Maloy Krishna Dhar on the Future of Afghanistan

From the Sri Lanka Guardian:

What are the options? Militarily, a situation may not soon arise for the USA to run away from Afghanistan, though 58% of people expect the President to pull out by mid 2011. However, home realities may force Obama or his successor to disengage from Afghanistan after arranging some kind of international recognition of Afghanistan’s “neutral status” respected by the major powers and all regional powers like India, Iran, and Pakistan etc.

Let’s have a look at the map of Afghanistan. The whole of Afghanistan is not controlled by Karzai government or the US/NATO forces. Iran has a big say in the provinces of Nimroz, Farah, Heart and part of Balochistan; Pakistan controls Helmand, Kandahar, Qalat. Paktia, Khost, Ghazni, Gandez, Jalalabad, Asdabad etc provinces through Talibans of Mullah Omar, Hekmatyar and Haqqani groups. In Northern areas non-Pushtuns have their own militia and are generally aligned to the western forces. The Tajik, Uzbek and Turkmenistani elements have more or less good relationship with the USA and the Russians. China has a common border only with the Afghan province of Faizabad. But China’s presence in Pakistan is rather significant and China is an important member of Sanghai Cooperation Organisation, in which Central Asian Republics, Russia and China are permanent members. Amongst other nations India, Pakistan and Iran enjoy observer status and Afghanistan has the status of a guest. There cannot be any international solution of the Afghan problem without Chinese involvement and agreement. Pakistan knows that it has the tacit support of China behind its ambidextrous policies in Afghanistan and Jammu & Kashmir. In most of such security related matters China and Pakistan work in tandem.

There cannot be any solution without Iranian help as well. Iran is the only Shia nation in the world which has reckonable military power. The USA tried to use Sunni leader Saddam Hussain against Iran. Later they themselves destroyed him. Conflict between Iran and the west is not new. It started over the oil issue and now it has expanded to the contentious issue of nuclear capability of Iran. The USA is in the historic habit of looking at Iran through the Sunni Wahhabi prism of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, moderate Jordan and other allies in the Middle East. The western powers have not gone back into the history of culturally rich Persia which now desperately wants to attain geostrategic status in the Middle East. Western dalliance with Sunni powers has produced wars after wars. Should they not have a second strategic and geopolitical look at Iran?

In case the USA cannot tame the Pakistan army and neutralize the ISI, as proved by WikiLeaks documents, how long it would allow itself to be blackmailed by a country which is nuclear empowered and which has the tarnished record of nuclear proliferation? Can the entire American people agree to pay the Pakistani generals for all the time to come in the name of fighting terrorism, while the same army diverts the fund to kill the American soldiers? A vibrant democracy like America shall not allow its President, the Pentagon, the NSA and the CIA to fund Pakistan with American blood-money for getting their own children killed. The bluff has already been called. It is matter of time when Washington should think of alternatives to an unfaithful bed partner.

Americans are open to radical thinking. What’s wrong if a Shia power develops nuclear research capability in collaboration with the USA and Russia? What if such an agreement is reached? In that case can Iran be used to secure the flanks of Afghanistan in a multination guarantee? Perhaps such an agreement with Iran can be a viable step to ensuring a “neutral” Afghanistan and preventing Pakistan from unduly fiddling with its internal and external affairs. There are recent indications that both Moscow and Washington are gradually looking at the feasibility of this option. Friendly Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan should be better assurance to “neutral” Afghanistan than the wolf- at-the-door, Pakistan.

Is a “neutral” Afghanistan possible? Well, some loud thoughts are rebounding from one capital to another. The Kabul Conference held on July 20, 2010 had discussed many items regarding internal and external affairs and providing service to the people. However, none of the super-powers emphatically spoke in terms of a neutral Afghanistan. Some discussions had taken place about future dispensation in Afghanistan, but most leaders were of the view that Afghanistan’s independence and sovereignty should be assured by the international community. Obviously, Pakistan did not enjoy the interlocution and later deputed General Kayani and ISI chief Pasha to have separate discussions with Karzai about Pakistan’s sphere of influence in Afghanistan. Karzai also leaned towards Pakistan with a view to stabilizing his personal position, rather than the position of Afghanistan. But, his relations with the western community are visibly improving.

The NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen spoke on the eve of the conference, exuding a high degree of optimism about the war. He wrote that NATO was “finally taking the fight to the Taliban” aimed at the “marginalization of the Taliban as a political and military force … [which] will encourage many who joined the Taliban to quit their ranks and engage in the reconciliation effort.” Starting the transition does not mean that the struggle for Afghanistan’s future as a stable country in a volatile region will be over. Afghanistan will need the continued support of the international community, including NATO. The Afghan population needs to know that we will continue to stand by them as they chart their own course into the future. To underline this commitment, I believe that NATO should develop a long-term cooperation agreement with the Afghan government.’ Obviously he had the support of Obama administration. Obama intrinsically supports the “neutral” Afghanistan idea.

Russia is not so emphatic about “post war” role in Afghanistan, but supports the “neutral” thesis. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointedly underlined in his statement at the Kabul conference the importance of recognizing Afghanistan’s future “neutral status”, which would preclude any sort of permanent foreign military presence. To quote Lavrov: ‘The restoration of the neutral status of Afghanistan is designed to become one of the key factors of creating an atmosphere of good-neighborly relations and cooperation in the region. We expect that this idea will be supported by the Afghan people. The presidents of Russia and the US have already come out in favor of it.’

The Chinese position is ambiguous. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi chose to visit the idea of a “neutral” Afghanistan, but somewhat tangentially. He said: The international community must give continued attention to Afghanistan and follow through on the commitments made in London [conference in January] and the previous international conferences on Afghanistan. We should respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty and work together towards the early realization of ‘Afghanistan run by the Afghans’. We want to see a peaceful, stable and independent Afghanistan.’ It appears that China is leading Pakistan in a joint approach to the Afghan imbroglio.

India has always supported the “neutral” status of Afghanistan and has recently reiterated, “India is committed to the unity, integrity and independence of Afghanistan underpinned by democracy and cohesive pluralism and free from external interference.”

However, Pakistan is not at all interested in any kind of Indian presence in Afghanistan. According to Chris Alexander, Canadian diplomat and former head of UN mission in Kabul wroting in an article in Globe and Mail (Aug 2, 2010), “The Pakistan army under General Kayani is sponsoring a large scale guerrilla war through Afghan proxies-whose strongholds in Balochistan and Waziristan are flourishing. Their mission in Afghanistan is to keep Pashtun nationalism down, India out and Mr. Karzai weak.” Kayani had reportedly offered peace to Karzai in case he agreed to shut down all Indian consulates in Afghanistan.

Though rendering support to “neutral” Afghanistan the USA is planning to set up a permanent military base in northern Afghanistan near Mazar-i-Sharif in Amu Darya region over an area of 17 acres. The base is about 35 km from Uzbek border and is likely to be a part of strings of US bases in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirghizstan etc Central Asian countries as part of its forward military missions in the region. Russia and China are not strategically happy with such US plans and consider the Mazar-i-Sharif base as an American plan to have a permanent foothold in Afghanistan.

All said and done, the Afghan kaleidoscope is still uncertain and Pakistan is still busy exploiting Washington’s vacillating indetermination over what to do with an unreliable ally. Obama should decide or face the wrath of the American people. The people can read history faster than the leaders can do. The same had happened in Cambodia and Vietnam. Now in South Asia Washington cannot afford to dance tango with an unfaithful partner which is conspiring with the Talibans, and is known to have links with al Qaeda. Whose war is the USA fighting in Afghanistan? Its own or Pakistan’s?

JournoList Names Posted on Web

Alleged members of JournoList, according to Free Republic, include (more members remain who have not been identified publicly):

JournoList: 155 Names Confirmed (With News Organizations)
Source List Included | 08/09/2010 | BuckeyeTexan
Posted on August 9, 2010 6:20:18 PM EDT by BuckeyeTexan

Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect
Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal
Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO
Mike Allen - POLITICO
Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America
Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic
Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation
Ryan Avent - Economist
Dean Baker - The American Prospect
Nick Baumann - Mother Jones
Josh Bearman - LA Weekly
Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report
Ari Berman - The Nation
Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute
Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University
Brian Beutler - The Media Consortium
Lindsay Beyerstein - Freelance journalist
Joel Bleifuss - In These Times
John Blevins - South Texas College of Law
Eric Boehlert - Media Matters
Sam Boyd - The American Prospect
Ben Brandzel - MoveOn.org, John Edwards Campaign
Shannon Brownlee - Author, New America Foundation
Rich Byrne - Playwright
Kevin Carey - Education Sector
Jonathan Chait - The New Republic
Lakshmi Chaudry - In These Times
Isaac Chotiner - The New Republic
Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic
Michael Cohen - New America Foundation
Jonathan Cohn - The New Republic
Joe Conason - The New York Observer
Lark Corbeil - Public News Service
David Corn - Mother Jones
Daniel Davies - The Guardian
David Dayen - FireDogLake
Brad DeLong - The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkeley
Ryan Donmoyer - Bloomberg News
Adam Doster - In These Times
Kevin Drum - Washington Monthly
Matt Duss - Center for American Progress
Gerald Dworkin - UC Davis
Eve Fairbanks - The New Republic
James Fallows - The Atlantic
Henry Farrell - George Washington University
Tim Fernholz - American Prospect
Dan Froomkin - Huffington Post, Washington Post
Jason Furman - Brookings Institution
James Galbraith - University of Texas at Austin
Kathleen Geier - Talking Points Memo
Todd Gitlin - Columbia University
Ilan Goldenberg - National Security Network
Arthur Goldhammer - Harvard University
Dana Goldstein - The Daily Beast
Andrew Golis - Talking Points Memo
Jaana Goodrich - Blogger
Merrill Goozner - Chicago Tribune
David Greenberg - Slate
Robert Greenwald - Brave New Films
Chris Hayes - The Nation
Don Hazen - Alternet
Jeet Heer - Canadian Journolist
Jeff Hauser - Political Action Committee, Dennis Shulman Campaign
Michael Hirsh - Newsweek
James Johnson - University of Rochester
John Judis - The New Republic, The American Prospect
Foster Kamer - The Village Voice
Michael Kazin - Georgetown University
Ed Kilgore - Democratic Strategist
Richard Kim - The Nation
Charlie Kireker - Air America Media
Mark Kleiman - UCLA The Reality Based Community
Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect
Joe Klein - TIME
Robert Kuttner - American Prospect, Economic Policy Institute
Paul Krugman - The New York Times, Princeton University
Lisa Lerer - POLITICO
Daniel Levy - Century Foundation
Ralph Luker - Cliopatria
Annie Lowrey - Washington Independent
Robert Mackey - New York Times
Mike Madden - Salon
Maggie Mahar - The Century Foundation
Amanda Marcotte - Pandagon.net
Dylan Matthews - Harvard University
Alec McGillis - Washington Post
Scott McLemee - Inside Higher Ed
Sara Mead - New America Foundation
Ari Melber - The Nation
David Meyer - University of California at Irvine
Seth Michaels - MyDD.com
Luke Mitchell - Harper’s Magazine
Gautham Nagesh - The Hill, Daily Caller
Suzanne Nossel - Human Rights Watch
Michael O’Hare - University of California at Berkeley
Josh Orton - MyDD.com, Air America Media
Rodger Payne - University of Louisville
Rick Perlstein - Author, Campaign for America’s Future
Nico Pitney - Huffington Post
Harold Pollack - University of Chicago
Katha Pollitt - The Nation
Ari Rabin-Havt - Media Matters
Joy-Ann Reid - South Florida Times
David Roberts - Grist
Lamar Robertson - Partnership for Public Service
Sara Robinson - Campaign For America's Future
Alyssa Rosenberg - Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive
Alex Rossmiller - National Security Network
Michael Roston - Newsbroke
Laura Rozen - POLITICO, Mother Jones
Felix Salmon - Reuters
Greg Sargent - Washington Post
Thomas Schaller - Baltimore Sun
Noam Scheiber - The New Republic
Michael Scherer - TIME
Mark Schmitt - American Prospect, The New America Foundation
Rinku Sen - ColorLines Magazine
Julie Bergman Sender - Balcony Films
Adam Serwer - American Prospect
Walter Shapiro - PoliticsDaily.com
Kate Sheppard - Mother Jones
Matthew Shugart - UC San Diego
Nate Silver - FiveThirtyEight.com
Jesse Singal - The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly
Ann-Marie Slaughter - Princeton University
Ben Smith - POLITICO
Sarah Spitz - KCRW
Adele Stan - The Media Consortium
Paul Starr - The Atlantic
Kate Steadman - Kaiser Health News
Jonathan Stein - Mother Jones
Sam Stein - Huffington Post
Matt Steinglass - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
James Surowiecki - The New Yorker
Jesse Taylor - Pandagon.net
Steven Teles - Yale University
Mark Thoma - The Economists' View
Michael Tomasky - The Guardian
Jeffrey Toobin - CNN, The New Yorker
Rebecca Traister - Salon
Karen Tumulty - Washington Post, TIME
Tracy Van Slyke - The Media Consortium
Paul Waldman - Author, American Prospect
Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent
Moira Whelan - National Security Network
Scott Winship - Pew Economic Mobility Project
J. Harry Wray - DePaul University
D. Brad Wright - University of NC at Chapel Hill
Kai Wright - The Root
Holly Yeager - Columbia Journalism Review
Rich Yeselson - Change to Win
Matthew Yglesias - Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly
Jonathan Zasloff - UCLA
Julian Zelizer - Princeton University
Avi Zenilman - POLITICO

(ht The American Thinker)

Congress Pushes to End SEC FOIA Exemption

According to this article in SouthCoastToday, Cong. Darryl Issa (R-CA) is leading the charge to put the SEC back under FOIA regulations. (ht FOIABlog)

IMHO, very unfortunately, FOIA is no guarantee of public access to anything, given the various exemptions, including privacy and proprietary commercial information, in existing law. Alhough the exemption from FOIA is an obvious slap in the face of the American public, so far as I can tell, it only means that the SEC and Senators Frank, Dodd et al. didn't approach the issue with sufficient nuance, perhaps a reflection of Mary Schapiro's inexperience in government.

Bottom line: There is no reason to exempt SEC from FOIA. Also no reason to believe that putting the SEC under FOIA would result in greater openness or accountability.

This issue is one of political perception.

Christopher Hitchens on His Battle With Cancer

(ht Huffington Post) Christopher Hitchens speaks with reporter Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic about his struggle with cancer, joined by Martin Amis, in this video (which for some reason I can't embad):

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid30183073001?bctid=309209427001

Here's a link to DailyHitchens.com.

Also, a clip from CNN:

Nina Shea: US Mosques Serve As Terrorist HQ

From National Review:

As the 2005 study I prepared for Freedom House demonstrated, radical Saudi educational materials have been exported to some of America’s largest mosques, including the Washington Islamic Center in the nation’s capital, which distributed the Ibn Taymiyyah Press tract cited above. This literature calls for Muslims to “spill the blood” of apostates, polytheists (which includes Shiites), homosexuals, and adulterers; declares illegitimate any democratic state governed by “infidel” laws; calls for Muslims to work to establish sharia states in the West through both through aggressive dawa and militant jihad; promotes war to eradicate Israel; and are virulently anti-American.

So far, these radical ideas have been deemed protected under the First Amendment, and none of the mosques or Islamic centers named in the study have been shut down by government authorities (though some foreign imams associated with some of them have been expelled or barred from the country). For example, the Saudi-founded King Fahd Mosque in the west side of Los Angeles, near LAX, remains open. This mosque has distributed radical literature during the past decade, and it was here that two of the Saudi 9/11 hijackers promptly went upon their arrival in America. They made it their base, receiving assistance and friendship while making preparations for the attack on the Twin Towers. The mosque’s imam, Fahad al Thumairy, a well-known Wahhabi extremist and Saudi diplomat, was finally expelled by the U.S. in 2003 for suspected terror connections. The Al Farouq mosque in Brooklyn also has not been shuttered despite its promotion of jihad, both through radical literature on the subject and through sermons by Omar Abdel Rahman, the Blind Sheik, who was eventually convicted of seditious conspiracy for planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; another past imam there was a Guyana missionary who is the father of al-Qaeda’s new head of global operations, the American-raised Adnan Shukrijumah. The large Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., constructed with the help of the Saudi embassy, also remains open, although it has a long history of radical connections. Al-Awlaki himself preached there; it hosted some of the 9/11 hijackers; the Fort Hood murderer was associated with it and it may have been partly responsible for his radicalization; and it has distributed radical Saudi educational materials.

More on this from Andrew McCarthy, also in National Review:

ISLAMIC CENTERS ARE THE “AXIS”

Dar al-Hijra was established in 1991. Not so coincidentally, that is the same year American leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood wrote an internal memorandum to their global headquarters in Egypt, explaining that they saw their work in the United States as a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” Echoing imam Abdul-Malik, the Brotherhood said its tactic would be “sabotage.” (The memo is here, with the English translation following the original Arabic pages.)

The memorandum elaborates that every city should have an “axis” and “perimeter” from which this jihad-by-sabotage strategy is headquartered. That axis, it adds, will be known as “the Islamic Center.” Islamic centers — just like the one at Dar al-Hijra, just like the one planned for Ground Zero — are to become “the ‘base’ for our rise,” the memo says. They are to be the focal point of education, preparation, and the “supply [of] our battalions.” Battalions are small cells of fighters. In Muslim Brotherhood ideology (i.e., Islamist ideology) it is assumed that, at a certain mature point, when Muslim forces are strong enough, violent jihad will be effective, so Islamists prepare for it.

Quite the opposite of assimilation and toleration, the memo envisions each Islamic center as a “seed for a small Islamic society” and a “House of Dawa.” Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, has proclaimed that dawa, the stealth form of jihad, is the method by which Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” As I noted in a column last week, when it was released for Muslim audiences overseas, imam Rauf’s book (released in this country as What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America) was called A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. In any event, the Brotherhood memorandum also foretold that Islamic centers would be hubs for networking and cooperation between Islamist groups. Dar al-Hijra has certainly fit that bill. Its website, for example, has helped viewers connect to the sites of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood tentacles.

We know about the Brotherhood’s 1991 memorandum because it was seized from the home of an operative named Ismail Elbarasse. And wouldn’t you know it: Elbarasse is a founder of the Dar al-Hijra Islamic Center so admired by the State Department. He is a close friend and former business partner of Mousa abu Marzook, currently the number-two official in Hamas — and a man who ran that terrorist organization from his home in Virginia until he was finally expelled from the U.S. in the mid-Nineties. It was to Hamas that, according to the FBI and Israeli intelligence, Elbarasse and Marzook jointly transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Elbarasse may also have listened to one too many of imam Abdul-Malik’s speeches about bridge sabotage: In 2004, he was arrested for allegedly casing the Chesapeake Bridge, driving along slowly as his wife filmed the span up and down, lowering their camera out of sight when passing police vehicles drove by. It was all a misunderstanding, of course. Just recording “scenery,” Mrs. Elbarasse told the FBI — as her husband urged her to pipe down. But when the FBI reviewed the tape, they found it focused on “the cables and upper supports of the main span of the bridge, and also pan[ned] the east bound span of the bridge, filming the support cables and footings of the main span of the bridge. Portions of the footage zoomed in on the bridge joints of the main support span.” “It’s a crime to videotape a bridge?” the agitated Mrs. Elbarasse blurted. The government, for reasons unknown, decided not to pursue the case.

Coming Soon: Summer Reading Posts

I've been doing some summer reading: HITCH-22 by Christopher Hitchens; THE FLIGHT OF THE INTELLECTUALS by Paul Berman; TAMING THE GODS by Ian Buruma; A MOSQUE IN MUNICH by Ian Johnson; LIESPOTTING by Pamela Meyer. So, some posts to come should be a sort of summer reading special...stay tuned.

Germany Closes Hamburg Mosque After Terror Raid

From Bloomberg News:

German security officials raided and closed a Hamburg mosque where some of the al-Qaeda hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks met.

Taiba, an “Arab-German culture association” previously known as the al-Quds mosque, was shut down and banned today, the city-state’s security agency said in a statement on its website, without giving further details. Photos in the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper showed police entering the building and carrying out computers.

The Taiba mosque has again become a focal point for Islamists in Germany’s second-largest city, Abendblatt said on its website.

The Hamburg terror cell included three of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide pilots, among them the lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, and plotters of the attacks on New York and Washington. Their meetings at the al-Quds mosque included the 1999 wedding of one of the alleged conspirators

UPDATE: More from AFP, including an Uzbek connection:

The mosque, with about 45 members, was still the main meeting point for Islamic extremists in the city, according to Hamburg authorities.

Between 200 and 250 people usually attended Friday prayers including Arabs, Iranians, Russians, Bosnians and German converts.

Its current imam, German-Syrian national Mamoun Darkazanli, is wanted by Spanish authorities as a suspected Al-Qaeda operative with alleged links to the cell behind the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people.

Germany has refused to extradite him following a ruling by its highest court, and dropped its own case against him in 2006 for lack of evidence.

Earlier this year, German media reported that the CIA had singled Darkazanli out for targeted killing. The claims were never confirmed.

In a case officials described as decisive to the closing of the mosque, 10 men who regularly attended the prayer house travelled to the border region straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan in March last year, probably to attend militant training camps.

They are under investigation by German prosecutors on suspicion of founding a terrorist organisation.

At least one of the men allegedly joined the radical Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan while in Pakistan and later appeared in a German-language propaganda video in which he called for Muslims to take part in holy war, officials said.

Ahlhaus said Taiba had a sophisticated programme of courses, sermons, seminars and online publications to whip up hatred of "non-believers".

"We do not tolerate organisations that are levelled against the constitutional order and the idea of understanding between cultures in an aggressive, militant way," he said.

"But I underline that these measures are not targeted against the majority of the peace-loving, law-abiding Muslims in Hamburg."

The mosque belonged to the Salafist wing of Sunni Islam, a small fundamentalist minority among Germany's more than four million Muslims.

Bill Kristol: Mosque is Mayor Bloomberg's 9/11 WTC Memorial

From the Weekly Standard (ht Claudia Rossett, JihadWatch):

The conclusion of Bloomberg’s speech was odd: “Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure—and there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God’s love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us can attest.” Do the rest of us need Bloomberg’s hand-picked religious leaders to tell us that there are no limits to God’s love and mercy? We do doubt that encouraging this mosque to be built is an appropriate expression of respect for God’s love and mercy for those who were killed almost nine years ago. And we would note that no expression of New Yorkers’ love and gratitude for the victims of September 11 has yet been built at the site of Ground Zero during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure.

It is likely, we believe, that civic pressure will cause the mosque to be moved elsewhere—Bloomberg’s lecture notwithstanding. But if Bloomberg were to have his way, it’s worth noting that he would presumably attend a dedication of Feisal Abdul Rauf’s mosque at Ground Zero before he would attend a dedication of a proper memorial to those who died there.

Contemporary liberalism means building a mosque rather than a memorial at Ground Zero—and telling your fellow citizens to shut up about it.

Riot in Washington, DC Metro

According to Washington's WTOP news radio, there was a 70-person brawl at Metro's Gallery Place station last night. I wasn't there, but I was not far away.

I came home from Reagan National Airport by DC Metro last night. Although my transfer point had been Metro Center, not Gallery Place station, it doesn't surprise me that there was a brawl on the subway last night. Things are clearly terribly out of control at Metro. The system is a complete shambles. It is a shame and a disgrace. When I moved to Washington, DC in 1991, it was beautiful, clean, safe and efficient.

Not anymore.

I felt like rioting myself when I found all the escalators to the Shady Grove platform running the wrong way, with the stations steps blocked by barricades. There were no signs, nor were any Metro personnel present to give directions. Upon making my way with a few other brave souls past the barrier to the platform, I spotted a Metro employee sitting in a chair near a police-taped closed pathway. "How do I get the northbound Red Line train to Shady Grove?" I asked him.

He would not answer.

"There are no signs," I said.

"Do you usually walk past barricades?" he finally answered angrily.

"When all the escalators are running the wrong way, and there are no signs, yes," I shouted back.

He sat in stony silence in his chair.

So, I said, "Just tell me how to get on the northbound Red Line. I pay your salary."

"You don't pay my salary," he responded.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"I don't have to tell you my name," he said.

"I'm going to report you," I responded. "I pay your salary two ways--once in the fare, and again in my taxes as a DC resident."

"What's your name?" he asked me in reply. "Where do you work? I'm going to report you to your employer."

I gave him my name, and added that I was self-employed.

I then said, "Let's call a policeman to settle this."

"My name is John," he said.

"All trains are running on the Glenmont platform."

So, with a small group of onlookers, we transferred to a crowded southbound platform--jammed with passengers waiting on a Saturday night for trains going both northbound and southbound on a single track, running on a delayed schedule. Jammed. Unhappy.

The riot at Gallery Place, whatever may have sparked it, is clearly a symptom of the complete collapse of DC Metro's management.

Republicans Attack Kagan as Unfit for Supreme Court

Mayor Giuliani Opposes Ground Zero Mosque

Hizzoner's declaration of opposition, as transcribed by Politico's Maggie Haberman (ht JihadWatch):

"It sends a particularly bad message, particularly (because) of the background of the imam who is supporting this. This is an Imam who has supported radical causes, who has not been forthright in condemning Islamic (terrorism) and the worst instincts that that brings about.

"So it not only is exactly the wrong place, right at ground zero, but it's a mosque supported by an imam who has a record of support for causes that were sympathetic with terrorism. Come on! We're gonna allow that at ground zero?

"This is a desecration," he added. "Nobody would allow something like that at Pearl Harbor. Let's have some respect for who died there and why they died there. Let's not put this off on some kind of politically correct theory.

"I mean, they died there because of Islamic extremist terrorism. They are our enemy, we can say that, the world will not end when we say that. And the reality is, it will not and should not insult any decent Muslim because decent Muslims should be as opposed to Islamic extremism as you and I are."

Daniel Pipes: Britain World's Terrorist HQ

From DanielPipes.com:

In all, 28 countries have come under assault from British-based Islamist terrorists, giving some idea of their global menace. Other than India, the target countries divide into two distinct types, Western and majority-Muslim. An odd trio of the United States, Afghanistan, and Yemen have suffered the most British-linked terrorists.

Jacob Applebaum on Wikileaks' Rationale

From The Independent's (UK) story on his arrest by US Customs on arrival in NYC on his way to DefCon, this explanation of the need for Wikileaks:

At DefCon, Mr Appelbaum refused to confirm or comment on his detention but defended Wikileaks' commitment to exposing information that governments around the world want suppressed. "All governments are on a continuum of tyranny," he said. "In the US, a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt. In the US, we don't have censorship but we do have collaborating news organisations."

Wikileaks Co-Founder: Media Reporting Failures Create Wikileaks Demand

Australia's The Age newspaper interviewed Daniel Schmitt, co-CEO of Wikileaks, who said mainstream media has become a coverup industry, instead crusaders for truth:

And by week's end, wonder was that the medium was perhaps the message, that while the thrust of the documents was hardly revelational, the high-tech disgorging of secret material might prove an increasingly popular method for airing grievances, exposing lies and cover-ups, and - yes, maybe - for keeping governments honest.

''I'm sure that we are changing the game here,'' coos Daniel Schmitt, a 32-year-old former IT security specialist from Berlin who, along with Australian Julian Assange, is the public face of WikiLeaks. ''Just look at the sheer amount of good leaks we've had in the past three years. The whole idea of automating the leaking process is changing the way that society works.''

Call it the democratisation of leaking: individual media groups were more inclined to keep custody of the information they were scrutinising, argues Schmitt, [but] ''we publish the documents in full''.

''A source wants the maximum impact of their revelations. They want to change something. If they go to a newspaper, the newspaper will keep it secret and not share it with different papers to work further on the information. That is why sources mainly come to us. When we publish something, everyone can write a story about it.''

Sunday Times (UK): US OK'd BP-Libya Pan Am Bomber for Oil Deal

For some reason Rupert Murdoch doesn't want anyone to read the original article (The Sunday Times website is charging a pound a peep), so I've posted this link to the smoking gun quote as published on The Spectator (UK) website:

‘In the letter, sent on August 12 last year to Alex Salmond, the first minister, and justice officials, Richard LeBaron (deputy ambassador in London) wrote that the United States wanted Megrahi to remain imprisoned in view of the nature of the crime.

The note added: “Nevertheless, if Scottish authorities come to the conclusion that Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the US position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose.” LeBaron added that freeing the bomber and making him live in Scotland “would mitigate a number of the strong concerns we have expressed with regard to Megrahi’s release”.

Of course, the US could have asked that Megrahi be extradited for trial in the US, since there is no statue of limitations on murder, and the original agreement with the UK specified that he would not be set free--which is why the US needed to kosher the handover, in the first place.

Like the Wikileaks controversy, it is important that the facts come out, so that the problem can be resolved. If not, continued "credibility gaps" will suck all the life out of the administration as well as America's international posture, IMHO. Let's see all the relevant memos, in full, on the internet, sooner rather than later, please. Otherwise, it's just drip...drip...drip...

Arthur Herman has more in the NY Post (which Rupert still permits us to read online, for now):

Tuesday, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) announced that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was going to suspend its hearings on the sudden release last year of convicted Lockerbie bomber and Libyan citizen Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.

Menendez claims the reason he had to stop the investigation that he, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other Democrats have been screaming for is that the British witnesses they wanted to question on the possible link between Megrahi's release and a big BP offshore-drilling deal with Libya refused to testify.

Congressional Dems stopped a probe that would have disclosed what Obama and AG Holder knew about the release of Libyan terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.

The real reason is that the probe might also have had to disclose what President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder knew and when they knew it. That's because the London Times on Sunday published a letter written by deputy US ambassador Richard LeBaron in the days before Megrahi was set free, telling Scotland's first minister that, while the Obama administration opposed the terrorist bomber's release, it was nonetheless "far preferable" that he be sprung on compassionate grounds than be moved to a Libyan prison.

At the very least, the letter undermines Obama's statement that he had been "surprised, disappointed and angry" by the release last August. It turns out that he knew all along and that his anger and disappointment didn't extend so far as to make a diplomatic big deal about it.

At the time, an outraged Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said the release of the man convicted of murdering the 189 Americans on Pan Am 103 on grounds of "compassion" turned the meaning of the word on its head. It seems Obama was one of those doing the headstand.

Now that the Lockerbie hearings have been suspended, we may never get to the truth of what happened in those crucial days in mid-August or read the transcript that the White House is withholding of a conversation Holder had with his Scottish counterpart before the release.
That's unfortunate, because the truth would help us answer a more important question: How serious is this president about fighting and winning the War on Terror?

Meanwhile, Politico's Laura Rozen repeats US State Department boilerplate, including this link to the full text of LeBaron's 2009 letter as posted on the State Department website. After reading the text, including this paragraph:

We appreciate the manner in which the Scottish Government has handled this difficult situation. We recognize that the prisoner transfer decision is one that the Scottish Government did not invite, but now must take. We hope that the Scottish Government would consider every available alternative before considering the granting of Megrahi's prisoner transfer application;

IMHO, The Sunday Times interpretation is correct, and the State Department is misrepresenting the letter's implications.

If the US had objected strenuously, the UK (including Scottish) government would not have gone ahead with Megrahi's release.

Safe to say, from reading the document, that America's diplomats shed only "Crocodile Tears."

Wikileaks Reveals Iranian Ties to Al Qaeda

According to this article in the Wall Street Journal (ht JihadWatch):

U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said some of the most explosive information contained in the WikiLeaks documents detail Iran's alleged ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the facilitating role Tehran may have played in providing arms from sources as varied as North Korea and Algeria.

The officials have for years received reports of Iran smuggling arms to the Taliban. The WikiLeaks documents, however, appear to give new evidence of direct contacts between Iranian officials and the Taliban's and al Qaeda's senior leadership. It also outlines Iran's alleged role in brokering arms deals between North Korea and Pakistan-based militants, particularly militant leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and al Qaeda.

Sherrod to Sue Breitbart

Sherrod v. Breitbart could be an interesting case, for it surely raises questions of defamation, libel, and the worth of one's personal reputation, as well as the responsibility of a blogger to correct mistakes on the record--provided they were mistakes. It would also be interesting from a freedom of the press point-of-view, insofar as Shirley Sherrod's status as a "public figure" who gave a public speech would probably become an issue.

SAN DIEGO — Ousted Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod said Thursday she will sue a conservative blogger who posted a video edited in a way that made her appear racist.

Sherrod was forced to resign last week as director of rural development in Georgia after Andrew Breitbart posted the edited video online. In the full video, Sherrod, who is black, spoke to a local NAACP group about racial reconciliation and overcoming her initial reluctance to help a white farmer.

Speaking Thursday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Sherrod said she would definitely sue over the video that took her remarks out of context. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has since offered Sherrod a new job in the department. She has not decided whether to accept.

Sherrod said she had not received an apology from Breitbart and no longer wanted one. "He had to know that he was targeting me," she said.

Breitbart did not immediately respond to a call or e-mails seeking comment. He has said he posted the portion of the speech where she expresses reservations about helping the white farmer to prove that racism exists in the NAACP, which had just demanded that the tea party movement renounce any bigoted elements. Some members of the NAACP audience appeared to approve when Sherrod described her reluctance to help the farmer.

The farmer came forward after Sherrod resigned, saying she ended up helping save his farm.

Vilsack and President Barack Obama later called Sherrod to apologize for her hasty ouster. Obama said Thursday that Sherrod "deserves better than what happened last week."

I'm looking forward to the trial, and think it might become a bellwether libel and press freedom case...unless it is settled out of court and sealed by a non-disclosure agreement. The libel case represents a coming of age, of sorts, for bloggers. Plenty of mainstream news outlets get sued for damages. For example, Vicki Iseman, a former aide to Sen. John McCain, sued The New York Times for libel. She settled the case in 2009.

Storm Cuts Power to 250,000 Homes in Washington Capital Area

I published an open memo to President Obama (reprinted in my local neighborhood newspaper, The Northwest Current) in May 2009. It recommended using stimulus money to bury power lines. Had the administration taken my advice, a quarter-million homes in and around Washington, DC would not have been in the dark after last Sunday's storm:

Memo to President Obama: Use Federal Stimulus Funds to Bury Urban Power Lines

TO: The President
FROM: LJ
RE: Using Stimulus Funds to Bury Power Lines
DATE: May 18, 2009

The night before last, a big thunderstorm knocked down some trees that cut power to our urban block in the Nation's Capital. We were without power for some 10 hours before repair crews fixed the problem. The experience reminded me of complaints from participants in a seminar that I teach for families of international diplomats. Every year, some of the foreigners posted here express shock and dismay that their power goes out during storms in Washington, DC. Europeans and delegates from the former Soviet block simply cannot believe that the richest and most powerful country in the world allows its capital to suffer power cuts and blackouts "like a third-world country." I used to just shrug my shoulders and repeat the mantra that "burying power lines is very expensive..."

However, given the massive spending on the stimulus package and the need to create jobs in the USA, it would seem to me that there would be no better time than right now for the Obama administration to announce a federal program to bury power lines in urban areas. These are jobs that can't be moved to China or India, and the benefits will be felt as soon as residents of Washington, DC no longer need to stock up on candles and flashlights every time there is a bad weather forecast.

Furthermore, from a national security point of view it would seem to be a no-brainer that buried power lines are less subject to disruption from terrorism than those hanging on flimsy telephone poles. Needless to say, if climate change predictions are correct, increasingly severe weather would result in more power outages affecting above-ground transmission wires. Not to mention the disruption power cuts cause to the disabled dependent on electrically-powered medical equipment.

Burying power lines with stimulus funds would create jobs, improve national security, and enhance the quality of life in urban areas. At the same time, the latest FiOS and other high-tech connections could be installed, providing infrastructural improvements requisite for the industries of tomorrow where people are living today, perhaps lowering electricity rates in the bargain..Last but not least, it would no doubt help improve the image of America in the hearts and minds of diplomats posted here from around the world.

To those who say it can't be done, let us remind them of your campaign slogan: "Yes, we can!"

The Guardian's Wikileaks Website (Nice Graphics...)

French TV Interviews Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange