MentalGator

FP Passport - blogging on global news, politics, economics, and ideas (87 unread)

• What will Cameron and Merkel do if Sarkozy loses?

  Posted: February 29, 2012, 12:48 am by Joshua Keating

  

  Nicolas Sarkozy's counterparts in Europe's "big three" have been involving themselves in his reelection bid to an unusual extent. Angela Merkel endorsed Sarkozy in late January and may even appear at his campaign events. David Cameron unambiguously gave his support to Sarkozy in an interview earlier this month, calling him ‘brave politician’ with ‘great leadership qualities’.

  Cross-border endorsements aren't unheard of in Europe, where parties are grouped into international ideological coalitions. But the degree to which Cameron and Merkel have made the preference for Sarkozy clear raises questions about whether they will be able to cooperate with Socialist Francois Hollande should he win. While Sarkozy is doing better in the polls, he's still essentially tied with him and trails badly in a likely second-round head-to-head matchup. 

  So in the quite possible event that Hollande pulls it out, he's likely to remember comments like this: 

  Merkel's aides aren't even trying to hide their dislike of Hollande. "The conflict between Sarkozy and Hollande is a clash of two fundamental concepts," says CDU General Secretary Gröhe. "Strengthening competitiveness or left-wing redistribution."

  German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle seemed uneasy about the Merkel team's strongly-stated preference, saying that "The German government isn't a party in the French election campaign."

  Hollande is currently in London, campaigning with the city's sizable French population. Cameron declined to meet with him, and Hollande seems to have decided to use the president's popularity among the Tories against him:

  Today, Mr Hollande's campaign manager made it clear he saw Mr Cameron's support as a poisoned chalice for Mr Sarkozy. "Being the friend of the Conservatives, the friend of Thatherites and their heirs … is frankly pretty strange for the so-called 'candidate of the people," said Pierre Moscovici.

  I get why conservatives aren't thrilled about the prospect of a French president who wants to slap a 75 percent tax on millionaires, but given the realities of European politics, they're going to have to coordinate with him frequently. It might not be a terrible idea to extend an olive branch before he's sitting across the table from them in Brussels.

  As one Conservative British MP put it,  "Our political elite will have to rub shoulders with whoever wins, so we have to be very careful about interfering.... I don’t think we should be running our foreign policy like a scene from Love Actually with subtitles."

• Haitian birtherism

  Posted: February 29, 2012, 6:13 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Haitian President Michel Martelly has, for months, faced accusations that he holds  a U.S. passport, making him ineligible for his office. Now, the country's senate has taken up the debate, as the newspaper Haiti Liberté reports: 

  Two weeks ago, Sen. Moïse Jean Charles submitted what he called “irrefutable” evidence to a special Senate Select Committee that Martelly and 38 other high government officials hold dual, and sometimes triple, nationalities.

  On Jan. 24, Sen. Joseph Lambert, the Commission’s president, announced in a press conference that the Commission has confirmed dual nationality for two of the 10 cases it has investigated to date. However, Lambert has so far refused to release the names of dual citizenship officials, saying his commission would proceed “impartially” and “without emotion.” He said arrangements have been made to continue the nationality investigations overseas.

  The Senate inquiry threatens to create a political crisis which may force President Martelly, his Prime Minister Garry Conille, and other ministers to step down. If the charges against him prove true, it means that candidate Martelly lied to election officials about holding dual citizenship, which current Haitian law explicitly forbids for a high elected official.[...]

  Meanwhile, the Senate’s Vice President Andrice Riché said it was “scandalous that a foreign citizen can deceive the vigilance of Haitian institutions to enjoy privileges to which he is not entitled.” He argued that “these citizens would have nothing against [Haiti’s military] occupation” by UN troops, because “they are true to nothing.” Sen. Riché argued that “giving up Haitian nationality is an act of treason and the authors of such an act should not have responsibilities in the management and decision making for the country. If you said no to Haitian nationality, you said no to the country.”

  For an explainer piece last year looking at the question of whether Barack Obama might be eligible to run for president of some other country after producing his long-form U.S. birth certificate. Not every country's constitution is quite as specific as America's when it comes to the lifelong citizenship status of their heads of state. Haiti's is, however: 

  To be elected President of the Republic of Haiti, a candidate must:

  a. Be a native-born Haitian and never have renounced Haitian nationality;

  b. Have attained thirty-five (35) years of age by the election day; 

  c. Enjoy civil and political rights and never have been sentenced to death, personal restraint or penal servitude or the loss of civil rights for a crime of ordinary law;

  d. Be the owner in Haiti of at least one real property and have his habitual residence in the country; 

  e. Have resided in the country for five (5) consecutive years before the date of the elections;

  f. Have been relieved of this responsibilities if he has been handling public funds.

  The five consecutive years requirement was what foiled Wyclef Jean's presidential aspirations last year. The constitution also states that any citizen that holds a foreign passport automatically renounces his Haitian citizenship, which is the rap against Martelly. Sweet Micky denies the charge:  

  “It’s a conspiracy organized by people who can’t believe Michel Martelly is [going to be] the country’s President,” Martelly, aka “Sweet Micky,” told a Port-au-Prince radio station. “I’m Haitian, I never renounced my citizenship, my passport is Haitian.”

  There doesn't seem to be any credible proof to the contrary. But it also seems that given the number of people who've fled Haiti's violence, poverty, and natural disasters over the last two decades, barring them from returning to serve in office is a bit impractical.

  Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

• Morning Brief: UN debate on Syria shifts to humanitarian aid

  Posted: February 29, 2012, 3:18 pm by Uri Friedman

  UN debate on Syria shifts to humanitarian aid

  Top story: Following two vetoes by Russia and China of U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning the Syrian regime's crackdown, France and the United States are now drafting a resolution to provide access for humanitarian aid workers to besieged Syrian towns and call for an end to violence in the country.

  On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi signaled possible support for such a measure by telling the head of the Arab League that the international community should "extend humanitarian aid to Syria" while also calling for "political dialogue" and "all sides to cease violence." U.N. diplomats tell Reuters that Russia might also support a resolution that focuses on the humanitarian crisis and makes no mention of the political situation.

  As Syrian troops launch a ground attack on the flashpoint city of Homs, the United Nations estimates that 7,500 civilians have been killed in the conflict and that the death toll now exceeds 100 civilians a day. The Syrian government says around 2,500 civilians have died and that "armed gangs and terrorists" have killed more than 1,000 members of the security forces, according to the BBC.

  U.S. election: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney decisively won a primary in Arizona and narrowly defeated Rick Santorum in Michigan, solidifying his frontrunner status ahead of Super Tuesday contests next week.

  Middle East

  • Egyptian security officials claim they've detained senior al Qaeda commander Saif al-Adel at Cairo International Airport.

  • Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reports that the United States and Egypt are engaged in "intensive discussions" over ending the criminal prosecution of NGO workers.

  • Iran's foreign minister labeled the production of nuclear weapons a "great sin," as the country announced that it will accept gold instead of dollars from its trading partners in response to Western sanctions.

  Europe

  • The European Central Bank has offered €530 billion of low-interest loans to 800 banks across the European Union.

  • Belarus warned of an "escalation of tensions" with the European Union over the bloc's decision to withdraw member ambassadors from the country out of concern about human rights violations.

  • The French Constitutional Council struck down a draft law criminalizing the denial of an Armenian genocide, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to draft a new law.

  Americas

  • Interpol arrested 25 Anonymous members in Europe and South America who are suspected of launching cyberattacks against targets such as Colombia's defense ministry and a Chilean electricity company. 

  • Guatemala extradited the country's top drug trafficker to the United States, where he faces a life sentence if convicted.

  • Venezuela's vice president says that President Hugo Chavez is in "good physical shape" after undergoing cancer surgery in Cuba.

  Asia

  • Clashes in a town in Western China populated mostly by Uighurs killed 20 people.

  • Indian National Congress leader Sonia Gandhi has left India for a medical checkup, fueling speculation about her health.

  • The officers of a ship that struck a reef in New Zealand have pleaded guilty to causing the country's worst environmental disaster in decades. 

  Africa

  • Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has accepted an election run-off, but official results from Sunday's divisive contest have yet to be released.

  • Planes are picking up passengers from the crippled Costa Allegra cruise ship, which is now in the Seychelles.

  • A carpenter has reportedly been arrested in Zimbabwe for wondering aloud at a bar whether President Robert Mugabe had the strength to blow up balloons at his 88th birthday celebrations.

  
  

  Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images

• Red lines

  Posted: February 29, 2012, 7:49 am by Blake Hounshell

  For Iran watchers, the week or so leading up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington has been a busy one.

  First, on Friday, the latest International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards report came out on Iran's nuclear program, conveniently giving fodder for all sides of the bomb-Iran debate. The IAEA report, as an analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security describes, shows that Iran is expanding its uranium enrichment program, including in its deeply buried Fordow plant, but having trouble with next-generation  centrifuge technology that could make its breakout to a nuclear weapon much faster. (See also the New York Times, which concludes, "The report is likely to inflame the debate over whether Iran is nearing what Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, calls entering a 'zone of immunity.'")

  Also on Friday, the Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies have not changed their view that "there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb." The Los Angeles Times ran a similar story a day earlier. (In his Friday sermon, Iran's supreme leader seemed to confirm this assessment, calling nuclear weapons a "sin.")

  Then, on Monday, both the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press reported on the tense negotiations between Israel and the United States over what to do about all this. The Israelis are apparently "fuming" that Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly warned against an Israeli strike on Iran's facilities. Last week's visit to Israel by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon reportedly did not go well precisely for this reason. ("We made it clear to Donilon that all those statements and briefings only served the Iranians," one Israeli official told Haaretz, a comment sure to infuriate the White House.)

  The Israelis do not plan to tell their American counterparts if they do decide to attack Iran, the AP's Kimberly Dozier reported, a move a U.S. intelligence official interpreted for her as Israel wanting to give the United States plausible deniability in the event of a strike. But another way to look at it is as one more sign that Israel and the United States simply do not trust one another.

  The key issue under discussion is what the appropriate "red lines" are -- Iranian actions that would trigger a military response by Israel or the United States. For Israel, the bar is lower, but nebulous: Defense Minister Ehud Barak talks about Iran soon entering a "zone of immunity" that will make an attack impossible. For the United States, the big no-no is weaponization. The Israelis believe that waiting until Iran decides to build a weapon is too late, but it's not clear they have the capability to take out Iran's nuclear sites (read: Ferdow) on their own.

  The Journal suggests that Obama is coming Netanyahu's way on this, but a story in today's Los Angeles Times says the opposite. Clearly there's a policy fight going on behind the scenes, and the president's recent claims that he and Bibi are on the same page can't be taken seriously. Haaretz reports tonight that "Netanyahu wants Obama to state unequivocally that the United States is preparing for a military operation in the event that Iran crosses certain 'red lines,'" and that the distrust between the two men only seems to be deepening. Each leader feels the other is meddling in his country's domestic politics -- Obama by seeking to turn Israeli public opinion against a strike (example), and Netanyahu by working with Republicans to attack the president as soft on Iran.

  The million-dollar question is whether all this drama is really about establishing a credible threat to get the Iranians to capitulate (while terrifying European and Asian countries into boycotting Iranian oil), or whether Israel is indeed serious about attacking if the sanctions don't work, and is earnestly seeking U.S. buy-in.

  I have some sympathy for the view that, by publicly warning against strikes, the Obama administration is undercutting Israel's deterrent. Bluster aside, Iran has shown a tendency to back down when frightened, as in 2003 when it is thought to have shuttered its nuclear weapons program, and more recently when it toned down its tough talk about blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

  But threats have consequences, too. U.S. officials haven't clearly articulated why they believe all this war talk is unhelpful, but I suspect two reasons. One is the rising cost of gasoline, perhaps the issue that terrifies the political side of the White House most heading into November. Tensions over Iran are already adding about $10 per barrel to the price of oil, some analysts say, threatening to choke off America's nascent economic recovery and make Obama a one-term president.

  But the more serious issue is that if you make such a threat, you actually may need to carry it out someday. Is that something Barack Obama, a man who has staked his presidency on winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wants above all to do "nation-building at home," is prepared to do? He's already committed to preventing Iran from getting the bomb, taking containment off the table. He's shown little inclination for taking the big political risk of putting some sort of "grand bargain" on the table. But if sanctions don't bring Iran around -- and there's no sign yet that they will -- and sabotage and asking nicely don't do the job, what then?

• Should Central America's drug violence be considered a global crisis?

  Posted: February 28, 2012, 7:20 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  A new report from the U.N.'s International Narcotics Control Board contains more grim news about the drug violence in Central America:

  In Central America, the escalating drug-related violence involving drug trafficking, transnational and local gangs and other criminal groups has reached alarming and unprecedented levels, significantly worsening security and making the subregion one of the most violent areas in the world. Crime and drug-related violence continue to be key issues of concern in Central American countries. Drug trafficking (including fighting between and within drug trafficking and criminal organizations operating out of Colombia and Mexico), youth-related violence and street gangs, along with the widespread availability of firearms, have contributed to increasingly high crime rates in the subregion. There are more than 900 maras (local gangs) active in Central America today, with over 70,000 members. According to a recent report by the World Bank, drug trafficking is both an important driver of homicide rates in Central America and the main single factor behind the rising levels of violence in the subregion. The countries of the so-called "Northern Triangle" (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras), together with Jamaica, now have the world's highest homicide rates.  

  Just how bad is it? To put things in perspective, in Syria, where the the United Nations is debating imposing international sanctions and many are urging humanitarian intervention, an astonishing 7,500 people are estimated to have been killed in the last 11 months.  With Syria's population, that's almost 37 deaths per 100,000 people.

  By comparison, Honduras has a murder rate of 82.1 per 100,000, the highest in the world. It's followed by El Salvador at 66 and Jamaica at 60 -- all driven primarily by drug violence. With only 8.5 per cent of the world population, Latin America and the Carribean account for 27 percent of homicides.

  I don't mean to minimize the tragic violence of the Middle East, but it's a bit astonishing how little this carnage closer to home gets in U.S. political circles, particularly since, as the world's largest drug market, North Americans are directly implicated in it.

  U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is visiting Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama this week where she faces the unenviable task of touting progress in the war on drugs.

• Morning Brief: Syria crackdown intensifies after referendum

  Posted: February 28, 2012, 2:37 pm by David Kenner

  Syria crackdown intensifies after referendum

  Top story: President Bashar al-Assad's government escalated its assault on restive neighborhoods in Homs one day after a referendum on a new constitution. According to activist groups, more than 60 people were killed there on Monday. The city has been under daily artillery bombardment for three and a half weeks.

   The Syrian regime reported that 89.4 percent of voters had voted yes in the referendum on the new constitution, and that voter turnout stood at 57.4 percent. The United States and its allies, as well as the Syrian opposition, have denounced the vote as a farce.

  Meanwhile, news reports confirmed that Paul Conroy, a British photographer wounded in Homs, had been evacuated from the city. There was no word whether Edith Bouvier, a French journalist injured in the same attack, had also found a way out of the city.

  Germany approves Greek bailout: Germany's parliament approved its contribution to a Greek bailout package by an overwhelming margin.

  Asia

  • Japan considered the possibility of evacuating Tokyo following its nuclear accident last year.
  • Gunmen ambushed a bus in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 18 people.
  • South Korea's parliament passed a resolution calling on China to stop repatriating North Korean refugees.

  Middle East

  • Israeli soldiers killed a gunman who tried to infiltrate the country from the Sinai Peninsula.
  • Human rights organizations continued their efforts to free two journalists imprisoned in Libya.
  • Venezuela confirmed that it sent two shipments of oil to Syria last year, and would send more "when required."

  Europe

  • France's Socialist candidate for president, Francois Holland, called for a 75 percent income tax for top earners.
  • Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon was acquitted of charges that he abused his powers by investigating human rights abuses committed during Spain's civil war and ensuing dictatorship.
  • A stricken Italian cruise liner is being towed to an island in the Seychelles.

  Africa

  • Senegal's president said that he may not have received enough votes to avoid a run-off in the country's recent presidential election.
  • Sudanese rebels said that they killed 150 government troops in a battle along the disputed border with South Sudan.
  • A former governor of one of Nigeria's oil-producing states pleaded guilty in a British court to charges that he stole his country's oil wealth.

  Americas

  • Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa said that he would pardon three newspaper executives and columnists convicted of libel.
  • Colombia's FARC rebels said that they would free 10 members of the security services they were holding, and abandon kidnapping as a strategy.
  • The leader of Peru's Shining Path movement has been charged with terrorism and drug trafficking.

  
  

  JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images

• Francis Fukuyama builds a drone

  Posted: February 27, 2012, 10:42 pm by David Kenner

   

  Foreign Policy's new War Issue shows how drones have transformed the war against the Taliban and fueled President Barack Obama's counterterrorism strategy. But it's not only the cutting-edge technology that's evolving -- the tools to build a basic drone are now available to those of us who will never set foot in CIA headquarters.

  Stanford University professor Francis Fukuyama, who is better known for airy political science theories such as "the end of history," has spent the past few months building his very own unmanned aerial vehicle. As he described in a blog post over at the American Interest, it is a "quadcopter" -- a helicopter with four rotors - and is equipped with a Sony flip video camera. Fukuyama has uploaded two videos filmed from his drone: The one above shows it hovering over a baseball field near Stanford and is accompanied by music from the a cappella group the Swingle Singers.

  In an article for the Financial Times, Fukuyama says he was inspired to build a drone by the prospect that it would provide a new dimension to his photography. But since then, his project has taken on a life of its own as he seeks to push the limits of what's possible in the world of do-it-yourself unmanned aerial vehicles.

  But the nefarious uses of this new technology don't fail to escape Fukuyama: Do we really want to live in a world, he asks, where private individuals have access to the destructive power of drones? "As the technology becomes cheaper and more commercially available, moreover, drones may become harder to trace; without knowing their provenance, deterrence breaks down," he writes. "A world in which people can be routinely and anonymously targeted by unseen enemies is not pleasant to contemplate."

• New Putin ad aims at 'virgin' voters

  Posted: February 27, 2012, 10:12 pm by Joshua Keating

  In addition to suspiciously timed announcements of assassination plots, the Kremlin is also continuing with its tried-and-true strategy of equating voting for Putin to getting it on. In this new ad, a young woman is informed by a fortuneteller that her "first time" will be with the prime minister/soon-to-be-president himself. Her first time voting, you creeps:

  This whole sexy United Russia thing seems to have gotten a bit out of hand. For a fairly dark and disturbing response to the trend, see this new parody video from socialite-turned-political commentator Ksenia Sobchak.

• Iran spins Oscar win

  Posted: February 27, 2012, 9:50 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Iranian state TV is doing its thing, following A Separation's Oscar victory last night. The AP reports:

  Iran's state TV described the country's foreign film Oscar win on Monday as a victory over Israel, in a gesture of official approval toward an Iranian movie industry criticized by hardliners.

  The official reaction to the victory of "A Separation" in Sunday's awards ceremony was cast in nationalist terms and in the light of Iran's confrontation with its arch-foe, which also had a film, "Footnote," competing for the foreign language Oscar.

  The broadcast said the award won by "A Separation" succeeded in "leaving behind" a film from the "Zionist regime." It emphasized that the film won several Iranian awards in 2011, too.

  Yeah, because we all know that Hollywood is controlled by … wait, now I'm confused.

  On a related note, I was wondering how director Asghar Farhadi's speech last night would go over back home. While not explicitly political, Farhadi did refer to Iran as a "rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics," which could be read as a subtle suggestion that his country's cultural life has been smothered by its government. As Global Voices' Fred Petrossian reports, the official Fars News simply changed the text of the speech.

  The line:

  "I proudly offer this award to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment"

  … was changed to:

  "Iranian people respect all cultures despite the western hostility with Iranian nuclear program."

  I haven't had the chance to see A Separation yet, but from all I've read, Farhadi's Oscar sounds well-deserved. Iran has a rich film tradition, but the government seems to be doing its best to destroy it, judging from last month's decision to shutter the independent Iranian House of Cinema -- the country's directors' guild -- and the arrest of six documentary filmmakers working on a film about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in September. The country's two best-known directors are currently living abroad and in jail, respectively

• Is the Obama administration abusing the Espionage Act?

  Posted: February 27, 2012, 9:26 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Prosecutors may still attempt to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, though their case will likely depend on exactly how he received his information. But, WikiLeaks aside, the Obama administration has made increasing use of the act to clamp down on whistleblowers.

  Prompted by a question at a White House press briefing last week by ABC's Jake Tapper, David Carr explores the issue in his New York Times column: 

  The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers. [...]

  In case after case, the Espionage Act has been deployed as a kind of ad hoc Official Secrets Act, which is not a law that has ever found traction in America, a place where the people’s right to know is viewed as superseding the government’s right to hide its business.

  In the most recent case, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who became a Democratic staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged under the Espionage Act with leaking information to journalists about other C.I.A. officers, some of whom were involved in the agency’s interrogation program, which included waterboarding.

  For those of you keeping score, none of the individuals who engaged in or authorized the waterboarding of terror suspects have been prosecuted, but Mr. Kiriakou is in federal cross hairs, accused of talking to journalists and news organizations, including The New York Times.

  Another example was Thomas Drake, a former NSA employee who was prosecuted under the espionage act and faced a possible 35 years in prison for talking to reporters about a deal to buy digital data monitoring software uneccesarily violate privacy. The case against him eventually collapsed and he pleaded guilty to a minor misdemeanor charge. Some more examples here.

  I'm no attorney, but these prosecutions do seem to have diverged pretty far from the original scope of the Act, which refers to people who transmit information to a foreign government or entity "with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation." It seems pretty clear that neither Drake nor Kiriakou were acting with intent to harm the United States. And they were communicating with well-established U.S. media organizations, not foreign government or militaries. 

  U.S. courts have left the door open to espionage prosecutions of this kind, however. The best known case on this issue is the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, which is best remembered for the Supreme Court's decision that the Government could not prevent the publication of Vietnam war documents leaked by analyst Daniel Ellsberg to the New York Times. 

  However, the court actually ruled only that the Nixon administration had failed to demonstrate a compelling national security threat that warranted the prior prevention of publication. They left open the possibility that if a more compelling threat could be demonstration, such an injunction could be warranted. Moreover, it was suggested that the standard for a espionage prosecution after publication might not be as high as with prior restraint.

  So, the law's not quite settled on how much of a threat to national security a media leak needs to be before it's considered espionage. But at the rate the Obama adminsitration is going -- it has already prosecuted more government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined -- the Supreme Court may soon get the chance to provide some clarity on the matter. 

• Russia's not-so-surprising February surprise

  Posted: February 27, 2012, 8:06 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  It's early to say how credible the reported assassination plot against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is, but it is pretty clear that the Kremlin is taking full advantage of the timing of the announcement, just a week before the presidential election.

  First, there's the fact that Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said the arrest of two men after an apartment explosion is January was "was absolutely a plot to kill the prime minister," even before the Ukrainian government had confirmed it. Then there's the confusion about when this arrest actually took place: 

  Channel One said the suspects were arrested on Jan. 4, but a statement released by the Ukrainian security services this month, which made no mention of an assassination plot against Mr. Putin, said the arrests were made on Feb. 4. 

  And as Miriam Elder notes, Russians have heard this tune before. Another attempt to kill Putin was "foiled" by authorities in Moscow the day Dmitry Medvedev was elected president in 2008. Many in the Russian opposition also believe that Putin may have been involved in a series of Moscow appartment bombings, blamed on Chechen militants, prior to his first election as president in 2000.

  It's certainly not outside the realm of possibility that Chechen militant leader Doku Umarov might have plotted to kill Putin, as the suspects say in their videotaped confession, but the timing of this information being made public does seem awfully convenient at a time when the opposition is showing more life than ever before. 

• Morning Brief: Senegalese election remains too close to call

  Posted: February 27, 2012, 3:30 pm by Uri Friedman

  Senegalese election remains too close to call

  Top story: Early reports from Senegal's presidential election over the weekend suggest that neither incumbent Abdoulaye Wade nor former prime minister Macky Sall has gained the 50 percent of votes needed to avoid a run-off. A spokesman for Wade maintains that the president is "well ahead," while Sall has declared that "a second round is inevitable."

  Wade's decision to seek a third term despite a constitutional two-term limit sparked heated protests in the lead-up to the election, raising the prospect of volatility in a West African country that has long been a stable democracy. The president was booed on Sunday as he voted in the capital, Dakar.

  In the event of a run-off, the Associated Press notes, Wade will have a difficult time beating a united opposition. If he nevertheless emerges victorious, the New York Times adds, the unrest of recent weeks could "spill over into something uglier."

  Syria: At least 59 people were killed in Syria on Sunday during a referendum on a new constitution that Western leaders have dismissed as a sham, while the European Union imposed new sanctions on Syria and divisions emerged within the Syrian opposition.

  Asia

  • The Taliban is claiming responsibility for a deadly suicide attack on a NATO air base in eastern Afghanistan as "revenge" for the burning of Korans last week at NATO's Bagram air base. 

  • Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard defeated rival Kevin Rudd in a leadership vote.

  • Ahead of a joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened a "powerful retaliatory strike" at the first sign of aggression by the South.

  Middle East

  • Egypt has postponed the controversial trial of employees of American-backed nonprofit groups until April, the same month that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is slated to certify Egypt for foreign aid.

  • Outgoing Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh formally ceded power to his vice president in a ceremony in Sanaa, as the U.S. works with the new government to overhaul Yemen's military in an effort to combat al Qaeda.

  • Al Jazeera says it's uncovered new evidence that casts doubt on the case against the man accused of orchestrating the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.

  Europe

  • Russian and Ukrainian security services have reportedly foiled a plot to assassinate Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin after next week's presidential election, as thousands of anti-Kremlin protesters took to the streets on Sunday ahead of the contest.

  • Finance ministers of the Group of 20 countries convinced their European counterparts to review the size of the eurozone's bailout fund.

  • Spain's Supreme Court has cleared judge Baltasar Garzon of charges that he illegally investigated crimes committed during Francisco Franco's regime.

  Americas

  • Colombia's FARC rebel group has announced that it will stop kidnapping people for ransom and free captives.

  • WikiLeaks has begun publishing more than five million confidential emails from the private intelligence company Stratfor.

  • Brazil's finance minister indicated that developing countries would provide more financial assistance to Europe in exchange for more power at the International Monetary Fund.

  Africa

  • The Islamist group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a church in the Nigerian city of Jos.

  • Former South African President Nelson Mandela, 93, was discharged from the hospital after a brief stay. 

  • Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe called for elections to be held in 2012 during celebrations for his 88th birthday.

  
  

  Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images

• Indian government confused over gay rights stand

  Posted: February 24, 2012, 1:54 am by Hanna C. Trudo

  

  Gay sex is a touchy subject in India. A 148-year-old colonial law, overturned by the Delhi high court in 2009, deemed same-sex relationships as "unnatural offenses". For over a century, Indians have been wrestling with what's considered "natural" versus "unnatural" by the government, and after a recent slip of the tongue by Senior Supreme Court Advocate PP Malhotra, the confusion is understandable.

  Conservative groups have asked India's Supreme Court to overturn the Delhi court's decision and on Thursday, Malhotra, who gives legal positions on behalf of the government told the justices that gay sex should be banned as it is "highly immoral and against social order and there is high chance of spreading of diseases through such acts." India should not succumb to Western sexual practices, Malhotra's said, and those who do should be subject to imprisonment. (Under the previous legislation homosexual acts received up to a 10-year prison sentence).

  Coming from a highly-ranked government official, the statements provoked an uproar. But the home ministry quickly denied that any request calling for a new homosexuality ban had been made, said that it would not challenge the 2009 decision, and issued a statement saying that the ministry "has not taken any position on homosexuality."  Television reports later suggested that Mahotra was confused and was referring to an older government opinion.

  After the judgment decriminalizing homosexuality was delivered by the Deli High Court in 2009, the cabinet decided that "the government may not appeal against the judgment to the Supreme Court."  The Guardian reports that, "While actual criminal prosecutions are few, the law has been used frequently to harass people."

  The Supreme Court's next hearing, which will take place on Feb. 28, will decide the fate of the 2009 judgment, and, inevitably, the fates of those whose lives the law has impacted. Hopefully, the Home Office can figure out its opinion on the subject by then.

• The Election 2012 Weekly Report: Getting to Arizona

  Posted: February 24, 2012, 12:51 am by Joshua Keating

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  Debating Syria

  A Wednesday-night debate in Arizona was the first time the candidates discussed the deteriorating situation in Syria at any length, though mostly in the context of what it would mean for Iran's nuclear program and global energy prices. Mitt Romney did suggest that the United States work "with Saudi Arabia and with Turkey to ... provide the kind of weaponry that's needed to help the rebels inside Syria." Newt Gingrich, as he often does, suggesting a policy of having "our allies covertly helping destroy the Assad regime."

  The debate was widely covered as a test for the surging Rick Santorum, who was attacked repeatedly, often by Ron Paul, on his credentials as a fiscal conservative. On national security issues, Santorum touted his long record of urging aggressive polices against Iran and criticized the Obama administration for standing with "radicals" against "a friend of ours in Egypt" -- ousted president Hosni Mubarak. He also seemed to pivot away from his previous concerns about women serving in more combat roles in the military, though he did warn against "social engineering."

  Gingrich on the attack

  Seemingly eclipsed by Santorum's rise, onetime poll leader Gingrich has repeatedly made news this week for strident attacks against Barack Obama's foreign policy. Gingrich referred to Obama as the "most dangerous president in modern American history" during a speech in Oklahoma, accusing him of putting political correctness above U.S. national security in his administration's response to Islamist terrorism.  Appearing on CBS's "This Morning," Gingrich called Obama's energy policies "outrageously anti-American'' and ridiculed the idea that the electric car "is going to liberate us from Saudi Arabia."

  On Thursday, Gingrich again lashed out at Obama following the president's apology to Afghan authorities for the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base. "He is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the United States," Gingrich said. The candidate went on to demand that the Afghan government apologize to the United States for the killing of two American soldiers in the riots that followed the burning.

  Romney against the world

  The AP's Steven Hurst examined Romney's foreign-policy rhetoric in a news analysis this week, writing that "It often appears that Romney is targeting the rest of the world as fiercely as he does his rivals for the party nomination and President Barack Obama." Referring to Romney's attacks on European socialism, Chinese currency manipulation and Russian duplicitousness, the article asks whether the tone of Romney's rhetoric will hurt him in the general election, or with the governments in question should he become president.

  "Other governments are not naive, and they understand the rough-and-tumble of U.S. politics just as we understand the rough-and-tumble of politics in other countries," responded Amb. Richard Williamson, a top Romney foreign-policy advisor.

  Obama: I'll get to immigration next term

  The president came into office promising comprehensive immigration reform, but the issue has largely fallen by the wayside during congressional battles over health care and the economy. In an interview with Univision Radio this week, the president promised to make the issue a priority if he is reelected for a second term. "I've got another five years coming up. We're going to get this done," he said.

  At Wednesday night's debate, both Santorum and Romney held up Arizona's tough immigration policies and the harsh tactics employed by controversial Maricopa Country Sherriff Joe Arpaio as models for how to address the issue. 

  Santorum's Dutch disease

  Santorum has left many scratching their heads with comments made several weeks ago in which he suggested that 1 in 20 deaths in the Netherlands result from forced euthanasia. Santorum continued to claim that elderly people in the Netherlands often wear bracelets that say "do not euthanize me" and "don't go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they're afraid because of budget purposes that they will not come out of that hospital if they go into it with sickness." The Dutch government declined to comment on the claim this week, but provided the New York Times with documents showing that there is no provision in Dutch law for forced euthanasia. Voluntary euthanasia has been legal there since 2002 and accounts for around 2 percent of deaths in the country.

  The Netherlands wasn't the only European country Santorum has taken a shot at this week. At a national security focused speech in Ohio, he took aim at the president's relationship with France: "He actually went to France a year or so ago and was with Nicolas Sarkozy and said that, 'Here I am with the French prime minister, our best ally in the world.' Now think about this. Name one time in the last 20 years that the French stood by us with anything."

  The remark was given a "pants-on-fire" rating by Politifact.

  What to watch for

  Arizona and Michigan voters head to the polls on Tuesday. RealClearPolitics's latest poll average shows Romney with a 9-point advantage in Arizona. He also seems to have retaken the lead in his birthplace state of Michigan, but still leads Santorum by less than two points.

  Tuesday's victor will have little time to rest on his laurels. The 10 Super Tuesday contests are right around the corner on March 6. The biggest delegate prizes of the day will be Ohio, where Santorum currently leads, and Georgia, where native son Gingrich has the advantage.

  The latest from FP

  Scott Clement looks at why polls are so all over the map when it comes to attacking Iran.

  Joshua Keating rounds up the foreign-policy highlights from Wednesday's debate.

  Uri Friedman examines Gingrich's not-so-covert love of covert ops.

  Michael Cohen argues that campaign-trail rhetoric touting American exceptionalism is obscuring the real causes of decline.

• Morning Brief: 'Friends of Syria' meet in Tunis

  Posted: February 24, 2012, 3:37 pm by Joshua Keating

  'Friends of Syria' meet in Tunis

  Top news: Diplomats and officials from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States are gathering in Tunis for the so-called "friends of Syria" meeting, meant to increase pressure on the Syrian government. The meeting comes just a day after a U.N. report concluded that the Assad regime had directly ordered "gross human rights violations".

  Russia and China, key allies of Syria who have protected it from sanction by the U.N. Security Council, will not attend the meeting. Syrian state TV has condemned the gathering as a meeting of  "symbols of colonialism".

  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking to reporters in London ahead of the meeting, seemed to take the United States closer to tacitly accepting the arming of rebel forces by outside actors. "There will be increasingly capable opposition forces. They will from somewhere, somehow, find the means to defend themselves as well as begin offensive measures," she said.

  On Thursday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked his predecessor, Kofi Annan, to serve as the U.N.'s new envoy to Syria. Annan was praised for his handling of Kenya's post-election violence in 2008, during which he convinced both sides to accept a power-sharing government. 

  A French journalist in Homs, who was wounded in the same attack that killed two other western journalists in Wednesday, released a video appeal for a ceasefire and medical attention. French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused the Assad regime of deliberately targeting the journalists.

  “Those who did this will have to account for it. Thanks to globalization, you can no longer commit murder under cover of utter silence,” Sarkozy said.

   

  Elections: Increasingly violent protests are building ahead of  Senegal's presidential election on Sunday, in which President Abdoulaye Wade is seeking a third term. An observer mission led by former Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo has arrived in the country.

  Asia

  • Riots in Afghanistan over the burning of Qurans by U.S. troops continued even after President Obama apologized for the incident. 
  • The U.S. and North Korea are holding their first official talks since Kim Jong Un came to power.
  • Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that he will challenge his successor, Julia Gillard, for leadership of the Labour Party, and the country.    

  Middle East

  • Israeli war planes launched a strike in Gaza early Thursday morning. 
  • More than 50 people have now been killed in a wave of bombings across Iraq. 
  • IAEA chief Yukiya Amano is expected to explain the recent failure of inspections in Iran today.

  Europe

  • Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel apologized for the police handling of a series of racially motivated murders last decade. 
  • Spain is urging the EU to ease its budget deficit target. 
  • The European Court of Human Rights says Italy violated the rights of migrants by sending them back to Libya. 

  Africa

  • World leaders pledged more funding to tackle terrorism and piracy in Somalia. 
  • An airstrike in a Shabaab-held region of Southern Somalia killed at least four people. 
  • Nearly 130,000 people have been displaced by fighting in Mali since mid-January, according to the U.N.

  Americas

  • Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is heading to Cuba for more surgery today. 
  • The judge in a libel case involving Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has fled the country.
  • Pro-government crowds surrounding the home of a leading Cuban dissident on Thursday. 

  
  

  FETHI BELAID/AFP/Getty Images

• Why did China downplay the Nanjing Massacre?

  Posted: February 23, 2012, 11:07 pm by Isaac Stone Fish

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  Earlier this week, during a visit to Nanjing the mayor of Nagoya, Japan expressed doubt that his nation's troops had slaughtered tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens in 1937. The event, known as the Nanjing Massacre, remains contentious in Sino-Japanese relations, with many Chinese feeling that unlike Germany and the Jews, the Japanese have not done enough to apologize for the massacre. Yet China's post-war response wasn't exactly open, either.  

  Here is a guest post from historian Tony Brooks, who has studied China's post-1949 relations with Japan:

  Today Nanjing is a confident, thriving Chinese provincial capital, located 190 miles west of Shanghai. According to a recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute, Nanjing ranks eighth globally for fastest GDP growth between now and 2025, ahead of New Delhi and Moscow.  

  This confidence masks the turmoil over the city's past. In 1937 invading Japanese forces rapidly converged on Nanjing, and after a short intense battle, the city fell into enemy hands. According to Chinese accounts, there followed a six week orgy of killing, looting and mass rape, which resulted in the deaths of three hundred thousand Chinese citizens. Yet in the years when Mao Zedong ruled China, from 1949 to 1976, the massacre has been virtually ignored in official records. Why is that?

  Because it was formerly the capital of the Nationalists, the side fighting the Communists in China's civil war, very few Communists lived in Nanjing in the 1930s.

  Ever since defeating the Nationalists and unifying China in 1949, the Communists have claimed that they won both the Anti-Japanese War (the Japanese war with China during and before World War II) and the Civil War, and therefore have the right to rule China. If the Communist Party saved China from the Japanese during the War, then why did they do nothing to prevent the Nanjing Massacre?

  The Party appears to have sidestepped this conundrum during the Mao era by ignoring the Nanjing Massacre. Instead, they concentrated on highlighting the (minor) role that CCP forces played in beating the Japanese. For three decades after the Second World War, it was not possible to openly discuss the Nanjing Massacre in mainland China. In a similar way, much else was forcibly airbrushed out of Mao era debates on the War, such as Chinese traitors and the role of non-communist forces in beating the Japanese.

  The People's Republic of China didn't ignore the war during the Mao years. The press discussed and debated the war in Marxist terms, and anniversaries saw staged anti-Japanese demonstrations of up to one million people. Like the proverbial elephant in the corner of the room, the Nanjing Massacre, which took place in Nationalist held territory in the Nationalist capital, was off-limits until the early 1980s.

  During the 1950s and 60s, Japanese delegations visited Nanjing, often with the aim of trying to improve bilateral relations. Nanjing archives record that on these visits, the Japanese visitors frequently asked whether they could visit sites relating to the massacre (of which there are hundreds dotted around Nanjing, mainly just outside the city walls). The Chinese refused. Instead, they took their guests to see the fruits of Communist rule, such as the new bridge across the Yangtze River at Nanjing, or model state owed concrete factories. The Nanjing Massacre did not fit into Mao era narratives of a Communist led victory in the War. One feels that there was a deep feeling of shame that such an atrocity took place on Chinese soil. While the state wanted to ignore the atrocities in Nanjing, this does not mean that the masses wanted to forget.

  Declassified archives from the 1950s and 60s show that during rehearsals for visits by Japanese to Nanjing, there was considerable Chinese disquiet. Comments such as "My mother's arm was blown off by the Japanese in Nanjing, why should I welcome them here!" and "the devils burnt our village to the ground, how dare you welcome them to Nanjing now!" suggest that there was a high level of opposition to the CCP ignoring the massacre.         

  In July 1982 everything changed. Six years after the death of Mao, the Japanese education ministry published textbooks that whitewashed Japan's role in World War II, and changed the word "invade" China to "advance" into China. New Chinese leadership seemed to argue that if Japanese politicians and ministries were going to forget the war, then the Chinese needed to present evidence of Japanese atrocities committed in Nanjing and elsewhere - in order to force them to remember. An impromptu Nanjing Massacre museum was opened in the city just two weeks after the textbook crisis broke out, conveniently just in time for the anniversary of the Japanese defeat on August 15, 1982. To cite just one example of how the Nanjing Massacre has been caught up in the battle for memory over the War, before 1982 virtually nothing was published by Chinese academics on the subject. Since that date, there has been an explosion of interest in the massacre, with over ten thousand scholarly articles and books published in Chinese alone. As the denial of the massacre by the mayor of Nagoya this week attests, memory of the war is still being bitterly fought over.     

• Covert ops: Newt Gingrich's (not so) secret weapon

  Posted: February 23, 2012, 7:58 pm by Uri Friedman

  

  If a wave of déjà vu washed over you last night as Newt Gingrich outlined his approach to the violence in Syria, there's good reason. The United States should "have our allies covertly helping destroy the Assad regime," the former House speaker argued duringthe Republican presidential debate in Arizona. "There are plenty of Arab-speaking groups that would be quite happy. There are lots of weapons available in the Middle East."

  The response echoed one of Gingrich's favorite refrains. In November, for instance, he advocated "maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian [nuclear] program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable."

  Of course, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have also called for covert action in Iran. But Gingrich wants to apply the tactic far more expansively. In January, he called for clandestine operations to "encourage the Cuban people to feel that the end of the Castro brothers is actually the end of the dictatorship and that the time has come for a transition."

  In explaining how he would have handled the Libyan uprising during an appearance on Fox News last spring, Gingrich declared that the United States should have initially "taken a quiet, careful, indirect route that would have gotten rid of Qaddafi but without using American force and without using overt American action."

  Just this month, he told Greta Van Susteren that he would alter President Obama's approach to Pakistan by urging Congress to repeal all restrictions on U.S. spying, thereby rebuilding the "American capacity to do genuine intelligence and genuine covert operations."

  Gingrich likes to say that his faith in covert operations stems from how U.S. President Ronald Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II confronted the Soviet Union and supported the Polish trade union and opposition movement Solidarity in the 1980s. "They helped organize Solidarity, financed it, got printing equipment and communications gear," Gingrich told Miami's CBS4, in explaining how the Castro regime could be overthrown nonviolently.

  All this overt talk about covert action, however, has some people worrying that a President Gingrich would preside over the least-secret secret operations in U.S. history. "What is it about 'covert' that the Republicans don't understand?" the Washington Post's David Ignatius marveled after one debate in which the candidates used the word nine times. If Gingrich really believed he could become president, he "wouldn't put himself in the position of having to deny in office something that he had already admitted he'd do if elected," added Shikha Dalmia at The Daily, flagging America's "inglorious history of covert operations" as a cautionary tale.

  To be sure, it's one thing to recommend secret operations on the campaign trail and quite another to blab about them while in office. But Gingrich doesn't exactly have a sterling track record on the governing side, either. In 1995, he spearheaded an effort in Congress to launch a $20 million covert CIA program against Tehran over the objections of CIA and Clinton administration officials, who argued the project would be wasteful and ineffectual.

  At the time, the New York Times News Service noted that Gingrich had "made his feelings known so strongly that his desire for a covert operation" had become public, getting picked up by news outlets and Iranian leaders and diminishing the chances that the program would succeed:

  Now the CIA finds itself required, against its better judgment, to plan a "secret" mission, with its cover already blown, in a region where U.S. policy has in recent years suffered failures and fiascos.

  If Gingrich does indeed become president, he could find himself in a similar bind -- in several dicey regions, no less.

• Xi Jinping visits the old sod

  Posted: February 23, 2012, 6:36 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  It might seem a little odd that Chinese president-in-waiting Xi Jinping chose Ireland as the one European country to visit following his U.S. trip last week, but as the Herald Tribune explains, he's the latest in a long line of Chinese leaders fascinated with the Emerald Isle:

  A key reason may be a kind of free-trade pilgrimage - to the Shannon Free Zone, first visited by Jiang Zemin, the former Communist Party chief but then a vice minister of the State Imports and Exports Administration, in 1980.

  Chinese officials often say the free-trade area, set up in 1959, was a model for their own successful Special Economic Zones in southern China, which powered economic reform here starting in 1980. China now wants to upgrade its industries, and the high-tech Shannon Free Zone is of interest as a regional model, Irish commentators said.

  Other leaders who have visited Shannon include two prime ministers, Wen Jiabao and Zhu Rongji, and two vice prime ministers, Huang Ju and Zeng Peiyan. During his own visit, Mr. Xi requested a personal briefing from Dr. Vincent Cunnane, the chief executive of Shannon Development, which runs the zone, the company said in a statement.[...]

  Over the last 15 years, Ireland achieved something that fascinates Chinese officials — a transition from a poor, agricultural nation to a rich, high-tech one.

  Even as Mr. Xi’s Air China 747-400 landed in Shannon, a statement by him was distributed to waiting journalists describing Ireland as “a success story of moving, in a short period of time, from an agro-pastoral economy to a knowledge economy.”

  Whatever the reason, the vice president's hosts also seem to have lined up the most stereotypically "oirish" set of photo-ops possible for him. More photos of Xi doing Irish things below the jump:[[BREAK]]

  

   

  

   

  

  

• Mikhail Prokhorov on the microphone

  Posted: February 23, 2012, 6:08 pm by Joshua Keating

  Billionaire presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov -- the seven-foot assassin with the roughneck business -- gets down on a Russian talk show. Somehow I don't think his business partner Jay-Z will be offering him a guest verse on Watch the Throne II:

  President Dmitry Medvedev once promised to "hold press conferences in the rap style". Perhaps a battle is in order?

• 'I get to give the answers I want': Foreign-policy highlights from the Arizona debate

  Posted: February 23, 2012, 5:55 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Last night's debate in Arizona featured the usual rhetoric in the economy, more conversation than usual about contraception, and more evidence for the theory that Ron Paul is essentially running as a blocking tight-end for Mitt Romney at this point, repeatedly hammering at Rick Santorum's credentials as a fiscal conservative. We also got the first extended conversation about the situation in Syria, though everyone seemed anxious to pivot back to the comparatively more comfortable topic of Iran. To the highlights:

  We kicked off our national-security discussion with the question of women in combat. Santorum had made some waves a few weeks ago by suggesting that he has reservations about opening more front-line duties to women since "men have emotions when you see a woman in harm’s way." He also made some inaccurate statements about Israel's stance on this issue. The other candidates proceeded to hang Santorum out to dry on this one. 

  Romney: 

  I would look to the people who are serving in the military to give the best assessment of where women can serve. We've had over 100 women lose their lives in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  
  I was with Governor Bob McDonnell. His daughter has served as a platoon leader in Afghanistan. He said that she doesn't get emotional when she faces risk, he's the one that gets emotional as she faces that kind of risk. And I believe women have the capacity to serve in our military in positions of significance and responsibility, as we do throughout our society. 

  He then transitioned to a discussion of defense cuts and national security more broadly. 

  Gingrich -- surprise, surprise -- thought it was a "misleading question":

  You live in a world of total warfare. Anybody serving our country in uniform virtually anywhere in the world could be in danger at virtually any minute. A truck driver can get blown up by a bomb as readily as the infantrymen. So I would say that you ought to ask the combat leaders what they think is an appropriate step, as opposed to the social engineers of the Obama administration.

  Paul's answer doesn't "want even the men to be over there."

  Santorum grumbled: 

  I still have those concerns, but I would defer to at least hearing the recommendations of those involved. But I think we have civilian control of the military, and these are things that should be decided not just by the generals, but we should not have social engineering, as I think we've seen from this president. We should have sober minds looking at what is in fact the best proper -- proper roles for everybody in combat.

  Then it was on to Iran, where Gingrich is no longer so enthusiastic about asking generals for their input:

  General Dempsey went on to say that he thought Iran was a rational actor. I can't imagine why he would say that. And I just cannot imagine why he would have said it. The fact is, this is a dictator, Ahmadinejad, who has said he doesn't believe the Holocaust existed. This is a dictator who said he wants to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth. This is a dictator who said he wants to drive the United States out of the Middle East. I'm inclined to believe dictators. Now I -- I think that it's dangerous not to.
  
  If -- if an Israeli prime minister, haunted by the history of the Holocaust, recognizing that three nuclear weapons is a holocaust in Israel, if an Israeli prime minister calls me and says, I believe in the defense of my country. This goes back to a point that Congressman Paul raised that we probably disagree on. I do believe there are moments when you preempt. If you think a madman is about to have nuclear weapons and you think that madman is going to use those nuclear weapons, then you have an absolute moral obligation to defend the lives of your people by eliminating the capacity to get nuclear weapons.
  

  Romney pounded home his talking points:

  Ahmadinejad having fissile material that he can give to Hezbollah and Hamas and that they can bring into Latin America and potentially bring across the border into the United States to let off dirty bombs here. I mean -- or -- or more sophisticated bombs here, this -- we simply cannot allow Iran to have nuclear weaponry. And -- and -- and this president has a lot of failures. It's hard -- it's hard to think of -- economically his failures, his -- his policies in a whole host of areas have been troubling.
  
  But nothing in my view is as serious a failure as his failure to deal with Iran appropriately. This president -- this president should have put in place crippling sanctions against Iran, he did not. He decided to give Russia -- he decided to give Russia their number one foreign policy objective, removal of our missile defense sites from Eastern Europe and got nothing in return. He could have gotten crippling sanctions against Iran. He did not. When dissident voices took to the street in Iran to protest a stolen election there, instead of standing with them, he bowed to the election. This is a president... who has made it clear through his administration in almost every communication we've had so far, that he does not want Israel to take action. That he opposes military action. This is a president who should have instead communicated to Iran that we are prepared, that we are considering military options. They're not just on the table. They are in our hand. We must now allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. If they do, the world changes. America will be at risk. And some day, nuclear weaponry will be used. If I am president, that will not happen. If we reelect Barack Obama, it will happen. 

  Santorum took the opportunity to remind the crowd of his long record on Iran, take a shot at the vice president, and stand resolutely behind.... Hosni Mubarak:

  I would say that if you're looking for a president to be elected in this country that will send that very clear message to Iran as to the seriousness of the American public to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon, there would be no better candidate than me because I have been on the trail of Iran and trying to advocate for stopping them getting a nuclear weapon for about eight years now.
  
  I was the author of a bill back in 2008 that talked about sanctions on a nuclear program that our intelligence community said didn't exist and had the President of the United States, president bush oppose me for two years.
  
  And, by the way, so did Joe Biden on the floor of the Senate, and Barack Obama. I always say if you want to know what foreign policy position to take, find out what Joe Biden's position is and take the opposite opinion and you'll be right 100 percent of the time.
  
  But they opposed me. He actively opposed me. We did pass that bill eventually at the end of 2006, and it was to fund the pro- democracy movement, $100 million a year. Here's what I said -- we need to get this -- these pro-American Iranians who are there, who want freedom, want democracy, and want somebody to help them and support them.
  
  Well, we put -- we put some money out there and guess what? Barack Obama cut it when he came into office. And when the Green Revolution rose, the pro-democracy prose, we had nothing. We had no connection, no correlation and we did absolutely nothing to help them.
  
  In the meantime, when the radicals in Egypt and the radicals in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood, when they rise against either a feckless leader or a friend of ours in Egypt, the president is more than happy to help them out.
  
  When they're going up against a dangerous theocratic regime that wants to wipe out the state of Israel, that wants to dominate the radical Islamic world and take on the great Satan, the United States, we do nothing. That is a president that must go. And you want a leader who will take them on? I'll do that. 

  Paul, ignoring the boos, said there's no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapon, and went on to plea for a return to declarations of war: 

  Now, if they are so determined to go to war, the only thing I plead with you for, if this is the case, is do it properly. Ask the people and ask the Congress for a declaration of war. This is war and people are going to die. And you have got to get a declaration of war.
  
  And just to go and start fighting -- but the sanctions are already backfiring. And all that we do is literally doing the opposite. When we've been -- were attacked, we all came together. When we attacked the -- when we -- when we put them under attack, they get together and it neutralizes that. They rally around their leaders.
  
  So what we're doing is literally enhancing their power. Think of the sanctions we dealt with Castro. Fifty years and Castro is still there. It doesn't work. So I would say a different approach. We need to at least -- we talked -- we talked to the Soviets during the Cuban crisis. We at least can talk to somebody who does not -- we do not have proof that he has a weapon. Why go to war so carelessly? 

  Then came what Chuck Todd called the " first news of the debate", an extended discussion on Syria. However, when asked if he would support intervention against the Assad regime, Santorum seemed anxious to bring the discussion back to Iran:

  Syria is a puppet state of Iran. They are a threat not just to Israel, but they have been a complete destabilizing force within Lebanon, which is another problem for Israel and Hezbollah. They are a country that we can do no worse than the leadership in Syria today, which is not the case, and some of the other countries that we readily got ourselves involved in.
  
  So it's sort of remarkable to me we would have -- here again, it's -- I think it's the timidness (sic) of this president in dealing with the Iranian threat, because Syria and Iran is an axis. And the president -- while he couldn't reach out deliberately to Iran but did reach out immediately to Syria and established an embassy there. And the only reason he removed that embassy was because it was threatened of being -- of being overtaken, not because he was objecting to what was going on in Syria.
  
  This president has -- has obviously a very big problem in standing up to the Iranians in any form. If this would have been any other country, given what was going on and the mass murders that we're seeing there, this president would have quickly and -- joined the international community, which is calling for his ouster and the stop of this, but he's not. He's not. Because he's afraid to stand up to Iran.
  
  He opposed the sanctions in Iran against the -- against the central banks until his own party finally said, "You're killing us. Please support these sanctions."
  
  Ladies and gentlemen, we have a president who isn't going to stop them. He isn't going to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. We need a new president or we are going to have a cataclysmic situation with a -- a power that is the most prolific proliferator of terror in the world that will be able to do so with impunity because they will have a nuclear weapon to protect -- protect them for whatever they do. It has to be stopped, and this president is not in a position to do that.

  Gingrich used the Syria question to pivot to his energy plan: 

  Well, the first thing I'd do, across the board for the entire region, is create a very dramatic American energy policy of opening up federal lands and opening up offshore drilling, replacing the EPA.
  
  The Iranians have been practicing closing the Straits of Hormuz, which has one out of every five barrels of oil in the world going through it. We have enough energy in the United States that we would be the largest producer of oil in the world by the end of this decade. We would be capable of saying to the Middle East, "We frankly don't care what you do. The Chinese have a big problem because you ain't going to have any oil."
  
  [...]
  
  Second, we clearly should have our allies -- this is an old- fashioned word -- we have have our allies covertly helping destroy the Assad regime. There are plenty of Arab-speaking groups that would be quite happy. There are lots of weapons available in the Middle East.
  
  And I agree with -- with Senator Santorum's point. This is an administration which, as long as you're America's enemy, you're safe.
  
  You know, the only people you've got to worry about is if you're an American ally. 

  Not sure if "allies" or "covertly" was the old-fashioned word Gingrich was referring to. 

  Romney was the only one who actually advocated a position on intervention in Syria, and showed off his briefing on Syria's political ethnography:
  

  We have very bad news that's come from the Middle East over the past several months, a lot of it in part because of the feckless leadership of our president. But one little piece of good news, and that is the key ally of Iran, Syria, is -- has a leader that's in real trouble. And we ought to grab a hold of that like it's the best thing we've ever seen.
  
  There's things that are -- we're having a hard time getting our hands around, like, what's happening in Egypt. But in Syria, with Assad in trouble, we need to communicate to the Alawites, his friends, his ethnic group, to say, look, you have a future if you'll abandon that guy Assad.
  
  We need to work with -- with Saudi Arabia and with Turkey to say, you guys provide the kind of weaponry that's needed to help the rebels inside Syria. This is a critical time for us.
  
  If we can turn Syria and Lebanon away from Iran, we finally have the capacity to get Iran to pull back. And we could, at that point, with crippling sanctions and a very clear statement that military action is an action that will be taken if they pursue nuclear weaponry, that could change the course of world history. 

  An exasperated Ron Paul tried again: 

  I've tried the moral argument. I've tried the constitutional argument on these issues. And they don't -- they don't go so well. But there -- there's an economic argument, as well.

  As a matter of fact, Al Qaida has had a plan to bog us down in the Middle East and bankrupt this country. That's exactly what they're doing. We've spent $4 trillion of debt in the last 10 years being bogged down in the Middle East.
  
  The neoconservatives who now want us to be in Syria, want us to go to Iran, have another war, and we don't have the money. We're already -- today gasoline hit $6 a gallon in Florida. And we don't have the money. 

  So there you have it. The first time Syria has come up in a presidential debate, it was taken as an opportunity by the candidates to talk about the Iranian nuclear program, offshore drilling, and the national debt. I won't claim these issues are unrelated, but surely it might be possible to actually talk about potential U.S. policy responses to the situation in Syria for a few minutes?

  The war in Afghanistan wasn't discussed. Neither was trade or the eurozone crisis.  

   

• Morning Brief: Afghan protests over Quran burning spread

  Posted: February 23, 2012, 2:50 pm by David Kenner

  Afghan protests over Quran burning spread

  Top story: Afghans protested for a third day against the burning of the Quran and other religious material at Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan. Crowds turned violent in parts of the country, sparking clashes that left seven dead and many injured.

  Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a statement imploring protesters not to resort to violence, and called a meeting with both houses of Parliament. Some members of Parliament have called on Afghans to take up arms against the U.S. military in response to the incident.

  The Taliban have also tried to use the Quran burning issue to rally support for their insurgency against the American presence. The group issued a statement calling on Afghans to attack U.S. military bases and American soldiers in order to "give a kind of lesson to them that they never dare to insult the holy Quran."

  The Karzai government has used this episode to renew its demand that the large U.S.-run prison next to Bagram Airfield be handed over to Afghan control. U.S. officials have so far refused, saying that the Afghan government lacks the capacity to run the site.

  Attacks in Iraq kill dozens: A wave of attacks targeted predominantly Shiite areas across Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 50 people.

  Middle East

  • An Egyptian judge who has presided over the case of former President Hosni Mubarak said that he will issue his verdict on June 2.
  • The Israeli Supreme Court invalidated a law that granted ultra-Orthodox Jews engaged in religious studies an exemption from military service.
  • The White House condemned Iran's decision to block an IAEA inspection of a military site, calling it a "failure" for Tehran.

  Europe

  • Thousands of Russians rallied in Moscow to support Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's presidential bid.
  • The president of Abkhazia survived an assassination attempt.
  • Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released after spending a night in jail, as authorities investigate his involvement with a prostitution ring.

  Asia

  • U.S. and North Korean officials met in Beijing for talks over North Korea's nuclear program.
  • Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard called a leadership vote following the resignation of her foreign minister, Kevin Rudd.
  • A car bomb exploded in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing 15 people.

  Africa

  • International leaders gathered in Britain for a conference on the future of Somalia.
  • The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Italy violated the rights of African migrants by sending them back to Libya.
  • South Sudan expelled the head of a Chinese-owned oil company for his involvement in its dispute with Sudan.

  Americas

  • A train crash in Buenos Aires claimed the lives of 49 people and left over 600 injured.
  • Mexican prison guards, who were allegedly complicit in a recent prison break and massacre involving a drug gang, were arrested.
  • Heavy rains forced the Bolivian government to declare a state of emergency due to flooding.

  
  

  STR/AFP/Getty Images

• China raises movie quota; Hollywood on best behavior

  Posted: February 22, 2012, 1:46 am by Joshua Keating

  

  One deliverable from Xi Jinping's trip to America seems to be a new deal to allow more U.S. films -- at least 3-D ones -- to be distributed in China. The Guardian reports:

  China currently permits only 20 big foreign films a year to be released there, to the frustration of US studios. The pact allows in an extra 14 films each year, provided they are in Imax or 3D formats.

  It also allows foreign film-makers to keep a bigger share of box office takings: they will receive 25% instead of 13%.

  "This is a very big deal," said Chris Dodd, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America.

  "The industry has been living with the numbers in terms of percentages and quotas for 20 years … it begged for a conclusion."

  Though the Hollywood films released in China are few in number, they account for about 40% of the country's box office takings.

  This is obviously a big deal for Hollywood's bottom line. But as a recent article in the Diplomat pointed out, China's growing importance as a market for Hollywood could affect the kinds of films that studios make: 

  Critics claim that studios will be pressured to produce works that depict China in a sympathetic light, a fear prompted by China’s strict controls over film importation, distribution and production, along with the rebuffing of recent WTO rulings to allow foreign distribution and expand a 20-a-year cap on foreign movies.

  “They made it very clear in their last congress meeting that the overriding theme would be projecting an image overseas that they want projected, while Hollywood’s No.1 concern has always been the bottom line,” says Michael Berry, a lecturer of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara.

  “U.S. producers are taking an ultra-conservative route, and self-censorship is happening at a very early stage. In concept development there’s already an understanding of what will fly in China, and that gets concentrated by the time it gets to a screenplay.”

  And what flies in China today isn’t very much.

  Beijing’s thumbscrew restrictions include: No sex, religion, time travel, the occult, or “anything that could threaten public morality or portray criminal behavior.”

  All film scripts have to be signed off by a government censor and anything that depicts Tibet, Tiananmen Square, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, Uyghur separatists or Taiwan favorably is typically banned.

  In the late 1990s, Tibet was the cause of choice for Hollywood stars. The world's biggest bands were playing the Beastie Boys-organized Tibetan Freedom Concerts, studios were releasing films like Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun and magazines were running earnest headlines like "Can Hollywood Save Tibet."

  Richard Gere may still be a dogged advocate for Tibetan independence, but for the most part, Hollywood seems to have moved on and its hard not to imagine that the potential Chinese market has something to do with it. As the Diplomat recalls, the fallout over Kundun put Disney on Beijing's blacklist for years. The company had to go as far as to hire Henry Kissinger to smooth things out.  Today, studios seem a bit more cautious, even completely re-dubbing a planned Red Dawn remake to change the bad guys from Chinese to North Korea. 

  Given the experience of actors like Brad Pitt, who is reportedly still banned from entering China, 15 years after Seven Years in Tibet came out, I doubt any more Dalai Lama-themed stories will be coming to a screen near you in the next few years.  

• Putin praises Soviet-era spying

  Posted: February 22, 2012, 1:20 am by Joshua Keating

  FP's newest contributor, Vladimir Putin, has made stregnthening Russia's defenses a centerpiece of his reelection campaign. To that effect, during a recent interview, he praised Soviet-era spying in the United States: 

  "You know, when the States already had nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union was only building them, we got a significant amount of information through Soviet foreign intelligence channels," Putin said, according to state-run Itar-Tass.

  "The were carrying the information away not on microfilm but literally in suitcases. Suitcases!"

  Ah, the good old days. But who needs suitcases when you have dispersed networks of proxy computers. 

• Morning Brief: Two journalists killed by shelling in Syria

  Posted: February 22, 2012, 3:40 pm by Uri Friedman

  Two journalists killed by shelling in Syria

  Top story: The French government and opposition activists are reporting that the American reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed on Wednesday as Syrian forces shelled the flashpoint city of Homs, including a makeshift media center where the two journalists were staying. The deaths come less than a week after New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid died in Syria of an apparent asthma attack and only a day after a Syrian video blogger was killed in Homs.

  Just yesterday, Colvin (pictured above, on right) had reported on the situation in Homs for the BBC. "I watched a little baby die today" she noted. "Absolutely horrific, just a two-year-old." Reuters reports that 19 people have been killed in Homs so far today.

  On Tuesday, meanwhile, China, Iran, and Russia all expressed support for the Syrian government. Russia says it's working with all sides in the conflict to ensure safe passage for humanitarian convoys, while the Red Cross is meeting with Syria's main opposition group in Geneva.

  Afghanistan: At least four people have been killed in Afghanistan in a second day of protests over the accidental burning of copies of the Koran at NATO's Bagram airbase.

  Asia

  • Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has resigned as rumors swirl that he is gunning for Prime Minister Julia Gillard's job.

  • Indonesian police stormed a prison in Bali after a deadly riot by inmates.

  • South Korea is urging China to reconsider its decision to repatriate 30 North Korean refugees.

  Middle East

  • The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that nuclear talks with Iran have failed and that Tehran rejected its request to visit a military site, as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vows to stick to Iran's "nuclear course."

  • Israel will release a Palestinian member of Islamic Jihad who went on a hunger strike to protest his detention without charge.

  • Preliminary figures suggest that turnout in Yemen's first presidential election since the resignation of Ali Abdullah Saleh reached 60 percent despite deadly violence in the south.

  Americas

  • Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he'll undergo surgery on a new lesion that could indicate that his cancer has returned.

  • Prison guards helped the Zetas orchestrate a jailbreak and massacre of rival drug gang members in Mexico. 

  • The jail fire in Honduras that killed 360 prisoners may have begun after an inmate fell asleep while smoking.

  Europe

  • The leader of the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has escaped a deadly ambush on his convoy.

  • French police are questioning Dominique Strauss-Kahn for a second day as part of an investigation into a prostitution ring.

  • Spain is preparing to repatriate gold and silver coins worth several hundred million euros that a Florida-based treasure hunting company recovered from a 19th-century shipwreck. 

  Africa

  • Former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo is visiting Senegal to help restore calm ahead of Sunday's elections.

  • The United Nations is set to increase the number of African Union peacekeeping troops in Somalia by nearly 6,000 soldiers.

  • West Africa is experiencing an uptick in piracy and arms, cocaine, and human trafficking, according to the United Nations.

  
  

  Arthur Edwards/WPA Pool/Getty Images

• Want to spruce up your tired old concept? Put a 2.0 on it!

  Posted: February 21, 2012, 7:42 pm by Joshua Keating

  Today, Luke Bozier, a former Labour Party web guru who recently defected to the Tories, has an op-ed up at the Huffington Post recommending "intervention 2.0" as an international strategy for responding to the bloodshed in Syria. Here's how it works: 

  Instead of invasion, the new paradigm is to support and encourage grassroots movements inside the borders of countries whose regimes we seek to change. At an opportune moment, Western powers would utilise their unique military assets to ensure a swift, relatively happy ending.[...]

  Direct intervention is off the table, thanks to Russia and China's obstinate position at the UN. So countries like ours have to find ways to support the uprising, without directly engaging the Syrian military. Options include the covert supply of weapons, the promise of exile to senior figures willing to abandon Assad, training, strategic and tactical support to the armed resistance, and the de-recognition of the Ba'athist regime as the government of Syria.

  There's an argument to be made for intervention of this kind, but it's not exactly a paradigm-shattering approach. The idea of providing tactical support to rebels in countries whose governments we want to overthrow wasn't even that new when Dwight Eisenhower was doing it.  And Bozier's notion that "Previously, oppressed people didn't have a voice or the tools needed to stand up, thanks to the Internet they now do," would have been news to Mahatma Gandhi or the crowds at the Bastille.

  This is just the latest example of the rampant "2.0" abuse that has swept through the media and policymaking circles in the years since web 2.0 first became a buzzword. We have Wael Ghonim's recent book Revolution 2.0. The State Department touts "Civil Society 2.0". (This is admittedly less cumbersome that P2P2G.)

  It's hard to find a political concept that hasn't been 2.0'd these days. There's public diplomacy 2.0, counterinsurgency 2.0, Jihad 2.0, war 2.0, Islam 2.0, Christianity 2.0, Judaism 2.0, communism 2.0 and capitalism 2.0, feminism 2.0, Europe 2.0, India 2.0, conservatism 2.0, Obama 2.0, Putin 2.0, Tories 2.0, democracy 2.0, energy 2.0, nuclear 2.0, Zionism 2.0, al Qaeda 2.0, multilateralism 2.0, IMF 2.0, NATO 2.0, and environmentalism 2.0.

  Mea culpa: FP has indulged in this with pieces exploring authoritarianism 2.0, Libya 2.0, reset 2.0, development 2.0, Tahrir Square 2.0 and more.

  The problem with "2.0" is that, in additional quickly becoming a tiresome cliché, it's often used to dress up not-particularly-original concepts as high-tech, paradigm-shattering developments. Pretending that the rules have completely changed because of the advances in information technology seems like a very easy way to avoid learning from the still pertinent historical examples of the pre-networked world.

  As Rebecca McKinnon writes in her new book, Consent of the Networked, "Contrary to what some people may have hoped and believed, the Internet does not change human nature. "It generally doesn't change the basic rules of global politics either. The basic merits and flaws of an idea like humanitarian intervention still apply -- even in a post-Facebook world.

• Morning Brief: Europe agrees on new Greece bailout

  Posted: February 21, 2012, 3:02 pm by David Kenner

  Europe agrees on new Greece bailout

  Top story: European Union finance ministers approved a new bailout package for Greece, designed to help the debt-strapped nation avoid default. Greece will receive $172 billion under the terms of the deal, but will have to commit to strict austerity measures.

  Negotiations stretched on for 13 hours, as EU officials struggled to find a way for Greece to reduce its public debt from the current level of roughly 160 percent to 120.5 percent by 2020. The solution that was eventually reached will force private banks that hold Greek bonds to take a significant loss on their investment.

  Under the terms of the deal, a permanent European team will be set up to monitor Greece's implementation of the austerity measures. Among other measures, the bailout package requires Greece to cut pharmaceutical expenditures by over $1.3 billion in 2012, cut overtime pay for doctors by $66 million, and save nearly $400 million in military procurement. It also requires that Greece bolster its weak tax collection system.

  Irans warns it may strike first: As tensions with Israel rise, the deputy head of Iran's armed forces warned that Iran may take pre-emptive action against threats to its national interests.

  Middle East

  • Yemenis voted on Tuesday to remove President Ali Abdullah Saleh from office.
  • Two Iranian ships that had docked in a Syrian port reportedly departed, sailing through the Suez Canal.
  • The Syrian city of Homs once again came under artillery bombardment from the Syrian military.

  Asia

  • Thousands of Afghans protested outside Bagram Air Base over the improper disposal of the Quran by U.S. forces.
  • Burmese officials lifted restrictions on election campaigning for Aung San Suu Kyi's political party.
  • An explosion at a Chinese steel factory killed 13 people.

  Europe

  • Former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn is being questioned by French police for involvement in a prostitution ring.
  • EU officials will vote on legislation that would define Canada's oil sands as more polluting than other sources of oil.
  • Britain's public finances ran a large surplus in January.

  Africa

  • Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe denied reports that he had cancer, joking that he had been "resurrected" more times than Jesus Christ.
  • The Somali militant group al-Shabaab reportedly kidnaps entire school classes and forces them to fight, according to a new Human Rights Watch report.
  • Nigerian security forces reported that they killed eight Islamist militants in the northeast of the country.

  Americas

  • The United States and Mexico agreed on a deal to regulate oil and gas along their maritime border.
  • A carefully orchestrated gang attack in a Mexican prison resulted in the deaths of 44 inmates, and allowed 30 more prisoners to escape.
  • Families of those who died in a Honduras prison fire broke into a morgue to demand their loved ones' remains.

  
  

• Another not-so-genius terror plot foiled

  Posted: February 17, 2012, 10:10 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  An would-be suicide bomber was arrested on Capitol Hill today after accepting what he thought was an explosive vest from undercover agents. Roll Call's Emma Dumain has the details:

  Capitol Police were “intimately involved in the investigation for the duration of the operation” and assisted in today’s arrest, spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said in a statement.

  “The arrest was the culmination of a lengthy and extensive operation,” the statement continued. “At no time was the public or Congressional community in any danger.”[...]

  Local reports by Fox News describe the individual in custody as “a man, in his 30s and of Moroccan descent” who has been a target of a lengthy FBI investigation. Fox News reported that the suspect believed the undercover FBI agents assisting him were al-Qaida operatives.

  Roll Call notes that the story is similar to that of Rezwan Ferdaus, who was arrested last September in the midst of a plot to attack the Capitol with a remote-controlled aircraft.  Ferdaus was also in communication with FBI agents posing as al Qaeda members.

  The case is also similar to that Farooque Ahmed, who thought he was going to blow up the DC Metro system in 2010, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who thought he was going to blow up a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland Oregon in 2010, David Williams, who thought he was going to blow up a Bronx synagogue in 2009, and the "Fort Dix Five," who thought they were going to attack a New Jersey military base in 2006.

  In each case, undercover FBI agents spent months communicating and providing fake resources to the suspects before springing the trap. (This isn't even addressing the numerous sting operations run by the NYPD without the FBI's help, described by Louis Klarevas in his piece, "The Idiot Jihadist Next Door.") 

  The increasing frequency of these operations is bound to raise some questions about whether law enforcement agencies are pushing along the development of plots that the individuals involved might never have acted on without the longterm encouragement of their "al Qaeda contacts."

  The other question is just how many times the FBI can get would-be terrorists to fall for this. 

• The Election 2012 Weekly Report: Revving up in Michigan

  Posted: February 17, 2012, 9:17 pm by Joshua Keating

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  Mr. Xi comes to Washington

  This week's Washington foreign-policy agenda was dominated by the visit of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the country's presumptive next leader. Xi's meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama was fairly cordial, but it fell to his direct counterpart -- Vice President Joe Biden -- to register a few complaints about China's trade practices and human rights record. "As Americans, we welcome competition," Biden said. "But cooperation, as you and I have spoken about, can only be mutually beneficial if the game is fair."  

  Mitt Romney took aim at the administration's China policy in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, saying that the president had come into office as a "near supplicant to Beijing" and had since "demurred from raising issues of human rights for fear it would compromise agreement on the global economic crisis or even ‘the global climate-change crisis.' Such weakness has only encouraged Chinese assertiveness and made our allies question our staying power in East Asia." Romney promised to label China a currency manipulator on "day one of my presidency."

  Onetime candidate Jon Huntsman, a former ambassador to China who now has endorsed Romney, addressed the anti-China rhetoric that has appeared in both the presidential race and congressional races throughout the country. "It's much easier to talk about China in terms of the fear factor than the opportunity factor," Huntsman told MSNBC." When it comes to China, I think it's wrongheaded when you talk about slapping a tariff on Day One. That pushes aside the reality, the complexity of the relationship."

  Motor City Mayhem

  The next primaries will take place on Feb. 28 in Arizona and Michigan. The Wolverine State is considered home turf for Romney -- he was born in Detroit, his father was a popular governor, and Mitt won big over John McCain there in 2008 -- but the Michigan native trails Rick Santorum by 9 points in the current RealClearPolitics poll average.

  Romney has defended his opposition to the Obama administration's auto industry bailouts -- a somewhat controversial position during a week when General Motors reported record profits. Romney has emphasized his deep roots in the state and nostalgia for the days of U.S. auto dominance, telling a crowd, "I love cars. I grew up totally in love with cars. It used to be, in the '50s and '60s, if you showed me 1 square foot of almost any part of the car, I could tell you what brand it was -- the model and so forth.... Now, with all the Japanese cars, I'm not quite so good at it. But I still know American cars pretty well." (Never mind that the candidate drives a Canadian-made Chrysler in a new ad.)

  Santorum, meanwhile, has promised to revitalize the U.S. manufacturing sector by giving tax incentives to companies that move production back from overseas and cutting away at Obama-era regulations.

  Border War

  Meanwhile, Romney still leads Santorum in Arizona, but the gap is narrowing, despite the fact that the former Pennsylvania senator has virtually no ground organization in the state. The Arizona contest may push the candidates back to the right on immigration, after some more conciliatory rhetoric in Florida. Romney has been touting the support of Kris Kobach, the attorney and Kansas secretary of state who played a critical role in drafting Arizona's controversial SB 1070 immigration law.

  Arizona has gone Republican in every presidential election but one since 1952, but Democrats may be hoping that the state will be in play in the fall, thanks to a backlash from the state's growing Hispanic population. Senior Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod has visited the state in recent months and the Democratic National Committee has begun running ads targeting Latino voters.

  An Iranian attack on North Dakota?

  Santorum's longtime fixation on the threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions has been well-documented. But the rhetoric reached a new level this week when the candidate warned an audience in North Dakota that they might be a potential target for Iranian-sponsored terrorism. "Folks, you've got energy here. They're going to bother you. They'll bother you, because you are a very key and strategic resource for this country," he said. "No one is safe. No one is safe from asymmetric threats of terrorism.... That's what Iran will be all about unless we stop them from getting that nuclear weapon."

  As the National Review pointed out, Santorum's security concerns have dampened his enthusiasm for building a massive new oil pipeline through the state.

  Adelson re-ups on Gingrich

  Onetime frontrunner Newt Gingrich is sitting out the current contests in Michigan and Arizona, focusing on the ten March 6 "Super Tuesday" primaries, which include his home state of Georgia. Gingrich spent the majority of this week fundraising in California.

  Gingrich's slumping campaign may get a significant shot in the arm with news that billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson -- his principal financier -- will give an additional $10 million to the Super PAC backing Gingrich.  Adelson, known for his hawkish views on Israel and opposition to a Palestinian state, has given $11 million so far to the "Winning the Future" Super PAC.

  What to watch for

  Last week's Maine caucus may not actually be over yet. Romney was declared the winner -- by less than 200 votes over Ron Paul -- on Saturday, Feb. 11. despite the fact that one county had delayed its caucus due to weather and numerous irregularities were reported at other stations. The state GOP has announced that it will release a new vote total in March -- after Super Tuesday. Maine is a small state and its caucus is what's known as a "beauty contest" (it doesn't actually award any delegates), but it won't do wonders for the credibility of the early caucus system, if yet another victory -- remember Iowa? -- is posthumously taken away from Romney. 

  Evidently, the candidates seem to have tired of debates. A planned CNN debate scheduled for March 1 in Georgia has been canceled after Romney and Paul declined to participate.

  On the Election Channel

  Uri Friedman looks at a new poll that shows a majority of Americans support the use of force to prevent a nuclear Iran.

  Scott Clement says despite the recent dust-up over contraceptive-covering insurance, religion may not actually matter that much to voters.

  Daniel Drezner says Romney's China policy "reads like it was composed by the Hulk."

  Stephen Walt says hawks should vote for Obama.

  Michael A. Cohen looks at why, with Obama in office, liberals came to support the secret war on terror.

• BREAKING: Americans like Canada, not so fond of Iran

  Posted: February 17, 2012, 8:56 pm by Joshua Keating

  A new Gallup poll on U.S. attitudes toward other countries likely won't shock many:

  

   

  Most interesting may be the numbers on Mexico, which jumped six points since last year despite all the grim drug war news and the anti-immigration rhetoric on the campaign trail.

  You also have to wonder who the 13 percent of Americans with a positive view of North Korea are, and why that number is trending upward.

• Morning Brief: Syrian government steps up assault on Homs following U.N. vote

  Posted: February 17, 2012, 3:18 pm by Joshua Keating

  Syrian government steps up assault on Homs following U.N. vote

  Top news: The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support a non-binding resolution condemning Syria's government. The resolution, which passed 137 to 12 with 17 abstentions, calls for the Syrian government to immediately halt attacks on civilians and urges Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to appoint a special envoy for Syria. 

  Following the vote, Syrian forces appear to have stepped up their bombardment on the city of Homs with what residents are calling the worst shelling since the government began its crackdown on strongholds of the uprising 13 days ago. Government forces have yet to make a concerted ground assault on the city center, but have vowed to do so.

  China, whose isolation -- along with Russia -- as a protector of Syria on the U.N. Security Council was highlighted by the General Assembly vote, has dispatched an envoy to Damascus. Beijing has given few indications of Vice Minister Zhai Jun's agenda in Syria, but he did condemn the "use of force to interfere in Syria or the forceful pushing of a so-called regime change."

  Also on Thursday, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress that al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate appears to have infiltrated Syrian opposition groups and is likely responsible for recent bombings in Damascus and Aleppo.  

  Media: Celebrated New York Times Middle East correspondent Anthony Shadid died of an asthma attack while reporting in Syria. 

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  Middle East

  • Celebrations are being held in Benghazi marking the one-year anniversary of the uprising that went on to overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi.
  • The Muslim Brotherhood has threatened to review Egypt's 1979 treaty with Israel if the U.S. cuts off aid. 
  • Iran has sent a new letter to the European Union offering to restart nuclear negotiations.

  Asia

  • Afghanistan will require army soldiers to move their families into the country as a way of preventing Taliban infiltrators. 
  • A suicide bomber killed 21 people in Northwest Pakistan. 
  • Thai police say they're seeking two more suspects in the bombing plot apparently targeting Israeli diplomats. 

  Americas

  • "Underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was sentenced to life in prison.
  • Ecuador's president won a $42 million libel suit against one of the country's largest newspapers. 
  • International media groups and condemned recent attacks on the press in Trinidad and Tobago. 

  Europe

  • German President Christian Wulff resigned over an influence-peddling scandal. 
  • Prime Minister David Cameron made a plea for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom.
  • Cameron and France's Nicolas Sarkozy and meeting in Paris today for their first talks since the tense EU summit in December.  

  Africa

  • Experts say South Sudan is unlikely to begin producing oil for months, even if a dispute with the north is resolved. 
  • Two Ugandan ministers resigned over a corruption scandal. 
  • Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara is widely expected to be named as the next leader of West Africa's economic bloc today. 

  
  

  AFP/Getty Images

• Iowa governor: We have "a little bit of an in" with China

  Posted: February 16, 2012, 1:54 am by Isaac Stone Fish

  

  Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad hosted Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping this week; on Wednesday, a delegation of Chinese officials agreed to buy more than $4 billion dollars of soybeans. Xi, who many expect to be the next president of China, visited Iowa as part of a four-day trip to the United States. What follows is a phone interview with Governor Branstad after Xi's visit, edited and condensed for clarity.

  Foreign Policy: You had said that you would let President Barack Obama's administration handle political and human rights questions regarding Xi and China. Any regrets that you didn't use this chance to raise human rights questions with Vice President Xi?

  Governor Terry Branstad: I think my role as governor is really to build long-term friendships and relationships. The difference in those things needs to be worked out on the national level between those two countries.  

  FP: There's been a lot of talk about a potential slowdown of the Chinese economy. How is Iowa preparing for this?

  TB: Of course you're going to see some slowdown. China has had a phenomenal growth rate, but it's very unlikely that it's going to continue at that speed. Still, even if their growth rate is only 5-6 percent, compared with us, who have a minuscule growth rate, or Europe, which is on the brink of financial collapse, they're still in strong condition. Economically they don't have the debt problem that the U.S. and Europe have. There are a lot of things that China really has going for it.

  FP: When's the next time you'll see Xi?

  TB: I talked to him about this at dinner.  He had his first trip to the United States here when I was governor, April 26, 1985, and I would love to be the first governor to meet with him in Beijing when he becomes president.  

  FP: Isn't it not yet certain whether or not Xi will become president of China? Did he indicate anything?

  TB: He's very careful, and he's not presumptive. He's the vice president at this time, and is very cognizant of his role there. I think the general [thought] is that he is very likely to be the next president of China, and so we're obviously hoping that will be the case, and expecting that to be the case.

  We think that Iowa has a little bit of an in, and we'd love to build on that, and we know that personal relations are important.

  FP: What did he say when you asked him about visiting him as president?

  TB: He didn't directly answer that, but said that when I come to Beijing, he would love to have my wife come as well, so I took that as a positive sign. 

• Underwear bomber gets life

  Posted: February 16, 2012, 12:15 am by Joshua Keating

  

  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 25-year-old Nigerian man who attempted to bomb a U.S.-bound flight in Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009, was sentenced to life in prison today. 

  Abdulmutallab unexpectedly pleaded guilty on the second day of his trial, saying his attempted attack with a bomb hidden in his underwar was, a "blessed weapon to save the lives of innocent Muslims". In the end, his conviction was a fairly straighforward procedure, with the only controversy coming from one of the passengers, attorny Kurt Haskell, who continues to claim that Abdulmutallab was "given an intentionally defective bomb by a U.S. agent" and is, in fact, "a government patsy."

  Conspiracy theories aside, Abdulmutallab is likely to be headed to the super-max prison in Florence, Colorado, where he will join inmates including Zacarias Massoui, Jose Padilla, shoe-bomber Richard Reid, unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and a host of other notable figures from the worlds of terrorism and organized crime.

  Back in 2009, the Florence facility was reportedly near capacity, one of the arguments against relocating Guantanamo detainees to super-max prisons in the United States. Evidently, they've found some room. "Merchant of Death" Viktor Bout may be headed there soon as well.  

  Some have questioned the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights and try him in a civilian court rather than a military tribunal system, but in the end, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan doesn't seem to have had much trouble handing down the maximum sentence on him. 

• Is Germany trying to bully Greece out of the eurozone?

  Posted: February 16, 2012, 7:47 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Things are getting ugly on the continent, as the Financial Times reports:

  The battle of wills between Athens and its eurozone lenders has intensified, with Greece's finance minister accusing "forces in Europe" of pushing his country out of the euro while his German counterpart suggested postponing Greek elections and installing a new government without political parties.…

  There were signs a group of triple A-rated governments, including Germany, Finland and the Netherlands, were hardening their stance towards Athens. During a conference call among eurozone finance minsters [sic], the three countries suggested they may want additional letters from other smaller Greek parties and openly discussed the possibility of postponing Greek elections.

  Ahead of the call, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, said in a radio interview Greece might delay its polls and install a technocratic government that does not include politicians like Mr Venizelos and Mr Samaras, similar to the model currently in place in Italy.

  Obviously, no country is going to respond well to an infringement on sovereignty as blatant as foreign officials suggesting the idea of postponing elections and installing a "technocratic government" -- the world "junta" has been thrown around -- particularly not the sort of country that spends two decades feuding with one of its neighbors because its name is a bit too presumptuous.

  Schäuble has to be aware of the degree of ugly anti-German sentiment in Greece right now and the fact that Greece's main parties are losing ground to anti-austerity leftists in the polls. Tyler Cowen wonders if the goal is "simply to irritate the Greeks so much that they leave the Eurozone on their own."

• Morning Brief: Israel links Iran to attacks on diplomats

  Posted: February 16, 2012, 3:01 pm by David Kenner

  Israel links Iran to attacks on diplomats

  Top story: Israeli officials said that the explosive devices that were intended to be used in an attack on Israeli diplomatic staff in Bangkok, Thailand, were similar to the bombs used to target Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia. They asserted that this bolstered Israel's claim that the Iranian government was behind all three plots.

  Thai police arrested three Iranians on Tuesday after they accidentally set off their explosives at a rented home in Bangkok. Thailand's police chief said the men were targeting Israeli diplomatic staff, and that the homemade "sticky" bombs they planned to use matched the kind of devices used in the attacks in India and Georgia on Monday.

  A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry accused Israel of carrying out the attacks, saying that its goal was to "conceal its real essence in carrying out terrorist acts, particularly assassinating Iran's scientists."

  China's vice president visits Iowa: As part of his U.S. tour, Xi Jinping returned to an Iowa town where he spent his first visit to the United States.

  Americas

  • Over 300 people were killed in a prison fire in Honduras.
  • A court in Ecuador upheld a $40 million verdict issued against a newspaper for libeling President Rafael Correa.
  • Argentina condemned a planned visit by British MPs to the Falkland Islands.

  Asia

  • Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrived in Pakistan to discuss future peace talks with the Taliban.
  • North Korea marked the birthday of late leader Kim Jong-Il with a military parade.
  • NATO forces in Afghanistan resumed sending prisoners to Afghan-run jails.

  Middle East

  • China announced that a senior diplomat will travel to Syria in a bid to find a resolution to the country's political crisis.
  • A new report by Amnesty International warns that Libya's militias are operating violently and with impunity.
  • Eight Palestinian children were killed after their school bus collided with an Israeli truck in the West Bank.

  Europe

  • European leaders considered withholding a Greek bailout package even if Greece passes new austerity measures.
  • The Spanish economy contracted for the first time in two years.
  • Ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo voted in a non-binding referendum to reject rule by the Kosovo government.

  Africa

  • Liberia's former first lady introduced a bill that would make it possible to punish homosexuality with a death sentence.
  • New fighting in Somalia forced thousands of internally displaced Somalis to flee.
  • Gunmen in Nigeria attacked a jail, freeing nearly 200 prisoners.

  
  

  NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images

• Putin 'arrest' video goes viral

  Posted: February 15, 2012, 11:41 pm by Joshua Keating

  Someone in the Russian opposition has some impressive video editing skills. The video above, which uses some digital trickery to show Prime Minister Vladimir Putin being indicted on corruption and terrorism charges, has been viewed over 2 million times on YouTube. (There's a non-embeddable subtitled version over at the Guardian.) RFE/RL summarizes:

  The startlingly realistic clip, in the style of a Russian television news report, purports to show "former" Prime Minister Vladimir Putin being hauled into a Moscow courtroom to face charges including large-scale corruption and participating in a terrorist act with the purpose of intimidating the public and influencing the government.
  
  The charge apparently refers to the 1999 apartment-building bombings that rocked Moscow and other Russian cities in the run-up to Putin taking over the presidency in 2000.
  
  A sour-looking Putin sits in a cage and answers the judge's questions as cameras capture the scene. The audio of Putin's voice was taken from a televised report on Putin participating in the 2010 Russian census.

  The rest of the footage seems to be taken from the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

• Falun Gong's men and women in Washington

  Posted: February 15, 2012, 10:19 pm by Isaac Stone Fish

  The Communist Party claims that its media is "the mouthpiece of the party," and, with few exceptions, it has succeeded. After reporting in China, it's strange to attend an event in DC and be reminded that there exists a thriving Chinese anti-Communist Party media.  

  At a press event today for Xi Jinping's visit to Washington roughly a quarter of the Chinese media in attendance seemed to be Falun Gong, the spiritual sect banned in China and once practiced by as many as 70 million Chinese, whose affiliates run the "Global Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party," and other services dedicated to informing Chinese people that other options exist. These included the television broadcaster New Tang Dynasty and the newspaper the Epoch Times, best known for issuing a press pass to Wang Wenyi, the Chinese national who heckled Hu Jintao during a joint press conference at the White House with George W. Bush in 2006.

  This year the reporters are much quieter, sitting near, but not next to the rest of the Chinese media. "They don't invite us to their functions," said one Falun Gong-affiliated reporter. Another, Kitty Wang, a senior reporter from NDTV in Washington DC who left China in 2000, explains that she sees an educational function in her reporting. "We feel that we're giving the true info the Chinese citizens, and let them use it as they see fit," she said, as we watched Xi speak on the screen in front of us. "We found that many people doing media had the government viewpoint, so we wanted to provide the other side."

  Unsurprisingly, she's not sanguine about the Party's future. "Now the Communist Party is just trying to survive. There are people who recognize the wickedness of the Party, and so they have left it. They know that one day, when the Party falls, that they will be held responsible for participating." 

• Bienvenue à Twitter, Monsieur le Président

  Posted: February 15, 2012, 7:23 pm by Joshua Keating

  Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to officially announce his re-election bid in a TV appearance tonight, but the French president, who is trailing in the polls, is branching out into social media as well by launching a Twitter account. With only two posts, the president already has over 43,000 followers. (He's only following the Elysee Palace's official feed.) It's pretty g-rated so far, but it's not hard to imagine the possibilities if the notoriously short-tempered president really embraces the medium.

  Sarkozy is a little late to the game. Front-runner Francois Hollande and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen have already been tweeting for a while.

  But not everyone is so thrilled to see him. "Angela Merkel" tweets:

  Twitter used to be the one place I was safe from @NicolasSarkozy. #outlooknegative

• 'Where is my husband?'

  Posted: February 15, 2012, 7:00 pm by Joshua Keating

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  Foreign Policy contributing editor Christina Larson writes:

  "I will go out to do some errands." That is the last thing that Geng He remembers her husband, Gao Zhisheng, saying to her. She recalls that was wearing a casual black leather jacket and jeans, his usual attire. But since that brisk morning more than three years ago, he has not returned.

  Gao is one of China's most prominent human rights lawyers. He is a devout Christian and has defended religious minorities and documented human rights abuses in China. In December 2006, he was charged with "subversion," and in early 2009 he was "disappeared," presumably taken away for police interrogation. Where he is now is not certain.

  Geng spoke to Foreign Policy through her lawyer on Tuesday. She was in Washington to testify about his case before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. It was the same day that China's president-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, arrived in town to visit the White House and Pentagon.

  Actually, she did see him one time after he disappeared, in a news photograph that appeared in April 2010. He didn't look well. "I was very worried about his health. I would very much like him to see a doctor and dentist to make sure he is okay."

  Geng He and Gao Zhisheng have two children: a son who is almost 9, and a daughter who is almost 19. Geng was 23 and Gao was 26 when they married on August 1, 1990. What the future would entail for a studious lawyer who chose to stand up for principle, neither of them could then foresee.

• Most Americans support using force to prevent a nuclear Iran

  Posted: February 15, 2012, 6:18 pm by Uri Friedman

  

  During this year's Republican primary, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum have all suggested that they would use military force if necessary to dismantle Iran's nuclear program. And tensions between Washington and Tehran have only increased as speculation swirls about an imminent Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Iranian officials trumpet their nuclear advances, and mysterious bombings appear to target Israeli diplomats in Georgia, India, and Thailand. 

  But how does the American public view the situation in Iran? New polling from the Pew Research Center this morning suggests that Americans are in a rather bellicose mood when it comes to confronting Iran, and pessimistic about the power of sanctions to keep Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

  In the survey, 58 percent of respondents said it was more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if that meant taking military action. Only 30 percent preferred avoiding a military conflict even if it meant Iran going nuclear. Republicans (74 percent) were far more supportive of using military force than Democrats (50 percent), but Democratic backing was still substantial.

  Around half of Americans, meanwhile, believe the United States should remain neutral if Israel strikes Iran. But, as Pew points out, more respondents said the United States should support (39 percent) Israel than oppose (5 percent) it. A majority of Republicans think the United States should back Israel while a majority of Democrats think it should stay neutral. 

  Pew notes that there are nuances in the data as well. Women and young people, for example, are more likely to support the United States staying neutral in an Israeli-Iranian conflict. And, not surprisingly, conservative Republicans, including Tea Party supporters, are more likely to champion American support of Israeli military action than moderate or liberal Republicans.

  Where there's more agreement across the aisle is in the belief that tough economic sanctions -- a tactic the Obama administration continues to pursue -- will be ineffective in persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear program. Sixty-four percent of the public thinks these measures will not work, compared with 56 percent in October 2009.

  Of course, supporting military force if it means preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons (in other words, approving of it as a last resort) isn't the same as a full-throated endorsement of the military option. In a Quinnipiac University poll in November, 36 percent of respondents supported the use of force in any case, while an additional 14 percent backed the option if sanctions failed. In a CNN/ORC survey around the same time, more than six in 10 respondents selected "economic and diplomatic efforts" -- not "military action right now" -- as the best U.S. policy toward Iran's nuclear program.

  If Americans are so down on economic sanctions as an effective solution, however, one wonders whether they're beginning to resign themselves to a military conflict, even if they have little appetite for it.

• Xi drives me crazy: Your definitive list of bad Xi headline puns

  Posted: February 15, 2012, 5:01 pm by Isaac Stone Fish

  

  As pundits debate whether or not Xi Jinping will follow in the footsteps of current President Hu Jintao, we at FP would like to point out something he does share with his predecessor: a dangerously enticing name for Anglophone headline writers to abuse.  

  Xi, visiting the United States this week, will likely be appointed this fall as China's next President. Journalists, let us be the first to sound the warning: avoid the temptation (that we have already succumbed to several times) of a Xi headline pun! 

  From the FP editorial staff, here's a list of ten Xi headlines NOT to use:

  1. Territorial disputes in the South China Sea: "Xi's Gotta Have It."

  2. A profile of his teenage years: "Xi was only 16."

  3. His second visit to Iowa: "There Xi Goes Again."

  4. His portrayal in Chinese state media: "Isn't Xi Lovely?" (Or "Xi Will Be Loved.")

  5. A Chinese Gorbachev: "Xi Change."

  6. Bizarre policy choices: "Xi Moves in Mysterious Ways."

  7. A definitive chronicle of his speeches: "That's What Xi Said."

  8. His meeting with Henry Kissinger: "The Old Man and the Xi."

  9. On a conflict with the current head of the disciplinary committee: "He Said Xi Said."

  10. His stylish sartorial choices: "Ain't Nothing But a Xi Thing."

  This is by no means a comprehensive list. Please let us know any suggestions you have for other Xi headlines that should be banned- either write them in the comments section or send them to me via twitter: @isaacstonefish. Whoever comes up with the worst Xi headline pun will win a free copy of the book "Becoming China's Bitch."  

  Update: After careful consideration, we at FP have decided that the worst headline pun imaginable is China announces new high speed train line: "Xi's Got a Ticket to Ride." Thanks to twitter user @james_s_evans  for his submission! Honorable mention to @christophercherry for his China Daily all-purpose headline: "Every Little Thing Xi Does is Magic." We look forward to future contests if Shanghai Party Secretary Yu, Standing Committee Member He, or Director of the United Front Work Department Du become trending topics. 

• Morning Brief: U.S. officials greet China's heir apparent with tough trade talk

  Posted: February 15, 2012, 3:20 pm by Uri Friedman

  U.S. officials greet China's heir apparent with tough trade talk

  Top story: As Xi Jinping, China's vice president and leader-in-waiting, made his rounds in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, U.S. leaders focused on one issue in particular: trade. Vice President Joe Biden raised concerns about intellectual property theft and China's currency, noting that cooperation "can only be mutually beneficial if the game is fair." President Obama expressed a similar desire for everybody to play "by the same rules of the road." Senator John Kerry pledged to tell Xi the story of an American company whose technology was sold to China.  

  Xi, for his part, argued that any issues between the two countries should be resolved through dialogue and "not protectionism," urging the United States to lift restrictions on high-tech exports to China.

  U.S. officials also discussed human rights and China's veto of U.N. action against Syria with Xi. After a State Department lunch, the Chinese vice president explained that China had made progress on human rights in the past three decades, though he added that there was "always room for improvement."

  Syria: President Bashar al-Assad has ordered a referendum on a new constitution on Feb. 26, according to Syrian television, as Syrian government forces launched offensives against the opposition in Homs, Hama, and a district of Damascus.

  Europe

  • Greece's finance minister has promised to clarify the country's austerity package today as eurozone officials demand more detail and commitments from Greek leaders. 

  • New economic data suggests that Italy and the Netherlands have fallen into recession while France enjoyed unexpected growth at the end of last year.

  • Italian prosecutors are seeking a new trial for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito four months after an appellate court overturned their convictions in the murder of a British student.

  Asia

  • Israel's ambassador to Thailand says bombs seized by police in Bangkok resembled devices used against Israeli diplomats earlier this week in India and Georgia, while Thai authorities also say they may have found a link.

  • North Korean officials are pledging loyalty to Kim Jong Un and unveiling the first bronze statue of Kim Jong Il ahead of the late leader's birthday on Thursday.

  • NATO has admitted killing eight young Afghans in an air strike.

  Middle East

  • Iran is poised to unveil new uranium enrichment centrifuges and load domestically made nuclear fuel rods into a reactor, according to state-run news outlets, which are also reporting that the government has halted oil exports to six European countries.

  • More than 120 protesters have been wounded in clashes with police during the anniversary of Bahrain's uprising this week, according to activists.  

  • Egyptian state media is reporting that presidential elections will be held by late May.

  Americas

  • Mexican police say they've arrested a Sinaloa operative who's one of the country's main producers of methamphetamine.

  • Government officials and state media in Venezuela have launched blistering attacks on President Hugo Chavez's challenger in the upcoming presidential election, as the Supreme Court demands voting records from Sunday's primary contest.

  • A fire at a prison in Honduras appears to have killed hundreds of people.

  Africa

  • African Union troops have launched an offensive against al-Shabab strongholds near the Somali capital.

  • A Ugandan minister raided a workshop for gay activists days after a legislator reintroduced anti-gay legislation.

  • Congo has suspended the licenses of two airlines following a plane crash that killed a top advisor to President Joseph Kabila.

  
  

  Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• European Commission report flags 12 countries of concern

  Posted: February 14, 2012, 10:02 pm by Joshua Keating

  A new "Alert Mechanism Report" from the European Commission looks at macroeconomic data from across the continent and labeled 12 countries as warranting further scrutinty, including four of the continent's five largest economies. The AMR is part of legislation aimed at bolstering economic surveillance in countries beyond those -- Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Romania -- that are already under examination as part of assistance programs. The indicators examined included current account balance, export market shares, hous prices, private and public sector debt, and unemployment rates, among others. 

  The countries in need of "further in-depth analysis" are: Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Hungary, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.  The report notes:

  The identified Members States have different challenges and potential risks including
  spillover effects. Some Member States need to correct accumulated imbalances on both the
  internal and external side. They will have to reduce high levels of overall indebtedness and
  regain competitiveness so as to improve their growth prospects and export performance. In-
  depth analysis will help to assess the drivers of productivity, competitiveness and trade
  developments as well as the implications of the accumulated level of indebtedness and the
  degree of related imbalances in several Member States. Some countries are experiencing rapid  adjustment partly due to catching-up effects and these developments may require a closer  examination. Despite overall good macroeconomic performance  some countries display  developments in asset markets, including in particular housing, and a continuous build-up of  indebtedness in the private sector, which also warrant further analysis.  

  EUobserver reports that the report was originally going to single out Italy, Spain, Hungary and Cyprus as "pressing cases" but, possibly due to pressure from Italy's new government, it lumped all 12 countries into the same category:  

  Based on ten indicators such as housing prices, private loans, public deficit and export performance, the report initially singled out Italy, Spain, Hungary and Cyprus as "pressing cases". But in the final version, all 12 countries were put in the same basket, even though housing bubbles and increased private debt in Denmark and Sweden are less of a problem than Rome's high public indebtedness.

  According to Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, a former EU commissioner, put pressure on the college of commissioners to water down the language of the report ahead of a treasury bonds sale in Rome on Friday.

  Unfortunately for Monti, watering down bad news only works if nobody knows you're watering it down.

• Oliver Stone's son converts to Islam in Iran

  Posted: February 14, 2012, 7:16 pm by Uri Friedman

  

  AFP and Iranian news outlets are reporting this morning that Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone's son, Sean, converted to Shiism today during a ceremony in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, reciting the Islamic profession of faith and choosing the Muslim first name Ali. "The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with," the 27-year-old documentary filmmaker, whose father is half-Jewish and mother Christian, told AFP. "It means I have accepted Mohammad and other prophets."

  Earlier this month, the Iranian press reported that Sean attended a conference on "Hollywoodism and Cinema" in Tehran, which featured an address by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and focused on "Hollywood's behind-the-scenes policies and its destructive effects on family foundation," according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

  What's perhaps as interesting as the conversion, however, is the backstory. Last fall, Sean, pictured above in Tehran, traveled to Iran to work on a film about the mystic poet Rumi and to help "introduce Persian culture and civilization to the West," according to the Tehran Times. After his visit, he told The Wrap that Iran had a right to nuclear weapons and defended Ahmadinejad. "Iran is ruled by law," he explained. "People don't like Ahmadinejad, but that doesn't warrant a war or an uprising."

  Oliver Stone -- who has courted controversy in the past by interviewing Cuba's Raúl Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez for his 2009 documentary South of the Border -- has a more complicated relationship with Iran. Some Iranians were angered by Stone's 2004 biopic about Alexander the Great (the Tehran Times claims the film depicted "ancient Persians as idiots and buffoons"), and Iranian authorities have repeatedly rebuffed Stone's requests to make a documentary about Ahmadinejad. In 2007, Ahmadinejad's media advisor, Mehdi Kalhor, explained the decision by calling Stone "part of the Great Satan." Stone, in turn, issued a statement declaring that he wished "the Iranian people well, and only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours" (this was the Bush era).

  In an explosive 2010 interview with London's Sunday Times, Stone softened his tone somewhat, noting that U.S. policy toward Iran was "horrible." Iran "isn't necessary the good guy," he conceded. "But we don't know the full story." Now, it seems, Iran is much more than that -- a spiritual destination for his son. We wonder if Stone will get permission for that Ahmadinejad documentary after all.

• Morning Brief: China’s vice president begins U.S. visit

  Posted: February 14, 2012, 2:56 pm by David Kenner

  China’s vice president begins U.S. visit

  Top story: Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is likely to become his country's next leader, began a much-anticipated visit to the United States on Monday. He is set to meet with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office on Tuesday, and will also hold a meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

  U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, who was Xi's guest when he visited China in August, will accompany the Chinese vice president for much of his trip. U.S. officials are expected to raise some longstanding issues with their Chinese counterparts, including China's trade rule violations, its undervalued currency, and enhancing military-to-military ties.

  After the Washington leg of his trip, Xi will travel to Iowa, where he will meet his hosts from when he visited there as a county official in 1985. He will then fly to Los Angeles, where he will meet with business leaders.

  Israel-Iran tensions spike again: Israeli leaders accused Tehran of being responsible for bombings that targeted Israeli embassy personnel in India and Georgia.

  Middle East

  • Azerbaijan denied Iranian claims that it was aiding Israeli intelligence agents.
  • A heavy police presence prevented any demonstrations on the anniversary of Bahrain's anti-government protests.
  • Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that China would "not protect any party" in the Syria conflict.

  Asia

  • A man, who is alleged to be an Iranian, injured himself while trying to throw a bomb at Thai police in the capital of Bangkok.
  • A Tibetan monk set himself on fire on Monday, and security forces put out the blaze then detained him.
  • Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is under renewed pressure over when she decided to contest the premiership.

  Europe

  • British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne defended his government's austerity measures after the credit ratings agency Moody's gave the country a negative outlook.
  • Islamist cleric Abu Qatada was released on bail from a British prison.
  • An avalanche in Kosovo killed nine people.

  Africa

  • The number of Nigerians living in poverty increased sharply.
  • A senior aide to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo was killed in a plane crash.
  • A tropical cyclone caused extensive destruction in Madagascar.

  Americas

  • Police in Rio de Janeiro ended their strike over pay days before the beginning of the Carnival festival.
  • An Argentine union said that it will boycott British ships because of Argentina's dispute with Britain over the Falklands.
  • A Brazilian newspaper editor who had worked to expose corruption was shot dead.

  
  

  Feng Li/Getty Images

• Announcing the 2012 Gelber Prize finalists

  Posted: February 13, 2012, 3:26 am by Joshua Keating

  Every year, Foreign Policy is proud to partner with the Lionel Gelber Foundation and the Munk School for Global Affairs at the University of Toronto to present the Lionel Gelber Prize, which is awarded to the year's best book on foreign affairs. 

  Today, Sara Charney, chair of the Lionel Gelber Prize Board, today announced the shortlist for the 2012 Lionel Gelber Prize.

  The shortlisted books are:

  • A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman, published by Random House

  • Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Frederick Kempe, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons/Penguin Group (U.S.A.)

  • Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra F. Vogel, published by Belknap Press/Harvard University Press    

  • George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis, published by The Penguin Press/Penguin Group (U.S.A.)

  • On China by Henry Kissinger, published by The Penguin Press/Penguin Group (U.S.A.)

  The five-person prize jury selected their shortlist from their previously-announced longlist of ten titles, all of which were written in English and published in 2011.

  Throughout the week, we will be featuring audio interviews with the authors of the finalists. The winner will be announced on Feb. 27.

• Why is Greece cutting private-sector wages?

  Posted: February 13, 2012, 1:30 am by Uri Friedman

  

  There's something puzzling about the austerity bill embraced by the Greek parliament overnight. The package includes measures such as government layoffs that seem logical for a country flirting with default. But news reports are also discussing private-sector wage cuts. How is the government able to slash salaries in the private sector, and why would it imperil much-needed tax revenue by reducing people's incomes and embarking on what Reuters is calling "among the most radical steps backwards inflicted in peacetime in modern Europe?"

  For starters, the Greek government isn't strongarming companies into cutting salaries; it's modifying labor law by lowering the minimum wage by 22 percent to €586 a month (around $780) -- roughly on par with Portugal's -- with a 32 percent cut for workers under age 25. Greece's foreign lenders -- the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund -- have long demanded the cuts in exchange for a second bailout, and over the weekend Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos publicly endorsed the measure, which had nearly torn his governing coalition asunder only days earlier. The austerity program may be a bitter pill to swallow, Papademos allowed, but it will stave off bankruptcy and "restore the fiscal stability and global competitiveness of the economy."  

  Platon Tinios, an economist at the University of Piraeus in Greece, explains that the cuts championed by international financial organizations are intended to structurally revamp economies and make them more competitive. "Greece has a very rigid labor market, which has translated in the past 10 years into what essentially was jobless growth," he explains. "The point is to intervene in the labor market so as to increase the probability of jobs being created faster when the recovery comes."

  Or, as the New York Times put it earlier this month, the goal of reducing Greece's minimum wage is to "make Greek workers, who are generally less productive than workers elsewhere in Europe, able to compete more effectively inside the eurozone, where countries share a common currency that does not allow devaluations to help even out differences in labor costs." 

  Indeed, the EU and IMF forced a similar reduction in living standards in Latvia -- through a process known as "internal devaluation" -- though there is heated debate about whether it worked and whether the Latvian model can be applied to Greece.

  Dimitri Papadimitriou, an economics professor at Bard College and the president of the Levy Economics Institute, is highly skeptical of the IMF's "neoliberal policy." He says it hasn't worked in Latin America or Portugal and won't work in Greece, which doesn't have an export-driven economy like Germany does.

  Labor demand cannot be stoked simply by lowering the cost of production on the supply side, Papadimitriou argues. "If you had a good industrial base ... you could produce a lot more [by lowering wages] because the demand is there either from abroad or domestically," he explains. "But in the absence of that, interference with private-sector labor is not something that will solve the problem." Papadimitriou adds that reducing wages could put a dent in tax revenues and pension contributions.

  Tinios, meanwhile, is less concerned about those possibilities. "In the medium term, what's more important is to create more jobs, and reducing the minimum wage doesn't mean that hundreds of thousands of Greeks will be paid less tomorrow; it will mean that new job offers will be made at the lower minimum wage," he notes, though he concedes that struggling firms may be more likely to slash existing salaries if the minimum wage is reduced.

  There's also the question of whether, in cutting wages, Greece is chasing the wrong demon. "If our political system had, over the years and especially the last two years, addressed the essential problems of competitiveness in our economy -- the excessive number of laws and bureaucracy, the corruption, the bloated and wasteful state, the closed markets, the antibusiness environment -- then we wouldn't be forced to discuss wage costs today," Federation of Greek Industries President Dimitris Daskalopoulos declared earlier this month.

  The ultimate lesson, of course, is that Greece is choosing from a menu of awful options. As the Associated Press noted over the weekend, " Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Greece is trapped in a lose-lose predicament: It must deepen an austerity plan begun in 2010 that will throw many more people out of work. Or it must default on its debts, abandon Europe's single currency, and see its banking system implode."

  For now, Greek leaders appear to have averted their eyes, held their noses, and chosen the former.

• The dictator's dilemma: To win with 95 percent or 99?

  Posted: February 13, 2012, 9:27 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  In the category of least-surprising news of the weekend, Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov was reelected with 97 percent of the vote. The remaining three percent was spread among seven "opposition" candidates who spent most of the campaign lavishing praise on the former dentist.

  Berdimuhamedov seems to have gained some support, or at least some confidence, since 2007 when he was elected with 89 percent of the vote following the death of his predecessor and mentor Saparmurat Niyazov. It doesn't quite match Niyazov's 99.5 percent in 1992, but it puts him well ahead of regional peers like Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov and Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev, who won the comparatively paltry totals of 90.77 percent and 80.7 percent respectively in their most recent reelections.   

  In today's world, even the most blatantly undemocratic governments feel the need to hold periodic elections to reaffirm their legitimacy. But I'm always interested by the final numbers in elections where there's absolutely no question of who will win. The 90 percent mark seems to be a useful line to distinguish between the authoritarian governments that care about the international perception of their elections and want to present the appearance of having an  opposition, and those that care only about demonstrating their absolute control to their own citizens.

  While neither is a democratic contest, there is a difference -- in intended effect at least -- between Hosni Mubarak getting 88.6 percent of the vote in 2005 and Bashar al-Assad getting 97.62 percent in a “presidential referendum,” with no opposition candidates, as he did in 2007. Then there’s the 99 percent club, which includes the Castro brothers, and Kim Jong Il. Saddam Hussein went for the full 100 percent in 2002, but then again, he was overthrown a year later. (Why a dictator decides between winning by 97 percent or 99 percent isn't quite clear.)

  In general, when a former 90-percenter start slipping below that mark – as Mubarak did in 2005 -- it’s not a good sign for the future of the regime. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union won 100 percent in every legislative election until 1984, when the party, led by General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko, won 71.5 percent, with the rest going to handpicked “independents.” Seven years later the Communists were done.

  Today's Russia is something of a hybrid. In the last legislative elections, the ruling United Russia party took 64.3 percent of the vote nationwide, the kind of number you see in an authoritarian country that feels the need to demonstrate that it has at least a token opposition. (Iran, for instance.) But in Chechnya, United Russia took a Turkmenistan-like 99.48 percent of the vote with 99.5 percent turnout -- quite a show of support in a republic that recently saw a bloody nationalist uprising against Moscow.

  Another related question: what’s the most lopsided victory in a national election generally considered democratic? Jacques Chirac beat Jean-Marie Le Pen with 82.21 percent of the vote in 2002 French presidential election, but that was a run-off after he had failed to break 20 percent in the first round. Same with Lech Walesa’s 74.3 percent in Poland’s first democratic election.

  The winner among current democratic leaders – readers please correct me if I’m wrong – might be South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, who took 65.9 percent of the popular vote in 2009. This is slightly less than Nelson Mandela won in 1994, the first year black South Africans were allowed to vote.

  The numbers can often be a bit lopsided in new democracies. India’s Congress Party, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, won 44.99 percent of the vote in India’s 1951 election,  compared to only 3.29 percent for the second-place party.

  In the first two U.S. presidential elections, George Washington ran unopposed and took 100 percent of the vote. James Monroe also ran unopposed in 1820. The most lopsided contested presidential election in U.S. history was Thomas Jefferson’s  victory over Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in 1804. With a bit over 72 percent of the popular vote, (electors were chosen by state legislatures in 6 of the 17 states at that time), the author of the Declaration of Independence won with a higher percentage than Vladimir Putin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have ever managed to muster.

  Question for readers: Has any national candidate ever won over 90 percent in a first-round election against real opposition without cheating? 80 percent?

  Update: Several readers suggest the 2004 post-Rose Revolution Georgian presidential election in which Mikheil Saakashvili won 96 percent of the vote. The vote got a mostly clean bill of health from the OSCE.

• Did the United States use the Kashmir earthquake to send intelligence operatives into Pakistan?

  Posted: February 13, 2012, 6:05 pm by Blake Hounshell

  That's the charge the National Journal's Marc Ambinder makes in his very interesting new book on Joint Special Operations Command, coauthored with D.B. Grady.

  They write:

  The U.S. intelligence community took advantage of the chaos to spread resources of its own into the country. Using valid U.S. passports and posing as construction and aid workers, dozens of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives and contractors flooded in without the requisite background checks from the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Al-Qaeda had reconstituted itself in the country's tribal areas, largely because of the ISI's benign neglect. In Afghanistan, the ISI was actively undermining the U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai, training and recuiting for the Taliban, which it viewed as the more reliable partner. The political system was in chaos. The Pakistani army was focused on the threat from India and had redeployed away from the Afghanistan border region, the Durand line, making it porous once again. To some extent, the Bush administration had been focused on Iraq for the previous two years, content with the ISI's cooperation in capturing senior al-Qaeda leaders, while ignoring its support of other groups tha would later become recruiting grounds for al-Qaeda.

  A JSOC intelligence team slipped in alongside the CIA. The team had several goals. One was prosaic: team members were to develop rings of informants to gather targeting information about al-Qaeda terrorists. Other goals were extremely sensitive: JSOC needed better intelligence about how Pakistan tranported its nuclear weapons and wanted to pentrate the ISI. Under a secret program code-named SCREEN HUNTER, JSOC, augmented by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and contract personnel, was authorized to shadow and identify members of the ISI suspected of being sympathetic to al-Qaeda. It is not clear whether JSOC units used lethal force against these ISI officers; one official said that the goal of the program was to track terrorists through the ISI by using disinformation and psychological warfare. (The program, by then known under a different name, was curtailed by the Obama administration when Pakistan's anxiety about a covert U.S. presence inside the country was most intense.)

  Meanwhile, rotating teams of SEALs from DEVGRU Black squadron, aided by Rangers and other special operations forces, established a parallel terroris-hunting capability called VIGILANT HARVEST. They operated in the border areas of Pakistan deemed off limits to Americans, and they targeted courier networks, trainers, and facilitators. (Legally, these units would operate under the authority of the CIA any time they crossed the border.) Some of their missions were coordinated with Pakistan; others were not. As of 2006, teams of Green Berets were regularly crossing the border. Missions involved as few as three or four operators quietly trekking across the line, their movements monitored by U.S. satellites and drones locked onto the cell phones of these soldiers. (The cell phones were encrypted in such a  way that made them undetectable to Pakistani intelligence.) Twice in 2008, Pakistani officials caught wind of these missions, and in one instance, Pakistani soldiers operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas fired guns into the air to prevent the approach of drones.

  Forward intelligence cells in Pakistan are staffed by JSOC-contracted security personnel from obscure firms with insider names such as Triple Canopy and various offshoots of Blackwater, but it is not clear whether, as Jeremy Scahill of the Nation has argued, the scale of these operations was operationally significant or that the contractors acted as hired guns for the U.S. government. Sources say that only U.S. soldiers performed "kinetic" operations; Scahill's sources suggest otherwise. The security compartments were so small for these operations (one was known as QUIET STORM, a particularly specialized mission targeting the Pakistani Taliban in 2008) that the Command will probably be insulated from retrospective oversight about its activities. A senior Obama administration official said that by the middle of 2011, after tensions between the United States and the Pakistani government had reached an unhealthy degree of danger, all JSOC personnel except for its declared military trainers were ferreted out of the country. (They were easy to find using that same secret cell phone pinging technology.) Those who remained were called Omegas, a term denoting their temporary designation as members of the reserve force. They then joined any one of a dozen small contracting companies set up by the CIA, which turned these JSOC soldiers into civilians, for the purposes of deniability.

• Morning Brief: Greece passes austerity plan amid furious protests

  Posted: February 13, 2012, 3:34 pm by Uri Friedman

  Greece passes austerity plan amid furious protests

  Top story: Facing violent protests across the country, the Greek parliament has approved an austerity bill in an effort to avoid default and secure a second bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund. The measures include a 22 percent cut in the minimum wage and 150,000 government layoffs by 2015.

  Olli Rehn, the European Union's commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, praised the vote, urging Greek leaders to "make the case for the second program and fully implement it in order to return the country to stable economic growth and job creation." Eurozone ministers must now approve the measures during a meeting on Wednesday.

  Convincing the Greek public of the need for austerity, however, has proven difficult. Over the weekend, at least 80,000 people demonstrated in Athens, with buildings getting set on fire and protesters hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with tear gas. The concern, according to the New York Times, is that the "sharp belt-tightening and the bailout money it brings will still not be enough to keep the country from going over a precipice."   

  Xi Jinping visit: Ahead of a visit to the United States this week, Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who appears poised to become China's next leader, told the Washington Post that his country and America "must not allow frictions and differences to undermine the larger interests of our business cooperation" and warned Washington over its military activity in the Pacific.

  Middle East

  • Syrian forces are reportedly shelling the city of Homs for a 10th day after the government rejected an Arab League call for a U.N. peacekeeping mission and support of the opposition. 

  • Malaysia has deported a Saudi journalist who will likely be arrested for writing about the Prophet Muhammad on Twitter. 

  • Bahraini riot police clashed with young protesters wielding petrol bombs ahead of the anniversary of last year's uprising, while the authorities deported two American activists who participated in a demonstration.

  Asia

  • Pakistan's Supreme Court has indicted Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on charges of contempt of court as tensions escalate between the judiciary and the government. 

  • Facing little opposition, President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was reelected in Turkmenistan with 97 percent of the vote.

  • An Indonesian court is accusing Umar Patek of premeditated murder for his alleged role in the 2002 terrorist attacks in Bali. 

  Europe

  • Israeli officials say police in the Georgian capital Tbilisi have defused a bomb found in a car belonging to an Israeli embassy staffer, while another car bomb targeting an Israeli embassy staffer in New Delhi exploded.

  • A retired British businessman accused of offering to sell missile batteries to Iran will be extradited to the United States.

  • Britain's judiciary has set bail conditions for radical Palestinian-Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada. 

  Americas

  • Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski won a primary election and will challenge President Hugo Chavez in the fall.

  • Peruvian forces have captured a guerrilla leader and major player in the cocaine trade.

  • Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has proposed legalizing drugs in Central America, prompting criticism from the U.S. embassy in the country. 

  Africa

  • Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila's chief advisor was killed in a plane crash that also injured the country's finance minister.

  • Zambia dramatically won its first Africa Cup of Nations by beating tournament favorite Ivory Coast in Libreville, Gabon, where a 1993 plane crash killed Zambia's national team.

  • A ruling party candidate has been elected governor in a major Nigerian oil-producing state, ending a long political impasse. 

  
  

  Milos Bicanski/Getty Images

• State Dept. releases a bird's eye view of Syria crackdown

  Posted: February 10, 2012, 1:09 am by David Kenner

  

  The State Department wants you to see the crackdown in Syria. Today, it uploaded eight satellite images showing how President Bashar al-Assad's forces have positioned artillery toward major protest centers.

  The release was accompanied by a note by U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford. "[S]ome try to equate the violence perpetrated by the regime with the violence perpetrated by the opposition," he wrote. "[I]t is unfair to do so when one side is using such heavy weaponry... We are intent on exposing the regime's brutal tactics for the world to see."

  That's an argument that seems designed to undermine the case of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who criticized the recent Security Council resolution on Syria for not condemning the violence of armed groups within the country in the same language it used toward the Assad regime.

  State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a press briefing today that the United States will be releasing more declassified satellite imagery in the coming days. "Our intent here is to, obviously, expose the ruthlessness...of this regime and its overwhelming predominant military advantage and the horrible kinds of weaponry that it's deploying against its people," she said.

  More pictures appear after the jump.

  [[BREAK]]

  

  

  

   

  

   

• Lies, damn lies, and weibo rumors of Kim Jong Un’s demise

  Posted: February 10, 2012, 11:11 pm by Isaac Stone Fish

  

  Your news, should you choose to believe it, came in from unnamed "dependable sources:"

  "On the morning of February 10th at 2:45 pm, unknown persons broke into the residence of the highest leader North Korea Kim Jong En and shot him dead."

  Suspicious traffic patterns had been seen outside of the North Korean embassy in Beijing, and this explanation, it appears, seems as good as any: Users of China's Sina Weibo, the local Twitter clone, forwarded the message more than 10,000 times. One user posted a picture of what Kim Jong Un would look like arrested. Another commented "in this weird country, that's not even strange."  

  The chained Chinese media universe means that Weibo rumors are a lot more trusted than their Twitter counterparts. Chinese media coverage of sensitive subjects is often deliberately obfuscating, and Chinese viewers know it. A few days ago, Wang Lijun, one of China's best known gangbusters and the right-hand man of powerful politician Bo Xilai appeared to try to defect at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu. While official Chinese media covered the defection, they mostly copied the official Xinhua report, which failed to mention the most important point: how it affects Bo's chances of promotion.  

  Chinese official media reporting on North Korea is often further removed from reality than the way China reports on its own political process. (My favorite English-language example is a Xinhua article that compares nightlife in Pyongyang with New York and Tokyo.) Besides, North Korea itself is a black box: Even the best American articles often depend on rumors and hearsay to cobble together a portrait of the closed country. 

  All these factors combine to give the Sina Weibo rumor -- started, it appears, by a random user with less than 200 followers -- enough traction in China to land on this side of the world wide web and into the pages of Forbes, MSNBC, and Huffington Post. 

  It is possible that this Weibo user broke the story of a successful coup in North Korea, though it's extremely unlikely. My favorite explanation on the Twitter side of things comes from Shaun Walker, the Moscow correspondent for the Independent, who wrote "Possible that someone said he 'murdered an enormous family-sized bucket of fried chicken,' and something got lost in translation."
  

• Filming Homs's horrors

  Posted: February 10, 2012, 7:50 pm by David Kenner

  

  President Bashar al-Assad's assault on Homs continues, and the world has watched it unfold in real time. For the past week, activists have uploaded gruesome videos of indiscriminate shelling and civilian shelling that has given viewers worldwide a ground-level view of the destruction of Syria's third-largest city.

  Danny Abdul Dayem, a British citizen of Syrian descent, has been one of the most prominent activists to document the assault on the city. He is a former business management student who, during the past year, has made delivering aid and supplies to protesters his sole profession. He has been a resident of Syria since the 1990s, when his English mother converted to Islam and married his father.

  Dayem was shot in August when standing on a Homs street corner - the bullet, he said, went in his waist and came out his back. "A car came by and threw a grenade, which I actually thought was a firework. So I looked at my friend and told him, ‘there's not even time for that kind of stuff,'" he told the BBC. "The car parked right behind me, two meters between me and the car, opened the window and started shooting. I actually didn't feel the bullet at first."

  After fleeing with his family to Cairo and then London to recuperate, Dayem is now back in Homs to cover what has been the worst assault since the outbreak of unrest. He has uploaded a series of videos to his Youtube channel showing the destruction of the city. "Is this what the U.N. is waiting for, until there aren't any more children left?" he says in the below video, while standing over a dead child killed in a mortar attack.

   

  Dayem's videos also track the rapid deterioration of life in Homs. While his recordings in late January show celebratory anti-Assad street demonstrations, his reports during the past week have grown increasingly urgent and outraged. "This is the life we've gotten used to: Rockets, bullets, killing children, dead in the streets, body parts," he said in the below video, reportedly filmed in the Baba Amro neighborhood of Homs, as a building burned behind him and a rocket crashed in the distance. "Why isn't the world helping us? Where is the humanity in the world? Where is the frickin' U.N.?"

  
  
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  With only a few foreign correspondents being smuggled into Homs, the reports by Syrian citizen journalists has become an increasingly vital source of news about the unfolding destruction of the city. It's dangerous work: One of international news networks' primary sources of news for events in Homs, Mazhar Tayyara, was killed by government shelling in the al-Khaldiya neighborhood of Homs in the early morning hours of Feb. 4. Tayyara, a 24-year old who went by the moniker "Omar the Syrian," was the fourth citizen journalist killed in Syria during the past four months, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Another of those four, Basil al-Sayed, was shot and killed in December at a checkpoint at Homs, while recording security forces opening fire at protesters. This is the last video he filmed.

   

  But despite the risks, such reports have been one of the Syrian opposition's primary tools to spread its message. Another citizen journalist, Khaled Abou Saleh, made waves when he confronted the head of the Arab League observer mission in Syria, Gen. Mustafa al-Dabi, in the streets of Homs. In the video below, he implores the Arab League to stop the killing. In other videos, he is seen delivering a speech to an anti-Assad crowd and carrying the lifeless body of a young girl reportedly killed in Homs on Feb. 5. In the absence of sufficient arms to challenge Assad, these Syrians have only their video cameras.

   

  

• The Election 2012 Weekly Report: Santorumentum?

  Posted: February 10, 2012, 7:01 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Santorum's big night
  It ain't over yet. Rick Santorum pulled off an unlikely hat-trick on Tuesday night, winning caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado as well as a non-binding primary in Missouri -- a troubling development for frontrunner Mitt Romney, who received lower vote totals in all three states than he did in 2008.
  "I don't stand here and claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.... I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama," Santorum said in a speech to supporters in St. Louis. Once seen as the presumptive challenger to Romney, Newt Gingrich wasn't even on the ballot in Missouri and had disappointing third and fourth-place finishes in the other contests. His campaign is now focused on the Super Tuesday contests on March 6, which will award more than 400 delegates.
  Santorum's surprising success is likely to focus more media scrutiny on his foreign-policy views, which have so far received less attention than his socially conservative domestic policies. In particular, Santorum has a long record of hawkish views on Iran and Islam. 

  Women in combat
  The announcement this week that the Pentagon is easing some restrictions on women in combat is already resonating in the campaign. Santorum expressed concerns about the policy change this week, telling NBC's Ann Curry, "When you have men and women together in combat, I think men have emotions when you see a woman in harm's way.... I think it's something that's natural that's very much in our culture to be protective. That was my concern, and I think that's a concern with all the military.''
  Polls, however, show strong support -- even among those describing themselves as "very conservative" -- for allowing women to serve in combat roles.

  Release the Bachmann
  The Conservative Political Action Conference is meeting this week in Washington, D.C. and while there is reportedly little enthusiasm for Romney's candidacy at the event, former candidate Michele Bachmann fired up the crowd with a withering assault on Barack Obama's foreign-policy record. "After a decade of sacrifice to defeat global jihad, Obama has chosen to hand Iraq to Iran," Bachmann said. "Before Obama was elected, no one had ever heard a United States president say to the world that we are anything but an exceptional nation," she continued. "And before President Obama was elected, we never had a president go around apologizing to the world."
  Romney will address CPAC on Friday in what's being seen as a critical opportunity to defend his conservative credentials.

  Romney readies
  While he may be a long way from finishing off his Republican rivals, Romney is apparently already prepping for a foreign-policy debate with Obama. RealClearPolitics reports that for the past three weeks, the Romney campaign has been holding a weekly conference call with the more than 40 experts who are advising the campaign on foreign policy. Romney's campaign argues that despite Obama's generally high approval ratings on foreign affairs, he will be vulnerable on defense spending, tension with Israel, the "reset" policy with Russia, and his inability to halt the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

  Liberals learn to stop worrying and love drones and Gitmo
  Obama may have fired up the base in 2008 by attacking the Bush administration's harsh counterterrorism policies, but with a Democrat in office, these same voters seem to be becoming more comfortable with the war on terror. A new CBS-Washington Post poll finds that 70 percent of voters -- including 53 percent of self-identified liberal democrats -- approve of keeping the detention center at Guantanamo Bay open. Obama signed an executive order closing the prison in the first week of his presidency, but that promise has now been largely abandoned in the face of strong congressional opposition. The poll also found that 77 percent of liberal democrats support drone strikes against suspected terrorists and a majority also support the use of drones U.S. citizens who are suspected of terrorism overseas.

  What to watch for
  Maine will announce the results of its week-long caucuses on Saturday. The independent-leaning northeast state may be Ron Paul's best chance for a win, as neither Gingrich nor Santorum have campaigned in the low-turnout contest.

  On the Election Channel
  Uri Friedman reads Santorum's 40+ op-eds on Iran so you don't have to.
  Charles Kupchan says Romney should get real and admit it's not going to be an American century. Shadow Government's Will Inboden counters.
  David Hoffman lists 5 pressing national security threats that haven't been mentioned in the campaign.
  Scott Clement, from the Washington Post's Behind the Numbers team, finds little voter support for a U.S. intervention in Syria.
  Joshua E. Keating profiles America's weirdest Super PAC.

• Morning Brief: Eurozone demands more cuts from Greece

  Posted: February 10, 2012, 3:15 pm by Joshua Keating

  Eurozone demands more cuts from Greece

  Top news:  Eurozone finance ministers dismissed a package of $4.3 billion in Greek budget cuts as incomplete, demanding an additional $400 million in cuts to this year's budget. The package was presented by the Greek government on Thursday after weeks of tense negotiations between Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and his coalition. Finance ministers say they will reconvene on Wednesday, if the Greek government can make the additional cuts, to potentially sign off on a $172.6 billion bailout. 

  "Despite the important progress achieved over the last days, we did not yet have all necessary elements on the table to take decisions today," said Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg and head of the eurogroup.

  Greece is depending on the deal to avoid a default next month, and hopes to set in motion a private sector bond swap that will reduce its $460 billion debt load. The cuts already agreed to include cutting the minimum wage by 22 percent, shortening the terms of collective bargaining agreements, freezing private sector salary increases, and cutting 150,000 jobs from the government payrolls by 2015. 

  Violence has erupted yet again in Athens as youths began throwing paving stones and molotov cocktails outside the parliament on Friday. Police have responded with stun grenades and tear gas. Trade unions have called a two-day strike starting Friday. 

  Syria: Two explosions targeted security compounds in Aleppo as government ground forces began moving into Homs.

  Asia

  • Pakistan's Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani against contempt charges. 
  • Former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed called for early elections as a warrant was issued for his arrest. 
  • China's foreign ministry is sending a senior official to Iran for nuclear talks. 

  Europe

  • Activist Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon was convicted of illegally ordering a wiretap and suspended from the courts. 
  • Nine men pleaded guilty to planning terrorist attacks in London in 2010. 
  • A Russian engineer was sentenced to 13 years in jail for selling missile test data to the CIA. 

  Americas

  • The U.S. State Department urged citizens to avoid non-essential travel to many parts of Mexico.
  • Rio de Janeiro's police have voted to go on strike, just a week before the city's annual carnival. 
  • Colombia's authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the country's former peace commissioner for faking defections by Farc rebels.

  Africa

  • Somalia's al Shabab rebels announced that they had merged with al Qaeda.
  • Nigerian police rearrested the main suspect in Boko Haram's Christmas day bombing attack, who had escaped from custody last month.  
  • A senior Guinean official was charged over the killing of 157 protesters in 2009.

  Middle East

  • Egypt's prime minister said the country would not back down on its investigation of U.S.-funded NGOs, despite the threat of having its aid cut off. 
  • Negotiators appear to be finalizing an agreement as general strike in Israel moves into its third day.
  • Security forces killed one Shiite protester and wounded several others in Eastern Saudi Arabia.  

  
  

  ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP/Getty Images

• Mississippi lawmaker: Change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America

  Posted: February 9, 2012, 9:13 pm by Joshua Keating

  Guess it's a slow day in Jackson: 

  Mississippi State Rep. Steve Holland, a Democrat, has introduced a bill calling for the part of the Gulf of Mexico that is bordered by Mississippi to be renamed the “Gulf of America.”

  The measure, known as HB 150 and introduced to the state House Marine Resources Committee, says the body of water will have its new name beginning July 1.

  The bill doesn't give any reason for the change, but one Latino Republican group is proposing changing the name of the Mississippi River in retaliation. 

  Also, nobody tell Holland, who probably decorates his office with "American carpets" and refers to his highest quality dishware as "the good America," but arguing over Gulf nomenclature is a longtime Middle Eastern preoccupation.

  HT: Nick Miroff

• Decline Watch: Is the U.S. Constitution going out of style?

  Posted: February 9, 2012, 8:03 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  On Monday, we disussed Ruth Bader Ginsburg's now-controversial interview with an Egyptian television station in which she suggested that the U.S. Constitution may not be the best guide for a country writing its own founding document in the 21st century and suggested that the South African constitution, which includes both more enumerated rights and "positive" rights -- such as healthcare and economic equality -- might be a better fit. 

  It turns out this may be an increasingly popular view. The New York Times' Adam Liptak summarizes a recent study which found that fewer democracies have looked to the U.S. Constitution as a model in recent years:

  In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”

  A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

  [...]

  “Among the world’s democracies,” Professors Law and Versteeg concluded, “constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a whole became more similar to the U.S. Constitution, only to reverse course in the 1980s and 1990s.”

  “The turn of the twenty-first century, however, saw the beginning of a steep plunge that continues through the most recent years for which we have data, to the point that the constitutions of the world’s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II.”

  There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige.

  I'm not sure I buy that this is a sign of declining American power. Rather, it seems more like adaptation over time. The most controversial legal battles of American history have involved the interpretation of non-specific language in the constitution -- whether the bill of rights implies a right to privacy, whether the first amendment mandates a complete seperation of church and state, whether firearms laws are prohibited by the second amendment.

  If the U.S. were writing a new constitution today, it would likely address these issues in more specificity, and make reference to a number of modern. political issues that weren't concerns in the 18th century. It shouldn't be a surprise that new democracies are attempting a bit more specifity and modernity in their documents. (There is a danger in too much specificity, as the EU's unwieldy, 219-page monstrosity attests.)

  The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg is skeptical about the study, but actually makes a stronger case that U.S.-style constitutions have gone out of favor.

  The problem is that the study focusses almost exclusively on rights—the individual and civil rights that are specified in written constitutions. But it almost totally ignores structures—the mundane mechanisms of governing, the nuts and bolts, which is mainly what constitutions, written and unwritten, are about, and which determine not only whether rights are truly guaranteed but also whether a government can truly function in accordance with democratic norms. Or function at all with any semblance of efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability.

  Even in terms of structure, the U.S. model isn't particularly popular. A U.S.-style chief executive is a popular feature among Latin American governments, but over the years this has proven problematic by facilitating the rise of autocratic caudillos. Far more popular today are "parliamentary systems with some form of proportional representation."

  But again, this isn't really a new phenomenon -- there hasn't been a new democracy with an American-style presidential system for over a century so it's hard to attribue it to a loss of prestige. 

  Hat tip: Daily Dish

• Chaos in Maldives

  Posted: February 9, 2012, 6:44 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Rioting has erupted in the tiny Indian Ocean island nation after a confusing sequence of events that saw President Mohamed Nasheed resign, then claim a day later that he had been forced from office. Police have now issued a warrant for Nasheed's arrest:

  Nasheed had announced he was voluntarily resigning Tuesday after months of protests against his rule and fading support from the police and the army. But the next day, as former Vice President Mohammed Waheed Hassan was forming a new government, Nasheed suddenly announced he had actually been pushed from power at gunpoint.

  Thousands of his supporters swept into the streets. They clashed with security forces in Male, the capital, and attacked police stations in remote parts of this 1,200-island archipelago nation off southern India. The new government insists there was no coup.

  The dispute threatens the crucial tourism industry of this mostly Muslim nation of 300,000 people, which relies on dozens of high-end resorts that cater to the rich and famous. The developments also raise questions about the future of a democracy that only shed a 30-year, one-man rule with the 2008 multiparty elections that brought Nasheed to power.

  Nasheed first came to prominence as a human rights campaigner under the rule of the Maldives former leader, the dictatorial Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. He's best known internationally for his environmental activism, particularly his well-publicized stunt of holding a cabinet meeting underwater to raise awareness of the dangers rising sea levels pose to small island nations like the Maldives. But it's been a rough year for his presidency: 

  Over the past year, Nasheed was battered by protests over soaring prices and demands for more religiously conservative policies. Last month, Nasheed's government arrested the nation's top criminal court judge for freeing a government critic and refused to release him as protests grew.

  Nasheed's supporters have blamed both military factions tied to Gayoom and Islamist extremists for his ouster. The departed president now believes he will soon be arrested, as he was 27 times under Gayoom's rule. 

  Coups are an increasingly rare phenomenon in global politics, and when they do occur, those who take power have been increasingly willing to give it up -- thanks largely to changing international attitudes toward coups in the post-Cold War era. This case is complicated by the fact that it initially appeared that Nasheed had left voluntarily, and even now the facts aren't quite clear. Initially, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon appeared to give tacit approval to the transfer of power, but that could change if it appears that Nasheed was, in fact, forced from power.      

  Nasheed was interviewed by FP's Charles Homans about his environmental activism in Dec. 2010. 

• Can North Korea be Fictionalized?

  Posted: February 9, 2012, 5:42 pm by Isaac Stone Fish

  

  Adam Johnson, a professor of creative writing at Stanford University, tried to create an account of the mental life of the citizens of Pyongyang with his new novel, The Orphan Master's Son. It is the story of the many vicissitudes of a North Korean everyman, Pak Jun Do: raised as an orphan, he enters the army, joins a special forces team to kidnap Japanese, learns English, and gets sent to a gulag, from which he mysteriously emerges as a high-ranking official.  

  Two months into the reign of Kim Jong Un, North Korea remains impenetrable. "I'd much rather trade my story for a North Korean telling his own story," said Johnson. "We won't know if my version is right until North Koreans are able to tell their own stories."

  What follows is an interview with Johnson about the gulags, fictions, and lacunas of North Korea, edited and condensed for clarity:

  "In the stories we tell ourselves in the West, we expect to be the central character in our own narrative; we are a society of individuals and no matter how much we love others, they're secondary characters. The DPRK is exactly the opposite. There's one national narrative, tailored and maintained by script writers and censors. In a totalitarian world that script writer is responsible for everything that happened.

  If you're a secondary character in North Korea, your aptitude for certain things and your class background sends you down paths, maybe to be a doctor, or a peasant farmer, or a soldier, or a music player. Your own wants and desires are only going to get in the way of the role you've been given and that you have to play if you're going to survive.

  We have pretty clear information about citizens outside of the capital. We know how much food they eat, how much they ‘volunteer,' how much propaganda they consume; we have a portrait of the average person. Pyongyang is the mystery. Residents of Pyongyang tend not to defect because they're the top 3-4 percent of the nation.  If you're in Pyongyang you've made it. These people are the unknowns.

  It makes me dubious about people claiming to be experts there. Maybe they're getting briefings-but what we have publically is testimonies from defectors that are completely unverifiable.

  [[BREAK]]

  My character starts off as a real DPRK model citizen. He does what he's told when he's told, he doesn't complain. I read lots of accounts of perfect citizens who went to the gulag.

  In Yongdak, the prison for families, when you go in your kids strip bark, your wife works at the soy sauce factory, and you cut timber. The old people go to the ‘respect for the elderly' furniture factory: that creepy Nazi habit of naming something the opposite.

  Often the executions in the camps were done with sticks and stones. Every single person in the camp had to contribute to the slow death-even if it was a show punch to someone hanging, almost dead.

  After the gulag (Jun-Do) starts to change and becomes a more Western character; he starts to decide what matters to him.

  I had to keep the real darkness out of the book. The character goes into the camp one page and comes out the next; I tried to keep much of the darkness and absurdity out of the book.

  I don't think of myself as a political writer. I think giving the regime money (by visiting) was worth it for being able to tell this story.  Because I couldn't hear the stories of the North Koreans I saw on my trip, because I couldn't talk to them, I was filled with an overwhelming desire to individuate them. And because I couldn't do that that filled me with a desire to try to do it right.

  How do I measure the version I created? It's something I wondered many times. I just kind of went with the idea that everyone is human, and I tried to fit many of my fears as a parent. I'm surprised with such a mysterious, fascinating place, such a place that needs to be filled in, I'm surprised that more people haven't taken up the mantle and attempted it themselves. There's the valid argument that if you write across your culture, or your gender, or your age, you're bound to make some transgressions. I knew I got something wrong-but does that work making the endeavor?

  When defectors come out it is very difficult for them to tell their own stories. They've been trained their whole life to have someone tell their story for them.  More importantly, they're completely traumatized.  When people tell the story traumatized it's hard for them to tell it in a non-broken way. The distance to keep the causality out of them. They switch to the third person. They don't want this story to brutalize them again.   

  And it's not over. When Qadaffi died, when Saddam died, we went into their bunkers, we went into their files. The citizens took pictures in their bathtubs. They were completely cut down to size. But the death of Kim Jong Il only intensified the mystification."

• Morning Brief: Greece fails to agree to new budget cuts

  Posted: February 9, 2012, 3:00 pm by David Kenner

  Greece fails to agree to new budget cuts

  Top story: Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos announced that his coalition had failed to agree to a series of new austerity measures. The three parties met for seven hours, but reportedly could not reach a deal on new pension cuts.

  Immediately after the meeting with his coalition partners ended, Papademos met with representatives of the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund to discuss a new bailout package for Greece. The group announced its intentions to conclude an agreement before euro zone finance ministers meet on Thursday.

  The pension cuts, which were reportedly included in a draft agreement between Greece's bailout partners and Papademos, represent the main stumbling block. According to reports published in the Greek press, the new measures requested by Greece's creditors would slash over $4 billion from the budget.

  China outlines tensions with U.S.: Ahead of Vice President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington, a Chinese official described how the two countries suffered from a "trust deficit."

  Middle East

  • Syrian security forces' assault on the city of Homs continued, with activists saying 40 people had been killed so far on Thursday.
  • Egypt's prime minister said that a potential loss of U.S. aid would not convince his country to end a trial against American NGO workers.
  • Israel's main trade union launched a national strike over the government's use of contract workers.

  Asia

  • A court in the Maldives issued an arrest warrant for the country's former president.
  • The United States confirmed that one of China's top police chiefs, who some expect may have been seeking asylum, visited one of its consulates.
  • Pakistani officials said that a senior al Qaeda militant was killed in a U.S. drone strike in the country's tribal areas.

  Europe

  • Romania's parliament approved a new government headed by the country's former foreign intelligence chief.
  • A former French minister faces a criminal investigation for influence peddling.
  • Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been denied painkillers in prison, putting her in tremendous pain, her daughter said.

  Africa

  • The Somali militant group al-Shabab set off a car bomb near a café in Mogadishu.
  • Senegal's president rallied his supporters after coming under a wave of criticism for pursuing a third term in office.
  • Sudan launched the Darfur Regional Authority, which is intended to boost development of the region.

  Americas

  • Argentina will make a formal complaint at the United Nations about Britain's "militarization" of the Falkland Islands.
  • Brazilian police left a state legislature building that they had been occupying to press their demands in a pay dispute.
  • Mexican security forces found 15 bodies in two graves in the state of Veracruz.

  
  

• Even death won't stop prosecution of Russian lawyer

  Posted: February 8, 2012, 6:55 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  In a move straight out of Kafka, Russian police are taking the unusual step of filing new tax evasion charges against lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in their custody two years ago:

  The trial of the defendant, Sergei L. Magnitsky, would be the first posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history, according to a statement by the former employer, Hermitage Capital.

  The death of Mr. Magnitsky, a lawyer, in November 2009 drew international criticism over Russia’s human rights record, especially after accusations arose that he had been denied proper medical care. The State Department has barred officials linked to Mr. Magnitsky’s prosecutions from entering the United States. Parliaments in nine European countries are considering similar bans.

  Police officials reopened the case against Mr. Magnitsky last summer, saying it would provide a chance for relatives and supporters to clear his name.

  Relatives, though, said they had not asked for that, and executives at Hermitage said the motive was something else entirely: to vindicate the officials Mr. Magnitsky had accused of corruption.

  Magnitsky's original arrest on charges of tax evasion came shortly after he testified against two interior ministry officials, accusing them of embezzelement. See his business partner Jamison Firestone's piece from last year for more background on the case. Hermitage CEO William Browder also wrote about Magnitsky shortly after his death in 2009.  

  Does anyone know of a precedent anywhere in the world for a posthumous prosecution? According to Hermitage, it's never been done in Russia, even during the Soviet period. Even Adolph Hitler wasn't posthumously prosecuted, though there was some discussion of the idea at Nuremburg. Oliver Cromwell was posthumously executed in 1661, three years after his death, but I can't come up with any examples in modern times --particularly not for a crime like tax evasion.

  The Russian justice system appears to have outdone itself. 

• Cuba embargo turns 50

  Posted: February 8, 2012, 6:13 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  50 years ago this week, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order embargoing all trade with Fidel Castro's Cuba: 

  Whereas the Eighth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Serving as Organ of Consultation in Application of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, in its Final Act resolved that the present Government of Cuba is incompatible with the principles and objectives of the Inter-American system; and, in light of the subversive offensive of Sino-Soviet Communism with which the Government of Cuba is publicly aligned, urged the member states to take those steps that they may consider appropriate for their individual and collective self-defense;

  Whereas the Congress of the United States, in section 620(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (75 Stat. 445), as amended, has authorized the President to establish and maintain an embargo upon all trade between the United States and Cuba; and

  Whereas the United States, in accordance with its international obligations, is prepared to take all necessary actions to promote national and hemispheric security by isolating the present Government of Cuba and thereby reducing the threat posed by its alignment with the communist powers:

  Now, Therefore, I, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, acting under the authority of section 620(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (75 Stat. 445), as amended, do

  1. Hereby proclaim an embargo upon trade between the United States and Cuba in accordance with paragraphs 2 and 3 of this proclamation.

  2. Hereby prohibit, effective 12:01 A.M., Eastern Standard Time, February 7, 1962, the importation into the United States of all goods of Cuban origin and all goods imported from or through Cuba; and I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of the Treasury to carry out such prohibition, to make such exceptions thereto, by license or otherwise, as he determines to be consistent with the effective operation of the embargo hereby proclaimed, and to promulgate such rules and regulations as may be necessary to perform such functions.

  3. AND FURTHER, I do hereby direct the Secretary of Commerce, under the provisions of the Export Control Act of 1949, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2021-2032), to continue to carry out the prohibition of all exports from the United States to Cuba, and I hereby authorize him, under that Act, to continue, make, modify, or revoke exceptions from such prohibition.

  In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

  DONE at the City of Washington this third day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-sixth.

  JOHN F. KENNEDY

  By the President:
  Dean Rusk,
  Secretary of State

  
  

  The order went into effect on Feb. 7. Since that day, there have been ten U.S. presidents, five of whom are now deceased. The Sino-Soviet Communism mentioned in the order has ceased to exist. The embargo has been overwhelmingly condemned in the United Nations for 20 straight years -- the last time it came up for a vote, only Israel supported the U.S. position, with Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands abstaining. Cuba has never been classified as anything but "not free" on Freedom House's "Freedom in the World" rankings. In the past 50 years, the U.S. has conducted trade with countries including China, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, Chad, and Belarus. 

  Though the Obama administration has officially extended the embargo each year, there have been some small changes including easing travel and investment restrictions. The administration is clearly not all that enthusiastic about the policy, with one administration official telling CBS in 2009, "I think if you're arguing for consistency, it's something that we strive for but don't always reach. And that's obviously the case."

  With support for the embargo falling, even among Cuban-Americans, it's tempting to wonder if a second-term Obama might take action to end the policy. But as long as the Castro brothers are alive, there doesn't really seem to be much of a political upside to lifting the Kennedy-era embargo. Assuming at least one of the brothers is still alive, I'd be very suprised if an 11th president doesn't inherit the embargo, whether in 2012 or 2016. 

• Morning Brief: Homs assault persists as Russia pursues diplomacy

  Posted: February 8, 2012, 3:20 pm by Uri Friedman

  Homs assault persists as Russia pursues diplomacy

  Top story: Syrian forces are bombarding the city of Homs for a fifth straight day, not long after President Bashar al-Assad met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to discuss the conflict. Lavrov has since announced that Syria's vice president is prepared to begin talks with opposition forces and urged Western and Arab leaders to back the efforts. Syrian opposition leaders have rebuffed such calls in the past, insisting that Assad first end the violence and step down.

  Other countries are pressing forward with their own diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning to call Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as part of an effort to foster broad consensus on how to end the bloodshed, while the White says it may provide humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. France recalled its ambassador from Syria a day after the United States closed its embassy in Damascus.

  "As the Obama administration weighs worst-case scenarios for Syria," Reuters notes, "one stands out: a civil war that develops into a proxy battle between Arabs and the West on one side, and Russia and Iran on the other."

  Islamic extremism: A report by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security has concluded that terrorism by Muslim Americans poses "a miniscule threat to public safety." The study noted that 20 Muslim Americans were charged in violent plots or attacks in 2011, down from 47 in 2009. 

  Europe

  • Greek leaders postponed a decision on an austerity package for another day in the face of a general strike against the measures.

  • Germany enjoyed a trade surplus of $209 billion in 2011 on record imports and exports. 

  • Russian authorities are planning to retry a lawyer who died in detention for tax evasion, in the first posthumous prosecution in Russian history. 

  Asia

  • The ousted president of the Maldives claims he did not resign voluntarily yesterday but was rather forced out of power "at gunpoint" -- a claim the country's new leader denies.

  • Millions of voters in the giant Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have cast ballots in the first stage of a critical election.

  • The decision by a deputy of Chongqing Communist Party chief Bo Xilai to go on leave is fanning rumors in China of a corruption scandal or political infighting.

  Americas

  • Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has announced plans to formally complain to the U.N. Security Council about British "militarization" of their dispute over the Falkland Islands, but Britain ruled out negotiations.

  • The Brazilian government is suing Twitter over user alerts about police speed traps and roadblocks aimed at combating drunk driving.

  • Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum stole some of Mitt Romney's momentum by winning the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and a non-binding primary in Missouri.

  Middle East

  • The U.S. State Department may halve the size of its embassy in Iraq, which currently has a staff of nearly 16,000 people. 

  • The Iranian parliament has summoned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to testify about "irregularities" in his management of the country's ailing economy.

  • Israel's main labor union has launched a rare general strike that is expected to cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars a day.  

  Africa

  • The Islamic militant group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a military facility in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna.

  • Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will inaugurate a governing body tasked with striking a peace deal in Darfur.

  • A new study finds that Somali piracy in the Indian Ocean is costing the global economy $7 billion a year. 

  
  

  STR/AFP/Getty Images

• Russian space debris fears shut down Shanghai airport

  Posted: February 7, 2012, 12:25 am by Joshua Keating

  Via China Digital Times, Shanghai Daily reports that fears about debris from a destroyed Russian Mars probe forced the temporary shutdown of two Shanghai airports last month: 

  SOME 17 flights were told to defer landing at Shanghai's two airports late last month out of fear that debris from Russia's failed Mars probe might fall to the city, the civil aviation regulator of East China said yesterday.
  
  The regulators asked the planes to circle around Pudong and Hongqiao international airports about 1am on January 16 after being informed that some pieces of the probe might be dropping to the city, said the East China Regional Administration under Civil Aviation Administration of China.

  The Phobos-Grunt Mars probe crashed into the South Pacific about 1,250 kilometers west of Chile, though some reports suggested debris may have allen over a wider area, including parts of Brazilian territory. Russia's space agency blamed a computer malfunction caused by cosmic rays.

  Der Spiegel also recently reported that a 20-year-old German research satellite narrowly missed hitting Beijing last October -- though "narrowly" seems like a somewhat relative term when you're talking about distances of over 2,000 miles. NASA's 12,500-pound UARS crashed over the Pacific in September. 

  Thankfully, due to either navigation technology or probabilities, satellites generally crash at sea, though landfalls aren't unheard of -- such as SkyLab's 1979 crash in the town of Esperance in Western Australia. It seems like only a matter of time before this results in a major international incident. 

   

   

• Greece starts work on border fence

  Posted: February 7, 2012, 11:54 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  It's a somewhat less ambitious project than fending the 1,951 mile U.S.-Mexico border, but not necessarily less controversial. EU Observer reports:

  Greece has started construction of a 12.6-km-long razor-wire-topped fence designed to keep out migrants but described as "pointless" by the European Commission.

  The fence, costing an estimated €5.5 million, is being built in the Evros region on the Greek-Turkish border where the vast majority of irregular migrants try to cross into the EU. It is to be completed in September.

  The European Commission on Tuesday (7 February) said the fence is a national issue. But it also poured scorn on the project. "Fences and walls are short-term solutions to measures that do not solve the problem. The EU is not and will not co-finance this fence ... It is pointless," a spokesman for home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told press in Brussels.

  Just one day earlier, Christos Papoustis, a former European commissioner and currently Greece's minister for citizen protection had said the fence has both "practical and symbolic value."

  The Greek-Turkish border is for the most part a 180-kilometre-long river patrolled in part by Frontex, the EU's Warsaw-based border control agency. Near the city of Orestiada, the river loops east and runs for about 12 kilometres on the Turkish side, with the Greek-Turkish land border located in this loop.

  The fence may not be the best of the near-bankrupt Greek state's resources at the moment, but the country does have an understandable gripe about the EU's so-called Dublin regulation, which holds point-of-entry countries -- mostly on Europe's periphery -- responsible for handling asylum cases. Under the law, other countries deport asylum-seekers back to their country-of-entry for processing.  

• Morning Brief: Russian officials visit Syria as violence continues

  Posted: February 7, 2012, 2:59 pm by David Kenner

  Russian officials visit Syria as violence continues

  Top story: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Mikhail Fradkov, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence services, arrived in Syria for talks with President Bashar al-Assad about the growing turmoil in his country.

  Russia, which vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution over the weekend meant to lay out a path for a democratic transition in Syria, has reportedly been preparing its own initiative to end the violence. No details of the Russian proposal have been made public.

   "Every leader of every country must be aware of his share of responsibility. You are aware of yours," Lavrov was quoted as telling Assad as the talks began. "It is in our interests for Arab peoples to live in peace and agreement."

  Meanwhile, the Syrian government's crackdown continued in the city of Homs. Local activists reported that dozens of people were killed in Homs on Monday, as government security forces once again shelled the city.

  Palestinian unity deal moves forward: Fatah and Hamas announced that they would form an interim government, with President Mahmoud Abbas as its head, which will prepare for new elections.

  Middle East

  • President Barack Obama issued an executive order that tightened sanctions on Iran's banking sector.
  • Iraqi ministers belonging to the Iraqiya bloc ended their boycott of the Cabinet on Tuesday.
  • Iran detained several people who allegedly had ties to BBC's Persian-language station.

  Europe

  • A vice president of the European Commission told a Dutch newspaper that Greece's exit from the euro zone would not mark the end of the currency.
  • Britain's attorney general said he was "very concerned" that radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada had been released on bail, and that his government would still work to deport him to Jordan.
  • Italy took emergency measures to conserve gas supplies in the face of shortages.

  Asia

  • The president of the Maldives resigned after weeks of popular protests.
  • China reiterated on Tuesday that it would "resolutely crack down" on any unrest in Tibet.
  • Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi campaigned outside her home town for the upcoming elections.

  Africa

  • Former Liberian warlord George Boley will be deported from the United States.
  • The humanitarian organization Doctors of the World pulled out of northern Mali due to recent fighting between Tuareg groups and the military.
  • Chinese workers that had been abducted by Sudanese rebels were freed.

  Americas

  • President Barack Obama's election campaign will return $200,000 given to him by a Mexico casino magnate who is wanted on drug and fraud charges.
  • Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said that two of the country's most-wanted paramilitary leaders had been captured in Venezuela.
  • Brazilian police clashed with police officers, who are striking for better pay.

  
  

  LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images

• George Galloway flatters Assad's media advisor

  Posted: February 6, 2012, 1:28 am by David Kenner

  

  As my boss Blake Hounshell noted this morning, Syrian activists are having a field day trawling through the hacked e-mails of officials in President Bashar al-Assad's regime. One particularly interesting note was sent by former British parliamentarian George Galloway to Assad advisor Bouthaina Shaaban.

  Galloway was writing to request the Syrian government's help in organizing a convoy to the Gaza Strip. The plan was for vehicles to travel over land from London and the Gulf to the Syrian city Latakia, at which point they would board the Mavi Marmara - which had been the scene of a deadly raid by Israel Defense Forces solders only months earlier, as it tried to breach the Gaza blockade -- and travel to the Egyptian port city of al-Arish. From there, they would enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing. While the convoy did complete its mission, the Mavi Marmara does not appear to have ultimately taken part.

  In securing Assad's help, Galloway recited the Baath Party's own rhetoric back to Shaaban. "Syria is as I have often said is the last castle of Arab dignity," he writes.

  Von: b.shaaban@mopa.gov.sy

  Reply-to: b.shaaban@mopa.gov.sy

  An: buthainak1@hotmail.co.uk

  Betreff: Fwd: IMPORTANT - private and confidential

  Datum: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 06:03:38 +0300 (14.08.2010 05:03:38)

  Your Excellency Dr Bouthaina Sha'aban

  Special Advisor to President Bashar al Asad

  President of the Syrian Arab Republic

  Your Excellency, dear Dr Sha'aban

   

  I hope this letter finds you well. Please be assured of my warmest fraternal greetings always. I am writing on behalf of Viva Palestina whose world-wide family of solidarity organisiations and registered charities will soon be setting out for beseiged Gaza again with our fifth convoy of aid. You will recall the outstanding assistance afforded us in Syria on previous occasions over the last period. I am writing once again to ask for Syria's co-operation although I do not doubt it for one moment. Syria is as I have often said is the last castle of Arab dignity. My only regret is to have to ask for your help again.

  This convoy sets out simulataneously on September 18th 2010 from London, from Casablanca and from the Gulf. The London and Gulf columns of vehicles would like to converge on Latakia and sail from there to Al Arish. The Casablanca column hopes to join us in Al Arish and we hope all three columns - hundreds of vehicles strong - will enter Gaza through Rafah without hinderance.

  The aid on board the vehicles will be 50% medical equipment and 50% educational, construction and other aid. The organisers of the convoy are Viva Palestina UK, Viva Palestina USA, Viva Palestina Arabia, Viva Palestina Malaysia, Viva Palestina Ireland, the Turkish NGO IHH,the International Committee to break the Seige on Gaza, Kia Ora - the Viva Palestina sister organisation in New Zealand, Viva Palestina Australia, Viva Palestina South Africa, Viva Palestina Spain, Viva Palestina Italia, and Viva Palestina France.

  It is intended that the vehicles and passengers should sail to Al Arish on board the Mavi Marmara, which as you know is owned by IHH. If His Excellency the President Bashar al Asad and his government can accept this proposal in principle perhaps you could nominate partner organisation(s) and individuals with whom my colleagues could liaise about the practical details? The liaison from our side would be Mr Kevin Ovenden and Mr Zaher Birawi of Viva Palestina UK (as we believe 2 is enough).

  In any case please convey my respect and my admiration to His Excellency the President.

   

  With all good wishes

  George Galloway

• Qaddafi's spymaster takes a walk

  Posted: February 6, 2012, 9:53 pm by Blake Hounshell

  A correspondent in Doha, Qatar, sends in these pictures of Libyan ex-foreign minister and spy chief Musa Kusa taking a stroll near his "villa" in the outskirts of town. During the war, following his dramatic defection from Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime, Kusa first fled to London before setting up shop at the five-star Four Seasons Doha, where he was often seen enjoying Italian cuisine and smoking in the lobby, I'm told:

  

  Funny story: a retired CIA case officer, whose name I won't share, was coincidentally placed into a room next to Kusa's, a fact my source discovered when the ex-diplomat at one point was banished from the lobby by either the hotel or his Qatari hosts, and had to resort to pacing the hall outside his room. At one point, Kusa knocked on the former CIA guy's door and asked for a cigarette; on another occasion he tried to enter the wrong room by mistake. Eventually, the Qataris (and the hotel management) got sick of him and he moved out.

  In any case, as you can see, Kusa's new digs are not quite so luxurious:

  

  

• Small potatoes rule the day in Lebanon

  Posted: February 6, 2012, 9:30 pm by David Kenner

  

  Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati answered questions on Twitter on Sunday afternoon, one day after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria - a step that seems virtually guaranteed to plunge Lebanon's eastern neighbor into further violence. So what did the premier want to talk about? Spoiled spuds.

  "I realize that some of you are being kept busy with a story on expired potato chips which clearly changes the usual focus of the discussion," Mikati wrote. "Let me reassure you that instructions have been given to investigate expired potato chips story, perform related Lab tests&take measures."

  Mikati was referring to a dastardly plot to alter the expiration date of 35 tons of potato chips at a warehouse owned by his brother-in-law. Whatever the facts of the case, it is something less than the great struggles against dictatorship seizing the rest of the Middle East. It also says volumes about the issue Mikati doesn't want to talk about: The slow-motion collapse of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

  Mikati's line is that Lebanon will "disassociate" itself from events in Syria, remaining neutral in order to avoid the blowback from the incipient civil war. But all the major political actors in Beirut are doing precisely the opposite -- even those within Mikati's own government. Lebanese Ambassador to the U.N. Nawaf Salam, for example, was talking with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice on the floor of the Security Council just before the key vote on Syria. Salam reports to Lebanon's Foreign Ministry, which is run by a representative of the Amal party, a close ally of Hezbollah. It's difficult to see how inserting himself into the proceedings serves the purpose of "disassociating" Lebanon from events to the east.

  The examples are piling up. As Hezbollah stages raids on towns in search of Syrian dissidents, arms smugglers carry weapons across the border to Syrian militiamen. Hassan Nasrallah promises to stand by Assad to the end, and Sunni leader Saad Hariri says that "change is imminent" in Damascus.

  Violence is also piling up. Eight Lebanese have reportedly been killed in Syrian incursions across the border since the uprising began, and the Lebanese Army is now using helicopters in the north to search for "terrorist groups" at the request of the Syrian regime. And twice in the past three months, Lebanese parliamentarians have gotten into fistfights on live television.

  There is little point in criticizing Lebanon's prime minister, who is picking from a series of bad options, of being disingenuous. But from the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser to the civil war, Lebanon has a sad history of being destabilized by regional forces beyond its control. If Syria is poised to become 1980s Lebanon on steroids, as my colleague Marc Lynch writes, Beirut will get pulled down into the tragedy sooner or later.

• Was the Racist Chinese Super Bowl Ad Racist in China?

  Posted: February 6, 2012, 8:12 pm by Isaac Stone Fish

  A GOP senatorial candidate in Michigan, Pete Hoekstra, ran a Super Bowl advertisement featuring an Asian woman speaking broken English and thanking Hoekstra's opponent, Debbie Stabenow, for her free-spending ways. The ad hit a nerve in America, angering many for its portrayal of an Asian-American woman speaking broken English. The Michigan chapter of the Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote group said it was "deeply disappointed" by the ad, and political commentators criticized it across the board. The 'blame China' ad is becoming a fixture in American political campaigns;  see for example the 'xiexie Mr. Gibbs', or the 'Chinese professor.'

  While the woman in the Super Bowl ad wears a hat more often associated with Vietnam, the ad's website, www.debbiespenditnow.com, makes it clear that it is targeting China: Chinese coins, fans, an airplane, and the phrase "The Great Wall of Debt"  decorate the site.

  This ad, however, received almost no attention in China. There is scant chatter of it on Sina Weibo or Tencent Weibo, the two most popular Twitter-like microblogging services. The NFL, lacking the popularity that Yao Ming brought to the NBA, is rarely watched in China anyway, and the ads this year that drew any attention were mostly car commercials.

  Only a handful of Twitter users wrote about it in simplified Mandarin (the way Chinese is written in Mainland China, unlike the traditional characters which the Debbiespenditnow website inexplicably employs). One who did so is a software engineer working in the Netherlands who tweets under the name lihlii.  "I don't think it's racist," he said in a phone interview. "It's about America losing jobs."

  Broadly speaking, there is a whole different idea of political correctness in China. Asking how much someone makes a month within the first minute of meeting them doesn't raise eyebrows in China, and neither, generally speaking, do blanket racial statements, like commenting on the perceived cleverness of the Jews.  On the other hand, questioning Hu Jintao's ability to govern makes for awkward cocktail party chatter.

  Those who did object to the ad generally did so in an American context. Michael Anti, a popular blogger who has lived in the U.S. as a Nieman Fellow, wrote on Twitter:

  "I think the problem with the ad is that it's racist, not anti-Chinese. As a Chinese I should be amused by this ad, because it seems more like Southeast Asia. But Chinese in America are easily enraged by that sort of prejudicial defamation of the image of a Chinese woman. Also, her English is not the Chinglish of a Mainland Chinese."

  So what Super Bowl ads are controversial in China? Last year Groupon ran one featuring actor Timothy Hutton saying: "The people of Tibet are in trouble, their very culture in jeopardy. But they still whip up an amazing fish curry." This ruffled feathers for contravening  state policy and conventional wisdom that Han Chinese are helping Tibet (and for its inaccuracy: fish curry is probably eaten more in Vermont than Tibet). Groupon employees at the time said that the advertisement complicated the company's expansion plans into China, and they eventually pulled the advertisement.

• Why does Ruth Bader Ginsburg like the South African constitution so much?

  Posted: February 6, 2012, 8:07 pm by Joshua Keating

  Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is taking some heat from conservative blogs for this recent interview with Egypt's Al-Hayat TV, (skip to 9:30) in which she suggests that the U.S. constitution might not be the best model for post-revolutionary Egypt. Here's a summary from ABC:

  Asked by the English-speaking interviewer whether she thought Egypt should use the Constitutions of other countries as a model, Ginsburg said Egyptians should be “aided by all Constitution-writing that has gone on since the end of World War II.”

  “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa,” says Ginsburg, whom President Clinton nominated to the court in 1993. “That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary. … It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the U.S. Constitution.”

  Ginsburg, who spent her career before taking the bench advocating for gender equality, praised the U.S. Constitution and the founders, saying, “we were just tremendously fortunate in the U.S. that the men that met in Philadelphia were very wise.” But “it’s true that they were lacking one thing, that is there were no women as part of the Constitutional Convention, but there were women around who sparked the idea.”

  Ginsburg said “we are still forming the more perfect union” and noted that “when the Constitution was new in the 1780s, we still had slavery in the U.S.”

  But, she added, ”The genius of the Constitution, I think, is that it has this notion of who composes ‘We the people’. It has expanded and expanded over the years so now it includes people who were left out in the beginning. Native Americans were left out, certainly people held in human bondage, women, and people that were new comers to our shores. “

  The backlash is pretty predictable, (Hot Air's Allahpundit quips that "I’m actually sort of charmed that a left-wing jurist thinks it matters much what’s written in a nation’s constitution.") and falls into a larger debate on the court's about whether it's appropriate for American jurists to look to other countries' laws for precedent. Ginsburg's job security is pretty solid, so the fallout of this incident is likely to be pretty minimal, though I could see it as a future applause line on the campaign trail. But Ginsburg's comments also raise the question of what exactly is so great about South Africa's constitution. 

  What makes the post-apartheid document, which came into effect in 1997, so unique, is its inclusion of positive rights. In addition to freedom from discrimination -- including on the basis of sexual orientation, disability or religion -- and freedom of speech, under chapter two of the constitution, South Africans have the right to "make decisions concerning reproduction," "form a political party," or "form and join a trade union."

  Even more notable, the constitutions requires the state to enact policies that minimize inequality:

  The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to foster conditions which enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis.

  It also stipulates that citizens have the right to housing and adequate healthcare. 

  Needless to say, the South African state is often in violation of many of these goals, but the argument for the constitution is that it gives citizens legal recourse to demand government action on  economic matters. It's also the case that a constitution that essentially includes an explicit guarantee of abortion rights, mandates government-provided healthcare, and encourages income redistribution, is something of a Tea Party dystopia. 

  Ginsburg is not alone in her admiration of the South African model. Cass Sunstein, the legal scholar who current runs the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has called it ''the most admirable constitution in the history of the world.'" Though given Sunstein's own reputation among Tea Partiers, I'm guessing we won't hear him speaking up on Ginsburg's behalf during an election year. 

• Syrians troll through hacked emails of Bashar's presidential aides

  Posted: February 6, 2012, 5:40 pm by Blake Hounshell

  Move over, WikiLeaks: There's a new sheriff in town.

  The shadowy hacker collective Anonymous struck again late Sunday evening, exposing the email accounts of top aides to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and posting the passwords online for all to see (most of them were -- literally -- "12345").

  Expatriate Syrians pounced, gleefully delving through this treasure trove and pulling out newsworthy gems (some even joked about sending replies from the accounts, for example, "Curse your soul, Hafez"). There were few smoking guns, but one email, from U.N.-based press aide Sheherazad Jaafari to Damascus-based press aide Luna Chebel, was particularly interesting. It advises the presidential office on how to best handle Assad's Dec. 7 interview with ABC's Barbara Walters. If this is the quality of staff work Bashar al-Assad is getting... well, it explains a lot:

  Hello dear,

  Please let me know if you need anything else.
  Barbara will be here on the 2nd and the interview will be on the 4th because she is leaving on the 6th so that would give you some time to do the editing.

  Thank you.

  After doing a major research on the American Media's coverage on the Syrian issue and the American Society's perspective of what is happening on the Syrian ground, I have concluded some important points that might be helpful for the preparation of the upcoming interview with Barbara Walters.

  I based my research on online articles written about the Syrian issue, my personal contacts with the American journalists, my father and Syrian expatriates in the States.

  The Major points and dimensions that has been mentioned a lot in the American media are:

  The Violence:
  * The idea of violence has been one of the major subjects brought up in every article. They use the phrases "the Syrian government is killing its own people", "Tanks have been used in many cities", "airplanes have been used to suppress the peaceful demonstrations" and "Security forces are criminals and bloody".

  Bloodshed:
  · Bloodshed is another subject brought up in the American media. There is no mention of how many "soldiers and security forces have been killed". They think that bloodshed is done by the government to attack the "innocent civilians" and "peaceful demonstrators". Mentioning "armed groups" in the interview is extremely important and we can use "American and British articles" to prove that there are "armed gangs".

  Reform:
  · The American audience doesn't really care about reforms. They won't understand it and they are not interested to do so. Thus, a brief mention of the reforms done in the past couple of months is more than enough.
  · It is very important to mention the huge economical and political transformation that Syria has gone through in the last 11 years. Somehow, there needs to be a clarification that reform started since H.E took the office.

  Mistakes:
  · It is hugely important and worth mentioning that "mistakes" have been done in the beginning of the crises because we did not have a well-organized "police force". American Psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear that there are "mistakes" done and now we are "fixing it". Its worth mentioning also what is happening now in Wall Street and the way the demonstrations are been suppressed by police men, police dogs and beatings.

  Torture Policy:
  "Syria doesn't have a policy to torture people" unlike the USA, where there are courses and schools that specializes in teaching police men and officers how to torture criminals and "outlaws". For instace, "the electric chair and killing through injecting an overdose amount of medicine"...etc.
  *We can use Abu Ghraib in Iraq as an example.

  The Comments:
  · The comments that follow any article in the American Media are a very important tool to use in the interview. The Americans now believe that their government has failed two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are asking their government to stop interfering in other countries businesses and sovereignty and to start taking care of the American internal issues.

  Obama popularity's decline and incline through the past 3 years:
  · It is worth mentioning that when Obama asked H.E to step down he himself have had a 70% decrease of his popularity in the States.
  · It would be worth mentioning how your personality has been attacked and praised in the last decade according to the media. At one point H.E was viewed as a hero and in other times H.E was the "bad guy". Americans love these kinds of things and get convinced by it.

  Facebook and You tube:
  This is very important to the American mindset. The fact that Facebook and youtube are open now-especially during the crises- is important.

  The International media:
  · We should mention that in the first month the international media was allowed in Syria. Both al Jazeera and al Arabia's offices were open but when they started to manipulate what is happening and "make up facts", the Syrian government became more cautious about who will enter the country.

  10) Civil war in Syria and the neighboring countries:
  We can use Noland and Hillary's statements encouraging armed groups to not give up their weapons as a "clear" way of asking for a civil war in Syria.

  11) The opposition:
  * a brief mention of the opposition "figures". Syria doesn't have an opposition leader with a "ready" agenda; they are all from the previous generation. The opposition was asked to meet by the Syrian government but most of them refused to attend.

  Key Points:
  The government's crackdown, the bloody regime, civil war, security forces and violence, Tanks, you tube torture clips, Pres. Assad IGNORES the bloodshed and the "help" of other countries and the Arab League", Army defectors, Robert Fords return to the US for "Security reasons", Syria is an authoritarian government.

  The Broadcasting hours and channels:
  · The interview will be broadcast across ABC News platforms - including World News, Good Morning America, This Week, ABC Radio, a full edition of Nightline, and full-length treatment across the digital space (for ABC News this now includes Yahoo as well - which means you can reach as many as 100 million people. ABC News and Yahoo recently joined forces - which is another reason why so many people now bring their interviews to us).
  

  The exact dates/times for all these broadcasts depends on when the interview is done.

  This is all ABC News - every platform. The entire interview would run on ABC News Digital; "Nightline" will devote an entire broadcast; "World News" at least one night, maybe two; "Good Morning America" a segment; "This Week" a segment. And so on.

  Thanks to Fadi Mqayed for the pointer.

• Morning Brief: Syrian violence escalates as U.N. action collapses

  Posted: February 6, 2012, 3:31 pm by Uri Friedman

  Syrian violence escalates as U.N. action collapses

  Top story: There are fresh reports today of a heavy Syrian assault on the flashpoint city of Homs (pictured above during a protest on Friday), two days after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Bashar al-Assad's crackdown and pressuring the Syrian president to step down. As activists report hundreds of deaths in Homs over the weekend, the state-run news agency is blaming "terrorists" for bombing a gas pipeline near the flashpoint city.

  Russia and China, meanwhile, are defending their vetoes. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has argued that supporting the U.N. resolution would have meant taking sides in a civil war, while a commentary in China's People's Daily noted that "simplistically supporting one side and suppressing the other" would "be sowing fresh seeds of disaster."

  Lavrov will hold talks with Assad in Damascus on Tuesday and call for the swift "implementation of democratic reforms whose time has come."

  Palestinian unity deal: In a news conference in Doha on Monday, the rival Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah announced that they've formed an interim unity government led initially by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ahead of elections. Israel and the West have said they will not negotiate with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless the group recognizes Israel and renounces violence.

  Europe

  • The Greek government has agreed to a new round of steep spending cuts and will resume crisis talks on Monday in an effort to secure bailout funds. 

  • Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc has resigned in the face of protests against IMF-supported austerity measures.  

  • Finland has elected its first conservative head of state since 1956.

  Middle East

  • In an interview on Sunday, President Obama said he did not believe Israel had made a decision on whether to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and emphasized his support for a diplomatic solution to the standoff.

  • Egypt is putting 19 Americans -- including the son of U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood -- and several other foreigners on trial as part of a broader crackdown on nonprofit groups, in a move that has raised tensions with the United States.

  • In the latest development in Iraq's political crisis, a lawmaker in the country's Sunni-backed coalition says the Shiite-led government may take away his immunity from prosecution.

  Americas

  • Mexico's ruling National Action Party has chosen Josefina Vazquez Mota to run for president in July, making her the country's first female presidential candidate from a major party. 

  • Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who was extradited to Panama in December, has been moved from prison to a hospital after suffering a possible stroke.

  • Shoe-hurling protesters greeted outgoing Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Sunday when he emerged from a hotel in New York City, where he is receiving medical treatment.

  Asia

  • A 6.8-magnitude earthquake in the Philippines has killed at least 12 people.

  • Three Tibetan herders have reportedly set themselves on fire in the latest sign of unrest among Tibetans in Sichuan Province.

  • The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is reporting that CIA drone strikes on suspected militants in Pakistan are also killing rescuers and mourners.

  Africa

  • South Africa's ruling African National Congress has postponed final sentencing for the suspended Youth League leader Julius Malema. 

  • An inquiry into the mysterious death of Zimbabwean military leader Solomon Mujuru is winding down with many questions still unanswered.

  • Tuareg rebels who fought for Muammar al-Qaddafi are using weapons from the former Libyan leader's arsenal to reinvigorate their insurgency in Mali.

  
  

  AFP/Getty Images

• Your North Korean accordion quintet '80s pop cover for the day

  Posted: February 3, 2012, 9:57 pm by Joshua Keating

  Here's the description from YouTube:

  a-ha's eternal pop evergreen performed by young accordeon players from Kum Song School, Pyongyang, North Korea. Part of multi-genre project THE PROMISED LAND by director and artist Morten Traavik, opening at the international arts and culture festival Barents Spektakel in Kirkenes, Norway February 8-12, 2012 (Juche 101). 

  Traavik is also the guy behind the "Miss Landmine" pageants held in Angola and Cambodia, which we wrote about back in 2008.   

  Hat tip:  FP contributor Andrew MacGregor Marshall on Twitter

• The Election 2012 Weekly Report: On to the Caucuses

  Posted: February 3, 2012, 8:45 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Romney pulls away

  Mitt Romney decisively won Florida's primacy on Tuesday with 46 percent of the vote. Newt Gingrich came in second with a disappointing 32 percent. Trailing far behind were Rick Santorum with 13 percent and Ron Paul with 7 percent. But Gingrich in a concession speech that often felt more like a victory speech, vowed to continue fighting in what he described as a "two-person race" between himself and the "Massachusetts moderate." Santorum and Paul are also staying in the hunt.

  Several of the foreign-policy issues that had been billed as potential game changers this season appeared not to be major factors in Florida. Candidates have been highly vocal on Israel in hopes of peeling Jewish votes away from President Barack Obama, who has publicly clashed with the Israeli government on several occasions. But if a significant number of Jews are changing their voter registration to Republican, they've been quiet so far. Poll analyst Nate Silver of the New York Times noted that only 1 percent of the voters in this year's Florida primary identified as Jewish, down from 3 percent in 2008.

  Despite the heavy emphasis on immigration reform in campaign rhetoric, very few Florida voters called undocumented immigrants their top concern. Romney, who has been somewhat more hawkish than other candidates on the topic of immigration, took a majority of the Latino vote -- as well as nearly six of ten Cuban-American voters.

  But things haven't been going quite so well for Romney since his sweeping victory in Florida. He has been heavily criticized for remarks on Wednesday morning that he is "not concerned about the very poor" in a CNN interview. The candidate says he misspoke, but a highly publicized endorsement from Donald Trump on Thursday may not have been the best way to combat the perception that he's out of touch with economically struggling Americans.

  Politics of the pullout

  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta surprised many by saying that the United States hopes to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by mid-2013, up to 18 months sooner than expected. The Romney campaign was quick to pounce, with the candidate calling the administration's plans "naïve" and "misguided."

  "Why in the world do you go to the people that you're fighting with and tell them the date you're pulling out your troops?" Romney said at a campaign stop in Las Vegas. "It makes absolutely no sense." Perhaps banking on low public support for continuing the war, Obama's press secretary Jay Carney countered Romney's criticism, saying troops "will not stay in Afghanistan any longer than is necessary to accomplish that mission."

  The GOP front-runner has consistently criticized the administration's withdrawal plans, though earlier this year Romney himself announced his intention to "bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can."

  The Iran factor

  This week saw another round of speculation in Washington over whether Israel will attack Iran's nuclear facilities. According to the Washington Post's David Ignatius,  Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood Israel will attack Iran this spring or summer, before Iran enters a "zone of immunity" to commence building a nuclear weapon.

  Iran is likely to continue to dominate the campaign agenda with Gingrich warning recently that "If Iranians get nuclear weapons, they don't have to fire a missile. They can just drive a boat into Jacksonville. Drive a boat into New York harbor." Gingrich has said he would launch a U.S. strike on Iran "only as a last recourse, and only as a step towards replacing the regime."

  Romney has also argued that "If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."

  Gates says to tone it down

  Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense to both George W. Bush and Obama, addressed the GOP field in an interview with CNN on Thursday, warning against overheated campaign rhetoric calling Obama weak-willed on Iran.  "You know sometimes things get pretty heated in campaigns, but I think the reality is there is an acknowledgment on people's part around the world that this president is willing to use military force when our needs require it," he said.

  Gates addressed both sides of the debate over Iran, saying, "Those who say we shouldn't attack, I think, underestimate the consequences of Iran having a nuclear weapon....  And those who say we should, underestimate the consequences of going to war."

  What to watch for

  Nevada voters will caucus on Saturday with Romney heavily favored to win. Maine will hold its caucuses throughout the week starting on Saturday. Colorado and Minnesota will both hold caucuses on Tuesday. The caucus format could provide an opening for Paul and Santorum, who both tend to inspire more enthusiasm in their (admittedly smaller) base of supporters than the two frontrunners. Paul has been campaigning heavily in Maine since last week.

  The latest from FP

  Scott Clement looks at why Obama shouldn't expect voters to flock to the polls to reward him for killing Osama bin Laden.

  Michael Cohen says the decision to leave Afghanistan early will prove to be smart politics for the president.

  Michael Shifter lays out the Latin America debate the candidates should have had in Florida, instead of just bashing Fidel Castro.

  Robert Satloff channels his inner William Safire and explains why presidents should stop describing U.S. support for Israel as "ironclad."

  Joseph Sarkisian asks whether a vote for Romney is a vote for war with Iran.

  Peter Feaver argues that it's time for the GOP candidates to stop attacking each other and offer a sharp critique of Obama's foreign policy.

  Josh Rogin reports on Romney's pledge to defend South Sudan.

  Joshua Keating wonders whether Gingrich's campaign rhetoric will inspire a new generation to read the works of Saul Alinsky.

• Iran isn't amused by Israeli Samsung ad

  Posted: February 3, 2012, 8:08 pm by Uri Friedman

  

  Israel isn't having much luck with commercials these days. First there was the government-sponsored ad campaign late last year to persuade Israelis living in the United States to return home, which was yanked when it caused an uproar in the American Jewish community. Now, Iranian lawmaker Arsalan Fat'hipour is telling Iran's PressTV that the country may impose a ban on products from South Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung over a commercial depicting Israelis accidentally destroying an Iranian nuclear facility.

  The ad couldn't come at a tenser time. Iranian leaders are accusing the Israeli spy agency Mossad of killing an Iranian nuclear scientist in January, and using increasingly heated rhetoric (just today, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Israel a "cancerous tumor" that must be "cut"). Meanwhile, the media is abuzz with reports that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities could be imminent.

  In the commercial for the Israeli cable company HOT, four characters from the HOT television series Asfur, all (poorly) disguised as Iranian women, meet a Mossad agent in Iran who's watching the show on his Samsung tablet. In checking out the device's features, one of the characters accidentally presses a button that blows up a nearby nuclear plant.

  Here's the commercial:

  PressTV has expressed outrage not only with the ad but also with its underlying assumptions -- that Iran is a "primitive society" and that "Israel is powerful enough to easily destroy Iran's nuclear facilities or assassinate the country's nuclear scientists." Fat'hipour, the Iranian lawmaker, argues that Samsung produced the commercial to cozy up with Israel. But a Samsung spokesperson in Iran tells PressTV that HOT -- not Samsung -- produced the ad, which promotes a cable deal offering subscribers free Samsung tablets. HOT has informed CNN that it has no comment on the controversy.

  Of course, in the Middle East, any ad that veers toward the political is likely to be controversial. In 2009, for example, the Israel cell phone company Cellcom aired a commercial in which a soccer ball kicked by unseen Palestinians hits an Israeli military jeep patrolling the security barrier with the West Bank. The soldiers kick it back over the fence, only for the ball to return, sparking an impromptu soccer game among Israeli soldiers. "The ad has caused outrage among Palestinians and left-wing Israelis who accuse it of whitewashing the negative effects of the wall," ABC News noted at the time, adding that the ad agency that produced the commercial claimed that the spot was intended to show "how people can overcome obstacles between them to build friendship."

  Iran's tough words for Samsung, however, may be about more than just HOT's incendiary ad. Last month, the Korea Herald reported that the Iranian government had retaliated against South Korea's support for Western sanctions of Iranian oil imports by demanding that Korean companies remove their billboards in the capital. One of the targets of Tehran's wrath? Good old Samsung.

• Anonymous leaks FBI-Scotland Yard conference call

  Posted: February 3, 2012, 7:32 pm by Joshua Keating

  Earlier this week, Ars Technica's Nate Anderson profiled the online hacker collective Anonymous for FP, writing, "when the Anonymous hive gets prodded, the prodder usually finds himself covered with bee stings and begging for mercy."

  Today's victims are the FBI and the London Metropolitan Police after a recording of a conference call between the two agencies about the ongoing investigation of Anonymous was leaked online. Anderson writes:

  Much of the call is taken up by a UK investigator from the Metropolitan Police who comes across as eager to curry favor with the FBI. The biggest way this is being done? UK investigators are intentionally trying to delay the court cases against Ryan Cleary and Jake "Topiary" Davis, two UK Anons arrested last year, for up to eight weeks as a favor to the FBI's New York field office.

  The participants also discuss a possible lead in the hacking of online gaming service Steam.

  For now, the recording is up on YouTube. There's nothing particularly embarrassing or incriminating in it unless you're particularly amused by the British police describing the city of Sheffield as a dump or describing a juvenile suspect who goes by the name "tehwongz" as "a bit of an idiot." But the fact that the recording made it out at all has to be unnerving for investigators.

• Will cold shut down Russia's protests?

  Posted: February 3, 2012, 6:25 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Like many Russian leaders before him, Vladimir Putin is finding Russia's brutal winter to be a formidable ally. A major antigovernment demonstration is planned for this Saturday in Moscow, but with temperatures of around -10 expected, opposition leaders may find it hard to garner a strong turnout. The New York Times reports:  

  When it is that cold, it can be difficult to breathe, let alone send a Twitter message, and organizers are scrambling to come up with ideas — free tea and coffee, hundreds of Japanese space heaters — to entice people out of their homes and keep them alive long enough to make a political point.

  There also have been calls for the political sermonizing to be curtailed and the rally to be kept short.

  “Otherwise, many will freeze,” Grigory Chxartishvili, better known as the writer Boris Akunin, said at a meeting of the organizing committee this week. “And afterward our rally will be blamed for causing the flu and pneumonia.”

  Not surprisingly, authorities are warning people to stay indoors, with health inspector Gennady Onishchenko issuing this baffling statement: 

  “Whatever side you are on, I categorically forbid you going to the protest wearing the clothes you [usually] wear," Onishchenko said in remarks reported by Russian news agencies.
  
  "Get hold of your granny’s felt boots and sheepskin coats that aren’t moth-eaten and which used to be a sign of luxurious prosperity in the eighties, and then you can go to either protest.”
  

   

  Opposition leaders are adivising protesters to dress warmly and not worry about looking fashionable for the photographers, although journalist Anastasia Karimova chose to make a statement about the cold using a time-honored approach to Russian political messaging in the above photo, which was posted to her Facebook page. (The sign reads "Cold is not scary.")

  Ukraine is currently suffering an even worse cold snap, with temperatures below -30 and more than 100 deaths since last Friday.  

   

   

• Morning Brief: More violence in protests over Egypt soccer deaths

  Posted: February 3, 2012, 3:09 pm by Joshua Keating

  More violence in protests over Egypt soccer deaths

  Top story: Demonstrators, including many hardcore soccer fans known as Ultras, are clashing with police for a second day in several Egyptian cities, prompted by the deaths of 74 fans at a match on Wednesday. At least four people have been killed and there are reports of police in Cairo and Suez using birdshot on protesters.

  Many blame Egypt's military authorities for Wednesday night's violence at a game in Port Said, with rumors circulating that Port Said fans were allowed to carry knives into the game to attack Cairo's Ultras, who had been at the forefront of protests against the Mubarak regime.

  Egypt's newly elected parliament has called an emergency session to address the violence and the country's military leader, Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, has accepted the resignation of the governor of Port Said. 

  Protesters are planning several marches across Cairo later today, and funeral prayers for those killed at the game will be held in Tahrir Square. 

  U.N.: In an effort to win Russian support, backers have dropped a specific reference to Bashar al-Assad ceding power from a proposed Security Council resolution on Syria

  Middle East

  • The Ayatollah Khamenei declared the Iran would support all groups fighting Israel and that his country would retaliate against Western oil sanctions. 
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won an overwhelming victory in a snap primary vote held in parliament.  
  • Human Rights Watch says that Muammar al-Qaddafi's former ambassador to France was killed after torture by the militia forces that captured him. 

  Asia and Pacific

  • North Korea issued a series of demands for reviving relations with the South. 
  • A U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia gave a life sentence to former senior Khmer Rouge leader Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch.
  • A bail appeal by MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom was rejected in New Zealand. 

  Europe

  • Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said China might be willing to work with the IMF to help shore up Europe's finances. 
  • More than 100 people have died as a result of cold weather in Ukraine since last Friday.
  • The International Court of Justice ruled that Germany has immunity from suits in foreign courts over Nazi war crimes. 

  Americas

  • Cuban protesters say police beat and sexually harassed a group of women who were planning to hold an anti-government rally. 
  • Colombia's FARC rebels suspended plans to release six longtime hostages. 
  • Brazil's minister of cities resigned over corruption charges. 

  Africa

  • The U.N. has declared famine conditions over in Somalia. 
  • Demonstrators surrounded the presidential residence in Bamako to protest the Malian government's handling of recent attacks by Touareg rebels. 
  • A surveillance drone reportedly crashed into a refugee camp in Mogadishu. 

  
  

  MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images

• The latest Iran frenzy

  Posted: February 2, 2012, 6:15 am by Blake Hounshell

  The news gods have apparently decided it's time for yet another round of Washington's favorite parlor game: "Will Israel attack Iran?"

  The latest round of speculation was kicked off by a mammoth New York Times magazine article by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, who concluded, "After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012."

  Veteran Iran hand Gary Sick ably dispensed with Bergman's argument here, noting that his reporting actually points toward the opposite conclusion:

  Like virtually all other commentators on this issue, Bergman slides over the fact that the IAEA consistently reports that Iran has diverted none of its uranium to military purposes. Like others, he focuses on the recent IAEA report, which was the most detailed to date in discussing Iran’s suspected experiments with military implications; but like others, he fails to mention that almost all of the suspect activity took place seven or more years ago and there is no reliable evidence that it has resumed. A problem, yes; an imminent threat, no.

  Bergman also overlooks the fact that Iran has almost certainly NOT made a decision to actually build a bomb and that we are very likely to know if they should make such a decision. How would we know? Simply because those pesky IAEA inspectors are there on site and Iran would have to kick them out and break the seals on their stored uranium in order to produce the high enriched uranium needed for a bomb.

  Would Israel actually attack while these international inspectors are at work? No, they would need to give them warning, thereby giving Iran warning that something was coming. The IAEA presence is a trip wire that works both ways. It is an invaluable resource. Risking its loss would be not only foolhardy but self-destructive to Israel and everyone else.

  But Bergman's article isn't the only recent bite at this apple. Foreign Affairs hosted a debate between former Defense Department officials Matthew Kroenig and Colin Kahl on whether the United States should bomb Iran itself; Foreign Policy's Steve Walt went several rounds with Kroenig; defense analysts Edridge Colby and Austin Long joined the discussion in the National Interest. Many others weighed in.

  Today, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius threw another log on the fire when he reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June" and that the Obama administration is "conducting intense discussions about what an Israeli attack would mean for the United States." He added: "U.S. officials don’t think that Netanyahu has made a final decision to attack, and they note that top Israeli intelligence officials remain skeptical of the project." (Reuters notes archly that Ignatius was "writing from Brussels where Panetta was attending a NATO defense ministers' meeting.")

  There have also been a number of items in recent days about Iran's murky ties to al Qaeda, including this Foreign Affairs article by Rand analyst Seth Jones and what appeared to be a follow-up report in the Wall Street Journal (never mind that the information was nearly two years old), as well as a steady drumbeat of alarmist quotes from top Israeli officials -- all reminiscent of the run up to the Iraq war. Add to this mix Iran's threat to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, an ongoing congresssional push for tougher sanctions, and the heated rhetoric coming from Obama's Republican challengers, and you have a recipe for a media feeding frenzy.

  Most likely, the real drivers of this latest round are the Western attempts to persuade Iran's Asian customers -- China, India, Japan, South Korea -- to stop buying Iranian oil by persuading them that the only alternative is war. Those efforts are probably doomed, despite Israel's increasingly convincing ambiguity about its ultimate intentions. Asian countries simply don't care all that much about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon -- they care about their own prosperity above all.

  So, is Israel going to attack Iran, despite all of the doubts many have raised? There are only two people who know the answer to that question -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak -- and I don't think they'll announce their decision in the New York Times. The smart money's still betting against an Israeli strike, but the odds do seem to be getting shorter.

• Tymoshenko's daughter: Ukraine becoming a 'Stalinist regime'

  Posted: February 2, 2012, 1:13 am by Joshua Keating

  

  "The conditions of the Soviet Union and the Stalinist regime are back in Ukraine," said Yevgenia Tymoshenko in a meeting with reporters in Washington today. 

  The daughter of imprisoned former Ukrainian prime minister and opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is in Washington this week trying to raise awareness of her mother's condition and the deterioration of democracy in Ukraine. Yesterday, she testified on Capitol Hill and met with Vice President Joe Biden.

  In today's briefing, she described the conditions in which her mother has been kept since she was sentenced to seven years in prison last October: 

  When I see my mother, her health is not getting better. They’ve equipped the investigation room with a special bed where she can lie down because she cannot stand up or sit down or move without pain,. That’s where they continue interrogating her for a few hours every day while she’s lying down...

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  Her cell is always lit 24 hours a day and she’s under video surveillance, which they say is for her own safety but it’s obviously just to put more psychological pressure on her. Recently they stopped allowing normal food to her. Just bare food. Just bread with no necessary nutrients. She didn’t receive medical treatment, although authorities keep promising  all the time that it will be possible for an independent doctor to come and see her, but we haven’t seen the result. No hopefully, next week, independent doctors from Canada and Germany will be able to see her.   

  Tymoshenko's prosecution in a chaotic, circus-like trial last year involved a 2009 negotiation with Russia over a natural gas sale, which authorities say harmed Ukrainian interests. Her colleagues Yuri Lutsenko -- the former interior minister -- and Valery Ivashchenko --the former acting minister of Defense -- are also currently on trial.

  While several governments and organizations including the European Union have condemned Tymoshenko's prosecution as as a politically-motivated campaign against the country's most influential opposition figure, officials from President Viktor Yanukovych's government have maintained that the trial was carried out by law enforcement officials with no interference from the executive branch. Yevgenia, however, believes Yanukovych is directly responsible for her mother's treatment:

  He says in interviews ... that all the branches of government are independent and he doesn't have any influence on them. It’s funny, when there was pressure on him and he said 'okay, tomorrow she will be taken to the hospital,' the next day she was taken to the hospital. Obviously, we know that the high council of justice that was created after his judicial reforms, that the majority of this council are presidential people, and they can hire and fire judges and start criminal cases against them.

  Until her mother's sentencing, Yevgenia -- who returned to Ukraine in 2005 with her husband, a British rock singer, after nine years living in London --  was never involved in politics. "I’ve never wanted to be a politician," she said. "My mission is just to help my country’s democracy and obviously to help release these political prisoners."

  While she says she does not fear for her safety, she believes that her phones are tapped and that she is monitored by state security forces. Her father, Oleksander, fled Ukraine fearing his own prosecution and has been granted asylum in the Czech Republic. 

  Tymoshenko believes her mother's fate has had a chilling effect on the Ukrainian opposition, with many potential activists thinking, " Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} if this can happen to [the former] leaders of this country than what can happen to me?"

  I asked her is she believes there could be a repeat of the kind of anti-government uprising her mother helped lead in 2005, or even protests like those seen in Moscow in recent weeks.  "If my mom is out of prison, it's possible," she replied. "That's the reason she will not be freed unless the course of action is changed."

• Five things you can't do on Twitter in the United States

  Posted: February 2, 2012, 8:19 pm by Uri Friedman

  

  Caught the headlines recently about Twitter's new system for blocking tweets on a per-county basis and South Korea's indictment of an activist for reposting messages from the North Korean government's Twitter account? It makes us wonder: Just what are the red lines in the United States for using the microblogging service? After all, we know that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, and Air Force are all already monitoring Twitter or seeking to develop technology to do so. While the legal terrain here is murky, here are five behaviors you might want to avoid:

  • Threatening violence: Earlier this week, DHS agents detained Irish traveler Leigh Van Bryan and a friend at Los Angeles International Airport and sent them back to Europe after Bryan tweeted that he was going to "destroy America" and dig up Marilyn Monroe during his trip -- references, he later told officials, to partying and the comedy show Family Guy, respectively (the incident conjured up memories of other jokes gone awry, such as when the Onion enraged the U.S. Capitol Police by tweeting, "BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building"). In 2009, FBI agents arrested an Oklahoma City man named Daniel Knight Hayden for threatening on Twitter to kill police officers during a Tea Party tax protest. Hayden was sentenced to eight months in prison.

  • Coordinating unlawful behavior: Pittsburgh police arrested a New Yorker named Elliot Madison for using Twitter to alert anti-capitalist protesters about police movements during a 2009 G-20 summit. The criminal complaint claimed that Madison had helped demonstrators engaged in unlawful behavior avoid arrest, though the charges were later dropped.

  • Pranking police: This past summer, the L.A. Sheriff's Department opened a criminal investigation after the rapper The Game urged his 580,000 followers to call a number -- the department's Compton station, to be precise -- if they wanted an internship with him. The hundreds of calls that followed "overwhelmed the emergency phone system and delayed emergency service," according to the Los Angeles Times (the department ultimately decided not to pursue charges). Twitters accounts impersonating police departments in Virginia and Texas have also been shut down.

  • Cyberbullying: Last week, police in northwest Arkansas arrested three girls and one boy who were allegedly sending vulgar and derogatory messages from Twitter accounts.

  • Not tweeting: The manager for teen pop star Justin Bieber and an Island Def Jam Records executive were arrested a couple of years ago for not immediately cancelling an appearance by Bieber at a Long Island mall over Twitter, as police requested afters fans grew unruly. Prosecutors charged the manager, "Scooter" Braun, with reckless endangerment and criminal nuisance but later dropped the charges in exchange for Bieber recording a public service announcement on cyberbullying.

• Falklands aren't the only islands Britain is going to have to fight for

  Posted: February 2, 2012, 7:56 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  Hopefully William Hague has been brushing up on his Spanish. In addition to rising tensions with Argentina over the Falklands, the British government may soon face a challenge from Spain over its claim to Gibraltar: 

  Mariano Rajoy, Spain's new centre-right Prime Minister, meanwhile, is to demand talks over the future of the colony without the involvement of authorities in Gibraltar.

  His call marks a hardening of Madrid's position over its controversial claim for the return of the Rock. Under the previous Socialist Spanish government, the authorities in Gibraltar had been included in three-way talks with Madrid and London.

  Madrid was unimpressed after Mr Cameron told a meeting at the Council of Europe last week that the future of Gibraltar depended on the wishes of the colony's 30,000 inhabitants.

  Questioned by Spanish MEPs, Mr Cameron said that Britain backed the Rock's right to self-determination and that going against the wishes of its people would amount to "recolonisation".

  In response, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, the new Spanish Foreign Minister, wrote to William Hague, his diplomatic counterpart, stressing that there was no mention of auto-determination in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. Spanish diplomatic sources insisted that Mr Garcia-Margallo's letter was "not in the tone of a protest". But Mr Garcia-Margallo called on Mr Hague to explain the British stance regarding the Rock.

  Cameron and Hague probably wish they could spend their time on more crucial issues than defending Britain's remaining island outposts for the crown, but this sort of thing can be a slippery slope. Even Scotland's looking a bit dicey these day.

   

• Azerbaijan to change name to 'Northern Azerbaijan' to annoy Iran?

  Posted: February 2, 2012, 7:44 pm by Joshua Keating

  You'd think Azerbaijan might have its hands full with one ongoing territorial dispute, but a group of lawmakers have apparently decided this is a good time to mix things up with Iran. EurasiaNet's Giorgi Losadze explains: 

  The idea, pitched by minority lawmakers and applauded by representatives of the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party, spells trouble for the already less-than-neighborly relations between Azerbaijan and Iran. The name Northern Azerbaijan emphasizes the fact that the Azeri nation is split between an independent state, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and a province in northern Iran, known to many Azerbaijanis as Southern Azerbaijan.[...]

  And why not?, asked Yeni Azerbaijan Party parliamentarian Siyavush Novruzov. We already have the examples of North and South Korea, North and South Cyprus, so “Azerbaijan, as a divided state, should be called Northern Azerbaijan,” he argued, Trend reported. The lawmakers have proposed to hold a national referendum on the name change.

  The situation is a kind of inverse version of the ongoing naming dispute in Macedonia, which has had to labor under the ungainly name of "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" because Greece feels the name "Macedonia" implies a territorial claim on a region of Northern Greece historically known by that name. 

  The Azerbaijan naming dispute takes place against the backdrop of what tightened international oil sanctions against Tehran will mean for the country's own oil market. 

  Hat tip: Joshua Kucera 

• Morning Brief: Panetta says U.S. combat role in Afghanistan to end in 2013

  Posted: February 2, 2012, 2:46 pm by David Kenner

  Panetta says U.S. combat role in Afghanistan to end in 2013

  Top story: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Wednesday that the United States could end its combat mission in Afghanistan as early as mid-2013, more than a year before the deadline President Barack Obama laid out for withdrawing all U.S. troops from the country. His comments were the first time a U.S. official had put a date on when the United States would relinquish its central role in the conflict.

  There are roughly 90,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan, and 22,000 of them will return home by this fall. There has been no timeline for withdrawing the remaining 68,000 troops, other than that they must leave before the end of 2014.

  Panetta said that the U.S. troops would play an "advise and assist" role to Afghan forces after mid-2013, and described the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as a possible model to emulate in Afghanistan. He also suggested that financial strains may require Afghanistan's security forces, which includes 350,000 troops, to be downsized.

  Egyptian soccer riots claim dozens of lives: An Egyptian soccer match devolved into riots and clashes on Wednesday, resulting in at least 73 deaths and raising the prospect of further anti-government protests in Cairo.

  Asia

  • Pakistan's Supreme Court decided to indict Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani over his refusal to pursue corruption cases against the president.
  • More than 200 people were rescued off the coast of Papua New Guinea after their ferry sunk.
  • The Philippine military said that it killed three militants from al Qaeda-linked groups.

  Middle East

  • The Special Tribunal for Lebanon will try the suspects in the murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in absentia.
  • Palestinians staged a protest against Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as he traveled from Israel to Gaza.
  • Diplomat at the U.N. Security Council said that progress had been made in passing a resolution aimed at condemning the violence in Syria.

  Europe

  • German Chancellor Angela Merkel traveled to China to discuss the euro zone crisis, as well as to coordinate policy on Iran and Syria.
  • NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen endorsed French and U.S. calls for Afghans to take the lead in security by mid-2013.
  • French prosecutors launched an investigation into the cruise ship disaster off the coast of Italy last month.

  Africa

  • British Foreign Secretary William Hague arrived in the Somali capital of Mogadishu to launch a new push to restore stability in the country.
  • South Sudan's President Salva Kiir said that war could break out with the north if oil negotiations aren't completed.
  • Nigeria arrested the spokesman for the Boko Haram militant group.

  Americas

  • Facebook announced that it would raise $5 billion in an initial public offering.
  • At least seven people were killed in an attack on a Colombian police station.
  • A man was arrested in Chile for stealing ice from a glacier.

  
  

  Pablo Martinez Monsivais-Pool/Getty Images

• 2012: The darkest Falklands anniversary yet?

  Posted: February 1, 2012, 11:01 pm by Uri Friedman

  

  My, how the times have changed.

  In 1992, ten years after Britain beat back an Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands and two years after the two sides resumed diplomatic relations, Argentine President Carlos Menem delivered a speech on the anniversary of the bloody conflict. "Sooner or later, maybe before the year 2000, we will recover the Malvinas Islands without shedding a drop of blood," he pledged, using his country's term for the South Atlantic islands off Argentina's eastern coast, which Britain has controlled since 1833. The Los Angeles Times observed at the time that both Britain and Argentina seemed eager to "negotiate patiently" on everything from trade to petroleum exploration to the conservation of fisheries around the Falklands.  

  Fast forward to 2012, the 30th anniversary of the war. Prince William, a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, is flying to the Falklands tonight to begin a six-week mission as Britain prepares to dispatch an advanced warship to the islands, prompting Argentina's Foreign Ministry to declare that Britain is "militariz[ing]" the conflict and sending Queen Elizabeth II's grandson "in the uniform of a conquistador."

  The row comes after Argentina persuaded a South American trading bloc to prevent ships flying the Falklands flag from docking in their ports, threatened to cut the only air link between the islands and South America, and started a "squid war" by instructing Argentine fishermen to catch the creatures (which, along with sheep, are critical to the archipelago's economy) before they reached the Falklands. British Prime Minister David Cameron responded to these actions by accusing Argentina of "colonialism" since Falkland Islanders "want to remain British."

  So what explains this bellicose, nationalistic behavior by both sides regarding a territory with a mere 3,000 inhabitants? Britain's decision to authorize offshore oil prospecting in the Falklands in 2010 has surely played a role, as has the United Kingdom's economic malaise coupled with Argentina's rapid (if checkered) economic growth. In 2002 -- the 20th anniversary of the Falklands War -- the roles were reversed. As Argentina struggled to recover from a crippling economic crisis, Reuters reported that many Argentine politicians "skipped public ceremonies commemorating the war because they were afraid of being heckled by angry crowds suffering from rising unemployment and bank account freezes."

  Now Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, emboldened by a resounding reelection victory, has made the Falklands a centerpiece of her foreign policy. In its statement this week, Argentina's Foreign Ministry accused Britain of taking an aggressive stance toward the Falklands to distract the public from spending cuts related to "structural crisis and high unemployment." And indeed, the Financial Times notes that some analysts believe Britain -- and particularly its Falklands air base -- may be vulnerable to an Argentine invasion because of Royal Navy cuts and the government's decision to scrap its only aircraft carrier. By sending the HMS Dauntless destroyer to the Falklands, the paper explains, Britain may be leaving "nothing to chance" as the anniversary of the war approaches this spring. 

  In fact, the anniversaries have been growing tenser for some time, as Britain has repeatedly refused to acquiesce to Argentine demands for U.N.-sponsored negotiations on the sovereignty of the islands. In 2007 -- the 25th anniversary of the conflict -- frustration over Britain's rejection of talks spurred the Argentine government to reassert its claim to the Falklands, in a move that seemed rather toothless since the claim was already baked into Argentina's constitution.  

  But Argentina's current measures are packing more of a punch. And while a renewal of hostilities may be unlikely, more than just squid has already been caught in the diplomatic crossfire. As the Guardian points out today, Falkland Islanders are contending with "higher food prices and a growing sense of encirclement" even as Kirchner and Cameron score political points. As John Fowler, deputy editor of the Falklands Island-based Penguin News, wrote earlier this month:

  You could say we feel like the duck in the basket in the traditional gaucho game of 'pato.' This poor creature used to end up belonging to one side or the other, but was likely to be battered to death in the process.

• Wikileaks to move to Sealand?

  Posted: February 1, 2012, 9:51 pm by Joshua Keating

  

  As an fan of geopolitical anomalies, I was excited to see this Mashable item suggesting that WikiLeaks might move its servers to the Principality of Sealand, the 6,000 square foot former British military installation in the North Sea that since 1968 has been "ruled" as a sovereign nation by the highly entertaining Prince Roy Bates and his family. Unfortunately, the Fox News story the item is based on seems purely speculative. And a Sealand URL still wouldn't protect any of WikiLeaks' operators from prosecution.

  But, as Mashable notes, this isn't the first time Sealand has been discussed as a possible data haven: 

  Sealand did house the data hosting company HavenCo between 2000 and 2008, before operations ceased for unknown reasons. In 2008, according to Security and the Net, the file-sharing site PirateBay campaigned for donations to purchase Sealand and live in a “copyright-free nation.”

  In other news, Sealand is currently "in talks" about forming a national rugby team. It must be a pain to get the ball back if it goes out of bounds. 

• Morning Brief: Security Council debate on Syria sputters

  Posted: February 1, 2012, 3:17 pm by Uri Friedman

  Security Council debate on Syria sputters

  Top news: Arab and Western states spent Tuesday calling on the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and delegate power to his deputy over his crackdown on an 11-month-old uprising, which has grown increasingly violent. But Russia and China, both veto-wielding Security Council members, remain unconvinced.

  Vladimir Chizhov, Moscow's envoy to the European Union, explained on Wednesday that Russia would veto the draft resolution unless it explicitly ruled out military intervention in Syria, while Li Baodong, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council that China opposed the "use of force" and "pushing for forced regime change" in Syria. "Behind all the arguments lurked the ghost of Libya," the New York Times observes.

  In her remarks to the Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that Libya was a "false analogy." The plan for a democratic transition in Syria "represents the best efforts of Syria's neighbors to chart a way forward," she explained. 

  Election 2012: Mitt Romney regained momentum in the Republican primary by securing over 46 percent of the vote in Florida, with Newt Gingrich coming in a distant second with just under 32 percent. Romney declared that the competitive primary is preparing him for a general election victory, while Gingrich pledged to contest every state.

  Asia

  • During a visit to Afghanistan, Pakistan's foreign minister dismissed charges in a leaked NATO report that her country supports the Taliban, calling the allegations "old wine in new bottles."

  • The International Atomic Energy Agency is supporting new stress tests to determine whether Japan's nuclear facilities can weather another emergency.

  • Bedouin tribesman in Egypt have released 25 Chinese workers kidnapped in an attack that came shortly after 29 Chinese workers were captured in Sudan.

  Middle East

  • Iran says it conducted "constructive and positive talks" with U.N. nuclear inspectors and promised more negotiations but released no additional details about the visit.

  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defeated an ultranationalist rival in an election for the leadership of his right-wing Likud party.

  • Hundreds of young Muslim Brotherhood members blocked protesters from reaching the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated parliament in Cairo, resulting in more than 70 injuries.

  Americas

  • U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper listed Iranian aggression, cyberattacks, Mideast volatility, North Korea's nuclear program, and drug-fueled violence in Mexico and Central America as top concerns.  

  • Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff met with Fidel and Raul Castro in Cuba as part of an effort to strengthen financial ties with the island.

  • Mexico's political leaders are up in arms over the discovery of $1.9 million in cash in a state official's luggage at an airport.

  Europe

  • Four men inspired by al Qaeda and Anwar al-Awlaki have admitted to a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange. 

  • WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is appealing his extradition to Sweden at Britain's Supreme Court. 

  • Opponents of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin brandished a giant banner opposite the Kremlin reading, "Putin, go away" before police removed the sign.

  Africa

  • Deadly clashes have erupted in Senegal's capital between police and opposition supporters protesting President Abdoulaye Wade's reelection bid, as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern about the violence.

  • Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe condemned African leaders for recognizing Libya's National Transitional Council after an African Union summit.

  • Zimbabwe is combating an outbreak of typhoid that has afflicted more than 1,500 people. 

  
  

  Mario Tama/Getty Images