Hope is not a plan

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld made the then-questionable, and in light of his later behavior, ridiculous, claim that Al Jazeera was helping to violate the Geneva Conventions by airing images of dead or captive American soldiers. We later struck the al Jazeera transmitting station in Baghdad, also probably a questionable move.

As it happens, Tunisia now shares Rumsfeld's outrage.

The government of Tunisia closed its embassy in Doha, Qatar (al Jazeera's home office is in Qatar; it was also started with a grant from the Qatari government). They're protesting the airing of an interview with Moncef Marzouki, an opposition activist living in Paris who is calling for civil resistance against the government of Tunisia.

Of course, the reasoning is different here. This time, al Jazeera's in trouble for airing a call for civil protest by a human rights activist who wants change in a predominantly Arab, Islamic nation.

Which seems, all in all, like the kind of thing we'd want to support, and might expect to see on al Hurra.

Showing today (and then over and over again this week) on al Hurra, the American Arabic-language news station:

Messing With Heads

Think smoking pot is a harmless pastime? Think again. According to the latest scientific research, it can cause psychosis, schizophrenia, depression and anxiety disorders. And worryingly, teenagers - the people who indulge most – are those most at risk. In this eye opening documentary, young users now being treated for psychosis speak candidly about their experiences.

Good grief. Why are we wasting our air time trying to propagate American anti-drug culture into the Arab world? Is it all a clever ploy to convince radical Islamists that we, too, are a bunch of controlling fundamentalists?

Actually, I'd feel a lot of respect for the producers at al Hurra if that's the goal, as it's one area where official American national policy coincides well with radical Islamist beliefs.

If you're curious and speak Arabic (or just want to watch video in a language you don't understand), some of the programs produced by al Hurra can be downloaded from their website.

Added note: Unsurprisingly, the drug problem in Iraq is not centered on pot. Of all the things one might produce in-country or smuggle across the borders, pot would probably be the most difficult (that said, people are doing it). Instead, most of the abused drugs are either pills or non-pharmaceutical solvents (e.g. sniffing glue). I would think that the dangers of sniffing glue -- which definitely will cause brain damage -- would be good to publicize on al Hurra.

IRIN article
BBC article

I just emailed al Hurra to ask them about their choice of coverage in this case.

85-year-old dissident religious leader Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri made a fairly direct criticism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the current Iranian executive this week. He says that although nuclear energy is Iran's right, Ahmadinejad is going about it the wrong way, using belligerence rather than negotiations. In addition, he has complained about resource mismanagement, an unwillingness to admit that Iran suffers from inflation, and money spent aiding outside groups (unnamed, but one presumes Hamas and Hezbollah) rather than within Iran. In his words:

"Some countries don't have oil and gas. Yet, they run their country and stand on their own," he said, according to a copy of his words seen by AP.

He complained that people kept on shouting slogans about nuclear rights, but he asked: "Don't we have other rights too?"

It's good to recall that there are many like Montazeri, when one is tempted to paint all of Iran with the brush of radical foolishness. As we well know, the dangerous person in charge does not necessarily represent the will, ethics, morality, or value of the people.

BBC article

It's not just Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri rebuking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it seems. This week, past Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani criticized Ahmadinejad's economic policy, and apparently Iranian newspapers are printing critical editorials about his economic practices and his bellicose international stance. As this BBC article points out, this almost certainly means that those otherwise in power in Iran are starting to think of Ahmadinejad as a liability. They may not want him out of power, but they certainly want him to behave.

Again, the parallels with our executive are clear, even if "those in power" has a different meaning in the States than it does in Iran.

A State Department report on Israel's use of U.S.-supplied cluster munitions in Lebanon indicates that "terms agreed with Israel for the use of US-supplied munitions were "likely" to have been violated."

Perhaps State can remind the rest of us that Israel's self-perceived best interest is not guided at all by what is in America's interest. The only way to guarantee that weapons are used according to our agreements is to refuse to provide those weapons when the agreements are violated. No one should get an out on something that can cause us so many problems.

BBC article

"There are friendly nations, but no friendly intelligence agencies" should be amended to include "or militaries, either."

What do you do if you're Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and al Jazeera has started running pieces about how the Arab world has lost faith in Hezbollah following gloating television coverage of Saddam Hussein's execution and divisive political tactics used within Lebanon?

Blame someone else, naturally.

Nasrallah pulls a play out of Bush's playbook and badly misdirects blame for a war of choice:

"The one who fomented chaos in Lebanon, who destroyed Lebanon, who killed women and children, old and young in Lebanon, is George Bush and [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice, who ordered the Zionists to launch the war on Lebanon," he said.

Of course, as that particular BBC article points out:

Hezbollah and Israel fought a fierce 34-day conflict in July and August, after Hezbollah killed and captured several Israeli soldiers.

Do they suppose Israel needed to be told to go to war, after that?

The laughable part comes next, though, when he claims that Bush is:

"...trying to defeat resistance movements in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq by starting civil wars".

See? The massive sectarian violence in Iraq isn't a bug of bad American policy, it's a feature.

All politics is local politics.

In his editorial piece Victory is Not an Option, retired Lt. General William Odon gives a sober, cogent overview of the failings of current policy and offers an alternative plan.

For the record, that's one more plan offered as an alternative to the President's warplan.

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

The full essay is in the extended as I don't know if the Washington Post will keep the link live, but I recommend clicking here to read it on their site, as it crosslinks to other good content, such as a breakdown of the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

A bus carrying Iranian Revolutionary Guards was hit by a car bomb in southeastern Iran, killing eleven. The attack has been claimed by Jundallah, a Baluch Sunni group native to the area. The Iranian government claims that Jundallah are a bunch of rebels and drug runners, possibly with American and British support. After a similar claim was made in the Guardian, Jundalllah issued their own statement in response:

We do not have any sort of ties with the Talebans. As Moslems, we share Islam with all Moslems with moderate views. We believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all other conventions of United Nations. We believe in freedom of speech and freedom of association. We also believe in self-defence as it has been recognised by many United Nations conventions. The right to self-defence has been also recognised in almost all countries and all cultures.

We are striving and campaigning to preserve our human dignity, human rights, national identity and religious beliefs.

There's more if you follow the link, including a denial of involvement in the drug trade.

al Jazeera article
CNN article

I check into, but do not really listen to, KPFA, for much the same reason I only check in with Fox. Reporting with bias I can deal with, but in listening to either, you have to work around chains of buzzwords that the speakers can't help but choke out every time they mention a topic.

That said, there's more value to be found in KPFA than in Fox, by far.

The KPFA program Flashpoints featured a story yesterday about a policy of strip-searching at checkpoints in Israel and the Palestinian territories, with an emphasis on this having been done to children. While I was doing some follow-up reading at If Americans Knew -- the site of the those who compiled that report -- I found an article they'd included that made an interesting point. The problematic yield of American support for Israel is not just a matter of antagonizing Arab nations. It's also a matter of funding industries that compete directly with ours, including arms sales to countries we won't deal with (and given our own armament promiscuity, that may be saying a lot).

In general, this entire line of thinking highlights the lack of good cost-benefit analysis for everyone involved. The checkpointing policies described in the report aren't particularly helpful, and, like many semi-punitive measures, may tend to generate enemies rather than control them. Similarly, we aren't doing a good evaluation of our role vis-a-vis Israel. A friend suggested that our policy would be sounder if we cut our military aid to Israel and replaced it witha promise that we would not fall to an attack from outside. If we then went on to spread some of that money around the area, that would help reduce key pressures that lead to violence, such as poverty and lack of hope. And that, in the end, would even help Israel.

A series of constitutional changes that will make it easier to exclude religious groups from government and that include a number of "anti-terrorism" measures were voted into effect in Egypt this week in what was, by almost all accounts, a tremendously shady voting process.

The Egyptian justice ministry placed the turnout at an already low 27.1%, but conflicting observations from various NGOs put the actual turnout at 3-9%. Rights-oriented groups were not happy with the outcome:

Amnesty International describes the changes as the greatest erosion of human rights in 26 years.

Human Rights Watch said the amendments "effectively remove basic protections against violations of Egyptians' rights to privacy, individual freedom, security of person and home and due process"

To clarify just how shady the actual voting was, consider the following:

Ayman Mohyeldin, an Al Jazeera correspondent, said he spoke to voters who did not understand why they were voting and even found people who voted though they were ineligible to vote.

There is no guarantee that the ballot will be tallied but the incident highlights major loopholes in the voting system, Mohyeldin said.

al Jazeera article

And I mean that seriously. In this article, al Jazeera repeats part of one of the coerced "confessions" given by British military personnel in Iranian custody. The Iranian government statement is as follows:

"All evidence, including the GPS carried by the British military and also the frank confessions of all 15 British personnel shows that they have entered Iran's territorial waters without permission," Iranian state television said earlier on Monday.

However, listen to what Captain Chris Air actually says, even though he's stuck in unfriendly custody and is doubtless subject to substantial off-screen coercion:

Captain Chris Air, one of the 15 naval service personnel, was shown saying: "At about 10 o'clock in the morning, we were seized, apparently at this point here, from their maps, from the GPS they've shown us, which is inside Iranian territorial waters.

"...from their maps, from the GPS they've shown us..."

That's not an admission, even if the Iranian executive wishes it were. Smart.

The British sailors and marines recently released from Iranian custody wasted very little time at all in recanting anything said under duress and confirming that they were, indeed, not in Iranian waters when they were seized:

"We were equipped with Xeres true navigational equipment and hand held GPS for backup. The helicopter in support provided continuous navigational confirmation and we were also linked to HMS Cornwall who were monitoring our exact position at all times. Let me make it absolutely clear, irrespective of what has been said in the past, when we were detained by the IRG we were inside internationally recognized Iraqi territorial waters and I can clearly state we were 1.7 nautical miles from Iranian waters."

Also:

"We were interrogated most nights, and presented with two options. If we admitted we had strayed, we would be on a plane back to the UK soon. If we didn't we faced up to seven years in prison. We all at one time or another made a conscious decision to make a controlled release of non-operational information.

And:

"When taken by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard we were well inside Iraqi territorial waters.

"We remain immensely proud of our team. Their courage and dignity throughout their illegal detention was in line with the best tradition of the service.

These quotes were taken from a statement read by Lieutenant Felix Carman and Royal Marine Captain Chris Air, as displayed on the CNN site.

Even as he was being held in isolation, Captain Air did a great job of indicating that the official Iranian claims were false.

CNN article
al Jazeera article
BBC article

The BBC's radio news roundup is reporting today that the Iranian government is considering easing off on its gas subsidies and limiting buyers to four liters of gas a day. Translating that into American, that's a gallon of gas a day. The Iranian government faces the basic problem that although Iran is awash in crude oil, it has comparatively little refining capacity. As a consequence, most of its refined gas is imported and subsidized to keep the price down -- the report cited a price of about 18 cents a liter, or 72 cents a gallon.

Actually imposing these limits, and raising gas prices, would both be spectacularly unpopular moves. So unpopular, in fact, that it's been nearly a year since anyone suggested such a move, and it still hasn't been done. There are real worries that if something isn't done, however, the damage to the Iranian economy could be profound.

(...and, in a quirky twist on the 1970s, the BBC reporter points out that western nations could actually put in place a gasoline embargo against Iran, perhaps as a means of punishing them for continuing their nuclear program.)

In a wholly different category of mismatch, the UAE has seized twelve Iranian divers, accusing them of violating UAE territorial waters. This is just another episode in a long-running dispute between the two countries over owneship of several islands in the gulf. These islands, comprising Lesser Tunb, Greater Tunb, and Abu Musa, were abandoned by Britain in 1971, seized by Iran, and claimed by the UAE.

All of this comes just ahead of Iranian president Ahmadinejad's visit to the UAE.

Finally, the Iranian parliament has banned al Jazeera from entering, pending a formal apology to Iraqi Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. al Jazeera's crime occurred when one of its show hosts questioned the legitimacy of al-Sistani's rule, which apparently was "...a plot of the enemies of Islam and Iraq and news networks like Al Jazeera committed this insult because of their influential role."

So even al Jazeera can't catch a break. Darned liberal media.

You may have missed this, but the Washington Post has recently covered the fact that our tax-dollar funded, theoretically American-propaganda-oriented Arabic-language news station, Al Hurra, has been broadcasting all sorts of fundamentalist rantings and ravings.

From Joel Mowbray's opinion piece in the Post:

Al-Hurra was intended to cut through the anti-West and anti-U.S. propaganda that permeates even mainstream Arab media. Stories in that vein no longer see significant airtime, and nowhere is this more apparent than Al-Hurra's new approach to the Holocaust--the treatment of which in Arab society embodies so much that is wrong in that critical region of the Muslim world.

Also broadcast unchallenged were the remarks of the infamous French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, who informed Arab viewers: "Gas chambers and mass killings of the Jews, in the way that it is pretended (by the Jews), is completely untrue, and an historical lie."

Al Hurra also broadcast all of an hour-long speech by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Yes, that's the Hezbollah that we've classed as a terrorist group.

Should it seem peculiar that new Al Hurra programming director Larry Register would do such a thing, consider the fact that he speaks no Arabic. In fact, most of the upper echelon folks currently overseeing the channel speak no Arabic. This may be quirky of me, but I think if I were in any way responsible for a broadcast station meant to foster good public relations with a hugely critical part of the world, I'd bust my ass trying to learn the language.

Mowbray closes his editorial with this message:

But that's not enough. The people who already monitor the network--its employees--need to be empowered to report dubious decisions without fear of reprisal. Transparency will allow concerns to be investigated swiftly. Employees simply won't come forward, though, if they believe no one in power cares. For that reason, a clear signal must be sent by firing Mr. Register.

After all, if you can't get fired for using U.S. taxpayer dollars to provide a platform for Islamic terrorists and help further Holocaust denial, then wouldn't Congress and the Bush administration be communicating that pretty much anything goes?

I agree. Write a letter to the fool we have in the executive now, as well as your Senators and Representative. The trickle-down pattern of rank incompetence costs us money and lives, and now it's promoting radical terrorism on our dime.

The full opinion piece
Another opinion piece, reprinted on Representative Steve Rothman's site

Here's a template, if you'd like to write to the President and your Senators and Rep about the travesty of Al Hurra promoting terrorist messages using your money.

[Politician's name] -

I am writing to express my deep dismay at the fact that Alhurra, a news station funded by American taxpayers, has been broadcasting extremist messages by known terrorist leaders. This negligence and disregard for the safety of the many American soldiers and civilians working in the Middle East is intolerable, and must be stopped immediately. Programming director Larry Register must be fired, to be replaced by someone who understands the driving purpose of Alhurra, and who also has the basic competence to speak the language the station broadcasts in. Alhurra itself must also be completely reviewed, especially the levels of upper management. This includes the Broadcasting Board of Governors, who have been derelict in their duty as the true directors of Alhurra.

We need quick, decisive action on this topic before any American lives are lost as a result of continued incompetence.

[My name]

In case you missed it, Gaza has gone to hell recently. President Mahmoud Abbas has sacked the Hamas-led government by declaration, but they're having none of it, given that they've routed the Fatah security wing and overtaken the Palestinian Authority's official buildings.

For an American perspective, al Jazeera turned to Shelly Smith, a 42-year-old high school teacher who lives and works in Gaza. Her account is grim:

Our neighbour Waseem Arafat had gone to the Shifa hospital in Beit Hanoun to visit someone and when he came out a gunman shot him four times in the head.

Shortly after Ronald Reagan came into office, Iran released the sixty-six hostages it had held for over a year.

Hamas is now following Iran's example, trying to mark a political shift with a hostage release. According to a Hamas spokesman, they're calling for the release of BBC journalist Alan Johnston.

This is a clear sympathy play by Hamas, who've spent much of the last week killing random civilians as they pushed Fatah out of power. Doubtless, they do have the power to lean on Alan Johnston's kidnappers, the self-styled "Army of Islam". They almost certainly had that power two weeks ago, too -- but they didn't need to make up for deaths and mass destruction two weeks ago.

On effectively taking power in Gaza last week, Hamas promised to free kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston, in a face-saving gesture of goodwill from a group that was, until recently, shooting random bystanders in the head during their fight with rival group Fatah.

Johnston's kidnappers, a day club referring to themselves with no sense of irony as the "Army of Islam," issued a quick declaration that they were, under no circumstances, handing Mr. Johnston over.

Hamas has now indicated that if the handover doesn't happen soon, they're going to free Johnston by force. The "Army" replied that it will kill Mr. Johnston if this happens. Their own set of demands revolves around Abu Qatada, who is currently facing deportation from the UK on the grounds that he's a terrorist. Of course, given their declarations about how killing Mr. Johnston will bring them "closer to God", it's clear what their real motivation is.

Hopefully, Mr. Johnston will emerge safely from the care of this cadre of losers, regardless of what happens with Hamas or anyone else.

As I discussed in May, the government of Iran has spent the last year trying to figure out how to solve its gas problem. Despite its large oil reserves, Iran has very little refining capacity, and thus is forced to import gasoline. For years, the government has been subsidizing these imports, keeping the prices very low and doing great harm to the national treasury. Since sometime in 2006, they've been thinking of easing off on these subsidies while simultaneously putting in place a gas purchasing cap.

This week, they enacted a cap.

It did not go well.

With less than two hours notice, the government or Iran announced to its citizens that they are now limited to 100 liters of fuel (26 gallons) per month.

Riots broke out soon after, and twelve gas stations were torched in Tehran.

"Guns, fireworks, tanks, [President] Ahmadinejad should be killed," chanted angry youths, throwing stones at police.

Some Iranian members of parliament are calling for a relaxation on the cap, citing the improbably short notice the government gave. The government of Iran is, in turn, presumed to be trying to cut down on its fuel imports before someone (like, say, the US) decides to cut off the gas supply by way of applying pressure against Iran about its nuclear program, interference in Iraq, funding of Hezbollah, or anything else that strikes their fancy.

BBC article

As reported in this BBC article, BBC reporter Alan Johnston was freed today. Mr. Johnston was kidnapped about four months ago during his regular press work in Gaza. His kidnapping sparked more than the usual round of outrage, as his was seen as a fair voice that could publicize Palestinian needs and concerns to the world at large. After months in captivity, things sped up considerably when Hamas forcibly took control of Gaza and promised they'd secure his freedom. Despite initial threats to kill Mr. Johnston should Hamas try a rescue, the self-styled "Army of Islam" finally gave in and released him and a number of other captives, unharmed.

The BBC has a timeline of the process, which began on the third of July when Hamas flooded the Sabra district of Gaza, where Johnston was being held, with gunmen. The BBC and other sources describe Hamas's negotiation process in fairly vague terms, but I would not be surprised if the leverage they used on the "Army" involved some manner of threats not just to its members, but to their families.

The final words, from Mr. Johnston:

Johnston praised Hamas for winning his freedom. "If it hadn't been for that real serious Hamas pressure, that commitment to tidying up Gaza's many, many security problems, then I might have been in that room for a lot longer," he told the news conference later during the day.

Asked if he would return to Gaza, Johnston said: "After many months of kidnapping, I think I need a break."

One of the "upshots" of a totalitarian government is the ability make radical policy changes very quickly. This may occasionally result in the violent overthrow of your government, but that's the risk you generally take when the options are "violent overthrow" or "business as usual." One imagines elections let off some of this pressure.

Last week, the government of Iran announced sharp fuel rationing, resulting in much public complaint and a number of riots.

This week, the government of Iran announced that within two weeks they'll stop making gasoline-only cars, instead switching over to dual-fuel vehicles that can run on both gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). This is so obviously an unworkable schedule, it's hard to see why "two weeks" was chosen, rather than a realistic-sounding time frame.

"The automobiles which have been supplied to the market prior to this will gradually be converted to dual fuel too," Mr Tahmasebi added.

But it is not clear the infrastructure is in place yet, either to produce enough gas or to provide enough filling stations, our correspondent says.

Notice how that's over a million vehicles manufactured last year alone? There are a lot of vehicles needing conversion, not to mention the need to rebuild fueling centers, and so forth.

The thing to watch in the coming months is whether this gradually transitions into a realistic policy, or joins the ranks of many other totalitarian train wrecks of days past.

BBC article

Sixteen Saudia national were transferred from the holding facility at Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabian custody this week, following a review process at Gitmo. They follow in the footsteps of sixty-one other Saudis who were previously released from American custody. According to Saudi officials, most of the prisoners who were previously transferred from our custody were subsequently released by the Saudis.

al Jazeera article

The government of Iran just released from custody two Chinese nationals who were arrested for taking pictures of a military complex in the town of Arak.

The Chinese foreign ministry said: "In early July, two people from Chinese companies mistakenly took some pictures of some sensitive buildings when they were helping local owners to conduct field measurements in Iran.

"They were detained by Iranian police and now they have been freed. The foreign ministry and Chinese embassy in Iran have warned Chinese citizens in Iran to behave so as to prevent misunderstandings."

Indeed. It's always good to prevent these misunderstandings.

BBC article

A little shy of a week ago, a group of Israeli jets apparently transited across Syria, possibly hitting a target in northern Syria before exiting across the Turkish border and heading home.

The Syrian authorities are livid. They say that the aircraft were driven off but that they fired their weaponry into a deserted area.

Outstanding theories about what the Israelis would have hit range from the reasonable (a Hezbollah arms factory) to the less credible (a stash of nuclear weapons program material being held for North Korea). Notably, the Israeli government apparently told the Syrian government it was scaling back Israeli forces in the Golan just ahead of the action, possibly to signal that the impending strike wasn't a prelude to war.

The clearest upshot of the entire incident, for now, is that American-made aircraft still beat Russian-made air defenses. Caveat emptor.

BBC article

If you've been following the news, you should have heard that a recent National Intelligence Estimate says that Iran dropped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. George Bush has countered by claiming that this recent NIE is a "warning signal" -- rather than, say, seeing the positives that apparently international pressure can put a nation of nuclear arms.

You can download and read the public version of the NIE by clicking here. Here's the relevant section heading bits:

A. We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.

H. We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so.

Notably, this public version of the NIE was (naturally) not released at the request of George Bush. You can click here to read Dr. Donald Kerr's statement about why they released the information. Here's the punchline, in his words:

The decision to release an unclassified version of the Key Judgments of this NIE was made when it was determined that doing so was in the interest of our nation’s security. The Intelligence Community is on the record publicly with numerous statements based on our 2005 assessment on Iran. Since our understanding of Iran’s capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available. While the decision to release the declassified Key Judgments was coordinated in discussion with senior policy makers, the IC took responsibility for what portions of the NIE Key Judgments were to be declassified.

"...we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available."

"...doing so was in the interest of our nation's security."

The office of the DNI is, perhaps, not as compliant as George Tenet was.

This has been a busy week for Iran in the news. Let's take a look.

In a typically ranting speech of the kind that may soon get him censured by the actual power in Iran, President Ahmadinejad has suggested that Iran is approaching the "summit of our nuclear path." In more material terms, Russia recently finished delivering nuclear fuel for Iran's first nuclear power station.

As I talked about last June, Iran faces a fundamental fuel issue that won't be solved by nuclear power -- gasoline. Although Iran is an oil exporter, it lacks refining capacity and has been hemorrhaging away its oil profits in the form of gasoline subsidies to keep fuel prices low inside the country. Last year's attempts to fix this situation by limiting fuel use went poorly. It's unclear to what extent nuclear power will lift this kind of cost pressure, but it's possible that the discovery of a massive gas field off the coast may help by providing even more capital to pay for all that fuel. However, as the article notes:

Iran has the world's second-largest proven gas reserves after Russia and it has ambitions to export gas to a host of countries including Armenia, Pakistan and Syria.

However, it has failed to become a major international exporter because of a lack of foreign investment and slow progress in exploiting its fields.

Despite its export plans, Iran had recently been forced to import gas from neighbouring Turkmenistan because of high domestic consumption.

Switching from resource management to social management, government spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi announced the arrest of fifty-four members of the prohibited Bahai faith. The officially allowed faiths in Iran are Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism was presumably grandfathered in, as it precedes Islam in the area, and Judaism and Christianity get the special "religions of the book" exception. Bahai is in the unfortunate position of suggesting that it's a later (and better) successor to all these other faiths (you can read more about Bahai at the official website). Fifty-one of the convicts were given suspended sentences, provided they take "courses by state propaganda officials."

In the same press conference, Jamshidi indicated that a customs official was recently executed for corruption and bribery, while admitting that, yes, they don't usually execute people for corruption. On that note, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi ordered a limitation on public executions, and publication of execution photos.

Correspondents say it appears Ayatollah Shahrudi wants to lower the profile of executions as Iran has been widely criticised by Western countries and international organisations.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, serious drug trafficking, apostasy, adultery and male homosexuality.

Good to know.

Israeli helicopters continue missile attacks within the Gaza strip even as Hamas launches the occasional missile over the border. Characteristically, the most recent Israeli attacks netted some collateral fatalities and injuries among Palestinians who had the misfortune to be standing near the wrong car. Just as characteristically, Hamas is just randomly killing people as it pitches missiles into Israel without any specific targets.

Statements from the relevant parties set the tone for this reciprocal cycle of non-goal-achieving violence:

Hamas says attacks from the Gaza Strip, including rockets fired by its own fighters and others, are a response to Israeli military operations in the territory and the occupied West Bank and would end if Israel stopped all such activity and lifted its blockade.

David Baker, a spokesman for Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said: "Israel will be diligent in our efforts to put an end to these lethal rocket attacks. Those firing rockets at our civilians will know neither rest nor have any respite from the measures we will take to stop these attacks."

Gaza's Coastal Municipalities Water Utility has put out this appeal for international assistance as they have run out of chlorine to sterilize drinking water within the area due to the ongoing blockade of Gaza. It's not altogether clear how this does not count as collective punishment of a civilian population, although it's worth noting that Palestinians not bearing citizenship of other nations who live within Gaza may not actually qualify for protection under the fourth Geneva convention, which normally prevents such collective punishments from being carried out. Of course, there may be any number of Palestinians bearing citizenships of signatory nations such as Jordan or perhaps Egypt (or even Israel itself), and they are theoretically protected from collective punishment by Israel or any other signatory. Random citizens of Israel are, of course, also supposed to be protected from being rocketed by any citizens of signatory powers who happen to disagree with Israeli policy.

al Jazeera article

The U.S.S. Cole has been ordered to sit off the coast of Lebanon as an overt act of support for the government of Lebanon in the face of electoral issues and burgeoning factional conflict.

Lebanon has not had a president since 24 November, when pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud left office. Parliament has repeatedly failed to elect a successor amid an ongoing row over candidates.

The election was postponed once again this week, and is now due to take place on 11 March. It was the 15th such delay.

It's notable that of the roughly forty or so ships in the sixth fleet, the U.S.S. Cole is the first tasked to the scene. The Cole, as you hopefully recall, was hit in late 2000 by suicide attackers while in port in Aden, Yemen. It was subsequently repaired and returned to duty.

The amphibious assault ship U.S.S. Nassau is expected to head to an offshore position near Lebanon as well. The Nassau normally carries a Marine Expeditionary Unit such as the 24 MEU, which assisted in the evacuation of Americans from Lebanon during the Israel-Hezbollah Summer War of 2006.

BBC article

I'll just quote this al Jazeera article:

A group of prominent US Jewish activists has launched a lobbying group and new political action committee in a bid to promote a new Arab-Israeli peace deal, organisers say.

The J Street lobbying group and its action committee, JStreetPAC, has an advisory council of more than 100 government officials, academics and activists, it says.

The organisation was formed to counter conservative groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and evangelical Christian organisations whose pro-Israel stances have dominated US foreign policy, the group said.

...and...

[J Street executive director] Ben Ami also criticised groups who portrayed organisations voicing a more critical line of Israel as anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.

"We're a pro-Israel organisation started by and represented by those who care about Israel and want it to survive, to be strong and safe."

Following a High Court ruling that the Serious Fraud Office's failure to investigate BAE's bribery case was wrong, the SFO has appealed this decision. In response, they've been allowed to contest the ruling that they acted unlawfully in dropping their investigation. This appeal will be heard sometime later this year.

al Jazeera article

This week has been an especially Israel-heavy news week. Negotiations between Israel and Syria may well be on the upswing again, especially following the passing of an unofficial and yet not-quite-secret message that Israel is willing to consider giving back the Golan Heights. That might come as a bit of a shock to the thousands of Israelis now living in the Golan.

At the same time, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has publicized a 2004 letter from George Bush to then PM Ariel Sharon that Olmert claims consists of Bush giving Israel a green light for settlement expansion in the West Bank. The Bush administration has denied that the letter gave that message, and the final interpretation is clearly up in the air. That said, the cited article ends in a telling quote from Colin Powell, who was our Secretary of State at the time:

Powell said that in 2004, he did not anticipate that Bush's letter would be perceived as a green light by Israel for adding to the settlements. "I consistently spoke against settlement growth, but as you know all I could do is talk against it," Powell said. "There would be no consequences and there still aren't."

"There would be no consequences and there still aren't."

Powell certainly had the read on our interactions with and treatment of the state of Israel.

...and another American citizen is up on charges of spying for Israel.

It does become hard, over time, to justify protecting the little kid who keeps pathologically stealing your record collection, even if you're afraid his classmates are going to beat him up.

Over the last half decade, the two dumbest conspiracy stories concerning the September 11 attacks have been that either the United States or Israel were behind them, with concomitant fabricated tales about all the Jews (because they have meetings and memos, yeah?) staying home from work the day of the attacks, or there being no evidence of an airplane at the Pentagon (except the videotape of a plane hitting the pentagon, plane debris throughout the crash site, and an engine-shaped hole in the damn wall where one of the engines punched through). Many rational people have worked to debunk this stupidity while addressing real concerns like the false connections the Bush administration tried to make between al Qaeda and Iraq.

The latest round of debunking comes from, well, al Qaeda.

In what is viewed as a sign of increasing hostility between the organization and Iran, al Qaeda leadership member Ayman al-Zawahiri has posted an audio track online in which he blames Iran for spreading the idea that Israel was behind the attack, and definitively claims credit for al Qaeda.

In a two-hour audiotape posted on an Islamist website, Osama Bin Laden's chief deputy responded to questions posted by al-Qaeda sympathisers.

"Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it."

Indeed.

al Jazeera article

Coming fairly under the radar in this week of war and Olympics, the United States has signed an agreement with Libya in which diplomatic relations between the two countries will be renewed following financial compensation for deaths on both sides. Specifically, Libya agrees to pay compensation to victims (or rather, families of victims) of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1986 Berlin disco bombing, and the United States will compensate victims of our 1986 air raid against Tripoli.

Assuming this deal continues smoothly, we can expect to see a reopening of a US embassy in Tripoli and the possibility of financial aid for Libya. And, of course, you might actually be able to go there on vacation.

BBC article

In its latest video, al Qaeda -- as fronted by Ayman al-Zawahiri -- has taken to task basically everyone else of note in the Islamic world, claiming among other things that:

• Iran of aiding the United States by not preventing the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq
• Hezbollah of celebrating a victory that's actually a defeat
• Lebanon's leadership of following America's lead
• The anti-insurgency movement in Iraq is "treacherous" and "doomed"

Some of this was done in nicely amateurish fashion, most notably with al-Zawahiri referring to an "Iranian-Crusade" alliance, trying to imply that by not getting itself smashed to bits trying to block two different American invasions of neighboring nations, Iran is somehow our ally.

The hallmark of all those being verbally assailed by al-Qaeda in this video is that they're placing the health and welfare of their people ahead of the intangible concept of an overall Islamic nation. Iran has chosen to protect itself and its interests rather than get directly involved in fighting American forces on the ground, because that's a fight it would lose (and it almost certainly has been shipping armed support for the insurgency into Iraq, even so). Hezbollah doesn't really give a damn about a larger Muslim nation -- it wants Israel to go away and it wants to be able to control the future direction of the Lebanon area. Similarly, the official government of Lebanon isn't interested in al Qaeda's interests -- they just want Lebanon to no longer be the place where Israel, Hezbollah, and Syria fight. Finally, the teaming up of local militias and other movements in Iraq with the Iraqi and American militaries has come on the heels of locals realizing that as much as they want the Americans out, large-scale murder of their own civilians by al Qaeda in Iraq is completely unacceptable.

It is a fundamental error to assume that anyone will place a global ideology above the health and safety of their own people.

al Jazeera article

As I talked about in this post from earlier today, al Qaeda's most recent message is a screed whose targets represent a laundry list of folks within the Islamic world who have realized that al Qaeda hurts them, their nations, and their people, and who have as a result rejected al Qaeda. One quote in particular from Ayman al-Zawahiri's criticism of Hezbollah struck me:

"The most bizarre and astounding thing is that Hassan Nasrallah [Hezbollah's leader] celebrates a victory every year.

"What victory?" he said. "Retreating 30 miles backwards?" he said.

This utterly simplistic "if you've retreated, you've lost" mentality has a remarkable parallel in the minds of our toy-soldier pushing, wanna-be war heroes (without actually participating in that nasty fighting) the neo-cons. To the Bill Kristols and Paul Wolfowitzes of the world, a 30-mile withdrawal is a loss. Even though Hezbollah kept the soldiers whose kidnapping sparked the war, even though Israel took extensive casualties on the way in, even though Israel was never able to shut off Hezbollah rocket fire, even though Israel was eventually forced to leave Lebanon with no conclusive result, and even though Hezbollah was able to claim extensive political advantage within Lebanon by handing out cash reparations to civilian victims of the conflict immediately afterward, to the simplistic, action-hero-in-their-own-minds members of al Qaeda and the neo-con movement, you went backward, so you lost.

It's this same mentality that has al-Zawahiri insisting that Iran should have somehow blocked the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and that has Paul Wolfowitz unable to imagine that the postwar occupation of Iraq could take more troops than the invasion would -- despite empirical evidence from so many recent and distant wars that showed just that.

It's more than a little ironic that Michael Goldfarb called out the "Dungeons & Dragons crowd" who criticize war heroes from "the comfort of mom's basement" when this war was promoted and pushed by people who conveniently skipped out on their opportunity to serve, but enjoy pretending to be Jack Ryan and pretending to know how to run a war.

Except, of course, that even Jack Ryan actually goes into the damn field. If someone threatened to punch little Paulie, I imagine he'd sue them rather than try to fight back.

I'd be willing to put up air fare and some money for knives so that al-Zawahiri and friends could have at it once and for all with Wolfowitz and his buddies. If anyone's left over, we can have them work out the rest of their days doing community service in whichever urban center wants them.

Mr. Bush --

I was heartened this week to hear that our military is increasing operations along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. I was heartened as well to hear that more troops and other resources will be sent presently to Afghanistan to help stabilize that fine nation and wrench the future away from the hands of extremism.

I am disheartened, however, by your pathetic negligence and disregard for our citizens, especially our brave soldiers in the field, in putting this off as long as possible, and then trying to "shoehorn in" the capture or killing of Bin Laden and his compatriots before you leave office.

Are you doing this to help your party? Did you knowingly leave enough threat around to justify your own policies, but now want to cap things off in time for the McCain campaign to benefit?

Are you doing this to try and secure your legacy? Is it a failing-student, last-ditch effort to slide your copied homework under the office door and hope the teacher doesn't realize you turned it in late?

Either option is sad. Either option means that you, through will or neglect, have put off doing what you said you would emphasize above all other things.

You are derelict.

Before your second term, there was no clear answer to the question of "Who was the worst president?" Even presidents with deeply problematic times in office, such as Grant, could point to high points and redeeming qualities in their lives. You had a chance for that as well, but instead chose to put our welfare and safety aside, hand out no-bid contracts to your war-profiteering friends, and then try desperately, at the last minute, to get your homework in on time.

Fail.

Just so you know.

Sent today. For background on the "late homework" I'm referring to, click here.

Following an armed attack by settlers from the Yetsahir settlement against Palestinians in the village of Asira al-Kabaliya, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert started a cabinet meeting with this statement:

"In the state of Israel, there will be no pogroms against non-Jews."

That's a particularly powerful and intentional choice of words on the part of Mr. Olmert, making a clear connection that must be at once striking and perhaps uncomfortable to many listeners in Israel. It seems, however, like now might be the time for just that connection to be made.

The incident followed the stabbing of a nine-year-old boy by a Palestinian in a nearby Jewish outpost earlier in the day. His wounds were not life-threatening.

...and...

Yigal Amitai, a spokesman for the nearby Yitzhak settlement, said the Palestinian who stabbed the boy had come from Asira al-Kabaliya.

Asked whether Yitzhar settlers had taken the law into their own hands, he said: "I think it is time for Israel to stop playing the victim, and start being the aggressor."

Incidentally, Amitai is Aramaic for "friend."

al Jazeera article

Although there are no reliable casualty figures from Israel's aerial assault on Gaza this week, the estimate of a few hundred dead and hundreds more injured seem depressingly plausible. Although our official national line is that the Israeli strikes are justified, and the Hamas missile attacks that led up to it were clearly a terrible idea, it's hard to point to a place in this cycle where anything reasonable has happened. It's just less than a year since Israel and Hamas traded munitions tit-for-tat, and Israel has maintained a supply blockade that by a reasonable standard is, in fact, collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians within that area. Once again, it's back to missiles and air strikes, and once again, civilians are randomly suffering.

This conflict provides an unending supply of depressing quotes:

"We took Hamas by surprise, we targeted Hamas headquarters, so this is the beginning of a successful operation, I hope, but the idea is to change realities on the ground," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the BBC on Sunday.

Is there an evidence-based reason to expect that barraging the area will generate fewer people who want to kill random Israelis?

Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, suggested that casualty figures put forward by the Palestinians were misleading and insisted that only Hamas targets had been hit.

"Hamas is using figures to attract public attention, media attention and for propaganda purposes," he told Al Jazeera.

"At the end of the day we are attacking Hamas strongholds ... No civilian targets are hit, it is very unfortunate that some civilians will be hit."

As the CIA World Factbook helpfully tells us, the Gaza strip is an area about twice the size of Washington, D.C., with a population of 1.5 million, or about 4200 people per square kilometer -- roughly the population density of Boston. I challenge you to imagine an airstrike against a Boston police station that wouldn't kill civilians.

Although the exact figures are, as stated, unreliable, we know for a fact that there is collateral damage, as nine U.N. staffers have been killed so far. We can reasonably extrapolate from there that civilians are being killed, and we can imagine that this is not making the Palestinian people more sympathetic to the Israeli cause, Fatah or no.

CNN article
BBC article
al Jazeera article

Some recent headlines from Gaza...

UN Chief Outraged Over Israeli Attack on Gaza Compound (The IDF shelled the UN's compound in Gaza City, claiming they were taking fire from that location. The UN has pointed out that the IDF knows their number, and could have called them first before directing fire into a position with 700 sheltered people.)

Palestinian Death Toll Tops 1,000 in Gaza (About a third of those are children, and half or so are estimated to be civilians.)

Israelis shell hospitals and UN HQ This article gives us the following quote exchange between Ehud Olmert and the UNRWA rep:

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, justified shelling the UN headquarters claiming armed Palestinians within it had fired at Israeli troops first.

"We always take action against militants ... there were no militants in our compound and now they [the Israelis] are changing their story, saying militants were 'in the vicinity'," he said.

It's not clear how Israel's current course of action can be expected to achieve their nominal end goal of fewer dead Israelis. The evidence of past Israel-area conflicts as well as the course taken by other sectarian conflicts does not empirically support a high likelihood of success for this operation.

Following the cessation of hostilities in Gaza, international aid organizations have been allowed in through the full blockade the IDF has maintained since November. Already, members of the ICRC and the UN's humanitarian wing are declaring their horror at the destruction, and calling for immediate and long-term assistance in rebuilding the area. Unfortunately, efforts to call up money to support the aid to the civilian population of Gaza have been stymied in the UK by the refusal of the BBC to air fund-raising appeals for the Disasters Emergency Committe, a UK-based charity that is currently trying to raise funds for people in Gaza, the DRC, Myanmar, and elsewhere. The BBC decision cited their wanting to "avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story."

I am skeptical about that claim. They didn't refuse the DRC calls, and I've been reading about conflict there in the BBC for months.

As has been argued lately in some circles of Israel supporters in the US, we probably don't do our ally any good by giving them a free pass on everything they do. Certainly, stifling emergency aid to Palestinian civilians can't look good to the bulk of the world, and rightfully so.

In the aftermath of the latest wave of attacks into the Gaza area, it's looking like there may be a serious case made for the IDF having committed war crimes during the conflict. In the past, I considered that Palestinians might not count as protected persons under article four of the fourth Geneva Convention, but on re-examining the legal position of Palestine, I think that is incorrect. As such, there's already a clear case to be made for evaluating the ongoing blockade as a form of collective punishment against non-Hamas Palestinians who are not party to any ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Similarly, the mass damage and concomitant mass casualties within Gaza appear to violate article three of the fourth convention. There's also the added possibility, looking rather more like a certainty now, that some elements within the IDF used white phosphorous on that most civilian of targets, a UN school full of refugees. Indeed, the report is that the Israeli government is already forming a defense team in case war crimes charges are levied. I certainly do not relish the job of Ygal Palmor who had to go on the BBC today and insist that "Parts of the Gaza Strip are open battlefield..." in the face of cellphone video of WP landing on civilians.

Meanwhile, the official word on the IDF site is that the operation was a resounding success.

I think, perhaps, some goal reevaluation is in order.

Through the latter part of this incursion, when the question of whether or not too much force was being used was broached to American political figures, the stock response was that if missiles were being fired into an American city, we'd do anything we could. To that, I have to point out that despite narcotraffickers making Hamas-like tunnels into my old home town of San Diego for years, and despite their violence against American citizens, at no point did we send tanks and infantry into Tijuana after softening it up with an air bombardment.

Clearly, right now Gaza is crippled. However, with four hundred dead kids, it's not at all clear that there won't be more people with a newly learned violent hatred of Israel, ready to do random violence against its civilians in direct defiance of the ostensible goals of this operation.

Meanwhile, the rest of us would do well to question whether or not the IDF blew right through a treaty to which its parent nation is a signatory.

In his book Fire, Sebastian Junger asks whether intentionally provoking someone into committing war crimes against your own people should, itself, be a war crime.

Following an attack on an Israeli patrol near the Kissufim border crossing that left one Israeli soldier dead, the IDF predictably responded by sending helicopters into Gaza to blow something up.

In interviews on the BBC last week, every single Palestinian who the reporters spoke with had nothing but anger for both sides participating in the dubious futile cycle of Gaza violence -- "both" here being Hamas and the Israeli government, and notably not actually the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

BBC article
al Jazeera article

The story in Gaza over the last year has been, among other things, that of the United Nations people on the scene not being listened to by the local authorities, be they Palestinian or Israeli.

This time around, the issues is the theft of 3,500 blankets and 400 food parcels by Hamas from a UN warehouse in Gaza. The Hamas official statement pretty much spells out the reasoning, despite being a nominal repudiation of the UN statement:

The Hamas Social Affairs Minister in Gaza, Ahmed al-Kurd, denied that members of the Islamist movement had removed aid from a UN building.

He accused the UN of giving aid to local groups with ties to Hamas opponents.

In other words, Hamas wants to be the official patron, and is stealing from the UN to do it, deflecting the release of aid from people who need so they can claim authority in the area.

Notably, at the same time Mahmoud Abbas is in Strasbourg, pushing the EU parliament for a war crimes investigation following the Israeli attack on Gaza.

It is no surprise that there's frustration in Gaza.

BBC article
al Jazeera article

As I mentioned before, American journalist Roxana Saberi is being put on trial in Iran, ostensibly for being an American spy. When last we checked in, her lawyer hadn't been allowed to see the specific charges against her; now the (closed) trial has begun, with a verdict expected in a couple weeks.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has demanded her release.

"That a government expresses an opinion without seeing the indictment is laughable," he said.

Presumably, given that the general charge is spying on our behalf, our government is actually in a position to evaluate the indictment even without seeing the specifics.

Once again, I suggest you contact your political representatives about this issue.

BBC article

Just ahead of a routine bout of crazy, President Ahmadinejad of Iran called for measures to be taken to ensure the rights of recently convicted Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi:

"Please take the necessary measures to ensure that the process of examining the charges against the aforementioned individuals are being carried out carefully and fairness, justice and regulations are observed," he wrote in the letter to prosecutors.

Given the rapid upscaling and risible nature of the charges levied against Ms. Saberi, some on the outside are taking this as a sign that she's the fulcrum of a power struggle within Iran. The concern is that the case has been overtaken by hardliners within Iran who are attempting to alienate the United States during the beginning of a time of rapprochement between the two nations.

Following this call, Ayatollah Shahrudi, the head of the Iranian judiciary, called for a "quick and fair" appeal for Ms. Saberi. We can hope that this is a code for the reorientation of this misguided trial such that the bogus charges against Ms. Saberi can be reversed. We can't assume that's the case, however, and it's hard to say what anything we see from outside Iran means until Ms. Saberi and her parents are allowed to leave.

BBC article

I just added al Arabiya to my RSS reader and was immediately rewarded with a story that is a ridiculous confluence of ideology, trademark violation, and agricultural trade.

"Panic" (to quote the somewhat wry coverage from al Arabiya) erupted in Iranian markets after people realized that traders were selling oranges labeled with an Israeli brand. A first-blush glance suggested they'd made their way to Iran from Israel via China, but a deeper look, including some checking in Israel, suggests that the oranges may well have been grown somewhere else and then had fake labels slapped on them, effectively counterfeiting a prestigious Israeli brand. This reasonably plausible suggestion has not stopped the relevant Iranian authorities from issuing default rabidity in response to this finding:

In an interview with Mehr, the head of the fruit and vegetable distribution organization in Tehran called the incident worrying and said the "violators" should be dealt with.

He added that his organization will follow the issue closely and will not allow those who want to make a profit ignore “religious and revolutionary learning.”

al Arabiya article

As an interesting footnote to the ongoing tumult in Iran, consider this bit from the BBC's reporting on the topic:

Some telephone, SMS and internet services have also been restricted, prompting some protesters to turn to the internet messaging service Twitter to communicate.

The official said the state department contacted Twitter over the weekend to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that could have cut daytime service to Iranians.

I don't really use Twitter myself, but consider the hopeful nature of (1) twitter dodging attempts at censorship and (2) someone at State being aware of this fact and making the move to keep Iranian citizens communicating with the world by contacting Twitter. This is an impressive positive on both counts.

BBC article

I'm amused at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's speech today, as it offers up such helpful gems as:

"There is 11 million votes difference," the ayatollah said. "How can one rig 11 million votes?"

Given the apparent fact that the voting certification did not even follow the Republic's normal rules for vote certifications.

"The Islamic establishment will never manipulate people's votes and commit treason ... the legal structures and electoral regulations of this country do not allow vote rigging," he said in his first public address on the issue since the election.

I'm confident that, by the book, elections in Chicago can never be rigged, either.

At the same time as the Ayatollah was telling everyone to shut up and go home, Ahmadinejad was backing off from generally derogatory remarks he'd made about the protesters, insisting that he just meant the ones who were burning buildings. Inasmuch as those are his loyalist Basij militia members (who are also killing off their fellow Iranians), that's fairly risible as well.

When a young Persian expat was interviewed on the BBC today, he complained that reporters are only reporting from Tehran, whereas out in the rest of the country, people like Ahmadinejad. When the BBC interviewer pointed out that this was because most foreign reporters had been ejected and the others couldn't leave Tehran, the expat suggested they could "find a way" and that the coverage of election-related unrest is all about hating on the Islamic Republic.

Of course, what seems most accurate is that what happens next will depend on people within Iran, and we will continue to simply watch and see.

BBC article
al Jazeera article

This week met the curious news that Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan had suggested that the Chinese treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to genocide. Here are the words:

Mr Erdogan made the controversial comments last Friday, telling NTV television: "The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There's no point in interpreting this otherwise."

This is curious, of course, since the Turkish government has, to some extent rather notoriously, rejected the suggestion that Ottoman Turkey committed genocide back in 1915. This has been a big problem for Turkey both in terms of EU entry and in terms of rapprochement with neighboring Armenia.

Naturally, Chinese officials seized on this disjunction between Erdogan's words and his country's official stance. State vehicle Xinhua took a moment out to highlight statements in the EU parliament made against Erdogan's statement, right before going on to talk about how peaceful and harmonious life resumes in Xinjiang (for definitions of "peaceful" that involve pipe beatings of Uighurs by Han Chinese).

Although Erdogan's remark is frankly silly in context, it also gave the PRC a new way to point to the outside world and shout "Bad man!" while vigorously suppressing those within its own borders.

This is, of course, the normal pattern. Or, to paraphrase a friend, "It's only okay for China to kill Chinese people."

BBC article

During our most recent presidential election cycle, Sarah Palin pandered to the rabid core of the retreating perimeter crew by asserting that some parts of our country constitute "real America," whereas those other parts that didn't support her did not. Naturally, she had to backpedal on this to some extent later, but the core message of making the political opposition into actual aliens was clear.

I found this all somewhat perplexing, since I am an Eagle Scout from California, with roots in another country and the American midwest. Hard to say what that makes me, right?

Tellingly, the "they're not really ours" line showed up again this week in the voice of Afshin Rattansi, a reporter for Press TV who is often interviewed by the BBC to provide a counterpoint from the official Iranian point of view, more or less. Although Afshin is not a government spokesman, Press TV is sort of like the Iranian equivalent of Voice of America, which naturally colors its point of view (as VoA's point of view is colored by its funding source). In response to a question about how the public would view the upcoming confirmation of Ahmadinejad's new term, he had this to say:

"Certainly, 60% are not the middle class in Tehran that we are watching on our TV pictures of demonstrations."

Which is to say that "real Iran" is not those effete bastards in the city, but, rather, is the rural areas. He then went on to accuse the BBC and others of misrepresenting Iranian society by focusing on the disgruntled minority.

Of course, the dramatic flaw in all of this is that tight press controls in Iran mean that no one can do what you really need to do here and carry out a large-scale, representative survey to see how people feel in general. Thus, the best the BBC can do is interview who it can, sneak reporters to villages to see how some people there feel, and so forth.

Outside of this issue, though, I thought it was utterly telling that this defense of Ahmadinejad fell back on the same divisive, alienating rhetorical tactic that the Republican presidential campaign leaned on. Just as that campaign wanted to pander to a core that it hoped it could ramp up for victory, rather than trying to convince the rest of America that it had the right idea, the Iranian religious establishment wants to lean on an appeal to its active supporters and hopefully make the unhappy group, however large it is, seem different enough to dissuade new members from joining.

It's a curious parallel.

Today's breaking news from the Gaza strip is of a gun battle at a Mosque, between the de facto rulers of the strip - Hamas - and a radical Islamist group that thinks Hamas is too liberal. The group's apparent leader, Abdul Latif Musa, has called for Sharia and stricter application of Islamic principles in the strip, with his group threatening to burn down Internet cafes.

Apparently, that's one step too far for Hamas.

Is it going too far for Hamas to be shelling a mosque? No idea.

al Jazeera article
BBC article