George Gilder's Israel Test

A reader of this blog told me to read George Gilder's new book, The Israel Test, in order to understand what is happening with the "Gaza Flotilla." He even sent me this link to the first chapter, which one can read on Google Books. It makes for interesting reading...

Charles Crawford on How the Internet Fries Our Brains

From CharlesCrawford.biz:

The general Carr argument is that the immediacy of unlimited communication actually changes the way we think, to the extent of affecting the way our very neural circuits tick:

... fewer and fewer people are likely to be engaged in such contemplative, deep reading activities due to the highly distractive nature of the Internet and digital technologies.

“With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use,” Carr claims. “At the very least, it’s the most powerful that has come along since the book.”

The Net and multimedia “strains our cognitive abilities, diminishing our learning and weakening our understanding” ...

This piece took me to Nicholas Carr's blog Rough Type.

See eg his ideas on delinkification - cutting hyperlinks from work (such as this sentence!) to help the flow of thought and general self-discipline, or at least listing the links only at the end of the piece.

And this magnificent, elegant effort about why LP records emerged. Was it to help 'bundle' more songs on to a single disk? No:

The long-player was not, in other words, a commercial contrivance aimed at bundling together popular songs to the advantage of record companies and the disadvantage of consumers; it was a format specifically designed to provide people with a much better way to listen to recordings of classical works.

Anyway, does the Internet in fact change our brains?

Probably.

We read more, but surely we also read less systematically. We get jumpy if we have not checked our emails/texts.

I am struck by the way even serious grown-ups now think there is nothing wrong in abruptly tuning out of a conversation with the person next to them while checking some or other e-device. Go to a park or restaurant and look at people who are ostensibly together in fact ignoring each other, as they tap away on little gadgets or simply talk to people on their mobiles. The remote starts to get more 'real' or at least immediate/important than reality.

Uzbek Spiritual Leader Dies in Jerusalem, Age 61

From the Jerusalem Post:

In a small and ancient family plot attached to his ancestral home in Jerusalem’s Old City, regional Sufi leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bukhari was laid to rest on Tuesday at age 61, after a long struggle with heart disease. He was head of the mystical Naqshabandi Holy Land Sufi Order.

A longtime proponent of nonviolence and interfaith unity, Bukhari found his inspiration in Islamic law and tradition, as well as in the writings of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

“The stronger one is the one who can absorb the violence and anger from the other and change it to love and understanding. It is not easy; it is a lot of work. But this is the real jihad,” he once told the Globaloneness Project in an interview.

His teachings and practices put him in danger and under great stress that over the years harmed his health, said Sheikh Ghassan Manasra of Nazareth, whose father heads the regional Holy Land Qadari Sufi Order.

“Sheikh Bukhari influenced lots of people, worked hard to bridge the religions and cultures; and his teaching is keeping part of the youth on the right path. We worked together for many years and succeeded many times and failed many times and decided to stay on the [path] of God to bring peace, tolerance, harmony and moderation,” he said.

“But on both sides, Jewish and Muslim, there are moderates but also extreme people, and our work was very dangerous, with a lot of pressure and stress until now, and I think this explains, in part, his heart problems.”

Netanyahu's Gaza Flotilla Statement

From the Israeli Prime Minister's Office website:

“No Love Boat”

Once again, Israel faces hypocrisy and a biased rush to judgment. I’m afraid this isn’t the first time.

Last year, Israel acted to stop Hamas from firing thousands of rockets into Israel’s towns and cities. Hamas was firing on our civilians while hiding behind civilians. And Israel went to unprecedented lengths to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties. Yet it was Israel, and not Hamas, that was accused by the UN of war crimes.

Now regrettably, the same thing appears to be happening now.

But here are the facts. Hamas is smuggling thousands of Iranian rockets, missiles and other weaponry – smuggling it into Gaza in order to fire on Israel’s cities. These missiles can reach Ashdod and Beer Sheva – these are major Israeli cities. And I regret to say that some of them can reach now Tel Aviv, and very soon, the outskirts of Jerusalem. From the information we have, the planned shipments include weapons that can reach farther, even farther and deeper into Israel.

Under international law, and under common sense and common decency, Israel has every right to interdict this weaponry and to inspect the ships that might be transporting them.

This is not a theoretical challenge or a theoretical threat. We have already interdicted vessels bound for Hezbollah, and for Hamas from Iran, containing hundreds of tons of weapons. In one ship, the Francop, we found hundreds of tons of war materiel and weapons destined for Hezbollah. In another celebrated case, the Karine A, dozens of tons of weapons were destined for Hamas by Iran via a shipment to Gaza. Israel simply cannot permit the free flow of weapons and war materials to Hamas from the sea.

I will go further than that. Israel cannot permit Iran to establish a Mediterranean port a few dozen kilometers from Tel Aviv and from Jerusalem. And I would go beyond that too. I say to the responsible leaders of all the nations: The international community cannot afford an Iranian port in the Mediterranean. Fifteen years ago I cautioned about an Iranian development that has come to pass – people now recognize that danger. Today I warn of this impending willingness to enable Iran to establish a naval port right next to Israel, right next to Europe. The same countries that are criticizing us today should know that they will be targeted tomorrow.

For this and for many other reasons, we have a right to inspect cargo heading into Gaza.

And here’s our policy. It's very simple: Humanitarian and other goods can go in and weapons and war materiel cannot.

And we do let civilian goods into Gaza. There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Each week, an average of ten thousand tons of goods enter Gaza. There's no shortage of food. There's no shortage of medicine. There's no shortage of other goods.

On this occasion too, we made several offers – offers to deliver the goods on board the flotilla to Gaza after a security inspection. Egypt made similar offers. And these offers were rejected time and again.

So our naval personnel had no choice but to board these vessels. Now, on five of the vessels, our seamen were not met by any serious violence and as a result, there were no serious injuries aboard those ships. But on the largest ship, something very different happened.

Our naval personnel, just as they landed on the ship – you can see this in the videos – the first soldier – they were met with a vicious mob. They were stabbed, they were clubbed, they were fired upon. I talked to some of these soldiers. One was shot in the stomach, one was shot in the knee. They were going to be killed and they had to act in self-defense.

It is very clear to us that the attackers had prepared their violent action in advance. They were members of an extremist group that has supported international terrorist organizations and today support the terrorist organization called Hamas. They brought with them in advance knives, steel rods, other weapons. They chanted battle cries against the Jews. You can hear this on the tapes that have been released.

This was not a love boat. This was a hate boat. These weren't pacifists. These weren't peace activists. These were violent supporters of terrorism.

I think that the evidence that the lives of the Israeli seamen were in danger is crystal clear. If you're a fair-minded observer and you look at those videos, you know this simple truth. But I regret to say that for many in the international community, no evidence is needed. Israel is guilty until proven guilty.

Once again, Israel is told that it has a right to defend itself but is condemned every time it exercises that right. Now you know that a right that you cannot exercise is meaningless. And you know that the way we exercise it – under these conditions of duress, under the rocketing of our cities, under the impending killing of our soldiers – you know that we exercise it in a way that is commensurate with any international standard. I have spoken to leading leaders of the world, and I say the same thing today to the international community: What would you do? How would you stop thousands of rockets that are destined to attack your cities, your civilians, your children? How would your soldiers behave under similar circumstances? I think in your hearts, you all know the truth.

Israel regrets the loss of life. But we will never apologize for defending ourselves. Israel has every right to prevent deadly weapons from entering into hostile territory. And Israeli soldiers have every right to defend their lives and their country.

This may sound like an impossible plea, or an impossible request, or an impossible demand, but I make it anyway: Israel should not be held to a double standard. The Jewish state has a right to defend itself just like any other state.

Thank you.

Self-Publishing Challenges Book Industry Establishment

According to today's Wall Street Journal, authors are now able to bypass the publishing industry by selling their self-published books on Amazon.com--and the iPad looks to make electronic publishing the wave of the future:

Much as blogs have bitten into the news business and YouTube has challenged television, digital self-publishing is creating a powerful new niche in books that's threatening the traditional industry. Once derided as "vanity" titles by the publishing establishment, self-published books suddenly are able to thrive by circumventing the establishment.

"If you are an author and you want to reach a lot of readers, up until recently you were smart to sell your book to a traditional publisher, because they controlled the printing press and distribution. That is starting to change now," says Mark Coker, founder of Silicon Valley start-up Smashwords Inc., which offers an e-book publishing and distribution service.

Fueling the shift is the growing popularity of electronic books, which few people were willing to read even three years ago. Apple Inc.' s iPad and e-reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle have made buying and reading digital books easy. U.S. book sales fell 1.8% last year to $23.9 billion, but e-book sales tripled to $313 million, according to the Association of American Publishers. E-book sales could reach as high as 20% to 25% of the total book market by 2012, according to Mike Shatzkin, a publishing consultant, up from an estimated 5% to 10% today.

But some publishers say that online self-publishing and the entry of newcomers such as Amazon into the market could mark a sea change in publishing.

"It's a threat to publishers' control over authors," said Richard Nash, former publisher of Soft Skull Press who recently launched Cursor Inc., a new publishing company. "It shows best-selling authors that there are alternatives—they can hire their own publicist, their own online marketing specialist, a freelance editor, and a distribution service."

Amazon has taken an early lead, providing service tools for authors to self publish and creating an imprint last year to publish promising authors in print and online.

This month, Amazon is upping the ante, increasing the amount it pays authors to 70% of revenue, from 35%, for e-books priced from $2.99 to $9.99. A self-published author whose e-book lists for $9.99 on Amazon's Kindle e-bookstore will receive about $6.99 for each book sold. The author would net $1.75 on a similar new e-book sale by most major publishers.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I own stock in Amazon and Apple.

Federal Contracts to Go Online

(ht FOIABlog) According to a story in the Federal Times, the US Government is moving towards putting its contracts online for public inspection. Hope it leads to greater competition rather than more "off the books" shenanigans. It might also lead to less contracting and more full-time employees, not a bad way to go...

Israel Links Turkish Ship to Al Qaeda

From the Israeli Defense Force website:

In a special meeting of the Security Cabinet it was disclosed that a group of 40 people on board the Mavi Marmara with no identification papers belong to Al Qaeda. The terrorists were equipped with bullet proof vests, night-vision goggles, and weapons.

On board the Mavi Marmara ship that arrived as part of the flotilla to Gaza was a group of approximately 40 people with no identification papers, who are mercenaries belonging to the Al Qaeda terror organization. This was disclosed by the Israeli Security Cabinet, which gathered on Tuesday evening (June 1) for a special meeting.

Do I believe this? Yes.

Curiously, the recently released Obama National Security strategy declared that the US is at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates. But in this case, the US pressured Israel to release the captured Al Qaeda affiliated fighters! What kind of war is that? BTW, Hamas is also affiliated with Al Qaeda, through the Muslim Brotherhood.

So, if Obama's National Security Strategy is nothing more than lip-service, does that mean America actually has no national security strategy at all?

That would explain a lot...

More on the story at Sad Red Earth.

NGOs--The New "Merchants of Death"

Recent stories about NGO involvement in the "Gaza Flotilla" call to mind Linda Polman's new book War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times. Polman argues that so-called "humanitarians" are the new "merchants of death"--supplying warring armies with everything from tents, food and medicine to guns, grenades, and rockets in pursuit of money and power. I saw a copy of the book on sale in Daunt's bookshop on the Fulham Road in London on the day we returned to the USA. I bought it, and read it, fascinated, in a single sitting, just before news from Gaza confirmed every word Polman wrote. Her case studies are mainly in Africa, Asia, and Iraq. But the tragedy facing the Palestinians is touched upon...and the blame placed squarely where it belongs: with UNRWA and the NGOs that have turned a blind eye to murder and mayhem since 1948.

Here's what The Independent (UK) had to say:

Aid, she argues, can prolong conflicts and endanger the lives of the very people it is supposed to save. Wars attract aid, and as a rebel in the Sierra Leone countryside points out, the more violence there is, the more aid will arrive. "WAR means 'Waste All Resources'," he says. "Destroy everything. Then you people will come and fix it."

The aid industry – and it is an industry – deserves a large part of the blame for this. For decades we have been sold simple messages as if there are simple solutions. The complexities of aid have been deliberately ignored. Earlier this year, the BBC alleged that some of the money raised from Bob Geldof's Band Aid had been siphoned off by Ethiopian rebels and spent on arms. The allegation was vigorously denied, but to those who work in aid, this was not surprising. To deliver humanitarian assistance in warzones often requires making arrangements and cutting deals with armed groups. If a Congolese rebel group tells an aid agency they can deliver food in their areas only if they hand over 10 per cent to them, what should that agency do? Accept the compromise or pack up and go home? Neither option is straightforward.

This is a short book, 164 pages plus notes, and it would have benefited from a greater analysis of how aid agencies and NGOs (non-governmental organisations) have developed over the past decade. Many NGOs are no longer merely humanitarian actors. They are also advocates and campaigners. But working to save lives in a warzone while simultaneously trying to raise awareness of the causes of the conflict can lead to problems. Can the NGO working in Darfur criticise the Sudanese government which allows it to operate? Will NGO workers in Afghanistan be in danger if head office puts out a press release criticising the Taliban?

All of which has made the job of the humanitarian worker increasingly hazardous. According to Polman it has now become the fifth most-dangerous profession in the world, after lumberjack, pilot, fisherman and steelworker.

Polman has written a modern-day version of Mother Courage; a searing account of how aid can fuel the conflicts it tries to stop. But it is soured somewhat by what seems like a distaste for aid workers. With one exception, the aid workers she meets are portrayed as heartless men and women who tell disparaging jokes about the people they claim to help, while spending their evenings drinking bottles of expensive French wine and their days off playing rounds of golf.

I'm glad I bought a copy in London. For some reason, the book is not available under its British title in the USA. The American edition is titled "The Crisis Caravan," and won't be available until its September 10th release date. You can pre-order it here on Amazon.com:

Charles Crawford on the Delegitimization of Israel

From CharlesCrawford.Biz:

The main point for me is that the intellectual and political onslaught against Israel is so stunningly dishonest as to reveal that a much deeper Negotiation is going on.

Basically, almost all parts of the planet and indeed much of the chattering classes' space in the democratic West are directly or by implication supporting policies of a new Strident Irrationalism, aimed at delegitimizing not only Israel but Truth itself.

Facts in this drama count for nothing. Not the fact that if we are looking for brutal violence at sea and horrible oppression at home, North Korea leaves Israel and everywhere else on Earth far behind.

Not the fact that when Muslims are massacred almost every day they are massacred not by Israelis but by crazed Muslims.

Nor the fact that if we want to rail against crimes against humanity in the Middle East, the biggest and worst have been committed by Arab leaders against their own people.

And certainly not the fact that whereas Israel obviously operates some sort of pluralist political system, much of the Arab world is still rotten with the legacy of oppressive lumpen national socialist extremism dating back to WW2. Had the Arab world opted for pluralism and progress after the Cold War ended, the whole context for dealing with the Palestine problem would have been far easier.

Behind these malodorous hypocrisies lurks a darker force, hoping to deligitimise not only Israel but also the Holocaust and Nazi/Soviet crimes and the whole moral force of 'the West' and the Enlightenment.

This is the Negotiation of our age. Between Hope and Nihilism. Israel and the Palestinians are merely collateral damage.

Israeli Gaza Ship Commando Raid Recalls Altalena Attack

You wouldn't know it from press coverage, but Turkish, Arab and European Gaza blockade-runners got off a lot easier the other day than Jewish supporters did in 1948 trying to smuggle arms to the Irgun. Then, Ben Gurion had ordered the Israeli Defense Forces to sink the Altalena--and they did.

House to Raise BP Liability Cap to 10 Billion Dollars

From 75 million dollars.

My question to Nancy Pelosi: Why any cap at all?

Celebrating Memorial Day...

PC Magazine Grades Facebook's New Privacy Settings

Not such good grades, here:

1.) A Simplified Privacy Button On The Home Page: So-So

2.) "Just Friends" Default Setting: Fail

3.) Tighten Up Facebook Chat: Fail

4.) Offer Opt-In Incentives: Fail

5.) Streamline Account Deletion: Pass.

America's New National Security Strategy...

As released today by the White House, in this PDF file.

Ian Johnson on Barack Obama's Misguided Support for Islamists

From Foreign Policy:

In power, the Obama administration has continued its predecessor's endorsement of Islamists. In January 2009, for example, the State Department sponsored a visit of German Muslim leaders to one of the bastions of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). The German visitors were key government officials in charge of integration or recruitment of minorities into the police. One of the briefers was Jamal Barzinji, one of the triumvirate who set up a number of key Brotherhood-inspired structures in the United States.

Like many Brotherhood-related groups, IIIT faded from public view after the 9/11 attacks but has experienced a renaissance recently. IIIT had been closely associated with a raft of Islamist organizations in northern Virginia that were raided by federal agents because of their suspected ties to extremist Islam. As elsewhere, this action followed a familiar pattern. The groups in question, including IIIT, were primarily problematic for ideological reasons -- for trying to push the Brotherhood's vision of an Islamicized society, which clearly cannot work in a pluralistic culture.

But instead of being challenged on the field of ideas, where they could easily be shown to hold beliefs antithetical to democratic ideals, they were accused of supporting criminal activities and were raided. This had a double effect: It created the strange spectacle of the legal arm of the government trying desperately to prosecute these groups while, at the same time, the diplomatic arm held them up as models of integration. The failure to convict the Muslims was seen as an exoneration, almost a seal of approval.

Daniel Pipes on CIA Support for Islamists

In his National Review Online review of Ian Johnson's new book: A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, Daniel Pipes declares that the CIA bears responsibility for today's pandemic Islamist terror...

Johnson opens with a review of the systematic Nazi efforts to recruit Soviet Muslims from among their prisoners of war. Many Muslims loathed Stalin, and between 150,000 and 300,000 of them fought for the Axis in World War II. In other words, over and above their unfulfilled propaganda effort directed at Arabs, the Nazis actually fielded a substantial force of mainly Turkic Muslims under the leadership of a scholarly Nazi enthusiast named Gerhard von Mende.

After the German defeat in 1945, Johnson follows von Mende as he continued his anti-Communist work with ex-Soviet Muslims, now in a Cold War context. But his network of former soldiers proved not very competent at the task of arousing Muslim hostility against the Soviet Union. Their leading intellectual, for example, had served as the imam of an SS division that helped suppress the Warsaw uprising of 1944. Islamists quickly proved themselves far more competent at this political and religious challenge. Johnson explains that they “wear suits, have university degrees, and can formulate their demands in ways that a politician can understand.”

The heart of his fascinating study lies in tracing the evolution, much of it in Munich, from old soldiers to new Islamists. It’s a classic tale of 1950s intrigue, complete with rehabilitated Nazis, CIA front organizations, and dueling Soviet and American ambitions.

Johnson shows how, without anyone quite planning it, the Americans usurped von Mende’s network and handed it over to Said Ramadan. This early U.S. boost to the Muslim Brotherhood, Johnson argues, gave it the means to establish an Islamist framework to welcome the surge of Muslim immigration to Europe in the 1970s.

Thus did the Islamist domination of European Muslims have two hidden facilitators, Nazi and American. Its origins in Barbarossa reveal the ugly pedigree of today’s Islamist strength. Hitler and his thugs could not have foreseen it, but they helped set the stage for Eurabia.

American backing for Islamists prompts Johnson to warn against the futility of allying with the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk — as Tony Blair once again recently attempted. However tempting, it invariably harms the West. The lesson is simple: Be cognizant of history and do not assist the Islamists.

On his blog, Pipes admits that he knew about this before Johnson's book, because of his own father's involvement in Cold War research

Coincidentally, I spent the summer of 1953 at the age of three in Munich, just as that city was emerging as a center of Islamic activism, precisely because of the major presence of ex-Soviet Muslims living there. An excerpt from my father's autobiography, Richard Pipes Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger (Yale University Press, 2003), p. 74 explains why he took the family to Munich:

At the end of May 1951, with financial assistance from the Center of International Affairs at MIT, Irene and I left Daniel with our parents and went on a four-month trip to Europe and the Middle East. My purpose was to interview the surviving members of national governments of what had been the Russian Empire during the period 1917-21. I located quite a few of them in London, Paris, Munich and Istanbul, and they helped me appreciably to understand the complex situations of that era. In Paris I established contact with the Georgian émigré community. Two years later, I spent another summer in Europe, this time in Munich, interviewing refugees from Soviet Central Asia, nearly all of them ex-German prisoners of war. The information they furnished on life in their regions in the 1930s reinforced my conviction that nationalism was well and alive in the borderlands of the USSR and that no mass assimilation was taking place.

His research that summer provided the basis of his article, "Muslims of Soviet Central Asia: Trends and Prospects,” The Middle East Journal, Spring, 1955, pp. 147-162 and Summer, 1955, pp. 295-308.

Interestingly, as Pipes notes, the author's website features photos of former Nazi Uzbeks recruited as Islamist CIA agents during the Cold War--not included in the book. Among other Muslim Brotherhood agents on the CIA payroll, according to Johnson’s research: Tariq Ramadan's father...

You can buy a copy from Amazon.com: You can also listen to Ian Johnson's interview on the Diane Rehme show... Nieman Foundation interview here. Carnegie Council interview here. Wall Street Journal review here. Bookforum review here.

England Shifts Right

Just came back from a 100-mile walk across Dartmoor and Exmoor on the Two Moors Way. Highly recommended for splendid isolation, desolation, and reflection...Big news was the Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition Government headed by David Cameron and Nick Clegg. A shift to the right from Labour (which didn't lose as badly as it might have done), yet nevertheless significant since now England, France, Italy and Germany are all headed by conservative leaders. Left for home on the eve of the Queen's Speech.

People we talked to in London were generally optimistic, seemed to like the idea of the "outs" coming in to take over, after the "ins" had been thrown out.  Young faces (Cameron and Clegg are 40-ish), fresh starts, budget cuts, lengthy public manifestos published on the web and so forth dominated the news on TV and radio. A different approach to government, with a fixed term guaranteed by written agreement, and Clegg serving as a sort of vice-presidential Deputy Prime Minister to Cameron's presidential Prime Minister.

Will it work?

Too soon to tell, IMHO.

Elena Kagan's Hunter High School Yearbook Photo

(Source: Yahoo News)

Video of US Troops in Russian Victory Day Parade

PART I:

PART II:

iPad Cat Toy App

(ht Huffington Post)

Did Chris Cox Cause Thursday's Wall Street Plunge?

It sure looks like it, after reading yesterday's Washington Post article by David Cho and Jia Lynn Yang:

In 2007, the SEC put in place new rules for how stocks are traded, led by then-Chairman Christopher Cox. The goal was to give investors more control over how their trades were executed and to guarantee the best price when they buy stocks.

When the NYSE received an order for a stock, for instance, the rules required the exchange to route the order to the platform offering the best price.

The new SEC rules toppled the dominance of NYSE. The trading of its own listed stocks dropped from 85 percent to 21 percent, said James Angel, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

As a result, a single entity can no longer put a stop to panicked selling. The markets Thursday were a preview of what happens when other trading venues take over, he said.

"We are dangerously unprotected from a real-time meltdown," Angel said.

Market officials and regulators are now unwinding millions of the trades that occurred on the electronic exchanges Thursday...

More on this at this video documentary website: Stock Shock:

Happy V-E Day!

Since US, British and French troops are marching in the Russian V-E Day parade this year, I thought this old Soviet poster (ht Ferghana.ru) featuring US, French and British (and Nationalist Chinese!) flags might be apropos...

Charles Crawford on the British Election

He calls the result "a well hung Parliament..."

In this context, the widest range of options and (vitally) sense of momentum is with the party which has much the biggest haul of seats and the highest number of votes, ie the Conservatives. Plus neither Labour nor the Lib Dems can afford a new election soon.

Which is why on balance after a flurry of uncertainty and desperate babbling brought about by sheer exhaustion, I expect David Cameron to lead the next UK government for a while under some sort of formal or informal arrangement as outlined above.

If this happens, an uneasy game of chicken will ensue: the Conservatives in effect will be saying to Parliament every day: "Vote us out if you dare - and face the consequences"...

President Obama's Pakistan Connections

From reading this account, on Pakistaniat.com, which points out that the President's mother worked in Pakistan for 5 years for the Asian Development Bank, overseeing a project in Gujranwallait from 1987-1992, it sounds like Barack Obama should be able to figure out Pakistan's role in NY's Times Square bomb plot for himself:

Barack Obama may have visited Pakistan for longer than any U.S. President or presidential candidate ever has. As so many college students do, he seemed eager to see the world. He was in Karachi in 1981 as a young student, returning from a visit to his mother in Indonesia. According to a New York Times report:

…Mr. Obama also spoke about having traveled to Pakistan in the early 1980s. Because of that trip, which he did not mention in either of his autobiographical books, “I knew what Sunni and Shia was before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” he said… According to his campaign staff, Mr. Obama visited Pakistan in 1981, on the way back from Indonesia, where his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, were living. He spent “about three weeks” there, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, said, staying in Karachi with the family of a college friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, but also traveling to Hyderabad, in India.

Finally, as mentioned in the excerpt above, Senator Obama had a number of Pakistani friends during his college days, and it was that friendship that brought him to Pakistan. Some details, again, from the same New York Times report:

…In Dreams from My Father, he talks of having a Pakistani roommate when he moved to New York, a man he calls Sadik who “had overstayed his tourist visa and now made a living in New York’s high-turnover, illegal immigrant work force, waiting on tables”… During his years at Occidental College, Mr. Obama also befriended Wahid Hamid, a fellow student who was an immigrant from Pakistan and traveled with Mr. Obama there, the Obama campaign said. Mr. Hamid is now a vice president at Pepsico in New York, and according to public records, has donated the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign and is listed as a fund-raiser for it. Mr. Chandoo is now a self-employed financial consultant, living in Armonk, N.Y. He has also donated the maximum, $2,300, to Mr. Obama’s primary campaign and an additional $309 for the general election, campaign finance records show.

An Associated Press story on Obama’s college friends has more interesting snippets. Especially his relationship with Sohale Siddiqi, from Karachi, is fascinating - all the more to the Pakistani reader:

The way Sohale Siddiqi remembers it, he and his old roommate were walking his pug Charlie on Broadway when a large, scary bum approached them, stomping on the ground near the dog’s head. This was in the 1980s, a time when New York was a fearful place beset by drugs and crime, when the street smart knew that the best way to handle the city’s derelicts was to avoid them entirely. But Siddiqi was angry and he confronted the man, who approached him menacingly. Until his skinny, elite univerity-educated friend - Barack Obama - intervened. He “stepped right in between. … He planted his face firmly in the face of the guy. ‘Hey, hey, hey.’ And the guy backpedaled and we kept walking,” Siddiqi recalls.

…Obama spent the six years between 1979 and 1985 at Occidental College in Los Angeles and then in New York at Columbia University and in the workplace. His memoir, Dreams from My Father, talks about this time, but not in great detail; Siddiqi, for example, is identified only as “Sadik” _ “a short, well-built Pakistani” who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party. Obama’s campaign wouldn’t identify “Sadik,” but The Associated Press located him in Seattle, where he raises money for a community theater. Together, the recollections of Siddiqi and other friends and acquaintances from Obama’s college years paint a portrait of the candidate as a young man. They remember a good student with a sharp mind and unshakable integrity, a young man who already had a passion for the underprivileged. Some described the young Obama’s personality as confident to the point of arrogance, a criticism that would emerge decades later, during the campaign.

Not everyone who knew Obama in those years is eager to talk. Some explained that they feared inadvertently hurting Obama’s campaign. Among his friends were Siddiqi and two other Pakistanis, all of them from Karachi; several of those interviewed said the Pakistanis were reluctant to talk for fear of stoking rumors that Obama is a Muslim. “Obama in the eyes of some right wingers is basically Muslim until proved innocent,” says Margot Mifflin, a friend from Occidental who is now a journalism professor at New York’s Lehman College. “It’s partly the Muslim factor by association and partly the fear of something being twisted.”

…Of course, he was only 18 when he arrived at the small liberal arts college nicknamed “Oxy.” His freshman roommates were Imad Husain, a Pakistani, who’s now a Boston banker, and Paul Carpenter, now a Los Angeles lawyer… Obama had an international circle of friends _ “a real eclectic sort of group,” says Vinai Thummalapally, who himself came from Hyderabad, India. As a freshman, he quickly became friends with Mohammed Hasan Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, two wealthy Pakistanis.

In 1981, Obama transferred from Occidental to Columbia. In between, he traveled to Pakistan - a trip that enhanced his foreign policy qualifications, he maintained in a private speech at a San Francisco fundraiser last month. Obama spent “about three weeks” in Pakistan, traveling with Hamid and staying in Karachi with Chandoo’s family, said Bill Burton, Obama’s press secretary. “He was clearly shocked by the economic disparity he saw in Pakistan. He couldn’t get over the sight of rural peasants bowing to the wealthy landowners they worked for as they passed,” says Margot Mifflin, who makes a brief appearance in Obama’s memoir.

When Obama arrived in New York, he already knew Siddiqi - a friend of Chandoo’s and Hamid’s from Karachi who had visited Los Angeles. Looking back, Siddiqi acknowledges that he and Obama were an odd couple. Siddiqi would mock Obama’s idealism - he just wanted to make a lot of money and buy things, while Obama wanted to help the poor. “At that age, I thought he was a saint and a square, and he took himself too seriously,” Siddiqi said. “I would ask him why he was so serious. He was genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor. He’d give me lectures, which I found very boring. He must have found me very irritating.”

Siddiqi offered the most expansive account of Obama as a young man. “We were both very lost. We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay,” said Siddiqi, who at the time worked as a waiter and as a salesman at a boutique… In about 1982, Siddiqi and Obama got an apartment at a sixth-floor walkup on East 94th Street. Siddiqi managed to get the apartment thanks to subterfuge. “We didn’t have a chance in hell of getting this apartment unless we fabricated the lease application,” Siddiqi said. Siddiqi fudged his credentials, saying he had a high-paying job at a catering company, but Obama “wanted no part of it. He put down the truth.”

The apartment was “a slum of a place” in a drug-ridden neighborhood filled with gunshots, he said. “It wasn’t a comfortable existence. We were slumming it.” What little furniture they had was found on the street, and guests would have to hold their dinner plates in their laps. While Obama has acknowledged using marijuana and cocaine during high school in Hawaii, he writes in the memoir that he stopped using soon after his arrival in New York. His roommate had no such scruples. But Siddiqi says that during their time together here, Obama always refused his offers of drugs.

…Siddiqi said his female friends thought Obama was “a hunk.” “We were always competing,” he said. “You know how it is. You go to a bar and you try hitting on the girls. He had a lot more success. I wouldn’t out-compete him in picking up girls, that’s for sure.” Obama was a tolerant roommate. Siddiqi’s mother, who had never been around a black man, came to visit and she was rude; Obama was nothing but polite. Siddiqi himself could be intemperate - he called Obama an Uncle Tom, but “he was really patient. I’m surprised he suffered me.” Finally, their relationship started to fray. “I was partying all the time. I was disrupting his studies,” Siddiqi said. Obama moved out.

… Neither Hamid nor Chandoo would be interviewed for this story; Hamid is now a top executive at Pepsico in New York, and Chandoo is a self-employed financial consultant in the New York area. Both have each contributed the maximum $2,300 to Obama’s campaign, and records indicate each has joined an Asian-American council that supports his run for president. Both also are listed on Obama’s campaign Web site as being among his top fundraisers, each bringing in between $100,000 and $200,000 in contributions from their networks of friends. Both also attended Obama’s wedding in 1992, according to published reports and other friends.

Thummalapally has stayed in contact with Obama, too, visiting him in New York, attending his wedding in 1992 and joining him in Springfield, Illinois., for the Feb. 10, 2007, announcement of Obama’s run for the White House. President of a CD and DVD manufacturing company in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Thummalapally also is listed as a top fundraiser on the campaign Web site.

Siddiqi has not kept in touch. His has been a difficult road; years after his time with Obama, Siddiqi says, he became addicted to cocaine and lost his business. But when he needed help during his recovery, Obama - the roommate he drove away with his partying, the man he always suspected of looking down at him - gave him a job reference. So yes, he’s an Obama man, too. Witness the message on his answering machine: “My name is Hal Siddiqi, and I approve of this message. Vote for peace, vote for hope, vote for change, and vote for Obama.”

But the most interesting account, even more interesting than the yarn about Hal Siddiqi comes from Barack Obama himself, in his book Dreams from My Father...

Persepolis

Just saw Marjane Satrapi's feature-length cartoon coming of age story about growing up as a Persian emigre on Netflix...very relevant to today. I'm sorry I didn't see it when it came out in 2007. I don't know why it didn't win the Academy award for best foreign film. Catherine Deneuve plays the mother's voice. Five stars!

Plus, it explains what's going on with Iran right now: What's Past is indeed Prologue...

Ann Coulter on the Times Square Bomb Plot

From AnnCoulter.com:

Even after the NYPD de-wired the smoking car bomb, produced enough information to identify the bomb-maker, and handed it all to federal law enforcement authorities tied up in a bow, the federal government's crack "no-fly" list failed to stop Shahzad from boarding a plane to Dubai.

To be fair, at Emirates Airlines, being on a "no-fly" list makes you eligible for pre-boarding.

Perhaps the Department of Homeland Security should consider creating a "Really, REALLY No-Fly" list.

Contrary to the wild excuses being made for the federal government on all the TV networks Monday night, it's now clear that this was not a wily plan of federal investigators to allow Shahzad to board the plane in order to nab his co-conspirators. It was a flub that nearly allowed Shahzad to escape.

Meanwhile, on that same Monday at JFK airport, approximately 100,000 passengers took off their shoes, coats, belts and sunglasses for airport security.

But the "highly trained federal force" The New York Times promised us on Oct. 28, 2001, when the paper demanded that airport security be federalized, failed to stop the only guy they needed to stop at JFK last Monday -- the one who planted a bomb in the middle of Times Square days earlier.

So why were 100,000 other passengers harassed and annoyed by the TSA?

The federal government didn't stop the diaper bomber from nearly detonating a bomb over Detroit. It didn't stop a guy on the "No Fly" list from boarding a plane and coming minutes away from getting out of the country.

If our only defense to terrorism is counting on alert civilians, how about not bothering them before they board airplanes, instead of harassing them with useless airport "security" procedures?

Both of the attempted bombers who sailed through airport security, I note, were young males of the Islamic faith. I wonder if we could develop a security plan based on that information?

And speaking of a "highly trained federal force," who's working at the INS these days? Who on earth made the decision to allow Shahzad the unparalleled privilege of becoming a U.S. citizen last year?

WSJ: Pakistan's Historical Jihad

Sadanand Dhume explains:

In attempting to explain why so many attacks—abortive and successful—can be traced back to a single country, analysts tend to dwell on the 1980s, when Pakistan acted as a staging ground for the successful American and Saudi-funded jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. But while the anti-Soviet campaign undoubtedly accelerated Pakistan's emergence as a jihadist haven, to truly understand the country it's important to go back further, to its creation.

Pakistan was carved out of the Muslim-majority areas of British India in 1947, the world's first modern nation based solely on Islam. The country's name means "Land of the Pure." The capital city is Islamabad. The national flag carries the Islamic crescent and star. The cricket team wears green.

From the start, the new country was touched by the messianic zeal of pan-Islamism. The Quranic scholar Muhammad Asad—an Austrian Jew born Leopold Weiss—became an early Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations. The Egyptian Said Ramadan, son-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, made Pakistan a second home of sorts and collaborated with Pakistan's leading Islamist ideologue, the Jamaat-e-Islami's Abul Ala Maududi. In 1949, Pakistan established the world's first transnational Islamic organization, the World Muslim Congress. Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the virulently anti-Semitic grand mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed president.

Through alternating periods of civilian and military rule, one thing about Pakistan has remained constant—the central place of Islam in national life. In the 1960s, Pakistan launched a war against India in an attempt to seize control of Kashmir, the country's only Muslim-majority province, one that most Pakistanis believe ought to be theirs by right.

In the 1970s the Pakistani army carried out what Bangladeshis call a genocide in Bangladesh; non-Muslims suffered disproportionately. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto boasted about creating an "Islamic bomb." (The father of Pakistan's nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, would later export nuclear technology to the revolutionary regime in Iran.) In the 1980s Pakistan welcomed Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Palestinian theorist of global jihad Abdullah Azzam.

In the 1990s, armed with expertise and confidence gained fighting the Soviets, the army's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spawned the Taliban to take over Afghanistan, and a plethora of terrorist groups to challenge India in Kashmir. Even after 9/11, and despite about $18 billion of American aid, Pakistan has found it hard to reform its instincts.

Pakistan's history of pan-Islamism does not mean that all Pakistanis, much less everyone of Pakistani origin, hold extremist views. But it does explain why a larger percentage of Pakistanis than, say, Indonesians or Tunisians, are likely to see the world through the narrow prism of their faith. The ISI's reluctance to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism—training camps, a web of ultra-orthodox madrassas that preach violence, and terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba—ensure that Pakistan remains a magnet for any Muslim with a grudge against the world and the urge to do something violent about it.

William McGurn: First Amendment a Right, Not a Privilege

In today's Wall Street Journal, William McGurn reflects on the implications for bloggers of the Apple v Gizmodo iPhone Case:

Steve Simpson, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, puts it this way: "Once the government gets in the business of deciding who can speak based on identity, it will then necessarily be involved in deciding what viewpoints get heard."

The classic view of the First Amendment holds all Americans are entitled to its rights by virtue of citizenship. These days, alas, too many journalists and politicians assume that a free press should mean special privileges for a designated class. The further we travel in this direction, the more the government will end up deciding which Americans qualify and which do not.

It's not just Mr. Chen. Two weeks ago in New Jersey, a state appeals court ruled that a hockey mom who blogs is not a journalist for the purposes of protecting her sources. The woman was being sued for derogatory comments she posted on a message board about a company that supplies software for the porn industry. At the federal level, meanwhile, a "shield law" protecting journalists from revealing their sources remains bogged down in Congress as legislators are forced to define who is legitimately a journalist and who is not.

IMHO, "shield laws" are a bad idea--undemocratic, unconstitutional, and unfair...unlike the First Amendment.

Huffington Post: Lesson of Times Square Bomb Attempt--Try Terror Suspects in Manhattan!

IMHO, this analysis by Dan Collins, NY editor of the Huffington Post, is correct:

If I could offer a lesson, I'd be counter-intuitive. We should have let the federal government try the 9/11 terror sheik in Manhattan. It would have been inconvenient, although not necessarily as inconvenient as the police department led us to believe. But it would have been taking a stand. New Yorkers against the crazy people, most of whom fail. And the one who succeeds is never the one you suspect.

So we should work as hard as we can to protect against the unforeseeable. But in the meantime, we should be brave, and united, and supremely ticked off.

Connecticut Post: State Home for Terrorists

According to the Stratford, Connecticut Post, terrorists have been in the state for years. A couple of recent past links to terror in the land of steady habits:

Spring 2001 -- Four of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers meet with a Jordanian national living in Bridgeport who later was arrested for providing false identification cards to illegal aliens. The four are identified as Hani S.H. Hanjour, Nawaf Alzhami, Ahmed Alghamdi and Majed M. GH. Moqed was living at the Fairfield Motor Inn. Hanjour piloted the American Air Lines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. The Bridgeport contact, identified as Eyad M. Alrababah , is arrested by authorities in New Jersey for providing false identification cards and driver's licenses.

April 3, 2009 -- Hassan Abujihaad, a former U.S. Navy signalman aboard the U.S.S. Benson, is sentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in New Haven for disclosing ship movements via e-mails to Azzam Publications in London. Azzam operated an Internet site through OLM, LLC., a Trumbull-based web hosting firm. Two members of Azzam, Syehed Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad, who sought people to fight and fund the Jihad over the website, are challenging their extradition from London to Connecticut to stand trial on federal terrorism charges.

The Connecticut paper also published information on the alleged source of the car used in Times Square:

The Connecticut license plate on the explosives-packed Nissan Pathfinder was found to have been taken from a Ford pickup truck recently sent for repair to Kramer's Used Auto Parts on Old South Avenue in Stratford. Several sources said a vehicle identification number found on a replacement part on the Pathfinder was also from a vehicle last tracked to Kramer's.

Federal, New York state and New York City investigators went to the Norwalk home of Norman LeBlanc shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday, a police source said, adding that LeBlanc, whose family has owned Kramer's and other area auto parts businesses, then took the investigators to the Stratford junkyard.

It could not immediately be learned what, if any, material was taken from the business.

A few hours later Sunday morning, about a dozen police vehicles -- local police and FBI and NYPD -- were still outside Kramer's, which is off Access Road. The business is surrounded by an old chain-link fence with signs saying, "used cars bought and sold" and "auto and truck parts." There are dozens of used and junked cars on the lot.

Wayne LeBlanc is listed as president and CEO of the Stratford business. A reporter was turned away from his Flax Hill Road home in Norwalk without comment Sunday night.

Richarrd Fredette, chairman of Stratford's Board of Zoning Appeals and former owner of Elite Auto Body, said LeBlanc bought Kramer's from Nick Kramer, now deceased, about 15 years ago.

Hail to the Street Vendors Who Saved New York, Lance Horton & Duane Jackson!

The NY Daily News has the story:

They saw something and they said something.

Two Times Square street vendors - and Vietnam veterans - alerted cops that there was something fishy about the dark-colored SUV, officials said.

T-shirt hawker Lance Orton flagged down hero officer Wayne Rhatigan, 46, who was patrolling Times Square on horseback Saturday night.

"I'm not a celebrity, I'm just an average Joe," Orton said Sunday night, a towel wrapped around his waist in his Bronx apartment. "It's nice, but I'm not a glory hound."

Handbag vendor Duane Jackson also noticed the Nissan Pathfinder, and was immediately suspicious.

"Why is this knucklehead parked in the bus lane?" Jackson, 58, of Buchanan, Westchester County, said he asked himself after spotting the Nissan Pathfinder in a No Standing zone just as cops alerted by Orton were responding.

A cop shined a flashlight through the tinted windows.

What Jackson saw next really scared him.

"Smoke started coming out of it, then the pops began - five or six of them," Jackson said. "They sounded like firecrackers," he said. "That's when everyone started running."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/05/02/2010-05-02_times_square_vendors_duane_jackson_lance_horton_alerted_cops_to_smoking_car_bomb.html#ixzz0msLMCB00

Here's a link to a facebook page asking Mayor Bloomberg to take the street vendors out to dinner.

Nick Clegg v David Cameron v Gordon Brown

For those following the British election debates, the BBC has a good aggregator of election news, here.

UPDATE: There's also a Facebook Democracy UK page...

Florida Congressman Wants Chechens Added to Terror List

So far, the State Department has said: "No." Despite the fact that the group has officially declared war on the United States, as well as masterminding terror attacks in Russia. On this issue, IMHO, Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-FL) is right, and Hillary Clinton is wrong:

HASTINGS CALLS FOR CAUCASUS EMIRATE TO BE ON TERRORIST LIST
Group Claimed Responsibility for Moscow Subway Bombing

WASHINGTON--U.S. Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL), Co-Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission), introduced legislation today urging the State Department to formally designate the Caucasus Emirate as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

The State Department’s 2009 Country Reports on Terrorism is not expected to include the Caucasus Emirate in its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations despite the group's recent attacks on the Moscow subway that killed at least 38 people and the fact the group is behind more than 60 acts of terrorism in Russia’s North Caucasus in the past three months and trained 20 suicide bombers in 2009.

“We have a policy of zero-tolerance towards terrorism of any kind directed against anyone anywhere in the world,” Hastings said. “The Caucasus Emirate cooperates with al-Qaeda and has declared jihad on the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Israel. This organization is a threat to our national security and that of our allies. This resolution urges the Administration to officially acknowledge that reality.”

Shamil Basaev, who was the leader of the predecessor organization to the Caucasus Emirate until his assassination by Russian commandos in 2006, trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Khost, Afghanistan in 1994. The group’s Web site has included articles from an author connected to perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas shootings with rhetorical attacks on the United States calling for American Muslims to wage holy war against the United States.

“President Obama has made historic improvements in U.S.-Russian relations,” Hastings continued. “The United States and Russia must stand together in this ongoing struggle against violent fanatics. In this fight there is no room for double standards, we must be consistent."

Charles Crawford on Pope-gate, Cont'd...

Charles Crawford, Britain's former man in Warsaw, wants answers to some questions about the latest Foreign and Commonwealth Office anti-Papist memorandum:

The Heresiarch links to my thoughts on the FCO and its Popegate scandal, but wonders if I have it right - maybe the causes are ... even deeper:

It's easy enough to blame New Labour, with its love of targets and hatred of anything traditional or elitist, for this sort of tosh, but I suspect the Blair administration has been as much the symptom as the cause of it.

Other, profounder, causes have been at play: a loss of nerve on the part of the old elites, the complete ascendency of the media and the news cycle, a generalised and growing distrust of institutions - most powerful when internalised by those who themselves run those institutions - a truncation of attention-spans and an hysterical neophilia.

The best word for it is infantilisation. Britain, and probably most other western countries as well, is regressing to a state of toddlerism, or at best arrested adolescence.

I could not agree more.

See how the FCO is responding to this self-made disaster. By sending the offenders back to school:

The civil servant in charge of the Pope’s visit to Britain has been suspended and is to be investigated for misconduct after a memo lampooning the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church was leaked to the press.

All the staff involved in producing the memo are to be sent on “urgent diversity training” and will have nothing further to do with organising the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain in September.

Please excuse me while I leave the desk to emit a high-pitched scream.

Goes offstage

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Returns

This is not a problem requiring 'diversity training', where the wretched victims sit listlessly staring out of the window, trying their best not to listen to some or other humourless harpy intoning on their need to 'respect' minorities and examine their 'unconscious prejudices'.

This is not a technical problem at all, capable of being sorted by some extra 'training'.

Indeed, the key problem is the very fact that the FCO apppears to think that lack of 'training' is the problem, and that more training is the answer.

Wrong!

It's all about structure and professional attitude.

What was happening across the organisation to create a culture and command structure in which a significant non-junior diplomat could produce and circulate around Whitehall such drivel? (Note: when the story broke I contacted the FCO myself and was assured that the offending officer was 'junior'. This was at the least highly misleading.)

Come on Fleet Street, ask the the FCO the right questions:

-who was Mr Noorani's line manager?
-what instructions were given to him and by whom?
-what internal expertise was being drawn upon to advise on the Pope's visit?
-why were these ideas circulated without HM Ambassador to the Vatican clearing them first?
-who is running this part of the FCO whelk stall?

Answers please, from people in the know.

The New Republic on Human Rights Watch's Jihad

Benjamin Birnbaum writes:

As [Robert] Bernstein and his allies saw it, Whitson and others in MENA consistently ignored the context of Israeli actions—context that might have created a more accurate picture. That was the overriding complaint in a letter Edith Everett wrote to HRW in June 2008, outlining her dissatisfaction with the way the organization was treating Israel. HRW had repeatedly called for Israel to lift its blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Everett pointed out that “the original contravention of human rights lies with Hamas and these terrorist organizations and if they were to stop their unprovoked attacks on Israeli civilians there would be no restrictions on the flow of goods into Gaza.”

That month, Bernstein made a presentation at a meeting of the executive committee of HRW’s board. After asking HRW staffers to leave the room, he told the assembled something they already knew—that he had concerns about MENA’s Israel work—and something they did not: “I told them, from then on, they couldn’t assume that I would remain silent to the public.”

Ken Roth was absent from the meeting—his daughter was graduating from high school that day—but he was furious when he found out. He immediately e-mailed Bernstein’s son Bill, a classmate from Brown, lamenting how unfortunate he found it that a man who had spent his life championing human rights had become an apologist for Israel. He appealed to the younger Bernstein to intervene, warning that his father would do great harm to the organization and to his own reputation.

Not everyone at HRW, however, was eager to keep Bernstein in the fold. His persistent questions had become a never-ending source of annoyance to Whitson. “It just came to this point where we would have countless meetings with him explaining things over and over,” Whitson says. “And then, he would just ask the same question as if you’d never had the conversation before. And you’re like, ‘But did you actually read the report? Did you actually see what it said? Because it answers your question, and we’ve discussed this, like, eighteen times.’” Her attitude toward Bernstein’s threat was one of indifference. “You’re like, ‘OK, just go public and get it over with.’”

At the time, however, Bernstein was still unsure of himself. He had begun consulting prominent outsiders, among them just war philosopher Michael Walzer and Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, a friend of his son Tom. Zakaria spoke to Bernstein at length—first in a face-to-face meeting, then in a series of phone calls. Bernstein had already started putting his thoughts to paper—thousands of words’ worth—but felt he was getting nowhere and urged Zakaria to take up the cause instead. Zakaria demurred. “My advice to him,” Zakaria says, “was that, if he felt as strongly as he did, then he needed to speak out because the impact of the founder of Human Rights Watch talking about his disillusionment with the organization was going to be far greater than an outsider who had no historical association with the organization.”

Bernstein also raised some of his concerns with then-HRW board member Richard Goldstone, who would go on to write the U.N.’s much-maligned report on the Gaza war. There are few more reviled figures in Israel right now than Goldstone, but even he sympathized with Bernstein on certain points, such as the politicized nature of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which, after being created in 2006, had directed its first nine condemnations at Israel. In March 2008, barely a year before he accepted UNHRC’s mandate to investigate the Gaza war, he told Bernstein that he thought the body’s performance had been hopeless and expressed ambivalence as to whether HRW should continue appearing before it. He also agreed with Bernstein that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s increasingly aggressive anti-Israel rhetoric, in combination with his threatening policies, was an issue worthy of HRW’s attention. Goldstone pushed Roth to address it, but to no avail. (When I asked Roth in a February interview at his office about HRW’s refusal to take a position on Ahmadinejad’s threats against Israel, including his famous call for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” Roth quibbled about the way the statement had been translated in the West—“there was a real question as to whether he actually said that”—then told me that it was not HRW’s place to render judgments on such rhetoric: “Let’s assume it is a military threat. We don’t take on governments’ military threats just as we don’t take on aggression, per se. We look at how they behave. So, we wouldn’t condemn a military threat just as we wouldn’t condemn an invasion—we would look at how the government wages the war.” Whitson, who sat in on the interview, offered her two cents: “You know, that statement was also matched by Hillary Clinton saying that the Iranian regime should be destroyed or wiped off the map. Again, so, very similar statements, side by side, close in time.” For his part, Goldstone told TNR that he eventually came around to the view this was not an issue HRW should take up.)

Bernstein was becoming steadily more frustrated—and two of his closest allies at the organization were soon on their way out. In early 2009, Whitson informed Steve Apkon that, if he wished to serve another term on the MENA advisory committee, he would be expected to make a contribution in the $10,000 range. Apkon was livid. He dashed off a sharply worded letter to advisory committee chair Shibley Telhami. “An organization that was founded to protect the most basic of human rights—freedom of speech—seeing it as the canary in the coal mine in regards to everything else, seems to have created within its own organization a disregard and intolerance for open dialogue,” he wrote. His membership was not renewed. (HRW denies that Apkon’s removal had anything to do with his criticisms, attributing it primarily to his failure to make an acceptable contribution.)

Shortly thereafter, Edith Everett was gone. At a MENA advisory committee meeting in March 2009, two months after the war in Gaza, she raised the subject of human shields with HRW senior military analyst Marc Garlasco, who was on hand to discuss the issues he and his fellow researchers were planning to write about: “I said, ‘I hope when you talk about the Palestinians in Gaza that you speak about their use of the population as human shields,’ and he was beginning to respond to that when Sarah Leah Whitson wouldn’t let him speak. She just put an end to that conversation. She said, ‘Well, in summation, I think we have to move on,’ or something, and I said, ‘This is ridiculous,’ you know?” Everett immediately tendered her resignation from both the HRW board and the MENA advisory committee.

At the end of that month, Bernstein sent a long e-mail to the board of HRW. “While I realize that HRW is doing a lot of valuable work, to me the mishandling of the Israel-Palestine situation is like a cancer,” he wrote. “After my twenty-one years as chair, I still care deeply about the direction of HRW, and my inability to bring change bothers me.”

NJ Court Rules Blogger Not "Journalist"

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

PA Consulting Produced Joke Afghanistan Strategy Powerpoint

Clearly stated on page 31 of the Pentagon Powerpoint slide from "Dynamic Planning for COIN in Afghanistan" titled "Afghanistan Stability / COIN Dynamics" (p.22 of 31) mocked on page one of the New York Times is the author:

"© PA Knowledge Limited 2009."

Some questions:

1. Why is a contractor allowed to copyright a US government document paid for by taxpayers?

2. Who awarded this contract to PA Knowledge Limited?

3. How much was PA Knowledge Limited paid for this PowerPoint presentation?

4. Why wasn't PA Knowledge Limited mentioned in Elisabeth Bumiller's April 26, 2010 front-page NY Times story about the PowerPoint scandal?

Some interesting information from the PA Consulting website raise one more question about how this scandal originated:

1. PA Knowledge Limited is a subsidiary of PA Consulting--a British company:

Corporate headquaters
123 Buckingham Palace Road
London SW1W 9SR
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7333 5865
Fax: +44 20 7333 5050

QUESTION: Why is US strategy in Afghanistan being interpreted for PowerPoint presentations for the Pentagon by a foreign (although allied) company? Isn't there anyone in the Pentagon who can do this without a contract? Contracting out your strategy is a sure loser--that's a no brainer...

Isn't there anyone in Congress who could hold a hearing? Obviously someone leaked this to the press for a reason. Perhaps PA Consulting should be held liable for the problems with America's Counterinsurgency Strategy in Afghanistan?

The PA Consulting website describes the contract but unfortunately doesn't disclose the amount of money US taxpayers have wasted to date on this contract:

Counterinsurgency and strategies for effective ‘whole of government’ approaches to influence unstable regions

Developing tailored causal maps of key drivers of stability in regions and countries of interest, drawing on a library of analyses of regions across the world, we help give senior decision makers and their teams a shared ‘big picture view’ and a more structured way to help inform options for intervention.

Time to call PA executives to testify before Congress about their responsibility for America's problems in Afghanistan--as Goldman, Sachs brass just did.

President Obama Visits Ottumwa, Iowa

According to the Ottumwa Courier, the President has just been in Ottumwa, Iowa.I was there at Thanksgiving with someone I know and a friend. It's an interesting town. Hometown to Edna Ferber, author of "Showboat". Site of "Meat Solutions" (a slaughterhouse). Industrial. Union. We had a "loose meat" sandwich at "Canteen Lunch in the Alley" and saw the beautiful mural of Chief Ottumwa over the bar in the Tom-Tom-Tap at the Hotel Ottumwa. Then watched a magnificent prairie sunset. Next time you find yourself in Iowa, follow the lead of President Obama...and drop by Ottumwa. Here's an excerpt from the Ottumwa Courier report:

President Barack Obama on Tuesday sought to bolster both health care and regulatory reform during a historic visit to Ottumwa, saying his administration wants to “restore a sense of security to the middle class.”

“Visits like this remind you that when you get out into the heartland and you talk to folks, there is a lot to learn from rural America,” Obama said to a packed house at the Hellyer Student Life Center on the Indian Hills Community College campus. “It’s towns like this that give America its heartbeat.”

After a warm welcome, Obama received a standing ovation for the passage of health care reform, emphasizing popular angles on the legislation, like putting an end to bans for pre-existing conditions and help for senior citizens. He touted the reform package as the single biggest deficit reduction action since the 1970s, though he admitted it will mean larger deficits in the short term.

A similar ovation followed comments on regulatory reform for business. Obama focused on responsibilities, trying to create a connection between obligations met by families and those failed by corporate and political America. He drew distinctions between the behavior of Americans who struggle to pay their debts and behave according to social norms and corporations who don’t bother to try.

“Even before this last crisis it felt like it was slipping away. Folks like you are living up to your responsibilities. People in Washington and Wall Street are not living up to theirs,” he said.

And here's the video of the President' Town Hall from the White House website:

What Did Billy Graham Say to President Obama?

According to Christian Web News, among other things, topics included Franklin Graham's blacklisting by the Pentagon...

President Obama made the short drive from Asheville, where he spent the weekend, to Montreat, to see the 91-year-old Graham and son Franklin, also an evangelist.

The visit only lasted about 30 minutes, and included aides and advisers to both men. Obama had a private prayer and conversation with Billy Graham. Graham gave two bibles to Obama, one for him, and the other for the first lady, Graham spokesman Larry Ross said, according to the Associated Press.

Obama was “extraordinarily gratified that he took the time to meet with him” White House spokesman Bill Burton said.

According to Franklin Graham, his dad and Obama's conversation was “very cordial, very nice.” He said, “When the president got ready to leave, the president prayed for my father, my father prayed for him.”

According to Graham, his father prayed for the nation and that God would give Obama wisdom in his decisions. Franklin Graham said in his prayer, the president thanked God for Billy Graham's life.

Franklin Graham said he and Obama talked for a short time about the Pentagon Prayer Service ordeal. Graham said that the activists with an agenda were trying to pull all religion out of the military.

Franklin Graham said, “I wanted to make him aware of that. He said he would look into to it.”

BTW, I couldn't find an account--or a photo--on the White House website (but maybe I missed something).

General Jones' "Macaca" Moment of Truth...

I saw this video on YouTube yesterday, and was willing to give General Jones the benefit of the doubt. It is an old joke, one I had read years ago in a joke book. Not the worst joke ever, and possibly not even intended in a bad way...But, now that General Jones has apologized, it unfortunately needs to be taken a little more seriously--by the Israeli government, if not by the American Jewish community. If he has apologized, then General Jones has admitted that his intent was not, in fact, innocent. It was a reflection of a deeper bias against, prejudice towards, and even contempt for Jews and Israel (he mentioned Israel explicitly in the joke). If he had said, "No apology necessary, no offense was intended," it would have been different.

IMHO, Israel should issue a diplomatic protest against General Jones, asap. The Israelis need to ask for another National Security Adviser, who has not demonstrated such insensitivity, if nothing else. The American Jewish community, likewise, needs to formally protest and ask for a new National Security Adviser in the interest of the United States--where no group of citizens of any religion should be singled out for humiliation at the hands of a government official (especially a top Presidential adviser). Imagine what would have happened if General Jones had joked about Muslims, and use that as a single standard for judging behavior.

General Jones may have started with a banal joke, but if his apology isn't evidence of intentional defamation against Jews, I don't know what is... And if not stopped now, who knows where this might end, especially given recent demonization of Israel by General Petraeus and the Obama administration?

It's a "Macaca" moment of truth for General Jones, as former Virginia Governor George Allen might tell him...

UPDATE: I've received this response from the Anti-Defamation League Media Relations Department to my inquiry about their reaction:

(ADL Media )
Mr. Foxman’s reaction to Gen Jones’ joke as cited below in the ABC blog was widely reported in the media.

ADL has accepted Jones’ apology

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/04/antidefamation-league-national-security-adviser-jones-told-inappropriate-stereotypic-joke-about-jewi.html

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Political Punch
Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper

Anti-Defamation League: National Security Adviser Jones Told “Inappropriate, Stereotypic” Joke About Jewish Merchant
April 26, 2010 11:19 AM

While many in the largely Jewish audience laughed, others didn’t find it so funny, including Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

“It's inappropriate,” Foxman told ABC News. “it's stereotypic. Some people believe they need to start a speech with a joke; this was about the worst kind of joke the head of the National Security Council could have told.”

“To make fun of Jews in terms of ‘Jews won’t help you in need, Jews want to sell to you?’ Whoa!” Foxman says. “Where's the sensitivity? The irony of it is General Jones went to this forum to reach out to the Jewish community. Of all the jokes this is probably the worst one he could have picked.”

National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones has apologized for his offensive joke. Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League have accepted his apology.

Statement from General Jones about the joke he told during his remarks at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
“I wish that I had not made this off the cuff joke at the top of my remarks, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by it. It also distracted from the larger message I carried that day: that the United States commitment to Israel’s security is sacrosanct.” – General Jim Jones, National Security Advisor

P.S. I prefer Barry Rubin's analysis, here:

I could talk about more but let me focus on two that I think are inescapable and have policy consequences. It is interesting to note that both aspects relate to changes Jones made in the way the joke has been told by Jews.

First, the story is set in Afghanistan. Why there of all places where there have never been any Jews and there is only one in the whole country today? When it has appeared onJewish sites, the joke was set in the Sahara Desert. Note also Jones insisted--part of the joke but also revealing--that it was based on a "true" story.

Well, Afghanistan is the main theatre of operations for the U.S. military, especially if one takes into account future plans. So it shows that even in Afghanistan, there are people obsessed with theIsrael -Palestinian conflict. (That's not true by the way.) The idea that the conflict is the central issue in the world determining everything has become a theme of ObamaAdministration foreign policy. True, it is a Hamas guy and not a Taliban guy. Yet one cannot help but make the connection.

Second, instead of an individual Jew, the focus of the story is switched to Israel by making it a Hamas guy, putting in references to Israel, and making an Afghan Jew describe Israel as "my country."

The Jew, now made into a representative of Israel--in effect--rather than a generic Jew, seeks to charge (presumably overcharge) for letting the Hamas guy in to get what he needs. Indeed,Israel does demand an admissions' fee into peace for Hamas and also the Palestinian Authority: that they must show they are serious about peace as well as make compromises.

The tendency of the current U.S. government and of Europe is-and I don't want to overstate this-to say that such a barrier is unnecessary. End the sanctions on the Gaza Strip, they say, let Hamas into the talks (I'm not saying the Obamaadministration endorses this idea), give the PA a state. Then everything will be okay and peace will prevail.

The adaptation of this into the joke is to let the Hamas guy in without a tie and trust him to pay at the end of the meal. Indeed, that if you do so he will stop cursingIsrael and want to be friends. After all, most restaurants today have given up their tie and jacket requirement.

Now here's the joke I'll tell when they ask me to speak at the National Security Council:

An Israeli is walking through a dangerous desert, beset by enemies on every side. He comes upon an American general who is national security advisor. "Please help me," says the Israeli, "I'm out of ammunition."

"I'd love to help you," says the general, "but I can only sell you a tie. It's because I'm helping you that they are all out to get me!"

"No thanks on the tie," says the Israeli, "I'd rather have your support as an ally against those antisemitic, anti-American totalitarian forces which are out to destroy you any way."