea. [continued…]

Welcome to the Blagosphere
By Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2008

The schemes Blago allegedly invented to “monetize” his public authority, while never rising to the sophistication of, say, a credit default swap, still showed a cunning that would command the respect of any Wall Street Ponzi master. The governor allegedly speculated about trading the Senate seat for the job of energy secretary because, as “Deputy Governor A” helpfully informed him, that was the cabinet position “that makes the most money” — by which he almost certainly did not mean that it carried the greatest salary. Blago also apparently cooked up a plan in which a labor organization would create a highly paid position for him in exchange for the seat.

The governor’s fondest idea was allegedly to trade the Senate seat for a 501(c)4 organization that he believed the country’s best-known billionaires would graciously fund and that he would get to lead. And why not? Washington is filled with advocacy groups funded by the very wealthy that sometimes appear to be little more than retirement homes for political favorites.

The right has been gloating about the alleged Blagojevich villainy because it interrupts, in spectacular fashion, a long stretch in which most of the Beltway scandal-makers had an “R” after their names. Besides, this would-be mega-grafter comes from the same city and the same party as the hated Mr. Obama; it’s just a matter of time until the right blurs the two into one.

What outsiders seldom grasp about Illinois politics, though, is how bipartisan, how apolitical, the whole reeking thing is. John Kass of the Chicago Tribune, a connoisseur of the region’s corruption, refers to it as “the Combine.” Republicans run the machine when it’s their turn, and then hand the wheel over to Democrats when the public has had enough. [continued…]

Madoff and the global economy
By Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek, December 14, 2008

For years, Bernie Madoff, all-around nice guy, pulled billions of dollars of foreign and domestic money into his investment fund. His lure? He promised the implausible combination of good returns and low risk—and people believed him.

Painfully, the allegations of fraud surrounding the Madoff affair are also exposing the fundamental fallacy of the global economy. Like Madoff’s trusting investors, the rest of the world was willing to assume that the U.S. economy as a whole was a low-risk, good-return investment. This belief drove the entire structure of global trade and finance for the past 10 years. And when the subprime crisis showed this assumption of low risk to be false, the financial crisis resulted. [continued…]

Face to face with the Taliban
By Ghaith Abdul Ahad, The Guardian, December 14, 2008

“Salar is the new Falluja,” declared Qomendan Hemmet emphatically. “The Americans and the Afghan army control the highway, and five metres on each side. The rest is our territory.”

Salar district in Wardak province is 80km (50 miles) south of Kabul. The ­Kandahar-Kabul road that passes through this district is a major supply line for US and Nato troops. The road is reminiscent of the road from Baghdad to Falluja: littered with IED [improvised explosive devices) holes and the carcasses of burnt-out Nato supply trucks and containers.

The frequency of Taliban attacks is higher this year than at any time since 2001. Four British marines were killed last week, three of them when a 13-year-old boy blew himself up in Helmand province. Meanwhile, the area controlled by the Afghan government is shrinking to the fortified islands of the cities. [continued…]

America concedes
By Patrick Cockburn, London Review of Books, December 18, 2008

On 27 November the Iraqi parliament voted by a large majority in favour of a security agreement with the US under which its 150,000 troops will withdraw from Iraqi cities, towns and villages by 30 June next year and from all of Iraq by 31 December 2011. The Iraqi government will take over military responsibility for the Green Zone in Baghdad, the heart of American power in Iraq, in a few weeks’ time. Private security companies will lose legal immunity. US military operations will only be carried out with Iraqi consent. No US military bases will remain after the last American troops leave in 2011 and in the interim the US military is banned from carrying out attacks on other countries from within Iraq.

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), signed after eight months of rancorous negotiations, is categorical and unconditional. America’s bid to act as the world’s only super-power and to establish quasi-colonial control of Iraq, an attempt that began with the invasion of 2003, has ended in failure. There will be a national referendum on the new agreement next July, but the accord is to be implemented immediately, so the poll will be largely irrelevant. Even Iran, which had denounced the first drafts of the SOFA, fearing that any agreement would enshrine a permanent US presence in Iraq, now says that it will officially back the new security pact after the referendum: a sure sign that America’s main rival in the Middle East sees the accord as marking the end of the occupation and the end of any notion of Iraq being used as a launching-pad for military assaults on its neighbours. [continued…]

Change or deja vu? Obama divides Iran
By Gareth Porter, Asia Times, December 13, 2008

Iranian national security officials and political leaders have been carrying out an internal debate over how much freedom President-elect Barack Obama will have to change US policy toward Iran, and those who have argued that he will not be able to do so have gained the upper hand since Obama’s announcement of his national security team, interviews with Iranian officials and their advisers reveal.

The outcome of that debate, which is very sensitive to signals from Obama and his national security team, could be a key factor in how far Iran goes in indicating its own willingness to make concessions to Washington next year.

Two different views of Obama and his administration’s likely policy toward Iran emerged within the regime in the first weeks after his election, according to the officials interviewed in Tehran. One interpretation was that Obama’s election is the result of a fundamental shift in US politics and offers an opportunity for Iran to find a way out of its decades-long conflict with the United States.

The other view sees Obama as subject to the control of powerful forces – especially the pro-Israel lobby – that are inherently hostile to Iran. That interpretation implies that Iran should make no conciliatory move toward the Obama administration. [continued…]

The torture presidency
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 13, 2008

President George W. Bush has launched “Operation Legacy,” which he placed in the hands of his ultimate advisor, indeed his “brain,” Karl Rove. Remember Rove? He’s the man who refused to testify under oath when summoned by Congress to do so and was recently identified in a Congressional report as the plotter behind the U.S. Attorneys scandal, among other trainwrecks. The Rove effort features a 2-page set of talking points which have been circulated to members of the administration’s team highlighting the supposedly major Bush accomplishments which have begun to fill the American media. They start with the contention that “Bush kept us safe” by preventing any further attack on American soil after 9/11. Really?

Let’s just take a look at some of that “deranged” criticism. Indeed, let’s start with the criticism from the man tapped by Bush’s fellow Republicans to succeed him, John McCain. This week the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a powerful report, released jointly by chair Carl Levin and ranking member John McCain, that received the unanimous support of its Democratic and Republican members. The report concluded that Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level officials of the administration consciously adopted a policy for the torture and abuse of prisoners held in the war on terror. It also found that they attempted to cover up their conduct by waging a P.R. campaign to put the blame on a group of young soldiers they called “rotten apples.” Lawyers figure prominently among the miscreants identified. Evidently the torture policy’s authors then enlisted ethics-challenged lawyers to craft memoranda designed to give torture “the appearance of legality” as part of a scheme to create the torture program despite internal opposition. A declassified summary of the report can be read here; the full report is filled with classified information and therefore has been submitted to the Department of Defense with a request that the materials be declassified for release. (Don’t expect that to happen before January 20, however). [continued…]

The perils of Pakistan’s militant crackdown
By Aryn Baker, Time, December 13, 2008

Pakistan is acting decisively against the militants blamed for the Mumbai massacre: Last weekend, it arrested some key leaders of the banned Lashkar e-Toiba (LeT) organization identified by India and by U.S. officials as implicated in the terror attack; on Thursday it followed that up with a crackdown on the Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD), an Islamic charity that has allegedly functioned as a front organization for LeT since it was banned in Pakistan in 2002. Pakistani authorities froze bank accounts, closed a number of offices and detained dozens of members of the JuD. But while the crackdown may demonstrate the government’s firm resolve to tackle jihadist extremism within Pakistan, moving against the JuD is unlikely to significantly alter Pakistan’s militancy problem — and could even exacerbate it by generating sympathy for those against whom the authorities have acted. [continued…]

Jet-incursion flap highlights India-Pakistan tensions
By Aryn Baker, Time, December 14, 2008

A purported midnight incursion of Indian air force jets into Pakistani airspace Saturday brought tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors to an even higher pitch in the wake of the attacks on India’s financial capital of Mumbai that killed 171 last month. Within minutes, the Indian jets were chased back by the Pakistani air force, say Pakistani officials, and retired air force commanders interviewed on Pakistani TV swore to defend their nation. The Pakistani air force claimed that Indian planes intruded as much as 2 miles (4 km) into the country, but the government says it accepted Indian assurances that the incursions were inadvertent; the Indian government, for its part, denied publicly that an incursion took place at all. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari dismissed the incident at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Sunday, calling it a “technical incursion — two planes flying 50,000 miles up in the air; when they turned, they slightly entered Pakistan soil.” Brown was in Islamabad after visiting India and Afghanistan to discuss security in the wake of the Mumbai attacks. [continued…]

Report blames Rumsfeld for detainee abuses
By Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, December 12, 2008

A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.

The report was issued jointly by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the panel, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican. It represents the most thorough review by Congress to date of the origins of the abuse of prisoners in American military custody, and it explicitly rejects the Bush administration’s contention that tough interrogation methods have helped keep the country and its troops safe.

The report also rejected previous claims by Mr. Rumsfeld and others that Defense Department policies played no role in the harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and in other episodes of abuse. [continued…]

Islamabad arrests militants’ leader
By James Lamont, Financial Times, December 11, 2008

Pakistan last night arrested the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group blamed for the Mumbai attacks, as fears grew that the country was not doing enough to curb militants.

Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, last night told parliament that India had acted so far “with the utmost restraint”, but that “much more needs to be done” by Pakistan.

“The use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy is no longer acceptable,” he said.

Late last night, Pakistan placed Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, under house arrest, according to interior ministry officials. [continued…]

India presses Pakistan on terrorism but finds its own options limited
By Somini Sengupta, New York Times, December 12, 2008

Even as Indian officials on Thursday lambasted Pakistan as the “epicenter” of terrorism and dismissed its crackdown on extremist groups as inadequate in the wake of last month’s attacks in Mumbai, they all but ruled out the prospect of a military confrontation.

Rather, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told members of Parliament that it would take time for India to turn off the tap of support for militant groups operating across the border, and that war was “no solution.”

“We shall have to patiently confront it,” he said. “We have no intention to be provoked.”

His words signaled India’s delicate and somewhat circumscribed options. If it were to carry out even limited military strikes against Pakistan, it would be likely to lose the support of its allies, namely the United States, which fears that Pakistan would then divert troops from its western border with Afghanistan to its eastern one with India. [continued…]

Taleban tax: allied supply convoys pay their enemies for safe passage
By Tom Coghlan, The Times, December 12, 2008

The West is indirectly funding the insurgency in Afghanistan thanks to a system of payoffs to Taleban commanders who charge protection money to allow convoys of military supplies to reach Nato bases in the south of the country.

Contracts to supply British bases and those of other Western forces with fuel, supplies and equipment are held by multinational companies.

However, the business of moving supplies from the Pakistani port of Karachi to British, US and other military contingents in the country is largely subcontracted to local trucking companies. These must run the gauntlet of the increasingly dangerous roads south of Kabul in convoys protected by hired gunmen from Afghan security companies.

The Times has learnt that it is in the outsourcing of convoys that payoffs amounting to millions of pounds, including money from British taxpayers, are given to the Taleban. [continued…]

Global boiling
By Kirsten Weir, Salon, December 12, 2008

By now we all know what’s in store for us if we continue on our emissions-happy path: increasingly hotter days, horrific droughts and floods, angrier storms, acidic ocean waters that will dissolve coral reefs, and a surging sea level that will swallow our coastal cities. Still, that scenario is a virtual sunny day by the pool compared to the cataclysmic climate picture being drawn by some scientists. Never mind carbon dioxide emissions. Let’s talk about the vast stores of carbon hidden deep beneath our feet.

During the last year, geoscientists have held several workshops and conferences to discuss what is known — and the great deal that isn’t — about the “deep carbon” cycle. Next week, at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, scientists plan to hold a special session devoted to one potentially frightening aspect of that cycle: a strange little substance known as methane hydrate.

Methane hydrates, or clathrates, are icelike gas deposits buried under permafrost and deep below the seafloor. Some researchers fear that the hydrates are on the verge of melting en masse and belching out a cloud of methane gas that will send global temperatures skyrocketing. [continued…]

Former Nasdaq chairman charged with fraud
CNN, December 11, 2008

Former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff was arrested Thursday and charged with a single count of securities fraud for allegedly operating a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme from his investment advisory business, federal authorities said.

Madoff, 70, operated the advisory business separately from his Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, a securities broker dealer with its principal office in New York City, the Department of Justice said.

A source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN that Madoff appeared in court Thursday and bail was set at $10 million bond. The bond was signed and Madoff was released.

According to the complaint filed with the U.S. District Court of Southern New York, two senior employees of the securities broker firm told investigators that Madoff ran the advisory business from a separate floor of the securities firm offices. One of the senior employees said that Madoff kept the advisory business’ financial records under lock and key and was “cryptic” about its business.

A document filed by Madoff with the Securities and Exchange Commission early this year said the advisory business served between 11 and 25 clients and had about $17.1 billion in assets, the complaint said.

But on Wednesday, the complaint said, Madoff told senior employees that the advisory business was a fraud, that he was “finished,” had “absolutely nothing,” that “it’s all just one big lie” and that it was “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme.”

Madoff said the business had lost about $50 billion and that he planned to turn himself in to authorities in a week. But, the complaint said, he told the employees he wanted to distribute the $200 million to $300 million he had left to certain selected employees, family and friends. [continued…]

Hedge funds face big losses in Madoff case
By David Walker, Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2008

Christopher Miller, chief executive of London hedge fund ratings agency Allenbridge Hedgeinfo, said: “Some very big investor names are involved in this. The scheme could only work if enough investors were subscribing for him to pay money out. Some of the world’s biggest hedge funds have been hit by this. There will be a monumental impact for the hedge fund industry, it could be larger then Enron.

“Some investors in Madoff’s funds face 100% write-downs on the money they invested, they will suddenly be nursing full write-downs in December. When people realize the magnitude of this it will be fizzing around the stratosphere.” [continued…]

Fears of fascism as Israeli extremists prepare to take elections
By Mel Frykberg, Middle East Times, December 10, 2008

Israel’s upcoming general elections early next year could see some of the country’s most extreme right-wing elements, accused of being racist by some, winning the elections.

Right-wing poster boy Benjamin Netanyahu, a former Israeli prime minister, and chairman of the right-wing party Likud, is battling even more extreme elements in his own party in a bid to become Israel’s next prime minister.

He will face off against Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the chairman of the more centrist and ruling party Kadima, to lead the country. Current opinion polls indicate Netanyahu to be in the lead.

Likud held its primaries on Monday to prepare a list of candidates for the Knesset (Israeli parliament) with those from the far right making a strong showing. [continued…]

The indispensable ally
By Anatol Lieven, The National Interest, December 9, 2008

The most important questions concerning the terrorist attacks in Mumbai are also obvious ones, yet are not asked nearly often enough by Western analysts. They are: What goals did the terrorists hope to achieve by these attacks? And how to what degree did they achieve them? Regrettably, the terrorists so far seem to have achieved at least a qualified success.

The first terrorist objective was clearly the direct human and physical damage caused, and the direct impact of this damage on India. From this point of view, most unfortunately, the terrorists have pulled off the greatest success in a single operation since 9/11, though less due to their own strength than the weakness of the Indian state. India has suffered a severe economic blow at a most inopportune moment, and the shortcomings of its security system have been cruelly revealed. In fact, its entire claim to be an aspiring great power has been called into question. It still seems extraordinary that a mere ten terrorists can have achieved so much.

The less obvious, but even more important terrorist objective was the effect of the operation on the behavior of India’s government. It seems clear that by far the single most important goal in this regard was to worsen relations between India and Pakistan, and wreck hopeful recent signs of reconciliation, like the speech of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in the week before the attacks dubbing the insurgents in Indian-controlled Kashmir “terrorists” and calling for economic union between India and Pakistan. Islamists in Pakistan have spoken and written openly of their desire to disrupt this reconciliation, and ideally to cause a new war between India and Pakistan.

The extremists’ interests in such a new conflict, or the threat of one, are threefold. In the first place, Pakistani tension with India tends to boost wider Islamist support, especially since India is now seen as a close ally of the United States. Secondly, tension with India tends to increase support for the extremists in the Pakistani security services. There may well also be a more immediate objective, which is to draw Pakistani troops away from the campaign against the Pakistani Taliban in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan along the western border with Afghanistan, by forcing the Pakistani military to concentrate troops for defence against the old eastern enemy, India.

So far, the terrorists have not succeeded in creating a new conflict; and they have suffered a serious blow with the Pakistani army’s attack on their main base in Pakistani Kashmir and arrest of their leader. However, in many respects India’s response to the attacks fell straight into the trap dug by the terrorists. Rather than stressing that India and Pakistan had been victims of the same kind of monstrous attacks on their international hotels (India at the Taj and Oberoi in December, Pakistan at the Marriott in September) and needed to work together, Indian rhetoric, official and still more private, made it sound as if the Indian government was blaming the Pakistani government itself for these attacks. [continued…]

Russia courts the Muslim world
By Jacques Lévesque, Le Monde Diplomatique, December, 2008

Vladimir Putin was the first head of a non-Muslim majority state to speak at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, a gathering of 57 Muslim states, in October 2003. That was a political and diplomatic feat, especially since Russia was waging a long-running war in Chechnya at the time. Putin stressed that 15% of the total population of the Russian Federation are Muslim (1), and that all the inhabitants of eight of its 21 autonomous republics are Muslim (2), and he won observer member status with the organisation, thanks to support from Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Since then, Putin and other Russian leaders, including the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claim that Russia “is, to some extent, a part of the Muslim world”. In an interview with Al Jazeera on 16 October 2003, Putin stressed that, unlike Muslims living in western Europe, those in Russia were indigenous and that Islam had been present on Russian territory long before Christianity (3). So Russia now claims to have a privileged political relationship with the Arab and Muslim world and believes that, as a mostly European state, it has a historic vocation as a mediator between the western and Muslim worlds.

There are reasons for these claims. The first is to counter the pernicious effect of the Chechnyan war, in Russia as much as in the rest of the world. The aim is to avoid, or at least limit, polarisation between Russia’s ethnic majority and its Muslims by reinforcing Muslims’ feeling of belonging to the state. “We must prevent Islamophobia,” said Putin in the Al Jazeera interview. That will be difficult given the way anyone suspected of being a Muslim fundamentalist is pursued, and not just in Chechnya. “Terrorism should not be identified with any one religion, culture or tradition,” Putin insisted. Before 9/11 he called Chechen rebels “Muslim fundamentalist terrorists”; now he speaks of “terrorists connected to international criminal networks and drug and arms traffickers”, avoiding any reference to Islam. [continued…]