Firstly, Palestinian rejectionism cannot explain Avigdor Lieberman’s crusade to humiliate, disenfranchise, and perhaps even eventually expel Arab Israelis, the vast majority of whom want nothing more than to be accepted as equal citizens in the country of their birth. Lieberman is not a marginal figure. He was Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff; he heads Israel’s third-largest party; he serves as foreign minister; and when Israel held mock elections in ten high schools last year, he won.

Rolling Stone gets off to a good start (I haven’t gotten far, article came recommended):

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That’s $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG’s 2008 losses).

Incidentally, the US position now diverges quite strongly from the Israeli. The Israelis have recently been making increasingly worried statements about Iran’s potential nuclear weapons capacity, suggesting that while diplomacy might come first, military action might come second.

Iran seems open to the overture, with an aide to Ahmadinejad saying he “welcomes” the approach from Washington:

Iran today hailed an unprecedented direct appeal by the US president, Barack Obama, for better relations between the two countries, but urged the US to “realise its previous mistakes” as well as end sanctions and drop its support for Israel.

I can’t call the man crazy when he talks like that—sanctions should end when we address their desire for nukes; either by offering them more attractive carrots, or, the highly unlikely but perfectly just course: denuclearize the entire Middle East to stop the escalating arms race (ahem, Israel?).  And there is also this component:

However, there was no official response from Tehran to a far blunter message from Shimon Peres, the president of Israel, who called on Iran to “return to the enlightened world” and halt the uranium enrichment that could allow it manufacture nuclear weapons.

It looks like the Iranians have a real opportunity here:  their hostility to Israel is mostly driven by their strategic sovereign interest–given that Iran is an emerging power whose dominance in the region was secured by Sadaam’s ouster but is challenged by Israel–and they may very well see that it is deeply in their own interest to highlight their moderates, push for reconciliation with the US, and “enter the international community” as Obama mentioned…this all makes it very hard for us to keep supporting Israel’s push for war against Iran and Israel’s push to generally subvert and weaken it.  I recently read an Israeli columnist who commented along the lines of “what happens if Iranians elect (an Iranian moderate) while we have Avigdor Lieberman as our foreign minister…who will the international community say is more extreme then?”  I think that logic very-much applies to us.  We want to stabilize the shit out of that region, while Israel’s private interests lean toward instability (freeze’s the peace process, enhances their claim to being the only non-savage in the region and therefor worthy of our protection and aid).  Obama is more likely to take the pragmatic road of stability and peace in the region over Israel’s (then increasingly deranged) cries of “wolf” regarding some imaginary existential threat from Iran.  We simply can’t afford to ignore the costs in favor of blind adherence to principle–not since Iraq, and not against Iran.

Final Comment:  I am hopeful that Iran tries to subvert Israel by improving its relations with America.  My goodness; the political potential energy of this situation!  Our problems in Iraq diminish, our beefs with Syria and Lebanon cool-off.  I bet if the situation thaws down enough, the Arab players in the region may back off their nuke-pursuit, feeling confident that their normalization of relations with the USA will prevent Israel from attacking them (we will not support, and hopefully not tolerate, a unilateral Israeli attack amidst our succeeding efforts to ease tension and increase cooperation).  And what if Israel does attack, with or without our consent?  Well then Iran simply beats the shit out of Israel. (Citizens, Iran is not Iraq.  They have a conventional, generally modern military…which is far bigger than Israel’s band of nationalist boy scouts).  If Israel uses its nukes against Iran, my bet is that the international community will cut them off.  And the US will not be able to save them in the face of the diplomatic and political winds that would follow a preemptive nuclear strike by Israel.

I can’t help but agree with Ezra Klein of The American Prospect on this one:

There are times when it’s hard to believe that this is how my country acts now. That somewhere in government, some young bureaucrat had the idea that the President should publicly honor the Iranian New Year, and that bureaucrat felt that her superiors would also think this a good idea, and, indeed, the thought went all the way to the President, who agreed that a display of engagement and goodwill was consonant with our national values and foreign policy goals. It is hard to believe that five years after we were ordering “freedom fries” in the congressional cafeteria, we’re posting Persian translations at Whitehouse.gov.

We already learned, weeks ago, that Attorney General Eric Holder said the official policy of the Obama WH will be that “federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws”–in response to a question regarding states with laws allowing medical marijuana.  Decriminalization–in this economic climate, under this president–may be much closer than we thought.

California is taking the lead, with its history of wide popular support among Californians for the decriminalization of marijuana.  Here is Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) her state could be a great host for an experiment in reform.  Here’s the video from CNN:

ForeignPolicy.com also highlights changing attitudes in the EU.  A report by the European Commission “found no evidence that the global drug problem was reduced…from 1998 to 2007″.

The UN, now meeting in Vienna for the first time in 10 years to reassess global drug policy, is reaching even more dramatic conclusions: It’s worse than mere inertia…. drug policy is making matters worse, not better. UN Office of Drug and Crime’s head, Antonio Maria Costa, “acknowledged that drug control policies had, as an unintended consequence, led the growth of organized crime,” as the BBC put it.

The public response to his nomination began with Steve Rosen, former AIPAC official currently on trial for charges of espionage for passing secret documents to reporters and an official of the government of Israel.

a look at Chuck Schumer’s consistency: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/11/schumer/

Hypocrisy on China from humanrightsers

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2009/03/10/freeman-and-the-cognitive-dissonancing-of-sino-israel-relationship/

WashPo “article”    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR2009031003223.html?referrer=emailarticle

Walt  http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/node/16250

Rothkopf @ FP.com http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/node/16237

More to come (as I can stomach revisiting all the articles I read)

Here is a quote worth highlighting.  The entire column has been pasted after the jump.

The 1988 Hamas Charter is vile, but I think it’s wrong to get hung up on the prior recognition of Israel issue. Perhaps Hamas is sincere in its calls for Israel’s disappearance — although it has offered a decades-long truce — but then it’s also possible that Israel in reality has no desire to see a Palestinian state.

One view of Israel’s continued expansion of settlements, Gaza blockade, West Bank walling-in and wanton recourse to high-tech force would be that it’s designed precisely to bludgeon, undermine and humiliate the Palestinian people until their dreams of statehood and dignity evaporate.

The argument over recognition is in the end a form of evasion designed to perpetuate the conflict.

Middle East Reality Check

 Published: March 8, 2009

Skip to next paragraph

Earl Wilson/The New York Times:  Roger Cohen

Britain aligned itself with the U.S. position on Hezbollah, but has now seen its error. Bill Marston, a Foreign Office spokesman, told Al Jazeera: “Hezbollah is a political phenomenon and part and parcel of the national fabric in Lebanon. We have to admit this.”

Hallelujah.

Precisely the same thing could be said of Hamas in Gaza. It is a political phenomenon, part of the national fabric there.

One difference is that Hezbollah is in the Lebanese national unity government, whereas Hamas won the free and fair January 2006 elections to the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority, only to discover Middle Eastern democracy is only democracy if it produces the right result.

The United States should follow the British example. It should initiate diplomatic contacts with the political wing of Hezbollah. The Obama administration should also look carefully at how to reach moderate Hamas elements and engineer a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation.

A rapprochement between the two wings of the Palestinian movement was briefly achieved at Mecca in 2007. The best form of payback from America’s expensive and authoritarian allies — Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan — would be help in reconciling Gaza Palestinians loyal to Hamas with West Bank Palestinians loyal to the more moderate Fatah of Mahmoud Abbas.

Resolve is not the most conspicuous characteristic of those three allies. But Obama must push them to help. As long as Palestinians are divided, peace efforts will flounder.

With respect to Hamas, the West has bound itself to three conditions for any contact: Hamas must recognize Israel, forswear terrorism and accept previous Palestinian commitments. This was reiterated by Clinton on her first Mideast swing.

The 1988 Hamas Charter is vile, but I think it’s wrong to get hung up on the prior recognition of Israel issue. Perhaps Hamas is sincere in its calls for Israel’s disappearance — although it has offered a decades-long truce — but then it’s also possible that Israel in reality has no desire to see a Palestinian state.

One view of Israel’s continued expansion of settlements, Gaza blockade, West Bank walling-in and wanton recourse to high-tech force would be that it’s designed precisely to bludgeon, undermine and humiliate the Palestinian people until their dreams of statehood and dignity evaporate.

The argument over recognition is in the end a form of evasion designed to perpetuate the conflict.

Israel, from the time of Ben Gurion, built its state by creating facts on the ground, not through semantics. Many of its leaders, including Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, have been on wondrous political odysseys from absolutist rejection of division of the land to acceptance of a two-state solution. Yet they try to paint Hamas as irrevocably absolutist. Why should Arabs be any less pragmatic than Jews?

Of course it’s desirable that Hamas recognize Israel before negotiations. But is it essential? No. What is essential is that it renounces violence, in tandem with Israel, and the inculcation of hatred that feeds the violence.

Speaking of violence, it’s worth recalling what Israel did in Gaza in response to sporadic Hamas rockets. It killed upward of 1,300 people, many of them women and children; caused damage estimated at $1.9 billion; and destroyed thousands of Gaza homes. It continues a radicalizing blockade on 1.5 million people squeezed into a narrow strip of land.

At this vast human, material and moral price, Israel achieved almost nothing beyond damage to its image throughout the world. Israel has the right to hit back when attacked, but any response should be proportional and governed by sober political calculation. The Gaza war was a travesty; I have never previously felt so shamed by Israel’s actions.

No wonder Hamas and Hezbollah are seen throughout the Arab world as legitimate resistance movements.

It’s time to look at them again and adopt the new British view that contact can encourage Hezbollah “to move away from violence and play a constructive, democratic and peaceful role.”

The British step is a breakthrough. By contrast, Clinton’s invitation to Iran is of little significance.

There are two schools within the Obama administration on Iran: the incremental and the bold. The former favors little steps like inviting Iran to help with Afghanistan; the latter realizes that nothing will shift until Obama convinces Tehran that he’s changing strategy rather than tactics.

That requires Obama to tell Iran, as a start, that he does not seek regime change and recognizes the country’s critical role as a regional power. Carrots and sticks — the current approach — will lead to the same dead end as Hamas and Hezbollah denial.

 Middle East

While visiting Israel, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to a two-state solution. Nathan Brown thinks it’s time for Plan B.

Clinton told an Arab foreign minister that it’s “doubtful” that Iran will respond to U.S. offers of negotiations.

International donors have pledged $4.48 billion to rebuild Gaza.

Asia

Sri Lanka’s cricket team was attacked by gunmen in Lahore, Pakistan.

The United States’ new North Korea envoy Stephen Bosworth arrived in Beijing to being work reviving the stalled six-party talks.

An aide to Japanese opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa has been convicted of bribery.

Americas

Congressional Democrats are cracking down on tax havens.

U.S. stocks hit a 12-year low on Monday.

Raul Castro has ousted two top officials who were loyal to his brother Fidel.

Africa

The head of Guinea-Bissau’s parliament will become interim president after Monday’s presidential assassination. 

Tanzania has launched a campaign to prevent the widespread murder of albinos.

A prominent Rwandan minister has been convicted of genocide.

Europe 

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is in Washington to meet with Barack Obama.

Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party dominated local elections in Russia.

Damon Linker sees it:

…will the country really stick with Obama as he attempts to enact his stunningly ambitious agenda? They just might. But not because the 44th president has reawakened the liberalism that’s been slumbering in their souls since the summer of 1968. As National Review’s Rich Lowry noted in a brief post last week, Obama is defending his agenda not in ideological but in pragmatic terms — saying, in effect, “Hey, I’m not a big-government guy; it’s just that the Republicans made such a wreck of the place that I have no choice but to do some big things to clean up the mess.” And as Lowry recognizes, that’s an argument that just might just persuade the American people to go along for the ride, shifting the political spectrum to the left for a generation, while also managing at long last to bury Reaganite conservatism.

Welcome to the realignment.

I saw it coming.

Here are a couple examples:

Two Washington Post series in the running include Debbie Cenziper and Sara Cohen’s “Forced Out” investigation that revealed how local landlords drove tenants from rent-controlled apartments…The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has already gotten notice for its six-part series on toxins in everyday products and the failure of regulatory agencies to monitor them. “Chemical Fallout” has received a Polk Award and the 2008 John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.

It just feels good to know journalists are still chasing the truth, yaknow?

“What’s your diet secret?” I asked him. After all, stripping weight away is somewhat easy, compared to keeping it off. Sharpton put his arm around my shoulder and said, “I’ll tell you the secret. You ready for the secret?” He lowered his voice. “Never, ever eat anything after 6 p.m. Never.”

Now say that again in your best black-preacher-voice.  Aw-Huh.

The NY Observer reports that Fortune magazine is issuing an apology in its March issue for passages lifted from a 2004 NYT Magazine article.  It’s kinda wild to read matching paragraphs from the “new” and original articles and realize: yeah, that’s the art of good writing…that this drew carey look-alike seems to lack.

Here is the first of several side-by-side comparisons from the article:

TIMES MAGAZINE:

Alekperov’s titanium-and-glass desk is fastidiously neat — he hates disorder — and behind it hangs a frieze of the double-headed eagle, which is Russia’s coat of arms. If a visitor doesn’t yet grasp his message, there is just one photograph on his desk, a black-and-white portrait that shows not his wife or teenage son but President Putin. If, in your mind’s eye, you replace the eagle with a hammer and sickle, and if you imagine a photo of Leonid Brezhnev on the desk, you could be back in the U.S.S.R.

FORTUNE:

Behind his glass desk is the double-headed eagle, which is Russia’s coat of arms, and photos of Medvedev and Putin. Replace the eagle with a hammer and sickle and substitute a photograph of Nikita Khrushchev, and you could be back in the USSR.

As much he deserves it, I can’t help but call it a shame; he really seemed to be a rising star of sorts, but this will likely follow him throughout his career as a journalist.  I mean he took it from the New York Times of all places.  Who’s gonna notice that, right?  (HatTip: Chew-dog)