Cynthia McKinney's aid boat to Gaza seized

Huff Post reports that Israel stopped a "Free Gaza" aid ship destined for Gaza, diverting it to an Israeli port:

The 20 passengers include former U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire and other activists from Britain, Ireland, Bahrain and Jamaica.

The ship was flying a Greek flag, but no Greek citizens were aboard. The Greek government issued a statement saying it sent a message to Israel demanding that it release the ship, crew and passengers.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel was planning to free the crew and passengers. "Nobody wants to keep them here," he said. "They will be released as soon as they are checked."

The Free Gaza Movement has organized five boat trips to Gaza since August 2008, defying a blockade imposed by Israel when the militant group Hamas seized control of the territory from its Palestinian rivals in June 2007. Two other attempts were stopped by Israeli warshi

ps during Israel's three-week war in the territory in December and January. Nobody on board was harmed.

So Greece will stand up for an old ship, but the US government won't say a word on behalf of a former Congresswoman?

A lot of Americans will hear of this story and not think kindly of what Israel has done. Israel is not playing this very smart. Stopping aid ships is just plain stupid PR, anyway you look at it.

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Iran: What is the Basij?

Rand (Pdf):

In the provinces, the Basij present a more benign face through construction projects and disaster relief, while in urban areas, they are more apt to be seen quite negatively, quashing civil society activities, arresting dissidents, and confronting reformist student groups on campuses. Urban sentiments may be, moreover, affected by the Basij’s affilia-tion with the “pressure groups” or hardline vigilantes, of which Ansar-e Hezbollah is the most widely known.

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Journalists, terrorists, and risk of being taken hostage

A live-blogged a truly extraordinary panel of journalists who cover terrorism at the International Press Institute's World Congress in Helsinki:

Three panelists -- Alan Johnson of the UK (pictured left), Giuliana Sgrena of Italy, and moderator Hamid Mir of Pakistan -- have survived kidnapping by terrorist organizations.

Two members of the panel -- Peter Bergen and Hamid Mir -- have interviewed Bin Laden. CNN analyst and author Peter Bergen -- who conducted the first TV interview with Bin Landen -- has written a biography of the man. Hamid Mir is the only person aside from Robert Fisk to have interviewed Bin Laden on three occasions and Mir was the last person to have interviewed Bin Laden (the interview took place in Kabul in Nov. 2001).

Read the whole post.

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Barack Obama at Cairo University

Here's the video of Obama's speech of 4 June 2009 at Cairo University. White House transcript here. My own reaction here.

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Saudi blogger's perspective on the G20

Ahmed Al-Omran of Saudijeans.org attended the G20 meeting in London. Ahmed blogged:

Thanks to a cushion of reserves Saudi Arabia built during six years of soaring oil price, the country was not hit very hard by the financial crisis, and that’s why the US and UK asked Saudi Arabia to increase its contribution to the IMF.

Here are some of his posts relating to the summit and the experience:

• Last rant on the G20 Summit
• The G20 Summit Update
• The G20 Summit
• London

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You can survey other blogger's impressions of the summit here, and my own experience here.

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Queen Noor of Jordan on Gaza war

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UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk on report of Karen AbyZayd

Gaza live-blogger Eva Bartlett has brought to my attention an excerpt from a United Nations press release dated 9 Jan 2009.

9 December 2008

The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk, issued the following statement:

GENEVA -- In recent days the desperate plight of the civilian population of Gaza has been acknowledged by such respected international figures as the Secretary General of the United Nations, the President of the General Assembly, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Last week, Karen AbyZayd, who heads the UN relief effort in Gaza, offered first-hand confirmation of the desperate urgency and unacceptable conditions facing the civilian population of Gaza. Although many leaders have commented on the cruelty and unlawfulness of the Gaza blockade imposed by Israel, such a flurry of denunciations by normally cautious UN officials has not occurred on a global level since the heyday of South African apartheid.

And still Israel maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease. Such a policy of collective punishment, initiated by Israel to punish Gazans for political developments within the Gaza strip, constitutes a continuing flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

It is long past the time when talk suffices. As AbuZayd has written, "the chasm between word and deed" with respect to upholding human rights in occupied Palestine creates a situation where "radicalism and extremism easily take root." The UN is obligated to respond under these conditions. Some governments of the world are complicit by continuing their support politically and economically for Israel's punitive approach.

Protective action must be taken immediately to offset the persisting and wide-ranging violations of the fundamental human right to life, and in view of the emergency situation that is producing a humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding day by day. However difficult politically, it is time to act. At the very least, an urgent effort should be made at the United Nations to implement the agreed norm of a 'responsibility to protect' a civilian population being collectively punished by policies that amount to a Crime Against Humanity.

In a similar vein, it would seem mandatory for the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law. As AbuZayd has declared, "This is a humanitarian crisis deliberately imposed by political actors."

It should be noted that the situation worsened in recent days due to the breakdown of a truce between Hamas and Israel that had been observed for several months by both sides. The truce was maintained by Hamas despite the failure of Israel to fulfill its obligation under the agreement to improve the living conditions of the people of Gaza.

The recent upsurge of violence occurred after an Israeli incursion that killed several alleged Palestinian militants within Gaza. It is a criminal violation of international law for elements of Hamas or anyone else to fire rockets at Israeli towns regardless of provocation, but such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel's imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the UN or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.

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Why Gaza exists: Robert Fisk on the war

Fisk writes (hat-tip Aaron):

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don’t come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you’d think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.

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Live-blogging Israeli attack on Gaza

At my new website "There Live" I am keeping track of who is live-blogging the Israeli attack on Hamas in Gaza. See here for a list of the conflict's live-bloggers -- some jotting from inside Gaza, enduring incredible hardships to tell us what is happening.

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The mid-east game

This game tests your knowledge of mid-east geography.

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The source of future Middle East conflict?

Will aquifers be a source of future conflict in the Middle East region? This UNESCO map suggests it might well become so:

New Scientist reports:

The increasing reliance on aquifer groundwater - because there is more of it and it tends to be less contaminated by industrial run-off - has been called the "groundwater revolution".

But it is a revolution with worrying environmental consequences. In many parts of the world, around the Mediterranean for example, but also in the US and the Middle East, water tables are falling and aquifers are being infiltrated by seawater as agricultural practices pump water out faster than it can be replenished by rain.

When aquifers fall between countries, sustainable management requires international agreement. Yet, historically, many agreements have been weighted towards the richest or more powerful country.

The most well-known example of this is the 1995 agreement between the Israeli and Palestinian authorities. This granted Israel rights to 90% of the water contained in four aquifers (and the Jordan river) which span both territories.

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Iranian poltiical fortunes mirror price of oil

Thomas Friedman writes in the NY Times:

Watching oil prices fall from $147 a barrel to $57 is not like counting sheep. It’s the kind of thing that gives an Iranian autocrat bad dreams.

After all, it was the collapse of global oil prices in the early 1990s that brought down the Soviet Union. And Iran today is looking very Soviet to me.

As Vladimir Mau, president of Russia’s Academy of National Economy, pointed out to me, it was the long period of high oil prices followed by sharply lower oil prices that killed the Soviet Union. The spike in oil prices in the 1970s deluded the Kremlin into overextending subsidies at home and invading Afghanistan abroad — and then the collapse in prices in the ‘80s helped bring down that overextended empire.

(Incidentally, this was exactly what happened to the shah of Iran: 1) Sudden surge in oil prices. 2) Delusions of grandeur. 3) Sudden contraction of oil prices. 4) Dramatic downfall. 5) You’re toast.)

Under Ahmadinejad, Iran’s mullahs have gone on a domestic subsidy binge — using oil money to cushion the prices of food, gasoline, mortgages and to create jobs — to buy off the Iranian people. But the one thing Ahmadinejad couldn’t buy was real economic growth. Iran today has 30 percent inflation, 11 percent unemployment and huge underemployment with thousands of young college grads, engineers and architects selling pizzas and driving taxis. And now with oil prices falling, Iran — just like the Soviet Union — is going to have to pull back spending across the board. Fasten your seat belts.

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Why terrorist group favors McCain

If you honestly believe that McCain will make America strong, make intelligent decisions, appoint the best minds to positions of leadership, and think that Sarah Palin will never be called upon to take over the US presidency, the idea that Al-Qaeda wants John McCain to win would be hard to accept.

But keep this also in mind: Militarizing the fight against terrorists inevitably creates new venues for asymmetric warfare -- something the US is not especially good at fighting. Thus, war levels the playing field. Chaos always brings advantages to terror groups because terror group leaders such as Bin Laden understand the language, religion, culture of Mid East societies far better than John McCain or Obama ever will. Terrorist soldiers will always understand the local terrain better than any US marine. Terror group leaders cannot win the peace, but Iraq and Afghanistan show how they can turn chaotic situations to their own advantage.

If you think McCain is the more likely of the two candidates to resort to war as a means of problem solving, then it's easy to see why terrorists would want him to win.

More here.

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Made in America: Iran's Islamic Revolution

According to the LA Times:

A new report based on previously classified documents suggests that the Nixon and Ford administrations created conditions that helped destabilize Iran in the late 1970s and contributed to the country's Islamic Revolution.

A trove of transcripts, memos and other correspondence show sharp differences over rising oil prices developing between the Republican administrations and Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi in the mid-1970s, says a report to be published today in the fall issue of Middle East Journal, an academic journal published by the Washington-based Middle East Institute, a think tank.

Here is the abstract from the journal:

What led to the calamitous drop in Iran’s oil revenues in January 1977? Politics, religion, culture, and economics have been identified as factors contributing to the collapse of Iran’s monarchy in 1979. But until now scholars have been unable to access documents that could shed light on the inner workings of the relationship between senior US officials and the Shah of Iran, whom Henry Kissinger lauded as “that rarest of leaders, an unconditional ally, and one whose understanding of the world enhanced our own.”1 The declassification of the papers of Brent Scowcroft, who worked in the Nixon and Ford Administrations, marks a significant milestone in our understanding of the origins of the Iranian Revolution. They reveal that in 1976 the US and Saudi Arabia colluded to force down oil prices, inadvertently triggering a financial crisis that destabilized Iran’s economy and weakened the Shah’s hold on power.

The LA Times article notes:

The report, after two years of research by scholar Andrew Scott Cooper, zeros in on the role of White House policymakers -- including Donald H. Rumsfeld, then a top aide to President Ford -- hoping to roll back oil prices and curb the shah's ambitions, despite warnings by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that such a move might precipitate the rise of a "radical regime" in Iran.

That's Rumsfeld: too clever by half.
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Hat-tip Jacob

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Secret weapon used by US in Iraq

Greg Greenwald blogs:

I asked [Bob Woodward] this question about the claim Woodward made last week that the U.S. has achieved a new technological "breakthrough" allowing it to use a super-innovative and advanced weapon in Iraq (which Woodward says he knows about but refuses to describe), and Woodward's reply to my question is here (and my further reply/question is here).

This is what Woodward told CBS News'60 Minutes:

This is very sensitive and very top secret, but there are secret operational capabilities that have been developed by the military to locate, target and kill leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq, insurgent leaders, renegade militia leaders. That is one of the true breakthroughs

A writer for Wired magazine speculates what the weapon could be:

I'm going to make a wager about what I think Woodward is talking about, and I'll be curious to see what Danger Room readers have to say. I believe he is talking about the much ballyhooed (in defense geek circles) "Tagging, Tracking and Locating" program; here's a briefing on it from Special Operations Command. These are newfangled technologies designed to track people from long distances, without the targeted people realizing they are being tracked.

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