http://voanews.com/english/2008-07-02-voa7.cfm
By Jim Teeple
Jerusalem
02 July 2008
At least three people were killed and about forty others injured - many severely when a Palestinian bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem early Wednesday afternoon. VOA's Jim Teeple reports the bulldozer driver was killed by police who are describing the incident as a terrorist attack.
Witnesses reported a scene of chaos and panic as the bulldozer plowed through cars, knocked over a bus and damaged buildings on a busy downtown street near the city's main bus station.
The driver of the bulldozer was shot by police. They say no motive is known in what police are describing as a terrorist attack.
"The employee of a contractor company working on the street here in Jerusalem directed his bulldozer in the direction of civilian vehicles - a bus and cars that are on the street all the time yelling Allah al-akbar, apparent to us based on things we have experienced in the past,' said Daniel Seaman, a spokesman for the Israeli government. "This is undeniably a terrorist attack."
Police say the attacker was a Palestinian who lived in East Jerusalem who held Jerusalem identity papers. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have access to Jewish West Jerusalem and carry out nearly all construction work in the city.
In March, another Palestinian from East Jerusalem attacked a Jewish seminary not far from where today's incident took place, killing eight students.
30 June 2008
Israel OKs Hezbollah prisoner swap
Deal could take place ‘within a few days,’ source says
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25439385/
The Associated Press
updated 3:38 p.m. ET, Sun., June. 29, 2008
JERUSALEM - The Israeli government agreed Sunday to free a Lebanese gunman convicted in one of the grisliest attacks in the country's history in exchange for the bodies of two soldiers killed by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The German-mediated deal gives a rare political victory for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and closes a final chapter from Israel's inconclusive war against Hezbollah two years ago and hinted in the direction of a wider accommodation.
But critics warn that the heavy price could offer militant groups an even greater incentive to kill captive soldiers, and Hezbollah declared victory and planned celebrations.
Israel's Cabinet voted 22-3 in favor of the deal to return the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured by Hezbollah in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious monthlong war. Before the six-hour debate, Olmert announced for the first time that the soldiers were dead.
Regardless, he pushed for the deal to be approved, citing the country's deep moral commitment to its dead and captive soldiers.
"Since we were children, we have been taught that we don't leave wounded in the field and we don't leave soldiers in captivity without doing all we can to free them," he said.
Israel will also receive the remaining body parts of its soldiers from the Lebanon war and a thorough Hezbollah report about Ron Arad, a missing Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.
Israel must release prisoner
The most difficult part of the trade for Israel is the release of Samir Kantar. He is serving multiple life sentences for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis — a 28-year-old man, his 4-year-old daughter and an Israeli police officer.
Witnesses said Kantar smashed the little girl's head against a rock and crushed her skull with a rifle butt. The attack has been etched in the Israeli psyche as one of the cruelest in the nation's history. Kantar denied killing the girl or smashing her skull.
Her mother, while trying to silence the cries of her other daughter as Kantar and three others rampaged through the apartment, accidentally smothered the 2-year-old.
On Sunday the mother, Smadar Haran Kaiser, said she was devastated by the decision but understood it.
"The despicable murderer Kantar was never my own personal prisoner, but the state's prisoner," she told a news conference. "Even if my soul should be torn, and it is torn, my heart is whole."
Israel also agreed to release four other Lebanese prisoners, dozens of bodies and an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners.
Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On, who voted against the deal, told The Associated Press that he objected to the deal because "it included releasing Palestinian prisoners."
Israel's military chief of staff, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency, the commander of the Shin Bet security service and other defense officials briefed ministers before the vote. The Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs opposed the deal, while the military chief, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, supported it.
Critics of the deal
Critics argued that swapping bodies for Kantar was a dangerous precedent that would offer militant groups an even greater incentive to capture soldiers and less of a reason to keep them alive.
Dovish lawmaker Yossi Beilin told Channel 10 TV he would have backed the deal if the soldiers were still alive. "There is tremendous difference in my view between saving someone's life and receiving coffins," he said. "I pray that we didn't give these people ideas that they can carry out more kidnappings and then ask for whatever they want."
Israel is simultaneously negotiating a trade with Palestinian Hamas militants for the release of an Israeli soldier captured in a June 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip. Unlike his comrades in Lebanon, the soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, has sent letters and an audio tape to his parents and is believed to be alive, though he has not been seen since his capture and the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit him either.
There are indications that the prisoner swap could signal a decrease of tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, though the warlike rhetoric on both sides is likely to continue.
On June 1, without prior notice, Israel freed a convicted Lebanese spy and Hezbollah returned parts of bodies of three soldiers. Also, Israel has been indicating at new flexibility about solving the other outstanding issue with Hezbollah — a rocket border hill known as Chebaa Farms.
Though the U.N. drew a border that leaves the small parcel outside Lebanon, Hezbollah insists it is part of the country. Israel indicates it would turn the land over to the U.N. as a deposit for a final decision, which could defuse tensions if both sides want that.
In Beirut, Hezbollah said the Israeli approval of the deal reflected the guerrilla group's strength.
"What happened in the prisoners issue is a proof that the word of the resistance is the most faithful, strongest and supreme," the group's Al-Manar TV quoted Hezbollah's Executive Council chief Hashem Safieddine as saying.
In the southern city of Sidon, members of the Popular Democratic Party were decorating the central Martyrs Square with pictures of Kantar and hanging banners such as "Freedom to the hero, prisoner Samir Kantar," "the chain must break," and "freedom comes with blood not tears."
No signs that soldiers are alive
Hezbollah had offered no sign that Goldwasser and Regev were alive, and the Red Cross was never allowed to see them. Ahead of the vote, Olmert said for the first time that Israel has concluded the two soldiers were dead — killed during the raid or shortly after.
"We know what happened to them," Olmert told the Cabinet, according to comments released by his office. "As far as we know, the soldiers Regev and Goldwasser are not alive."
Goldwasser's wife, Karnit, praised Olmert for pushing for the trade, while still trying to come to terms with the prime minister's declaration.
"My heart aches. It is very difficult for me. I am very tired, drained inside," she told reporters. "All I want to do is to digest things, try to understand what happened ... to rest a bit ... to have my pain."
Israeli officials said the deal could take place as early as next week. The trade will likely take place in Germany.
Ofer Regev, brother of kidnapped soldier Eldad Regev, said he hadn't given up hope yet.
"Until we see otherwise, we will continue hoping for a miracle to happen to us," he said.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25439385/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MSN Privacy . Legal
© 2008 MSNBC.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25439385/
The Associated Press
updated 3:38 p.m. ET, Sun., June. 29, 2008
JERUSALEM - The Israeli government agreed Sunday to free a Lebanese gunman convicted in one of the grisliest attacks in the country's history in exchange for the bodies of two soldiers killed by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The German-mediated deal gives a rare political victory for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and closes a final chapter from Israel's inconclusive war against Hezbollah two years ago and hinted in the direction of a wider accommodation.
But critics warn that the heavy price could offer militant groups an even greater incentive to kill captive soldiers, and Hezbollah declared victory and planned celebrations.
Israel's Cabinet voted 22-3 in favor of the deal to return the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured by Hezbollah in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious monthlong war. Before the six-hour debate, Olmert announced for the first time that the soldiers were dead.
Regardless, he pushed for the deal to be approved, citing the country's deep moral commitment to its dead and captive soldiers.
"Since we were children, we have been taught that we don't leave wounded in the field and we don't leave soldiers in captivity without doing all we can to free them," he said.
Israel will also receive the remaining body parts of its soldiers from the Lebanon war and a thorough Hezbollah report about Ron Arad, a missing Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.
Israel must release prisoner
The most difficult part of the trade for Israel is the release of Samir Kantar. He is serving multiple life sentences for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis — a 28-year-old man, his 4-year-old daughter and an Israeli police officer.
Witnesses said Kantar smashed the little girl's head against a rock and crushed her skull with a rifle butt. The attack has been etched in the Israeli psyche as one of the cruelest in the nation's history. Kantar denied killing the girl or smashing her skull.
Her mother, while trying to silence the cries of her other daughter as Kantar and three others rampaged through the apartment, accidentally smothered the 2-year-old.
On Sunday the mother, Smadar Haran Kaiser, said she was devastated by the decision but understood it.
"The despicable murderer Kantar was never my own personal prisoner, but the state's prisoner," she told a news conference. "Even if my soul should be torn, and it is torn, my heart is whole."
Israel also agreed to release four other Lebanese prisoners, dozens of bodies and an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners.
Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On, who voted against the deal, told The Associated Press that he objected to the deal because "it included releasing Palestinian prisoners."
Israel's military chief of staff, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency, the commander of the Shin Bet security service and other defense officials briefed ministers before the vote. The Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs opposed the deal, while the military chief, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, supported it.
Critics of the deal
Critics argued that swapping bodies for Kantar was a dangerous precedent that would offer militant groups an even greater incentive to capture soldiers and less of a reason to keep them alive.
Dovish lawmaker Yossi Beilin told Channel 10 TV he would have backed the deal if the soldiers were still alive. "There is tremendous difference in my view between saving someone's life and receiving coffins," he said. "I pray that we didn't give these people ideas that they can carry out more kidnappings and then ask for whatever they want."
Israel is simultaneously negotiating a trade with Palestinian Hamas militants for the release of an Israeli soldier captured in a June 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip. Unlike his comrades in Lebanon, the soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, has sent letters and an audio tape to his parents and is believed to be alive, though he has not been seen since his capture and the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit him either.
There are indications that the prisoner swap could signal a decrease of tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, though the warlike rhetoric on both sides is likely to continue.
On June 1, without prior notice, Israel freed a convicted Lebanese spy and Hezbollah returned parts of bodies of three soldiers. Also, Israel has been indicating at new flexibility about solving the other outstanding issue with Hezbollah — a rocket border hill known as Chebaa Farms.
Though the U.N. drew a border that leaves the small parcel outside Lebanon, Hezbollah insists it is part of the country. Israel indicates it would turn the land over to the U.N. as a deposit for a final decision, which could defuse tensions if both sides want that.
In Beirut, Hezbollah said the Israeli approval of the deal reflected the guerrilla group's strength.
"What happened in the prisoners issue is a proof that the word of the resistance is the most faithful, strongest and supreme," the group's Al-Manar TV quoted Hezbollah's Executive Council chief Hashem Safieddine as saying.
In the southern city of Sidon, members of the Popular Democratic Party were decorating the central Martyrs Square with pictures of Kantar and hanging banners such as "Freedom to the hero, prisoner Samir Kantar," "the chain must break," and "freedom comes with blood not tears."
No signs that soldiers are alive
Hezbollah had offered no sign that Goldwasser and Regev were alive, and the Red Cross was never allowed to see them. Ahead of the vote, Olmert said for the first time that Israel has concluded the two soldiers were dead — killed during the raid or shortly after.
"We know what happened to them," Olmert told the Cabinet, according to comments released by his office. "As far as we know, the soldiers Regev and Goldwasser are not alive."
Goldwasser's wife, Karnit, praised Olmert for pushing for the trade, while still trying to come to terms with the prime minister's declaration.
"My heart aches. It is very difficult for me. I am very tired, drained inside," she told reporters. "All I want to do is to digest things, try to understand what happened ... to rest a bit ... to have my pain."
Israeli officials said the deal could take place as early as next week. The trade will likely take place in Germany.
Ofer Regev, brother of kidnapped soldier Eldad Regev, said he hadn't given up hope yet.
"Until we see otherwise, we will continue hoping for a miracle to happen to us," he said.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25439385/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MSN Privacy . Legal
© 2008 MSNBC.com
25 June 2008
Olmert Averts Split in Coalition
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; 9:42 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/25/AR2008062500068.html?hpid=topnews
JERUSALEM, June 25 -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bought himself more time in office Wednesday, fending off a rebellion by coalition partners who had threatened to bring down his government if he did not resign amid a burgeoning corruption probe.
But in exchange for keeping his coalition together temporarily, Olmert was forced to allow internal elections in his centrist Kadima party by late September. Rivals within Kadima are already jockeying for his job, and it is unclear if Olmert will even run.
Olmert has been fighting for his political life for nearly two months, ever since allegations surfaced that he had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars -- much of it in cash -- from a New York business executive. Olmert has denied all wrongdoing, but testimony last month by the businessman, Morris Talansky, was considered especially damaging. Since then, Olmert has faced calls from erstwhile allies for him to step aside.
The most serious challenge to his authority has come from Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who leads Kadima's largest coalition partner, the center-left Labor party. Barak had vowed to support a bill to dissolve the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. The vote was scheduled for Wednesday, and with Labor's support, the bill would have almost certainly passed. A last-minute deal in which Kadima agreed to a party primary within three months averted the showdown.
Olmert's term is slated to run until 2010, but if he sits out or loses the primary it would effectively end his 2 1/2 year premiership. It would also likely trigger new elections. Neither Kadima nor Labor is believed to be eager for that, however, since polls show the right-wing Likud party beating them both.
Olmert is hoping the extra time he won Wednesday will give him the chance to exonerate himself in court before any decisions are made about his political future. Talansky's cross-examination, scheduled for mid-July, is considered especially critical to that effort. Olmert is also hoping to push forward with a flurry of diplomatic initiatives, including negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and Syria.
"We have stability for the coming months," said Olmert spokesman Mark Regev. "There are very serious issues on the table, and we now have the time to move forward."
Talks with the radical Islamist group Hamas, mediated by Egypt, have already borne fruit in the form of a six-month cease-fire in Gaza. That truce was rattled on Tuesday, however, when the armed group Islamic Jihad fired three rockets from Gaza in response to an Israeli operation in the West Bank city of Nablus that left two of the group's members dead.
In retaliation for the rocket fire, Israel on Wednesday closed all commercial crossings leading to the coastal strip and would not say when they would reopen. Under the terms of the truce, Israel is supposed to gradually loosen the strict economic embargo that it imposed a year ago, when Hamas toppled a unity government with the rival Fatah party and took control of the territory.
Hamas said Israel's decision to close the crossings represented a violation of the truce. But Hamas also said it planned to continue to honor the week-old cease-fire, and the lack of an Israeli military response suggested that it does as well.
The truce is controversial in both Israel and Gaza, with hard-line critics in each place arguing that now is not the time for quiet.
Retired Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, a former chief of the Israel Defense Forces, said that instead of holding its fire, Israel should be conducting targeted killings and medium-scale military operations so that, ultimately, Hamas "will cry for [a truce] without conditions."
Yaalon doubts the current ceasefire will last.
"It's not a stabilized situation, and it's not going to last for six months," he said.
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; 9:42 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/25/AR2008062500068.html?hpid=topnews
JERUSALEM, June 25 -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bought himself more time in office Wednesday, fending off a rebellion by coalition partners who had threatened to bring down his government if he did not resign amid a burgeoning corruption probe.
But in exchange for keeping his coalition together temporarily, Olmert was forced to allow internal elections in his centrist Kadima party by late September. Rivals within Kadima are already jockeying for his job, and it is unclear if Olmert will even run.
Olmert has been fighting for his political life for nearly two months, ever since allegations surfaced that he had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars -- much of it in cash -- from a New York business executive. Olmert has denied all wrongdoing, but testimony last month by the businessman, Morris Talansky, was considered especially damaging. Since then, Olmert has faced calls from erstwhile allies for him to step aside.
The most serious challenge to his authority has come from Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who leads Kadima's largest coalition partner, the center-left Labor party. Barak had vowed to support a bill to dissolve the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. The vote was scheduled for Wednesday, and with Labor's support, the bill would have almost certainly passed. A last-minute deal in which Kadima agreed to a party primary within three months averted the showdown.
Olmert's term is slated to run until 2010, but if he sits out or loses the primary it would effectively end his 2 1/2 year premiership. It would also likely trigger new elections. Neither Kadima nor Labor is believed to be eager for that, however, since polls show the right-wing Likud party beating them both.
Olmert is hoping the extra time he won Wednesday will give him the chance to exonerate himself in court before any decisions are made about his political future. Talansky's cross-examination, scheduled for mid-July, is considered especially critical to that effort. Olmert is also hoping to push forward with a flurry of diplomatic initiatives, including negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and Syria.
"We have stability for the coming months," said Olmert spokesman Mark Regev. "There are very serious issues on the table, and we now have the time to move forward."
Talks with the radical Islamist group Hamas, mediated by Egypt, have already borne fruit in the form of a six-month cease-fire in Gaza. That truce was rattled on Tuesday, however, when the armed group Islamic Jihad fired three rockets from Gaza in response to an Israeli operation in the West Bank city of Nablus that left two of the group's members dead.
In retaliation for the rocket fire, Israel on Wednesday closed all commercial crossings leading to the coastal strip and would not say when they would reopen. Under the terms of the truce, Israel is supposed to gradually loosen the strict economic embargo that it imposed a year ago, when Hamas toppled a unity government with the rival Fatah party and took control of the territory.
Hamas said Israel's decision to close the crossings represented a violation of the truce. But Hamas also said it planned to continue to honor the week-old cease-fire, and the lack of an Israeli military response suggested that it does as well.
The truce is controversial in both Israel and Gaza, with hard-line critics in each place arguing that now is not the time for quiet.
Retired Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, a former chief of the Israel Defense Forces, said that instead of holding its fire, Israel should be conducting targeted killings and medium-scale military operations so that, ultimately, Hamas "will cry for [a truce] without conditions."
Yaalon doubts the current ceasefire will last.
"It's not a stabilized situation, and it's not going to last for six months," he said.
24 June 2008
A Living-Room Crusade via Blogging
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/world/middleeast/20blogger.html?ref=technology
May 20, 2008
By ROBERT F. WORTH
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Jane Novak, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two in New Jersey, has never been to Yemen. She speaks no Arabic, and freely admits that until a few years ago, she knew nothing about that strife-torn south Arabian country.
And yet Ms. Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph — blond and smiling — is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government’s allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or “the Zionist Novak.”
The worst of her many offenses is her dogged campaign on behalf of a Yemeni journalist, Abdul Karim al-Khaiwani, who incurred his government’s wrath by writing about a bloody rebellion in the far north of the country. He is on trial on sedition charges that could bring the death penalty, with a verdict expected Wednesday.
Ms. Novak, working from a laptop in her Monmouth County living room “while the kids are at school,” has started an Internet petition to free Mr. Khaiwani. She has enlisted Yemeni politicians, journalists, human rights activists and others around the globe. Her blog goes well beyond the Khaiwani case and has become a crucial outlet for opposition journalists and political figures, who feed her tips on Yemeni political intrigue by e-mail or text message.
She says her campaign is a matter of basic principle. “This is a country that lets Al Qaeda people go free, and they’re putting a journalist on trial for doing his job?” she said. “It’s just completely crazy.”
But Ms. Novak does admit to a personal interest in the case. She and Mr. Khaiwani have become close friends, though they have never met, and neither speaks the other’s language. One of the charges against him is receiving a cellphone text message from her, as part of an alleged plot (which he denies) to aid the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.
“The penalty for this crime is usually death,” Mr. Khaiwani said during an interview at his home in the Yemeni capital, Sana, in January. A lanky 42-year-old with large, piercing eyes and a dark sense of humor, he has already been jailed four times by the authorities in connection with his journalism. Last year he was kidnapped and beaten by men he says were plainclothes police officers.
Mr. Khaiwani added, with a broad smile: “If you add to this my relationship with Jane Novak, it means the death penalty for sure.”
Ms. Novak does not fit the profile of a dilettante in exotic causes. A former sales manager for a textile company, she speaks with a distinct Brooklyn accent, having grown up in Flatbush. When a Yemeni government minister visited the United States last year and invited the notorious “Jane,” as she is known throughout Yemen, to go to Washington for a meeting, she turned him down. “It was too much, the money, the kids, all for a one-day trip,” she said.
Nor does she have any background in Middle East studies. One of her opponents in Yemen accused her of being a Zionist member of Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “I had to Google it,” Ms. Novak said with a chuckle. “I didn’t know what it was.”
It was after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that Ms. Novak, who used to work not far from the World Trade Center, first took an interest in the Arab world. “I thought it would be a good idea to write in the English-language Arabic press on subjects we could all agree on, freedom of the press, equality, stuff like that,” she said.
In 2004, she started her blog, www.armiesofliberation.com, adorned with a Stars and Stripes logo, and soon wrote an article defending Mr. Khaiwani, who was in prison. He wrote her a letter of thanks, addressing it to “Jane Novak, the American journalist and political analyst.”
“Leaders in our region transform into gods,” he wrote. “They even come to believe in their fake holiness, which we aim to shatter, as they know they are humans just like us. Democracy and freedom are not granted by a leader of a regime. It is a worldwide human achievement of all the free people on earth.”
Moved by the letter, Ms. Novak started her first petition campaign on Mr. Khaiwani’s behalf. Through translators, the two began corresponding.
“He’s just such a nice guy,” Ms. Novak said. “He really believes in democracy, and he’s paying the price for it.”
It was months after their first letters before Ms. Novak could bring herself to tell Mr. Khaiwani that she was not, in fact, a journalist and political analyst, but a homemaker blogging on a laptop at home. “I didn’t want to tell you before, because I didn’t want you to lose hope,” she wrote.
Mr. Khaiwani wrote back to say that the news made him even prouder of her and her work.
Since then, she has written numerous articles defending him in the Yemeni press.
By taking up Mr. Khaiwani’s cause, Ms. Novak was wading into one of the most obscure and complex conflicts in the Arab world. The Houthi rebellion began in 2004 when rebels began fighting with government soldiers in Saada Province, northwest of the capital near the border with Saudi Arabia. The government accuses Iran of aiding the rebels, a charge Iran denies. Thousands of people have died in the fighting.
For Ms. Novak, the basic issue was freedom of speech. The Yemeni government has banned journalists from traveling to Saada and has tried to suppress coverage of the conflict.
Mr. Khaiwani, almost alone among Yemeni journalists, managed to get vivid photographs and accounts of the bloodshed in Saada, which he published on his Web site, now defunct. His reports have helped spread a sense of outrage at the government’s raids, which appear to have extended the fighting by provoking Saada residents who did not initially side with the Houthi rebels.
“I have a very deep relationship with people in Saada,” Mr. Khaiwani said during the interview in January. “Many citizens in Saada wanted to show a real image of what is happening in the war there.”
The Yemeni government considers the Houthis terrorists and accuse Mr. Khaiwani of abetting their cause. He is being tried in Yemen’s State Security Court, which is used for terrorism cases.
Ms. Novak, whose blog includes a strong counterterrorism focus, says that is a bitter irony. Yemen has a long history as a refuge for jihadists, and the Yemeni government has released numerous men convicted of terrorism charges. One of them, Jamal al-Badawi, is wanted by the F.B.I. for his role in Al Qaeda’s bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, in which 17 American sailors were killed. Mr. Badawi was apparently returned to prison last fall after American officials protested.
Ms. Nowak’s perpetual harping on these themes appears to infuriate the Yemeni authorities. In late 2005, Al Jazeera included her as a guest on a special about Yemen, along with a former United States ambassador, a leader of the Yemeni opposition, and a spokesman for the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. As soon as the spokesman came onto the line, he began a tirade, ignoring the moderator’s pleas to let others speak.
“She doesn’t speak Arabic, she’s never visited Yemen, and she’s not a real journalist!” the spokesman shouted. “She just has a Web site that she uses to attack Yemen!”
Some professional Arabists speak a little disdainfully of Ms. Novak’s blog and seem to consider her an amateur with a jingoistic American attitude and no real knowledge of the Arab world.
Ms. Novak readily admits that she is no expert, and that she cannot pronounce Arabic words properly. But she estimates that more than 2,000 Yemenis have contacted her since she began writing articles in 2004. She receives dozens of letters every month. Some are just a few words — “Thank you Novak don’t stop” — and some are long narratives of grief and anger.
Reaching out to people like Mr. Khaiwani, who are struggling thousands of miles away with Yemen’s poverty, injustice and corruption, has given her a new vocation, she said.
“Some say there’s no progress in the Middle East,” she said. “But if they could just see these people — they’re really modern heroes.”
Visit Ms. Novak's Blog: Armies of Liberation
May 20, 2008
By ROBERT F. WORTH
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Jane Novak, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two in New Jersey, has never been to Yemen. She speaks no Arabic, and freely admits that until a few years ago, she knew nothing about that strife-torn south Arabian country.
And yet Ms. Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph — blond and smiling — is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government’s allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or “the Zionist Novak.”
The worst of her many offenses is her dogged campaign on behalf of a Yemeni journalist, Abdul Karim al-Khaiwani, who incurred his government’s wrath by writing about a bloody rebellion in the far north of the country. He is on trial on sedition charges that could bring the death penalty, with a verdict expected Wednesday.
Ms. Novak, working from a laptop in her Monmouth County living room “while the kids are at school,” has started an Internet petition to free Mr. Khaiwani. She has enlisted Yemeni politicians, journalists, human rights activists and others around the globe. Her blog goes well beyond the Khaiwani case and has become a crucial outlet for opposition journalists and political figures, who feed her tips on Yemeni political intrigue by e-mail or text message.
She says her campaign is a matter of basic principle. “This is a country that lets Al Qaeda people go free, and they’re putting a journalist on trial for doing his job?” she said. “It’s just completely crazy.”
But Ms. Novak does admit to a personal interest in the case. She and Mr. Khaiwani have become close friends, though they have never met, and neither speaks the other’s language. One of the charges against him is receiving a cellphone text message from her, as part of an alleged plot (which he denies) to aid the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.
“The penalty for this crime is usually death,” Mr. Khaiwani said during an interview at his home in the Yemeni capital, Sana, in January. A lanky 42-year-old with large, piercing eyes and a dark sense of humor, he has already been jailed four times by the authorities in connection with his journalism. Last year he was kidnapped and beaten by men he says were plainclothes police officers.
Mr. Khaiwani added, with a broad smile: “If you add to this my relationship with Jane Novak, it means the death penalty for sure.”
Ms. Novak does not fit the profile of a dilettante in exotic causes. A former sales manager for a textile company, she speaks with a distinct Brooklyn accent, having grown up in Flatbush. When a Yemeni government minister visited the United States last year and invited the notorious “Jane,” as she is known throughout Yemen, to go to Washington for a meeting, she turned him down. “It was too much, the money, the kids, all for a one-day trip,” she said.
Nor does she have any background in Middle East studies. One of her opponents in Yemen accused her of being a Zionist member of Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “I had to Google it,” Ms. Novak said with a chuckle. “I didn’t know what it was.”
It was after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that Ms. Novak, who used to work not far from the World Trade Center, first took an interest in the Arab world. “I thought it would be a good idea to write in the English-language Arabic press on subjects we could all agree on, freedom of the press, equality, stuff like that,” she said.
In 2004, she started her blog, www.armiesofliberation.com, adorned with a Stars and Stripes logo, and soon wrote an article defending Mr. Khaiwani, who was in prison. He wrote her a letter of thanks, addressing it to “Jane Novak, the American journalist and political analyst.”
“Leaders in our region transform into gods,” he wrote. “They even come to believe in their fake holiness, which we aim to shatter, as they know they are humans just like us. Democracy and freedom are not granted by a leader of a regime. It is a worldwide human achievement of all the free people on earth.”
Moved by the letter, Ms. Novak started her first petition campaign on Mr. Khaiwani’s behalf. Through translators, the two began corresponding.
“He’s just such a nice guy,” Ms. Novak said. “He really believes in democracy, and he’s paying the price for it.”
It was months after their first letters before Ms. Novak could bring herself to tell Mr. Khaiwani that she was not, in fact, a journalist and political analyst, but a homemaker blogging on a laptop at home. “I didn’t want to tell you before, because I didn’t want you to lose hope,” she wrote.
Mr. Khaiwani wrote back to say that the news made him even prouder of her and her work.
Since then, she has written numerous articles defending him in the Yemeni press.
By taking up Mr. Khaiwani’s cause, Ms. Novak was wading into one of the most obscure and complex conflicts in the Arab world. The Houthi rebellion began in 2004 when rebels began fighting with government soldiers in Saada Province, northwest of the capital near the border with Saudi Arabia. The government accuses Iran of aiding the rebels, a charge Iran denies. Thousands of people have died in the fighting.
For Ms. Novak, the basic issue was freedom of speech. The Yemeni government has banned journalists from traveling to Saada and has tried to suppress coverage of the conflict.
Mr. Khaiwani, almost alone among Yemeni journalists, managed to get vivid photographs and accounts of the bloodshed in Saada, which he published on his Web site, now defunct. His reports have helped spread a sense of outrage at the government’s raids, which appear to have extended the fighting by provoking Saada residents who did not initially side with the Houthi rebels.
“I have a very deep relationship with people in Saada,” Mr. Khaiwani said during the interview in January. “Many citizens in Saada wanted to show a real image of what is happening in the war there.”
The Yemeni government considers the Houthis terrorists and accuse Mr. Khaiwani of abetting their cause. He is being tried in Yemen’s State Security Court, which is used for terrorism cases.
Ms. Novak, whose blog includes a strong counterterrorism focus, says that is a bitter irony. Yemen has a long history as a refuge for jihadists, and the Yemeni government has released numerous men convicted of terrorism charges. One of them, Jamal al-Badawi, is wanted by the F.B.I. for his role in Al Qaeda’s bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, in which 17 American sailors were killed. Mr. Badawi was apparently returned to prison last fall after American officials protested.
Ms. Nowak’s perpetual harping on these themes appears to infuriate the Yemeni authorities. In late 2005, Al Jazeera included her as a guest on a special about Yemen, along with a former United States ambassador, a leader of the Yemeni opposition, and a spokesman for the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. As soon as the spokesman came onto the line, he began a tirade, ignoring the moderator’s pleas to let others speak.
“She doesn’t speak Arabic, she’s never visited Yemen, and she’s not a real journalist!” the spokesman shouted. “She just has a Web site that she uses to attack Yemen!”
Some professional Arabists speak a little disdainfully of Ms. Novak’s blog and seem to consider her an amateur with a jingoistic American attitude and no real knowledge of the Arab world.
Ms. Novak readily admits that she is no expert, and that she cannot pronounce Arabic words properly. But she estimates that more than 2,000 Yemenis have contacted her since she began writing articles in 2004. She receives dozens of letters every month. Some are just a few words — “Thank you Novak don’t stop” — and some are long narratives of grief and anger.
Reaching out to people like Mr. Khaiwani, who are struggling thousands of miles away with Yemen’s poverty, injustice and corruption, has given her a new vocation, she said.
“Some say there’s no progress in the Middle East,” she said. “But if they could just see these people — they’re really modern heroes.”
Visit Ms. Novak's Blog: Armies of Liberation
Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama
This article really made me, well sad. I mean I guess like everyone else I believed that with Obama's "Hope" campaign and his Muslim name that there would be some sort of Muslim identification or at least Arab, if Muslim is too scary for him... But he has continually sided with Israel, and now he's trying to back step over his Jerusalem comment... It just really let me down :o(
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/politics/24muslim.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
June 24, 2008
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.
Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.
“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”
When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.
While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Mr. Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations — unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts — have been ignored. Last week, two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred by campaign volunteers from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit.
In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.
“This is the ‘hope campaign,’ this is the ‘change campaign,’ ” said Mr. Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota. Muslims are frustrated, he added, that “they have not been fully engaged in it.”
Aides to Mr. Obama denied that he had kept his Muslim supporters at arm’s length. They cited statements in which he had spoken inclusively about American Islam and a radio advertisement he recorded for the recent campaign of Representative Andre Carson, Democrat of Indiana, who this spring became the second Muslim elected to Congress.
In May, Mr. Obama also had a brief, private meeting with the leader of a mosque in Dearborn, Mich., home to the country’s largest concentration of Arab-Americans. And this month, a senior campaign aide met with Arab-American leaders in Dearborn, most of whom are Muslim. (Mr. Obama did not campaign in Michigan before the primary in January because of a party dispute over the calendar.)
“Our campaign has made every attempt to bring together Americans of all races, religions and backgrounds to take on our common challenges,” Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, said in an e-mail message.
Mr. LaBolt added that with religious groups, the campaign had largely taken “an interfaith approach, one that may not have reached every group that wishes to participate but has reached many Muslim Americans.”
The strained relationship between Muslims and Mr. Obama reflects one of the central challenges facing the senator: how to maintain a broad electoral appeal without alienating any of the numerous constituencies he needs to win in November.
After the episode in Detroit last week, Mr. Obama telephoned the two Muslim women to apologize. “I take deepest offense to and will continue to fight against discrimination against people of any religious group or background,” he said in a statement.
Such gestures have fallen short in the eyes of many Muslim leaders, who say the Detroit incident and others illustrate a disconnect between Mr. Obama’s message of unity and his campaign strategy.
“The community feels betrayed,” said Safiya Ghori, the government relations director in the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Even some of Mr. Obama’s strongest Muslim supporters say they are uncomfortable with the forceful denials he has made in response to rumors that he is secretly a Muslim. (Ten percent of registered voters believe the rumor, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.)
In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Mr. Obama said the rumors were offensive to American Muslims because they played into “fearmongering.” But on a new section of his Web site, he classifies the claim that he is Muslim as a “smear.”
“A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way,” Mr. Ellison said.
Mr. Ellison, a first-term congressman, remains arguably the senator’s most important Muslim supporter. He has attended Obama rallies in Minnesota and appears on the campaign’s Web site. But Mr. Ellison said he was also forced to cancel plans to campaign for Mr. Obama in North Carolina after an emissary for the senator told him the state was “too conservative.” Mr. Ellison said he blamed Mr. Obama’s aides — not the candidate himself — for his campaign’s standoffishness.
Despite the complications of wooing Muslim voters, Mr. Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, may find it risky to ignore this constituency. There are sizable Muslim populations in closely fought states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.
In those states and others, American Muslims have experienced a political awakening in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. Before the attacks, Muslim political leadership in the United States was dominated by well-heeled South Asian and Arab immigrants, whose communities account for a majority of the nation’s Muslims. (Another 20 percent are estimated to be African-American.) The number of American Muslims remains in dispute as the Census Bureau does not collect data on religious orientation; most estimates range from 2.35 million to 6 million.
A coalition of immigrant Muslim groups endorsed George W. Bush in his 2000 campaign, only to find themselves ignored by Bush administration officials as their communities were rocked by the carrying out of the USA Patriot Act, the detention and deportation of Muslim immigrants and other security measures after Sept. 11.
As a result, Muslim organizations began mobilizing supporters across the country to register to vote and run for local offices, and political action committees started tracking registered Muslim voters. The character of Muslim political organizations also began to change.
“We moved away from political leadership primarily by doctors, lawyers and elite professionals to real savvy grass-roots operatives,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, a political group in Washington. “We went back to the base.”
In 2006, the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee arranged for 53 Muslim cabdrivers to skip their shifts at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to transport voters to the polls for the midterm election. Of an estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, 86 percent turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Jim Webb, a Democrat running for the Senate who subsequently won the election, according to data collected by the committee.
The committee’s president, Mukit Hossain, said Muslims in Virginia were drawn to Mr. Obama because of his support for civil liberties and his more diplomatic approach to the Middle East. Mr. Hossain and others said his multicultural image also appealed to immigrant voters.
“This is the son of an immigrant; this is someone with a funny name,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, who is a Christian who has campaigned for Mr. Obama at mosques and Arab churches. “There is this excitement that if he can win, they can win, too.”
Yet some Muslim and Arab-American political organizers worry that the campaign’s reluctance to reach out to voters in those communities will eventually turn them off. “If they think that they are voting for a campaign that is trying to distance itself from them, my big fear is that Muslims will sit it out,” Mr. Hossain said.
Throughout the primaries, Muslim groups often failed to persuade Mr. Obama’s campaign to at least send a surrogate to speak to voters at their events, said Ms. Ghori, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Before the Virginia primary in February, some of the nation’s leading Muslim organizations nearly canceled an event at a mosque in Sterling because they could not arrange for representatives from any of the major presidential campaigns to attend. At the last minute, they succeeded in wooing surrogates from the Clinton and Obama campaigns by telling each that the other was planning to attend, Mr. Bray said. (No one from the McCain campaign showed up.)
Frustrations with Mr. Obama deepened the day after he claimed the nomination when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel. (Mr. Obama later clarified his statement, saying Jerusalem’s status would need to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians.)
Osama Siblani, the editor and publisher of the weekly Arab American News in Dearborn, said Mr. Obama had “pandered” to the Israeli lobby, while neglecting to meet formally with Arab-American and Muslim leaders. “They’re trying to take the votes without the liabilities,” said Mr. Siblani, who is also president of the Arab American Political Action Committee.
Some Muslim supporters of Mr. Obama seem to ricochet between dejection and optimism. Minha Husaini, a public health consultant in her 30s who is working for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia, lights up like a swooning teenager when she talks about his promise for change.
“He gives me hope,” Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, “as if it’s something bad,” she said.
For Ms. Ghori and other Muslims, Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach is not surprising in a political climate they feel is marred by frequent attacks on their faith.
Among the incidents they cite are a statement by Mr. McCain, in a 2007 interview with Beliefnet.com, that he would prefer a Christian president to a Muslim one; a comment by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that Mr. Obama was not Muslim “as far as I know”; and a remark by Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to The Associated Press in March that an Obama victory would be celebrated by terrorists, who would see him as a “savior.”
“All you have to say is Barack Hussein Obama,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer and contributing editor at Islamica Magazine. “You don’t even have to say ‘Muslim.’ ”
As a consequence, many Muslims have kept their support for Mr. Obama quiet. Any visible show of allegiance could be used by his opponents to incite fear, further the false rumors about his faith and “bin-Laden him,” Mr. Bray said.
“The joke within the national Muslim organizations,” Ms. Ghori said, “is that we should endorse the person we don’t want to win.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/politics/24muslim.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
June 24, 2008
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.
Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.
“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”
When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.
While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Mr. Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations — unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts — have been ignored. Last week, two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred by campaign volunteers from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit.
In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.
“This is the ‘hope campaign,’ this is the ‘change campaign,’ ” said Mr. Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota. Muslims are frustrated, he added, that “they have not been fully engaged in it.”
Aides to Mr. Obama denied that he had kept his Muslim supporters at arm’s length. They cited statements in which he had spoken inclusively about American Islam and a radio advertisement he recorded for the recent campaign of Representative Andre Carson, Democrat of Indiana, who this spring became the second Muslim elected to Congress.
In May, Mr. Obama also had a brief, private meeting with the leader of a mosque in Dearborn, Mich., home to the country’s largest concentration of Arab-Americans. And this month, a senior campaign aide met with Arab-American leaders in Dearborn, most of whom are Muslim. (Mr. Obama did not campaign in Michigan before the primary in January because of a party dispute over the calendar.)
“Our campaign has made every attempt to bring together Americans of all races, religions and backgrounds to take on our common challenges,” Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman, said in an e-mail message.
Mr. LaBolt added that with religious groups, the campaign had largely taken “an interfaith approach, one that may not have reached every group that wishes to participate but has reached many Muslim Americans.”
The strained relationship between Muslims and Mr. Obama reflects one of the central challenges facing the senator: how to maintain a broad electoral appeal without alienating any of the numerous constituencies he needs to win in November.
After the episode in Detroit last week, Mr. Obama telephoned the two Muslim women to apologize. “I take deepest offense to and will continue to fight against discrimination against people of any religious group or background,” he said in a statement.
Such gestures have fallen short in the eyes of many Muslim leaders, who say the Detroit incident and others illustrate a disconnect between Mr. Obama’s message of unity and his campaign strategy.
“The community feels betrayed,” said Safiya Ghori, the government relations director in the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Even some of Mr. Obama’s strongest Muslim supporters say they are uncomfortable with the forceful denials he has made in response to rumors that he is secretly a Muslim. (Ten percent of registered voters believe the rumor, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.)
In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Mr. Obama said the rumors were offensive to American Muslims because they played into “fearmongering.” But on a new section of his Web site, he classifies the claim that he is Muslim as a “smear.”
“A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way,” Mr. Ellison said.
Mr. Ellison, a first-term congressman, remains arguably the senator’s most important Muslim supporter. He has attended Obama rallies in Minnesota and appears on the campaign’s Web site. But Mr. Ellison said he was also forced to cancel plans to campaign for Mr. Obama in North Carolina after an emissary for the senator told him the state was “too conservative.” Mr. Ellison said he blamed Mr. Obama’s aides — not the candidate himself — for his campaign’s standoffishness.
Despite the complications of wooing Muslim voters, Mr. Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, may find it risky to ignore this constituency. There are sizable Muslim populations in closely fought states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.
In those states and others, American Muslims have experienced a political awakening in the years since Sept. 11, 2001. Before the attacks, Muslim political leadership in the United States was dominated by well-heeled South Asian and Arab immigrants, whose communities account for a majority of the nation’s Muslims. (Another 20 percent are estimated to be African-American.) The number of American Muslims remains in dispute as the Census Bureau does not collect data on religious orientation; most estimates range from 2.35 million to 6 million.
A coalition of immigrant Muslim groups endorsed George W. Bush in his 2000 campaign, only to find themselves ignored by Bush administration officials as their communities were rocked by the carrying out of the USA Patriot Act, the detention and deportation of Muslim immigrants and other security measures after Sept. 11.
As a result, Muslim organizations began mobilizing supporters across the country to register to vote and run for local offices, and political action committees started tracking registered Muslim voters. The character of Muslim political organizations also began to change.
“We moved away from political leadership primarily by doctors, lawyers and elite professionals to real savvy grass-roots operatives,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, a political group in Washington. “We went back to the base.”
In 2006, the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee arranged for 53 Muslim cabdrivers to skip their shifts at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to transport voters to the polls for the midterm election. Of an estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, 86 percent turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Jim Webb, a Democrat running for the Senate who subsequently won the election, according to data collected by the committee.
The committee’s president, Mukit Hossain, said Muslims in Virginia were drawn to Mr. Obama because of his support for civil liberties and his more diplomatic approach to the Middle East. Mr. Hossain and others said his multicultural image also appealed to immigrant voters.
“This is the son of an immigrant; this is someone with a funny name,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, who is a Christian who has campaigned for Mr. Obama at mosques and Arab churches. “There is this excitement that if he can win, they can win, too.”
Yet some Muslim and Arab-American political organizers worry that the campaign’s reluctance to reach out to voters in those communities will eventually turn them off. “If they think that they are voting for a campaign that is trying to distance itself from them, my big fear is that Muslims will sit it out,” Mr. Hossain said.
Throughout the primaries, Muslim groups often failed to persuade Mr. Obama’s campaign to at least send a surrogate to speak to voters at their events, said Ms. Ghori, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Before the Virginia primary in February, some of the nation’s leading Muslim organizations nearly canceled an event at a mosque in Sterling because they could not arrange for representatives from any of the major presidential campaigns to attend. At the last minute, they succeeded in wooing surrogates from the Clinton and Obama campaigns by telling each that the other was planning to attend, Mr. Bray said. (No one from the McCain campaign showed up.)
Frustrations with Mr. Obama deepened the day after he claimed the nomination when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel. (Mr. Obama later clarified his statement, saying Jerusalem’s status would need to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians.)
Osama Siblani, the editor and publisher of the weekly Arab American News in Dearborn, said Mr. Obama had “pandered” to the Israeli lobby, while neglecting to meet formally with Arab-American and Muslim leaders. “They’re trying to take the votes without the liabilities,” said Mr. Siblani, who is also president of the Arab American Political Action Committee.
Some Muslim supporters of Mr. Obama seem to ricochet between dejection and optimism. Minha Husaini, a public health consultant in her 30s who is working for the Obama campaign in Philadelphia, lights up like a swooning teenager when she talks about his promise for change.
“He gives me hope,” Ms. Husaini said in an interview last month, shortly before she joined the campaign on a fellowship. But she sighed when the conversation turned to his denials of being Muslim, “as if it’s something bad,” she said.
For Ms. Ghori and other Muslims, Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach is not surprising in a political climate they feel is marred by frequent attacks on their faith.
Among the incidents they cite are a statement by Mr. McCain, in a 2007 interview with Beliefnet.com, that he would prefer a Christian president to a Muslim one; a comment by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that Mr. Obama was not Muslim “as far as I know”; and a remark by Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to The Associated Press in March that an Obama victory would be celebrated by terrorists, who would see him as a “savior.”
“All you have to say is Barack Hussein Obama,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer and contributing editor at Islamica Magazine. “You don’t even have to say ‘Muslim.’ ”
As a consequence, many Muslims have kept their support for Mr. Obama quiet. Any visible show of allegiance could be used by his opponents to incite fear, further the false rumors about his faith and “bin-Laden him,” Mr. Bray said.
“The joke within the national Muslim organizations,” Ms. Ghori said, “is that we should endorse the person we don’t want to win.”
18 June 2008
Israel Open to Deal With Lebanon on Disputed Land
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19lebanon.html?hp
By ETHAN BRONNER and ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: June 19, 2008
JERUSALEM — Israel offered on Wednesday to start direct peace talks with Lebanon, saying all issues would be negotiable including a tiny piece of Israeli-held land on the countries’ mutual border that Israel has long argued does not belong to Lebanon but that the Lebanese say is theirs.
Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Mr. Olmert had spoken of his desire to start such talks in an internal Israeli meeting and had decided to make that desire public.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Israel at the weekend and made a surprise stop in Lebanon on Monday. On her trips, she spoke to both the Israeli and Lebanese governments about Washington’s desire to find a solution to the land dispute as a catalyst for solving bigger issues in the region, including strengthening the Beirut government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a senior Israeli official said, and Mr. Olmert agreed to this.
The announcement comes amid intense regional diplomatic activity, including the planned start on Thursday of a six-month truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, which the Israeli government confirmed on Wednesday, and the end of a second round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Syria for a comprehensive peace treaty.
Since Syria has such strong influence in Lebanon, Mr. Olmert argued that the talks with Syria should lead logically to discussions with Lebanon, Mr. Regev said.
Israel is also very close to a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group that it fought a war against two years ago.
The disputed piece of land that will be under negotiation is known as the Shabaa Farms.
When Israel withdrew from the occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations Security Council stated that the withdrawal was complete despite its holding onto the disputed area of land because Shabaa, the United Nations said, was part of the Syrian Golan Heights occupied by Israel.
But Lebanon and Hezbollah say the land is Lebanese and Syria has not contradicted them. Moreover, Hezbollah has used the Israeli hold over Shabaa as a pretext for keeping its men under arms despite United Nations resolutions calling for the disarming of all Lebanese militias.
Hezbollah says that as long as part of the Lebanese homeland is occupied, it needs its weapons because the national army is weak.
But the West, especially the United States and France, wants to reduce the power of Hezbollah, a client of both Syria and Iran, and has been looking for ways to strengthen the pro-Western government of Lebanon. Neither the Lebanese government nor Hezbollah made any immediate official statement on Wednesday. However, Al Manar television, which is run by Hezbollah, said “the real target behind Rice’s position on Shabaa Farms is the resistance’s weapons.”
Next month, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is due to brief the Security Council on the implementation of Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. In that report, it is likely that he will announce a revised or clarified stand on the sovereignty of Shabaa.
For Israel, the main concern in Lebanon is Hezbollah’s increasing power. Israeli military officials say that Hezbollah has far more rockets and far deadlier ones today than it did two years ago when the two fought a month-long war after Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the border to kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers.
It is unclear whether Shabaa and Hezbollah have been discussed by Israeli and Syrian officials negotiating in their talks, which are being mediated by Turkey. But the Israelis and Syrians say their latest round of talks went well and there is now the possibility that Mr. Olmert and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, will find themselves at a table together in France next month. Both men have accepted an invitation to a regional conference there on July 13 on immigration, security and the environment, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has said they will be seated at the same table.
In the past, the Lebanese government has consistently ruled out negotiations with Israel.
Last week, it issued a statement saying there were “pending bilateral issues between Lebanon and Israel which are governed by international resolutions which Israel must respect, and which cannot be the object of political negotiations."
Specifically, it said, Israel must “respect Lebanon’s sovereignty over its territory and its water, release prisoners, and provide maps on mines and cluster bombs” left over from the 2006 war.
Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem and Robert F. Worth from Beirut, Lebanon
By ETHAN BRONNER and ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: June 19, 2008
JERUSALEM — Israel offered on Wednesday to start direct peace talks with Lebanon, saying all issues would be negotiable including a tiny piece of Israeli-held land on the countries’ mutual border that Israel has long argued does not belong to Lebanon but that the Lebanese say is theirs.
Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Mr. Olmert had spoken of his desire to start such talks in an internal Israeli meeting and had decided to make that desire public.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Israel at the weekend and made a surprise stop in Lebanon on Monday. On her trips, she spoke to both the Israeli and Lebanese governments about Washington’s desire to find a solution to the land dispute as a catalyst for solving bigger issues in the region, including strengthening the Beirut government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a senior Israeli official said, and Mr. Olmert agreed to this.
The announcement comes amid intense regional diplomatic activity, including the planned start on Thursday of a six-month truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, which the Israeli government confirmed on Wednesday, and the end of a second round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Syria for a comprehensive peace treaty.
Since Syria has such strong influence in Lebanon, Mr. Olmert argued that the talks with Syria should lead logically to discussions with Lebanon, Mr. Regev said.
Israel is also very close to a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group that it fought a war against two years ago.
The disputed piece of land that will be under negotiation is known as the Shabaa Farms.
When Israel withdrew from the occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations Security Council stated that the withdrawal was complete despite its holding onto the disputed area of land because Shabaa, the United Nations said, was part of the Syrian Golan Heights occupied by Israel.
But Lebanon and Hezbollah say the land is Lebanese and Syria has not contradicted them. Moreover, Hezbollah has used the Israeli hold over Shabaa as a pretext for keeping its men under arms despite United Nations resolutions calling for the disarming of all Lebanese militias.
Hezbollah says that as long as part of the Lebanese homeland is occupied, it needs its weapons because the national army is weak.
But the West, especially the United States and France, wants to reduce the power of Hezbollah, a client of both Syria and Iran, and has been looking for ways to strengthen the pro-Western government of Lebanon. Neither the Lebanese government nor Hezbollah made any immediate official statement on Wednesday. However, Al Manar television, which is run by Hezbollah, said “the real target behind Rice’s position on Shabaa Farms is the resistance’s weapons.”
Next month, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is due to brief the Security Council on the implementation of Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. In that report, it is likely that he will announce a revised or clarified stand on the sovereignty of Shabaa.
For Israel, the main concern in Lebanon is Hezbollah’s increasing power. Israeli military officials say that Hezbollah has far more rockets and far deadlier ones today than it did two years ago when the two fought a month-long war after Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the border to kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers.
It is unclear whether Shabaa and Hezbollah have been discussed by Israeli and Syrian officials negotiating in their talks, which are being mediated by Turkey. But the Israelis and Syrians say their latest round of talks went well and there is now the possibility that Mr. Olmert and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, will find themselves at a table together in France next month. Both men have accepted an invitation to a regional conference there on July 13 on immigration, security and the environment, and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has said they will be seated at the same table.
In the past, the Lebanese government has consistently ruled out negotiations with Israel.
Last week, it issued a statement saying there were “pending bilateral issues between Lebanon and Israel which are governed by international resolutions which Israel must respect, and which cannot be the object of political negotiations."
Specifically, it said, Israel must “respect Lebanon’s sovereignty over its territory and its water, release prisoners, and provide maps on mines and cluster bombs” left over from the 2006 war.
Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem and Robert F. Worth from Beirut, Lebanon
17 June 2008
Israel and Hamas Agree to a Cease-Fire, Egypt Says
Ilhamda'allah!!
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/world/middleeast/18mideast.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By ISABEL KERSHNER and GRAHAM BOWLEY
JERUSALEM — Israel and the Islamist group Hamas have agreed on a mutual cease-fire to take effect Thursday following negotiations brokered by Egypt, Egyptian state media announced on Tuesday.
The official Egyptian state-owned news agency MENA and state-run television quoted an unidentified senior Egyptian official as saying that the truce would start at 6 a.m. Thursday. Israeli officials would not immediately confirm or deny that any agreement had been reached.
Talks, brokered by Egypt, have been proceeding intensively between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza. Both sides have appeared keen on achieving a cease-fire, but until the truce comes into effect neither side is likely to stop exchanges, and on Tuesday three Israeli airstrikes hit targets in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army said.
Palestinian medical officials in Gaza said that at least six militants were killed in the strikes and two others wounded.
However, a Palestinian official quoted by Reuters said that despite the deaths the negotiations for a truce were still on track.
“The two sides agreed, and the implementation of the truce will begin” on Thursday, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to announce a deal, said.
Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg News, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on al-Quds Radio: “We are so close to hammering out a final truce agreement. The cease-fire will include a cessation of fire, ending the blockade and reopening the closed border crossings of the Gaza Strip.”
On Monday, Ismail Haniya, a senior leader of Hamas, which controls Gaza, said that the talks brokered by Egypt for a period of calm with Israel were nearing completion and that he hoped for a “happy ending.”
Witnesses to the airstrikes on Tuesday said five of the six killed in the strikes were members of the armed wing of the radical group Islamic Jihad. The sixth was also a militant but was not immediately identified.
The Israeli military said the first two strikes hit vehicles carrying what they called “terror operatives.” The third strike was against “other activists,” the army said.
The medical officials in Gaza said four militants were killed in the first strike against a car driving on a road east of Khan Yunis, while the second strike was also on a car.
Towns and villages in southern Israel have been under continual rocket and mortar fire from Gaza in recent months, while Gaza has been subject to frequent Israeli military strikes aimed at militants and incursions.
Israel’s security cabinet decided last week to pursue an arrangement for mutual quiet, though it also instructed the military to prepare for more serious action should the talks fail or the truce break down.
The developments Tuesday come after Israel appeared to be making diplomatic progress on other fronts Monday: a possible prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, and a second round of indirect talks with Syrian representatives in Turkey.
Israeli officials refused to comment about possible developments with Hezbollah and said it would be premature to draw any conclusions about understandings with Syria.
Some Israelis, meanwhile, have suggested that the current flurry of diplomatic activity is intended to distract attention from the political and legal troubles of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who the police say is suspected of receiving illicit funds.
The possibility of an imminent exchange with Hezbollah, involving the two Israeli Army reservists whose capture by the militant group set off the 2006 war in Lebanon, seemed more likely on Monday when Zvi Regev, the father of one of the reservists, said he had been told about the men’s possible return. Mr. Regev, the father of Eldad Regev, told Israel Radio that Ofer Dekel, the Israeli official in charge of the soldiers’ case, informed the family two weeks ago “that a deal was about to be carried out.”
Mr. Dekel did not go into detail, he said, and did not know about the soldiers’ condition. Both were wounded in a Hezbollah ambush across the Israeli border that led to their capture in July 2006; the Lebanese group has offered no proof that they are alive.
Two Lebanese newspapers, Al-Akhbar and As-Safir, reported on Monday that a prisoner exchange could take place as early as the end of this week.
On June 1, Hezbollah representatives unexpectedly handed over to Israel the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the 2006 war, and Israel sent back across the border a Lebanese civilian who had completed a six-year prison term in Israel for spying for Hezbollah.
Any broader swap is likely to include the release of Samir Kuntar, the most notorious of the few remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel. He was sentenced to multiple life terms for killing four Israelis, including a 4-year-old girl, during a terrorist raid in Nahariya in 1979.
Later on Monday, Turkish and Israeli officials announced that Israeli and Syrian representatives had completed two days of indirect talks through Turkish mediators. The talks were “serious, positive and constructive” and were to be continued, an Israeli government official said.
Israel and Syria announced three weeks ago that they were engaged in negotiations through Turkish mediators for a comprehensive peace treaty, the first talks in eight years.
The Israeli news media have been rife with reports that the Israeli team will try to persuade the Syrians to have their leaders meet face to face in Paris in mid-July at the conference, organized by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, to establish a Mediterranean Union.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, confirmed that Mr. Olmert had been invited to the Paris conference and that he hoped to attend. But “anything beyond that is speculation,” Mr. Regev said.
Turkish Foreign Minster Ali Babacan said Tuesday that the latest talks had been “completed with success” and “more importantly, the calendar was set for the next two meetings which will be held in July,” news agencies reported from Luxembourg, where the Turkish official was attending a European Union meeting.
But, Mr. Babacan said, he did “not wish to elevate the expectations because this is a very complicated matter,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse. He added that Israeli and Syrian officials at the talks “left extremely satisfied with the negotiations.”
On Monday, Israeli troops killed three militants in Gaza as they were trying to plant explosives by the border fence. Islamic Jihad said the militants were laying a bomb meant to blow up an Israeli jeep on patrol.
Later, a rocket fired from Gaza by militants fell in a cemetery in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon about 10 miles north, and the military said one Israeli civilian was lightly wounded.
At least one militant was killed in a subsequent Israeli strike against a rocket-launching squad, the military said.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and Graham Bowley from New York. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
June 18, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/world/middleeast/18mideast.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By ISABEL KERSHNER and GRAHAM BOWLEY
JERUSALEM — Israel and the Islamist group Hamas have agreed on a mutual cease-fire to take effect Thursday following negotiations brokered by Egypt, Egyptian state media announced on Tuesday.
The official Egyptian state-owned news agency MENA and state-run television quoted an unidentified senior Egyptian official as saying that the truce would start at 6 a.m. Thursday. Israeli officials would not immediately confirm or deny that any agreement had been reached.
Talks, brokered by Egypt, have been proceeding intensively between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza. Both sides have appeared keen on achieving a cease-fire, but until the truce comes into effect neither side is likely to stop exchanges, and on Tuesday three Israeli airstrikes hit targets in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army said.
Palestinian medical officials in Gaza said that at least six militants were killed in the strikes and two others wounded.
However, a Palestinian official quoted by Reuters said that despite the deaths the negotiations for a truce were still on track.
“The two sides agreed, and the implementation of the truce will begin” on Thursday, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to announce a deal, said.
Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg News, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on al-Quds Radio: “We are so close to hammering out a final truce agreement. The cease-fire will include a cessation of fire, ending the blockade and reopening the closed border crossings of the Gaza Strip.”
On Monday, Ismail Haniya, a senior leader of Hamas, which controls Gaza, said that the talks brokered by Egypt for a period of calm with Israel were nearing completion and that he hoped for a “happy ending.”
Witnesses to the airstrikes on Tuesday said five of the six killed in the strikes were members of the armed wing of the radical group Islamic Jihad. The sixth was also a militant but was not immediately identified.
The Israeli military said the first two strikes hit vehicles carrying what they called “terror operatives.” The third strike was against “other activists,” the army said.
The medical officials in Gaza said four militants were killed in the first strike against a car driving on a road east of Khan Yunis, while the second strike was also on a car.
Towns and villages in southern Israel have been under continual rocket and mortar fire from Gaza in recent months, while Gaza has been subject to frequent Israeli military strikes aimed at militants and incursions.
Israel’s security cabinet decided last week to pursue an arrangement for mutual quiet, though it also instructed the military to prepare for more serious action should the talks fail or the truce break down.
The developments Tuesday come after Israel appeared to be making diplomatic progress on other fronts Monday: a possible prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, and a second round of indirect talks with Syrian representatives in Turkey.
Israeli officials refused to comment about possible developments with Hezbollah and said it would be premature to draw any conclusions about understandings with Syria.
Some Israelis, meanwhile, have suggested that the current flurry of diplomatic activity is intended to distract attention from the political and legal troubles of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who the police say is suspected of receiving illicit funds.
The possibility of an imminent exchange with Hezbollah, involving the two Israeli Army reservists whose capture by the militant group set off the 2006 war in Lebanon, seemed more likely on Monday when Zvi Regev, the father of one of the reservists, said he had been told about the men’s possible return. Mr. Regev, the father of Eldad Regev, told Israel Radio that Ofer Dekel, the Israeli official in charge of the soldiers’ case, informed the family two weeks ago “that a deal was about to be carried out.”
Mr. Dekel did not go into detail, he said, and did not know about the soldiers’ condition. Both were wounded in a Hezbollah ambush across the Israeli border that led to their capture in July 2006; the Lebanese group has offered no proof that they are alive.
Two Lebanese newspapers, Al-Akhbar and As-Safir, reported on Monday that a prisoner exchange could take place as early as the end of this week.
On June 1, Hezbollah representatives unexpectedly handed over to Israel the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the 2006 war, and Israel sent back across the border a Lebanese civilian who had completed a six-year prison term in Israel for spying for Hezbollah.
Any broader swap is likely to include the release of Samir Kuntar, the most notorious of the few remaining Lebanese prisoners in Israel. He was sentenced to multiple life terms for killing four Israelis, including a 4-year-old girl, during a terrorist raid in Nahariya in 1979.
Later on Monday, Turkish and Israeli officials announced that Israeli and Syrian representatives had completed two days of indirect talks through Turkish mediators. The talks were “serious, positive and constructive” and were to be continued, an Israeli government official said.
Israel and Syria announced three weeks ago that they were engaged in negotiations through Turkish mediators for a comprehensive peace treaty, the first talks in eight years.
The Israeli news media have been rife with reports that the Israeli team will try to persuade the Syrians to have their leaders meet face to face in Paris in mid-July at the conference, organized by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, to establish a Mediterranean Union.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, confirmed that Mr. Olmert had been invited to the Paris conference and that he hoped to attend. But “anything beyond that is speculation,” Mr. Regev said.
Turkish Foreign Minster Ali Babacan said Tuesday that the latest talks had been “completed with success” and “more importantly, the calendar was set for the next two meetings which will be held in July,” news agencies reported from Luxembourg, where the Turkish official was attending a European Union meeting.
But, Mr. Babacan said, he did “not wish to elevate the expectations because this is a very complicated matter,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse. He added that Israeli and Syrian officials at the talks “left extremely satisfied with the negotiations.”
On Monday, Israeli troops killed three militants in Gaza as they were trying to plant explosives by the border fence. Islamic Jihad said the militants were laying a bomb meant to blow up an Israeli jeep on patrol.
Later, a rocket fired from Gaza by militants fell in a cemetery in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon about 10 miles north, and the military said one Israeli civilian was lightly wounded.
At least one militant was killed in a subsequent Israeli strike against a rocket-launching squad, the military said.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and Graham Bowley from New York. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
14 June 2008
The end of intervention (OP-ED)
The New York Times
June 11, 2008
By Madeleine K. Albright
The Burmese government’s criminally neglectful response to last month’s cyclone, and the world’s response to that response, illustrate three grim realities today: totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbors are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground, helped in no small part by the disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many of the world’s necessary interventions in the decade before the invasion — in places like Haiti and the Balkans — would seem impossible in today’s climate.
The first and most obvious reality is the survival of totalitarian government in an age of global communications and democratic progress. Myanmar’s military junta employs the same set of tools used by the likes of Stalin to crush dissent and monitor the lives of citizens. The needs of the victims of Cyclone Nargis mean nothing to a regime focused solely on preserving its own authority.
Second is the unwillingness of Myanmar’s neighbors to use their collective leverage on behalf of change. A decade ago, when Myanmar was allowed to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, I was assured by leaders in the region that they would push the junta to open its economy and move in the direction of democracy. With a few honorable exceptions, this hasn’t happened.
A third reality is that the concept of national sovereignty as an inviolable and overriding principle of global law is once again gaining ground. Many diplomats and foreign policy experts had hoped that the fall of the Berlin Wall would lead to the creation of an integrated world system free from spheres of influence, in which the wounds created by colonial and cold war empires would heal.
In such a world, the international community would recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency situations — to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restore democracy or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or unwilling to do so.
During the 1990s, certain precedents were created. The administration of George H. W. Bush intervened to prevent famine in Somalia and to aid Kurds in northern Iraq; the Clinton administration returned an elected leader to power in Haiti; NATO ended the war in Bosnia and stopped Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of terror in Kosovo; the British halted a civil war in Sierra Leone; and the United Nations authorized life-saving missions in East Timor and elsewhere.
These actions were not steps toward a world government. They did reflect the view that the international system exists to advance certain core values, including development, justice and respect for human rights. In this view, sovereignty is still a central consideration, but cases may arise in which there is a responsibility to intervene — through sanctions or, in extreme cases, by force — to save lives.
The Bush administration’s decision to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11 did nothing to weaken this view because it was clearly motivated by self-defense. The invasion of Iraq, with the administration’s grandiose rhetoric about pre-emption, was another matter, however. It generated a negative reaction that has weakened support for cross-border interventions even for worthy purposes. Governments, especially in the developing world, are now determined to preserve the principle of sovereignty, even when the human costs of doing so are high.
Thus, Myanmar’s leaders have been shielded from the repercussions of their outrageous actions. Sudan has been able to dictate the terms of multinational operations inside Darfur. The government of Zimbabwe may yet succeed in stealing a presidential election.
Political leaders in Pakistan have told the Bush administration to back off, despite the growth of Al Qaeda and Taliban cells in the country’s wild northwest. African leaders (understandably perhaps) have said no to the creation of a regional American military command. And despite recent efforts to enshrine the doctrine of a “responsibility to protect” in international law, the concept of humanitarian intervention has lost momentum.
The global conscience is not asleep, but after the turbulence of recent years, it is profoundly confused. Some governments will oppose any exceptions to the principle of sovereignty because they fear criticism of their own policies. Others will defend the sanctity of sovereignty unless and until they again have confidence in the judgment of those proposing exceptions.
At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world a more humane place?
We know how the government of Myanmar would answer that question, but what we need to listen to is the voice — and cry — of the Burmese people.
June 11, 2008
By Madeleine K. Albright
The Burmese government’s criminally neglectful response to last month’s cyclone, and the world’s response to that response, illustrate three grim realities today: totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbors are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground, helped in no small part by the disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many of the world’s necessary interventions in the decade before the invasion — in places like Haiti and the Balkans — would seem impossible in today’s climate.
The first and most obvious reality is the survival of totalitarian government in an age of global communications and democratic progress. Myanmar’s military junta employs the same set of tools used by the likes of Stalin to crush dissent and monitor the lives of citizens. The needs of the victims of Cyclone Nargis mean nothing to a regime focused solely on preserving its own authority.
Second is the unwillingness of Myanmar’s neighbors to use their collective leverage on behalf of change. A decade ago, when Myanmar was allowed to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, I was assured by leaders in the region that they would push the junta to open its economy and move in the direction of democracy. With a few honorable exceptions, this hasn’t happened.
A third reality is that the concept of national sovereignty as an inviolable and overriding principle of global law is once again gaining ground. Many diplomats and foreign policy experts had hoped that the fall of the Berlin Wall would lead to the creation of an integrated world system free from spheres of influence, in which the wounds created by colonial and cold war empires would heal.
In such a world, the international community would recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency situations — to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restore democracy or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or unwilling to do so.
During the 1990s, certain precedents were created. The administration of George H. W. Bush intervened to prevent famine in Somalia and to aid Kurds in northern Iraq; the Clinton administration returned an elected leader to power in Haiti; NATO ended the war in Bosnia and stopped Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of terror in Kosovo; the British halted a civil war in Sierra Leone; and the United Nations authorized life-saving missions in East Timor and elsewhere.
These actions were not steps toward a world government. They did reflect the view that the international system exists to advance certain core values, including development, justice and respect for human rights. In this view, sovereignty is still a central consideration, but cases may arise in which there is a responsibility to intervene — through sanctions or, in extreme cases, by force — to save lives.
The Bush administration’s decision to fight in Afghanistan after 9/11 did nothing to weaken this view because it was clearly motivated by self-defense. The invasion of Iraq, with the administration’s grandiose rhetoric about pre-emption, was another matter, however. It generated a negative reaction that has weakened support for cross-border interventions even for worthy purposes. Governments, especially in the developing world, are now determined to preserve the principle of sovereignty, even when the human costs of doing so are high.
Thus, Myanmar’s leaders have been shielded from the repercussions of their outrageous actions. Sudan has been able to dictate the terms of multinational operations inside Darfur. The government of Zimbabwe may yet succeed in stealing a presidential election.
Political leaders in Pakistan have told the Bush administration to back off, despite the growth of Al Qaeda and Taliban cells in the country’s wild northwest. African leaders (understandably perhaps) have said no to the creation of a regional American military command. And despite recent efforts to enshrine the doctrine of a “responsibility to protect” in international law, the concept of humanitarian intervention has lost momentum.
The global conscience is not asleep, but after the turbulence of recent years, it is profoundly confused. Some governments will oppose any exceptions to the principle of sovereignty because they fear criticism of their own policies. Others will defend the sanctity of sovereignty unless and until they again have confidence in the judgment of those proposing exceptions.
At the heart of the debate is the question of what the international system is. Is it just a collection of legal nuts and bolts cobbled together by governments to protect governments? Or is it a living framework of rules intended to make the world a more humane place?
We know how the government of Myanmar would answer that question, but what we need to listen to is the voice — and cry — of the Burmese people.
05 June 2008
Wonderful Abayas!!
I stumbled upon this wonderful blog that sells abayas from Indonesia. Though the shipping is atrocious, figured into the total price of the abaya it evens out with something that would be bought in the US. The designs are lovely and very attractive, while remaining modest. I'm going to be ordering several!
USA Women's Size Standards
US Sizes 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Bust (inches) 32 ½ 33 ½ 34 ½ 35 ½ 36 ½ 38 39 ½ 41 43 45
Waist (inches) 24 25 26 27 28 29 ½ 31 32 ½ 34 ½ 36 ½
Hip (inches) 34 ½ 35 ½ 36 ½ 37 ½ 38 ½ 40 41 ½ 43 45 47
Bust (cm) 82 ½ 85 87 ½ 90 92 ½ 96 ½ 100 ½ 104 109 114
Waist (cm) 61 63 ½ 66 68 ½ 71 75 79 82 ½ 87 ½ 93
Hip (cm) 87 ½ 90 93 95 98 101 ½ 105 ½ 109 114 119
the price of the abayas:
- with height up to 170 centimeters, Indonesian sisters standart.
(As i dont know other nationality standart)
2/XS is USD 8
4/S is USD 8.5
6/S is USD 9
8/M is USD 9.5
10/M is USD 10
12/L is USD 10.5
14/L is USD 11
16/XL is USD 11
18/1XL is USD 12
20/2XL is USD 12.5
the Indonesian Post EMS maximum shipment for USA is 20 Kg.
one XS to M abaya approximately is 475 gr
and L to 2XL is about 550 gr
the shipping fee to USA is: in USDollar
up to 500gr is 23
up to 1000gr is 31
up to 1500gr is 40
up to 2000gr is 49
next 500 gr is 12
while the volumetric tariffs : in USD
1500 up to 2000gr is 47
2000 up to 2500 gr is 51.40
2500 up to 3000 gr is 55.27
3000 up to 3500 gr is 58.41
3500 up to 4000 gr is 61.18
next 500 gr is 12
http://baynamuslim.blogspot.com/2008/04/all-abaya-design.html
USA Women's Size Standards
US Sizes 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Bust (inches) 32 ½ 33 ½ 34 ½ 35 ½ 36 ½ 38 39 ½ 41 43 45
Waist (inches) 24 25 26 27 28 29 ½ 31 32 ½ 34 ½ 36 ½
Hip (inches) 34 ½ 35 ½ 36 ½ 37 ½ 38 ½ 40 41 ½ 43 45 47
Bust (cm) 82 ½ 85 87 ½ 90 92 ½ 96 ½ 100 ½ 104 109 114
Waist (cm) 61 63 ½ 66 68 ½ 71 75 79 82 ½ 87 ½ 93
Hip (cm) 87 ½ 90 93 95 98 101 ½ 105 ½ 109 114 119
the price of the abayas:
- with height up to 170 centimeters, Indonesian sisters standart.
(As i dont know other nationality standart)
2/XS is USD 8
4/S is USD 8.5
6/S is USD 9
8/M is USD 9.5
10/M is USD 10
12/L is USD 10.5
14/L is USD 11
16/XL is USD 11
18/1XL is USD 12
20/2XL is USD 12.5
the Indonesian Post EMS maximum shipment for USA is 20 Kg.
one XS to M abaya approximately is 475 gr
and L to 2XL is about 550 gr
the shipping fee to USA is: in USDollar
up to 500gr is 23
up to 1000gr is 31
up to 1500gr is 40
up to 2000gr is 49
next 500 gr is 12
while the volumetric tariffs : in USD
1500 up to 2000gr is 47
2000 up to 2500 gr is 51.40
2500 up to 3000 gr is 55.27
3000 up to 3500 gr is 58.41
3500 up to 4000 gr is 61.18
next 500 gr is 12
http://baynamuslim.blogspot.com/2008/04/all-abaya-design.html
30 May 2008
Life in Iran, Etched With Suspicion and Humor
By KAREN ROSENBERG
Decades before Marjane Satrapi drew the first frame of her celebrated comic book memoir “Persepolis,” the Iranian satirist Ardeshir Mohassess, now 69, was making black-and-white drawings whose blend of humor and reportage made him a cult figure for artists and intellectuals in his country. With rich allusions to Persian miniatures, Western artists like Goya and episodes in Iranian history, Mr. Mohassess has depicted life in Iran before, during and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The drawings have a fanciful yet descriptive line quality, comically exaggerating facial expressions while giving full weight to bullet holes and severed limbs. Some of the meanings may be lost on American viewers, but the artist’s deep suspicion of religious and political authority comes across clearly.
Now some 70 of Mr. Mohassess’s works are on view at the Asia Society and Museum in a show, “Ardeshir Mohassess: Art and Satire in Iran,” assembled by the artists Shirin Neshat and Nicky Nodjoumi. The timing could hardly be better, given Iran’s high profile in the American political debate during this presidential election year.
Ms. Neshat and Mr. Nodjoumi, who were born in Iran and now work in New York, first saw Mr. Mohassess’s drawings in Iranian newspapers before the revolution. They say they felt the need to reintroduce him to Western viewers after the Museum of Modern Art mounted the 2006 exhibition “Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking,” a group show that presented Ms. Neshat, Ms. Satrapi and other artists from the Islamic world alongside the Americans Bill Viola and Mike Kelley and was widely criticized for making superficial connections between cultures.
Ms. Neshat, whose films and photographs explore women’s place in Iranian society, is particularly fond of Mr. Mohassess’s drawings of women. In an untitled work from 1978, a rose grows out of a chador; the end of the stem disappears into the opening where the woman’s face should be. A similarly arresting image, “Mother’s Day” (about 1980), features a thorny branch in place of the flower. Both works suggest resistance to the muffling of women’s voices.
Mr. Nodjoumi, a painter who works in a figurative style with plenty of political symbolism, says he admires the broad visual and historical literacy of Mr. Mohassess’s satire, in which references to Daumier and the Qajar dynasty are equally at home.
Unlike a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammed, Mr. Mohassess’s drawings have not inspired any riots. But they did attract the attention of the shah’s dreaded secret police in the 1970s. After receiving several warnings from the Iranian authorities Mr. Mohassess relocated to New York in 1976. The move was intended to be temporary, but the revolution of 1979 prompted a change of plans.
The exhibition effectively begins with the series “Life in Iran” (1976-78). This group of more than 30 drawings is ostensibly set in the Qajar dynasty (1833-1925), but it clearly satirizes the reign of the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1941 to 1979). Royal figures in elaborate Qajar dress quash uprisings with acts of intimidation and brutality.
Artists, writers, teachers and free thinkers are among the oppressed. Ironic captions — “The convict’s execution coincided with the king’s birthday ceremonies,” for example, or “Members of a birth control seminar take a memorial picture” — pick up where Mr. Mohassess’s pen leaves off.
In one of the largest and most powerful works, a wedding has been interrupted by an oil truck crashing through the wall. The guests, some in chadors and others in Western clothing, seem to have been immobilized by this turn of events. The scene is farcical except for the bodies of the toppled bride and groom and the nooses dangling overhead.
Mr. Mohassess often works from photographs, lending his scenes of executions and “accidents” a grim authenticity. In an interview in the small exhibition catalog he admits to collecting “photographs of murderers and murdered people, a habit I have had since I was 7 or 8 years old.” He also collects images from the Qajar period, a source for the feathered and jeweled headdresses and embroidered tunics worn by the loutish royals and lackeys in his art.
Several drawings that Mr. Mohassess made after the revolution imbue single figures with disturbing symbolism. In “A Letter From Shiraz” (1982) a turbaned figure draws a picture of his own amputated feet; the upturned stumps of his legs serve as pedestals for them. The garden setting signifies “paradise on earth” in traditional Persian miniature painting; here it unites creation with self-mutilation.
In the ’80s, after a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Mohassess started creating collages from black-and-white photocopies of his earlier works, particularly those based on Qajar sources. He also adopted a simpler style, outlining clusters of small figures. In these works his pen, though shaky, depicts hangings and torture scenes in unnerving detail.
Given that his work is found in newspapers and magazines as well as on gallery walls, Westerners might tend to think of Mr. Mohassess, in the simplest terms, as Iran’s answer to Saul Steinberg. His drawings have been published in The New York Times as well as in the Nation and Playboy. Yet they are more ambiguous than typical op-ed illustrations and more subtle than most political cartoons. In Mr. Mohassess’s works, the coded beauty of traditional Persian art comes face to face with the ugliness of successive autocratic regimes.
“Ardeshir Mohassess: Art and Satire in Iran” is on view through Aug. 3 at Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/arts/design/30sati.html?ref=arts
24 May 2008
Vaseem Mohammed
You have to check out Vaseem's website. His art is amazing - as you can see ;o)
http://www.vaseemmohammed.com/
Islamic art is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of its past life to be reborn as rich and alive as before. The renaissance is the collective attempts of innovative work by British artists such as Vaseem Mohammed who combine classical and post-modernist styles to appeal to the audience of today.
Starting off with no artistic background or experience Vaseem has come a long way to become the artist he is now. Vaseem left his work in the retail industry in search of something which would be more fulfilling. “I come from a retail management background but I got so bored with it so I left. I ended up doing a foundation course which then opened up so much for me. I spent one year on my own basically just painting and experimenting.” Vaseem embarked on a year long course at Tower Hamlets College where he focused on graphic design to teach him the essentials.
Vaseem’s individuality came through at the early stages of his teaching when he refused to conform to the standard and style asked of him. “When I was doing my art and design course my teachers couldn’t help me. I was very stubborn, they used to say you can’t do that and I never used to listen to them.” Vaseem felt there had been a void in his teaching due to his interest in Islamic art and culture. “I needed someone to guide me and there was this amazing Sudanese man who was a 70-year-old master calligrapher, who guided me.” His guide was Osman Waqiallah, a revered artist whose work in the Vatican. Osman got him the art of calligraphy which is now a trademark of Vaseem’s paintings.
Starting out Vaseem’s work was very much experimental and an individual, striking style has emerged. Vaseem has two distinct styles of which one uses calligraphy as the heart of the piece juxtaposed on top of modernist, abstract style work. In his own words Vaseem describes the calligraphy as a representation of Islam’s stability and presence in an ever-changing world.
Vaseem draws from his childhood experiences of living in the East end of London in the Seventies. “That’s what inspires me; I like it, dilapidation, paint peeling off and things like that. In my parents house, which was over a 100 years old I used to peel at the wall paper, as children do, and there was decades of wallpaper there and subconsciously I started using that in my work.”
The surrounding work is done in layers using acrylic and gouache producing different textures and forms. “I keep stripping the layers of paint and eventually there comes some sort of an order. It is symbolic of the environment and the state of the world today. There is so much beauty in the world, Allah created it at the end of the day, and then there is mans destruction of it, whereas the calligraphy always stays intact like the Qur’an. The text is always the same and that is to show that Qur’an is always there whereas the world is ever-changing and evolving.”
The art of calligraphy was favoured in Islam to figural images to convey its core convictions as Islamic leaders saw the use of figural arts as possible idolatry. Islam’s theocracy then looked to calligraphy for religious expression. Vaseem made a conscious decision when embarking on his career to abstain from using animate images in his work in accordance with this tradition. He found that rather than restricting him in his works this opened up avenues for artistic expression by urging him to experiment with abstract styles. Calligraphy has built a reputation over the centuries as a symbol representing power and beauty and is revered by Muslims worldwide and appreciated by non-Muslims alike. The combination of artistry and scholarship has resulted in a sublime reputation which combines divine and moral representations. The use of calligraphy in Vaseem’s work adds an abstract beauty which draws the eye to the heart of the painting and gives it a soul and meaning.
The calligraphy used is varied and each painting has a complimentary style and design to fit in with the ethos of the piece. Kufic calligraphy has been in used in both the traditional and ornamental styles along with the more elaborate Thuluth and oriental Sini styles. The style is chosen depending on the theme of the piece and for its aesthetic beauty. In each case the relationship between the inscriptions and the disorder of paint produces a profound effect on the viewers urging them to question and understand the complexities of the piece and its message.
The path to art was intertwined with the path to Islam. “I got into Islam at the same time as I got into art. I guess one thing leads to another. It was more to do with the Islamic heritage and the arts as opposed to the religious side, that came later.” His work has a political message along with a religious one and is representative of world events occurring at the time. Vaseem uses his work to introduce people to Islam and make it more open to a wider audience. “I work firstly to bridge the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims. Also it is another window introducing people to Islam. As well as stuff that is happening at the moment and in the past, I’ve found it is a good way of attracting people and engaging them, in debate and discussion especially.”
Architecture is another distinct feature of Vaseem’s paintings. The walled cities painted incorporate the trademark domes, arches and intertwining alleyways that are a signature of Islamic architecture. The paintings are primarily inspired by a trip to Multan, a walled desert city in Pakistan. “There are a lot of saints and many monuments in Multan. These (the paintings) are views of the city. Its how light works with architecture. It’s my own interpretation and it’s just done, it’s not drawn out or anything. I carve these things out and use light and dark. It’s just trying to take manuscripts and putting them in different elements and contexts.”
The paintings share an expression of isolation and yet represent a global community. This is an expression of Vaseem’s own feelings of isolation both amongst the western and Islamic community. The walled cities are often mistaken for paintings of Morocco and other countries with Islamic heritage showing the unification of the architecture and Islam. Architecture in Islam tends to follow certain decorative principles which span all buildings and objects. The same ideas forms and designs recur across the Islamic world which prevail differences in art quality and execution of style explaining the familiarity of Vaseem’s paintings.
Initially Vaseem exhibited his work at Spitalfields market in the east end of London and eventually moved on to open his own gallery nearby. These days he works on commissions as well as private work. He has just finished a commission for an MBI international private jet which involved a set of complimentary paintings. He has also produced props for a forthcoming film called Redlight Runners. The film is being directed by Michael Madsen and the story involves the forgery of a ninth century Qur’an which Vaseem had to reproduce. This involved learning staining techniques to age the Qur’an and detailed study of calligraphy in that era resulting in a masterful replica.
Vaseem plans to travel further afield for inspiration and to exhibit his work. “My future plans are to go to the Middle East and Saudi Arabia to exhibit in a gallery called Zamzam gallery, one of the biggest galleries there. There is a client of mine who is going to take me over and I am hopefully going to do some work for the Saudi royal family.”
Vaseem is very introspective with his inspirations. He prefers to use experiences, emotions and situations which affect him personally than taking inspiration from other artists. “To be honest I don’t really look at much art, I just do my own thing, and I’ve always been like that. I actually refer to books but a lot of my stuff is kind of experimental.” Vaseem’s work is truly innovative and exciting and challenges traditional preconception of views and perspectives on Islamic culture.
Nadia Anwar, Emel Magazine May/June 2004
http://www.vaseemmohammed.com/
Islamic art is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of its past life to be reborn as rich and alive as before. The renaissance is the collective attempts of innovative work by British artists such as Vaseem Mohammed who combine classical and post-modernist styles to appeal to the audience of today.
Starting off with no artistic background or experience Vaseem has come a long way to become the artist he is now. Vaseem left his work in the retail industry in search of something which would be more fulfilling. “I come from a retail management background but I got so bored with it so I left. I ended up doing a foundation course which then opened up so much for me. I spent one year on my own basically just painting and experimenting.” Vaseem embarked on a year long course at Tower Hamlets College where he focused on graphic design to teach him the essentials.
Vaseem’s individuality came through at the early stages of his teaching when he refused to conform to the standard and style asked of him. “When I was doing my art and design course my teachers couldn’t help me. I was very stubborn, they used to say you can’t do that and I never used to listen to them.” Vaseem felt there had been a void in his teaching due to his interest in Islamic art and culture. “I needed someone to guide me and there was this amazing Sudanese man who was a 70-year-old master calligrapher, who guided me.” His guide was Osman Waqiallah, a revered artist whose work in the Vatican. Osman got him the art of calligraphy which is now a trademark of Vaseem’s paintings.
Starting out Vaseem’s work was very much experimental and an individual, striking style has emerged. Vaseem has two distinct styles of which one uses calligraphy as the heart of the piece juxtaposed on top of modernist, abstract style work. In his own words Vaseem describes the calligraphy as a representation of Islam’s stability and presence in an ever-changing world.
Vaseem draws from his childhood experiences of living in the East end of London in the Seventies. “That’s what inspires me; I like it, dilapidation, paint peeling off and things like that. In my parents house, which was over a 100 years old I used to peel at the wall paper, as children do, and there was decades of wallpaper there and subconsciously I started using that in my work.”
The surrounding work is done in layers using acrylic and gouache producing different textures and forms. “I keep stripping the layers of paint and eventually there comes some sort of an order. It is symbolic of the environment and the state of the world today. There is so much beauty in the world, Allah created it at the end of the day, and then there is mans destruction of it, whereas the calligraphy always stays intact like the Qur’an. The text is always the same and that is to show that Qur’an is always there whereas the world is ever-changing and evolving.”
The art of calligraphy was favoured in Islam to figural images to convey its core convictions as Islamic leaders saw the use of figural arts as possible idolatry. Islam’s theocracy then looked to calligraphy for religious expression. Vaseem made a conscious decision when embarking on his career to abstain from using animate images in his work in accordance with this tradition. He found that rather than restricting him in his works this opened up avenues for artistic expression by urging him to experiment with abstract styles. Calligraphy has built a reputation over the centuries as a symbol representing power and beauty and is revered by Muslims worldwide and appreciated by non-Muslims alike. The combination of artistry and scholarship has resulted in a sublime reputation which combines divine and moral representations. The use of calligraphy in Vaseem’s work adds an abstract beauty which draws the eye to the heart of the painting and gives it a soul and meaning.
The calligraphy used is varied and each painting has a complimentary style and design to fit in with the ethos of the piece. Kufic calligraphy has been in used in both the traditional and ornamental styles along with the more elaborate Thuluth and oriental Sini styles. The style is chosen depending on the theme of the piece and for its aesthetic beauty. In each case the relationship between the inscriptions and the disorder of paint produces a profound effect on the viewers urging them to question and understand the complexities of the piece and its message.
The path to art was intertwined with the path to Islam. “I got into Islam at the same time as I got into art. I guess one thing leads to another. It was more to do with the Islamic heritage and the arts as opposed to the religious side, that came later.” His work has a political message along with a religious one and is representative of world events occurring at the time. Vaseem uses his work to introduce people to Islam and make it more open to a wider audience. “I work firstly to bridge the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims. Also it is another window introducing people to Islam. As well as stuff that is happening at the moment and in the past, I’ve found it is a good way of attracting people and engaging them, in debate and discussion especially.”
Architecture is another distinct feature of Vaseem’s paintings. The walled cities painted incorporate the trademark domes, arches and intertwining alleyways that are a signature of Islamic architecture. The paintings are primarily inspired by a trip to Multan, a walled desert city in Pakistan. “There are a lot of saints and many monuments in Multan. These (the paintings) are views of the city. Its how light works with architecture. It’s my own interpretation and it’s just done, it’s not drawn out or anything. I carve these things out and use light and dark. It’s just trying to take manuscripts and putting them in different elements and contexts.”
The paintings share an expression of isolation and yet represent a global community. This is an expression of Vaseem’s own feelings of isolation both amongst the western and Islamic community. The walled cities are often mistaken for paintings of Morocco and other countries with Islamic heritage showing the unification of the architecture and Islam. Architecture in Islam tends to follow certain decorative principles which span all buildings and objects. The same ideas forms and designs recur across the Islamic world which prevail differences in art quality and execution of style explaining the familiarity of Vaseem’s paintings.
Initially Vaseem exhibited his work at Spitalfields market in the east end of London and eventually moved on to open his own gallery nearby. These days he works on commissions as well as private work. He has just finished a commission for an MBI international private jet which involved a set of complimentary paintings. He has also produced props for a forthcoming film called Redlight Runners. The film is being directed by Michael Madsen and the story involves the forgery of a ninth century Qur’an which Vaseem had to reproduce. This involved learning staining techniques to age the Qur’an and detailed study of calligraphy in that era resulting in a masterful replica.
Vaseem plans to travel further afield for inspiration and to exhibit his work. “My future plans are to go to the Middle East and Saudi Arabia to exhibit in a gallery called Zamzam gallery, one of the biggest galleries there. There is a client of mine who is going to take me over and I am hopefully going to do some work for the Saudi royal family.”
Vaseem is very introspective with his inspirations. He prefers to use experiences, emotions and situations which affect him personally than taking inspiration from other artists. “To be honest I don’t really look at much art, I just do my own thing, and I’ve always been like that. I actually refer to books but a lot of my stuff is kind of experimental.” Vaseem’s work is truly innovative and exciting and challenges traditional preconception of views and perspectives on Islamic culture.
Nadia Anwar, Emel Magazine May/June 2004
23 May 2008
Shirin Neshat & Others
Did anyone see this show in 2006? Has anyone seen Neshat's new movie? If anyone has the catalogue and are interested in selling it let me know!!!
Non-Western artists have made quite a breakthrough in recent history, as far as becoming a part of the mainstream art world. Five years in the making, the Museum of Modern Art's exibition proves that the canvas has definitively become even more culturally diversified. The following is MoMA's description of their current exhibit from their website. A photo slide show essay follows from Slate magazine, offering some insightful criticism of this complex and intriguing exhibition.
Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking
February 26–May 22, 2006
Art on left by: Shirin Neshat (b. 1957 in Qazvin, Iran, lives and works in New York)
Untitled
1996
RC print and ink, 67 x 48" (170.2 x 121.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York. © Shirin Neshat. Photograph: Larry Barns. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York
The Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA-NYC) has a write up on the Exhibit which appears below:
An ever-increasing number of artists, such as Mona Hatoum, Shirin Neshat, and Shahzia Sikander, have come from the Islamic world to live in Europe and the United States. Without Boundary brings together some of these major contemporary voices. The exhibition features the work of artists of diverse backgrounds—Algerian, Egyptian, Indian, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Pakistani, Palestinian, and Turkish—across a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, animation, photography, carpet and textile, and comic strips.
The exhibition seeks to emphasize diversity by questioning the use of artists’ origins as the sole determining factor in the consideration of their art. To examine the various ways in which these artists’ works diverge from popular expectations, the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue examine the visual treatment of texts and miniature painting on one hand, and issues of identity and faith or spirituality on the other. The intention is not to imply uniformity based on a collective identity but rather to highlight complex, idiosyncratic approaches. Works by Mike Kelley and Bill Viola, two American artists, are included to prevent simplistic conclusions based purely on origin. Other artists featured include Jananne Al-Ani, Ghada Amer, Kutlug Ataman, the Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Shirazeh Houshiary and Pip Horne, Emily Jacir, Y.Z. Kami, Rachid Koraïchi, Marjane Satrapi, Shirana Shahbazi, and Raqib Shaw.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Fereshteh Daftari and Homi Bhabha (Harvard), with a prose piece by novelist Orhan Pamuk.
Here is an excerpt from Slate Magazine:
The conception underlying the show is confused and self-contradictory. Yet most of the art itself—including [this image] (shown above) by photographer Shirin Neshat—is powerful, original, stunning. It might seem captious to criticize a curatorial framework that brings mind-opening work to a wider public. But unfortunately, the show's context will shape perceptions of the art within it. The show's curator, Fereshteh Daftari, describes the exhibition's premises like this: "We often think of artists in terms of their origins. … This is problematic with artists from the Islamic world, particularly in light of the intense attention currently devoted to Islam from the West." Daftari points out that the Islamic world in fact "stretches from Indonesia to the Atlantic coast of Africa," adding that "Without Boundary sets out to look at the work of a number of artists who come from the Islamic world but do not live there. Only active consideration of this kind will slow down the race toward simplistic conclusions and binary thinking." Let me try to explain why, for all the curator's doubtlessly good intentions, the show's muddled premise does a disservice to its art. No doubt, as Daftari writes, there has never been a better time to use an art exhibition to prove the diversity of Islamic culture. The dichotomy of a "clash of civilizations" that shapes American foreign policy is inaccurate and crude. The hope would be that such a show might reveal the delicate spirituality of Islamic art and that this disclosure might soften the impression of militancy and fanaticism as the sole qualities of the Muslim world. Alas, "Without Boundary" lacks the thoughtful complexity that would illuminate such tangled issues.
The complete slide-show essay compiled by Slate on this Exhibition can be viewed in its entirety here: East Meets West: Why MoMA's new show doesn't help us understand Islam. (by Lee Siegel).
http://boundlessmeanderings.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/new-art-exhibition-at-moma-islamic-or-not/
Non-Western artists have made quite a breakthrough in recent history, as far as becoming a part of the mainstream art world. Five years in the making, the Museum of Modern Art's exibition proves that the canvas has definitively become even more culturally diversified. The following is MoMA's description of their current exhibit from their website. A photo slide show essay follows from Slate magazine, offering some insightful criticism of this complex and intriguing exhibition.
Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking
February 26–May 22, 2006
Art on left by: Shirin Neshat (b. 1957 in Qazvin, Iran, lives and works in New York)
Untitled
1996
RC print and ink, 67 x 48" (170.2 x 121.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York. © Shirin Neshat. Photograph: Larry Barns. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York
The Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA-NYC) has a write up on the Exhibit which appears below:
An ever-increasing number of artists, such as Mona Hatoum, Shirin Neshat, and Shahzia Sikander, have come from the Islamic world to live in Europe and the United States. Without Boundary brings together some of these major contemporary voices. The exhibition features the work of artists of diverse backgrounds—Algerian, Egyptian, Indian, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Pakistani, Palestinian, and Turkish—across a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, animation, photography, carpet and textile, and comic strips.
The exhibition seeks to emphasize diversity by questioning the use of artists’ origins as the sole determining factor in the consideration of their art. To examine the various ways in which these artists’ works diverge from popular expectations, the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue examine the visual treatment of texts and miniature painting on one hand, and issues of identity and faith or spirituality on the other. The intention is not to imply uniformity based on a collective identity but rather to highlight complex, idiosyncratic approaches. Works by Mike Kelley and Bill Viola, two American artists, are included to prevent simplistic conclusions based purely on origin. Other artists featured include Jananne Al-Ani, Ghada Amer, Kutlug Ataman, the Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Shirazeh Houshiary and Pip Horne, Emily Jacir, Y.Z. Kami, Rachid Koraïchi, Marjane Satrapi, Shirana Shahbazi, and Raqib Shaw.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Fereshteh Daftari and Homi Bhabha (Harvard), with a prose piece by novelist Orhan Pamuk.
Here is an excerpt from Slate Magazine:
The conception underlying the show is confused and self-contradictory. Yet most of the art itself—including [this image] (shown above) by photographer Shirin Neshat—is powerful, original, stunning. It might seem captious to criticize a curatorial framework that brings mind-opening work to a wider public. But unfortunately, the show's context will shape perceptions of the art within it. The show's curator, Fereshteh Daftari, describes the exhibition's premises like this: "We often think of artists in terms of their origins. … This is problematic with artists from the Islamic world, particularly in light of the intense attention currently devoted to Islam from the West." Daftari points out that the Islamic world in fact "stretches from Indonesia to the Atlantic coast of Africa," adding that "Without Boundary sets out to look at the work of a number of artists who come from the Islamic world but do not live there. Only active consideration of this kind will slow down the race toward simplistic conclusions and binary thinking." Let me try to explain why, for all the curator's doubtlessly good intentions, the show's muddled premise does a disservice to its art. No doubt, as Daftari writes, there has never been a better time to use an art exhibition to prove the diversity of Islamic culture. The dichotomy of a "clash of civilizations" that shapes American foreign policy is inaccurate and crude. The hope would be that such a show might reveal the delicate spirituality of Islamic art and that this disclosure might soften the impression of militancy and fanaticism as the sole qualities of the Muslim world. Alas, "Without Boundary" lacks the thoughtful complexity that would illuminate such tangled issues.
The complete slide-show essay compiled by Slate on this Exhibition can be viewed in its entirety here: East Meets West: Why MoMA's new show doesn't help us understand Islam. (by Lee Siegel).
http://boundlessmeanderings.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/new-art-exhibition-at-moma-islamic-or-not/
22 May 2008
20 May 2008
I found this on facebook...Kinda Kewl
HELP END POVERTY NOW!!! - Yardım Son Dünya Açlık - Ayuda Acabar El Hambre En El Mundo Hambre - Aider La fin Mondial Faim - Auta poistamaan nälänhätä maailmasta - עזרו להפסקת הרעב הגלובאלי - 力添え ・ワールド 饑餓
17 May 2008
LOL
"'I hope you didn't tell them it was me who wanted to know.'
'Certainly not! I told them I hadn't seen you. Sorry, but I have to live here and your name is mud right now.'
Nigh hung up the phone, wondering why she had left the relative peace of the Middle East."
-Jude Deveraux, Someone to Love
Isn't it funny how you leave the West for the Middle East, leave the Middle East to get away from the drama only to find it wasn't as bad as the social pressure you're going home to! Lol, I read this and could soooooooooooo relate...
'Certainly not! I told them I hadn't seen you. Sorry, but I have to live here and your name is mud right now.'
Nigh hung up the phone, wondering why she had left the relative peace of the Middle East."
-Jude Deveraux, Someone to Love
Isn't it funny how you leave the West for the Middle East, leave the Middle East to get away from the drama only to find it wasn't as bad as the social pressure you're going home to! Lol, I read this and could soooooooooooo relate...
30 April 2008
Q&A: Lida Abdul Afghan video artist
Posted: Apr 25, 2008 in Culture
Lida Abdul is the country's latest ethnic hybrid -- the Afghan-American.
At 14, she fled her native Kabul with her older brother to escape the Soviet occupation, which began in 1979 and ended 10 years later.
"My brother and I were sent out so that he wouldn't have to go to the military because no one ever returned," said Abdul, a 34-year-old video artist who was in town to open a new exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
"The war was really brutal. So I lived with my brother. I grew up really on my own, with my brother, in India and Germany."
She moved to California in the early 1990s to study at the University of California-Irvine.
After the Soviet occupation, Afghanistan was overrun by Taliban extremists, and it currently remains at war as the new Afghan government and NATO forces battle those same Taliban fighters.
Abdul's video art -- very short films that are usually displayed in a gallery setting, not a theater setting -- typically deals with images of war and recovery in her homeland.
Do you remember the Soviet invasion?
I do remember the first time, the first day when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. All of a sudden, we had helicopters flying all over Kabul. You could hear the helicopters. The next thing, you could hear the tanks. The tanks were all over the cities, even in residential areas. You could hear the street cracking, the pavement breaking. It was really intense.
Do Afghans support NATO?
Afghans right now are happy that the NATO forces are in Afghanistan. They are pro-NATO forces. They felt really abandoned after the Russians left. They felt the international community really neglected them. They didn't have any roads. They didn't have food to eat. They fought for so many years against the Russians and that was where they felt really neglected. Now they feel someone is really paying attention to them.
One of your films shows a group of men trying to pull down ruins with ropes. What is the message there?
The question is: Is it possible to move away from the ruins or get rid of the ruins? That's the main question. And it's also speaking about the internal ruins. Can you get rid of the memory of the ruins, or does it always stay with you? What happens to memory, really? I don't have the answer, but that's the question I'm asking.
Who are your actors?
They are not actors. I never use professional actors because they are too composed, they are bringing too much history with them. But if I just use normal, everyday people, it's much more interesting. It's more about life, not a construction of some complex character.
Do ordinary people understand that when you recruit them to be in your films?
At first they don't understand what I'm doing. They think it's a little absurd, like painting the ruins white, or pulling the ruins down by rope. At first they didn't understand it. But from the very beginning of the piece until the end, there is a transformation. Then they understand. OK, this is really dealing with our history. We're really trying to focus on the condition that we're living under and where do we go from here? So, in that sense, I think that is a transformation and they understand.
How do you find the children who appear in your films?
It's really interesting. They're kind of silent. I have tried to understand and interview kids. There's a lot of silence. In some pieces that I've done, they perform their own trauma. There's one piece called "Umbrella" that I've done where a little boy is dancing in space endlessly on his own. I didn't ask him to do that. It's about this kind of repetition of the trauma. And usually, if you've noticed people who go mad, they usually repeat things a lot.
Do you show your films in Afghanistan?
Yes, I do.
Who is your audience?
Everyday people from all walks in life. They are really engaged in the arts and culture. Because of the culture and the tradition of the Persian literature and poetry, they have that already. There's a lot of storytelling and so on. There's a lot of theater. There are a lot of plays that they're interested in .....
We get mixed messages on the situation in Afghanistan. Is the country recovering from 30 years of war?
There's so much going on in Afghanistan. It's really interesting. It's an amazing place despite the war. My intention is to bring back the other aspects of Afghanistan that you don't get to see here in the United States or in Europe.
But we see so much devastation. Is that one of the points of your film, that life goes on?
Exactly. That's completely my point, that life goes on, even though there is war and destruction, that it doesn't stop people from moving on, from really progressing and having hope. Even though there's been 30 years of war, the Afghans are not feeling sorry for themselves. They're moving on. It's a culture that really has a part to it that's very loving, very positive.
Why did you want to study art in the United States?
I didn't know that I wanted to study art, actually. I was going to go to law school, then I dropped out because I realized it was not for me. I realized I wanted to do art because as a child, I was always drawing and painting, so somehow it returned. It was a memory I had of my childhood when I was working on my drawings, and I decided that I need to go back to that.
You split your time between Los Angeles and Kabul. Where do you want to settle?
I would really like to settle in Afghanistan. It would be very interesting to me as an artist. The fact that it's in transition from a war time to a peace time, from a state of disaster to a state of being more in construction, it is interesting. There are so many things that are happening. As a viewer, as someone who analyzes my environment, it's fascinating to see how something is built and how things are in transition. They have cell phones, but there are ruins. They don't have a car, but they have cell phones. It's between modernity -- they still have horses on the street. There's something nice about that.
If you go
Who: Lida Abdul, a video artist from Afghanistan whose work explores the history of destruction and political unrest in her country.
Exhibit: Video works "White House" (2005, 4 minutes, 58 seconds); "What We Saw Upon Awakening" (2006, 6 minutes, 50 seconds); "In Transit" (2008, 4 minutes, 48 seconds).
Where: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 4000 Michigan Road.
When: Now through Sept. 28.
Cost: Free.
Information: (317) 923-1331 or www.imamuseum.org.
- Interview by Abe Aamidor / Indianapolis Star
31 March 2008
17 March 2008
Iraqis See a Candidate's Agenda in McCain's Visit
Ya, Allah - He's already at it! Though I agree that McCain is 100% better than Bush, he still will enforce this war of oppression, and I hope people see that :o(
March 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/world/middleeast/17mccain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and MICHAEL LUO
BAGHDAD — Senator John McCain arrived in Iraq on Sunday morning on a trip that was described as a visit by an official Congressional delegation, but that also served to showcase his foreign policy credentials as he campaigns for the White House.
Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was scheduled to meet with officials including the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, and the senior American military commander in the country, Gen. David H. Petraeus. He was also scheduled to meet with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said Yaseen Majid, a media adviser to Mr. Maliki.
Many Iraqi politicians are closely monitoring the American presidential race, and some said the visit bolstered their belief that if Mr. McCain, of Arizona, succeeded President Bush in the November election, the American military would have a large presence in Iraq for a very long time.
“This visit confirms that the Republicans believe that the Iraqi war is very important in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East,” said Wael Abdul Latif, an independent Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament. “It’s a message to Iran that the United States will never leave, even after Bush is gone.”
Jalaladeen Sagheer, a senior member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a leading Shiite party, described the visit as “an advertisement for the American elections” and said it showed Mr. McCain’s commitment to staying in Iraq, a policy Mr. Sagheer said he favored. “It suggests that American officials will make good on their promises,” he said.
Some Sunni Arabs were not pleased by the visit. “If the Republicans win the election, then nothing will really change in Iraq, and we need a big change to kick the occupiers out of the country,” said Abu Mohammed, a 30-year-old barbershop owner in Samarra, north of Baghdad. “I would like to show him the schools and hospitals and how the children and women suffer.”
Another Samarra shop owner, 52-year-old Hamid Saleh, said he wanted the Republicans to lose the election. “All I want is someone who works to fix my country, and not destroy it,” he said.
American officials in Iraq said Mr. McCain’s precise schedule was not being released for security reasons. He was joined on the trip by two close political allies, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.
The three senators are also visiting Israel, London and Paris. Mr. McCain has said the trip is not primarily political. He told reporters last Friday: “I do want to emphasize again that the three of us are going as members of the Armed Services Committee.”
On Thursday, however, Mr. McCain will attend a $1,000-a-plate fund-raising lunch at a home in London. His campaign has said Congress will be reimbursed for the political parts of the trip, including the fund-raiser.
Mr. McCain’s advisers have been cautious about the perception that he is exploiting his overseas trip for political gain. None of his top political advisers are traveling with him, and his campaign has been careful to route questions about it to his Senate office. But they say they believe that the trip is clearly beneficial to Mr. McCain, enabling him to showcase his national security credentials while his Democratic counterparts continue to battle for the nomination.
The new dynamic in Iraq, with significant declines in American military and Iraqi civilian casualties, has significantly altered the political landscape for Mr. McCain since last spring, when American troop deaths spiked and his candidacy faltered. A low point of that period for Mr. McCain came last April when he drew ridicule for trumpeting a peaceful stroll through a Baghdad marketplace, which was actually backed by heavily armed American troops.
Mr. McCain stands to reap the most politically from any rise in public support for the war effort, having staked his candidacy on his unflagging backing of President Bush’s troop escalation. While cautious about being overly ebullient about Iraq, Mr. McCain is almost invariably upbeat when he describes what is happening in Iraq.
He said last month, “Anybody who believes the surge has not succeeded, militarily, politically and in most other ways, frankly, does not know the facts on the ground.”
A survey done in late February by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 48 percent of Americans believed that the war was going “very well” or “fairly well,” up from 30 percent in February 2007, although a majority continued to believe it was a mistake.
Meanwhile, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton continue to reject the troop escalation out of hand, arguing that the political reconciliation it was supposed to help usher in has not occurred and will happen only if prodded by the prospect of American withdrawal.
Mrs. Clinton was scheduled to give a major speech on Iraq on Monday, in which her advisers said she would furnish details about her plan to begin withdrawing American troops within 60 days of coming into office, arguing it is the only way to force Iraqi politicians to take responsibility.
She was also expected to attack Mr. Obama over a recent statement by a former foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power, in which she said the Iraq withdrawal plan Mr. Obama had outlined while campaigning was a “best-case scenario” that he would revisit once in office. Mr. Obama has defended his stance on withdrawing troops. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said she would also take on Mr. McCain for a recent comment in which he said American troops could be in the country for 100 years.
Mr. McCain has defended that comment, made at a town hall meeting earlier this year in New Hampshire, arguing that he did not mean they would still be fighting but simply maintaining a presence in the region.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Baghdad, and Michael Luo reported from New York. Reporting was contributed by Solomon Moore, Qais Mizher and Mudhafer al-Husaini from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Salahuddin, Iraq.
March 17, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/world/middleeast/17mccain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and MICHAEL LUO
BAGHDAD — Senator John McCain arrived in Iraq on Sunday morning on a trip that was described as a visit by an official Congressional delegation, but that also served to showcase his foreign policy credentials as he campaigns for the White House.
Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was scheduled to meet with officials including the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, and the senior American military commander in the country, Gen. David H. Petraeus. He was also scheduled to meet with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said Yaseen Majid, a media adviser to Mr. Maliki.
Many Iraqi politicians are closely monitoring the American presidential race, and some said the visit bolstered their belief that if Mr. McCain, of Arizona, succeeded President Bush in the November election, the American military would have a large presence in Iraq for a very long time.
“This visit confirms that the Republicans believe that the Iraqi war is very important in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East,” said Wael Abdul Latif, an independent Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament. “It’s a message to Iran that the United States will never leave, even after Bush is gone.”
Jalaladeen Sagheer, a senior member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a leading Shiite party, described the visit as “an advertisement for the American elections” and said it showed Mr. McCain’s commitment to staying in Iraq, a policy Mr. Sagheer said he favored. “It suggests that American officials will make good on their promises,” he said.
Some Sunni Arabs were not pleased by the visit. “If the Republicans win the election, then nothing will really change in Iraq, and we need a big change to kick the occupiers out of the country,” said Abu Mohammed, a 30-year-old barbershop owner in Samarra, north of Baghdad. “I would like to show him the schools and hospitals and how the children and women suffer.”
Another Samarra shop owner, 52-year-old Hamid Saleh, said he wanted the Republicans to lose the election. “All I want is someone who works to fix my country, and not destroy it,” he said.
American officials in Iraq said Mr. McCain’s precise schedule was not being released for security reasons. He was joined on the trip by two close political allies, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.
The three senators are also visiting Israel, London and Paris. Mr. McCain has said the trip is not primarily political. He told reporters last Friday: “I do want to emphasize again that the three of us are going as members of the Armed Services Committee.”
On Thursday, however, Mr. McCain will attend a $1,000-a-plate fund-raising lunch at a home in London. His campaign has said Congress will be reimbursed for the political parts of the trip, including the fund-raiser.
Mr. McCain’s advisers have been cautious about the perception that he is exploiting his overseas trip for political gain. None of his top political advisers are traveling with him, and his campaign has been careful to route questions about it to his Senate office. But they say they believe that the trip is clearly beneficial to Mr. McCain, enabling him to showcase his national security credentials while his Democratic counterparts continue to battle for the nomination.
The new dynamic in Iraq, with significant declines in American military and Iraqi civilian casualties, has significantly altered the political landscape for Mr. McCain since last spring, when American troop deaths spiked and his candidacy faltered. A low point of that period for Mr. McCain came last April when he drew ridicule for trumpeting a peaceful stroll through a Baghdad marketplace, which was actually backed by heavily armed American troops.
Mr. McCain stands to reap the most politically from any rise in public support for the war effort, having staked his candidacy on his unflagging backing of President Bush’s troop escalation. While cautious about being overly ebullient about Iraq, Mr. McCain is almost invariably upbeat when he describes what is happening in Iraq.
He said last month, “Anybody who believes the surge has not succeeded, militarily, politically and in most other ways, frankly, does not know the facts on the ground.”
A survey done in late February by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 48 percent of Americans believed that the war was going “very well” or “fairly well,” up from 30 percent in February 2007, although a majority continued to believe it was a mistake.
Meanwhile, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton continue to reject the troop escalation out of hand, arguing that the political reconciliation it was supposed to help usher in has not occurred and will happen only if prodded by the prospect of American withdrawal.
Mrs. Clinton was scheduled to give a major speech on Iraq on Monday, in which her advisers said she would furnish details about her plan to begin withdrawing American troops within 60 days of coming into office, arguing it is the only way to force Iraqi politicians to take responsibility.
She was also expected to attack Mr. Obama over a recent statement by a former foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power, in which she said the Iraq withdrawal plan Mr. Obama had outlined while campaigning was a “best-case scenario” that he would revisit once in office. Mr. Obama has defended his stance on withdrawing troops. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said she would also take on Mr. McCain for a recent comment in which he said American troops could be in the country for 100 years.
Mr. McCain has defended that comment, made at a town hall meeting earlier this year in New Hampshire, arguing that he did not mean they would still be fighting but simply maintaining a presence in the region.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Baghdad, and Michael Luo reported from New York. Reporting was contributed by Solomon Moore, Qais Mizher and Mudhafer al-Husaini from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Salahuddin, Iraq.
09 March 2008
Bush Uses Veto on C.I.A. Tactics to Affirm Legacy
March 9, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/washington/09policy.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.
Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies.
The veto deepens his battle with increasingly assertive Democrats in Congress over issues at the heart of his legacy. As his presidency winds down, he has made it clear he does not intend to bend in this or other confrontations on issues from the war in Iraq to contempt charges against his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, and former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.
Mr. Bush announced the veto in the usual format of his weekly radio address, which is distributed to stations across the country each Saturday. He unflinchingly defended an interrogation program that has prompted critics to accuse him not only of authorizing torture previously but also of refusing to ban it in the future. “Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,” he said.
Mr. Bush’s veto — the ninth of his presidency, but the eighth in the past 10 months with Democrats in control of Congress — underscored his determination to preserve many of the executive prerogatives his administration has claimed in the name of fighting terrorism, and to enshrine them into law.
Mr. Bush is fighting with Congress over the expansion of powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and over the depth of the American security commitments to Iraq once the United Nations mandate for international forces there expires at the end of the year.
The administration has also moved ahead with the first military tribunals of those detained at Guantánamo Bay, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite calls to try them in civilian courts.
All are issues that turn on presidential powers. And as he has through most of his presidency, he built his case on the threat of terrorism.
“The fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance,” Mr. Bush said in his radio remarks, echoing comments he made Thursday at a ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. “We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks,” he added. “And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”
The bill Mr. Bush vetoed would have limited all American interrogators to techniques allowed in the Army field manual on interrogation, which prohibits physical force against prisoners.
The debate has left the C.I.A. at odds with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies, whose officials have testified that harsh interrogation methods are either unnecessary or counterproductive. The agency’s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement to employees after Mr. Bush’s veto defending the program as legal, saying that the Army field manual did not “exhaust the universe of lawful interrogation techniques.”
Democrats, who supported the legislation as part of a larger bill that authorized a vast array of intelligence programs, criticized the veto sharply, but they do not have the votes to override it.
“This president had the chance to end the torture debate for good,” one of its sponsors, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, said in a statement on Friday when it became clear that Mr. Bush intended to carry out his veto threat. “Yet, he chose instead to leave the door open to use torture in the future. The United States is not well served by this.”
The Senate’s majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush disregarded the advice of military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, who argued that the military’s interrogation techniques were effective and that the use of any others could create risks for any future American prisoners of war.
“He has rejected the Army field manual’s recognition that such horrific tactics elicit unreliable information, put U.S. troops at risk and undermine our counterinsurgency efforts,” Mr. Reid said in a statement. Democrats vowed to raise the matter again.
Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has been an outspoken opponent of torture, often referring to his own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In this case he supported the administration’s position, arguing as Mr. Bush did Saturday that the legislation would have limited the C.I.A.’s ability to gather intelligence.
Mr. Bush said the agency should not be bound by rules written for soldiers in combat, as opposed to highly trained experts dealing with hardened terrorists. The bill’s supporters countered that it would have banned only a handful of techniques whose effectiveness was in dispute in any case.
The administration has also said that waterboarding is no longer in use, though officials acknowledged last month that it had been used in three instances before the middle of 2003, including against Mr. Mohammed. Officials have left vague the question of whether it could be authorized again.
Mr. Bush said, as he had previously, that information from the C.I.A.’s interrogations had averted terrorist attacks, including plots to attack a Marine camp in Djibouti; the American Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan; Library Tower in Los Angeles; and passenger planes from Britain. He maintained that the techniques involved — the exact nature of which remained classified — were “safe and lawful.”
“Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland,” he said.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, disputed that assertion on Saturday. “As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist attack,” he said in a statement.
The handling of detainees since 2001 has dogged the administration politically, but Mr. Bush and his aides have barely conceded any ground to critics, even in the face of legal challenges, as happened with the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay or with federal wiretapping conducted without warrants.
At the core of the administration’s position is a conviction that the executive branch must have unfettered freedom when it comes to prosecuting war.
Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, said Mr. Bush’s actions were consistent with his efforts to expand executive power and to protect the results of those efforts. Some, he said, could easily be undone — with a Democratic president signing a bill like the one he vetoed Saturday, for example — but the more Mr. Bush accomplished now, the more difficult that would be. “Every administration is concerned with protecting the power of the presidency,” he said. “This president has done that with a lot more vigor.”
Representative Bill Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has been holding hearings on the administration’s negotiations with Iraq over the legal status of American troops in Iraq beyond Mr. Bush’s presidency. He said the administration had rebuffed demands to bring any agreement to Congress for approval, and had largely succeeded.
“They’re excellent at manipulating the arguments so that if Congress should assert itself, members expose themselves to charges of being soft, not tough enough on terrorism,” he said. “My view is history is going to judge us all.”
Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/washington/09policy.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.
Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies.
The veto deepens his battle with increasingly assertive Democrats in Congress over issues at the heart of his legacy. As his presidency winds down, he has made it clear he does not intend to bend in this or other confrontations on issues from the war in Iraq to contempt charges against his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, and former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.
Mr. Bush announced the veto in the usual format of his weekly radio address, which is distributed to stations across the country each Saturday. He unflinchingly defended an interrogation program that has prompted critics to accuse him not only of authorizing torture previously but also of refusing to ban it in the future. “Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,” he said.
Mr. Bush’s veto — the ninth of his presidency, but the eighth in the past 10 months with Democrats in control of Congress — underscored his determination to preserve many of the executive prerogatives his administration has claimed in the name of fighting terrorism, and to enshrine them into law.
Mr. Bush is fighting with Congress over the expansion of powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and over the depth of the American security commitments to Iraq once the United Nations mandate for international forces there expires at the end of the year.
The administration has also moved ahead with the first military tribunals of those detained at Guantánamo Bay, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite calls to try them in civilian courts.
All are issues that turn on presidential powers. And as he has through most of his presidency, he built his case on the threat of terrorism.
“The fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance,” Mr. Bush said in his radio remarks, echoing comments he made Thursday at a ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. “We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks,” he added. “And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”
The bill Mr. Bush vetoed would have limited all American interrogators to techniques allowed in the Army field manual on interrogation, which prohibits physical force against prisoners.
The debate has left the C.I.A. at odds with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies, whose officials have testified that harsh interrogation methods are either unnecessary or counterproductive. The agency’s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement to employees after Mr. Bush’s veto defending the program as legal, saying that the Army field manual did not “exhaust the universe of lawful interrogation techniques.”
Democrats, who supported the legislation as part of a larger bill that authorized a vast array of intelligence programs, criticized the veto sharply, but they do not have the votes to override it.
“This president had the chance to end the torture debate for good,” one of its sponsors, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, said in a statement on Friday when it became clear that Mr. Bush intended to carry out his veto threat. “Yet, he chose instead to leave the door open to use torture in the future. The United States is not well served by this.”
The Senate’s majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush disregarded the advice of military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, who argued that the military’s interrogation techniques were effective and that the use of any others could create risks for any future American prisoners of war.
“He has rejected the Army field manual’s recognition that such horrific tactics elicit unreliable information, put U.S. troops at risk and undermine our counterinsurgency efforts,” Mr. Reid said in a statement. Democrats vowed to raise the matter again.
Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has been an outspoken opponent of torture, often referring to his own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In this case he supported the administration’s position, arguing as Mr. Bush did Saturday that the legislation would have limited the C.I.A.’s ability to gather intelligence.
Mr. Bush said the agency should not be bound by rules written for soldiers in combat, as opposed to highly trained experts dealing with hardened terrorists. The bill’s supporters countered that it would have banned only a handful of techniques whose effectiveness was in dispute in any case.
The administration has also said that waterboarding is no longer in use, though officials acknowledged last month that it had been used in three instances before the middle of 2003, including against Mr. Mohammed. Officials have left vague the question of whether it could be authorized again.
Mr. Bush said, as he had previously, that information from the C.I.A.’s interrogations had averted terrorist attacks, including plots to attack a Marine camp in Djibouti; the American Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan; Library Tower in Los Angeles; and passenger planes from Britain. He maintained that the techniques involved — the exact nature of which remained classified — were “safe and lawful.”
“Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland,” he said.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, disputed that assertion on Saturday. “As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist attack,” he said in a statement.
The handling of detainees since 2001 has dogged the administration politically, but Mr. Bush and his aides have barely conceded any ground to critics, even in the face of legal challenges, as happened with the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay or with federal wiretapping conducted without warrants.
At the core of the administration’s position is a conviction that the executive branch must have unfettered freedom when it comes to prosecuting war.
Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, said Mr. Bush’s actions were consistent with his efforts to expand executive power and to protect the results of those efforts. Some, he said, could easily be undone — with a Democratic president signing a bill like the one he vetoed Saturday, for example — but the more Mr. Bush accomplished now, the more difficult that would be. “Every administration is concerned with protecting the power of the presidency,” he said. “This president has done that with a lot more vigor.”
Representative Bill Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has been holding hearings on the administration’s negotiations with Iraq over the legal status of American troops in Iraq beyond Mr. Bush’s presidency. He said the administration had rebuffed demands to bring any agreement to Congress for approval, and had largely succeeded.
“They’re excellent at manipulating the arguments so that if Congress should assert itself, members expose themselves to charges of being soft, not tough enough on terrorism,” he said. “My view is history is going to judge us all.”
Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.
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