Politics Daily

Muslim Baiting: Peter King's Dangerous Obsession

Sarah Wildman — 2011-03-09T22:16:00+00:00

In the last month and half, the Muslim world has been re-imagined in Western minds. On our television screens, at least before the upheaval in Libya, we saw women on the streets of Cairo, peaceful demonstrations, dictators overthrown.

It was a different Islamic world than the one we'd been shown before, one that craves democracy, privileges peace; it was a counterpoint to Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations," and it provided a recognition of shared values, shared hopes.

The world we saw is imperfect, to be sure. Women are struggling to be equal partners in that peaceful revolution. But it is a struggle that is taking place away, largely, from terror.

Huckabee's Slide: From Anti-Elite Demagoguery to Right-Wing Buffoonery

David Corn — 2011-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

Filed under: 2012 President, Deep Background, Field Notes

I wrote too soon.

On Tuesday, I posted a column declaring that Mike Huckabee's new book, "A Simple Government," "is an assault on thinking." My point: in this tract the former Republican governor of Arkansas and failed 2008 contender strikes an anti-elite pose, demagogically bashes policy experts, and attacks the Obama administration for being inexperienced and not sufficiently simple. But that's nothing compared to the crackpot crusade he's been on this week.

It all began when Huckabee appeared on right-wing Steve Malzberg's radio show in New York City, seconded Malzberg's demands for more information on Obama's background (Malzberg is a birther), and claimed President Barack Obama grew up in Kenya "with a Kenyan father and grandfather," noting that Obama inherited a hatred of the British, who colonized Kenya. Huckabee, of course, was wrong: Obama did not grow up in Kenya. He grew up in Hawaii and spent several years as young child in Indonesia. And he had virtually no contact with his Kenyan father after the age of 2. He had not been indoctrinated with anti-British sentiment.

Huckabee soon after claimed that he had merely misspoke and had meant to say Obama had grown up in Indonesia. But that explanation was disingenuous, for Huckabee had repeatedly made the Kenya reference to illustrate the point that Obama was a foe of the United State's closest ally. Indonesia was ruled by the Dutch, not the British. And the folks young Obama spent time with in Indonesia probably didn't care much about the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.

What Huckabee had been doing on that radio show was spreading Fox News-ish swill: the loony thesis, first peddled by conservative author Dinesh D'Souza in Forbes magazine last September and then seconded by Newt Gingrich, that because Obama's father was apparently an anti-colonialist in Kenya, the president was now acting out the anti-Western and anti-capitalism rage he had inherited from his father. This is a ludicrous. Given that Obama did not grow up with his father, how did he come by such anti-Western (and what these guys really mean is anti-American) anger? Is there a Kenyans-hate-white-capitalists gene? But on Malzberg's show, it was as if Huckabee, who hosts a show on Fox News, had somehow absorbed this stupid idea -- perhaps via Green Room osmosis. He was parroting a shorthand version of D'Souza's premise. This is how the right-wing's transmission belt of trash operates.

There's more. One portion of that radio show appearance has not received much attention. In the middle of the exchange about Obama's birth certificate and Kenya, Malzberg said of Obama, "He despises the West, he despises the Brits, and I think he could take it all out on Israel and that's why he despises Israel." How did Huckabee respond to the charge that Obama detests the West, England, and Israel? He didn't. The former preacher said nothing. And in this sort of situation, silence can be read as at least quasi-assent. I doubt Huckabee truly believes Obama hates the West and Israel. But he's playing footsie with the yahoos who do -- because he will want their votes, should he run for the GOP presidential nomination. By not challenging Malzberg on this point, Huckabee was, in a way, granting legitimacy to his view.

This is particularly troubling: a leader of the Republican Party going along with this vile criticism of the president. During the Bush years, Democrats were often harshly critical of W. But there were no major Democratic figures who contended that Bush was fundamentally anti-American or some kind of "other." Yet leading Republicans encourage such talk about Obama.

Think I'm being too hard on Huck? Two days later -- after the brouhaha over his Kenya remarks -- Huckabee went on another conservative radio show and agreed when the host, Bryan Fischer, said that due to Obama's childhood experiences, the president holds "fundamentally anti-American ideas." That is, Huckabee was still flopping about in the mud pit of conservative craziness.

One question: What was Huckabee doing sharing a microphone with Fischer? He's a true extremist. As Tim Murphy points out in Mother Jones:

Fischer has previously argued that gay sex is "domestic terrorism," that Native American societies were a "slop bucket" that deserved to be wiped out by Christians, that the President is a "fascist dictator," that Muslims should be banned from serving in the military, that gays literally caused the holocaust, and that grizzly bears should be slaughtered to appease an angry God.

But Fischer has an audience, and that's enough for a GOP panderer.

This past week, Huckabee blundered repeatedly. The Republican wannabe who has long cultivated the image of a friendly fellow demonstrated that he is willing to participate in the most perfidious conservative attacks on the president. It was a buffoonish but disturbing performance. Huckabee showed that he's not ready to be president of the United States, though he seems rather well-prepared to be president of Fox News.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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John Galliano, Anti-Semitism, and the Power of Words

Sarah Wildman — 2011-03-01T22:50:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up, Video, Analysis, Field Notes

In just days, one of the greatest names in modern fashion has seen his reputation scrambled, from cheeky enfant terrible to accused bigot.

Last Thursday night, John Galliano, Christian Dior's star designer, was drinking at the Paris watering hole and fashionista favorite La Perle, when he allegedly tore into a 35-year-old gallery owner named Geraldine Bloch. He's accused of calling her an "ugly Jew face" with bad eyebrows and cheap boots and threatening her friend with equally noxious epithets (the friend, apparently, is Asian).

At first, Galliano was simply suspended from the House of Dior, where he has worked the runway since 1996, pending an investigation. The French police, who briefly took Galliano into custody following a complaint filed by Bloch, said Galliano's blood-alcohol level was alarmingly high.

Israel Quietly Shuts Down Embassies as Sabers Rattle in the Middle East

Sarah Wildman — 2011-02-16T12:42:00+00:00

Filed under: Foreign Policy, Middle East, Field Notes

As Days of Rage continue across the Middle East, and thoughts are far from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Israeli Foreign Ministry took the unusual step earlier this week of quietly shutting down four embassies and putting others on high alert. That's because as attention has turned to protests in Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, and Iran, sabers are rattling between Lebanon and Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that his nation could once again enter Lebanon, and Hezbollah once again promised to avenge its martyrs.

That would be one martyr, in particular. At least this week.

While Israel's embassy in Cairo was already in flux due to the 18-day Egyptian uprising, the decision to shut down four, thus far unnamed, diplomatic missions coincides with the third anniversary of the death of Imad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah leader, in Lebanon. Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in February 2008; Hezbollah blamed Israel. Israel denied culpability.

Observers pointed out that there were others around the globe who were happy to see Mughniyeh dead (the United States is at the top of that list). Mughniyeh was widely believed to be involved in the hijacking of TWA flight 845 in the early 1980s (and was indicted for that crime in the U.S.) and other attacks on Americans, as well as bombings against Jewish and Israeli sites in Argentina -- including the deadly AMIA bombing in 1994 against a Jewish community center that killed 85 people and wounded 151 more. He then dropped off the radar for years, though intelligence believed him to be still active -- and even blamed him for the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996.

Upon his death, then State-Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "The world is a better place without this man in it. One way or the other, he was brought to justice." And the FBI's Richard Kolko told the Associated Press, "If this information proves true, it would be considered good news in the ongoing fight against terrorism."

But good news for fighters of terrorism didn't mean there wasn't revenge in the works. Hezbollah promised as much. Wednesday morning, at a rally marking the party's Martyr's Day, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah reiterated that promise. "I say to the Zionist leaders and generals: Wherever you go in the world . . . at any time, to watch your heads because the blood of Imad Mughniyeh will not be wasted."

He promised war and he promised bombs. "I say to the fighters of the Islamic Resistance: Be ready. If a new war is imposed on Lebanon we may ask you to take Galilee, to free Galilee," Hassan Nasrallah said. "I hope the people of Israel have good bomb shelters."

Agence France-Press reported that on the dais with Nasrallah was Mohammed Yusuf Mansour, a Hezbollah leader who escaped from a Cairo prison last week.

Indeed, this week the Israeli Foreign Ministry acknowledged it had received enough credible threats to believe the lives of embassy staffers were at risk. "A number of irregular incidents targeting Israeli destinations were recorded in the last few days," the ministry said in a statement Tuesday. "At this point we estimate that a threat exists against the locations and it is being dealt with. The relevant Israeli authorities are in contact with the relevant authorities in the countries in question."

The countries weren't named, but observers noted that on Friday Israel's Counter Terrorism Bureau declared eight countries were high risks for Israeli and Jewish travelers -- Egypt, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania and Venezuela. The foreign ministry did not confirm embassy closings in those nations, possibly to throw off any planned attacks.

Closing an embassy is a relatively unusual step. The United States and the United Kingdom, however, temporarily closed embassies in Yemen in early January 2010 due to threats of an al-Qaeda attack there.

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Days of Rage: As Mideast Protests Spread, Peaceful Outcomes Are Up in the Air

Sarah Wildman — 2011-02-15T12:55:00+00:00

Filed under: Field Notes

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down after an 18-day quiet revolution, but the region is hardly at rest. What started in Tunisia has spread thick and fast throughout the region. Algeria is simmering. Jordan is fitful. Iran and Syria are clamping down on protests. Bahrain and Yemen have protests in the streets. Eighteen days may have changed Egypt, but the rest of the Middle East has hardly returned to normal.

Asked Monday if she had a message for protesters in the region, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton replied, "Remain peaceful, nonviolent. That is what worked so well in Egypt, and that's what will work, because it gives you a standing that is absolutely unimpeachable -- that you are going out and protesting but not using violent means. Continue to stand up for universal rights but recognize that change requires a process, and be willing to be part of that process."

It may take Gandhi-like patience to remain peaceful.

Demonstrators swelled the streets of the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain Tuesday after Monday's "Day of Rage" protest of government repression. Several protesters were injured and two were killed.

Sunnis rule Bahrain, but Shias are in the majority -- and for years they have claimed the government has institutionalized discrimination. Nabeel Rajab of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) told Al Jazeera: "We are only asking for political reforms: right of political participation, respect for human rights, stopping of systematic discrimination against Shias. All the demands are to do with human rights and nothing to do with the ruling family and their regime." Bahraini leaders, Al Jazeera said, had tried to buy peace. It didn't work.

In Bahrain's capital, Manama, thousands of people filled Pearl Square -- dubbed "Tahrir Square" after its counterpart in Cairo -- on Tuesday. King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa spoke on television to express sympathy for the dead.

But while protester there are not -- as of yet -- calling for a change of government, the same cannot be said of Yemen, where protests continued Tuesday for a fifth day. In the streets of the capital, Sanaa, and in the town of Taez, protesters called for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has held power for three decades. "After Mubarak, it's Saleh's turn," the demonstrators chanted and, using a slogan from Egypt, "The people want to oust the regime."

Yemeni protesters, inspired by those in Egypt, are also relying on Facebook and Twitter to organize. "It will not matter to us if we stay one, two or three months," Hashem al-Abara, one of the social-networking organizers, told Agence France-Presse. "We will continue with the protests, and the ruling party's attacks against our peaceful demonstrations will not set us back."

As in Egypt, the Yemeni attacks on protesters have included journalists covering events there. Reporters Without Borders, based in Paris, issued a statement denouncing such actions: "Reporters Without Borders roundly condemns the attacks that security agents, police officers and plainclothes men have carried out against journalists covering street protests in Sanaa during the past two days." The group listed several specific attacks, including one against photojournalist Khalil Al-Berh, who was held in a security services vehicle, his camera taken and the contents of its memory card deleted. Khalid Al-Mahdi, a Reuters photographer, was attacked on the street, his camera destroyed. Two correspondents reported being badly beaten.

Algeria, too, appears both inspired and spooked by Egypt. Protests hailed a statement from Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci, who told French television that Algeria's two-decade-old "emergency law," which institutionalizes censorship and bans freedom of assembly, would be lifted this week, giving Algerians "complete freedom of expression."

Further protests are planned for this weekend, as the lifting of the law may be too little, too late for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Protesters, by the thousands, are calling for the leader, in office for over a decade, to step down.

In Jordan, where King Abdullah replaced his Parliament on Feb. 1, scandal threatened the monarchy not from the streets but from the Bedouin tents. Queen Rania, a global figure known both for her beauty and her humanitarian work, was accused last week of corruption by the leaders of 36 tribes.

But it is Iran that the United States is looking toward with a mixture of dread, derision and consternation. Speaking of that nation Monday, Secretary Clinton referred to its "hijacked" revolution. "What Iran is doing to its people, even as we speak, where there are protesters trying to have their voices heard in Iran who are being brutally suppressed by the Iranian security forces, I don't think anyone in the Middle East -- or frankly, anyone in the world -- would look to Iran as an example for them. That is not where anybody wants to end up, where you are basically in a military dictatorship with a kind of theocratic overlay which doesn't respond to the universal human rights of the Iranian people. So I don't think there's much to be learned or really in any way followed coming out of Iran when it comes to democracy."

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Henri Huet, 'Most Influential' Vietnam War Photojournalist, Finally Honored

Sarah Wildman — 2011-02-10T16:49:00+00:00

Filed under: Field Notes

You might not know his name, but you've seen his work. Haunting images of men up to their waists in mud, wading through South East Asian jungles. Maybe you've seen the series of medic Thomas Cole, himself bloodied and half-blinded, covered in a sagging, once-white bandage, tending to men strewn about a makeshift hospital, a clearing really, filled with the dead, the dying, the wounded.

Forty years ago today, four photojournalists died when they were shot down over the Laos sky: Larry Burrows of Life magazine, Kent Potter of United Press International, Keizaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek and the man behind those images described above - Henri Huet - a French national just shy of 44 years old, and an Associated Press photographer who devoted more than 20 years to covering Vietnam.

On Tuesday, an exhibit opened in Paris at La Maison Européenne de la Photographie - "Henri Huet: Vietnam." It is a first, honoring the man, the work, and the time. His colleagues, killed that day, are represented as well. Co-curated by the Associated Press, and the Huet family, the effort to bring Huet's name back to prominence was largely the work of his niece, Hélène Gédouin, an editor at Hachette in France.

James Caccavo, who worked as a photojournalist first for the Red Cross and then for Newsweek in Vietnam, met Huet in the field and recalled his work was aesthetially outstanding, but said " they also had a very strong human element, a lot of emotion in them. He was one of the few photographers who got the names of people in his pictures. He always had all this information when he filed so you will see the names of those he photographed. He personalized the work he was doing." Caccavo arrived young and relatively green, 23, in 1968. But Huet treated him as a peer. "He was very warm and friendly. He was very kind. There was no big ego."

Huet was born in 1927 in Da Lat, Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and a French father. He moved to France as a toddler and grew up to study painting. But by 22 he was back in Vietnam as a French combat photographer, eventually joining the Associated Press. He won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his work in 1967.

"I had heard from him as a child because my father used to tell stories about their childhood and about Henri's work," Gédouin told me in an e-mail. "My father admired him, this spirit of adventure." But she really didn't know his work until she came across Requiem a book of photographs taken by photojournalists who perished during Vietnam. It was published by one of Huet's editors, a German AP reporter and editor named Horst Faas. "That was a real shock. I realized how good Henri was as a photographer, and how compassionate his work was. I decided I wanted to know more, and this is how it all started."

This was an exhibition that Gédouin put together first in Perpignan, the small southern French city. And then, a book she worked on with Faas and the AP -- Henri Huet - "J'étais photographe de guerre au Viêtnam." And what became a multi-year effort to teach her country about the work of one of their native sons; a man whose name had been all but totally forgotten. "As he worked for the Associated Press and because the archives are in New York, his work was not well known in France," she said.

"I respected Henri as a person, as a reporter of great integrity, great fairness ... and of course he was a good photographer, a photographer who had a little bit of extra as an artist," Faas, his old boss, said at the Perpignan festival. "He was the most influential photographer of his time, in Vietnam."

When Gédouin began to think about honoring her uncle, she says, "I phoned AP Paris. The Paris photo editor, Guy Kopelowicz, answered my call. He was very surprised, as he had met Henri. He told me that he had always wanted to do something for Henri before to get retired. He was thinking of an exhibition. I said, 'And you never thought of a book?' He said, 'Non, but it seems that you just fell from the sky' . . . then gave me Horst Faas' contact in London.

"I phoned him. I will never forget the strong voice with a German accent who said: 'Well, when do you come to London?' I was there within 10 days. I saw the material and there was enough to make a good book. When I came back to Paris, it took me less than a month to find a publisher. Then Horst and I flew to Stockholm to meet Henri's fiancée: she had kept all Henri's belongings."

Gedouin continued researching, writing and editing in a process she calls "very moving, and very painful." In 2006 she brought the work to Jean-François Leroy, the man in charge of the annual Visa Pour L'image festival in Perpignan, who agreed to show his work. But she didn't want to stop there. "I wanted to get Henri's photos to Paris," she said. So she made an appointment with Jean Luc Monterosso, director of La Maison Européenne de la Photographie. "Monterosso looked at the photos and said 'yes' at once. He gave me his first possibility and it was February 2011.

"I only realized that it would be the exact 40th anniversary of Henri's death when I started to get in a real schedule of work with the museum six months ago."

The timing has made Huet's old colleagues nostalgic.

"He was very warm and very kind," Caccavo, the photojournalist, says again and again in a conversation. "When he and Larry [Burrows] and [Kent] Potter were killed on that helicopter it was a devastating shock to all of us. All of these people were gone at once. I was in Los Angeles when it happened. I came back to the U.S. to finish up and get my degree. I heard the news on the radio and as soon as I got home I went to call the AP to see who was on the helicopter ... I was devastated. There was no way they could survive that kind of incident. It took many, many years before they were even able to get to the crash site and find what they could find."

Caccavo says Huet lived the war so deeply, he never even took the opportunities afforded him to leave.

"I remember when Henri left Vietnam to work for the AP in Tokyo. I saw him in Tokyo in 1970 and he desperately wanted to get back to the war. He took my wife and me to dinner and he was talking about how he missed the closeness of being with people because you do get very close to people in the field, and he was very determined to get back even though it was very dangerous. I don't think it was a thrill-seeking or ... sense of adventure. I think it was the human experience of being close to people again. We were like a big extended family."

Gedouin says the opening of the exhibit this week was large and well attended. "The thing I am always a bit sad about is that Henri's children are not here to celebrate the work of their father. Henri's brothers and sister have been looking for them and didn't manage to find them. When Henri got divorced, the children stayed with their mother who traveled to settle in Australia. Since then, nothing . . . "

Maybe now they'll hear of him, and now they will know. Their father is an icon of war photography, a man whose work informs and shapes all that has come since.

The exhibition runs through April.

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Israel Tense as Egypt Slides Into Power Vacuum

Sarah Wildman — 2011-02-02T15:20:00+00:00

Filed under: International, Middle East, Analysis, Field Notes, Egypt Crisis

Around the world, in the corridors of power and on the streets, the word is everywhere: Egypt. But perhaps nowhere is that word uttered with more trepidation, more grim uncertainty, and more mortal stress than in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Israeli leaders are concerned about preserving the 30-year cold peace with Egypt, signed by Hosni Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar El-Sadat, the leader who paid for that treaty with his life. They are concerned about what the dissolution of Egypt's government means for the future of the peace process. As Egypt's immediate neighbors to the north, Israelis are panicked that Egypt's slide into a power vacuum can only bode ill.

All that unease has meant that, unlike the marvel and wonder and undercurrent of admiration the Egyptian protestors have garnered from Western journalists, Israeli newspapers have been anxious and introspective. "Can Israel only broker peace with dictators?" asked one headline in Ha'aretz, the Israeli daily newspaper. Other headlines range from the woeful - "We're on our own" -- to the accusatory: "Obama's betrayal of Mubarak" and "A bullet in the back from Uncle Sam."

Cairo Is Not Berlin: The Folly of Mistaking Egypt for the Former Eastern Bloc

Sarah Wildman — 2011-01-29T19:00:00+00:00

Filed under: George W. Bush, Bush Administration, Religion, Obama Administration, National Security, International, Military, European Union, Analysis, Field Notes, Barack Obama, Islam, Human Rights, Egypt Crisis

"Whatever the future holds . . . the tide can never be turned back."

Words about Egypt's days of protest, which broke out last Tuesday? No. Written this week? No. The sentence comes from Page One of the Washington Post on Aug. 31, 1980. The country was Poland. The story was striking Lenin Shipyard workers. The demonstrators in the above-the-fold photo were cheering Lech Walesa.

The analogy to the beginning of the end of the Iron Curtain is so easy; it's a language we all know: "This is the Arab world's Berlin moment," Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics told Reuters. "The authoritarian wall has fallen -- and that's regardless of whether Mubarak survives or not. It goes beyond Mubarak. The barrier of fear has been removed. It is really the beginning of the end of the status quo in the region. The introduction of the military speaks volumes about the failure of the police to suppress the protesters. The military has stepped in and will likely seal any vacuum of authority in the next few weeks. Mubarak is deeply wounded. He is bleeding terribly. We are witnessing the beginning of a new era."

Secretary of State Clinton: End the Violence and Lift the Information Blackout in Egypt

Sarah Wildman — 2011-01-28T15:48:00+00:00

Filed under: Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, White House, Field Notes, Egypt Crisis

As night fell on the Egyptian cities of Cairo and Alexandria, President Hosni Mubarak, the leader of the Nile River country for nearly 30 years, imposed a curfew on thousands of protesters clogging the streets. It doesn't appear to have been obeyed.

Then again, the protesters, most of whom are calling for an end to the Mubarak regime, could say they hadn't heard the news: All Internet access as well as all cell phone networks have been blocked in Egypt. Observers are calling the move one of the most massive information blackouts in the history of social networking.

In the meantime, rumors abound that protesters have been beaten or killed and leaders taken into custody. And in reaction to the upheaval, the State Department has urged all Americans to delay or cancel non-essential travel to the country.

"We are deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protesters and we call on the Egyptian government to do everything in its power to restrain security forces," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the press at mid-day. "At the same time, protesters should also refrain from violence and express themselves peacefully."

"As we have repeatedly said, we support the universal human rights of the Egyptian people, including the right to freedom of expression, association and assembly. We urge the Egyptian authorities to allow peaceful protests and to reverse the unprecedented steps it has taken to cut off communications."

Clinton said the protests show that there are "deep grievances within Egyptian society" and that the Egyptian government needs to understand "that violence will not make these grievances go away. As a partner we strongly believe the Egyptian government needs to engage immediately with the Egyptian people in implementing needed political, economic and social reforms."

Clinton's message was echoed by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. "We are in continual contact....with the Egyptian government," he said during a Friday briefing. "We have not waited for the events of the last several days to bring up our concerns about freedom of assembly and Internet freedom."

President Obama, speaking in a YouTube interview Thursday, spoke out about the protests for the first time. "I've always said to him [Mubarak] that making sure that they are moving forward on reform - political reform, economic reform - is absolutely critical to the long-term well-being of Egypt. And you can see these pent-up frustrations that are being displayed on the streets."

The protests, which followed the government-toppling demonstrations in Tunisia, swelled over the last few days to encompass a broad swath of Egypt's population. They reflect anti-Mubarak sentiments as well as frustration with problems such as high unemployment, torture and inequality. The protesters themselves are, as the BBC put it, "ordinary Egyptians" who want the president to step down and allow free and fair elections.

Egypt's uprising, even more perhaps than the scenes recently from Tunis and Thursday in Yemen, has drawn global attention for its mixture of youth outrage, police crackdown, and the presence of long-marginalized political rivals of Mubarak's regime - namely Mohamad ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a Nobel Prize winner who has said he would run for president if Mubarak allowed it. ElBaradei flew to Egypt earlier in the week to join the protests. By Friday afternoon ElBaradei had been placed under house arrest.

In a statement ElBaradei declared, "The Egyptian people will take care of themselves. The Egyptian people will be the ones who will make the change. We are not waiting for help or assistance from the outside world, but what I expect from the outside world is to practice what you preach, is to defend the rights of the Egyptian to their universal values."

Universal values in this case extends from the right to assembly to the right to free speech and the right to convey that speech -- which has been deterred by the shutdown of Internet and cell phone networks. The website Gigaom.com provided a trenchant analysis of the situation, and possible mechanisms by which it is even possible to shut down all access. Renesys.com, which calls itself the "Internet intelligence authority," had this to say:

"In an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world...The Egyptian government's actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map.

A top tweet of the day mocked the government's efforts to block social networking:

"Everything ██is█████████████fine ████████love. █████████the ███Egypt ███████government ██#jan25 #Egypt #censorship"

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Railroad to Hell: France's SNCF Expresses 'Sorrow,' 'Regret' for Holocaust Role

Sarah Wildman — 2011-01-28T10:32:00+00:00

Filed under: Field Notes

Sixty-six years ago yesterday -- a lifetime ago -- Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked by ceremonies across Europe, speeches from leaders, acknowledgment from government officials; ambassadors in Washington, D.C., sometimes visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on this date.

Sixty-six years and yet the wounds can feel terribly fresh.

Take the case of the French national railway company, SNCF -- Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français. During the years of Nazi occupation, SNCF shuttled some 76,000 Jews to the Franco-German border; only 3,000 would return. Survivors and families have long sought to hold the company responsible, to receive indemnity payments, to have an acknowledgement of guilt, to make restitution for injustice.

This battle has stretched on for decades. It is about responsibility in wartime, about the role of France under occupation, about the politics of memory. France has come a long way since 1995, the first year that a French leader would embrace responsibility for the nation's role in those years of horror. "France, homeland of the Enlightenment and of human rights, land of welcome and asylum," said then-President Jacques Chirac, "accomplished the irreparable. . . . Failing her promise, she delivered those she was to protect to their murderers." In February 2009, the Conseil D'Etat formally ruled that the state -- in the guise of the Vichy government -- was responsible for the treatment of the Jews. Vichy was France, in other words, not Germany.

But the French state and the French railroad are two different entities. SNCF has long skirted full acknowledgement of wrongdoing.

SNCF is also a leader in high-speed trains -- the company that runs the trains you might have taken from Paris to Marseilles or to Nantes or Strasbourg -- and SNCF wants to make those trains for U.S. use, specifically for lucrative contracts in Florida and California. But there are a number of Holocaust survivors who don't want that to happen -- at least not until SNCF does something about its role in the war. Legislation was introduced in both states that would bar the awarding of contracts to companies that deported Jews (in California, the measure passed but was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's just before he left office); similar legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House and Senate.

Many observers believe that's why, in the last few months, SNCF has begun expressing "regret" and "sorrow" over the matter. And many also believe it is why, after years of stalling, the company suddenly made a grand statement about a long-abandoned train depot in the Paris suburb of Bobigny (a communist enclave). There, some 22,000 Jews boarded cattle cars for Auschwitz.

"In the name of the SNCF, I bow down before the victims, the survivors, the children of those deported, and before the suffering that still lives," the company's chairman, Guillaume Pepy, said at a commemorative ceremony marking the depot as a "lieu de memoire" -- a place of memory. Harriet Tamen, an American lawyer for the 600 or so survivors who sought to take SNCF to court a decade ago and who filed a class-action suit against the company in 2006, called it a "first step." In a conversation with the New York Times, she also said the company should take the "next step and pay reparations to the victims."

But in a phone interview, University of Manchester Holocaust historian Jean-Marc Dreyfus cautioned to read Pepy's statement carefully. "Its not taking responsibility," he said. "They say they were constrained and they were forced to [transport Jews] and it was the responsibility of the state and they were under orders."

Last May two Holocaust survivors pressed members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to take up their cause. Lawsuits over the years have faltered in U.S. courts, which have ruled that SNCF, which is partly state-owned, is protected under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act of 1976.

And yet, though the company has balked at issuing statements of responsibility, it has been ahead of a curve with its internal investigation. The company hired a historian in 1992 to document the role of the company in wartime, a project that was concluded in 1996 and made public in 2000. The historian found that SNCF had cooperated with German demands. As the Forward reported last May, documents filed in court show that SNCF even requested funds from the French government after the war to pay for the trains used to deport Jews. (The government declined.)

Part of the problem is that, though shameful activities have been acknowledged, "the questions have changed" since the history report on SNCF was commissioned in 1992, says Dreyfus. "The questions asked by families of survivors [are] different. They want to know if SNCF made a profit on the trains. That is not answered."

Dreyfus knows a great deal about such questions. An expert on Aryanization (the process by which material goods were appropriated by the German state), he published a book -- "Des Camps Dans Paris" -- in 2003 about three forgotten slave labor camps in the heart of Paris. I followed him to each site: one that now houses a major advertising agency; another that is home to an haute couture fashion line; the third a construction site next to the Austerlitz train station. These places had been used by the Gestapo to organize the goods of Jews who were deported from Paris. Useable items -- armoires, tables, chairs, household goods -- were repackaged and sent to German victims of allied bombings. Personal items were destroyed.

Dreyfus discovered that French moving companies had aided the Gestapo -- there were still contracts on file in the archives of the movers' union. When the Gestapo deported a family, French movers would bring the family's possessions to a sorting camp, where Jewish slave labor processed them.

In the case of the SNCF, not everyone is convinced the railway company should atone for wrongdoing. A large number of railroad workers were part of the resistance. As Arno Klarsfeld, son of the famous Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld, told the New York Times: "This American pressure on the SNCF has tarnished the memory of 1,647 train drivers who were executed or deported and never came back. . . . It discards the role of German authorities and the French Vichy state and lessens the responsibility of those who took charge of deporting the Jews who lived in France."

Be that as it may, SNCF is clearly concerned. It recently launched an English-language section of its website to deal with company history. Life under Nazi occupation, the section reads, was a "struggle for the French who had to fight for their very survival while often also struggling with questions of conscience." SNCF devotes nearly a dozen pages to this attempt at explaining the company's role during World War II.

"Because we are new to America, many people are not yet familiar with SNCF," it says. "It is understandable that they may have questions about us and our history. In particular, questions have been raised recently about the company during the World War II era, when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied France."

Responsibility for the deportation of Jews is clearly delineated: "On March 27, 1942 the first convoy of racial deportees departed from Drancy and Compiègne. By August 1944, 76,000 Jewish men, women and children had been sent by train to the German border. The German railway workers would then take them on to the horror of extermination camps. The transportation conditions were appalling. The Nazis ordered all arrangements regarding the convoys: composition, timetable, material, etc. Children, women and elderly people had to endure the most abominable situations, in conditions that were inhumane. A quarter of France's Jewish population was deported and sadly, few would return."

In a section marked "Myths and Facts," SNCF again underscores it was not responsible for sending Jews to their deaths. It also says transporting Jews was not a profitable venture -- indeed, the company was "financially devastated" during the war. It even notes the California legislation that was vetoed -- and says SNCF will "voluntarily comply and even exceed" demands of transparency.

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Sinking Peace: Leaked Documents Said to Show Decline of Middle East Talks

Sarah Wildman — 2011-01-23T22:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Field Notes

The Guardian and Al Jazeera served the world a fresh batch of leaked documents Sunday, with the material spanning a decade in the Israel-Palestine peace process. The picture is nothing if not depressing; the story is one of desperation, humiliation and dead-ends.

The explosive news is the great concessions allegedly made by the Palestinians to the Israelis in round after round of talks. (The New York Times reports that State Department officials will not vouch for the documents' authenticity.) Palestinian negotiators appear to have offered to allow Israel to annex all but one of the East Jerusalem settlements, a point of contention between Israelis and Palestinians for decades. Even the ever-unresolved question of a Palestinian Right of Return -- that is, the right of Palestinian refugees driven, forced or scared out of Israel in 1948 to return to their ancestral homeland -- appears, on the Palestinian side, to have been wobbly at best. The offer, apparently, was for a tiny number of returnees -- a thin veil, in other words, to save face for negotiators, but otherwise a complete caving-in on the issue. Other major concessions included a proposal for a joint-committee to control the Temple Mount in the old city of Jerusalem. Finally it seems there were back-room conversations between Israelis and Palestinians around Gaza. And most of these concessions were made two years ago, a desperate effort, well before this last process, to end this hundred-years war.

The appearance of this huge release of papers, which encompasses the bulk of the last decade of negotiations on the seemingly intractable issue of peace in the region, could not come at a worse time. After tremendous build-up and fanfare, and a joint State Department and White House launch this September, the peace process is at a standstill. Israel refused to extend a moratorium on settlement building and the Palestinians, to save face, refused to return to the table. The Obama administration is scrambling now to restart talks. It will be much more difficult in light of this material.

The Guardian calls the first impression of Palestinian negotiators in these leaks -- namely Saeb Erekat, who has been working on the peace process since the Madrid conference of 1991 -- as "weak" and "desperate." In a conversation with the U.S. envoy George Mitchell -- sent last spring to conduct back-room conversations -- Palestinian senior negotiator Erekat is said to have cried out: "Nineteen years of promises and you haven't made up your minds what you want to do with us. . . . We delivered on our road map obligations. Even Yuval Diskin [director of Israel's internal security service, Shabak] raises his hat on security. But no, they can't even give a six-month freeze to give me a figleaf." Blasting the United States for caring only about "PR" and "quick news," he added, "What good am I if I'm the joke of my wife, if I'm so weak?"

On Al Jazeera, as reported by the Israeli daily Haaretz, Erekat's quiet and personal frustration was revealed even more. The negotiator complained that he couldn't get his calls returned by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And that even small niceties, like acknowledging the holidays each religion observed, were overlooked. "I called Uzi Arad before Passover and arranged a call from Abbas to Netanyahu to congratulate him," Erekat said to U.S. diplomat David Hale. "I got nothing. Come Ramadan, the feast, nothing. I called them to meet from the beginning, they kept canceling. This is Netanyahu."

Hale was apparently pushing Erekat to restart negotiations. This was in the time period just before the 10-month moratorium on settlement building had begun. Erekat is angered that the United States won't be clearer on its position. And he believes the Israelis aren't sure partners in peace.

"Israelis want the two-state solution but they don't trust," Erekat told Hale. "They want it more than you think, sometimes more than Palestinians." Then he mentions a position paper that explicitly sets out the Palestinian Authority's red lines.

"What is in that paper gives them the biggest Jerusalem in Jewish history, symbolic number of refugees return, demilitarized state. . . . What more can I give?" Erekat said.

The publication of these papers may be intended to embarrass the United States, or Israel, but in actuality, it is not so much "news" to those who have been following the years of front- and back-room deals for years as a very public declaration in a region that trades on quiet talk. It will more than likely be a blow to Palestinian leaders who have conceded more than they would like the public to know. The publication will surely be another blow to what is terribly weakened, if not dead, process.

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Julian Assange: Sex Criminal or Political Refugee?

Sarah Wildman — 2011-01-11T21:50:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up, Analysis, Field Notes, WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange appeared before a London court Tuesday fighting extradition to Sweden on charges of "sex by surprise." He's been accused by two women of taking consensual sex and turning it into nonconsensual sex, of pushing women past their point of comfort, of forcibly having sex without a condom. His lawyers, who are fighting extradition, claim that sending him to Stockholm means condemning him to illegal rendition by the United States to prison in Guantanamo Bay or, even, to death row. Assange, for his part, claims no wrongdoing. He claims this is a set up, orchestrated by the West, or the White House, to shut him up. He's won a $1 million book contract from Knopf even as he's pent up in a lush estate, wearing an an electronic bracelet to track his movements, like a wayward Lindsay Lohan.

But you know all this already. You know this because the Assange case has become yet another in a long history of events in which words like "rape" and "sex" are used to batter the women who have dared to bring them up.

Andrew Cuomo Takes Communion and Revives the 'Good Catholic' Debate

David Gibson — 2011-01-07T19:48:00+00:00

Filed under: House, Democrats, Republicans, Religion, Nancy Pelosi, Abortion, Gay Rights, Obama Administration, Disputations, Governors, Congress, Conservatives, Liberals, Field Notes, Health Care Reform, Barack Obama, John Boehner, 2012 Elections

One of Andrew Cuomo's first acts after his inauguration as New York's governor was also one of the least-noticed, even though it could have sparked a serious controversy for the rising Democratic star -- he went to Mass and received communion.

The problem with that, as conservative Catholic activists and some bishops see it, is that Cuomo is pro-choice and divorced, and he backs gay marriage. And if that weren't enough, he attended the Jan. 2 Mass with his live-in girlfriend, Sandra Lee, the Food Network host, who is also Catholic and divorced.

Just supporting abortion rights has in the past been more than enough to create trouble for Mass-going Catholic pols, as Cuomo's father, Mario, found out back when he was governor in the 1980s. He clashed with the late New York Cardinal John O'Connor, who suggested that a pro-choice Catholic official -- like Mario Cuomo -- could be excommunicated. (Denial of the Eucharist is one of the most severe spiritual penalties that can be levied against a Catholic.)

But the scope of the dispute between Catholic pro-choice pols -- principally Democrats -- and abortion-opposing bishops and their conservative Catholic allies has only grown exponentially since then, with the likes of John Kerry and Joe Biden coming in for especially harsh treatment.

So it was no surprise that soon after the Sunday Mass at Albany's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception -- presided over by the local bishop, Howard Hubbard, and also attended by Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy, himself a pro-choice Catholic, -- Andrew Cuomo quickly became the target of pointed critiques that threatened to revive the controversy over who is a "good Catholic."

"Disaster," is how conservative political activist Thomas Peters, who goes by the moniker "American Papist," titled his blog post on the event. "I'm not surprised by Bishop Hubbard's actions or those of Cuomo, Duffy and Lee, but I am deeply disappointed by them," Peters wrote. "The pro-life and pro-marriage values the Church upholds were damaged today."

The American Papist's father, Edward Peters, a prominent canon lawyer and also an outspoken conservative blogger, wrote an item parsing church law on the topic and provocatively called it, "Cuomo's concubinage and holy Communion."

"The fact that both Cuomo and Lee are divorced renders the concubinage adulterous on both sides," wrote the elder Peters, who teaches at the seminary of the Detroit archdiocese. He concluded his legal analysis by saying that under the church's canon law, Cuomo and Lee should be denied communion if they approach the altar, and he blasted Hubbard for a "dereliction of pastoral duty" for not taking that step.

Cuomo wasn't the only newly elected pro-choice Catholic Democrat to tempt fate. Pro-life activists were upset that in Nevada, the governor-elect, Brian Sandoval, started his inauguration day at Mass, the first time in recent memory that a new governor has begun his term with a religious service. Moreover, Sandoval was warmly welcomed to the service by Las Vegas Bishop Joseph A. Pepe, who urged Sandoval to retain "a closeness to the people we serve. We have to listen and we have to listen carefully."

That's not what many pro-lifers wanted to hear from a Catholic bishop preaching to a pro-choice politician.

Yet it's still not clear that any of these flashpoints will ignite, or at least not with the power they have in the past.

For example, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, who is often quoted criticizing pro-choice Catholics, declined to take a swipe at Cuomo when offered the chance. "We're not one to pass judgment" on how people conduct their personal life, Donohue's spokesman told The Daily News.

The News also quoted an unnamed priest close to the new governor as saying Cuomo "takes his Catholicism very seriously." (Cuomo was for years married to Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, who in 2008 wrote an affecting book about her faith called "Being Catholic Now.")

Of Cuomo's live-in relationship with Lee, the priest said, "I'm not going to condemn it, but at the same time, I'm not going to condone it."

Similarly, Bishop Hubbard, who won't reach the mandatory retirement age of 75 for another three years, has a reputation as one of the last progressives in the U.S. hierarchy and is not inclined to use a Mass to publicly embarrass a politician.

True to form, in his homily Bishop Hubbard exhorted Cuomo and Lt. Gov. Duffy to employ "evangelical daring" in working to fix the broken state government. "We know they, over the next four years, will be deeply immersed in the work of evangelization by bringing about the transformation of our state and our society," Hubbard said as Cuomo, flanked by his three daughters, sat in the front row.

But another factor that may contribute to a shift away from what has been called the "Catholic civil war" is that the optics of public Catholicism changed dramatically this week as John Boehner, a reliably pro-life Catholic, took over as speaker of the House from Nancy Pelosi, a reliably pro-choice Catholic.

Moreover, Boehner leads a very different House than the one Pelosi presided over. With the retirement of Rhode Island representative Patrick Kennedy, there is now no member of the Kennedy clan in either chamber of Congress for the first time since 1947, leaving Catholic conservatives without a favorite punching bag. And Boehner is now in charge of a House in which the number of pro-life Democrats is half what it was last year (cut to about 20 from around 40), leaving Republicans with most of the anti-abortion votes -- and the responsibility to translate those votes into policies.

At the same time, Boehner will be held accountable for making -- or not -- tough decisions on a range of other knotty issues, many of which could well run counter to Catholic social justice teachings that Republicans don't usually support.

In the past Boehner led Republican opposition to any number of items that were priorities for the bishops, from universal health care reform (without abortion funding) to an immigration overhaul. But opposition to abortion and gay marriage are the issues that outweigh all others for the bishops. On those items Boehner is on their side, and with other issues now demanding the new speaker's input, Catholic conservatives are already rallying to protect Boehner -- a "real Catholic," as Deacon Keith Fournier calls him -- from any of the "cafeteria Catholic" charges that conservatives often used against liberals.

To be sure, President Obama is still deeply unpopular with leading conservative voices in the U.S. hierarchy, and almost anything he does has the potential to inflame the Catholic right; activists were already agitating over Obama's choice of William Daley as his new chief of staff, characterizing Daley as a "dissenting Catholic" because he has criticized the likes of Chicago Cardinal Francis George.

But the main thrust of conservative Catholic lobbying for the near future may be directed more toward reconciling the Republican agenda with the Catholic catechism than singling out "bad Catholic" Democrats for sacramental banishing.

From that perspective, the Cuomo-communion story may turn out to be the tale of the dog that didn't bark.

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Bhutto Biopic: Filmmaker Got Rare Access to Tell Pakistani Family's Story

Sarah Wildman — 2010-12-17T19:50:00+00:00

Filed under: Woman Up, International, Field Notes

"Bhutto," a documentary examining the Greek tragedy of that Pakistani family -- with a special emphasis on the life, rise, and violent 2007 death of Benazir Bhutto -- premieres this weekend in theaters across the country. It is a harrowing, moving -- even wrenching -- film about history, family and sacrifice for country. It is also a magnificent and artful effort to bring audiences up to speed on Pakistani history, from partition to the present, throwing so many dates and facts out it's a bit like taking a crash course, a whole semester in 1 hour 51 minutes.

Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim nation. Think what you will about her -- and there are those who question her role and accomplishments, laced as they were with allegations of inefficiency and corruption -- it is difficult not to find her rise and her legacy fantastic, even triumphant. Her untimely death, blamed by many on the failure of Pervez Musharaff's government to protect her when she returned from eight years of self-imposed exile, was a blow to Pakistani democracy, a blight on efforts to bring transparency and openness to the region.

But as much as the Bhutto family seemed blessed by good fortune, intelligence and beauty, the children of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto -- who himself served as both president and prime minister of Pakistan, brokered a famous peace agreement with India and later was ousted in a coup by his chief of staff -- eventually met catastrophe. Three of Zulfikar's children were assassinated. Only Benazir's sister, Sanam, the only apolitical Bhutto, was spared. (As for Zulfikar: After his ouster by Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, he was incarcerated and eventually executed.)

And yet Benazir seemed, from birth, someone who would transcend the limitations set on women in Pakistani society. This movie is an hommage to that transcendence. Not for nothing has it been called a hagiography. (NPR's term: "hero-worship.") But in celebrating Bhutto's life, its wide range of commentators -- especially the fantastic voice of Tariq Ali -- do not shy from questioning her legacy.

For some, the film by Duane Baughman is not new, nor is interest in it. "Bhutto" premiered at Sundance last winter and was shown in June to a sold-out crowd of Washington luminaries such as Nancy Pelosi, as Eleanor Clift reported at the time. In addition, many foreign policy scholars, politicians, and others in this country knew Benazir Bhutto -- who went to Harvard in the late 1960s and then Oxford after that -- as a friend or colleague or stateswoman. Baughman will be joined by Mark Siegel, Bhutto's longtime friend and U.S. spokesman, talking to audiences in Washington this weekend at the E Street Cinema.

I talked to Baughman by phone this week about making the film, and about its subject.

PD: I cover foreign policy, and I thought I knew the basics of Pakistani history, but I felt I learned a lot watching this film. Was that the goal?

DB: I think anyone who reads the New York Times every day feels that way, and the interesting thing is that you get to learn how much what we know is literally our own version of what other people want us to know. There is always a healthy dose of political messaging on Pakistan and United States relations with Pakistan. That was the beauty of funding the movie myself. I was free to go on any tangent I wanted to explore, to be able to lay out as clear a picture as I've seen. Benazir is the vehicle for being able to tell the story of Pakistan, and I don't think you can tell the story of Pakistan without telling the story of the Bhuttos.

PD: What led you to tell that story?

DB: I came to the film through my day job as an American political consultant and international consultant who has done work against dictators. . . . We were being vetted to get pulled into Benazir's race [for re-election -- an effort that was ended by her assassination in 2007] by Mark Siegel. . . . The work never came to pass. I realized I knew the people I needed to know to be an asset to the family. I also knew they didn't trust any Westerners. They got contacted by hundreds of filmmakers with resumes longer than mine -- partly because mine was non-existent! Once I had the trust and permission of the family, I knew I could get anyone else I needed to get on board. I had no idea it would end up being [former Secretary of State] Condi Rice or [former Pakistani President] Musharaff or [New York Times correspondent] John Burns. . . .

PD: And you spoke to Benazir's children and husband, so extensively and openly.

DB: The family was pivotal. I was fortunate enough to get the family for the first, and possibly the last, time on film. I got to the children, and the family as a whole because of Mark Siegel, and this movie would not have been made without the assistance of Mark. Mark . . . had the ear and the trust of the family and he convinced them that I could pull together all the required elements from Hollywood and from Washington.

PD: How did you go about trying to balance your coverage?

DB: I would go to bed at night having cold sweats, worrying that Pakistanis would say that Westerners don't understand our country or they don't understand our culture or our politics. It made me ultra-aware and ultra-sensitive, to make me dig as deeply as I could to get voices. . . . The first country that bought this film after we world-premiered at Sundance last year was Pakistan. It opened in June [and] had an extended run of two months. It was not only the first time a U.S. documentary was bought and run in Pakistani theaters, but it also ran to decent reviews and uncut, which was a true testament to freedom of expression and political expression, and it shows the care and feeding we did to be respectful of culture, country, religion, people and politics.

PD: Ultimately, the piece comes across as very, very pro-Bhutto, though you do have a few voices that call into question her story -- Fatima Bhutto, for example, her niece and the daughter of her murdered brother Murtaza. And there's an interesting moment when New York Times correspondent John Burns seems to almost imply that his story -- about corruption in Pakistan -- might not have been airtight.

DB: Fatima has made a cottage industry of criticizing her aunt. That's politics in Pakistan and it's a blood sport and a lot of times its feudal. . . . Her disdain for her aunt didn't begin when her father died but when she was born. . . . .The bottom line is what I tried to do was present facts and not opinions, and the fact was they were accused of a lot but they were not convicted of anything. You might not like Pakistani courts or elections, but it is not up to us and you have to trust to reach conclusions and justice. . . . Our foreign policy has been incredibly short-sighted. . . . Only now are we taking some of the proper, long-overdue steps with Kerry-Lugar (the bill which triples aid to Pakistan).

I think the story seems positive because I believe you can't make history in a positive way . . . and come across as anything but a heroine. Regardless of her human frailties, she broke a very significant barrier and there isn't anything anyone can do to undo that. She was constantly saying, "We are in office but we are not in power" in 1988 [ during her first administration]. The administration hadn't sat down and drawn up a plan for day 2. No one expected them to wrest power from the military or that the ISI [Inter Service Intelligence Pakistani Security Services] would allow it to happen.

The second time [in office -- Bhutto was elected prime minister twice], she was more savvy and had more of a vision and achieved more accomplishments, like the opening of thousands of women's police stations across the country, which, for the very first time, gave women a voice in legal maters and a safe haven to keep their voices heard on matters of justice. Even with those victories, her hands were tied on a daily basis, not just by a military that didn't salute -- not just didn't want to salute -- that didn't salute. One of the parties she formed a coalition with was a conservative Islamic party. It was like ruling in a box of knives; everywhere you turn you get cut. It is almost as difficult to believe that she succeeded, that she got there in the first place.

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WikiLeaks: Spanish Firm Suspected of Supporting Syrian WMD Development

Sarah Wildman — 2010-12-06T10:42:00+00:00

Filed under: Field Notes

WikiLeaks has released a memo marked "secret" between the State Department and the American Embassy in Madrid warning that for the last seven years the Spanish steel producing firm Aceros has been "maintaining a business relationship with" Syrian firms that, American officials believe, could be acting on behalf of the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), "the entity responsible for overseeing Syria's WMD and missile programs."

The cable maintains that the materials supplied to Syria "can be used in structural support components in ballistic missiles and in some forms are controlled by the Nuclear Suppliers Group and Wassenaar Arrangement." (The latter governs export control of arms-related materials and technology; it was signed by 40 countries, including Spain.)

Syria signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1969. But for some time the U.S. has suspected Syria's nuclear program has been developing weapons of mass destruction. (Israel bombed a nuclear facility in Syria in 2007, which set back the program. The Times of London reported at the time that the nuclear materials had been purchased from North Korea.) Today's Wall Street Journal has an op-ed criticizing the United States for not doing more to deter Syria's growing nuclear capability. But this cable shows American anxiety about the issue.

The cable is labeled an "action request" and goes on to explain:

Objectives: We want to share this information with Spanish officials and urge them to take all appropriate measures to ensure that Aceros is not acting as a supplier to Syrian entities of proliferation concern. We also want to advise the [government of Spain] that sanctions pursuant to U.S. law could be imposed on Aceros if the firm is found to have supplied Syria with regime-controlled items.

Action Request: Request Embassy Madrid approach appropriate Spanish government officials to deliver talking points/non-paper in paragraph 5 below and report response. Talking points also may be provided as a non-paper. Among the talking points passed to Embassy employees meeting with Spanish officials are these gentle but threatening notes: "We encourage you to investigate this information and take appropriate measures to ensure that Aceros is not acting as a source of supply to Syria's weapons development programs. We also want to advise you that sanctions pursuant to the U.S., Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act could be imposed on Aceros if the firm is found to have supplied Syria with regime-controlled materials."

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Spanish Air Traffic Controllers Strike, Crippling Travel

Sarah Wildman — 2010-12-03T15:33:00+00:00

Filed under: International, Transportation, Field Notes, Economy

A few months back European airports were clogged with desperate travelers stuck for days due to the unexpectedly devastating cloud of volcanic ash drifting from Iceland. Only Spanish airports offered routes out for trans-Atlantic travelers.

Good thing it wasn't this week. Today a massive strike of air traffic controllers crippled Spanish air travel.

The strike completely shut down travel into and out of Madrid-Barajas airport -- a central hub in the capital city -- as well as the airspace over the holiday islands of Ibiza, Mallorca, and Menorca, a trio known as the Balaeric islands. Flights into Barcelona and Sevilla were drastically reduced but not canceled. The El Pais newspaper estimated that at least 250,000 passengers were already affected by the walk-out.

Iberia, the Spanish airline, acknowledged it had been taken almost entirely by surprise.

The air traffic controllers called in sick, en masse, purposefully thwarting travel at the beginning of a holiday weekend in Spain. AENA, which operates the airports, called the action "intolerable" and "irresponsible." Passengers were urged to stay home until the situation changed.

At issue are new rules on the number of hours air traffic controllers will be required to work, the conditions they work under, and salary. Contested as well is the creeping privatization of Spanish airports, an effort on the part of the government to avoid a debt crisis. Control of Madrid and Barcelona airports will be soon sold to the private sector.

"The decision to paralyze air traffic in the country is ... extremely serious misconduct that could be punished with disciplinary dismissals of controllers who refuse to work," AENA officials said.

The Spanish economy is in dire straights. Unemployment recently hit 20 percent.

The strike may not be the first the country sees as José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government struggles to control an economy that has not righted itself since the global financial crisis.

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Wildfire in Northern Israel Rages, Killing 40; 'We Lost All Control'

Sarah Wildman — 2010-12-02T15:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Field Notes

It's being called the "Worst disaster in Israeli history."

It's not terror. It's got nothing to do with the peace process.

It's a wildfire, raging out of control from Haifa through the lush and beautiful Carmel Mountains. Forty are already dead. Mass evacuations have begun from northern towns and villages, as well as from dorms at Haifa University, displacing an estimated 10,000. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left his home in Jerusalem to travel to the scene. He has issued a call for help internationally, appealing to the United States, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Russia.

But so far the fire refuses to yield. Strong winds have spread it, and smoke has choked the city beneath it. As night fell on Israel, hundreds of acres of land had burned beyond recognition.

Said Haifa Mayor Yonah Yahav: "The flames spread on a scale we've never seen."

Haifa's firefighters issued a morose statement Thursday afternoon: "We lost all control of the fire. There aren't enough firefighting resources in Israel in order to put out the fire." The dead are prison guards -- they were on a bus, heading to help evacuate a prison in the mountains -- when it was trapped on a road and they perished.

In Israel the rainy season has barely begun; indeed, it should have begun already but it hasn't. The country is experiencing widespread drought. This week, rabbis began to meet and pray for rain at the Western Wall, declaring Monday a day of fasting and prayer for rain. The chief rabbi of Israel sent out a call to communities around the world to pray for rain. Even "secular farmers," reported the Israeli news service Arutz7, had begun to pray for rain.

"This is a difficult hour, and we will need to learn lessons for the future, but at this moment, our only thoughts are to save lives and protect the forces that are dealing with this catastrophe," the prime minister told the press, as quoted in Ha'aretz, the Israeli daily.

Added President Shimon Peres: "Today, our hearts are in Haifa, with the firefighters that with incredible courage are battling the flames; some of them have even been injured, along with residents of the area. We are praying for a miracle. We are praying for their safety. We are praying for the fire to end." The Palestinian Authority has sent their condolences.

Donations are being accepted at http://tinyurl.com/26ok6af .

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Iran Execution: Woman Hanged in Murder of Husband's First Wife

Sarah Wildman — 2010-12-01T22:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Field Notes

She sat in jail for eight years, having confessed to the stabbing murder of her common-law husband's first wife. She later retracted that confession; indeed she was championed by global human rights activists who said that confession was coerced. It was too late.

For Shahla Jahed, 40, eight years of life and torment in Iran's notorious Evin prison ended Wednesday. But her way out wasn't through the front door. It was at the gallows. Jahed's was the 146th execution in Iran this year. The case was both drawn out and confusing: Was she the murderer? Was her lover also responsible? No one was ever sure.

The only thing clear was that at 5 a.m. local time, Jahed was executed for the 2002 death of Laleh Saharkhizan, former wife of Nasser Mohammadkhan, a 1980s-era Iranian soccer star.

Reports quibbled over whether it was Laleh Saharkhizan's brother-in-law or her son who pulled the chair out from under Jahed. Her lover, Nasser Mohammadkhan (he's been called the "David Beckham of Iran"), reportedly was in the room. Theirs was what is called in Shia Islam a "temporary marriage" -- that's a semi-legal status that somehow avoids the label "adultery" (though some compare it to prostitution, as it allows men to "marry" women for hours or days in order to be "legal.") We might call it a form of common-law marriage.

There are "strong grounds to believe that Shahla Jahed did not receive a fair trial, and may have been coerced into making a 'confession' during months of detention in solitary confinement," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa, speaking to the BBC.

Speaking to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Shahla Jahed's lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, broke down. "I just can't believe it. I'm not feeling well. Shahla just kept crying; she didn't say anything. I went forward and told her to talk, but she only cried. The victim's family did not give their consent until the last minute. All the people who were there asked them to forgive her, but unfortunately they didn't accept. Nasser Mohammadkhan was there, too, and said nothing."

Khorramshahi was referring to a last-minute pardon option available to those convicted of murder in Iran: according to the BBC, a "direct appeal" to the victim's family is possible, and the family can commute the sentence. Speaking to the BBC, Khorramshahi said he had not had time to appeal to them. "According to the rules I should have been informed 48 hours before the execution so that I can go to the bereaved family asking them to forgive Shahla for the last time," he said.

The case has been pending for eight years and suddenly the execution was scheduled for this morning; feminist groups and human rights groups expressed shock and dismay. NPR reported that there is a great deal of "tabloid" attention to the execution in Iran.

Speaking to the Guardian, Jahed's former cell-mate, Fereshteh Ghazi, 31, lashed out at the system. "Even if Shahla had committed the crime, which she didn't, Shahla and the murdered wife are both victims of a male-dominated society, a system that gives all the rights to men. Shahla, Laleh [the murdered wife], and all other women like them are all victims of flaws in the Iranian judicial system and Iran's unequal judicial system. Even the person who pulled away the chair today in her execution is a victim of the system."

"I can say that she was a very emotional woman. She was always very energetic and happy and at the same time she was very sad. You could see the sadness in her eyes, but she had an optimistic outlook . . . she used to help all the new inmates.

"Like her first appearance at her trial, she told me in the prison that she was beaten up for 11 months and she was tortured. But she didn't confess until Naser Mohammadkhan came to see her and asked her to take responsibility for the murder and she did so."

Jahed is not the woman who activists were championing earlier this fall, Sakineh Mohammad-Ashtiani, 43, who has also been sentenced to death. That case is still pending.

Iran is notorious for its use of execution. Amnesty International estimates that the country executed 388 people last year alone.

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NATO Summit 'Extremely Productive,' a Satisfied Obama Says

Sarah Wildman — 2010-11-20T16:38:00+00:00

Filed under: Senate, Republicans, Terror, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, International, Congress, Nuclear Proliferation, Military, European Union, Field Notes, Barack Obama

No Rest for the Weary: Obama Arrives in Lisbon for the NATO Summit

Sarah Wildman — 2010-11-19T13:55:00+00:00

Filed under: Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, Nuclear Proliferation, France, European Union, Field Notes

President Obama touched down in Lisbon Friday morning, barely rested from a scant week in Washington after 10 days in Asia. But the short weekend in Portugal will be no holiday. On the docket are packed days revolving around the NATO summit and the U.S.-European Union meetings that will include a re-evaluation of Afghanistan policy, U.S.-Russia policy, E.U.-Russia relations, a reaffirmation of U.S.-E.U. relations, missile defense, and nuclear disarmament.

Indeed, The Economist called these next two days among the "most crucial" NATO meetings in the history of the organization. They will be focused, ostensibly, on the new "strategic concept" document (the lead piece authored by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) that goes to the core of NATO's very raison d'etre in the post-Cold War era -- what exactly does an organization created as a bulwark against the Soviet Union mean in the post-Soviet era? At the same time, there will be meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, with built-in side talks to reassure our European allies that the United States remains committed to the trans-Atlantic relationship.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune Thursday, the president underscored that message. "As an alliance of democratic nations, NATO ensures our collective defense and helps strengthen young democracies. Europe and the United States are working together to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote peace in the Middle East and confront climate change. And as we have seen in the recent security alert in Europe and the thwarted plot to detonate explosives on trans-Atlantic cargo flights, we cooperate closely every day to prevent terrorist attacks and keep our citizens safe. Put simply, we are each other's closest partners. Neither Europe nor the United States can confront the challenges of our time without the other."

In other words: at a moment when India and China - the "new" New World -- are on the rise, there have been rumbles of concern regarding what "old Europe," as the Bush era once referred to it, has to offer the United States and the world in terms of strategic alliances. At issue is how the United States continues to assuage Europeans that the special relationship remains essential to U.S foreign policy. (An idea that is harder to advance when the president chooses not to attend every E.U.-U.S meeting.) But, even if there were nothing else of import, a third of the troops on the ground in Afghanistan are NATO troops and the United States needs those troops to remain committed, at least through 2014 when the planned transition begins.

Part of the conversation means addressing the fractured needs of the various NATO members. On nuclear disarmament, for example, France and Germany are at polar ends of the spectrum. The Brookings Institution reports that the United States has some 200 tactical nuclear weapons in five NATO countries.

France believes ambiguous deterrence is best. Germany would like total disarmament, leveraging off of Obama's speech in Prague last year on nuclear drawdown in which he said, "The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War" and promised "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." (That peacenik option is unlikely to happen anytime soon, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton underscored in five points earlier this year in Talinn, Estonia on the continued "nuclear" aspect of this nuclear treaty).

It does not help Obama's credibility or relationships in Lisbon that he leaves Washington in the wake of a Republican meltdown over the New START treaty, which was committed to a U.S.-Russia nuclear drawdown.

But nuclear disagreements aside, it will be the future of Afghanistan that will be among the stickiest conversations in Lisbon. No new troops are being offered by NATO, but the future of the engagement - arguably one of the harder-to-prove successes in the history of NATO military operations - is at issue. The Afghans still need a great deal of help before the transition from foreign presence, and NATO will, if the United States has anything to do with it, continue to play a role in training leadership on the ground there.

And then there is the question of Article 5 of NATO's founding treaty - that's the part where it says "the Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all." That alliance has to be reconsidered at a moment when the threat of attack is less likely to be from troops on the ground or from the air than from cyber attacks or terrorism. (Article 5 was, famously, invoked after September 11.)

Talk about a full plate. Did we mention that the economy is on the docket as well? Europe has her hands full trying to rescue Ireland from the debt crisis. Portugal is not much better. Just after landing in Lisbon, the president committed to continue to work with Europe on economic matters.

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No Rest for the Weary: Obama Arrives in Lisbon for the NATO Summit