A Blue View

The One Document That Crystallizes The Difference Between Obama & Bush

This NY Times report on Obama's "New Foundations" strategy makes the diff clear: he is an intelligent, sophisticated thinker not blinded by hegemonic fervor as was his predecessor:

President Obama’s first formal National Security Strategy argues that preserving American leadership in the world hinges on learning to accept and manage the rise of many competitors, and dismisses as far too narrow the Bush era doctrine that fighting terrorism should be the nation’s overarching objective.

In a 52-page document that tries to balance the idealism of Mr. Obama’s campaign promises with the realities of his confrontations with a fractious and threatening world over the past 16 months, Mr. Obama describes an American strategy that recognizes limits on how much the United States can spend to shape the globe.

An America “hardened by war” and “disciplined by a devastating economic crisis,” he argues, cannot sustain extended fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan, while fulfilling other commitments at home and abroad.

“The burdens of a young century cannot fall on American shoulders alone,” Mr. Obama writes in the introduction of the strategy being released on Thursday. “Indeed, our adversaries would like to see America sap our strength by overextending our power.”

That line is just one of many subtle slaps at President George W. Bush. Much of the National Security Strategy, which is required by Congress, reads as an argument for a restoration of an older order of reliance on international institutions, updated to confront modern threats. While Mr. Bush’s 2002 document explicitly said the United States would never allow the rise of a rival superpower, Mr. Obama argues that America faces no real military competitor, but that global power is increasingly diffuse. “To succeed, we must face the world as it is,” he says.

The principal author of the report, Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, noted in an interview that Mr. Obama’s move to replace the G-8 nations with a broader group, called the G-20, that includes China, India and Brazil, recognizes this reality. “We are deeply committed to broadening the circle of responsible actors,” Mr. Rhodes said.

Although the administration has put renewed focus on the war in Afghanistan and escalated C.I.A. drone strikes against militants, the strategy rejects Mr. Bush’s single-minded focus on counterterrorism as the organizing principle of national security policy. Those efforts “to counter violent extremism” — Mr. Obama avoids the use of the word “Islamic” — “are only one element of our strategic environment and cannot define America’s engagement with the world.”

He goes on to argue that “the gravest danger to the American people and global security continues to come from weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons.” And he dwelled on cyber threats, climate change, and America’s dependence on fossil fuels as fundamental national security issues, issues that received relatively little or no attention in Mr. Bush’s 2002 document, although his administration focused on them more in its second term.

“It is a rather dramatic departure from the most recent prior national security strategy,” Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview.

Mr. Bush’s 2002 document articulated a vision of American power that foreshadowed the American involvement in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s version could fuel the ongoing debate about whether his philosophy expands or constricts American influence.

Critics already argue that Mr. Obama does not place enough importance on fighting terrorism or fully embrace America’s singular role in the world as he seeks the favor and cooperation of other nations.

A section on the use of force makes no mention of pre-emptive attacks against countries or non-state actors who may pose a threat, as Mr. Bush did in 2002, just six months before the invasion of Iraq. But Mr. Obama does not explicitly rule out striking first.

“While the use of force is sometimes necessary, we will exhaust other options before war whenever we can, and carefully weigh the costs and risks of action against the costs and risks of inaction,” he says. When it is necessary, he adds, “we will seek broad international support, working with such institutions as NATO and the U.N. Security Council.”

Mr. Bush’s aides said they would not seek a “permission slip”’ for such actions. Mr. Obama phrases that idea differently, writing, “the United States must reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend our nation and our interests, yet we will also seek to adhere to standards that govern the use of force.”

Mr. Obama also defines national security more broadly than his predecessor did, making the case, for example, that reducing the deficit is critical to sustaining American power. He emphasizes issues like the economy, education, climate change, energy and science. In that way, he tries to draw a broader theme linking his presidency to the notion of a “new foundation,” the phrase he previously has coined as a slogan for his domestic program.

“Our national security begins at home,” the strategy says.

Media Comparion: Has The U.S. Made Progress With China Over Iran Or Not?

In preparation for today's Nuclear Security Summit, did Obama achieve a breakthrough with China over Iran or not? It apparently depends on your source of news, as the teasers from 3 different newspapers' homepages make clear.

Wash Post:

President seeks global help in sanctioning Iran

Obama uses summit on nuclear terrorism to press international leaders to support further isolating Iran, and garners support on issue from China.

NY Times:

China Pledges to Work With U.S. on Iran Sanctions

President Hu Jintao agreed to join negotiations on sanctions against Iran, but he made no specific commitment to U.S.-backed measures, officials said

Wall St Journal:

U.S., China Divided Over Iran

President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed to step up pressure on Iran for its nuclear program, the U.S. said, but the two nations still appear divided on how to apply that pressure.

Obama & Medvedev Sign Nuclear Reduction Treaty; Relations With Russia "Vastly Improved"

Wash Post:

President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a sweeping new arms reduction pact on Thursday that pledges to reduce the stockpile of deployed, strategic nuclear weapons in both countries and commits the old Cold War adversaries to new procedures to verify which weapons each country possesses.

Obama arrived in this historic city Thursday morning to formalize a step toward the vision he laid out here a year ago -- of a world without nuclear weapons.

The leaders met privately for about an hour before signing the pact in a ceremony hosted by the Czechs and full of symbolism. U.S. officials said the full document, just now finished after months of negotiation, would be posted in full on the Internet later today.

The treaty, called New START, imposes new limits on the ready-to-use, long range nuclear weapons and pledges to reduce the two biggest nuclear arsenals on the globe. Both countries will be required to have a maximum of 1,550 ready to use, long-range nuclear weapons in addition to the other parts of their nuclear stockpile.

Arms control advocates have expressed disappointment in the treaty, saying it does not go far enough in reducing the dangerous weapons on both sides. Some conservatives have raised questions about the treaty's impact on the American nuclear deterrent.

But experts from the right and the left agree the treaty extends a verification plan that has allowed the world's two nuclear giants to maintain stability that has existed for the past 20 years.

In the U.S., attention will soon turn to the Senate, where the White House is pushing for ratification of the pact by the end of 2010 ...

Senior U.S. officials said Obama's trip to Prague is designed to set the stage for further efforts by the president to argue for reductions in the spread of nuclear weapons around the globe.

The treaty's new limits on Russian and American nuclear weapons are important in their own right, officials said, but are also crucial in restoring a "moral legitimacy" to both countries as they seek to restrain other nations from becoming nuclear powers.

"The signing of the new treaty is part of an overall strategy to put us in a strong political position to mobilize support," said one top White House adviser. "By restoring our moral legitimacy it puts us in a much stronger position."

White House aides said the treaty demonstrates that both countries have taken a "serious step" toward nuclear disarmament, and predicted in advance that the conversation would quickly shift to efforts by the world community to deal with Iranian and Korean nuclear ambitions.

"All of that will come to a head in May," when the U.S. hosts a conference on the nuclear non proliferation treaty in New York, said one senior official. "Everybody understands that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. The question is whether the countries in the NPT and the United Nations will be acting together to stop Iran."

Nonviolence: Have The Palestinians Finally Found An Effective Way Forward?

This NY Times story made me very hopeful. I've long thought that a truly nonviolent movement would be the best way forward for the Palestinians: while the Israelis have a very powerful military force, the Palestinians have an overwhelming moral force that if harnessed to a truly nonviolent movement, would be unstoppable (and would be especially hard for Israel in particular to stop).

Senior Palestinian leaders — men who once commanded militias — are joining unarmed protest marches against Israeli policies and are being arrested. Goods produced in Israeli settlements have been burned in public demonstrations. The Palestinian prime minister has entered West Bank areas officially off limits to his authority, to plant trees and declare the land part of a future state.

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, said he planted trees in the West Bank last month “to establish our presence on our land and keep our people on it.”

Something is stirring in the West Bank. With both diplomacy and armed struggle out of favor for having failed to end the Israeli occupation, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, joined by the business community, is trying to forge a third way: to rouse popular passions while avoiding violence. The idea, as Fatah struggles to revitalize its leadership, is to build a virtual state and body politic through acts of popular resistance.

“It is all about self-empowerment,” said Hasan Abu-Libdeh, the Palestinian economy minister, referring to a campaign to end the purchase of settlers’ goods and the employment of Palestinians by settlers and their industries. “We want ordinary people to feel like stockholders in the process of building a state.”

The new approach still remains small scale while American-led efforts to revive peace talks are stalled. But street interviews showed that people were aware and supportive of its potential to bring pressure on Israel but dubious about its ultimate effectiveness.

Billboards have sprung up as part of a campaign against buying settlers’ goods, featuring a pointed finger and the slogan “Your conscience, your choice.” The Palestinian Ministry of Communications has just banned the sale of Israeli cellphone cards because Israeli signals are relayed from towers inside settlements. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is spending more time out of his business suits and in neglected villages opening projects related to sewage, electricity and education and calling for “sumud,” or steadfastness.

“Steadfastness must be translated from a slogan to acts and facts on the ground,” he told a crowd late last month in a village called Izbet al-Tabib near the city of Qalqilya, an area where Israel’s separation barrier makes access to land extremely difficult for farmers. Before planting trees, Mr. Fayyad told about 1,000 people gathered to hear him, “This is our real project, to establish our presence on our land and keep our people on it.”

Nonviolence has never caught on here, and Israel’s military says the new approach is hardly nonviolent. But the current set of campaigns is trying to incorporate peaceful pressure in limited ways. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, just visited Bilin, a Palestinian village with a weekly protest march. Next week, Martin Luther King III is scheduled to speak here at a conference on nonviolence.

On Palm Sunday, the Israeli police arrested 15 Palestinians in Bethlehem who were protesting the difficulty of getting to Jerusalem because of a security closing. Abbas Zaki, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, was arrested, prompting demonstrations the next day. Some Palestinians are also rejecting V.I.P. cards handed out by Israelis allowing them to pass quickly through checkpoints.

Palestinian political analysts say it is too early to assess the prospects of the nonviolent approach. Generally, they say, given the division between Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority here, nothing is likely to change without a political shakeup and unified leadership. Still, they say, popular resistance, combined with institution-building and international appeals, is gaining notice among Palestinians.

“Fatah is living through a crisis of vision,” said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs in Jerusalem. “How can they combine being a liberation movement with being a governing party? This is one way. The idea is to awaken national pride and fulfill the people’s anxiety and passion. Of course, Hamas and armed resistance still remain a real option for many.”

Khalil Shikaki, who runs the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, said: “The society is split. The public believes that Israel responds to suffering, not to nonviolent resistance. But there is also not much interest in violence now. Our surveys show support for armed resistance at 47 percent in March. In essence, the public feels trapped between failed diplomacy and failed armed struggle.”

Israeli military authorities have not decided how to react.

"Obama’s Nuclear Strategy Intended as a Message"

An analysis from the NY Times:

At the heart of President Obama’s new nuclear strategy lies a central gamble: that an aging, oversize, increasingly outmoded nuclear arsenal can be turned to the new purpose of adding leverage to the faltering effort to force Iran and North Korea to rethink the value of their nuclear programs.

The 50-page “Nuclear Posture Review” released on Tuesday acknowledged outright that “the massive nuclear arsenal we inherited from the cold-war era” is “poorly suited to address the challenges posed by suicidal terrorist and unfriendly regimes seeking nuclear weapons.”

Nonetheless, the new strategy aims to use the arsenal to do just that, despite considerable skepticism that any new doctrine or set of White House announcements is likely to change the calculus for North Korea or Iran.

Mr. Obama’s new strategy makes just about every nonnuclear state immune from any threat of nuclear retaliation by the United States. But it carves out an exception for Iran and North Korea, labeled “outliers” rather than the Bush-era moniker of “rogue states.” The wording was chosen, Mr. Obama’s senior advisers said, to suggest they have a path back to international respectability — and to de-targeting by the United States.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates made the choice explicit. “There is a message for Iran and North Korea here,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

Nonnuclear states that abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty would not be threatened with nuclear retaliation by the United States — even if they conducted conventional, biological or cyber attacks. But, he added, “if you’re not going to play by the rules, if you’re going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.”

A number of analysts argued that by publicly painting a target on Iran and North Korea the administration could, perhaps unwittingly, bolster hard-liners in those countries, who have made the case that nuclear weapons are the only way to ensure their safety against American plotting.

The opposite critique came from two senior Republican Party national security experts — Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl, both of Arizona — who contended that the pressure was not direct enough.

“We believe that preventing nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation should begin by directly confronting the two leading proliferators and supporters of terrorism, Iran and North Korea,” they wrote. “The Obama administration’s policies, thus far, have failed to do that, and this failure has sent exactly the wrong message to other would be proliferators and supporters of terrorism.”

To Mr. Obama and his aides, the “outlier” approach is all part of a broader strategy of adding to the pressure on both countries. Over the past year, they have aided the interception of North Korea’s shipping. They have sought to develop new sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and to undermine its nuclear program with a program of covert action.

Robert S. Litwak, vice president for programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said that Mr. Obama had expanded an effort begun by President George W. Bush to globalize the effort to contain the nuclear aims of both nations.

Obama Revamps, And Limits, U.S. Nuclear Doctrine

NY Times:

President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.

But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation.

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.

White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.

Mr. Obama’s new strategy is bound to be controversial, both among conservatives who have warned against diluting the United States’ most potent deterrent and among liberals who were hoping for a blanket statement that the country would never be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama argued for a slower course, saying, “We are going to want to make sure that we can continue to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,” and, he added, to “make sure that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances.”

The release of the new strategy, known as the Nuclear Posture Review, opens an intensive nine days of nuclear diplomacy geared toward reducing weapons. Mr. Obama plans to fly to Prague to sign a new arms-control agreement with Russia on Thursday and then next week will host 47 world leaders in Washington for a summit meeting on nuclear security.

"Obama: A Giant-Killer, Feeling His Oats"

NY Times (for more on how Obama's new stance on Israel, see The Israeli Left Blames Netanyahu & Wants American Pressure To Force Change. And for more evidence of his new tougher stance with the GOP, see this.):

Is this it, then? He hath slain the health-care Goliath. Does that mean, a year and a half into the job, that President Obama has acquired the political savvy and tactical confidence to take on other juggernauts?

Amidst all the euphoria at the White House last week, that question hovered; and not just in Washington. More than a dozen foreign leaders called to congratulate Mr. Obama on his historic achievement. Editorial pages around the world lauded Mr. Obama — a British magazine swooned that he could perhaps “out achieve” even Franklin Roosevelt. A Financial Times cartoon depicted Mr. Obama as Superman.

But, at the risk of killing the White House buzz, remember President Bush’s Mission Accomplished appearance on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln? Political fortunes can turn quickly, especially since, in Mr. Obama’s case, he still has another two and a half years to go in his first term — plenty of time for other things to go wrong that could stain his presidency.

The trick now for Mr. Obama, presidential scholars say, will be to turn the lessons he has learned in the health care fight to the other big, intractable issues that loom, from climate change to unemployment, to Iran, and even to the ultimate behemoth that has bedeviled American presidents since 1967: Middle East peace.

We’ll come back to that in a second.

Mr. Obama could retire into the history books, many presidential scholars say, on the health care achievement alone. But there is a swagger emanating from the White House that suggests he may now have acquired a liking for the benefits of sticking his neck out to lead.

Just days after the health vote, Mr. Obama completed a landmark arms control accord with Russia that had eluded negotiators for months. The Start agreement took far more time to reach than Mr. Obama had expected, exceeding the deadline by four months. But in the end, Russia backed down on the last contentious point. That was after Mr. Obama refused to yield to Russian demands on missile defense, even though he risked missing another looming deadline, the nuclear security summit he will host in April.

“Had Obama lost the health care vote, he would have been politically damaged,” said David Rothkopf, a Clinton administration official now who writes on foreign policy. “And that would have had an effect on everything else. But the major transformational consequence of winning isn’t a political boost, but the fact that he is now learning on the job. The message is that he is starting to come of age as a leader.”

How Mr. Obama applies the lessons of health care to other issues will be a big part of determining his success, many presidential historians say. Tenacity isn’t necessarily enough; there has to be patience and a willingness, at some point, to draw a line in the sand.

The Israeli Left Blames Netanyahu & Wants American Pressure To Force Change

Two excerpts from Israel's Haaertz newspaper. The first is from an Aluf Benn column on 25 Mar on Netanyahu's diasterous U.S. visit:

The prime minister erred in choosing to fly to the United States this week. The visit - touted as a fence-mending effort, a bid to strengthen the tenuous ties between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama - only highlighted the deep rift between the American and Israeli administrations.

The prime minister leaves America disgraced, isolated, and altogether weaker than when he came ...

At the start of his visit, Netanyahu was tempted to bask in the warm welcome he received at the AIPAC conference, at which he gave his emotional address on Jerusalem ...

Netanyahu almost believed the crisis had passed, that he had survived by offering partial, noncommittal answers to the Americans' questions. Shortly before meeting with Obama, Netanyahu even warned the Palestinians that should they continue to demand a freeze on construction, he would postpone peace talks by a year.

His arrogant tone underscored the fact that Netanyahu believed that on the strength of his AIPAC speech, he could call the next few steps of the diplomatic dance.

But then calamity struck. At their White House meeting, Obama made clear to his guest that the letter Netanyahu had sent was insufficient and returned it for further corrections. Instead of a reception as a guest of honor, Netanyahu was treated as a problem child, an army private ordered to do laps around the base for slipping up at roll call.

The revolution in the Americans' behavior is clear to all. On Sunday morning Obama was still anxiously looking ahead to the House of Representatives vote on health care - the last thing he wanted was a last-minute disagreement with congressmen over ties with Israel.

The moment the bill was passed, however, a victorious Obama was free to deal with his unruly guest.
Instead of setting the diplomatic agenda, Netanyahu surrendered control over it. Instead of leaving the Palestinian issue aside and focusing on Iran, as he would like, Netanyahu now finds himself fighting for the legitimacy of Israeli control over East Jerusalem ...

The Americans made every effort to downplay the visit. As during his last visit in November, Netanyahu was invited to the White House at a late hour, without media coverage or a press conference. If that were not enough, the White House spokesman challenged Netanyahu's observation at AIPAC that "Jerusalem is not a settlement."

The Americans didn't even wait for him to leave Washington to make their disagreement known. It was not the behavior Washington shows an ally, but the kind it shows an annoyance ...

Returning to Israel today, Netanyahu will need to work hard to rehabilitate his image, knowing full well that Obama will not relent, but instead demand that he stop zigzagging and decide, once and for all, whether he stands with America or with the settlers.

And the second is from Zvi Bar'el on how Netanyahu is "endangering Israel's security":

If there's a photo the White House should issue after Benjamin Netanyahu's visit, it's a group portrait of the prime minister, his Iraqi counterpart and the president of Afghanistan embracing Barack Obama together.

They are all heads of governments attached to the U.S.'s umbilical cord. They all experience insecurity in the region, and the world is concerned about each of the three's security. Washington manages domestic policy for each of them, since each poses a danger to American foreign policy. In Iraq, Washington is involved in disagreements among Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds. In Afghanistan, Washington dictates conditions to the president to help advance its war against Al-Qaida. And when it comes to Israel, the United States showed clearly last week that it will not allow domestic Israeli politics to interfere with American foreign policy.

The group photo is a fitting picture of how Israel's situation has deteriorated during Netanyahu's short term in office. We're not talking about yet another clumsy Israeli foreign minister whom no one wants to meet, or irksome building permits. Netanyahu poses a threat to Israeli security because he tips the balance of U.S.-Israeli relations, which are essential for our survival. And not only these relations. If Washington gives Israel the cold shoulder, it will be showing the way for other important countries, from Britain to Egypt and Brazil to Turkey, to do the same. Israel is no longer an exotic citron, but has been exposed as just another lemon.
    

The Evolving Media Meme: Obama Is Like LBJ After All. First Health Care, Now Nuclear Deal W/Russia

NY Times:

President Obama was angry. He was on the phone with President Dmitri A. Medvedev last month to finalize a new arms control treaty with Russia, only to be confronted with new demands for concessions on missile defense. A deal that was supposed to be done was unraveling.

President Obama and Michael McFaul, the president’s top adviser on Russia, listen during a phone call with President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia on Feb. 24.

“Dmitri, we agreed,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Medvedev with a tone of exasperation, according to advisers. “We can’t do this. If it means we’re going to walk away from this treaty and not get it done, so be it. But we’re not going to go down this path.”

Mr. Obama hung up and vented frustration. Some of his advisers had never seen him so mad. A picture taken by a White House photographer captured his grim face in that moment of uncertainty. For a year he had been trying to forge a new relationship with Russia, starting with a treaty to slash nuclear arsenals. And for a year Russia had been testing him, suspecting he was weak and certain it could roll over him.

If Mr. Obama overestimated his powers of persuasion in reaching quick agreement with the Russians, they misjudged how far they could get him to bend. In the end, they compromised on nonbinding language. And so, after all the fits and starts, all the miscalculations, the vodka toasts that proved premature and the stare-downs that nearly sank the whole enterprise, Mr. Obama hung up the phone again with Mr. Medvedev on Friday, this time having finally translated aspiration into agreement.

The president then stepped before cameras to tell the world that next month the United States and Russia would sign a “new Start” treaty paring back their still formidable nuclear arsenals, cutting the legal limits on deployed strategic warheads by 30 percent and on launchers by half. Just as important, it will establish an inspection regime to replace one that expired in December.

The announcement culminated a negotiation that sprawled across time and space in ways that Mr. Obama hardly expected when he kicked it off, a process that dragged on four months past its deadline and leapt from London to Moscow to Geneva to Singapore to Copenhagen to Washington. For a new president, the effort became a crucible of diplomacy and a tutorial in the complexities of international security.

This account of how Mr. Obama reached agreement is based on interviews with American officials and Russian insiders, many of whom requested anonymity to discuss confidential negotiations. It is a story with twists and turns that included 10 rounds of talks by full-time negotiators in Geneva but ultimately kept coming around to intense personal negotiations between Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev, who met or talked by telephone 14 times to hash through disputes.

“When President Obama’s domestic positions were weakened in recent months and he was completely consumed in his crusade for health care reform, making all other issues irrelevant, it is surprising how much attention he kept on Start,” said Sergei M. Rogov, director of the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies in Moscow, referring to the treaty. “Even being 24-hours-a-day busy on health reform, he had a 25th hour for Start.”

And a 26th and maybe a 27th.

“It’s been much harder than we anticipated,” said a senior Obama administration official involved in the process. “We thought it would be relatively easy.”

It was not. <Continue reading.>

Google Stands Up To China (cartoon)

 

Google To Stop Censoring Chinese Search Results

Wash Post:

Google announced Monday that it would stop censoring search results on its site in China, forcing authorities in Beijing to decide whether they are willing to forsake one of the most important tools of modern technology so that they can maintain their iron grip over the flow of information.

In negotiations with Chinese authorities over the past two months, Google had tried to determine whether it could operate an unfiltered search engine in China under the country's laws. But Chinese officials, the company said Monday, made it "crystal clear . . . that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement."

As a result, Google has made what analysts described as a shrewd but risky business decision -- to redirect users in mainland China to its search engine based in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China that operates its own economic and political systems. The company described the move as a "sensible solution."

"This move is entirely legal by Chinese law and Hong Kong law, and that is important to know: that we are abiding by the law," a source at Google said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Still, the decision puts the Internet search giant, which has a huge financial stake in China, on a collision course with Beijing. Despite Google's intention to keep some of its business operations in China, the government there could shut it down, block all of its sites or even take action against some of its 700 employees there.

That concern was evident in Google's announcement Monday, which stressed that "all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them."

The move drew a quick and angry response in Beijing, where an unnamed government official said that the Chinese had been patient with Google but that the company had nonetheless "violated its written promise" to censor search results, according to the state-run New China News Service ...

Internet users in China can, with some effort, get around what is known as the Great Firewall. But government barriers have prevented tens of millions of mainland Chinese from seeing vast segments of cyberspace. Chinese in Hong Kong -- beneficiaries of Beijing's "one country, two systems" policy -- have had access to unfiltered results.

Google's decision Monday, some experts said, threatens to reveal to mainland Chinese that the government has effectively operated a parallel set of unequal Internet universes ...

Human rights groups hailed Google's decision to stop self-censoring, casting it as an important challenge to the Chinese government's censorship system.

"As a practical matter, it means that they may have to leave, but they're going to force the government to choose between an uncensored search engine and kicking Google out," said Arvind Ganesan, business and human rights director at Human Rights Watch.

Real Consequences For Israel's Intransigence?

NY Times:

An ill-timed municipal housing announcement in Jerusalem has mutated into one of the most serious conflicts between the United States and Israel in two decades, leaving a politically embarrassed Israeli government scrambling to respond to a tough list of demands by the Obama administration.

The Obama administration has put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a difficult political spot at home by insisting that the Israeli government halt a plan to build housing units in East Jerusalem. The administration also wants Mr. Netanyahu to commit to substantive negotiations with the Palestinians, after more than a year in which the peace process has been moribund.

With the administration’s special envoy, George J. Mitchell, suddenly delaying his planned trip to Israel, the administration was expecting a call from Mr. Netanyahu, after a tense exchange last week with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

On Monday, however, Mr. Netanyahu sounded a defiant note, telling the Israeli Parliament that construction of Jewish housing in Jerusalem was not a matter for negotiation.

He is struggling to balance an increasingly unhappy ally in Washington with the restive right wing of his coalition government.

The prospects for peace in the Middle East seemed murkier than ever, as a year’s worth of frustration on the part of President Obama and his aides seemed to boil over in its furious response to the housing announcement, which spoiled a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“What happened to the vice president in Israel was unprecedented,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Where it goes from here depends on the Israelis.”

But the diplomatic standoff also has repercussions for the Obama administration. Its blunt criticism of Israel — delivered publicly by Mrs. Clinton in two television interviews on Friday and reiterated Sunday by Mr. Obama’s political adviser, David Axelrod — has set off a storm in Washington, with pro-Israel groups and several prominent lawmakers criticizing the administration for unfairly singling out a staunch American ally.

“Let’s cut the family fighting,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut. “It’s unnecessary; it’s destructive of our shared national interest. It’s time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interests but our enemies’.”

Relations between Israel and the United States have been uneasy ever since Mr. Obama took office with a plan to rekindle the peace process by coupling a demand for a full freeze in Jewish settlement construction with reciprocal confidence-building gestures by Arab countries.

Neither happened, and Mr. Obama, who is not as popular in Israel as he is elsewhere around the world, was forced last September to make do with Mr. Netanyahu’s offer of a 10-month partial moratorium on settlements in the West Bank. But the president was outraged by the announcement of 1,600 housing units in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem during Mr. Biden’s visit, administration officials said.

Mr. Obama was deeply involved in the strategy and planning for Mr. Biden’s visit and orchestrated the response from Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton after it went awry, these officials said.

The administration has used language intended to telegraph anger, defining the dispute not only in terms of the damage it could cause to the peace process but to the American relationship with Israel.

“That is a whole different order of magnitude of importance,” said Daniel Levy, a former peace negotiator who is senior fellow and head of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation, a research group.

Israel - Palestine Cartoons

"The burden is on the Israelis to do something that could restore confidence in the process and to restore confidence in the relationship with the U.S."

Wash Post:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Friday about the state of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, demanding that Israel take immediate steps to show it is interested in renewing efforts to achieve a Middle East peace agreement.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described the nearly 45-minute phone conversation in unusually undiplomatic terms, signaling that the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades after the embarrassment suffered by Vice President Biden this week when Israel announced during his visit that it plans to build 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem.

Clinton called Netanyahu "to make clear the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president's trip," Crowley said. Clinton, he said, emphasized that "this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America's interests."

From the start of his tenure, President Obama identified a Middle East peace deal as critical to U.S. national security, but his efforts have been hampered by the administration's missteps and the deep mistrust between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Last fall, he softened his demand for a full freeze on settlement construction, accepting a limited 10-month moratorium that did not include the East Jerusalem area where the construction announced this week is to take place. Clinton at the time hailed the Israeli plan as "unprecedented."

Special envoy George J. Mitchell has struggled to relaunch peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Last week, he got the two sides to agree to indirect talks, with Mitchell shuttling between them, but the Israeli announcement has imperiled that development. Rising Palestinian anger led Israeli forces on Friday to seal off the West Bank and post riot squads around Jerusalem's Old City and Arab neighborhoods.

U.S. officials were especially furious about the announcement because they thought they had reached a private understanding with Netanyahu that even though East Jerusalem was not officially included in the moratorium, he would prevent any provocative actions there. Its release during Biden's trip, intended as a fence-mending mission, was seen as another slap.

"The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting," Clinton told CNN on Friday.

Obama had approved Clinton's call, sitting down with her during their weekly meeting Thursday to determine the language she would use. "The secretary and the president worked through together the specific points she would be making to Prime Minister Netanyahu," deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said. Biden also called Netanyahu on Friday to reinforce the message, officials said, and Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was summoned to a meeting with Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg.

Some analysts applauded the administration's tough stance, saying it may jar the right-leaning Israeli government into making gestures to the Palestinians. But others said Clinton's call risked emboldening Arab and Palestinian officials to make new demands before talks start, if only so as not to seem softer than the Americans.

Internet freedom Has Become A "fundamental principle of American foreign policy"

This is smart. From the NY Times:

Seeking to exploit the Internet’s potential for prying open closed societies, the Obama administration will permit technology companies to export online services like instant messaging, chat and photo sharing to Iran, Cuba and Sudan, a senior administration official said Sunday.

On Monday, he said, the Treasury Department will issue a general license for the export of free personal Internet services and software geared toward the populations in all three countries, allowing Microsoft, Yahoo and other providers to get around strict export restrictions.

The companies had resisted offering such services for fear of violating existing sanctions. But there have been growing calls in Congress and elsewhere to lift the restrictions, particularly after the postelection protests in Iran illustrated the power of Internet-based services like Facebook and Twitter.

“The more people have access to a range of Internet technology and services, the harder it’s going to be for the Iranian government to clamp down on their speech and free expression,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made yet.

The decision, which had been expected, underscores the complexity of dealing with politically repressive governments in the digital age: even as the Obama administration is opening up trade in Internet services to Iran, it is shaping harsh new sanctions that would crack down on Iranian access to financing and technology that could help Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

Critics have said these sanctions are leaky and ineffective, and some say it makes more sense to spread digital technology, which makes it harder for governments to restrict the flow of information within societies, and to prevent their people from contact with the outside world.

The Treasury Department’s action follows a recommendation by the State Department in mid-December that the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is run by the Treasury, authorize the downloading of “free mass-market software” in Iran by Microsoft, Google and other companies.

In a speech in January, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that Internet freedom had become a fundamental principle of American foreign policy. “Viral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day,” she said, referring to censored publications that were passed around in Soviet-era Russia and helped fuel the dissident movement.

While Iran is the prime target of the Treasury’s action, it has implications for Sudan and Cuba, where the administration is also seeking to open more channels of communication to the outside world. Two other blacklisted countries, North Korea and Syria, are not affected by the decision because their sanctions do not currently rule out the export of Internet services.

"The Jihad Against the Jihadis"

A very interesting piece from Fareed Zakaria:

How moderate Muslim leaders waged war on extremists—and won.

More than eight eventful years have passed [since 9/11], but in some ways it still feels like 2001. Republicans have clearly decided that fanning the public's fears of rampant jihadism continues to be a winning strategy. Commentators furnish examples of backwardness and brutality from various parts of the Muslim world—and there are many—to highlight the grave threat we face.

But, in fact, the entire terrain of the war on terror has evolved dramatically. Put simply, the moderates are fighting back and the tide is turning. We no longer fear the possibility of a major country succumbing to jihadist ideology. In most Muslim nations, mainstream rulers have stabilized their regimes and their societies, and extremists have been isolated. This has not led to the flowering of Jeffersonian democracy or liberalism. But modern, somewhat secular forces are clearly in control and widely supported across the Muslim world. Polls, elections, and in-depth studies all confirm this trend.

The focus of our concern now is not a broad political movement but a handful of fanatics scattered across the globe. Yet Washington's vast nation-building machinery continues to spend tens of billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are calls to do more in Yemen and Somalia. What we have to ask ourselves is whether any of that really will deter these small bands of extremists. Some of them come out of the established democracies of the West, hardly places where nation building will help. We have to understand the changes in the landscape of Islam if we are going to effectively fight the enemy on the ground, rather than the enemy in our minds. <Continue reading.>

This graph from later in the article I thought was powerful and important enough to highlight as it directly rebuts Darth Vader (a.k.a. Dick Cheney):

But consider: the most important moderates to denounce militants have been the families of radicals. In the case of both the five young American Muslims from Virginia arrested in Pakistan last year and Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, parents were the ones to report their worries about their own children to the U.S. government—an act so stunning that it requires far more examination, and praise, than it has gotten. This is where soft power becomes critical. Were the fathers of these boys convinced that the United States would torture, maim, and execute their children without any sense of justice, they would not have come forward. I doubt that any Chechen father has turned his child over to Vladimir Putin's regime.

GOP Obstructionism: Another Clear Example Of How The GOP Rejects Their Own Ideas When Obama Agrees To Them

NY Times:

John Walker Lindh and David Hicks were both young Muslim converts who traveled to Afghanistan to join the Taliban and were captured there in 2001 by American troops. But then their cases diverged — in ways that might surprise anyone following the fierce political debate over how the Obama administration should treat terrorism suspects.

Bush administration officials decided to charge Mr. Lindh, an American, in the civilian criminal justice system. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and will not get out until at least 2019.

Mr. Hicks, an Australian, was treated as an enemy combatant — the approach now pressed by President Obama’s Republican critics. He went before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and got a seven-year sentence with all but nine months suspended. He is already free.

The Dec. 25 arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, has reignited an old argument over how to treat terrorism suspects. Republican critics have denounced the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab criminally, read him his rights and give him a lawyer. He was a combatant in Al Qaeda’s war on the United States, critics say, and should have been treated accordingly.

But the assumptions behind the criticism — that the military approach will gain more intelligence, avoid the meddling of government-paid defense lawyers and lock away a convicted terrorist for a longer sentence — are undercut by the record since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In eight years, the Bush administration said it had obtained at least 319 convictions in “terrorism or terrorism-related” cases in the civilian justice system, according to a Justice Department budget document. A study by the Center on Law and Security at New York University found convictions in nearly 9 of 10 cases, with a 16-year average sentence for those convicted of terrorism.

Only two accused terrorists arrested in the United States, Ali al-Marri and Jose Padilla, were moved temporarily into the military system. But after legal challenges by the lawyers supplied to all detainees who face military justice, the Bush administration moved both cases back to civilian courts, where Mr. Padilla was sentenced to 17 years in prison and Mr. Marri to 8 years.

Meanwhile, at Guantánamo, just three men were convicted by military commissions, largely because the tribunals drew countless legal challenges. Two of the three men convicted, including Mr. Hicks, are now free.

Robert M. Chesney, an expert on national security law at the University of Texas, said the attacks on the Obama administration’s handling of Mr. Abdulmutallab were “mired in misinformation, some of it willful.”

Mr. Chesney said the Republicans were largely to blame for what he called “a bizarre public discussion that is 90 percent politics and 10 percent substance,” since they never complained when the Bush administration handled terrorism cases the same way. But he said the Obama administration might have invited the attacks by itself applying partisan spin to security.

Haiti Cartoons

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation: Congo Approves Economic Stimulus Package Of AK-47 For Every Citizen

Don't Believe The Wall St Apologists When They Say Obama's Bank Plan Will Hurt US Competitiveness

Wall St apologists are already touting out the "US banks will be disadvantaged against the rest of the world" argument in response to Obama's dramatic plan to restructure the "too big to fail banks." Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world is already doing equivalent things (for their context) so Obama's plans will not make US banks less competitive internationally. In fact, in many ways all Obama will be doing will be leveling the playing field by bringing the US approach back up to the rest of the worlds.

Yesterday there was "Obama bank plan wins tentative support in Europe", and today, this from Reuters:

Financial stability board welcomes Obama bank plan

The Financial Stability Board (FSB), charged by the G20 to coordinate national regulation in response to the financial crisis, on Saturday welcomed U.S. proposals to limit banks' size and trading activities.

The proposals are among a range of options the board is considering as its addresses the risk of banks being "too big to fail," it said in a statement.

Major European economies have offered support for President Barack Obama's plan, which could rewrite the world financial order, but indicated they had no plans to follow suit.

The FSB is considering several other options to address the "too big to fail" problem including targeted capital, leverage, and liquidity requirements, improved supervisory approaches and simplification of firm structures.

"A mix of approaches will be necessary to address the TBTF problem, given the different types of institutions and national and cross-border contexts involved," the FSB said.

"At the same time, these approaches must preserve an integrated financial services market and not create regulatory arbitrage through an uneven playing field."

The FSB will make recommendations to G20 leaders in October and publish an interim report shortly after a G20 summit in June.

More Haiti Cartoons

More Haiti Cartoons On The Media & Right-Wing

Google & China Cartoons

Surreal White House Scene: Clinton, Bush & Obama

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Cartoons On The Haitian Earthquake: What It Tells Us About Ourselves

Reacting to the reaction of some on the Right:

Today, we're paying attention. Last month and next month, not so much:

Putting things in perspective:

"Pressure Grows to Grant Haitians Temporary Protected Status"

The Gaggle:

In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, pressure is intensifying on the Obama administration to grant temporary protected status (TPS) to undocumented Haitians living in the U.S. TPS, which is aimed at illegal immigrants who cannot return home safely due to natural and man-made disasters, would allow an estimated 30,000 Haitians to remain in the country for a defined period of time—most likely 12 to 18 months—and obtain work permits. In Miami today, a variety of groups, including South Florida's congressional delegation, immigrant advocacy organizations, and the Catholic Church, held press conferences calling on the administration to act. "If they don't grant TPS in this situation, they have effectively repealed TPS," says Randy McGrorty of Catholic Charities Legal Services. "This is exactly what TPS was designed for." Yet so far, administration officials have said only that the policy is under consideration; in the meantime, all they've pledged to do is temporarily halt the deportation of Haitians residing here illegally.

TPS is a sour topic for the Haitian community. Advocates have long sought it, given the string of calamities that the island has suffered, including four hurricanes last year. But "Haitians have been let down time and again, by administration after administration," says Cheryl Little of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. What angers activists even more is that TPS has been granted to several other immigrant groups. Hondurans and Nicaraguans benefited from TPS after Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and Salvadorans earned the status after an earthquake in 2001. As destructive as both  those tragedies were, they don't match the apparent scale of devastation in Haiti. Yet, just as the island nation languishes in a unique category of squalor in the hemisphere, so, too, does the community here find itself relegated to a unique category of undesirable.

One of the arguments frequently used against granting TPS to Haitians is that it will encourage a massive influx of new immigrants. Yet Little and McGrorty point out that TPS benefits only those who are already in the U.S., not fresh arrivals. Moreover, they argue, allowing undocumented Haitians already here to work legally and send home remittances would serve a dual purpose: it would funnel dollars toward reconstruction and provide a measure of stability to families who might otherwise feel compelled to emigrate.

Limbaugh: Don't Help Haitians Because Obama Is Using The Crisis To Boost His Standings

What an unfeeling pig! Is there nothing nonpartisan to this guy?

Google Catches The Chinese Government With Its Hand "In The Cookie Jar." What's Obama To Do?

NY Times:

Last month, when Google engineers at their sprawling campus in Silicon Valley began to suspect that Chinese intruders were breaking into private Gmail accounts, the company began a secret counteroffensive.

It managed to gain access to a computer in Taiwan that it suspected of being the source of the attacks. Peering inside that machine, company engineers actually saw evidence of the aftermath of the attacks, not only at Google, but also at at least 33 other companies, including Adobe Systems, Northrop Grumman and Juniper Networks, according to a government consultant who has spoken with the investigators.

Seeing the breadth of the problem, they alerted American intelligence and law enforcement officials and worked with them to assemble powerful evidence that the masterminds of the attacks were not in Taiwan, but on the Chinese mainland.

But while much of the evidence, including the sophistication of the attacks, strongly suggested an operation run by Chinese government agencies, or at least approved by them, company engineers could not definitively prove their case. Today that uncertainty, along with concerns about confronting the Chinese without strong evidence, has frozen the Obama administration’s response to the intrusion, one of the biggest cyberattacks of its kind, and to some extent the response of other targets, including some of the most prominent American companies.

President Obama, who has repeatedly warned of the country’s vulnerability to devastating cyberattacks, has said nothing in public about one of the biggest examples since he took office. And the White House, while repeating Mr. Obama’s calls for Internet freedom, has not publicly demanded a Chinese government investigation. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had been the most senior U.S. official to talk of the seriousness of the breach, discussed it on Thursday with a Chinese diplomat in Washington, however, and a senior administration official said there would be a “démarche in coming days” — a diplomatic move.

On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry deflected questions about Google’s charges and dismissed its declaration that it would no longer “self-censor” searches conducted on google.cn, its Chinese search engine. A ministry spokeswoman said simply that online services in China must be conducted “in accordance with the law.”

In interviews in which they disclosed new details of their efforts to solve the mystery, Google engineers said they doubted that a nongovernmental actor could pull off something this broad and well organized, but they conceded that even their counterintelligence operation, taking over the Taiwan server, could not provide the kind of airtight evidence needed to prove the case.

The murkiness of the attacks is no surprise. For years the National Security Agency and other arms of the United States government have struggled with the question of “attribution” of an attack; what makes cyberwar so unlike conventional war is that it is often impossible, even in retrospect, to find where the attack began, or who was responsible ...

Even as the United States and companies doing business in China assess the impact, the attacks signal the arrival of a new kind of conflict between the world’s No. 1 economic superpower and the country that, by year’s end, will overtake Japan to become No. 2.

China Has Become The World's Largest Auto Market & Biggest Exporter Of Goods, But Is It Too Far Too Fast?

NY Times:

As much of the world struggles to clamber out of a serious recession, a gradual flow of economic power from West to East has turned into a flood.

New high points, it seems, are reached daily. China surged past the United States to become the world’s largest automobile market — in units, if not in dollars, figures released Monday show. It also toppled Germany as the biggest exporter of manufactured goods, according to year-end trade data. World Bank estimates suggest that China — the world’s fifth-largest economy four years ago — will shortly overtake Japan to claim the No. 2 spot.

The shift of economic gravity to China has occurred partly because growth here remained robust even as the world’s developed economies suffered the steepest drop in trade and economic output in decades.

But that did not happen by chance: China’s decisive government intervention in the economy, combined with the defiant optimism of its companies and consumers, has propelled an economy that until recently had seemed tethered to the health of its major export markets, including the United States.

Beijing’s state-run news media, indulging in a moment of self-congratulation, have hailed China’s new economic prominence as proof of national superiority.

The country’s economic miracle, the newspaper People’s Daily boasted last week, exists because its leaders — unlike those in other, unnamed nations — can make quick decisions and ensure underlings carry them out. The Great Recession, the newspaper said, has laid bare cracks in plodding Western-style capitalism.

Yet China confronts a number of challenges about its recent surge, including whether its formula for growth is sustainable, and how it will manage its increasingly strained economic relations with the outside world. Those are likely to prove challenging issues for a leadership unaccustomed to making policy under an international spotlight.

Sustaining a global-size economy is nowhere near as simple as building one, some Chinese and Western economists say. As the Chinese navigate toward a bigger role in the world financial system, they are already running into diplomatic and political headwinds.

Is It Inevitable? (cartoon)

 

Obama Shifts To Supporting Iranian Opposition (#iranelection)

Wall St Journal:

The Obama administration is increasingly questioning the long-term stability of Tehran's government and moving to find ways to support Iran's opposition "Green Movement," said senior U.S. officials.

The White House is crafting new financial sanctions specifically designed to punish the Iranian entities and individuals most directly involved in the crackdown on Iran's dissident forces, said the U.S. officials, rather than just those involved in Iran's nuclear program.

U.S. Treasury Department strategists already have been focusing on Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has emerged as the economic and military power behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In recent weeks, senior Green Movement figures -- who have been speaking at major Washington think tanks -- have made up a list of IRGC-related companies they suggest targeting, which has been forwarded to the Obama administration by third parties.

Names on the list include Iran's largest telecommunications provider, Telecommunication Company of Iran, which is majority-owned by the IRGC, and the Iranian Aluminum Co. A U.S. official involved in Iran said the administration wouldn't comment on whether it was acting on the information.

American diplomats, meanwhile, have begun drawing comparisons in public between Iran's current political turmoil and the events that led up to the 1979 overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi.

"In my opinion there are many similarities," the State Department's chief Iran specialist, John Limbert, told Iran-based listeners this week over U.S. government-run Radio Farda. "I think it's very hard for the government to decide how to react to the legitimate and lawful demands of the people."

Since the opposition movement's demonstrations recently peaked after the death of reformist Islamic cleric Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a number of Iran scholars in the U.S. said they have been contacted by senior administration officials eager to understand if the Iranian unrest suggested a greater threat to Tehran's government than originally understood.

"The tone has changed in the conversation," said one scholar who discussed Iran with senior U.S. officials. "There's realization now that this unrest really matters."

In a signal of the White House's increased attention to Iran's political upheaval, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered over coffee at the State Department this week with four leading Iran scholars and mapped out the current dynamics, said U.S. officials. One issue explored was how the U.S. should respond if Tehran suddenly expressed a desire to reach a compromise on the nuclear issue. Mrs. Clinton asked whether the U.S. could reach a pact without crippling the prospects for the Green Movement ...

Still, the White House's re-evaluation of the Green Movement marks a significant evolution of Mr. Obama's Iran policy since demonstrators began openly challenging President Ahmadinejad's re-election in June, said diplomats and analysts.

Iranian Crackdown Cartoons (#iranelection)

Avatar (cartoon)

From Thailand: 

Yemen & Afghanistan (cartoons)

The Trade View From China (cartoon)

From China Daily:

 

Something Is Happening In Iran (#iranelection)

Andrew Sullivan:

If you sense that nothing significant shifted during Ashura, you need to see this video:

The American Evangelical Role In Uganda's Death-to-Gays Bill

The first NY Times article sets the appalling scene:

“We walk on the streets knowing that at any moment someone could be knowing you and there could be mob justice,” said Stosh Mugisha, a woman who is going through a transition to become a man. “You feel embarrassed by someone touching you. People provoke us. But I just play it cool. Keep a low profile. It is terrible.” ...

Anti-gay sentiments are one thing, and hardly unique to Uganda. But what seems different here is the level of official, government-sponsored anti-gay hate speech.

“I detest gays in my heart,” said Kassiano E. Wadri, a member of Parliament and the chief whip of the opposition. “When I see a gay, I think that person needs psychotherapy. You need to break him.”

Then the second article describes the American evangelical role in Uganda's state sponsored oppression:

Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.

Donor countries, including the United States, are demanding that Uganda’s government drop the proposed law, saying it violates human rights, though Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity (who previously tried to ban miniskirts) recently said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”

The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.

Instead, Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.

“It’s a fight for their lives,” said Mai Kiang, a director at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a New York-based group that has channeled nearly $75,000 to Ugandan gay rights activists and expects that amount to grow.

The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.

Obama Sees Iranian Nuclear Sanction Opportunity (#iranelection)

NY Times:

As President Obama faces pressure to back up his year-end ultimatum for diplomatic progress with Iran, the administration says that domestic unrest and signs of unexpected trouble in Tehran’s nuclear program make its leaders particularly vulnerable to strong and immediate new sanctions ...

In interviews, Mr. Obama’s strategists said that while Iran’s top political and military leaders remained determined to develop nuclear weapons, they were distracted by turmoil in the streets and political infighting, and that the drive to produce nuclear fuel appeared to have faltered in recent months.

The White House wants to focus the new sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the military force believed to run the nuclear weapons effort. That force has also played a crucial role in the repression of antigovernment demonstrators since the disputed presidential election in June.

Although repeated rounds of sanctions over many years have not dissuaded Iran from pursuing nuclear technology, an administration official involved in the Iran policy said the hope was that the current troubles “give us a window to impose the first sanctions that may make the Iranians think the nuclear program isn’t worth the price tag.”

While outsiders have a limited view of Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration officials said they believed that the bomb-development effort was seriously derailed by the exposure three months ago of the country’s secret enrichment plant under construction near the holy city of Qum. Exposure of the site deprived Iran of its best chance of covertly producing the highly enriched uranium needed to make fuel for nuclear weapons.

In addition, international nuclear inspectors report that at Iran’s plant in Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges spin to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, the number of the machines that are currently operating has dropped by 20 percent since the summer, a decline nuclear experts attribute to technical problems. Others, including some European officials, believe the problems may have been accentuated by a series of covert efforts by the West to undermine Iran’s program, including sabotage on its imported equipment and infrastructure.

These factors have led the administration’s policy makers to lengthen their estimate of how long it would take Iran to accomplish what nuclear experts call “covert breakout” — the ability to secretly produce a workable weapon.

Passing Of A Year & A Decade (cartoons)

Today's Iran Cartoons (#iranelection)

The View Of The Xmas Bomber From Nigeria (cartoon)

 

Latin America's Gay Rights Firsts: Mexico City Enacts 1st Marriage Equality Law, 1st Gay Newlyweds Relax In Argentina

First the AP provides an update on Latin America's first gay newlyweds:

An Argentine couple participated in Latin America's first gay wedding on Monday, but interpretations vary on whether the law allows such unions in Argentina, and the question is now before its supreme court.

Argentina's Constitution is silent on whether marriage must be between a man and a woman, effectively leaving the matter to provincial officials, who approved Monday's wedding. But a law specifically legalizing gay marriage has been stalled in its Congress since October ...

Latin America's first gay newlyweds — Alex Freyre and Jose Maria Di Bello — were eager to relax and honeymoon.

"We want to rest now. It was a time during which we suffered a lot of humiliations," Freyre told The Associated Press after returning to Buenos Aires from Ushuaia, the world's southernmost city, where the couple were wed.

The men tried to get married in Argentina's capital but city officials, who had earlier said the ceremony could proceed, refused to wed them on Dec. 1, citing conflicting judicial rulings.

Then the AP reveals part of Mexico City's motivation for their breakthrough and discusses the state of marriage equality in Latin America:

Mexico City enacted Latin America's first law recognizing gay marriage Tuesday and said it hopes to attract same-sex couples from around the world to wed.

The law, approved by city legislators on Dec. 21, was published in Mexico City's official register Tuesday and will take effect in March. It will allow same-sex couples to adopt children and municipal officials say it will make Mexico's capital a "vanguard city" — and attract extra tourism revenues.

"Mexico City will become a center, where (gay) people from all over the world will be able to come and have their wedding, and then spend their honeymoon here," said Alejandro Rojas, the city tourism secretary.

"We are already in talks with some travel agencies that are planning to offer package tours that include flights, hotels, guides, and everything they need for the wedding, like banquets," said Rojas. "We are going to become a city on a par with Venice or San Francisco" — the current leader in the gay travel market segment.

The annual economic impact of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender travelers is about $70 billion in the United States alone, according to Community Marketing Inc., a tourism research company that specializes in gay and lesbian consumers.

Gay marriages of foreigners in Mexico City would presumably only be recognized by countries and states that also have legalized same-sex marriage. An exception is New York State, which doesn't allow same-sex marriages but which recognizes those which were performed legally in other jurisdictions ...

But even as Mexico City officials celebrated enactment of the law, others vowed to stop the marriages from taking place.

In a Sunday Mass, Roman Catholic Cardinal Norberto Rivera said "the essence of the family is being attacked by making homosexual unions equivalent to matrimony between a man and a woman."

Armando Martinez, the president of a local Catholic lawyers' group, said he was planning demonstrations against same-sex marriages, and will also support legal efforts to overturn the Mexico City law.

"We are going to carry out exhaustive campaigns at the offices of the justices of the peace in the city, using acts of peaceful civil resistance to prevent homosexual couples from being married," Martinez said.

Iranian Crackdown (cartoon #iranelection)

 

Copenhagen Wont Float (cartoon)

 

"Latin America's first legally married same-sex couple"

Al Jazeera:

Two men in Argentina have become Latin America's first legally married same-sex couple, after the governor of the country's southernmost Tierra del Fuego province permitted their wedding.

Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre, both gay rights activists, were married in Ushuaia, the provincial capital, in a civil ceremony on Tuesday.

"My knees didn't stop shaking," 41-year-old Di Bello said. "We are the first gay couple in Latin America to marry."

Claudio Morgano, president of the national anti-discrimination institute and a witness at the wedding, called the marriage a "historic occasion".

Argentina's constitution does not specify that marriage must be exclusively between a man and a woman, but the country's civil code does make the distinction.

The couple had previously tried to marry in Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, but were prevented from doing so by city officials citing conflicting judicial rulings on the issue.

The couple then tried again in Tierra del Fuego where Fabiana Rios, the provincial governor, authorised the wedding after a local registry official refused to officiate.

Rios said in a statement that gay marriage "is an important advance in human rights and social inclusion and we are very happy that this has happened in our state".

Di Bello, who is an executive at the Argentine Red Cross, met Freyre, the executive director of the Buenos Aires Aids Foundation, at an HIV awareness conference. Both are HIV-positive.

At Monday's indoor ceremony, the grooms wore sport coats without ties, and had large red ribbons draped around their necks in solidarity with other people living with HIV.

Many in Argentina and throughout Latin America remain opposed to gay marriage, particularly the Roman Catholic Church.

Bishop Juan Carlos, of the southern city Rio Gallegos, told the Argentine news agency DyN: "The decision took me by surprise and I'm concerned."

He called the marriage "an attack against the survival of the human species".

Same-sex civil unions have been legalised in Uruguay, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and some states in Mexico and Brazil.

Opposition Arrests In Iran (#iranelection)

Al Jazeera:

Several security force members were reportedly beaten up by protesters [AFP] Security forces in Iran have arrested a number of prominent critics of the government in the wake of opposition protests that left as many as eight people dead. Ebrahim Yazdi, who served as foreign minister in the early months of Iran's 1979 revolution, and Emadeddin Baghi, a human rights campaigner and journalist, were arrested on Monday, according to the pro-opposition Rahesabz website. There were also reports that two aides to Mohammad Khatami, a former reformist president, and three advisers to of Mir Hossein Mousavi, an opposition leader, were detained. Security forces reportedly stormed a series of opposition offices in an apparent crackdown following fierce clashes at street protests during the Shia Muslim commemoration of Ashoura. Seyyed Ali Mousavi, Mousavi's 35-year-old nephew, was among the eight people killed, with the Parlemannews website saying he was shot during clashes at Enghelab square "and was martyred after he was taken to Ebnesina hospital". State television attributed his death to "unknown assailants". Reports of violence, including that police fired on protesters during the protests, could not be independently verified because foreign media are banned from covering protests.

'Suspicious death'

Ahmad Reza Radan, Iran's deputy police chief, acknowledged that "several people" had been killed, but denied that police had used guns to contain the protests.

Referring to four of the deaths, Radan said: "One fell off a  bridge, two died in car accidents and one was killed by a bullet."

"As the police was not using firearms this [death] is suspicious and it is being investigated," he said.

Opposition leaders criticised the government for the killings in what are some of the bloodiest confrontations in Iran since the demonstrations that followed the disputed June 12 presidential poll.

"What has happened to this religious system that it orders the killing of innocent people during the holy day of Ashoura?" Mehdi Karroubi, one of the defeated reformist candidates in the election, said in a statement reported on the Jaras website.

The website also said that unrest had spread to other parts of Iran, including the holy city of Qom, Shiraz, Isfahan, Najafabad, Mashhad and Babol ...

Payam Akhavan, who co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre, characterised the protests as a result of Iran's disputed June election, which saw Mousavi and others beaten to the presidency by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent.

"The regime has tried to portray the Green [opposition] Movement, the protests, as a very limited segment of Iranian society - middle class, secular students in Tehran," he told Al Jazeera.

"But now it's clear that the protests against the regime encompass a very broad cross-section of Iranian society, including devout Muslims."

Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University, said that the protests were being organised from abroad, a sentiment frequently stressed by the Iranian government.

Dozens Of Raw Videos From The Riots In Iran (#iranelection)

From Turborama:

This guy has uploaded another 38 clips, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ahriman46#g/u

And this channel has a lot with titles added to each vid: http://www.youtube.com/user/GREENUNITY4IRAN#g/u
(Hat tip to Bananas for adding this link here)

Very good blog with lots of videos and pics: http://freegreeniran.blogspot.com /
(Hat tip to rollin74 for adding the link here)

(#iranelection) "The Iranian regime hit back viciously last night after the opposition turned the funeral .... into another huge anti-government demonstration"

London Times:

The Iranian regime hit back viciously last night after the opposition turned the funeral of their spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, into another huge anti-government demonstration in the holy city of Qom.

Men on motorbikes attacked the car carrying Mir Hossein Mousavi, the opposition leader, back from Qom to Tehran. They smashed the back window and injured one of his aides, a reformist website reported. Hundreds of government agents halted the memorial service for Montazeri, according to a conservative website.

The assaults, which cannot be independently confirmed, came at the end of a day when the so-called Green Movement had carried its campaign to oust a regime it considers illegitimate into the heart of the country’s theological capital.

Six of Iran’s 12 leading Ayatollahs went to Montazeri’s house to pay their respects despite his repeated attacks on the regime. “Qom has been under serious security over the past six months, but today they have effectively lost control of it,” said Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at the University of St Andrews.

Opposition websites variously reported that tens or hundreds of thousands of mourners had poured into the city of shrines and seminaries. Photographs showed a sea of mourners packing the streets as Montazeri’s black-draped coffin inched forward on the back of a truck.

Mr Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the two defeated candidates in June’s hotly disputed presidential election, joined the mourners as they beat their chests and chanted “Dictator — Montazeri’s way will continue”, “Oppressed Montazeri is with God today”, and “Montazeri is not dead — it is the Government that is dead”.

Footage shot with mobile phones showed men and women wearing green scarves and wristbands and holding up black-bordered portraits of Montazeri.

Opposition activists were jubilant. “This has taken the Green Movement into the heart of Qom, the ‘Vatican’ of the Islamic republic. Hopefully the clerics will begin to break away from the regime,” said one.

Another said that protesters were talking of how Qom provided the first spark for the 1979 revolution against the Shah, and could do the same for President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader.

Witnesses said that after yesterday’s ceremony Basij, the militia, attacked opposition supporters outside Montazeri’s home and tore down black banners. Thousands of mourners also marched in Montazeri’s hometown of Najafabad, near the city of Isfahan.

The Green Movement appears to be emboldened and gaining momentum, and this is a week of great opportunity. The sacred month of Muharram culminates on Sunday in the emotionally charged holiday of Ashura, when Shia Muslims mourn the 7thcentury martyrdom of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson and the talk is of sacrifice.

The opposition is planning nationwide protests that day, and the fact that Ashura coincides with the seventh day since Montazeri’s death, an important date in the Shia mourning ritual, will give them greater impetus.

"US ups funds for Israeli missile defense"

Jerusalum Post:

US Barack Obama has signed a defense spending bill that includes $202 million in funds for Israel's missile defense programs, the White House announced Monday ... increasing the amount of money given to Israeli missile defense projects developed in coordination with the United States.

The Arrow-3, a controversial program that initially faced push-back from US Pentagon officials, will now get $50m. as opposed to the $37m. originally requested by the administration.

In addition, the short-range ballistic missile defense program will get $80m., with the balance for the existing long-range program. The total is some $25m. more than was approved last year.

"We are tremendously pleased with the ongoing cooperation between the United States and the State of Israel in the area of missile defense," an Israeli official said after Obama signed the bill this weekend.

He noted that cooperation to deal with mutual threats has gone on for the past decade, and that "we're very pleased with the continuing commitment, as has been demonstrated in the allocation for 2010."

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