Neal Sher: AIPAC's Saudi Connection

A former AIPAC executive charges in The Jewish Week that the Bush administration may be prosecuting the American Jewish lobby in order to appease the Saudis--and AIPAC might be too scared to fight back...

Moreover, there are reports from the Executive Committee meeting held during the conference that AIPAC leadership displayed near total deference to the administration. Former AIPAC President Melvin Dow apparently took the lead in killing any proposed policy that might step on toes at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Now, evidence that its agenda may have been compromised can be found in AIPAC’s total failure to pursue The Saudi Arabia Accountability Act — one of the most important pieces of national security/anti-terrorism and pro-Israel legislation pending before Congress:

Proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter in June 2005, the bill aims to halt “Saudi support for institutions that fund, train, incite, encourage, or in any other way aid and abet terrorism, and to secure full Saudi cooperation in the investigation of terrorist incidents, and for other purposes.” When introduced, it had bipartisan support across the ideological spectrum.

The legislation is bolstered by the work of many serious experts — both in and out of government — who for years have been alerted U.S. authorities to the dangerous and deadly activities of Saudi entities, many of which are part of or directly controlled by the government in Riyadh. The legislation’s text cites evidence, for example, that Saudi entities furnish at least 50 percent of the current operating budget of Hamas.

Predictably, the Bush administration opposes the legislation; it has no intention to take on the Saudis, despite overwhelming evidence of their heavy involvement in financing, supporting and advocating terror and anti-American and anti-Israel hatred.

But AIPAC’s failure even to acknowledge the legislation (check its Web site — not a word) let alone push for passage, is inexcusable. Can there be a more quintessential example of pro-Israel legislation? So, what’s the problem?

It’s hard not to conclude that AIPAC’s timidity is directly linked to the predicament in which it finds itself. This is no time, AIPAC leaders undoubtedly are thinking, to challenge and upset an administration that already has demonstrated that it is ready, willing and able to play hardball. Having given in on Rosen and Weissman, AIPAC has sent clear signals that it is willing to pull punches, if that’s what it takes, to preserve “access” and “influence.”

But political clout and financial resources are not ends unto themselves. The pro-Israel community has worked long and hard to build a strong and wealthy lobby. It has a right to expect — indeed, demand — from AIPAC leadership an organization with not just brains and brawn, one with the guts to take on, when the cause so dictates, even those they otherwise consider to be friends.

The very last thing the community needs are leaders acting as though they are guests in their own country.

One wonders, will Bush and Cheney be prosecuted for sharing American war plans with Prince Bandar (as Bob Woodward documented in Plan of Attack)--or does the Bush administration consider Saudi princes who permit Saudi suicide bombers to cross into Iraq to kill American soldiers and civilians to be more trustworthy than Israelis?

Russian Military Hazing Causes Draftee's Double Amputation

Ronald Reagan played a victim of a double amputation in King's Row, uttering his favorite movie line (and title of his autobiography), "Where's the rest of me?" when he woke up from the anasthesia. Now, a real-life case has occurred in the Russian military, where a young draftee was beaten, tortured, and had his legs amputated. It is a major scandal in Russia, protests have broken out, military officers have been fired, TV news has broadcast graphic accounts, as well a a phone number to make donations to the victim. Strangely, not too much press here in the USA, although the biggest news in Russia...

Here's an excerpt from the Reuter's story:

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian officers must face punishment over the case of a young conscript who was beaten so badly that his legs and genitals had to be amputated, the soldier's sister demanded on Saturday.

She spoke as demonstrators in Moscow angrily called for the dismissal of Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov after the brutal bullying incident in which the victim's suffering was made worse because medical treatment was delayed.

Andrei Sychev, 19, was tied up and beaten for hours by drunken soldiers over the New Year holiday at a tank academy in Chelyabinsk, in the Ural mountains.

Ivanov said Moscow wasn't told about the attack for 25 days and sought to stem outrage by dismissing the general in charge of the tank academy, Russian state television reported.

Some soldiers and officers at the academy have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in the violence -- known as 'dedovshchina' -- that older conscripts dole out to fresh soldiers.

"I consider they are all guilty as they were in charge and should have stopped this 'dedovshchina' or at least not allowed it to get this far," Sychev's sister, Marina Muffert, told Reuters by telephone.

"I hope they find those who are guilty for this and that they are punished," she said.

"He can't speak because of the oxygen tube but he can croak a few words and he could take some liquid food today."

Sam Donaldson Celebrates Mozart's Birthday

Last night we went to the Kennedy Center, to see the National Symphony Orchestra under maestro Leonard Slatkin's production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio. It was a lot of fun, Douglas Fitch's staging was cute, the orchestra and singers were all great, especially Osmin. The cherry on top of the confection was an appearance by ABC's veteran Washington correspondent Sam Donaldson in the role of Pasha Selim, the Ottoman Emperor--in whose harem the action takes place. He had some outstanding dialog (his role was spoken, not sung), ranging from "My dungeons are filled with people who don't like me..." to, "If they cannot be won by love and kindness, let them go..."

It was a whole lot of fun, and a great way to pay tribute to the musical genius -- in a quite inside-the-beltway fashion. There's another performance tonight, if you have nothing else to do, and are near Washington.

Happy Year of the Dog!

It's Chinese New Year (also celebrated in Russia), and this is the year of the dog:

People born in the Year of the Dog possess the best traits of human nature. They have a deep sense of loyalty, are honest, and inspire other people¡¦s confidence because they know how to keep secrets. But Dog People are somewhat selfish, terribly stubborn, and eccentric. They care little for wealth, yet somehow always seem to have money. They can be cold emotionally and sometimes distant at parties. They can find fault with many things and are noted for their sharp tongues. Dog people make good leaders. They are compatible with those born in the Years of the Horse, Tiger, and Rabbit.

Was Mozart Really Like "Amadeus"?

Mozart's 250th birthday seems like the right time to link to this essay on the Mozart Project website by A. Peter Brown discussing how the composer's life differed from its portrayal in Amadeus:

Amadeus the play and movie, as well as the books by Hildesheimer and Carr, derived their success from the unquestionable fascination Mozart holds for us today. Without the name of Mozart, the deep interest in these artifacts of our own culture would not exist. For those who want letters, memoirs, and other primary sources in order to make their own interpretation, these are readily available, but they cannot be taken as "just the facts," for nearly every writer of letters and memoirs, as well as the purveyors of rumors, had his own agendas and beliefs. It is from the documents themselves and their interpretation that the Mozartean mythologies flourished.

Why does Mozart command so much attention? Perhaps it stems from the eternally misguided effort to understand the man behind the music. Although Mozart's music is often recognized as universal, it has received varying interpretations of its essential meaning. For example, critical opinion of the Symphony No. 40 in G Minor K. 550 is one of total admiration, but its character has remained elusive. Robert Schumann found it classical in the strict sense, full of Grecian "lightness and grace." Alfred Einstein thought it a "fatalistic piece of chamber music." Jens Peter Larsen believed it was not the expression of a private mood. Robbins Landon stated that it belongs to a series of works revealing the downside of Mozart's manic tendencies, while Jack Westrup found in it the spirit of opera buffa. Probably no work of the symphonic canon elicits such a wide range of affective reactions from knowledgeable critics. But perhaps it is this variety of reactions to his music that explains the varied interpretations of the person. Perhaps it is only in this sense that the biographies with their explanations of the man parallel the receptions of the music. While one can attempt to set the historical record straight, Shaffer's and Forman's Salieri had it right on one count: the phenomenon of Mozart transcends explanation.

Daniel Pipes: Hamas Hoisted Bush With His Own Petard

Daniel Pipes analyzes implications of the Hamas victory:

In brief, elections are bringing to power the most deadly enemies of the West. What went wrong? Why has a democratic prescription that's proven successful in Germany, Japan and other formerly bellicose nations not worked in the Middle East?

It's not Islam or some cultural factor that accounts for this difference; rather, it is the fact that ideological enemies in the Middle East have not yet been defeated. Democratization took place in Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union after their populations had endured the totalitarian crucible. By 1945 and 1991, they recognized what disasters fascism and communism had brought them, and were primed to try a different path.

That's not the case in the Middle East, where a totalitarian temptation remains powerfully in place. Muslims across the region – with the singular and important exception of Iran – are drawn to the Islamist program with its slogan that "Islam is the solution." That was the case from Iran in 1979 to Algeria in 1992 to Turkey in 2002 to the Palestinian Authority this week.

This pattern has several implications for Western governments:

Slow down: Take heed that an impatience to move the Middle East to democracy is consistently backfiring by bringing our most deadly enemies to power.

Settle in for the long run: However worthy the democratic goal, it will take decades to accomplish.

Defeat radical Islam: Only when Muslims see that this is a route doomed to failure will they be open to alternatives.

Appreciate stability: Stability must not be an end in itself, but its absence likely leads to anarchy and radicalization.

Returning to the dilemma posed by the Hamas victory, Western capitals need to show Palestinians that – like Germans electing Hitler in 1933 – they have made a decision gravely unacceptable to civilized opinion. The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority must be isolated and rejected at every turn, thereby encouraging Palestinians to see the error of their ways. (Emphases mine)

I'll believe Bush is serious about winning only when Daniel Pipes is given a powerful public position...

Maryland Buys Uncle Tom's Cabin

Hamil Harris had an interesting story in the Washington Post yesterday about Uncle Tom's Cabin, which the state of Maryland has purchased as a historical monument. Not only did the cabin really exist, Harriet Beecher Stowe's book was inspired by the autobiography of Josiah Henson, a slave who escaped to Canada and worked on the Underground Railroad:

Henson later returned to Maryland in hopes of buying his freedom, but Riley [his owner] refused to grant it. As a result, he returned to Kentucky to get his wife, and they escaped to Canada to freedom. Henson became a minister and founder of a Canadian settlement called Dawn.

In 1849, Henson wrote his autobiography. Stowe read it after they met in Massachusetts. Three years later she published "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

Marion Joyce, spokeswoman for the Montgomery County Planning Board, said that one of her favorite stories about Henson is about his return to Montgomery County after he had earned his freedom and Riley had died.

"When he knocked on the door, Mrs. Riley asked who it was, and he said Sy, which was his nickname, but she didn't believe him," said Joyce, adding that Riley's wife knew how to tell if it was really Henson because he had broken his arm protecting her husband in a fight.

Henson's arm was deformed, and Riley's wife asked to touch it.

"Sy, it is you. You are a gentleman now," the woman reportedly commented. Henson responded, "Mrs Riley, I always was a gentleman."

Mark Steyn on Hamas's Win

Steyn spoke about the Palestinian election on Hugh Hewitt's radio show:

They won a landslide. And you know, I don't want to make a frivolous comparison, but in a sense, this is a kind of Joel Stein vote. I mean, they're basically saying that the Fatah line, which is that we believe in a two-state solution, but at the same time, we subsidize and glorify terrorism and suicide bombers. They're saying to hell with that humbug hypocrisy line. Let's vote for the party that says we don't believe in a two-state solution, where what we are, we want to drive every last Jew into the sea. And in that sense, this is a less hypocritical expression of where the Palestinian people are at, than supporting Fatah was. Also, I would say that of course, Fatah was incredibly corrupt. Basically, they were in the tenth year of the five year parliament. I mean, you can imagine if the Bush administration says don't worry, folks, we're going to stick around until 2013. And Fatah had spent most of the last ten years taking all the money from the European Union, and basically salting it away in their Swiss bank accounts. That's...eventually, that's going to catch up with you.

HH: The other thing that comes to mind that my friend, Dennis Prager, made very obvious, no honest person can deny now that the Palestinian people want Israel destroyed.

MS: No, and that's right. And I think you're much better knowing honestly and truly where people stand. And often times, particularly in the Middle East, the West has gotten into trouble because its believed leaders who have come up with a form of words that plays well in English language media, and that is not what they tell their own people, or where their people are. And the great thing about Hamas is they're perfectly open. They want to destroy Israel, they don't want it there. That's their bottom line. And I think that's very clarifying.

HH: Let's be cold and clear-eyed about this, Mark Steyn. I believe this means there is an inevitable war out there between Israel and Palestine, because Hamas is going to have to deliver to its constituents what it wants, doesn't it?

MS: Well, I don't think it will...I don't actually think it will be a war. In a sense, I think in the immediate future, what it does is it gives Israel a greater leeway to secure itself with the wall. Nobody's going to argue when you're living next to Hamas that you don't have the right to build a wall. That argument, which the Europeans and other people have made, looks absolutely stupid now. But I think what it does tell you is that in the end, the Palestinians are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the Earth. Every city you go to...you go to New York, you go to London, you go to Paris, you meet talented, energetic Palestinian doctors and lawyers and accountants. All the talent got out of there in the late 1940's and early 50's. You imagine people, third, fourth generation, the people who stuck around because of this insane dream that they're going to get some olive grove of their great-grandfathers back one day, can you imagine what kind of idiot is going to stick around for sixty years for that? So it's the absolute worst of the Palestinian people who are in Gaza, and in the West Bank. And it's a terrible tragedy for them. But it is the fact that they've been wrecked by being essentially mollycoddled by the U.N. and world opinion for sixty years.

Steyn also discussed his belief that Saddam did have WMD in Iraq, with host Hugh Hewitt:

I want to switch, if I can, to Saddam, and his general who is running around the United States with a new book saying that they shipped airplane loads of WMD out of Iraq and into Syria. Mark Steyn, he can make his own case, but if a ranking Saddamite had come forward and said there were no WMD's, do you think he would be getting what? 5, 10, 100 times the publicity that this fellow is?

MS: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I don't think...the fact of the matter is, when you look at the regime's behavior, they behaved as if they had WMD. When you're in that, what you call the Syrian Desert, which is...sort of spreads over Syria, Jordan and Iraq, when you're in that part of the world, you stumble across these huge bases that just have numbers and letters. They're all called H-2 and H-3. And these things go on for mile. And you drive in them, because when I was there, the gates had all been sort of torn down. And you think, well, what the hell is this? It's not an airfield or anything. What was he keeping here? And then you go up to the Syrian border, and you see it's basically just a line in the sand. There was all kinds of stuff that disappeared over there, because essentially, the United States and the United Nations chose to give Saddam effectively a year to get the stuff out of the country.

World Economic Forum Magazine Calls for Israel Boycott

Roger L. Simon tipped us off to this story about anti-Israel propaganda, calling for a boycott of Israel, in the World Economic Forum magazine distributed in Davos, Switzerland. Davos organizer Klaus Schwab apologized, and pulled the story off his website. But I'd suggest it's not enough.

Actions speak louder than words. If Schwab is truly sorry, here's a suggestion for Professor Dr. Schwab to reall demonstrate he's not an anti-semite or anti-Israel:

Move next year's World Economic Forum meeting to Jerusalem, Haifa or Tel Aviv...

Haaretz: Hamas Win Is Victory For Netanyahu

Haaretz's analysis today makes some sense--Benjamin Netanyahu may regain Israel's top job, thanks to Hamas. And they may strike a peace deal:

Rabin brought Arafat. Arafat brought Benjamin Netanyahu and Sharon to power. Sharon brought Hamas. And Hamas will yet bring back Netanyahu - and the lion shall lie down with the lamb.

How Harvard Lost Russia

Author David McClintick, writing in Institutional Investor, details the intricate web of corruption, fraud, and abuse, paid for by the US government through USAID, that eventually cost America Russia's friendship--an NGO called the Harvard Institute for International Development (ht Johnson's Russia List):

Since being named president of Harvard University in 2001, former U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers has sparked a series of controversies that have grabbed headlines. Summers incurred the wrath of African-Americans when he belittled the work of controversial religion professor Cornel West (who left for Princeton University); last year he infuriated faculty and students alike when he seemed to disparage the innate scientific abilities of women at a Massachusetts economic conference, igniting a national uproar that nearly cost him his job; last fall brought the departure of Jack Meyer, the head of Harvard Management Co., which oversees the school's endowment but had inflamed some in the community because of the multimillion-dollar salaries it pays some of its managers.

Then, in quiet contrast, there is the case of economics professor Andrei Shleifer, who in the mid-1990s led a Harvard advisory program in Russia that collapsed in disgrace. In August, after years of litigation, Harvard, Shleifer and others agreed to pay at least $31 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. government. Harvard had been charged with breach of contract, Shleifer and an associate, Jonathan Hay, with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.

Shleifer remains a faculty member in good standing. Colleagues say that is because he is a close longtime friend and collaborator of Summers.

In the following pages investigative journalist David McClintick, a Harvard alumnus, chronicles Shleifer's role in the university's Russia Project and how his friendship with Summers has protected him from the consequences of that debacle inside America's premier academic institution.

ff duty and in swimsuits, the mentor and his protégé strolled the beach at Truro. For years, with their families, they had summered together along this stretch of Massachusetts' famed Cape Cod. Close personally and professionally, the two friends confided in each other the most private matters of family and finance. The topic of the day was the former Soviet Union.

"You've got to be careful," the mentor, Lawrence Summers, warned his protégé, Andrei Shleifer. "There's a lot of corruption in Russia."

It was late August 1996, and Summers, 42, was deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Shleifer, 35, was a rising star in the Harvard University economics department, just as Summers had been 15 years earlier when he had first taken Shleifer under his wing.

Summers' warning rose out of their pivotal roles in a revolution of global consequence -- the attempt to bring the Russian economy out from the ruins of communism into the promise of Western-style capitalism. Summers, as Treasury's second-in-command, was the architect of U.S. efforts to help Russia. Shleifer's involvement was more intimate. Traveling frequently to Moscow, he was directing key elements of the reform effort under the banner of the renowned Harvard Institute for International Development.

Working on contract for the U.S., HIID advised the Russian government on privatizing its economy and creating capital markets and the laws and institutions to regulate them. Shleifer did not report formally to Summers but rather to the State Department's Agency for International Development, or AID, the spearhead of the U.S.'s foreign aid program.

Personal affection as much as official concern prompted Summers' admonition. He had come to know that Shleifer and his wife, Nancy Zimmerman, a noted hedge fund manager, had been investing in Russia. Though he didn't know specifics, he understood just enough to worry that the couple might run afoul of myriad conflict-of-interest regulations that barred American advisers from investing in the countries they were assisting.

Summers did not restrict his warnings to Shleifer.

"There might be a scandal, and you could become embroiled," Summers told Zimmerman. "You should make sure you're clear with everybody. People might want to make Andrei a problem some day. The world's a shitty place."

Summers' warnings proved at once prophetic and ineffectual. Even as Shleifer and his wife strove to reassure their friend, they were maneuvering to make an investment in Russia's first authorized mutual fund company. Within eight months their private Russian dealings, together with those of close associates and relatives, would explode in scandal -- bringing dishonor to them, Harvard University and the U.S. government. The Department of Justice would deploy the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston to launch a criminal investigation that would uncover evidence of fraud and money laundering, as well as the cavalier use of U.S. government funds to support everything from tennis lessons to vacation boondoggles for Harvard employees and their spouses, girlfriends and Russian pals. It would, in the end, be an extraordinary display of an overweening "best and brightest" arrogance toward the laws and rules that the Harvard people were supposed to live by.

Says one banker who was a frequent visitor to Russia in that era, "The Harvard crowd hurt themselves, they hurt Harvard, and they hurt the U.S. government."

Mostly, they hurt Russia and its hopes of establishing a lasting framework for a stable Western-style capitalism, as Summers himself acknowledged when he testified under oath in the U.S. lawsuit in Cambridge in 2002. "The project was of enormous value," said Summers, who by then had been installed as the president of Harvard. "Its cessation was damaging to Russian economic reform and to the U.S.-Russian relationship."

Reinventing Russia was never going to be easy, but Harvard botched a historic opportunity. The failure to reform Russia's legal system, one of the aid program's chief goals, left a vacuum that has yet to be filled and impedes the country's ability to confront economic and financial challenges today (see box, page 77).

Harvard vigorously defended its work in Russia, but in 2004, after protracted legal wranglings, a judge in federal district court in Boston ruled that the university had breached its contract with the U.S. government and that Shleifer and an associate were liable for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Last August, nine years after Summers and his protégé took their stroll along that Truro beach, Harvard, Shleifer and associates agreed to pay the government $31 million-plus to settle the case. Shleifer and Zimmerman were forced to mortgage their house to secure their part of the settlement.

Russia's struggles today certainly don't result entirely from Harvard's misdeeds or Shleifer's misconduct. There is plenty of blame to share. It is difficult to overstate the challenge of transforming the economic and legal culture, not to mention the ancient pathologies, of a huge, enigmatic nation that once spanned one sixth of the earth's land surface, 150 ethnicities and 11 time zones. The Marshall Plan, by comparison, was simple.

Summers wasn't president of Harvard when Shleifer's mission to Moscow was coming apart. But as a Harvard economics professor in the 1980s, a World Bank and Treasury official in the 1990s and Harvard's president since 2001, Summers was positioned uniquely to influence Shleifer's career path, to shape U.S. aid to Russia and Shleifer's role in it and even to shield Shleifer after the scandal broke. Though Summers, as Harvard president, recused himself from the school's handling of this case, he made a point of taking aside Jeremy Knowles, then the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, and asking him to protect Shleifer.

Months after Harvard was forced to pay the biggest settlement in its history, largely because of his misdeeds, Shleifer remains on the faculty. No public action has been taken against him, nor is there any sign as this magazine goes to press in late December that any is contemplated.

Throughout the otherwise voluble university community, there has been an odd silence about the entire affair. Discussions mostly have taken place sotto voce in deans' offices or in local Cambridge haunts, such as the one where a well-connected Harvard personage expressed deep concern, telling II: "Larry's handling of the Shleifer matter raises very basic questions about the way he governs Harvard. This is fraught with significance. It couldn't be more fraught."

The silence is now beginning to break, thanks to the leadership of academic worthies like former Harvard College dean Harry Lewis, who is finishing a book about the university to be published in the spring by Perseus Public Affairs. Lewis agreed to show II the manuscript, in which he asserts, "The relativism with which Harvard has dealt with the Shleifer case undermines Harvard's moral authority over its students."

As Glenn Reynolds says, read the whole thing . . .

Mark Steyn on Canada's Conservative Revolution

Mark Steyn is crowing about the Candian election, in The Australian

A SAD day for Michael Moore. In the event of a terrible tragedy, the corpulent anti-corporate crusader is wont, like the Queen and Kofi Annan, to issue a formal statement to the world. And his "Michael Moore Statement On Canadian Election" made distressing reading: "Oh, Canada - you're not really going to elect a Conservative majority on Monday, are you? That's a joke, right?"

Well, no. In a very Canadian kind of revolution, we rose up yesterday and threw the bums out but gave them a soft, fluffy landing, nevertheless installing in office a minority government that somehow managed to get itself elected despite having the word "Conservative" in its name.

Daniel Pipes Endorses Hamas

Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows. Daniel Pipes has taken sides against the US-subsidized Palestinian Authority and the Fatah party, (weakly) endorsing Hamas:

Fatah is dubbed moderate and Hamas extremist; or, in the even more dramatic terms of an Associated Press headline today, "Palestinians choose between pursuing peace or confrontation with Israel." In fact, the differences between them are merely tactical; a more accurate headline would be "Palestinians choose between pursuing more overt or more covert destruction of Israel." Basically, Hamas speaks its mind and Fatah dares not. And Hamas provides the social services that Fatah cannot because its honchos have stolen the funds.

Ironically, this means that there is some reason to prefer Hamas to Fatah, for it prompts a more negative response from Israelis, Europeans, Americans, and others. But the New York Sun has already made this point for me a couple of days ago, in a house editorial titled "Recipe for Trouble":

a victory by Hamas, evil though the organization is, might not be all bad. At least then it would be clear to everyone what Israel is facing, an enemy committed to its complete destruction. … With Hamas in power, the Palestinian Authority could be seen, even by the American state department, for what it is, a terrorist state with the aim of destroying a free and democratic American ally. It would join the ranks of Iran and Syria as a rogue state that America would seek to isolate and roll back rather than subsidize with taxpayer dollars.

So, while I do not wish Hamas well in any manner at all (an article of mine appearing today in USA Today calls for it to be destroyed), there will likely be some benefit in having it complicit in the Palestinian Authority.

The American Thinker on Iran v. Israel

Writing in The American Thinker, J.R. Dunn says Israel can't afford to wait until Iran attacks with nuclear weapons:

An acute observer might well think that everyone involved was trying to ease the way for a strike to be carried out – by the U.S. or Israel or both. It really wouldn’t matter so long as the EU and the UN were not involved. (The French nuclear threat only highlights this point – it’s best read as a statement intended to direct Iranian intentions elsewhere.) Israel, after all, does have a history of the coup de main, the all-or-nothing strike such as occurred in 1956, 1967, and 1981.  Look at the situation from Israel’s point of view to grasp how far it may be forced to go. This is the state founded in the shadow of the Holocaust, as a lifeboat for oldest surviving nation on Earth. The only people the world ever consciously tried to destroy.

To the Israelis, a hostile Middle Eastern state gaining nuclear weapons renders the level of risk effectively infinite. They will be facing not defeat, not humiliation, but effective annihilation. Under these circumstances, any level of response is justified. In the past week, two prominent Israelis, Benjamin Netanyahu and chief of staff Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, have both publicly stated that “the threat to Israel is existential.” On January 21st Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz went even further: the Iranian people face “havoc and destruction” if their government fails to stand down. They should be taken as meaning what they say.

Those words may be the only warning anyone ever gets.  There was a point during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 when it appeared that the Egyptians had broken though Israeli lines in the Sinai at the same time the Syrians were about to drive across the Golan. Although never verified, it’s been reported on some authority that Moshe Dayan placed the Israeli nuclear strike force on full alert, the planes at the ends of the runways with their engines hot, their weapons armed, ready to head for their targets.

The “go” phrase was, “The Temple has fallen for the third time.” It didn’t happen then. And I think it can taken as a given that the Temple will not fall this time either. Apart from that, everything else is up in the air. Except for the jets – and they’re always ready to go.

Kofi Annan's Role in Sudan's Suffering

Roger L. Simon objects to the Washington Postproviding editorial space for the UN Secretary-General to posture on Sudan, without mentioning Kofi Annan's responsibility for the unfolding tragedy.

More on Moscow's British NGO Spy Scandal

In the Moscow Times

British Spy Scandal 'Rocks' Moscow NGOs

Tony Blair didn't deny Russian charges that British spies have used high-tech rocks as electronic mail drops in a spy scandal that threatens to envelope Western-supported NGOs--through British funding and contacts, some of whom have been named as accused spies. Here's RIA Novosti's version:

The program also alleged that Marc Doe, a first secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, had been authorizing regular payments to Russian non-governmental organizations. Several documents signed by him were shown as evidence of cash payments to NGOs operating in Moscow, including 23,000 pounds (about $40,000) to the Moscow Helsinki Group, and 5,719 pounds ($9,700) to the Eurasia Foundation.

Another document signed by Doe, a 27-year-old graduate of Durham University, contained information on cash payments for an obscure project for establishing schools of public inspectors in remote areas of Siberia and Russia's Far East.

FSB spokesperson Diana Shemyakina said earlier that thousands of NGOs were working in Russia, although only 92 were officially registered by the Justice Ministry. Most of them were founded and provided with funds by the U.S. government and public organizations, and by its NATO allies, she said.

Non-governmental organizations with financing from other countries are thought to have played a major role in the "revolutions" that have swept former Soviet states in recent years, prompting some Russian politicians to raise concerns that similar activities were being carried out in Russia. Parliament passed a bill restricting the operation of NGOs at the end of last year.

Apart from Doe, the Rossiya program said embassy employees Christopher Pirt, 30, and Paul Cronton, were also involved in espionage, as was 32-year-old researcher Andre Fleming.

On the other hand, this Guardian story from Britain is more amusing, sort of "Get Smart" meets "Austin Powers."

An x-ray of the box, shown on Russian state television, showed four big batteries and a radio transmitter-receiver tightly packed together - a device of such crude simplicity it would have made Q, James Bond's technical wizard, shudder.

"First the Russian asset would walk past the stone," Nikolai Zakharov, deputy spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB), as the KGB is now known, told the Guardian. "He would send information to the stone from his palmtop, and later the embassy employee would pass by and collect it from another palmtop."

He said the device, a 21st century version of the "dead letter drop", had a range of up to 20m and could send and receive coded signals to or from small palmtop computers, almost identical to those available on Britain's high streets. It enabled British diplomats to communicate indirectly with their alleged Russian agents: it meant they never had to be in the same room as them. Four members of the British embassy staff were identified by the Russians and accused of being part of a spy ring. The four were all still at their posts last night.

Interfax, the Russian news agency, reported that the FSB had fanned out across Moscow to check other potentially suspicious rocks. Sergei Ignatchenko, chief spokesman for the FSB, told the agency that a second device had been spotted but was retrieved by British agents.

The echoes of Ian Fleming and John le Carré will raise a smile in Britain and elsewhere. But there is serious side to this, and not only for the alleged Russian agent being held in Moscow accused of handling state secrets. Though old cold war enemies - such as Britain and Russia - have set up procedures to cooperate quite closely on counter-terrorism, they still indulge in a mutual spying game. The second oldest profession is as alive and as well as the oldest.

But on another level it is troubling. For if the British are guilty, they have threatened the work of NGOs, by crossing the line between democracy-building and espionage. And that may mean big trouble for democracy-builders everywhere...

Thieves of Baghdad

Last night a friend was talking about this book at dinner, and mentioned a really nasty review in today's Washington Post. When I saw the review myself, of this new book about the search for the art looted from the Baghdad Museum in today's Washington Post, I understood her excitement. The reviewer, Post critic Philip Kennicott, complained that the author sounded hostile to journalists, bureaucrats, and ivy-leaguers. He called him a "Marine snob." The Post's message, it's a good read--but don't read it!

So I thought: This book by William Bogdanos--a US Marine who tracked down the treasures and discovered the looting of the Iraq museum was an "inside job"--must be REALLY interesting.

After I get a copy, I may have some more to say....

Moscow's Ismailovsky Flea Market in 360 Degrees

I really love these 360-degree panoramas...

Kanan Makiya on European Racism on Iraq

From an interview in on Democratiya.com(ht War and Piece):

People like myself, those of us who went into Iraq after April and March 2003 as part of the effort to transform this country, have felt betrayed by Europe as a whole. We were attacked by the media of all the surrounding countries, countries utterly hostile to the sort of values on which Europe rests. Satellite stations distorted what was going on. The silence in Europe at that moment gave enormous sustenance to all those forces struggling against the transformation of Iraq. It enabled the Jihadis, the Ba'athists, the extreme Arab nationalists, and the Arab regimes, to say 'Look at the hostility of Europe to what the United States has done!' Europe made it possible to isolate not just the United States but everything that is represented by the west. Europe gave strength to the argument that it was a traditional colonist land grab or oil grab, which was nonsense, of course.

I would say that much of the strength of the hostility of the Jihadi movement, and of the forces that have made life so horrible in Iraq, came from the silence of Europe. Europe has a lot to answer for. It's not even that it was half-hearted. They fell in completely with the language of the non-democratic Arab regimes. They bought their line and they seemed to stand for the same things. They undermined entirely the values of the operation. Europeans knew that the United States was not going to permanently occupy Iraq. Deep down the smarter Europeans must have known it wasn't just about oil. It was - rightly or wrongly - a way of changing the traditional western attitude towards the Arab Muslim world. It was an end to the support for autocratic and repressive governments. It was a new view that if we are going to succeed in this war against terror then we are going to have to be viewed by the populations of this part of the world in a totally different way. Now Europe might not have thought it was the right time. Europe might have thought it should be done differently. But Europe should never have been seen to be undermining the argument itself.

Europe was justifying and supporting the foundations on which these repressive regimes stood. It had acquiesced so fully in that relativist language it had no views of its own that it thought could be shared. More: it looked racist because it looked like the democratic values it enjoyed were not possible for Arabs and Muslims to enjoy. All of a sudden the shoe was on the other foot entirely. It was not the Americans who were the imperialists or racists. It was the Europeans who, by sitting back, were saying 'you Arabs and you Muslims really can't do any better than this, so why mess around with this thing in the first place?'