Antony Loewenstein

Those Palestinian terrorists are apparently busy working themselves into a frenzy:

Hamas may carry out a mega-terror attack, the Deputy Shin Bet Chief, known only as Y, told cabinet members Sunday. “There were clear orders from the Hamas headquarters abroad to Hamas here to carry out a mass casualty attack in Israel,” he said.According to Y, the Hamas leadership in Gaza is experiencing “deep strategic complications.” The organization is frustrated by its lack of success in gaining legitimacy in the international arena, particularly in Europe.

hey are also having trouble running the government, particularly in controlling internal checkpoints and, in general, in positively impacting daily life.

This situation increases the likelihood that the organization’s policy regarding terror attacks with change, in Gaza, the West Bank and possibly even outside of Israel, the deputy Shin Bet chief said.

This story strains credibility on so many fronts. The fact that Hamas is unable to radically shift “daily life” is because Israel and the international community is imposing a criminal blockade on Gaza. The mysterious “Y” – why do Israeli journalists allow themselves to be prostituted in this way? – sounds like a lovely chap.

Of course it’s possible that Hamas is re-considering launching terror attacks within Israel, but highly unlikely. Time is on their side. While the major powers have unwisely side-lined the democratically-elected group in the last year and a half, the popularity of resisting Israeli occupation is something most Palestinians continue to admire. The alternative? Mahmoud Abbas, Washington’s obedient bitch.

George Bush appears to have granted Bin Laden his greatest wish.

The only western journalist to interview al Qaeda’s leader says the US invasion of Iraq “fulfilled Osama bin Laden’s wish.”

In a recent interview with Australian television, Al Quds editor Abdul Bari Atwan claimed that the terror leader had sought to draw US troops into a fight in the Middle East.

“He told me personally that he can’t go and fight the Americans and their country. But if he manages to provoke them and bring them to the Middle East and to their Muslim worlds, where he can find them or fight them on his own turf, he will actually teach them a lesson,” Atwan said. “It seems the invasion of Iraq fulfilled Osama bin Laden’s wish. That’s why the Americans are losing in Iraq.”

Remember that next time a wingnut talks about how the right is tough on fighting terror.

The ruling elite in Washington, who are never averse to making a quick buck, are gearing up for regime change in Baghdad. Sensing he has nothing to loose, Maliki seems to be tiring of his role as Washington’s puppet and pointed out that such suggestions of replacing the Iraqi leader not only makes a mockery of the notion that Iraq is any kind of democracy, but underlines the arrogance of Washington’s ruling class.

Iraq’s embattled prime minister lashed out at American critics Sunday, saying Sen. Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who have called for his ouster should “come to their senses” and stop treating Iraq like “one of their villages.”

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also lambasted the U.S. military for raids in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, adding new strains ahead of next month’s showdown in Washington over the future of the U.S. mission.

The grim combination of ongoing violence and political deadlock have increased frustration in both Washington and Baghdad, with American lawmakers increasingly critical of al-Maliki’s performance and Iraqi leaders growing weary of what they consider unfair U.S. criticism.

Clinton and Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have called for al-Maliki to be replaced.

These announcements, along with criticisms form George Bush, appear to be part of a concerted effort by the gears of Washington’s machine to sell the idea of replacing Maliki to the American public.

Glenn Greenwald exposed this last week, when Philip Zelikow, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appeared on national television in the US, suggesting that the Bush administration was working to depose Maliki. What was withheld from the public is that Zelikow has a vested interest in the matter.

But currently, Zelikow in particular runs around Washington holding himself out — and being held out — as an Expert on the Future of Iraq while concealing that his firm is being paid by Allawi to undermine Maliki. As but one example, Zelikow was a featured Iraq Expert on ABC News with Charles Gibson three nights ago, on Monday Tuesday.

Zelikow was presented as an impartial, non partisan expert on the matter. Zelikow of course, was not the only culprit.

It really is very strange how all of Official Washington, seemingly at the same time, collectively decided to turn on Prime Minister Maliki — who, after all, was elected democratically and was the leader in whom we were placing all of our hopes for progress in Iraq. Obviously, there is a very potent and well-funded effort to induce exactly that policy change at the highest levels of Republican power. The CNN article stated the obvious:

Pressed on why allies of the White House would be contradicting the president so publicly, the senior administration official said of the lobbyists, “They’re making a lot of money.”

What if you’re an Egyptian student coming to America and you want to leave the airport within five hours?

Read on.

The human rights situation in Egypt remains dire (thanks, in part, to the support of the US administration. Democracy? Hardly crosses their mind.)

Cairo-based blog The Skeptic explains the ongoing oppression of the Muslim Brotherhood (and the group’s site reveals yet more.)

It constantly astounds me that supposed human rights campaigners in the West remain silent on such matters. If one believes in human rights, it’s a universal belief, not selectively applied.

Australia is on the frontline in the war on terror. Or so our little SAS commentariat likes to think. In fact, the case of terror suspect Mohamed Haneef shows the Howard government and the federal police utterly out of their depth. The Sydney Morning Herald’s David Marr explains:

“Geography was not one of my better subjects at school,” Detective Sergeant Adam Simms of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team admitted to the prisoner in the sixth hour of the interrogation. “Bangalore, where’s that in relation to Pakistan?”

As good a reason as any for the Australian Federal Police to be so furious this week at the release of the transcript of the second interrogation of Mohamed Haneef, is the embarrassment the force will endure as the ignorance of the interrogators is displayed page after page. For 10 days detectives on three continents had been gathering whatever evidence they could find about the Gold Coast doctor, but Detective Simms had not opened an atlas.

He did not know where Liverpool was from London. The name Mysore meant nothing to him. It seems he’d never heard of Urdu. The ways of Skype were new to him: “I’m a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to this sort of thing.” His grasp of a doctor’s career paths was shaky. He had no clue what Muslims do in Ramadan. “OK,” he said when Haneef explained. “Excuse my ignorance, yeah.”

Calling all terrorists. This country is open for business.

Rory Carroll, Guardian Comment is Free, August 25:

We have just had another installment of the Caracas edition of Looney Tunes, with John Pilger hailing Hugo Chavez as the embodiment of freedom and democracy and detractors denouncing Venezuela’s president as a bloodthirsty tyrant. It’s depressing.

Instead of a serious and open-minded discussion about the complex changes unfolding in Venezuela and Latin America there has been, with a few notable exceptions, pompous polemic and scornful abuse.

The notion that Chavez is doing both good and bad things, and that the destination of his revolution is far from clear, is alien to this discourse.

Each side comes out swinging anecdotes and statistics supposedly proving that a new Jerusalem of universal education, social inclusion and grass roots empowerment has been established. Or that an ogre with ruinous economics is gutting democracy.

The pseudo-scientific certitude is all the more puzzling when it comes from armchairs far from the Caribbean. The Islington Chavista is as didactic as the Connecticut neocon.

Remember Ayad Allawi? The former Iraqi leader has been accused of murdering six insurgents in 2004.

He’s now angling to take back the top job in the war-ravaged country and is being assisted by one of Washington’s best PR firms.

This could work rather well for the US. A strongman seems to be the preferred option these days. This democracy caper hasn’t exactly worked out as planned.

Why blogging matters (and academics who don’t understand the technology should really just enjoy their last days praising the “accountable” mainstream media and be on their merry way.)

As usual, Tony Karon’s analysis of the Middle East is spot-on. The rise of Syria and Iran as regional players is directly related to the clusterfuck that is Iraq:

Unlike the politicians in Washington who seem blithely oblivious in their campaign-trail debates, the Iraqis — like everyone else in the Middle East — are well aware of the limits of American power, and the fact that it is on the wane. The signs are everywhere now, nowhere more so than in the fact that even the regimes most dependent on direct U.S. military support — Iraq and Afghanistan — are simply ignoring the Bush Administration’s injunctions against consorting with Iran.

They know the U.S. has shot its wad, and that it can’t sustain the current troop “surge” beyond next spring. They smell the panic in the discussion in Washington over how and when to pull the troops out, as the underpinnings of American power begin to creak ominously, like that bridge in Minneapolis — in an extraordinary intervention in the Financial Times, recently, U.S. comptroller David Walker compared the U.S. to the Roman Empire on the eve of its collapse, warning that current debt, taxation and expenditure levels combined with infrastructural decay, an aging population and ruinous military commitments abroad have created a “burning platform” for U.S. governance.

The mother of all distractions for Washington? A strike against Iran, seemingly growing in possibility by the day.

Amira Hass, Haaretz, August 23:

Not only are some 1.5 million Gaza residents living like prisoners in the largest jail in the world, but they are also subjected to daily attacks by Israel that leave them with more dead to bury. Two children were killed on Tuesday, and not only those suspected of firing Qassam rockets. And if there’s no shelling, there’s a short-term incursion, and dozens of people are arrested and undergo a day-long campaign of humiliation.

The economy has been completely paralyzed for two months now. Tens of thousands of private-sector workers have not made even NIS 100 in the past two months. There is zero export because the Karni crossing is closed. This situation will continue for a long time if Israel’s attitude toward Hamas remains as is.

Abe Foxman , the national director of the Anti-Defamation League , has finally acknowledged that there was an Armenian genocide.

The national director of the Anti-Defamation League bowed to pressure from both the Jewish and Armenian-American communities yesterday and officially acknowledged the genocide of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks more than 90 years ago.

In doing so, Abraham H. Foxman reversed years of ADL policy and a position he had reaffirmed as recently as Friday when he fired the ADL’s New England regional director, Andrew H. Tarsy, for defying the national organization and acknowledging the genocide.

Of course, Foxman had little choice, given that criticism was coming thick and fast from the Jewish community.

As a Jew, I find the ongoing efforts by Mr. Foxman and the ADL to deny recognition of the Armenian genocide morally repugnant, ignorant, and particularly inappropriate for an organization geared to reducing, as opposed to abetting and fomenting Antisemitism, and other forms of irrational hatred. Andrew Bostom (read it all here.)

Time for an overthrow of Amercan Jewish lay leadership. They will lead us straight to the ovens.

UPDATE: Two regional members of ADL quit in protest to firing!

Former chairman of the Polaroid Corp., Stewart L. Cohen, and City Council member Mike Ross told the Globe yesterday they could no longer be part of an organization with national leaders who refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide and fired regional director, Andrew H. Tarsy, on Friday for taking a position in support of Armenian-Americans.

If Foxman does not change his position and acknowledge the genocide, George Beilin, a past president of the North Shore Council of the B’nai B’rith Organization, called on the national leader to “resign immediately for the sake of the Jewish community in the United States and the world.”

Who’s ass are we kissing anyway? More on this here.