2010 Archive Selected News Articles

July 2010

• Jul/Aug 2010
  Foriegn Policy: Who Else Is to Blame?
  From security short falls to lack of government accountibility, Mo Ibrahim, Paul Wolfowitz, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, Bruce Babbitt, and Raymond C. Offenheiser explain those contributing factors that cripple societies and inevitably keep failed states failing.

• Jul/Aug 2010
  Foriegn Policy: Where Left Means Right. What happens when political parties trend in the other direction?
  From security short falls to lack of government accountibility, Mo Ibrahim, Paul Wolfowitz, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, Bruce Babbitt, and Raymond C. Offenheiser explain those contributing factors that cripple societies and inevitably keep failed states failing. Ever since rival factions arranged themselves on opposite sides of a meeting hall during the French Revolution, the political meanings of the terms "left" and "right" have been pretty constant. Left-wingers everywhere like high taxes, big government, and social change. Right-wingers prefer low taxes, small government, and free markets. Except when they don't.

• Jul/Aug 2010
  Foriegn Policy: Where Autocrats Don't Fear to Tread. Why dictators love the United Nations.
  In May 2007, Zimbabwe was elected to chair the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. It was a novel choice, as "sustainable" wasn't exactly the In May 2007, Zimbabwe was elected to chair the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. It was a novel choice, as "sustainable" wasn't exactly the first word most people would use to describe the course President Robert Mugabe has charted for his southern African nation. Radical economic policies imposed by the revolutionary-turned-strongman had systematically destroyed Zimbabwe, plunging a once relatively prosperous country of some 12 million people into destitution. Farm productivity had fallen three-quarters for some crops; the U.N. World Food Program found that 3.3 million people were at risk of hunger, and nearly as many had fled to find work and refuge elsewhere. There was also the inconvenient fact that Mugabe's environment and tourism minister, Francis Nheme, who would represent Zimbabwe on the commission, was banned from traveling to the European Union on account of EU sanctions. But the Zimbabweans had firm African support, so there was little that other U.N. members could do but look on in horror.

• Jul/Aug 2010
  Foriegn Policy: The Worst of the Worst Bad dude dictators and general coconut heads.
  A continent away from Kyrgyzstan, Africans like myself cheered this spring as a coalition of opposition groups ousted the country's dictator, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. "One coconut down, 39 more to harvest!" we shouted. There are at least 40 dictators around the world today, and approximately 1.9 billion people live under the grip of the 23 autocrats on this list alone. There are plenty of coconuts to go around. The cost of all that despotism has been stultifying. Millions of lives have been lost, economies have collapsed, and whole states have failed under brutal repression. And what has made it worse is that the world is in denial. The end of the Cold War was also supposed to be the "End of History" -- when democracy swept the world and repression went the way of the dinosaurs. Instead, Freedom House reports that only 60 percent of the world's countries are democratic -- far more than the 28 percent in 1950, but still not much more than a majority. And many of those aren't real democracies at all, ruled instead by despots in disguise while the world takes their freedom for granted. As for the rest, they're just left to languish.

• Jul/Aug 2010
  Foriegn Policy: The Known Unkowns.
  When U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to the "known unknowns" that remained in Iraq in 2002, he was mocked endlessly -- and those mysterious black holes ended up confounding his administration's project there. Rumsfeld's not the only one to encounter this epistemological puzzle: Known unknowns are everywhere, waiting to trip us up. Here are a few of the most enigmatic.

• Jul/Aug 2010
  Foriegn Policy: How to Be a Middle East Technocrat. A look at the rising class of results-minded bureaucrats who are finding a new way across the Islamic World.
  The Arab world's fire-breathing guerrillas and military despots get all the attention. But the men who run the region's day-to-day affairs are a different breed. Across the Middle East over the last decade, a new class of technocrats -- all in their 40s and 50s, with advanced degrees in law and economics, many from Western universities, and backed by powerful patrons -- has risen to power in governments from Syria to Egypt to Palestine, resolutely focused on tackling the mundane problems affecting their societies. And they are achieving surprising success by adhering to three relatively simple rules.

• Jul/Aug 2010
  Foriegn Affairs: Veiled Truths. The Rise of Policitcal Islam in the West.
  In The Flight of the Intellectuals, Paul Berman argues that it is not violent Islamists who pose the greatest danger to liberal societies in the West but rather their so-called moderate cousins, such as Tariq Ramadan. Such a reading of contemporary Islamism, however, misses the many nuances of the movement and the real battles between reformers and Salafists. This spring, Tariq Ramadan arrived in the United States nearly six years after being denied a visa by the Bush administration. The U.S. government had previously refused Ramadan entry on the grounds that he had donated to a French charity with ties to Hamas. Then, last January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Ramadan was welcome. His appearance in the United States seemed to manifest the White House's changing rhetoric about the Muslim world. In June 2009, President Barack Obama spoke in Cairo of reaching out to Muslims with "mutual interest and mutual respect." Figures such as Ramadan -- symbols of a nonviolent Islamism long shunned as enablers of extremism -- may now represent a bridge across previously intractable divides.

• Jul/Aug 2010
  Foriegn Affairs: Honolulu, Harvard, and Hyde Park. The Making of Barack Obama.
  Barack Obama's appeal has always been something of a paradox. On the one hand, Obama's election as the United States' first African American president can be seen as a triumph for "identity politics" and a blow to the near hammerlock that white Protestant males have had on the presidency since George Washington. On the other hand, it moves the country closer to an era of nonracial or postracial politics, in which racial identity will matter less and less. Obama is a clear break from past generations of black politicians. In the parlance of the civil rights movement, he is a member of "the Joshua generation" -- a term drawn from the Bible that refers to the generation of Jews who did not remember the Exodus but lived to enter the Promised Land. And he has embraced a very different political style from those of other black politicians, such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. With a white mother and a Kenyan father who lived in the United States only briefly, Obama had little personal connection to the forces and history that shape African American identity. Growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia, two places where black-white relations were a marginal and distant force, young Barry Obama's life was touched only tangentially by race. From this start, Obama emerged as the most commanding figure in African American politics ever and was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

• Jul-12-2010
  Investopedia: The Hidden Differences Between Index Fund.
  Think of your trips to the candy store as a child. You'd pick out your favorite candy... let's say it was jelly beans. Orange tasted like oranges and yellow tasted like lemons - but sometime later, the yellow jelly beans you purchased might taste like pineapples, or popcorn! What was up with that? The lesson here, that appearances can't be trusted, can be applied to index funds too. Although an S&P 500 or Dow Jones Industrial Average index fund should each replicate its respective index, the fund's performance is not guaranteed to be the same as others like it or as the index it mimics. Read on to learn about the sometimes hidden differences between index funds. Not all index funds perform the same. Expense ratios, fees and tracking error can drastically affect an index fund's performance. Investors should carefully investigate an index fund before buying in to make sure that its fees are low and that they have a firm understanding of what the fund invests in, as well as the strategies and goals that management uses to meet its objectives. Index funds can be very dependable investments, but investors are more likely to find one they can count on if they weed out any element of surprise.

• Jul-12-2010
  Investopedia: Invest In Hollywood With The Film Futures Market.
  Want to make a bet on the next mega blockbuster? Well a movie futures market is a concept that has been tossed around for several years but it wasn't until 2010 that Commodity Futures Trading Commission took it seriously and approved the concept. The idea of a film futures market may seem a little odd. You've seen the futures market work with the agriculture industry, but backers of this market, such as some film funds, studios and movie producers, attest that it can help the turbid Hollywood film industry while giving a lucky speculator an enormous payoff on an unlikely outcome. Meanwhile, firms such as Cantor Fitzgerald are alleviating worries and securing transparency. The brokerage firm is reassuring its experience in capital markets to the public. It has also laid out a set of solutions in congressional committee meetings to counter concerns about gambling and manipulation. The firm claimed before a congressional meeting that it could detect inaccuracies of studio data by comparing it to electronically captured sales records. The film futures market may be a new concept, but it will have to go through some trial and error to better determine whether it will be the right choice for you.

• Jul-12-2010
  Investopedia: 15 Insurance Policies You Don't Need.
  Fear of the future sells insurance. Because we can't predict the future, we want to be ready to cover our financial needs if, or when, something bad happens. Insurance companies understand this fear and offer a variety of insurance policies designed to protect us from a host of calamities that range from disability to disease and everything in between. While none of us wants anything bad to happen, many of the potential catastrophes that happen in our lives are not worth insuring against. In this article, we'll take you through 15 policies that you're probably better off without. There are so many policies to chose from, and they all cost money. While a certain amount of insurance coverage is necessary and prudent, you need to choose carefully. In general, broad policies that offer coverage for a multitude of potential events are a better choice than limited-scope policies that focus on specific diseases or potential incidents. Before you buy any policy, read it carefully to make sure that you understand the terms, coverage and costs. Don't sign on the dotted line until you are comfortable with the coverage and are sure that you need it.

• Jul-12-2010
  Investopedia: 5 Insurance Policies Everyone Should Have.
  Protecting your most important assets is an important step in creating a solid personal financial plan. The right insurance policies will go a long way toward helping you safeguard your earning power and your possessions. In this article, we'll show you five policies that you shouldn't do without. Insurance policies come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and boast many different features, benefits and prices. Shop carefully, read the policies and talk to the salesperson to be certain that you understand the coverage and the cost. Make sure the policies that you purchase are adequate for your needs, and don't sign on the dotted line until you are happy with the purchase.

• Jul-09-2010
  Foriegn Affairs: The G-20’s Dead Ideas. Why Fiscal Retrenchment is the Wrong Response to the Crisis.
  The recent G-20 meeting in Toronto ended with the world's largest economies promising to cut deficit spending. But such a course is unwise and unlikely to lead to growth -- it is time for finance ministers to take on the speculators who are calling for retrenchment. One of the most well-known lines in John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory notes how politicians think of themselves as reacting to “events” when they are in fact “usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” The latest G-20 meeting, held last month in Toronto, proves Keynes’ wisdom once again -- with a twist. The G-20 meeting ended with a collective endorsement of “growth-friendly fiscal consolidation,” which assumes that if G-20 member states tighten their fiscal belts, states will have to borrow less, pay less interest, and, therefore, will not “crowd-out” private-sector growth. Such a strategy may sound sensible, but it relies on the same fallacy of composition that brought on the banking crisis -- that by making individual banks safe, you make the system as a whole safe -- only in reverse. That is, although it may make sense for any single state (or firm or household) to clean its balance sheet, if all the G-20 states embark on such a course at once, the results could be disastrous. The whole -- Keynes’ critical insight -- is not equivalent to the sum of its parts. The finance ministers of the G-20 states seem to believe that by retrenching in the middle of a recession, they will somehow improve their states’ balance sheets and thus return to a period of economic growth. Deflation, in other words, is now good for growth. How did we get here?

• Jul-08-2010
  Investopedia: 4 Dishonest Broker Tactics And How To Avoid Them.
  Any industry has its bad apples, and the brokerage industry is no exception. While most investment professionals are honest, there are always people who will take advantage of people when given the change - especially when it comes to money. As a result, it helps to be armed with information to help you understand the investment profession, and ask the right questions when seeking its services. For the most part, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) do a fairly good job regulating and policing the brokerage community. Even so, the best way to avoid deceitful brokers is to do your homework. And even then, the most thorough background check of the firm, broker or planner doesn't always prevent investors from falling prey to fraudulence. Here we look at the most unscrupulous practices brokers have used to boost their commissions and push poor-quality investments onto unsuspecting investors.

• Jul-08-2010
  The Economist: Lament for a Lebanese cleric. He tried to calm things down. The death of a Shia ayatollah who had increasingly called for tolerance.
  AMONG the hundreds of thousands who thronged the narrow streets of Beirut’s Shia quarter for Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Fadlallah’s funeral on July 6th, a few chanted “Death to America!” Once upon a time the pugnacious cleric might have joined in. After all, many Lebanese accused American agents of sponsoring the massive car bomb that targeted him in 1985, killing 80 people on these same streets in what was widely assumed to be revenge for the Shia suicide-bombing that had earlier killed 241 American marines in their barracks in southern Beirut. The ayatollah will be hard to replace. No one of his stature can now gently counter Hizbullah’s claim to represent all Lebanese Shias or question its fealty to Iran. And there is one less ayatollah to challenge Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in his claim to lead all the world’s Shias.

• Jul-08-2010
  The Economist: Gold. Store of value Low returns on other investments and fears about the world economy have caused the price of gold to soar. Don’t count on its continued rise.
  ON THE kind of hot, sultry day in which the brutal Delhi summer specialises, the attractions of lingering languidly over gold jewellery in air-conditioned comfort are easily understood. Yet customers are thin on the ground in the jewellery section of the Central Market, an unruly hive of commerce in the middle-class district of Lajpat Nagar. “Business has never been this slow in the 14 years that I’ve run this place,” complains Mrs Anand, owner of Hans Jewellers. Lajpat Nagar’s jewellers estimate that sales are down by 40% or more on a year ago. In a typical year India soaks up perhaps a quarter of all the gold mined in the world. Now, however, not only are people not buying; more and more of them want to swap their gold jewellery for cash. Jyoti Pal, a shop assistant, reckons that these days about as many people come in to sell as to buy. Suresh Hundia, president of the Bombay Bullion Association, goes further: “There are only sellers in the market at these prices and most jewellers are buying back only old jewellery.”

• Jul-08-2010
  The Economist: A special report on gambling. Shuffle up and deal. The internet is radically changing the business of gambling. Now policy must catch up, argues Jon Fasman.
  INPOINTING a precise moment when the world changes is never easy, even in retrospect. Yet it is possible to say with relative confidence that the world of gambling was changed dramatically by events around a green felt table at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas on May 23rd 2003, the final day of that year’s World Series of Poker (WSOP). The hand immediately preceding the final table—the last nine of the tournament’s 839 competitors who would play for $2.5m—pitted Phil Ivey, one of the sharpest and most ruthless players of his time, against Chris Moneymaker, an unknown 27-year-old accountant from Nashville. The newcomer eliminated Mr Ivey thanks to a lucky draw on the last card dealt. Mr Ivey, a stone-faced old- school player, declined to shake his vanquisher’s hand. Mr Moneymaker went on to win the tournament. His victory created what came to be called “the Moneymaker effect”: interest in poker soared. Suddenly spending time playing a game on a computer looked like a road to riches. And those riches seemed attainable. The stars in poker, unlike those in professional sport, look very much like the spectators; they just happen to be more successful. In the years since Mr Moneymaker’s victory, the tournament has variously been won by a patent lawyer, a Hollywood agent and a 21-year-old professional poker player.

• Jul-01-2010
  The Economist: The threat from the internet: Cyberwar. It is time for countries to start talking about arms control on the internet.
  THROUGHOUT history new technologies have revolutionised warfare, sometimes abruptly, sometimes only gradually: think of the chariot, gunpowder, aircraft, radar and nuclear fission. So it has been with information technology. Computers and the internet have transformed economies and given Western armies great advantages, such as the ability to send remotely piloted aircraft across the world to gather intelligence and attack targets. But the spread of digital technology comes at a cost: it exposes armies and societies to digital attack. The threat is complex, multifaceted and potentially very dangerous. Modern societies are ever more reliant on computer systems linked to the internet, giving enemies more avenues of attack. If power stations, refineries, banks and air-traffic-control systems were brought down, people would lose their lives. Yet there are few, if any, rules in cyberspace of the kind that govern behaviour, even warfare, in other domains. As with nuclear- and conventional-arms control, big countries should start talking about how to reduce the threat from cyberwar, the aim being to restrict attacks before it is too late.

June 2010

• Jun-30-2010
  CONGRESS OF UNITED STATES: LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF IRAQ: HIS EXCELLENCY NOURI AL-MALIKI.

• Jun-24-2010
  Stratfor: Criminal Intent and Militant Funding.
  STRATFOR is currently putting the finishing touches on a detailed assessment of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the al Qaeda-inspired jihadist franchise in that country. As we got deeper into that project, one of the things we noticed was the groups increasing reliance on criminal activity to fund its operations. In recent months, in addition to kidnappings for ransom and extortion of businessmen — which have been endemic in Iraq for many years — the ISI appears to have become increasingly involved in armed robbery directed against banks, currency exchanges, gold markets and jewelry shops. This increase in criminal activity highlights how the ISI has fallen on hard times since its heyday in 2006-2007, when it was flush with cash from overseas donors and when its wealth led the apex leadership of al Qaeda in Pakistan to ask its Iraqi franchise for financial assistance [2]. But when considered in a larger context, the ISIs shift to criminal activity is certainly not surprising and, in fact, follows the pattern of many other ideologically motivated terrorist or insurgent groups that have been forced to resort to crime to support themselves.

• Jun-17-2010
  Stratfor: Watcing for Watchers.
  In last week's Security Weekly we discussed how situational awareness is a mindset that can — and should — be practiced by everyone. We also described the different levels of situational awareness and discussed which level is appropriate for different sorts of situations. And we noted how all criminals and terrorists follow a process when planning their acts and that this process is visible at certain times to people who are watching for such behavior. When one considers these facts, it inevitably leads to the question: “What in the world am I looking for?” The brief answer is: “warning signs of criminal or terrorist behavior.” Since this brief answer is very vague, it becomes necessary to describe the behavior in more detail. Surveillance It is important to make one fundamental point clear up front. The operational behavior that most commonly exposes a person planning a criminal or terrorist act to scrutiny by the intended target is surveillance [8]. Other portions of the planning process can be conducted elsewhere, especially in the age of the Internet, when so much information is available online. From an operational standpoint, however, there simply is no substitute for having eyes on the potential target. In military terms, surveillance is often called reconnaissance, and in a criminal context it is often referred to as casing or scoping out. Environmental activist and animal rights groups trained by the Ruckus Society [9] refer to it as “scouting.” No matter what terminology is being used for the activity, it is meant to accomplish the same objective: assessing a potential target for value, vulnerabilities and potential security measures. Surveillance is required so that criminals can conduct a cost-benefit analysis.

• Jun-17-2010
  The Economist: Iraq's flagging democracy. Stop messing around. Iraqis and their neighbours need to get a grip—or their country could slip back to its bad old ways.
  FEW countries more urgently need governing, yet Iraq is languishing without a real leader. No party or alliance clearly won the election held three months ago, so a period of horse-trading was inevitable. But now the country is dangerously adrift. The new parliament has only just assembled for the first time. No laws have been passed since March. Vital legislation to bring in foreign investment and share out the proceeds of oil production is stalled. Above all, Iraq needs a leader who can appeal to its Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, divided by a chasm of ethno-sectarian hatred. If not, it risks falling back into the sort of authoritarianism that was supposed to have been banished by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The chief rivals for the post of prime minister are Iyad Allawi, whose alliance won the most seats in parliament but still got barely more than a quarter of them, and Nuri al-Maliki, the caretaking incumbent. Both Mr Allawi, pictured left, and Mr Maliki, pictured right, are Shias, as are well over half of Iraq’s people. But they seem incapable of doing the job (see article). Mr Maliki at one time raised hopes that he could, especially after he boldly dispatched the national army to the southern city of Basra to chase out thuggish Shia militias. But since then he has fallen back on a core of assertive Shias and is widely reviled by Sunnis and Kurds. He is not the unifier Iraq needs. For his country’s sake, he should give way to another man.

• Jun-13-2010
  Metatransparent: Problems of Democracy in the Arab World - Part 1 (in Arabic).

• Jun-13-2010
  Metatransparent: Problems of Democracy in the Arab World - Part 2 (in Arabic).

• Jun-08-2010
  Stratfor: The Limits of Public Opinion: Arabs, Israelis and the Strategic Balance.
  Last weeks events off the coast of Israel [2] continue to resonate. Turkish-Israeli relations have not quite collapsed since then but are at their lowest level since Israels founding. U.S.-Israeli tensions have emerged, and European hostility toward Israel continues to intensify. The question has now become whether substantial consequences will follow from the incident. Put differently, the question is whether and how it will be exploited beyond the arena of public opinion. The most significant threat to Israel would, of course, be military. International criticism is not without significance, but nations do not change direction absent direct threats to their interests. But powers outside the region are unlikely to exert military power against Israel, and even significant economic or political sanctions are unlikely to happen. Apart from the desire of outside powers to limit their involvement, this is rooted in the fact that significant actions are unlikely from inside the region either.

• Jun-07-2010
  Sovereign Challenge: Israel as a Strategic Liability?
  America’s ties to Israel are not based primarily on U.S. strategic interests. At the best of times, an Israeli government that pursues the path to peace provides some intelligence, some minor advances in military technology, and a potential source of stabilizing military power that could help Arab states like Jordan. Even then, however, any actual Israeli military intervention in an Arab state could prove as destabilizing as beneficial. The fact is that the real motives behind America’s commitment to Israel are moral and ethical. They are a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust, to the entire history of Western anti-Semitism, and to the United States’ failure to help German and European Jews during the period before it entered World War II. They are a product of the fact that Israel is a democracy that shares virtually all of the same values as the United States. The U.S. commitment to Israel is not one that will be abandoned. The United States has made this repeatedly clear since it first recognized Israel as a state, and it has steadily strengthened the scale of its commitments since 1967. The United States has provided Israel with massive amounts of economic aid and still provides enough military assistance to preserve Israel’s military superiority over its neighbors. The United States has made it clear that any U.S. support for Arab-Israeli peace efforts must be based on options that preserve Israel’s security, and its recent announcements that it will consider “extended regional deterrence” are code words for a U.S. commitment that could guard Israel, as well as its neighbors, against an Iranian nuclear threat.

May 2010

• May/Jun 2010
  Foriegn Policy: Attention Whole Foods Shoppers.
  Stop obsessing about arugula. Your "sustainable" mantra -- organic, local, and slow -- is no recipe for saving the world's hungry millions. From Whole Foods recyclable cloth bags to Michelle Obama's organic White House garden, modern eco-foodies are full of good intentions. We want to save the planet. Help local farmers. Fight climate change -- and childhood obesity, too. But though it's certainly a good thing to be thinking about global welfare while chopping our certified organic onions, the hope that we can help others by changing our shopping and eating habits is being wildly oversold to Western consumers. Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.

• May-31-2010
  Stratfor: Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion.
  On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis [3]. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation's planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel.

• May-04-2010
  Stratfor: The Global Crisis of Legitimacy.
  Financial panics are an integral part of capitalism. So are economic recessions. The system generates them and it becomes stronger because of them. Like forest fires, they are painful when they occur, yet without them, the forest could not survive. They impose discipline, punishing the reckless, rewarding the cautious. They do so imperfectly, of course, as at times the reckless are rewarded and the cautious penalized. Political crises — as opposed to normal financial panics — emerge when the reckless appear to be the beneficiaries of the crisis they have caused, while the rest of society bears the burdens of their recklessness. At that point, the crisis ceases to be financial or economic. It becomes political. The financial and economic systems are subsystems of the broader political system. More precisely, think of nations as consisting of three basic systems: political, economic and military. Each of these systems has elites that manage it. The three systems are constantly interacting — and in a healthy polity, balancing each other, compensating for failures in one as well as taking advantage of success. Every nation has a different configuration within and between these systems. The relative weight of each system differs, as does the importance of its elites. But each nation contains these systems, and no system exists without the other two.

• May-01-2010
  Elaph: The New Iraq - by Khlaid Shawkat (in Arabic).

April 2010

• Apr-29-2010
  Stratfor: Jihadists in Iraq: Down For The Count?.
  On April 25, The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) posted a statement on the Internet confirming that two of its top leaders, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri, had been killed April 18 in a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation in Salahuddin province. Al-Baghdadi (an Iraqi also known as Hamid Dawud Muhammad Khalil al-Zawi), was the head of the ISI, an al Qaeda-led jihadist alliance in Iraq, and went by the title “Leader of the Faithful.” Al-Masri (an Egyptian national also known as Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir), was the military leader of the ISI and head of the group's military wing, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Al-Masri replaced Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006. Al-Zarqawi had alienated many Iraqi Sunnis with his ruthlessness, and al-Baghdadi is thought to have been appointed the emir of the ISI in an effort to put an Iraqi face on jihadist efforts in Iraq and to help ease the alienation between the foreign jihadists and the local Sunni population. Al-Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq and the military leader of the ISI, was considered the real operational leader of ISI/AQI efforts in Iraq.

• Apr-27-2010
  Elaph: Editorial (in Arabic).

• Apr-24-2010
  Stratfor: Baghdad Politics and the U.S.-Iranian Balance.
  The status of Iraq has always framed the strategic challenge of Iran. Until 2003, regional stability — such as it was — was based on the Iran-Iraq balance of power. The United States invaded Iraq on the assumption that it could quickly defeat and dismantle the Iraqi government and armed forces and replace them with a cohesive and effective pro-American government and armed forces, thereby restoring the balance of power. When that expectation proved faulty, the United States was forced into two missions. The first was stabilizing Iraq. The second was providing the force for countering Iran. The United States and Iran both wanted to destroy Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime, and they collaborated to some extent during the invasion. But from there, their goals diverged. The Iranians hoped to establish a Shiite regime in Baghdad that would be under Tehran's influence. The United States wanted to establish a regime that would block the Iranians.

• Apr-16-2010
  The Guardian: US foreign policy isn't thuggish. America doesn't export democracy with 'thuggish violence' – the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions were about security.
  The US has been criticised both for timidity and thuggishness in promoting democracy in Afghanistan. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images Simon Jenkins's attack on the west's allegedly "thuggish" efforts to export democracy reveals a misunderstanding of US foreign policy and the place of democracy promotion within it. Anger at the many failures of the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq should not lead us to conflate these with democracy promotion itself. The United States went to war in these countries because it believed, rightly or wrongly, that their rulers posed a serious national security threat. The short-term solution was to topple the Taliban and Saddam. Neither war was fought to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into Western-style democracies. Yet, for historical and ideological reasons, American policymakers once again have found it hard to frame their actions exclusively in security terms. Hardcore Nixonian realpolitik rarely finds many takers in Washington. Instead, a powerful liberal tradition drives it to pursue democratic transformation irrespective of the original motive compelling intervention. From Kabul to Baghdad, the hope has been once again that democracy would be the welcome by-product of a more urgent security goal.

• Apr-04-2010
  Foreign Affairs: Stay the Course of Withdrawal When Should the United States Leave Iraq?
  Having held parliamentary elections on March 7 and endured a protracted period of vote counting, Iraqis are focused on the arduous process of government formation. As this Iraqi drama unfolds, U.S. military forces ar preparing to redeploy according to the U.S.-Iraq security agreement of November 2008 and President Barack Obama’s announced timetable for withdrawal. The impending drawdown -- from 96,000 troops today to abo 50,000 on September 1, 2010, and zero on January 1, 2012 -- will require the United States to defer increasin Iraqis as they dictate their own future. This, in turn, requires that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) continue their development. The increased proficie the ISF is a main reason why, though Iraqis will continue to endure grievous violence in coming years, there longer a broad-based insurgency that poses a strategic threat to the political process or the government. But t progress is relatively new: although President George W. Bush said in 2005 that “as the Iraqis stand up, we w down,” the ISF has only recently achieved a substantial level of operational independence.

March 2010

• March/April 2010
  Foreign Affairs: Armistice Now An Interim Agreement for Israel and Palestine.
  More than 16 years after the euphoria of the Oslo accords, the Israelis and the Palestinians have still not reached a final-status peace agreement. Indeed, the last decade has been dominated by setbacks -- the second intifada, which started in September 2000; Hamas' victory in the January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections; and then its military takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 -- all of which have aggravated the conflict. A further effort to reach a comprehensive settlement is bound to falter, thus increasing the dangers of another major flare-up and undermining the credibility of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The prospects of a deal between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA President Mahmoud Abbas are slim, since Abbas already rejected former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's far-reaching proposals -- the sort of offer Netanyahu would never make. This diplomatic stalemate discredits moderates and plays into the hands of extremists on both sides who refuse to make the concessions that any viable peace treaty will require.

• Mar-18-2010
  Newsweek: A Third Muslim-World War? Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu would do anything to protect Israel—as long as he doesn't have to believe in peace.
  Back when Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu was elected Israel's prime minister for the first time, in 1996, a Jordanian political scientist with a grim sense of humor said the only way to describe him was like a villain out of an old Western: "He's a lyin', cheatin', deceitin' son of a bitch!" The Obama administration, without using quite such colorful language, might be inclined to agree. As Aluf Benn, the respected diplomatic correspondent for Israel's Haaretz newspaper wrote in these columns recently, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel last week, he "had come to offer not just friendship, but support (and protection) against Iran—Israel's greatest bogeyman—in exchange for a few concessions from Netanyahu. Instead, he got a finger in the eye."

• Mar-11-2010
  The Economist: The wrangling has only just begun. A government reflecting the people’s will should slowly and messily emerge.
  DOZENS of explosions woke up voters in Baghdad on March 7th, heralding the day of the general election. Every few minutes another thunderous bang reminded them to stay at home, away from polling stations. Officials said the city had been hit by a barrage of mortars. Voter turnout was lower than before, in Baghdad little more than 50%. It was hardly a shining model of democracy. The American army played down the violence. Most of the bangs, said its spokesman, had been caused by water bottles stuffed with explosives. Insurgents had put them in bins around the city and set them off by mobile phones to terrify voters. Two big bombs had killed at least 38 people but nobody was badly hurt by the bottle- bombs, said General Ray Odierno, the American commander. The bangs were an act of desperation by a fading insurgency. The turnout overall was said to be 62%. Despite the fear, many Iraqis were plainly determined to assert their democratic right to choose their leaders. Barack Obama called the election a “milestone in Iraqi history”.

• Mar-09-2010
  Wall Street Journal: Iraq's Remarkable Election. The strategic benefits of an emerging Middle East democracy.
  It takes a cynical mind not to share in the achievement of Iraq's national elections. Bombs and missiles, al Qaeda threats and war fatigue failed to deter millions of Iraqis of all sects and regions from exercising a right that is rare in the Arab world. Even the U.N.'s man in Baghdad called the vote "a triumph." On Sunday, 61% of eligible voters came out in Anbar Province, a former extremist stronghold that includes the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi. In the last national elections five years ago, 3,375 people—or 2%—voted in Anbar. The other Sunni-dominated provinces that boycotted in 2005 saw similar numbers: over 70% turnout in Diyala and Salaheddin and 67% in Nineveh, all higher than the national average of 62%. American Presidential elections rarely have such turnout. Al Qaeda as well as Sunni and Shiiite extremist groups were defeated militarily by the surge, and this election continues the trend toward settling disputes through politics, not bombs. The remaining terrorists, far weaker and organized in smaller cells, tried hard to deter voting. Thirty-eight people died in various mortar, rocket and bomb attacks on election day. But the attackers had trouble getting near voting stations, and security in Baghdad and elsewhere was good and Iraqis brushed off these threats.

• Mar-05-2010
  CNN.com: Iraq's big test could reshape Middle East.
  Iraq holds a key parliamentary election March 7, 2010. Fareed Zakaria says this is a test of the vibrancy of Iraq's democracy. He says it will be crucial for Iraq to show that rights of minorities will be protected. Iraq could emerge as a more powerful nation and a model for democracy in the Arab world. his weekend's Iraqi election is testing the strength of the nation's young democracy and could be a turning point in the history of the Middle East, says analyst Fareed Zakaria. In the March 7 election, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition in the Iraqi parliament is seeking to win enough votes to keep him in office for another term. On Thursday, a series of insurgent attacks led to the deaths of 29 people in the city of Baquba. Zakaria said the election could have a lasting impact: "It might be the turning point in the rise of Iraq in the Middle East. Iraq is one of the largest, most important countries in the Arab world. It has the third or fourth largest petroleum reserves in the world. Even now it has $40 billion in oil revenues every year; it has a well-trained army thanks to the Americans. "It is perhaps the beginning of a return to prominence in the Middle East. It is possible that 10 years from now we'll look back and say, while everyone was obsessing about the rise of Iran, the real story in the Middle East in these years was the rise of Iraq." The Obama administration plans to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by the end of August, leaving 50,000 Americans in advisory roles, who will leave by the end of 2011.

• Mar-02-2010
  Wall Street Journal: Another Step Forward for Iraq. A democratic country is emerging that answers neither to Sunni Arab states nor to Iranians.
  Forgive Vice President Joe Biden the audacity of claiming last month on CNN's "Larry King Live" that Iraq is destined to be "one of the great achievements of this administration." The larger point he made—that a representative government is taking hold in Baghdad—is on the mark. As Iraq approaches its general elections on March 7, we should take yes for an answer. The American project in Iraq has midwifed that rarest of creatures in the Greater Middle East: a government that emerges out of the consent of the governed. We should trust the Iraqis with their own history. That means letting their electoral process play out against the background of the Arab dynasties and autocracies, and of the Iranian theocracy next door that made a mockery out of its own national elections. In a perfect world, the Iraqis would have left the past alone and avoided the ban that was imposed on some 500 candidates accused of ties to the Baath Party. But this is a matter for the Iraqis themselves. In the twilight of the American regency the United States can't order Iraqi political life.

• February/March 2009
  The Atlantic: How The Crash Will Reshape America
  The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?

February 2010

• Jan/Feb-2010
  The Atlantic: SimCity Baghdad. A new computer game lets army officers practice counterinsurgency off the battlefield.
  Over dinner several years ago, an Army officer lamented to Randall Hill, the executive director of the Institute for Creative Technologies, that he and his men had been unprepared for what they faced after Baghdad’s fall. “We need SimCity,” he told Hill. The institute, which receives much of its funding from the Army, modeled UrbanSim on those experiences—the blood and tears of officers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bosack and his team then built the game’s characters as autonomous agents that react not just to specific actions, but to the climate created by a player’s overall strategy. Members of a tribe, for instance, want jobs, but they won’t work if they don’t feel safe. Instead, they might join the insurgents. Patrolling neighborhoods, meeting with tribal elders, and creating more economic opportunities—tactics straight from counterinsurgency manuals—can reduce the likelihood of that outcome in the game.

• Jan/Feb-2010
  Atlantic: How America Can Rise Again.
  Is America going to hell? After a year of economic calamity that many fear has sent us into irreversible decline, the author finds reassurance in the peculiarly American cycle of crisis and renewal, and in the continuing strength of the forces that have made the country great: our university system, our receptiveness to immigration, our culture of innovation. In most significant ways, the U.S. remains the envy of the world. But here’s the alarming problem: our governing system is old and broken and dysfunctional. Fixing it—without resorting to a constitutional convention or a coup—is the key to securing the nation’s future.

January 2010

• Jan/Feb-2010
  The Atlantic: SimCity Baghdad. A new computer game lets army officers practice counterinsurgency off the battlefield.
  Over dinner several years ago, an Army officer lamented to Randall Hill, the executive director of the Institute for Creative Technologies, that he and his men had been unprepared for what they faced after Baghdad’s fall. “We need SimCity,” he told Hill. The institute, which receives much of its funding from the Army, modeled UrbanSim on those experiences—the blood and tears of officers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bosack and his team then built the game’s characters as autonomous agents that react not just to specific actions, but to the climate created by a player’s overall strategy. Members of a tribe, for instance, want jobs, but they won’t work if they don’t feel safe. Instead, they might join the insurgents. Patrolling neighborhoods, meeting with tribal elders, and creating more economic opportunities—tactics straight from counterinsurgency manuals—can reduce the likelihood of that outcome in the game.

• Jan/Feb-2010
  Atlantic: How America Can Rise Again.
  Is America going to hell? After a year of economic calamity that many fear has sent us into irreversible decline, the author finds reassurance in the peculiarly American cycle of crisis and renewal, and in the continuing strength of the forces that have made the country great: our university system, our receptiveness to immigration, our culture of innovation. In most significant ways, the U.S. remains the envy of the world. But here’s the alarming problem: our governing system is old and broken and dysfunctional. Fixing it—without resorting to a constitutional convention or a coup—is the key to securing the nation’s future.