U.S. - Canada relations explained by Tom Brokaw

YouTube link.

Balancing Afghanistan and the Punjab

The National Interest is a conservative magazine founded by Irving Kristol and published by the Nixon Center.   I was therefore somewhat startled when an article in the magazine was emailed to me by a Pakistani friend who described the article as "spot on" in assessing the situation in the Punjab.  This friend is highly knowledgeable about affairs in that part of the world, so when he assessed the article as having a "clear assessment" of the situation, I paid attention.  Here are some excerpts from "A Mutiny Grows in Punjab":

U.S. STRATEGY toward Pakistan is focused on trying to get Islamabad to give serious help to Washington’s campaign against the Afghan Taliban. There are two rather large problems with this approach. The first is that it is never going to happen. As U.S. diplomats in Pakistan themselves recognize (and as was made ever so clear by the WikiLeaks dispatches), both Pakistani strategic calculations and the feelings of the country’s population make it impossible for Islamabad to take such a step, except in return for U.S. help against India—which Washington also cannot deliver.

The second problem is that it gets America’s real priorities in the region back to front. The war in Afghanistan is a temporary U.S. interest, in which the chief concern is not the reality of victory or defeat as such (if only because neither can be clearly defined) but preserving some appearance of success in order to avoid the damage to American military prestige that would result from obvious failure. By contrast, preserving the Pakistani state and containing the terrorist threat to the West from Pakistan is a permanent vital interest not only of the U.S. military and political establishments but of every American citizen...

If Pakistan is to be broken as a state, it will be on the streets of Lahore and other great Punjabi cities, not in the Pashtun mountains. By the same token, the greatest potential terrorist threat to the United States and its Western allies from the region stems not from the illiterate and isolated Pashtuns but from Islamist groups based in urban Punjab, with their far-higher levels of sophistication and their international links, above all to the Pakistani diaspora in the West...

But there comes a time in many wars when victory itself becomes so elusive, and the costs of pursuing it so great, that a broader and more detached view of national interests sees that these are best served by some form of compromise. This seems to me to be becoming the case in Afghanistan; not because of the costs of the Afghan war itself, which are bearable, but because of the way in which that conflict is destabilizing and radicalizing Pakistan, risking a geopolitical catastrophe for the United States—and the world—which would dwarf anything that could possibly occur in Afghanistan...

A central fact tends to be missed, in part because it is a deeply uncomfortable one for Americans, with their instinctive faith in democracy and their inborn desire to be liked and respected by other nations: that (and with deep regret I can attest to this from my own numerous interviews in Pakistan) the Afghan Taliban enjoy the sympathy of the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis at every level of society. And so the U.S. war there—and America’s demands of Pakistani assistance—are weakening the state. The support for the Taliban is not based in their religious ideology, which is alien to most Pakistanis. It is so prevalent because, as with the anti-Soviet mujahideen of the 1980s (who were also not admired for their extremist ideals), the Taliban are seen as a legitimate force of resistance against an alien occupation of the country...

The greatest potential catalyst for a collapse of the Pakistani state is not the Islamist militants themselves, who are in my view far too weak and divided to achieve this (a capacity for murderous terrorism should not be confused with a capacity for successful revolution); it is that actions by the United States will provoke a mutiny of parts of the military. Should that happen, the Pakistani state would collapse very quickly indeed, with all the disasters that this would entail...

THE OVERTHROW of the regime can never happen in peripheral areas like Waziristan, Baluchistan or even Karachi. It would have to happen in Punjab... It is the possible collapse of Pakistan, not the outcome of the present war in Afghanistan, which is the really terrible threat to America and its allies from this part of the Muslim world.

Much more at the link.

The relevance of Bahrain

From NPR:

The tiny island nation of Bahrain plays a big role in America's Middle East strategy. In fact, more than 6,000 U.S. military personnel and contractors are located just five miles from where government security forces violently put down demonstrations this week.

Bahrain is also home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, a major logistics hub for the U.S. Navy ships... "It has facilities that can provide support to our ships, including, you know, fuel, water provisions, resupply," retired Rear Adm. Steve Pietropaoli says.

Those facilities have been resupplying warships for nearly a half-century, ever since Great Britain's fleet left the island. Bahrain provided major basing facilities and support for the armada of U.S. Navy ships sent for the first Persian Gulf War in 1990 and the Iraq War in 2003...

So what does Bahrain get out of this relationship besides rent? It receives security guarantees from the United States.

That's just the start. The Bahraini Defense Force sends its personnel to the U.S. for training and it buys high-quality American weapons as well. American military sales to Bahrain have totaled nearly $1.5 billion in the past decade alone.

Those sales include everything from Apache and Cobra attack helicopters to F-16 warplanes, missile launchers and howitzers, plus more than 50 Abrams tanks — some of which now patrol Bahrain's capital of Manama.

Map credit.

"Curveball" admits lying about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction"

In this exclusive interview by The Guardian (in German, subtitled in English), Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi explains how and why he created the myth of Saddam's WMDs (mobile weapons laboratories).

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

"Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," he said. "They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."

The admission comes just after the eighth anniversary of Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in which the then-US secretary of state relied heavily on lies that Janabi had told the German secret service, the BND. It also follows the release of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's memoirs, in which he admitted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction programme.

More at a pair of Guardian articles here and here.  This isn't really "news" - posted for possible future reference.

Lady Gaga is jealous

Via Reddit.

Open thread on Egypt

Yesterday a blogger who visits TYWKIWDBI from Brazil requested that I start an "open thread" where readers of this blog can express/share comments about the situation in Egypt.

I'm pleased to do that, but suspect the participation will be modest.  My metrics show readers from 213 countries in the past year (about 1000 visits from Egypt), but my personal observation is that the vast majority of visitors here are silent lurkers; commentary on my posts typically comes from a core group of several dozen more outspoken people.

However, with this topic it might be different.  A reminder that my policy re comments is that any expression in polite adult language is welcome, but I delete "ad hominem" attacks where commenters try to insult other commenters.

So, have a go.

For starters I offer the clever image above, from Reddit, posted after Mubarak's surprise announcement that he would not be resigning his Presidency.

The U.S. Constitution offers protection to non-Americans

A post I wrote last week ("Guantanamo detainee dies in custody") has elicited a vigorous and heated interchange in the Comments section.  I normally leave comment debates alone as long as they don't deteriorate into interpersonal "ad hominem" attacks, but one comment that was made today warrants rebuttal:

"Constitutional right? He's a terrorist, NOT an American citizen, he has NO Constitutional right"

That's wrong.  Ethically wrong - AND Constitutionally wrong.  Here's a repost of an article I posted one year ago:

Selections from another interesting essay by Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

...one of the most pervasive myths in our political discourse: namely, that the U.S. Constitution protects only American citizens, and not any dreaded foreigners...

First, the U.S. Supreme Court, in 2008, issued a highly publicized opinion, in Boumediene v. Bush... although the decision was 5-4, none of the 9 Justices -- and, indeed, not even the Bush administration -- argued that the Constitution applies only to American citizens. What divided the Boumediene Court was the question of whether foreigners held by the U.S. military outside of the U.S. (as opposed to inside the U.S.) enjoy Constitutional protections...

Indeed, the whole reason why Guantanamo was created was that Bush officials wanted to claim that the Constitution is inapplicable to foreigners held outside the U.S. -- not even the Bush administration would claim that the Constitution is inapplicable to foreigners generally.

The principle that the Constitution applies not only to Americans, but also to foreigners, was hardly invented by the Court in 2008. To the contrary, the Supreme Court -- all the way back in 1886 -- explicitly held this to be the case... Over 100 years ago, the Supreme Court explicitly said that the rights of the Constitution extend to citizens and foreigners alike. The Court has repeatedly applied that principle over and over.

Mubarak's wealth

When I posted a query last week asking why Mubarak doesn't just leave Egypt, I commented that "he must have gobs of money."  Even though I'm a seasoned cynic, I was startled by the number cited by ABC News:

Experts say the wealth of the Mubarak family was built largely from military contracts during his days as an air force officer. He eventually diversified his investments through his family when he became president in 1981. The family's net worth ranges from $40 billion to $70 billion, by some estimates...

"The business ventures from his military and government service accumulated to his personal wealth," said Jamal. "There was a lot of corruption in this regime and stifling of public resources for personal gain."

Jamal said that Mubarak's assets are most likely in banks outside of Egypt, possibly in the United Kingdom and Switzerland...

Gross national income is $2,070 per family in Egypt, according to the World Bank.

Unfriend?

Via The Frustrated Teacher.

The increasing role of Al Jazeera

Excerpts from an article at The Big Think:

Scholars and foreign policy experts have long argued that channels like al Jazeera have fundamentally redefined how Arab audiences view politics by recasting political issues in regional terms and embedding Pan-Muslim and Pan-Arab narratives within its news content...

A large portion of Arab audiences who watched al Jazeera's extensive month-long coverage of Tunisia, and now Egypt, are interpreting these events and outcomes through transnational Muslim and Arab political lenses, rather than as Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, Moroccan, Yemini etc, etc...

Egyptians who view the United States and Israel through a transnational Muslim -- rather than Egyptian -- political lens may perceive a very different set of (self) interests, policy choices, and relations than currently exist. In turn, if a new, more democratic regime emerges in Egypt, it will need to be responsive to public sentiment in order to gain and maintain long-term legitimacy -- which may mean shifting the nature of its relations with the United States and Israel.

And on a related note, ABC News reports that the Mubarak goon squad burned the Al Jazeera office in Cairo:

That authorities have targeted reporters for Al Jazeera English – as well as those for Al Jazeera Arabic -- shows how the younger, more analytical of the two channels has come echo the Arabic channel's ability to get under the skin of autocratic, unpopular regimes...

Al Jazeera English has its detractors, but its coverage of Egypt has been lauded by most independent critics as aggressive, informative and more extensive than its competitors. Its increasing influence has earned the ire less of the United States -- often called its most obvious target, but which this week defended its right to report freely -- than of the governments of the region. Today at least four governments in the Arab world have banned the channel from operating, none more obviously than the Egyptians in the last two weeks...

A reminder that the streaming live coverage is accessible via the internet here.

Why doesn't Mubarak just leave?

That's the question I've been asking myself for several days.  He must have gobs of money, and little to gain by staying in power any longer.  Why not just go somewhere?  I hadn't heard that question addressed either during the Al Jazeera broadcasts or on the web, until today.  Here are excerpts from an article at Foreign Policy:

So why is Mubarak trying to squeeze a few more months out of his three-decade career in office and avowing his intentions to stay in Egypt rather than packing for the Riviera? It may be because exile isn't what it used to be; over the last 30 years, things have gotten increasingly difficult for dictators in flight. Successor regimes launch criminal probes; major efforts are mounted to identify assets that may have been stripped or looted by the autocrat, or more commonly, members of his immediate family...

More menacingly, human rights lawyers and international prosecutors may take a close look at the tools the deposed dictator used to stay in power: Did he torture? Did he authorize the shooting of adversaries?.. A trip to The Hague or another tribunal might be in his future...

If Mubarak leaves, he will need a safe haven: a government that will protect him from lawsuits and criminal charges. It is increasingly difficult for any Western state to make such promises. And that leaves him with few and generally unappealing exit options.

More at the link.  Via The Daily Dish.

About those Mubarak supporters in the conflict today...

The live streaming coverage from Al Jazeera continues to be excellent, but the best text article about the identity of the "pro-Mubarek demonstrators" I've found comes from CNN:

As battles raged between the two sides, some pro-Mubarak protesters were captured by his opponents. Some were terrified to be caught and begged for their lives, screaming that the government had paid them to come out and protest...

Several CNN journalists heard from pro-Mubarak demonstrators that they worked for the government. Staff from the national petrochemical company said they had been ordered to come and protest.

"These (pro-Mubarak) protests were organized by the government and the ruling National Democratic Party," analyst Kamal Zakher told CNN. The government mustered government workers and lawmakers whose seats are threatened, he said.

"They were ordered to go out today. They are well organized and that is suspicious -- especially the use of camels and horses. These are abnormal techniques to demonstrate," he said, referring to the shocking charge of about 50 or 60 mounted men through Tahrir in the middle of the afternoon...

State television called the pro-Mubarak demonstrators tourism workers. At least some Egyptians working in the tourism industry are known to be genuinely upset at the anti-Mubarak demonstrators, accusing them of hurting their business by bringing instability...

Human wall protecting the Cairo Museum

Kudos to these men.

Source, via Reddit.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Information from several sources, because the current events in Egypt suggest that this group will be in the news for a while.  First, from CNN:

The Muslim Brotherhood is a religious and political group founded on the belief that Islam is not simply a religion, but a way of life. It advocates a move away from secularism, and a return to the rules of the Quran as a basis for healthy families, communities, and states.

The movement officially rejects the use of violent means to secure its goals. However, offshoots of the group have been linked to attacks in the past, and critics blame the Brotherhood for sparking troubles elsewhere in the Middle East. Many consider it the forerunner of modern militant Islamism.

The article then cites some relevant history of the group, followed by these comments -

The Brotherhood is the oldest and largest opposition group in Egypt. However, it is illegal under Egyptian law, which bans all parties based on religion. Because of this, its members contest elections as independents... The Brotherhood has widespread support among Egypt's middle classes, and its members control many of the country's professional organizations...

Sayyid Qutb, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s, developed the doctrine of jihad, and the radical group Hamas is believed to be an offshoot of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood.

This from the New York Times:

The support of the Brotherhood could well change the calculus on the streets, tipping the numbers in favor of the protesters and away from the police, lending new strength to the demonstrations and further imperiling President Hosni Mubarak’s reign... But Islam is hardly homogeneous, and many religious leaders here said Thursday that they would not support the protests, for reasons including scriptural prohibitions on defying rulers and a belief that democratic change would not benefit them.

A Washington Post links to the CNN and NYT pieces and offers additional comment from an article in Time:

If we are talking about Egypt, there is a whole rainbow variety of people who are secular, liberal, market-oriented, and if you give them a chance they will organize themselves to elect a government that is modern and moderate. They want desperately to catch up with the rest of the world.

Historically, Islam was hijacked about 20 or 30 years after the Prophet and interpreted in such a way that the ruler has absolute power and is accountable only to God. That, of course, was a very convenient interpretation for whoever was the ruler.

There is of course extensive historical and geopolitical information about the Muslim Brotherhood in Wikipedia.

TYWKIWDBI normally gets about 100 visits a month from readers in Egypt; they are of course cut off right now, but if others in the region or anyone with a good understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood would like to offer some perspective in the Comments section, please have a go.

Internet cutoff in Egypt; implications re a "kill switch" for an American president

Information from various sources re the blocking of internet service in Egypt.   First, from the New York Times:

Autocratic governments often limit phone and Internet access in tense times. But the Internet has never faced anything like what happened in Egypt on Friday, when the government of a country with 80 million people and a modernizing economy cut off nearly all access to the network and shut down cellphone service.

The shutdown caused a 90 percent drop in data traffic to and from Egypt, crippling an important communications tool used by antigovernment protesters and their supporters to organize and to spread their message...

Professor Deibert said that a government that chooses to tamper with the Internet — let alone shut it off — incurs potentially serious diplomatic, political and economic costs. Citizens and businesses, he noted, have become increasingly dependent on Internet communication and transactions, and doubtless are putting pressure on the Egyptian government to relent...

Egypt has only a handful of major Internet access providers, so it would take just a few phone calls to get them to stop the flow of traffic. That would not be possible in countries with more complex networks.

These observations from the BBC:

Earlier this week, Egyptians had reported being unable to access social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. At the time the Egyptian government denied it was behind the block, saying it supported free speech.

Many of the protesters were able to get round those restrictions by using smartphone apps - which had not been blocked - to access those sites. Others used proxy servers - which divert web traffic to its destination via sites that haven't been blocked.

And from Scientific American:

The shutdown does not appear to be a spontaneous event, given that the Telecom Egypt, Raya, Link Egypt, Etisalat Misr and Internet Egypt ISPs each shut down its part of Egypt's Internet in sequence an average of about three minutes apart, according to Manchester, N.H.-based network security firm Renesys Corp. This sequencing indicates that each of the ISPs may have received a phone call telling them to drop Internet access to their subscribers, as opposed to an automated system that kicked in to take down all of the providers at once... If this analysis is correct, it indicates a level of governmental Internet control unseen to this point, not even in China, Iran and Tunisia...

Typically what happens in countries like Tunisia or Iran or China is people exert very surgical control over information, they will block particular domain names, or they'll block particular Web sites or particular small networks that host content that they don't like. When Iran had its problems after its elections, they slowed down their Internet so they could use it more effectively to control protestors but they didn't take it down...

If you look at a complex system such as those in the United States or Canada, you might ask, "How many phone calls would I have to make to shut it down?" It probably wouldn't be possible. Most of the people you would call operate independent of the government and wouldn't even listen to you. In a place like Egypt there's a lot less diversity in that ecosystem. There were just a few key providers, they're all licensed by the government. They have to do what the government says...

There is [currently] no standing legal authority to be exercised and no kill switch [in the United States]... If the laws were changed so that there were a clear-cut legal authority and a plan to control the Internet, then anything is possible. But I certainly don't think that the industry in most countries on Earth would stand to have that kind of power dangled over their heads. It would do incredible violence to the companies economically, and it would do even greater economic violence to the country.

For further discussion on this topic, see the companion piece at Scientific American entitled "Conspiracy theory: Could the president take over the Internet?"

PC World has a relevant post entitled "Get Internet Access When Your Government Shuts It Down".

And finally for now, an observation at Al Jazeera that searches for "Egypt" are not trending in China because the word has been blocked there.

Image via The Daily What.

Egypt, January 25, 2011

Incredible. 

Note the comment at 0:45 - "We will not be silenced.  Whether you're a Christian, whether you're a Muslim, whether you're an atheist, you will demand your goddamn rights, and we will have our rights, one way or the other.  We will never be silenced!

And this tweet:

Via Reddit, where there are several threads discussing Egypt.

The situation in Egypt

This topic isn't a "TYWK", but I thought I'd add two sources.  At Reddit someone asked for a basic explanation of what's happening, stating "I still feel like I started watching a very complicated movie right in the middle."  Here is the top-rated response, from "Sagron":

I'll do my best, but you should really click the links K0ilar and robotl suggested as they'll do a much better job of explaining than I'm about to.

The Catalyst: Tunisia a country in Northern Africa was ruled by a repressive and dictatorial regime led by President Ben Ali. At the end of 2010, a series of riots broke out throughout Tunisia, collectively termed the "Jasmine Revolution." The root causes are considered to be mass unemployment, widespread corruption, appalling living conditions and the governments propensity to squash free speech. This resulted in President Ben Ali dissolving the government, a victory for the revolutionaries.

Regional results: In the region, the success of the Tunisian revolution led to widespread instability. It had previously been considered axiomatic that regional dictatorships were too stable to fall. The Tunisian revolution proved otherwise and soon protests began all over the region, most strongly in Algeria, Yemen and Egypt.

Egypt: The Egyptian youth were mobilized by the example set by the Tunisian revolution. Many suggested that the upcoming 25th of January 'National Police Day' be instead used as a massive nation wide protest against corruption. Other causes for the unrest have been the widespread brutality of the Egyptian police and military (Egypt is basically a dictatorship because the country is under 'Emergency law' and has been since 1967), the crippling poverty in the country and President Mubarak himself.

The Egyptian Response: The Egyptian police and military have been very heavy handed in responding to the protests. A huge number of protestors have been beaten by police and plain clothes secret police officers. Three have been confirmed killed at the time of this writing. In an effort to stop the protestors utilizing Facebook and Twitter to organize and get their message out, Egypt shut down access to those two sites and now, basically unplugged the country from the internet entirely.

Friday: This Friday will see a pivotal moment in the Egyptian revolution as a mass protest has been called after traditional Friday prayers. The Egyptians have called for a "Million Man March" but the chaos in the country and the unpredictability of what's going on makes it difficult to even guess at what will actually transpire.

Predictions: Analysts are split as to what will happen in Egypt. There seems to be a concensus that unlike Tunisia, whose military was underpaid, had terrible morale and had little stake in the Police State, the Egyptian army is far more likely to support the Mubarak regime. If the support of the armed forces wavers (as the police support already has, on occasion) then a very real revolution is on the cards.

The U.S in the Region: If you're American and wondering, the U.S has a lot of skin in the game. Mubarak has received a huge amount of aid from the United States. Egypt is one of the only Middle Eastern countries to have something approaching a lasting peace treaty with Israel, and Mubarak is generally considered to be a 'friend of the West' by the standards of his fellow leaders in the region. Many of the protesters see the U.S as propping up Mubarak's regime. If the revolution succeeds, any popular democracy in Egypt is almost certainly going produce leaders with anti-American platforms. Further, one of the largest opposition groups in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is considered a terrorist organization and a supporter of terrorism by the Russian Federation and is typically anti-west in its rhetoric.

Hope that helps and I really hope I didn't get too much wrong.

But by far the best coverage I've found today is the live-streaming coverage by Al Jazeera English.  I've had it open on a separate tab for a couple hours while surfing and blogging; there hasn't been a commercial yet, and they are offering a mix of interviews with analysts and live video from the streets and commentary from reporters down in the streets and up in buildings.

I don't know how to embed this live video.  You can watch it/listen to it at this link.

The modern megaliths of North Korea

From a photoessay with about a hundred photos of North Korea, I found the two above to be the most interesting: "The road is prepared for an invasion, the big cubes can be pushed on the road to trap the enemy tanks. Just in case, they put those things up on every road in the radius of 50km from the border, they are often decorated. "

Credit watermarked in the photos, via Reddit.

President Obama's anti-terrorism policies

Excerpts from an extensive post by Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

...everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding -- rather than reversing -- the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism. As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise -- and claiming vindication -- based on Obama's switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power)...

And now Dick Cheney himself -- who once led the "soft on Terror" attacks -- is sounding the same theme. In an interview last night with NBC News, Cheney praised Obama for continuing his and Bush's core approach to Terrorism:

I think he's learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate... I think he's found it necessary to be more sympathetic to the kinds of things we did.

Gen. Hayden put it best, as quoted by The Washington Times:

"You've got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]," Mr. Hayden said, listing the continuities. "And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action."

And that list, impressive though it is, doesn't even include the due-process-free assassination hit lists of American citizens, the sweeping executive power and secrecy theories used to justify it, the multi-tiered, "state-always-wins" justice system the Obama DOJ concocted for detainees, the vastly more aggressive war on whistleblowers and press freedoms, or the new presidential immunity doctrines his DOJ has invented...

Aside from the repressiveness of the policies themselves, there are three highly significant and enduring harms from Obama's behavior. First, it creates the impression that Republicans were right all along in the Bush-era War on Terror debates and Democratic critics were wrong...

Second, Obama has single-handedly eliminated virtually all mainstream debate over these War on Terror policies. At least during the Bush years, we had one party which steadfastly supported them but one party which claimed (albeit not very persuasively) to vehemently oppose them. At least there was a pretense of vigorous debate over their legality, morality, efficacy, and compatibility with our national values. Those debates are no more...

Third, Obama's embrace of these policies has completely rehabilitated the reputations and standing of the Bush officials responsible for them...

If Obama has indeed changed his mind over the last two years as a result of all the Secret Scary Things he's seen as President, then I genuinely believe that he and the Democratic Party owe a heartfelt, public apology to Bush, Cheney and the GOP for all the harsh insults they spewed about them for years based on policies that they are now themselves aggressively continuing.

More at the link.

I would also like to note that Glenn Greenwald is currently holding the annual fundraiser for his blog: "relying on reader support is what allows me to maintain full independence... also enables much-needed assistance for the work that is done here, including having a regular research assistant... It also means that one can work full-time on journalism, analysis and activism without any concern for accommodating the interests of corporate employers and advertisers..."

TYWKIWDBI has made a smaller-than-we-would-like contribution to that fundraising drive.  Others who wish to do so will find a Paypal "Donate" button at this link.

Reconsidering Iran's Ahmadinejad in light of Wikileaks' revelations

An interesting op-ed piece at The Atlantic raises some viewpoints about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that I have not previously heard expressed.  Herewith some excerpts:

Is it possible that Iran's blustering president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long thought to be a leading force behind some of Iran's most hard-line and repressive policies, is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalize, secularize, and even "Persianize" Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country's more conservative factions? That is the surprising impression one gets reading the latest WikiLeaks revelations, which portray Ahmadinejad as open to making concessions on Iran's nuclear program and far more accommodating to Iranians' demands for greater freedoms than anyone would have thought...

In October 2009, Ahamdinejad's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, worked out a compromise with world power representatives in Geneva on Iran's controversial nuclear program. But the deal, in which Iran agreed to ship nearly its entire stockpile of low enriched uranium to Russia and France for processing, collapsed when it failed to garner enough support in Iran's parliament, the Majles.

According to a U.S. diplomatic cable recently published by WikiLeaks, Ahmadinejad, despite all of his tough talk and heated speeches about Iran's right to a nuclear program, fervently supported the Geneva arrangement, which would have left Iran without enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. But, inside the often opaque Tehran government, he was thwarted from pursuing the deal by politicians on both the right and the left who saw the agreement as a "defeat" for the country and who viewed Ahmadinejad as, in the words of Ali Larijani, the conservative Speaker of the Majles, "fooled by the Westerners." ...

The second revelation from WikiLeaks is even more remarkable. Apparently, during a heated 2009 security meeting at the height of the popular demonstrations roiling Iran in the wake of his disputed reelection, Ahmadinejad suggested that perhaps the best way to deal with the protesters would be to open up more personal and social freedoms, including more freedom of the press...

Take, for example, Ahmadinejad's comments in June 2010, when he publicly condemned the harassing of young women for "improperly" covering themselves, a common complaint among Iranians. "The government has nothing to do with [women's hijab] and doesn't interfere in it. We consider it insulting when a man and a woman are walking in the streets and they're asked about their relationship. No one has the right to ask about it."...

Bear in mind that advancing such anti-regime, anti-clerical views can be considered a criminal offense in Iran, one potentially punishable by death. And yet, they seem to be part of a larger push by Ahmadinejad and his circle to change the nature of the Islamic Republic. Indeed, Ahmadinejad seems to be actively pursuing what Meshaei has termed "an Iranian school of thought rather than the Islamic school of thought" for Iran, one that harkens back to Iran's ancient Persian heritage, drawing particular inspiration from Iran's ancient king, Cyrus the Great...

...this was the man who, in 2005, generated wide outrage in the West for suggesting that Israel should be "wiped from the map." But even that case said as much about our limited understanding of him and his context as it did about Ahmadinejad himself. The expression "wipe from the map" means "destroy" in English but not in Farsi. In Farsi, it means not that Israel should be eliminated but that the existing political borders should literally be wiped from a literal map and replaced with those of historic Palestine. That's still not something likely to win him cheers in U.S. policy circles, but the distinction, which has been largely lost from the West's understanding of the Iranian president, is important.

More at the The Atlantic.

n.b. - I was reminded by a comment yesterday that my prior habit of using links to highlight blocks of text for quick scanning was confusing.  I adopted that method with the original TYWKIWDBI because no other method of underlining was available and the color scheme rendered boldfacing almost inapparent.  Starting with this post I'm going to try to use bold fonts to highlight key points for those skimming through the material.