Maloy Krishna Dhar on the Future of Afghanistan

From the Sri Lanka Guardian:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JournoList Names Posted on Web

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

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

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

(ht The American Thinker)

Congress Pushes to End SEC FOIA Exemption

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

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

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

This issue is one of political perception.

Christopher Hitchens on His Battle With Cancer

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

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

Here's a link to DailyHitchens.com.

Also, a clip from CNN:

Nina Shea: US Mosques Serve As Terrorist HQ

From National Review:

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

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

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

ISLAMIC CENTERS ARE THE “AXIS”

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

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

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

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

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

Coming Soon: Summer Reading Posts

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

Germany Closes Hamburg Mosque After Terror Raid

From Bloomberg News:

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

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

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

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

UPDATE: More from AFP, including an Uzbek connection:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Riot in Washington, DC Metro

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

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

Not anymore.

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

He would not answer.

"There are no signs," I said.

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

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

He sat in stony silence in his chair.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"My name is John," he said.

"All trains are running on the Glenmont platform."

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

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

Republicans Attack Kagan as Unfit for Supreme Court

Mayor Giuliani Opposes Ground Zero Mosque

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

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

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

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

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

Daniel Pipes: Britain World's Terrorist HQ

From DanielPipes.com:

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

Jacob Applebaum on Wikileaks' Rationale

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

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

Wikileaks Co-Founder: Media Reporting Failures Create Wikileaks Demand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wikileaks Reveals Iranian Ties to Al Qaeda

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

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

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

Sherrod to Sue Breitbart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

French TV Interviews Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange

Wikileaks v FOIA

The Wikileaks story has made me think a bit about the Freedom of Information Act. This law, signed by Lyndon Baines Johnson on September 6, 1966 (officially Public Law 89-554, 80 Stat. 383; Amended 1996, 2002, 2007), was intended to make information about activities of the US government available to the American public--who as citizens and taxpayers are responsible for the federal government. The principle was simple. However, in practice, over time, more and more loopholes have been added to the law through legislation, regulation, executive and administrative decisions, and court rulings--to the point where, due to fees allowed for search, review, and duplication by government agencies, it has become almost prohibitive for individual citizens to request information. Instead, a series of preferences has emerged over time that has privileged various sectors of society--such as newspapers, television stations, universities, non-profit organizations and the like--which have been exempted from certain charges.

These privileges resulted, no doubt, from well-intended attempt to reduce the burden of answering requests from thousands of American citizens, to give "bang for the buck" to the law. The idea would be that such institutional players would be best situated to disseminate information to the American public.

However, since the law was written, advances in technology have shifted the nature of information dissemination. As the Wikileaks controversy reveals, news organizations such as the New York Times offered to collaborate with the US government to suppress information. That is, they served not only as disseminators, but also as filters, editors, indeed censors of information.

On the other hand, the Wikileaks website provided universal, immmediate, instantaneous and total dissemination. Thus, the mainline news organizations provided an inferior medium of dissemination to Wikileaks.

This only has to do with the question of dissemination. However, dissemination is a key problem that is considered under FOIA when granting categorical preferences and fee reductions.

Secondly, the "data dump" on Wikileaks permitted thousands of interested readers all over the world to comb through the data looking for keywords of interest to them--in the aggregate, small numbers add up to big numbers. Thus, in combination with distributed computer processing, the data mining possibilities of an internet post by a lone individual on Wikileaks are much greater than a release to an established newspaper or media company.

More interesting is that the Wikileaks release demonstrates that US Government information is already available in electronic form. Clearly, automated computer programs could scan data for keywords to classify and/or de-classify the information on a regular basis. Such routine declassification--which might include excision of specific information "too hot to handle" while allowing more general material to be distributed--could be automatically posted on government websites.

A daily release of routine information, much like a daily press conference, removes much of the drama and "gotcha!" from information. It would allow sober citizens to evaluate what is going on--perhaps with computer matrices of their own devising that might actually help win the war that the US has been losing since 9/11 (Islamist extremism has metastasized, spreading around the globe, "on a roll," due in large measure to America's failure to catch Bin Laden "dead or alive", the express war aim stated by President George W. Bush, and reiterated by President Obama).

Such sharing of information would probably help mobilize the American citizenry, creating pressure to win--rather than the current situation, where a "Top Secret America" (to quote the Washington Post) keeps ordinary citizens in the dark, yet demands trillions of tax dollars for projects of dubious efficacy, legality, or prudence. The resulting enrichment and corruption of Washington decision-makers actually serves the interests of America's enemies. America grows weaker and poorer, the stock market and housing market collapse, America's adversaries strike with impunity--and still no one is held to account, because the American public has been kept in the dark.

It has become a cliche to quote Justice Brandeis's observation that "sunshine is the best disinfectant." But it does not make it less true.

The first rule of war, to know one's enemy, cannot be practiced in the dark. The key problem, now as always, is for the American public to be able to "identify friend, or foe?" Americans don't know the answer to that question in Iraq, or Afghanistan. Indeed, due to a flawed strategy that shrank from properly identifying allies and enemies (despite public rhetoric of "with us, or against us"), Americans have been literally kept in the dark by political and military leaders.

The Wikileaks controversy could provide a welcome change, by reminding American leaders that the public's right to know is not an obstacle to victory--but a prerequisite for it. What is needed is honest debate about the struggle America faces, based on honest information.

Let's hope the Wikileaks story doesn't go away, but is the beginning of a flow of new information that will enable America to chart the right course in the years to come...based not on ideology, wishful thinking, "conflict resolution," "reconciliation," "power sharing," or blaming allies. The 90,000 documents have been a gift to the American people, that could serve as a catalyst for a realignment of political and economic forces in such a way as to clear the decks.

Let us hope that there is someone in America with the common sense, and leadership, to grasp this opportunity for what it represents...

Wikileaks Documents Embarrass Central Asia, Per Eurasianet

Joshua Kucera looked for Central Asian references in the Wikileaks file, and found a few:

Here, an outgoing US ambassador to Uzbekistan (apparently Jon Parnell) gives his thoughts in 2007:

*Uzbekistan is not that hard to figure out. Coming up with effective policy mechanisms to advance U.S. interests in Tashkent is a much more difficult question. On the eve of my departure after over three years in Tashkent, I offer some thoughts on where we are and what may lie ahead. Uzbekistan does not pose all that complex a picture. It is a post-Soviet police state run in the interest of a small coterie of families who monopolize political and economic life. Membership in the inner circle is no longer based on loyalty to a ruling ideology or party as it was in the Soviet era, but on loyalty to the president, Islam Karimov. He will be reelected for another term later this year (probably on December 23) regardless of what the constitution may say. His many public and private statements to the contrary, he is not interested in reform of any sort, but in tight bureaucratic control of the economic and political system.

Here, a US embassy cable complains about Tajikistan's president "ranting" about Uzbekistan in July 2007:

*"This new bridge is as important for us as oxygen," Tajik President Emomali Rahmon told Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who led the US presidential delegation to the opening of the new US-funded bridge linking Tajikistan and Afghanistan across the Pyanj River. Rahmon used the remainder of a ninety-minute US-Tajik bilateral meeting to elicit US assistance and investment for additional infrastructure projects, expound on Tajikistan's favorable foreign policy and business climate, and rant about Uzbekistan. A separate trilateral meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai was more scripted and concluded the business portion of the festive weekend (August 25-26).

A May 2007 cable from the US embassy in Tashkent reports on frustrations that the Germans have with Uzbekistan:

*According to the German Ambassador, the German-Uzbek counterterrorism relationship is "stagnant," with no real dialog taking place. In addition to providing little credible information, the Government of Uzbekistan allows little access to the Islamic community, thus impeding Germany's ability to reach an independent assessment about the real terrorist threat here. The Uzbeks profess to want more cooperation, but their approach to cooperation is that German equipment and money are welcome, but that German values on such things as respect for human rights are not. The German Ambassador expects that the Uzbeks will "scream" publicly if European Union sanctions are not lifted completely in May, but that the decision will have little negative impact on the German base at Termez because of the money that the Uzbeks receive as a result of the German presence.

In June 2007, the US embassy in Dushanbe analyzes Tajikistan's relationship with Iran:

*Tajikistan has characterized its ties with Iran as purely economic, but growing political, military and diplomatic relations indicate that more than investment and trade is bringing the two countries closer together. In the last eighteen months, Tajik President Rahmon and Iranian President Ahmadinejad have made trips to each other's capitals and signed a raft of agreements and declarations ranging from education, science and culture to inter parliamentary and defense cooperation. Iranian assistance has also trickled into impoverished rural areas, building schools and mosques in places where the government has provided little development. But although friendship with a country that supports religion-based insurrections in neighboring states is a dangerous game for Tajikistan, neither Rahmon nor Tajikistan can afford to say no to infrastructure development and investment. In the short run, both countries stand to gain from closer relations: Tajikistan needs the money, and Iran needs the friend.

A Kyrgyz politician is called "melodramatic" for warning of the possibility of civil war:

*A meeting between opposition MP Kubatbek Baibolov and SCA DAS Evan Feigenbaum April 19 revealed that Baibolov, at least, has little hope for a near-term solution to Kyrgyzstan's political instability. Baibolov said that the struggle for power and resources between rival clans remained the core explanation for the country's dilemmas, and was doubtful that constitutional reforms alone could resolve the current standoff. Ever melodramatic, he forecast that if a resolution was not found, civil war could ensue.

I imagine this could be resulting in some awkward conversations this week in Tashkent and Dushanbe...

Afghan Police Chief Was Iranian Spy, Per Wikileaks Documents

From Jihad Watch:

Here again we see that those in authority had no mechanism for and/or no interest in distinguishing "moderates" who merited being given powerful positions in post-Taliban Afghanistan from Islamic supremacists and jihadists. And even they had cared to make such a distinction and tried to do so, how could they have gone about it?

Wikileaks Founder Fears US Arrest as "Material Witness" in Manning Case

Julian Assange fears the US government, reports London's Daily Telegraph:

Mr Assange says despite this he still fears he is at risk of being forcefully detained by the US government as a material witness in the prosecution of US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning.

Mr Manning, 22, was arrested in Baghdad in May and charged earlier this month with multiple counts of mishandling and leaking classified data, after a computer hacker turned him in.
In the United States an authority has the right to detain and hold a material witness for an indefinite period to ensure they give their testimony in a criminal investigation.

The Wikileaks founder said: "Today the White House put out a private briefing to reporters about Wikileaks and me and it quoted a section from an interview with me in Der Spiegel saying that I enjoy crushing -------- [bastards].

"Somehow the White House finds that offensive.

"In terms of returning to the United States I don't know. Our sources advise from inside the US government that there were thoughts of whether I could be charged as a co-conspirator to espionage, which is serious.

"That doesn't seem to be the thinking within the United States any more however there is the other possibility of being detained as a material witness and being kept either in confinement or not being allowed to leave the country until the Manning case is concluded."

He also claimed that Bradley Manning is being held in a secluded facility in Kuwait which he says is like "a second Guantanamo Bay".

He also accused the US government of doing this to "hide" Mr Manning from effective civil representation.

Wikipedia on Wikileaks

An interesting account, here:

Staff and funding

According to a January 2010 interview, the Wikileaks team then consisted of five people working full-time and about 800 people who worked occasionally, none of whom were compensated.[31] Wikileaks has no official headquarters. The expenses per year are about €200,000, mainly for servers and bureaucracy, but would reach €600,000 if work currently done by volunteers were paid for.[31] Wikileaks does not pay for lawyers, as hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal support have been donated by media organisations such as the Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association.[31] Its only revenue stream is donations, but Wikileaks is planning to add an auction model to sell early access to documents.[31] According to the Wau Holland Foundation, Wikileaks receives no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth.[45] An article in TechEYE.net wrote

As a charity accountable under German law, donations for Wikileaks can be made to the foundation. Funds are held in escrow and are given to Wikileaks after the whistleblower website files an application containing a statement with proof of payment. The foundation does not pay any sort of salary nor give any renumeration [sic] to Wikileaks' personnel, corroborating the statement of the site's German representative Daniel Schmitt on national television that all personnel works voluntarily, even its speakers.[45]
[edit]Hosting

Wikileaks describes itself as “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking”. Wikileaks is hosted by PRQ, a Sweden-based company providing “highly secure, no-questions-asked hosting services.” PRQ is said to have “almost no information about its clientele and maintains few if any of its own logs.” PRQ is owned by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij who, through their involvement in The Pirate Bay, have significant experience in withstanding legal challenges from authorities. Being hosted by PRQ makes it difficult to take Wikileaks offline. Furthermore, "Wikileaks maintains its own servers at undisclosed locations, keeps no logs and uses military-grade encryption to protect sources and other confidential information." Such arrangements have been called "bulletproof hosting."[46] Wired reported in July 2010 that is currently not possible to make submissions to the Wikileaks website. Assange responded that the submissions engine is currently being re-engineered.[47] Since 16 July 2010 the submission page is reachable again.

The Wikipedia entry posts an interesting list of prominent scoops, as well as a link to the Wikipedia profile of Julian Assange, director of Wikileaks. Thanks to this link on WaPedia's entry for Assange, I found this post from Assange's 2007 blog, that I think explains his rationale for Wikileaks:

Sun 31 Dec 2006 : The non linear effects of leaks on unjust systems of governance

You may want to read The Road to Hanoi or Conspiracy as Governance ; an obscure motivational document, almost useless in light of its decontextualization and perhaps even then. But if you read this latter document while thinking about how different structures of power are differentially affected by leaks (the defection of the inner to the outer) its motivations may become clearer.

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.

Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what's actually going on.

Kingston Daily Freeman on Wikileaks and the New Media Order

An interesting analysis of the import of the Wikileaks story from the Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman:

THE online release of an estimated 91,000 secret U.S. military documents on the Afghanistan war has shaken the old order.

In brief, a private group — WikiLeaks.org — obtained the records and scheduled the material for release on the Internet.

Yes, the White House, Britain and Pakistan were — and are — all up in arms at what is being called one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history.

But the organization also made the records available to three news organizations — The New York Times, the German magazine Der Spiegel, and the Guardian newspaper in London — about a month before the scheduled release. By doing so, WikiLeaks not only disseminated information to the displeasure of three sovereign governments, but also put three esteemed “old media” news organizations to work, effectively daring them not to publish stories on the documents.

NOT too long ago, editors at those publications would have been deciding whether and, if so, on what terms the public would receive leaked material.

In today’s world, all three organizations knew WikiLeaks was going to post the documents with or without their parallel participation.

In that way, the decision to write about the hither-to secret material was taken out of the hands of the old media editors by the distribution power of the Internet...

Or, as President Obama declared on ABC News’ Good Morning America: “...we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.”

Document of the Week: Wikileaks Afghan War Diary

I'm reading it now, and shall comment as I figure out what's going on here. But in the meantime, here's the link to the 90,000 pages of documents posted on the web by Wikileaks, so you can read the original material:

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010.

There's also a dedicated webpage, with a number of download options:

http://wardiary.wikileaks.org.

Some preliminary thoughts:

The following statement seems to indicates that the leak may be coming from somewhere nearer the top than the bottom of the chain-of-command:

We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.

The White House reaction, so far, seems to support a view that this "leak" may have been sanctioned from the top, as indicated by this July 26th White House press conference statement by Robert Gibbs:

MR. GIBBS: Look, again, I would point you to -- as I said a minute ago, I don’t know that what is being said or what is being reported isn’t something that hasn’t been discussed fairly publicly, again, by named U.S. officials and in many news stories. I mean, The New York Times had a story on this topic in March of 2009 written by the same authors.

Likewise, National Security Advisor General James Jones' statement:

These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people.

More evidence of a leak from the top can be found in today's statement from President Obama, as reported by The Guardian (UK):

Barack Obama today claimed the disclosures about the mishandling of the Afghanistan war contained in leaked US military documents justified his decision to embark on a new strategy.

If the release of 90,000 leaked messages doesn't damage US releations with Afghanistan and Pakistan, why were they classified in the first place?

I'll hazard one other comment at this point. Whatever the source, even if President Obama or Vice President Biden, a recourse to "leaks" is a symptom that the document classification system is not working properly.

At a certain point, the US government invites a climate of distrust--as it did in Vietnam--when it refuses to routinely declassify and release information that poses little danger to the war effort. In that sense, over-classification becomes a security risk, because it encourages leaks. These leaks, in turn, undermine the justification for secrecy in the first place--and lead to questions as to whether information had been properly classified by the US government.

Indeed, this article in the Christian Science Monitor discusses the problem of overclassification, in the light of the Wikileaks story.

A perceived "credibility gap" is the logical consequence of such an approach. In the end, it would tend to undermine both the war effort and the administration, despite any protests to the contrary...

Randall Terry Calls Senate Republican Leader "Spineless Chicken"

From the Louisville Courier-Journal:

In an interview yesterday, Terry called [Sen. Mitch] McConnell [R-KY] "a spineless chicken" for not leading a filibuster against Kagan.

He said he believes that Republicans can cobble together enough opposition to Kagan using her positions on abortion, gun rights and other issues to sustain a filibuster.

"Find your problem with Elena Kagan and make that your hill to die on," he said.

Frank Gaffney: Elena Kagan Has Not Come Clean About Her Shariah Past

From TownHall.com:

Which is where Elena Kagan's enabling of the penetration of Shariah into our capital markets through the Harvard Law School's Islamic Finance project comes in. The purpose of that project is, according to an excellent essay by Andy McCarthy entitled "Elena Kagan's ‘Don't Ask Don't Tell' Shariah Policy" published last week in National Review Online, "to promote Shariah compliance in the U.S. financial sector."

This is accomplished by via legal support to an industry known as "Shariah-Compliant Finance" (SCF)." It was invented in the mid-20th Century by Brotherhood operatives as a means of facilitating and underwriting the penetration of Shariah into Western societies by mainlining it into their capitalist bloodstreams.

McCarthy notes that: "Kagan and other apologists for Shariah-Compliant Finance would absolve themselves from the real-world consequences of their allegedly well-intentioned diversity fetish. But legitimizing any aspect of Shariah is the endorsement of all of it....There is no cut-and-dried separation of Shariah brutality from the tidy, white-collar world of financial transactions."

Against this backdrop another Kagan connection to Shariah looms large. As my colleague, Christine Brim, observed in a post at Andrew Breitbart's awesome new national security web portal, BigPeace.com: During her time as Harvard Law's dean, Kagan twice (once in absentia, the other time in person) awarded the school's "Medal of Freedom" to the controversial Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudry. Today, according to Brim, the thus-legitimated Chaudry is engaged in a "powergrab...to impose Shariah law across Pakistan's government."

As a new ad by the Center for Security Policy asks, "If Kagan tolerates promoting the injustice of Shariah law on the campus of Harvard, what kind of injustice will she tolerate in America during a lifetime on the Supreme Court?"

Althouse: Kagan Least Popular Supreme Court Nominee Since Bork & Miers

From Ann Althouse's blog:

 Instead, she and we got the supposedly charming Kagan, who, for some reason, is the least popular Supreme Court nominee...since Gallup started polling people, at the time of the Bork nomination. (Bork and Harriet Miers,unsuccessful nominees,  were less popular than Kagan.) 

IMHO, Kagan's a Bork of the Left; that is, an Ivy-League law professor, Solictor General, extremist on the abortion issue, political operative, lacking empathy or judicial temperament.

Full disclosure: I had an unhappy debate with Bork at the American Enterprise Institute years ago about Madonna v. Gypsy Rose Lee, when he was hawking his book "Slouching Towards Gomorrah." At the AEI event, Bork, who denounced Madonna vociferously for her lewd act, defended Gypsy Rose Lee, whom he admitted seeing perform in person, with these words: "Madonna is no Gypsy Rose Lee."

A gasp filled the room, then chuckles.

The event was reported in The New York Times by William Grimes.

Oddly enough, both Mr. Bork and Professor Berns, the strongest voices for censorship, indulged in fond reminiscence over the good old days when the strip shows they attended, on rare occasions, showed a respect for the decencies.

AEI certainly practiced what it preached when it comes to censorship: I was never invited back to speak on a public panel at AEI, after that. Later I attended a Bork debate versus C. Boyden Gray--and Gray wiped the floor with him.

Bottom Line: If the Republicans allow Kagan through, they don't deserve to win control of Congress in November...

Dr. C. Everett Koop: Stop Elena Kagan!

From the Americans United for Life website:

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop wrote an open letter urging that Senators vote against the nomination of Elena Kagan. Koop based his letter on AUL Action’s 54-page report on Kagan and partial-birth abortion. Two major national media outlets have written about the Koop letter so far.

Excerpts from a USA Today blog post on this subject today at their On Politics blog:

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop is urging a no vote on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in a letter that will be delivered today to senators who soon will be deciding to confirm her.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on sending President Obama’s second Supreme Court nominee to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote.

In the letter, Koop accuses Kagan of lobbying successfully to change the language of a 1997 statement by American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists on a controversial procedure that critics call “partial-birth abortion.”

Koop calls “unethical” and “disgraceful” Kagan’s effort to convince the medical group to describe the procedure as medically necessary.

“She was willing to replace a medical statement with a political statement that was not supported by any existing medical data,” writes Koop.

Document of the Week: TopSecretAmerica.com

The Washington Post published part one of Dana Priest's and William Arkin's three-part investigative report today into the 854,000 people with Top Secret security clearances working for approximately 3200 government and private organizations in 10,000 locations across the United States. The story revealed that in the Washington, DC area, these operations utilize about 17 million square feet of office space, publishing 50,000 intelligence reports annually.

Conclusion: "...many are routinely ignored."

IMHO, this story is the tip of the iceberg, so one hopes that the authors might have a book coming out with more information. The only question I have is: Why did the Post's editors wait until 2009?

This sort of report might have helped had it come out in 2002, 2003, or 2004--before the US started losing "big time," to use a favorite phrase of Dick Cheney. Was it fear of the Bush administration? Was it a favor to them?

Perhaps CIA Leon Panetta or Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wanted this critique to come out, now.

It would appear so, at least from reading their mentions in the article. In which case, better late than never.

In any case: here's a link to the Post website for the complete story:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america.

And here's a link to the Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/TopSecretAmerica.

Galina Vromen on the Dilemmas of Israeli-Arab Friendship

My cousin has published her account of life as an Israeli in an Arab village in the current issue of the Wilson Quarterly:

Some Jews think I’m brave. Some think I’m stupid. I am an Israeli Jew who lives in an Arab Israeli town because I want to get to know the 20 percent of my compatriots who are Arabs and learn their language. No one thinks this is normal. There must be another motive. Maybe I am married to an Arab? Maybe I want to make a political statement? Maybe my work brings me here? The answer on all counts is “no.” Just curiosity? How crazy!
Once Israeli Jews get over the shock, they almost always ask: “How do people treat you? Are you accepted?” The assumption is that I am shunned at best, attacked at worst. Nothing could be further from the truth...

Patrick Doughterty's "Stickwork"

An artist friend told me about the giant stick constructions of Patrick Dougherty, who is coming to Washington, DC's Dumbarton Oaks this September...

Washington Post May Finally Have Done Something Right

By announcing this forthcoming story about intelligence contractors (I would outlaw any contracting for intelligence work, myself) on Monday (ht Drudge Report). Here's an excepft from a State Department cable about the story from Foreign Policy's website:

"The Washington Post plans to publish a website listing all agencies and contractors believed to conduct Top Secret work on behalf of the U.S. Government...The website provides a graphic representation pinpointing the location of firms conducting Top Secret work, describing the type of work they perform, and identifying many facilities where such work is done..."

Themes

While we can't predict specific content, we anticipate the following themes:

The intelligence enterprise has undergone exponential growth and has become unmanageable with overlapping authorities and a heavily outsourced contractor workforce.

The IC and the DoD have wasted significant time and resources, especially in the areas of counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

The intelligence enterprise has taken its eyes off its post-9/11 mission and is spending its energy on competitive and redundant programs.

Format

The Washington Post may run a series of three articles, the first being an overview, the second focused on the large number of contractors supporting the intelligence enterprise, and the third looking at a specific community (the Fort Meade/BWI Airport area) that has expanded in part due to Intelligence Community growth.

The Washington Post is expected to work with Public Broadcasting Service's Frontline program to add a television component to this work, and will also present an interactive web site demonstrating growth of the intelligence enterprise and inviting comment and dialogue. The Post advises that "links" between individual contractors and specific agencies have been deleted, although the Post will still cite contractors and their locations.

Too bad about the links being deleted by the Post...

Earthquake Rocks US Capital!

Washington, DC was shaken up--and shaken awake--this morning by a 3.6 earthquake reportedly centered in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I felt it myself, along with someone I know, at 5 am (official reports say 5:04). Luckily, no major damage has been reported, and no casualties.

Still, unusual for Washington, DC. Someone I know had felt a small earth tremor just yesterday morning, now it seems it was a precursor of this quake. Since earthquakes come in waves, we're sitting tight, waiting for aftershocks...

WTOP news story here.

Tea Party Targets Lindsey Graham

Over Kagan's nomination. From Talking Points Memo:

Tea party activists are claiming victory over the one-week delay until Solicitor General Elena Kagan receives a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and one group is going after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as the most likely GOP "Yes" vote to confirm Kagan to the Supreme Court.

"This gives us more time and we must not fail. We must keep calling Senators and tell them to stop Kagan," Tea Party Nation wrote supporters in an email obtained by TPM Organizers misspelled Graham's name, then said he's "the most likely" to support Kagan's nomination.

We think so too, even though Graham peppered Kagan with questions during her hearings. Of course, it's not likely that tea party calls to Graham are going to change his mind, since he told the New York Times recently that the movement "will die out." So far, the Republicans who have said they are opposing Kagan are the ones with political targets on their backs.

Tony Blankley: Kagan Must Be Barred From Supreme Court

From The National Review:

The very power of the Supreme Court to exercise judicial review derives precisely from the Court’s being empowered by the pre-constitutional sovereignty of the people, who have an inalienable right to protect themselves from any undue state restraints on such sovereign rights (see Empire of Liberty, Gordon S. Wood, pages 443, 448 — 451).

And now, proposed to be intruded into that temple of justice — that last fail-safe of freedom — comes the form of Elena Kagan: cold to the very passion of our Declaration of Independence. Ignorant of its animating powers. Insentient of its still-governing force. And — thankfully — oblivious even to her need to attempt to hide her true scorn and indifference.

It is a dead certainty that, if she is admitted to the High Court, the day will come when she will cast aside — carelessly, indifferently, and without pause, and with a leering smile and a chuckle on her lips — our sacred birthrights as so much nuisance and interference with the government’s right to direct our lives as it, or she, sees fit.

She must be barred from the Court.

Forty-one filibustering senators can save the Republic this week, or all 99 will surely be condemned by history for their failure to act when they had the legal power to do so.

The senators have had their warning: Side with Abraham Lincoln and the Republic or with Elena Kagan. Which will it be?

Gun Owners of America: Elena Kagan "Not Sympathetic" to African-American Gun Owners

From Ammoland.com:

Combine all of this with the fact that in 1987 Elena Kagan told her boss, Justice Thurgood Marshall, that she was “not sympathetic” to the plight of an African-American man who wanted to own a gun for self-protection because he carried large sums of cash when depositing money for the laundromat where he worked in Washington, D.C.

Senator Lautenberg Demands BP-Libyan Pan Am 103 Bomber Deal Investigation

FoxNews.crom reports:

Megrahi originally had not been part of the prisoner transfer, but former British Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw later cited "overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom" in including Megrahi.

BP could earn as much as $20 billion from the deal with Libya, set to begin next month.

"It is shocking to even contemplate that BP is profiting from the release of a terrorist with the blood of 189 Americans on his hands," Lautenberg wrote. "The families of the victims of Pan Am flight 103 deserve to know whether justice took a back seat to commercial interests in this case."

Hmmmmm...$20 billion, where have I seen that number before? Oh, that's right, it is the same amount BP has pledged to pay victims of the Gulf oil spill. Link to read Lautenberg letter (PDF) here.

South Carolina Group Targets Lindsey Graham in Kagan Nomination Fight

The Canada Free Press (of all places) reports that Move America Forward will buy ads in South Carolina to pressure the state's senators (meaning Lindsey Graham, since Jim DeMint's position is not in doubt) to oppose Elena Kagan. The effort begins with a press conference tomorrow:

Columbia, SC – The nation’s leading grassroots military-support organization, Move America Forward, is joining the Judicial Action Group and Tea Party Express in calling on South Carolina U.S. Senators Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham to oppose the nomination of Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court. The groups will be discussing why they are exerting pressure to oppose Kagan, and announcing details of a major TV ad buy.

Nikki Haley is scheduled to attend, and will give her reasons for opposing a Kagan confirmation.

Military families and their supporters are extremely displeased President Barack Obama has chosen Solicitor General Elena Kagan to join the U.S. Supreme Court, and they are urging the United States Senate to defeat her nomination.

“We are proud to be standing with Nikki Haley, a pro-troop American patriot, who from a military family, against the nomination of Elena Kagan. Military families like Nikki’s agree that Kagan is a bad choice for Supreme Court, after kicked military recruiters off the campus of Harvard Law, impeding their ability to do their jobs in service to their country.” said Danny Gonzalez, Director of Communications for the pro-troop group. Haley’s brother has served in U.S. Army for over 20 years and her own husband Michael Haley is currently employed by the Department of the Army while concurrently serving in the South Carolina National Guard.

Also appearing at Thursday’s Columbia news conference to express the organization’s opposition, will be former Navy S.E.A.L. Benjamin Smith and Paul Jauregui, representing Judicial Action Group, the organization whose name appears on the TV ad.

PRESS CONFERENCE DETAILS:

Thursday, July 15 at 10:00AM

The State House (Front Steps)
1100 Gervais St.
Columbia, SC

The groups gathering tomorrow oppose Kagan on four major premises:

*Kagan has zero experience as a judge
*At Harvard, Kagan treated terrorists’ lawyers better than our own U.S. military
*Kagan asked the Supreme Court to ignore the law and re-write it so as to impose her own “gay rights” agenda
*Kagan favors foreign law over our own U.S. Constitution

For further details, please contact Danny Gonzales at (714) 926-6189 or Danny@MoveAmericaForward.org

The reason for the campaign is clear: If Graham could be persuaded to vote against Kagan, her nomination might be killed in the Senate Judiciary Committee, without the need for a floor vote...

Armenian Lobby Fights Nomination of New US Ambassador to Azerbaijan

I received an email from the Armenian National Council of America in opposition to the nomination of Matthew Bryza as ambassador to Baku. Among the ANCA complaints was this item:

Firing of Ambassador John Evans:

Matthew Bryza served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, overseeing Armenia and the surrounding region, during the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Marshall Evans, over his truthful statements on the Armenian Genocide. He also held this position during what the Washington Post has described as the State Department’s intervention with the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) regarding the withdrawal of its award to Ambassador Evans for constructive dissent.

Mr. Bryza has yet to offer any meaningful insights into the specific justification for the firing of Ambassador Evans or to discuss his role in the termination of a distinguished 35-year diplomatic career.

The Armeniapedia.org website has posted some background on the Evans controversy:

Evans's use of the word `genocide,' which is bound to anger Turkey, was also announced and welcomed by the chairman of the Armenian Assembly of America, Anthony Barsamian. `In his public commentaries, Ambassador Evans repeatedly employed the words "Armenian Genocide" to properly characterize the attempted annihilation of our people by Ottoman Turkey,' he said in a speech in Los Angeles.

Barsamian was addressing more than 270 community leaders that gathered to pay tribute to countries that attempted to stop or recognized the genocide.

Evans thus became the first U.S. official since former President Ronald Reagan to publicly describe the mass killings and deportations of Ottoman Armenia as a genocide. Reagan did so in an April 1981 statement on the genocide committed in Cambodia in the 1970s.

Judge Orders Guantanamo Prisoner Photos Released

In response to a FOIA lawsuit, reported on FOIABlog.

Congress Investigates Defense Department's "Corrupt Practices" in Kyrgyzstan

At a CESS conference in Michigan, a few years ago, I had a debate of sorts with a US State Department official from Embassy Bishkek, who complained in her presentation about corruption in Kyrgyz education. She had described American anti-corruption efforts to stamp out the selling of grades by professors. I thought the project sounded unwise, and remarked from the audience something to the effect of, "I wish we'd stop this anti-corruption rhetoric, because I bet we are corrupting them." Needless to say, the discussion ended on a sour note. Now, I find out, I may have been more right than I knew at the time, according to Eurasianet's Diedre Tynan'a report on hearings scheduled for Thurday:

Three figures said to be associated with Red Star Enterprises Ltd. and Mina Corp have been subpoenaed by a US congressional committee that is investigating potential improper dealings concerning the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan. The trio will be expected to answer questions about the companies' business operations and relationships in Kyrgyzstan, as well as the entities' ownership structures.

Chuck Squires, the director of operations for both Red Star and Mina Corp, Erkin Bekbolotov, a Kyrgyz national, and Doug Edelman, an American entrepreneur, were subpoenaed July 1 by Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat and the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, EurasiaNet.org has learned.

Squires, a former defense attaché at the US Embassy in Bishkek, is due to appear before the committee on July 15. Bekbolotov is scheduled for questioning on July 20 and Edelman on July 22. The testimony will be given in closed committee sessions.

The subpoenas have been formally served to Squires, Bekbolotov and Edelman, as well as to Red Star and Mina Corp's company addresses in Gibraltar, sources close to the investigation insist. A spokesman for Red Star/Mina Corp declined to comment on the development.

Investigators at the Subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Affairs are said to be frustrated by a lack of cooperation from Red Star and Mina Corp since the start of the congressional probe. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

In letters dated April 12, investigators asked representatives of the two entities to provide information about the companies' structures and their respective relationships to former Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, his son Maxim, and the companies Aalam Services and Manas Aerofuels, both of which are now in the process of being nationalized by the Kyrgyz provisional government.

The congressional probe is focusing on possible corrupt practices surrounding Manas fuel supplies, as well as fuel supply arrangements at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. Representatives of Red Star and Mina Corp, the previous and current holders of US government contracts to supply jet fuel to Manas, deny any wrongdoing in connection with the fulfillment of their contracts.

The Browser's Five Books

Like an internet version of the Five Books of Moses, or a print variant of the BBC's Desert Island Discs radio program, The Browser offers a Five Books feature on topics of current interest (ht Charles Crawford). What does it mean?

FiveBooks – Become an expert with FiveBooks.

Every day an eminent writer, thinker, commentator, politician, academic chooses five books on their specialist subject. From Einstein to Keynes, Iraq to the Andes, Communism to Empire. Read the interviews, share in the knowledge, buy the books.

Our site is funded by the small percentage we get from every Amazon sale made through us. So please support us by buying your books from FiveBooks, the authoritative way to become an authority.

This week, the theme is a world gone mad:

This Week on Five Books--Mad World

Sociology Professor Frank Furedi chooses books on the crisis in education and says schools have got to stop trying to solve social problems and start educating kids, stop hiding behind gimmicks and interactive white boards and start talking to young people in an intelligent way.

BTW, there's a Russian connection, in the person of the founder, Al Breach:

I’m Al Breach, am 39, and started working on what was to become The Browser with Robert in early 2008. Along with managing the set-up of the business, I’m on the board / advisor to a few companies (Vostok Nafta and Bank of Georgia) and invest actively. My home is in a village in the Swiss mountains.

I spent most of my adult life in Moscow working as an economist. I started in Moscow in mid 1996 writing a journal, before joining Goldman Sachs to become their Russia & FSU economist. After an 8 month sabbatical in Japan in 2002, I joined what was then Brunswick UBS and worked there until late 2007 heading research.

I was born and raised in London, but along with Moscow and Switzerland have lived in Beijing, Tokyo, New York and Zimbabwe. I did an MSc in Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE), studied Mathematics with Philosophy at Edinburgh University, and my secondary school was Westminster.

By sheer coincidence, I actually saw Al Breach speak a few years ago, at a panel on the Russian economy chaired by Leon Aron, at the American Enterprise Institute. If he is as knowledgable about literature as about Russian business, this site should prove to be of interest...especially since Nick Clegg also went to Westminster School--Breach's alma mater.

Another Russian connection, for editor Anna Blundy:

I am a novelist and journalist, and I studied Russian at University College, Oxford. I covered Russia’s financial crisis and Yeltsin’s demise in the late 1990s as Bureau Chief for The Times AND once interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev live in Russian on Radio Svoboda. I am the author of seven critically acclaimed novels and a memoir and have appeared as a commentator on the BBC’s Newsnight Review, Radio Four’s Midweek and Woman’s Hour among others and have written for publications such as The Spectator and Cosmopolitan. My five Faith Zanetti books feature a female war correspondent at odds with a rumbling world, and my latest novel, The Oligarch’s Wife, is published by Random House in December 2009. I wrote a single-girl column for The Times in the early 1990s and now write a regular column in The Times entitled ‘How Did I Get Here?’ about life in northern Italy. I have a masters in Psychoanalytic Theory and am currently working on a PhD thesis psychoanalysing Samuel Pepys from his diaries.

And yet another Russian connection, in the person of Browser co-founder Robert Cottrell:

My name is Robert Cottrell, and I am editor of The Browser. Which is to say, mainly, that I choose the pieces we recommend in "Best of the Moment", and I collect the fragments we publish under "Browsings".

I take suggestions gladly from all sides for pieces to recommend: my email address is robert[at]thebrowser.com. Most links come from my daily reading of RSS feeds, and, increasingly, from following other strong readers on Twitter, where I am @robertcottrell.

Until 2008 I was in print journalism as a staff writer variously for The Economist, the Financial Times, the Independent and the Far Eastern Economic Review. I also contributed to the New York Review of Books for ten years, mostly on Russian topics.

In 2004 I moved to New York as deputy editor of Economist.com. I found over time that I wanted to try building something new, rather than maintaining a large and established site. My first attempt in that direction was the creation of More Intelligent Life, a "baby" site for a re-launched Economist quarterly magazine, Intelligent Life: the site has since been taken over, and improved out of all recognition, by Emily Bobrow. I left The Economist in 2008 to form a business partnership with Al Breach, out of which The Browser has grown.

I live now in Riga, Latvia, where I have a second-hand-book shop.

In my print-journalism days the pieces I most enjoyed writing were the relatively relaxed ones done for The Economist's Christmas issues. Most of those are behind a pay barrier now—such as this one, about the art of conversation. But I see my profile of Santa Claus can still be had for nothing; and, for the time being, my piece about being foreign, in the latest Christmas issue, is also free. Most of my pieces for the New York Review of Books are behind a pay barrier, though last time I looked, one of them, on Chechnya, has remained in the wild.

I wonder if they need a Washington correspondent?

New Format from Blogger

You may have noticed that this blog has switched to the "Simple" format on Blogger. Hope that makes it easier to read--and for RSS subscriptions to Mobile apps (blogger doesn't seem to have it's own app to format blogs for iPhones, yet).