December 2010
12 posts
Parag Khanna: Future Shock? Welcome to the New... →
A provocative look at the future. Are we really entering the Middle Ages?
Imperial by Design -- Can America Go Back Over the... →
Political scientist John Mearsheimer of Chicago lays out his case for an alternative American strategy. He is a classic realist and believes that offshore balancing — relying on regional powers to balance rival regional powers, with the US coming in only when absolutely necessary — is the most efficient and least expensive strategy for maintaining US influence in the world. He...
Egypt's real state of emergency →
Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, made the mistake of trying to run for election in his native Egypt. As he discovered, the sclerotic regime of Husni Mubarak is good for almost nothing but maintaining itself in power. It will brook no opposition, and it is shameless in making a mockery of the democratic laws written...
Monitoring America | washingtonpost.com →
Since 9/11 and the “Global War on Terror,” we have grown numb to the ballooning intrusion of government into our daily affairs. Excellent in-depth reporting by the Washington Post.
The Militarization of Post-Khomeini Iran:... →
A new article in The Washington Quarterly makes the provocative point that “the new Islamic Republic appears to be stronger and, surprisingly, on the way to political stability. For the international community, the new Iran presents both immense challenges and new opportunities: it will further erode the civil liberties of the Iranian people, but in the long term, may very well prove to be...
FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau: Patterns of Iran Human... →
Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and his colleague Aaron Rhodes have written a detailed and sobering analysis of the pattern of human rights abuses in Iran since the crackdown following the contested election of 2009.
That crackdown has produced what I regard as an increasingly authoritarian regime under the effective control of the...
Why I won't help post bail for Julian Assange
Michael Moore explained on MSNBC his decision to post bail money for Julian Assange, primarily on the grounds that the world needed to shine a light on the lies concocted by governments to lead their countries into war. He cited the Gulf of Tonkin lie, which had to wait for years to be exposed by Daniel Ellsberg, and the false claim of WMD in Iraq, among other things. I admit that I start...
WikiLeaks: America the indispensable
Despite all the headlines and breathless analysis, the WikiLeaks dump of U.S. State Department cables has thus far had surprisingly little effect on U.S. policy or diplomacy. The limited sample released to date – reportedly only about one percent of the total archive – can be divided into three broad categories:
Ho Hum. The overwhelming majority of the cables merely show American diplomats...
FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau: Israel's Covert War... →
The article at the link is the best compilation of apparent Israeli assassinations and other attacks against Iran that I have seen. It was written by Muhammad Sahimi, who writes for Tehran Bureau, the award-winning source of current information and analysis on Iran, associated with PBS Frontline.
Although there is no proof that Israel carried out all of these attacks, the allegation is not...
Israel on Iran: So wrong for so long - War Room -... →
Israel has been crying wolf about Iran’s nuclear program for a very long time. Justin Elliott of Salon has compiled quite a list. Just click on the link above.
Am I a Criminal?
The US government and particularly the Department of State is in the midst of a futile effort to close a barn door thrown open by WikiLeaks, which dumped an enormous collection of documents into the internet. The government is taking the position that these are still classified documents, so (1) no US official or contractor can download them unless they have the proper clearance; and (2) private...
Iran and Latin America
Here are two new WikiLeaks releases that deal with Iran. The first is from January 2009 and is a round-robin telegram from the State Department to many U.S. embassies asking them to keep their eyes peeled for any information about Iran’s possible courting of Latin American countries and/or possible establishment of terrorist bases there. The second describes a suspected delivery of Unmanned...