Can Obama keep Sudan from exploding after its referendum?

By Michael Abramowitz
The Washington Post
Thursday, December 30, 2010; 7:00 PM

Looking back on his presidency, Bill Clinton has often expressed regret over his administration's failure to stop the genocide that ravaged Rwanda in 1994 and cost 800,000 lives, even referring to it as a "personal failure" on his part. And President George W. Bush, who labeled the mass killings in Darfur in 2004 as "genocide," has voiced frustration over his inability to persuade the United Nations and others to intervene more forcefully.

Now President Obama is trying to avoid having to issue his own mea culpa.

Obama's test comes in Sudan, which on Jan. 9 is supposed to hold a referendum on whether the country's southern region will secede from the north. If the south votes for independence - as it is expected to do after decades of marginalization and a north-south civil war - deadly violence could easily erupt. The government in Khartoum has proved willing to brutalize its citizens (in the Darfur region and elsewhere) to remain in power and achieve its aims, and secession would bring to the fore unresolved tensions over Sudan's oil wealth and where to draw the new borders.

This time, the United States seems to have finally learned its lesson. In recent months, the Obama White House has convened multiple meetings of top advisers to discuss Sudan, sent a special envoy to the region more than 20 times and offered Khartoum a package of carrots and sticks aimed at avoiding the worst violence. While the administration won't deal directly with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been indicted for war crimes committed in Darfur, U.S. officials have enlisted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Sudan's neighbors to send a strong message that the referendum must be held peacefully and on time.

"This is the first time I have seen the U.S. government devote so many high-level resources to preventing violence before it happens rather than responding to it after the fact," Samantha Power told me in an interview. Power - whose 2002 book, "A Problem From Hell," chronicled the world's failure to deal with 20th-century genocides and mass slaughters from Armenia and the Holocaust to Rwanda and Bosnia - is now an adviser to Obama.

But these efforts and resources may not be enough. Yes, the world is watching: In addition to Washington's diplomatic push, the African Union is trying to broker peace, European nations are sending economic assistance, and 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are in southern Sudan monitoring the situation. But the sad reality is that even an actively engaged international community may be unable to head off mass violence in the months or years ahead.

A coup in Khartoum, a cattle raid in the south that escalates into tribal violence, a rogue militia commander deciding to start a new conflict in a fragile border region - there is virtually no limit to the plausible scenarios that could lead to renewed fighting in Sudan. Ethnic and economic tensions, the willingness of political leaders to manipulate them and the easy availability of weapons will continue to make the country vulnerable to violence, even genocide.

If the referendum is not held on time or is tampered with by the north, "there is a huge potential for war," former guerrilla soldier Acuil Malith Banggol told me during my recent trip to the south. "Both parties are arming themselves, and there will be more destruction. . . . There is no way southern Sudan is going to accept being humiliated and subject to slavery, racial discrimination and religious discrimination."

Preventing such violence through diplomacy, as the Obama administration is attempting, is obviously preferable to dealing with it later - but the options may be limited. Diplomacy can be effective only if it is complemented by willingness to take action if prevention fails. And here, the legacy of places such as Rwanda and Bosnia yields a dispiriting conclusion: It is hard to have confidence that the world would be willing or able to intervene to stop a mass slaughter in Sudan, especially in the months after the referendum, when international attention will inevitably fade.

It is far from clear that the U.N. Security Council would react quickly to an unfolding crisis, and most experts agree that the U.N. troops in Sudan would be of little use should atrocities commence. (Years of conferences, NATO and E.U. deliberations, and think-tank studies on civilian protection have yet to yield momentum for an effective international rapid-deployment force to deal with such emergencies.) The United States has the capacity to intervene militarily in Sudan, but after 10 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, would it have the will, and would it be effective?

If the unthinkable were to happen in Sudan this year, we might hear echoes of Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of peacekeeping forces in Rwanda in 1994, who futilely begged the United Nations for more troops to end the slaughter there - and who has lived in anguished regret over his failure ever since.

In many respects, southern Sudan should offer an easy test case for the international community. The potential for crisis has been slow-burning, with the January referendum date long looming as a possible trigger for violence, so the world's political and military leaders have had the luxury of giving serious planning and thought to how to avoid calamity. Two successive U.S. administrations of both parties, along with political leaders from Africa and elsewhere, have worked hard, if not always effectively, to keep the peace process on track. And everyone involved in the diplomatic efforts is keenly aware of the recent failures to prevent massive killing in Darfur, where an ongoing conflict has kept more than 2 million people living perilously in displacement camps.

The Obama administration is populated with senior officials - Vice President Biden, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton come to mind - who understand the consequences of past inaction. Although it took some time to reach this point, the administration is now focused on preventing the worst. U.S. officials have been considering humanitarian contingencies for months, and the White House has appointed a director of war crimes and atrocities whose full-time job is to nudge the bureaucracy to address crises such as Sudan.

As the referendum approaches, there are reasons to hope that the worst violence might be averted. Northern Sudan's political leaders are publicly suggesting that they could live, albeit grudgingly, with an independent southern Sudan. U.N. officials are reporting relative calm in the border regions where violence might first emerge. Authorities in both north and south seem committed to resolving their differences politically and understand that renewed war - after six years of uneasy peace - would be disastrous for their economies and security. They also know that fresh fighting would jeopardize the oil revenue on which both sides depend.

But the situation remains extremely dangerous. As India, Bangladesh and the former Yugoslavia attest, the partition or breakup of states has often been extremely bloody for civilians. In my conversations with dozens of people in the south, genuine hope for the future was mixed with a sober understanding of the risks ahead: After all, almost everyone endured terrible hardship during the civil war - the loss of a parent or child, slavery, or a massacre in their village.

And they are hardly sure that they can count on the world to keep history from repeating itself. As they see it, the depredations that took place in southern Sudan, long before Darfur became a household name in the West, received scant attention from other governments and peoples.

Goi Jooyui Yol, a political commissioner in Akobo County in the south, keenly remembers the silence of the international community when the massive violence engulfed his country in the 1980s and 1990s, taking more than 2 million lives and displacing an additional 4 million people. The violence was "very intense," he told me. "Before the world knew, many people were killed."

Next time, ignorance won't be an excuse.

Michael Abramowitz is director of the Committee on Conscience, the genocide-prevention arm of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He visited southern Sudan in late September and early October.

West chides Russia over ex-tycoon Khodorkovsky trial

BBC
30 December 2010

Daniel Sandford: "He won't be released until 2017"

The US, UK and Germany have criticised the new six-year sentence imposed by a Russian court on former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Khodorkovsky, who is near the end of an eight-year term for tax evasion, has been told he will stay jailed till 2017 for embezzlement and money-laundering.

The US said the new sentence seemed to be an abuse of Russia's legal system.

Russia has not yet responded, but previously rejected Western criticism of the guilty verdict as interference.

After the sentencing, US state department spokesman Mark Toner said Washington was concerned by the apparent "abusive use of the legal system for improper ends, particularly now that Khodorkovsky and [former business partner Platon] Lebedev have been sentenced to the maximum penalty".

Later an unnamed senior US administration official, quoted by Reuters news agency, said the sentencing might complicate Russia's expected entry to the World Trade Organisation in 2011.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was "disappointed" by the sentence.
Continue reading the main story
Analysis
image of Adam Brookes Adam Brookes BBC News, Washington

The Russian authorities have told the rest of the world to mind their own business over the trial.

The Obama administration has devoted a great deal of political effort to improving the relations with Russia over the last couple of years.

The US Senate recently ratified an important new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, so while the state department's criticism of the sentence may sound strong, it seems unlikely it'll be backed up by action.

"The impression remains that political motives played a role in the trial," she said in a statement.

And UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said he was deeply concerned and urged Russia "to respect the principles of justice and apply the rule of law in a non-discriminatory and proportional way".

"In the absence of this the UK and much of the international community will regard such a trial as a retrograde step," Mr Hague added.

Once seen as a threat to former President Vladimir Putin, he was found guilty along with Lebedev of stealing billions of dollars from their own oil firm, Yukos, and laundering the proceeds.

Their lawyers are expected to appeal but if Khodorkovsky does remain in jail until 2017, it will mean he does not return to society until well after the next Russian presidential election.

Some analysts have suggested he could otherwise pose a political threat to the Kremlin's candidate in 2012.
'Isolated from society'

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were first arrested in 2003 and sentenced in 2005 for fraud and tax evasion.

On Thursday, the court in Moscow sentenced the two men to 14 years in prison, to run concurrently with the eight-year term handed down in 2005.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

Putin signalled to the court who today is the boss and who today decides Khodorkovsky's fate and life”

End Quote Yury Shmidt Defence lawyer

The term includes time served since the two men's arrest.

Judge Viktor Danilkin had been reading the 800-page verdict out since Monday.

Khodorkovsky could "only be reformed by being isolated from society", the judge said.

As sentence was passed, the defendant's mother shouted at the judge: "May you and your offspring be damned!"

The two defendants themselves, however, are said to have reacted calmly to the decision.

Supporters have held rallies outside the courthouse to condemn Mr Putin and the Kremlin.

Defence lawyer Yury Shmidt told reporters that the sentence amounted to "lawlessness".

He accused the Russian authorities "headed by Putin" of leaning on the justice system.

"Putin signalled to the court who today is the boss and who today decides Khodorkovsky's fate and life," he added.

Mr Putin referred to Khodorkovsky in a televised question-and-answer session last week, when he said he believed "a thief belongs in prison".

The defence has argued that the charges were absurd since the amount of oil said to have been embezzled would be equivalent to the entire production of Yukos in the period concerned.

After tax police filed enormous claims for unpaid taxes against Yukos, Khodorkovsky's old company filed for bankruptcy in 2006.

REPORT: Henry Kissinger’s Long History Of Complicity In Human Rights Abuses

Think Progress
Zaid Jilani on Dec 29th, 2010

Earlier this month, audio tapes from the Nixon White House were revealed to the public that captured a shocking exchange between Nixon and then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In the tapes, Kissinger responds to an appeal made by Israeli leader Golda Meir to Soviet leaders to allow the emigration of Russian Jews to her country. He tells Nixon that the “emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

Since these comments were revealed to the public, there has been an uproar in the media, with the New York Times writing that the tapes showed that Kissinger was “brutally dismissive” of human rights concerns related to Soviet Jews.

The former secretary of state has gone on a media offensive, attempting to save his public image among the media furor. In an op-ed piece published Sunday, Kissinger wrote that he was sorry he “made that remark 37 years ago,” and argued that it was taken out of context. Curiously, the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman, while condemning the comments, also rose to Kissinger’s defense, saying, “I think what Kissinger said is horrendous, offensive, painful, but also I’m not willing to judge him. The atmosphere in the Nixon White House was one of bigotry, prejudice, anti-Semitism, the intimidation of the anti-Semitism, the stories, the bigotry.” David Harris of the American Jewish Committee offered a similar defense: “Perhaps Kissinger felt that, as a Jew, he had to go the extra mile to prove to the president that there was no question of where his loyalties lay.”

But what both the press that is reporting about Kissinger’s comments and what his most passionate defenders are omitting is that these revealed remarks only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the former secretary of state’s complicity in human rights violations. The mentality revealed in his remarks about Soviet Jews are not an aberration but a major feature of his approach to foreign policy: disregarding human rights in pursuit of other strategic goals. Kissinger has a long history of complicity in major human rights abuses in every corner of the globe, one that is rarely reported on in the press in its reports on the former secretary of state. Here are just a few of these abuses:

- Bangladesh: In 1971, Bangladesh, which was at the time East Pakistan, declared its independence from Pakistan. The Pakistani military responded with a brutal military campaign that included massive killings and the estimated systematic raping of nearly 200,000 Bangladeshi women. When Daka Consul General Archer Blood and other American diplomatic staff began to protest the Pakistani army’s behavior to Washington, Nixon and Kissinger had him dismissed. During the height of the atrocities, Kissinger sent a message to Pakistan General Yahya Khan, congratulating him on his “delicacy and tact” in his military campaigns in Bangladesh. When Kissinger received word that massive famines were going to spring up in the country in 1971, he warned USAID to try to avoid helping, saying that Bangladesh was “not necessarily our basket case.” Soon after becoming secretary of state, Kissinger downgraded the American diplomatic staff who had signed onto a protest of Pakistani atrocities in 1971.

- Cambodia: Kissinger was one of the chief masterminds of the Nixon administration’s secret and illegal bombing campaign of Cambodia — he wanted the bombing of “anything that flies, on anything that moves” and warned that it must be secretly done to avoid congressional scrutiny — the extent of which was not discovered until President Bill Clinton declassified related documents in 2000. By the end of the American bombing campaign of Cambodia, the country was perhaps the “most heavily bombed country in history.” The bombings killed more than a half a million people, and were a major factor in the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge.

- Chile: In 1973, Kissinger aided and abetted a right-wing military faction that deposed the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. The faction then installed the dictator General Augusto Pinochet, who went on to torture and/or murder tens of thousands of peaceful dissidents in the country. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” Kissinger said in rationalizing his actions, falsely accusing Allende of being a communist and essentially declaring that the United States should have the power to decide Chile’s government. Due to his complicity in bringing Pinochet to power, Kissinger was summoned for questioning and has arrest warrants out in his name in Chile, Argentina, and France. Since the warrants were issued he has not returned to any of those three countries.

- Indonesia and East Timor: In 1975, President Gerald Ford and Kissinger met with Indonesian’s leader, General Suharto. During the meeting, Ford and Kissinger essentially gave “full approval” to Suharto to invade neighboring East Timor. In the resulting invasion, hundreds of thousands of Timorese civilians were massacred. Kissinger repeatedly denied that he had such conversations with Suharto, but these denials were found to be false after the declassification of government documents in 2001.

- Iraq: In 1975 Kissinger both encouraged a Kurdish revolt against Saddam Hussein and then abandoned the rebels to be killed following invocations from the Shah of Iran. Bob Woodward’s book State of Denial revealed that Kissinger was a major Iraq policy advisor to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. He warned Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson of the same analogy he used during the Vietnam years, that troop withdrawals would be like “salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded.” Woodward writes that when Gerson asked Kissinger why he supported the war, he replied, “Because Afghanistan wasn’t enough,’ … In the conflict with radical Islam, he said, they want to humiliate us. ‘And we need to humiliate them’ … In Manhattan, this position got him into trouble, particularly at cocktail parties, he noted with a smile.”

- Vietnam: Kissinger, in a possible violation of the Logan Act, helped scuttle peace talks in 1968, prolonging the Vietnam War to advantage Richard Nixon in the presidential election. This extension of the war cost thousands of American lives and those of more than a million people in Indochina.

Viewed with the context of Kissinger’s actions while he was a senior official in multiple American administrations, his comments about Soviet Jews are hardly surprising. Unfortunately, most of the major media’s reporting about Kissinger’s comments does not include this history of complicity in human rights abuses.

In fact, despite his complicity in these abuses, the former secretary of state continues to be a lauded public figure in the United States. He is regularly uncritically featured on major news programs, was recently honored at the State Department, and was even cast as a cartoon character’s voice on a children’s TV show. If history is any judge, this latest revelation about Kissinger will soon be forgotten by major media and elites in the public sphere. But that does not change the actual facts and Kissinger’s long, sordid history of human rights abuses.

Terrorist watch list: One tip now enough to put name in database, officials say

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 29, 2010; 10:11 PM

A year after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials say they have made it easier to add individuals' names to a terrorist watch list and improved the government's ability to thwart an attack in the United States.

The failure to put Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the watch list last year renewed concerns that the government's system to screen out potential terrorists was flawed. Even though Abdulmutallab's father had told U.S. officials of his son's radicalization in Yemen, government rules dictated that a single-source tip was insufficient to include a person's name on the watch list.

Since then, senior counterterrorism officials say they have altered their criteria so that a single-source tip, as long as it is deemed credible, can lead to a name being placed on the watch list.

The government's master watch list is one of roughly a dozen lists, or databases, used by counterterrorism officials. Officials have periodically adjusted the criteria used to maintain it.

But civil liberties groups argue that the government's new criteria, which went into effect over the summer, have made it even more likely that individuals who pose no threat will be swept up in the nation's security apparatus, leading to potential violations of their privacy and making it difficult for them to travel.

"They are secret lists with no way for people to petition to get off or even to know if they're on," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
440,000 on list

Officials insist they have been vigilant about keeping law-abiding people off the master list. The new criteria have led to only modest growth in the list, which stands at 440,000 people, about 5 percent larger than last year. The vast majority are non-U.S. citizens.

"Despite the challenges we face, we have made significant improvements," Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in a speech this month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And the result of that is, in my view, that the threat of that most severe, most complicated attack is significantly lower today than it was in 2001."

The master watch list is used to screen people seeking to obtain a visa, cross a U.S. border, or board an airliner in or destined for the United States.

The standard for inclusion on it remains the same as it was before - that a person is "reasonably suspected" to be engaged in terrorism-related activity. But another senior counterterrorism official, who like some others would speak only on the condition of anonymity, said that officials have now "effectively in a broad stroke lowered the bar for inclusion."

Timothy Healy, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the master list, said the new guidelines balance the protection of Americans from terrorist threats with the preservation of civil liberties. He said the watch list today is "more accurate, more agile," providing valuable intelligence to a growing number of partners that include state and local police and foreign governments.

Each day there are 50 to 75 instances in which a law enforcement official or government agent stops someone who a check confirms is on the watch list, a senior official at the Terrorist Screening Center said. Such "positive encounters" can take place at airports, land borders or consular offices, or during traffic stops.

The official recounted an incident two years ago in which a state trooper pulled over a truck driver for a traffic violation.

The driver appeared nervous, was traveling to several states, had three cellphones and plenty of food in his truck, and made several calls during the stop. The trooper was able to confirm through a call to the Terrorist Screening Center that the man was on the watch list. It turned out, the official said, that an FBI case agent had an open al-Qaeda-related investigation on the truck driver.

The names on the watch list are culled from a much larger catch-all database that is housed at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean and that includes a huge variety of terrorism-related intelligence.
TIDE troubles

From its inception in 2005, the database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, was plagued by technical difficulties.

In 2008, the counterterrorism center undertook a multimillion-dollar upgrade to streamline and more fully automate the database so that only one record exists per person, no matter how many aliases that person might have.

Those improvements should reduce errors and free up analysts for more pressing tasks, said Vicki Jo McBee, the counterterrorism center's chief information officer.

The new system will also ease the sharing of fingerprints and iris and facial images of people on the watch list among screening agencies, McBee said. And rather than sending data once a night to the Terrorist Screening Center's watch list, which can take hours, the new system should be able to update the list almost instantly as names are entered, McBee said.

Deployment has not been smooth. TIDE 2, as it is called, failed readiness tests and missed a December launch deadline. But now, McBee said, all tests have been passed and the system will be launched in January.

Meanwhile, the National Counterterrorism Center has developed a 70-person pursuit group to investigate "sleeper" terrorism threats, with four teams examining the regional hotbeds in Africa; in Yemen and the Arabian Gulf; in Pakistan and Europe; and in the United States. A fifth picks up the rest of the world.

"We try to look at the unknowns, the terrorists lurking in the dark that you don't know about, like the Abdulmutallabs of the world," said an official familiar with the group.

The teams, which include analysts from the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, might take a tip about a suspect flying to the United States on a certain route, then study travel records to see whether they can find travelers who match the pattern.

They also mine Internet sites for clues, in "a careful, legal way," the official said. For instance, though analysts had not identified Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born Connecticut man, before his May attempt to blow up a car in Times Square, a pursuit team delineated his network of associates in the United States in part by gleaning details from social networking sites, she said.

Much of the pursuit group's work is filtering out irrelevant information.

"We get a huge kick out of" handing a lead to the FBI, the official said. "But . . . the ruling-out is almost as important as the actual finding of leads."

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.

Israeli population stands at 7,695,000 at end of 2010

Central Bureau of Statistics: 75.4% of population is Jewish, 20.4% is Arab and 4.2% is of other ethnicity.

By Moti Bassok
Haaretz
29.12.10

There are 7,695,000 people currently residing in Israel, according to a study by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, released to mark the end of the first decade of the third millennium.

Of that number, 5,802,000 (75.4%) are Jewish, 1,573,000 (20.4%) are Arab and 320,000 (4.2%) are of other ethnicity.

The statistics show that the population in Israel has grown by 143,000 (1.9%) in 2010, a similar growth rate to the rest of the decade.

This year, Israel has absorbed some 16,000 immigrants, including some 6,000 who were born abroad to Israeli parents and moved to Israel for the first time. Another 4,000 people moved to Israel as part of a family reunification.

Another 11,000 Israelis who have been living abroad for more than 12 months were deducted from the total population.

Israeli population in U.S. surges, but exact figures hard to determine

By Sue Fishkoff · December 22, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- The number of Israelis living in the United States grew by about 30 percent over the past decade, according to newly released U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Some 140,323 people living in the United States today were born in Israel, up from 109,720 in 2000. Of the Israelis living here, 90,179 have U.S. citizenship and 50,144 do not.

But Israeli expatriates and Israeli government sources say the true figure is actually much higher. The Israeli Consulate in New York estimates there are 600,000 Israelis living in the United States.

“Estimates of Israeli emigrants in the U.S. are difficult to make and often subject to controversy,” said Professor Steven Gold of Michigan State University, author of the 2002 book “The Israeli Diaspora.”

The numbers suggest that migration to America from Israel exceeds American immigration to Israel, or aliyah. From 2000 through 2009, 23,640 U.S. citizens made aliyah, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel.

The U.S. data on the Israeli population comes from the 2009 American Community Survey, an annual report produced by the U.S. Census Bureau that was released earlier this year and updated in recent weeks. The decennial census stopped collecting detailed information such as country of origin after 2000; that information is now collected and included in the bureau’s annual community surveys.

The survey also reported that 27 percent of Israelis in the United States arrived since 2000. Three-quarters are between the ages of 25 and 65. Forty-five percent of the adults have at least an undergraduate degree, and more than 80 percent hold white-collar jobs. And just to dispel a popular stereotype, only 4.6 percent work in the “production, transportation and material moving occupations.”

The Israeli Leadership Council in Los Angeles, an organization that promotes communal identity among local Israeli Jews, says that about 250,000 Israelis live in the greater L.A. region. The council's figures are based on information from the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, said a spokesperson for the group. The consulate would not confirm the figures to JTA.

A UJA-Federation of New York study published in February 2009 reported about 80,000 people living in households with at least one Israeli adult in New York City and three suburban counties. Dave Matkowsky, director of the resource center for Jewish diversity at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, says his department uses that figure "with caveats," suggesting that the real number may be higher.

The Israeli Consulate in New York has registered 140,000 Israeli heads of household or individuals living in the region.

Aside from New York and Los Angeles, the metropolitan areas of Boston, San Francisco and Miami also have significant Israeli populations.

So which numbers are more accurate, the census figures or the Jewish estimates?

Leonard Saxe, director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, notes that many Israelis in the United States are here temporarily and might not be counted as “residents.”

He also says that many people holding Israeli passports may not have been born in Israel but in the former Soviet Union or even the United States. They would not show up in the Census Bureau statistics but would be counted as Israeli citizens by most other estimates, including those of the Israeli government.

Another discrepancy could be in how Israelis are counted. Israel considers as Israelis children born to Israelis, even if they’ve never been to Israel, Gold noted. Those children would not show up as Israelis in the U.S. Census figures.

Then there are political sensitivities.

“Official estimates of Israelis abroad, especially those released by the Jewish Agency or Ministry of Absorption [versus the more conservative Central Bureau of Statistics] are regarded as often exaggerated and inconsistent with data collected via systematic methods, perhaps because of an effort to draw attention to the issue of Israeli emigration,” Gold said.

Columbia University sociologist Yinon Cohen has come up with what Gold calls “the most careful estimates,” drawing upon the U.S. Census, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and American Jewish population surveys.

Cohen estimates that between 150,000 and 175,000 Jewish Israeli expats were living in the United States as of 2000.

So Young and So Many Pills

More than 25% of Kids and Teens in the U.S. Take Prescriptions on a Regular Basis

By ANNA WILDE MATHEWS
WSJ
DECEMBER 28, 2010

Gage Martindale, who is 8 years old, has been taking a blood-pressure drug since he was a toddler. "I want to be healthy, and I don't want things in my heart to go wrong," he says.

And, of course, his mom is always there to check Gage's blood pressure regularly with a home monitor, and to make sure the second-grader doesn't skip a dose of his once-a-day enalapril.

These days, the medicine cabinet is truly a family affair. More than a quarter of U.S. kids and teens are taking a medication on a chronic basis, according to Medco Health Solutions Inc., the biggest U.S. pharmacy-benefit manager with around 65 million members. Nearly 7% are on two or more such drugs, based on the company's database figures for 2009.



Doctors and parents warn that prescribing medications to children can be problematic. There is limited research available about many drugs' effects in kids. And health-care providers and families need to be vigilant to assess the medicines' impact, both intended and not. Although the effects of some medications, like cholesterol-lowering statins, have been extensively researched in adults, the consequences of using such drugs for the bulk of a patient's lifespan are little understood.

Many medications kids take on a regular basis are well known, including treatments for asthma and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

But children and teens are also taking a wide variety of other medications once considered only to be for adults, from statins to diabetes pills and sleep drugs, according to figures provided to The Wall Street Journal by IMS Health, a research firm. Prescriptions for antihypertensives in people age 19 and younger could hit 5.5 million this year if the trend though September continues, according to IMS. That would be up 17% from 2007, the earliest year available.

Researchers attribute the wide usage in part to doctors and parents becoming more aware of drugs as an option for kids. Unhealthy diets and lack of exercise among children, which lead to too much weight gain and obesity, also fuel the use of some treatments, such as those for hypertension. And some conditions are likely caught and treated earlier as screening and diagnosis efforts improve.

Gage, who isn't overweight, has been on hypertension drugs since he had surgery to fix a heart defect as a toddler, says his mother, Stefanie Martindale, a Conway, Ark., marketing-company manager.

Most medications that could be prescribed to children on a chronic basis haven't been tested specifically in kids, says Danny Benjamin, a Duke University pediatrics professor. And older drugs rarely get examined, since pharmaceutical firms have little incentive to test medicines once they are no longer under patent protection.

Still, a growing number of studies have been done under a Food and Drug Administration program that rewards drug companies for testing medications in children. In more than a third of these studies, there have been surprising side effects, or results that suggested a smaller or larger dose was needed than had been expected, Dr. Benjamin says. Those findings underscore that children's reactions to medicines can be very different than those of adults. Long-term effects of drugs in kids are almost never known, since pediatric studies, like those in adults, tend to be relatively short.

"We know we're making errors in dosing and safety," says Dr. Benjamin, who is leading a new National Institutes of Health initiative to study drugs in children. He suggests that parents should do as much research as they can to understand the evidence for the medicine, confirm the diagnosis, and identify side effects. Among the places to check: drug labels and other resources on the FDA's website, published research at www.pubmed.gov, and clinical guidelines from groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics.

When a child psychiatrist diagnosed their then 8-year-old daughter with bipolar disorder four years ago, Ken and Joy Lewis, of Chapel Hill, N.C., sought a second opinion from another child psychiatrist.

They also worked with a psychologist. Dr. Lewis, who leads a company that does early-stage drug studies, reads all the available research on each medication suggested for the girl, now 12, who has taken antipsychotics and other psychiatric medications including Risperdal and Haldol.

"If your child has a chronic problem, then you have to invest the time as a parent," he says.

Parents and doctors also say nondrug alternatives should be explored where possible. Tom Wells, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences who sees patients at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock, frequently pushes diet and exercise changes before drugs for hypertensive kids. "Obesity is really the biggest cause I see for high blood pressure in adolescents," he says. But only about 10% of families adhere to his diet and exercise recommendations, he says.

Beverly Pizzano, a psychologist who lives in Palm Harbor, Fla., spent years struggling with behavioral therapies for her son Steven, 10, who showed symptoms of ADHD at a young age. She worked with a counselor on a system of rewards for good behavior, and even had a research team watch him and suggest interventions. But she turned to medications after he struggled in kindergarten. "We tried everything before I would get to that," she says.

After a drug is prescribed, children must be closely monitored, doctors say. They may not recognize or communicate a possible side effect, or whether their symptoms are improving. They also don't always follow prescription instructions.

Robert Lemanske, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, says patients at his pediatric asthma clinic are checked regularly for side effects such as slowed rates of growth. He quizzes parents and young patients on details like where they keep their inhalers to make sure they're taking their prescribed medicine.

Nichole Ramsey, a preschool teacher whose 9-year-old son Antwone is a patient at the clinic, watches her son's basketball practices so she can head off any wheezing or other symptoms. She also makes sure she's around when he gets his regular Advair dose. If Antwone stays at a friend's house overnight, she asks the parents to watch that he takes steps like rinsing out his mouth to avoid a fungal infection that can be a side effect of the inhaled drug.

"You're still the best monitor of what's going on with them," she says of a parent's role.

Ms. Ramsey is particularly concerned about Advair, which has been tied to rare instances of asthma-related death, but says it works better than a previous drug he was using. Before he started the medications, Antwone was hospitalized several times for asthma attacks.

As children's bodies change and grow, they often need different drugs or doses, says Greg Kearns, chairman of medical research at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo.

Jennifer Flory, a homemaker in Baldwin City, Kan., says that after her daughter Cassandra, now 16, started taking a higher dose of the asthma drug Singulair a few years ago, she became more moody and sad. Ms. Flory didn't connect the change to the drug, but when she eventually mentioned it to a nurse practitioner at the girl's asthma clinic, the nurse suggested stopping Singulair, which currently has a precaution in its label about possible psychiatric side effects. Cassandra, who continued taking Advair, became far more cheerful and didn't have any increase in asthma symptoms, Ms. Flory says.

A spokesman for Merck & Co., which makes Singulair, said in a statement that the company is "confident in the efficacy and safety of Singulair," which is "an important treatment option for appropriate patients."

Write to Anna Wilde Mathews at anna.mathews@wsj.com

Israel Represses Israelis and Congress Approves

by Stephen Zunes
Foreign Policy in Focus
Tuesday, December 28, 2010

It’s been two years since Israel initiated the “Operation Cast Lead” military assault on the besieged Gaza Strip. Since then, the right-wing Israeli government of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has launched an unprecedented wave of intimidation against Israeli peace and human rights groups. These groups say they are “working in an increasingly hostile environment,” according to a New York Times report, and that Israeli government leaders are fostering “an atmosphere of harassment” by turning “human rights criticism into an existential threat.”

However, Congress has chosen to look the other way – and wants the executive branch to do the same.

A resolution -- sponsored by House Foreign Relations Committee Chair Howard Berman (D-CA), Middle East Subcommittee Chair Gary Ackerman (D-NY), and soon-to-be House Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) -- condemned the findings of the UN Human Rights Council report for documenting such infringements on civil liberties and other human rights violations by the Israeli government.

Included in the resolution were the words: “even though Israel is a vibrant democracy with a vigorous and free press, the report of the ‘fact-finding mission’ erroneously asserts that ‘actions of the Israeli government . . . have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions . . . is not tolerated.’” It passed the House by an overwhelming 344-36 vote.

The UNHRC fact-finding mission, led by the prominent South African jurist Richard Goldstone, is best known for documenting evidence of war crimes by both Hamas and the Israeli government. However, it also covered suppression of internal dissent both within the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and within Israel and found that “individuals and groups viewed as sources of criticism of Israel’s military operations were subjected to repression or attempted repression by the Government of Israel.”
Pattern of Abuse

In recent months, I have contacted scores of offices of Democratic members of Congress. I’ve offered them evidence that the UNHRC report accurately documented the growing intolerance of the Israeli government to legitimate dissent. Yet to this day, they stand by their vote, insisting the charges of Israeli repression were “erroneous” and denying that the repression continues.

The rightist Netanyahu government, apparently emboldened by such a broad bipartisan defense of its actions from Washington, has only increased its repression of Israeli citizens in the year since the House passed its resolution. This has included surveillance and intimidation of Israeli peace and human rights groups, with the detention for days without charge of scores of Israeli Jews attending or simply en route to peaceful protests. On December 27, for example, an Israeli court sentenced Jonathan Pollack, a leading young human rights activist, to three months in prison for being part of an “illegal assembly” –a bicycle protest against the war on Gaza.

Other Israelis speaking out have been imprisoned or otherwise censored as well. The Knesset stripped member Haneen Zoabi of her parliamentary benefits and her diplomatic passport for taking part in last summer’s humanitarian aid mission to Gaza. The government has detained Israeli community activist Ameer Makhoul – whom Amnesty International has called “a key human rights defender” and “a prisoner of conscience” – on “espionage” charges, though they have refused to make the charges public. And the government charged Israeli whistle-blower Anat Kamm, who documented illegal assassinations of Palestinian opponents by the Israeli military, with espionage and banned the Israeli press from reporting on her detention.

This past June, 25 members of Israel’s parliament introduced legislation that would ban Israeli organizations if they support universal jurisdiction for war crimes. A second bill would make it illegal to support a boycott or other sanctions against products from Israeli settlements. Prime Minister Netanyahu has also pushed for a loyalty oath, which would require prospective citizens to pledge loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish state” in an effort to exclude non-Jews and non-Zionist Jews from citizenship.

There has been a systematic McCarthyistic campaign against academic freedom. Parliamentary hearings supported by Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar have challenged the legitimacy of left-leaning professors who address Israeli human rights abuses. Membership in anti-occupation or human rights groups has been used to bar young academics from being hired.

Israeli actors, directors and playwrights who signed a petition that they would not perform in a new theater built in the West Bank settlement of Ariel have been banned from receiving government subsidies, including funding for international tours, as well as the right to perform at state venues.

Im Tirtzu, a nationalist Israeli organization, goaded on by government officials, launched a harsh billboard smear campaign against 12 human rights organizations and their funders, the New Israel Fund and the Ford Foundation. Meanwhile, right-wing thugs have assaulted prominent Israeli peace and human rights advocates with apparent acquiescence of some segments of the police.

Goldstone’s fact-finding mission also expressed concerns at the government’s threat to eliminate the tax-exempt status of human rights groups and limit their ability to receive support from abroad, noting it could have “an intimidating effect on other Israeli human rights organizations." The New York Times reported that Israeli tax authorities have repeatedly harassed such organizations as the Israeli advocacy group Gisha, which supports freedom of movement for Palestinians.
Congress Balks

Human Rights Watch and other groups have condemned such efforts to silence Israel’s vibrant civil society. But the overwhelming majority of the U.S. Congress continues to insist that such human rights organizations have no basis for such concerns.

The U.S. Congress has gone on record denying – and, by implication, defending – Israeli government repression against Israeli citizens. In this resolution and previously, Congress has rationalized Israeli repression of Palestinians and Lebanese as necessary acts of “self-defense” against “terrorism.” However, this same excuse cannot justify intimidation of Israeli individuals or organizations. By including this clause in the resolution attacking the Goldstone commission report, then, a large bipartisan Congressional majority is effectively legitimizing the suppression of nonviolent peace and human rights activists in a democracy. This action constitutes a very dangerous precedent.

When Congress begins denying well-documented cases of government-backed repression of human rights activists because the country in question is nominally “a vibrant democracy with a vigorous and free press,” then it’s only a matter of time before the Democrats, along with their Republican counterparts, begin denying and defending such repression against human rights groups here in the United States as well.
Stephen Zunes, a Foreign Policy In Focus senior analyst, is a professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. He is the author, along with Jacob Mundy, of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press).

2011: A Brave New Dystopia

By Chris Hedges
truthdig.com
Dec 27, 2010

The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent forms of control? Or would we be, as Huxley envisioned, entranced by entertainment and spectacle, captivated by technology and seduced by profligate consumption to embrace our own oppression? It turns out Orwell and Huxley were both right. Huxley saw the first stage of our enslavement. Orwell saw the second.

We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley foresaw, seduced and manipulated us through sensual gratification, cheap mass-produced goods, boundless credit, political theater and amusement. While we were entertained, the regulations that once kept predatory corporate power in check were dismantled, the laws that once protected us were rewritten and we were impoverished. Now that credit is drying up, good jobs for the working class are gone forever and mass-produced goods are unaffordable, we find ourselves transported from “Brave New World” to “1984.” The state, crippled by massive deficits, endless war and corporate malfeasance, is sliding toward bankruptcy. It is time for Big Brother to take over from Huxley’s feelies, the orgy-porgy and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. We are moving from a society where we are skillfully manipulated by lies and illusions to one where we are overtly controlled.

Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” Orwell wrote in “1984.” “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin uses the term “inverted totalitarianism” in his book “Democracy Incorporated” to describe our political system. It is a term that would make sense to Huxley. In inverted totalitarianism, the sophisticated technologies of corporate control, intimidation and mass manipulation, which far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian states, are effectively masked by the glitter, noise and abundance of a consumer society. Political participation and civil liberties are gradually surrendered. The corporation state, hiding behind the smokescreen of the public relations industry, the entertainment industry and the tawdry materialism of a consumer society, devours us from the inside out. It owes no allegiance to us or the nation. It feasts upon our carcass.

The corporate state does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader. It is defined by the anonymity and facelessness of the corporation. Corporations, who hire attractive spokespeople like Barack Obama, control the uses of science, technology, education and mass communication. They control the messages in movies and television. And, as in “Brave New World,” they use these tools of communication to bolster tyranny. Our systems of mass communication, as Wolin writes, “block out, eliminate whatever might introduce qualification, ambiguity, or dialogue, anything that might weaken or complicate the holistic force of their creation, to its total impression.”

The result is a monochromatic system of information. Celebrity courtiers, masquerading as journalists, experts and specialists, identify our problems and patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a radical left. Prescient social critics, from Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky, are banished. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture, under the tutelage of these corporate courtiers, becomes, as Huxley noted, a world of cheerful conformity, as well as an endless and finally fatal optimism. We busy ourselves buying products that promise to change our lives, make us more beautiful, confident or successful as we are steadily stripped of rights, money and influence. All messages we receive through these systems of communication, whether on the nightly news or talk shows like “Oprah,” promise a brighter, happier tomorrow. And this, as Wolin points out, is “the same ideology that invites corporate executives to exaggerate profits and conceal losses, but always with a sunny face.” We have been entranced, as Wolin writes, by “continuous technological advances” that “encourage elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, actions measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose denizens are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.”

Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.

Attitudes and temperament have been cleverly engineered by the corporate state, as with Huxley’s pliant characters in “Brave New World.” The book’s protagonist, Bernard Marx, turns in frustration to his girlfriend Lenina:

“Don’t you wish you were free, Lenina?” he asks.

“I don’t know that you mean. I am free, free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.”

He laughed, “Yes, ‘Everybody’s happy nowadays.’ We have been giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else’s way.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.

The façade is crumbling. And as more and more people realize that they have been used and robbed, we will move swiftly from Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Orwell’s “1984.” The public, at some point, will have to face some very unpleasant truths. The good-paying jobs are not coming back. The largest deficits in human history mean that we are trapped in a debt peonage system that will be used by the corporate state to eradicate the last vestiges of social protection for citizens, including Social Security. The state has devolved from a capitalist democracy to neo-feudalism. And when these truths become apparent, anger will replace the corporate-imposed cheerful conformity. The bleakness of our post-industrial pockets, where some 40 million Americans live in a state of poverty and tens of millions in a category called “near poverty,” coupled with the lack of credit to save families from foreclosures, bank repossessions and bankruptcy from medical bills, means that inverted totalitarianism will no longer work.

We increasingly live in Orwell’s Oceania, not Huxley’s The World State. Osama bin Laden plays the role assumed by Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984.” Goldstein, in the novel, is the public face of terror. His evil machinations and clandestine acts of violence dominate the nightly news. Goldstein’s image appears each day on Oceania’s television screens as part of the nation’s “Two Minutes of Hate” daily ritual. And without the intervention of the state, Goldstein, like bin Laden, will kill you. All excesses are justified in the titanic fight against evil personified.

The psychological torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning—who has now been imprisoned for seven months without being convicted of any crime—mirrors the breaking of the dissident Winston Smith at the end of “1984.” Manning is being held as a “maximum custody detainee” in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 of every 24 hours alone. He is denied exercise. He cannot have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Army doctors have been plying him with antidepressants. The cruder forms of torture of the Gestapo have been replaced with refined Orwellian techniques, largely developed by government psychologists, to turn dissidents like Manning into vegetables. We break souls as well as bodies. It is more effective. Now we can all be taken to Orwell’s dreaded Room 101 to become compliant and harmless. These “special administrative measures” are regularly imposed on our dissidents, including Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was imprisoned under similar conditions for three years before going to trial. The techniques have psychologically maimed thousands of detainees in our black sites around the globe. They are the staple form of control in our maximum security prisons where the corporate state makes war on our most politically astute underclass—African-Americans. It all presages the shift from Huxley to Orwell.

“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling,” Winston Smith’s torturer tells him in “1984.” “Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

The noose is tightening. The era of amusement is being replaced by the era of repression. Tens of millions of citizens have had their e-mails and phone records turned over to the government. We are the most monitored and spied-on citizenry in human history. Many of us have our daily routine caught on dozens of security cameras. Our proclivities and habits are recorded on the Internet. Our profiles are electronically generated. Our bodies are patted down at airports and filmed by scanners. And public service announcements, car inspection stickers, and public transportation posters constantly urge us to report suspicious activity. The enemy is everywhere.

Those who do not comply with the dictates of the war on terror, a war which, as Orwell noted, is endless, are brutally silenced. The draconian security measures used to cripple protests at the G-20 gatherings in Pittsburgh and Toronto were wildly disproportionate for the level of street activity. But they sent a clear message—DO NOT TRY THIS. The FBI’s targeting of antiwar and Palestinian activists, which in late September saw agents raid homes in Minneapolis and Chicago, is a harbinger of what is to come for all who dare defy the state’s official Newspeak. The agents—our Thought Police—seized phones, computers, documents and other personal belongings. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury have since been served on 26 people. The subpoenas cite federal law prohibiting “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.” Terror, even for those who have nothing to do with terror, becomes the blunt instrument used by Big Brother to protect us from ourselves.

“Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?” Orwell wrote. “It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.”

Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “Death of the Liberal Class.”

Khodorkovsky trial: Russia hits back at West

BBC
28 December 2010

Russia has accused Western nations of exerting "unacceptable" pressure over the trial of jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Russia's foreign ministry was reacting to criticism by the US and Germany on Monday after a second guilty verdict was delivered against Khodorkovsky.

Khodorkovsky, once seen as a threat to former President Vladimir Putin, was convicted of embezzlement.

He was first jailed in 2005, for fraud and tax evasion.

Khodorkovsky and his former business partner Platon Lebedev were back in court on Tuesday as the judge continued reading out his verdict.

It is unclear when their sentences will be pronounced.

"Attempts to exert pressure on the court are unacceptable," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement on its website.

"We expect everyone to mind his own business, both at home and in the international arena."
Continue reading the main story
Analysis
image of Paul Reynolds Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent, BBC News website

The Khodorkovsky case has become an irritant in relations between Russia and Western countries even though it has not derailed progress on other fronts such as co-operation on sanctions against Iran and transit for Nato forces into Afghanistan and the agreement on nuclear weapons in the new Start treaty.

Western governments have to be careful not to criticise the principle of anti-corruption moves in Moscow so those critical of Russia have concentrated on what they claim is the selective nature of prosecutions. These have been targeted, they say, at political opponents of the Russian government.

This case is also seen in the West as part of Moscow's failure to develop a proper rule of law. The Russians, however, have had little difficulty in painting Khodorkovsky as a thief and oligarch and so reject what they regard as interference, saying that this reflects badly on those who defend him.

Assertions that justice was being applied selectively in Russia were, the statement said, "groundless".

The judge found Khodorkovsky and Lebedev guilty of stealing from their own firm, Yukos, and laundering the proceeds.

Delivering the full verdict and sentence is expected to take several days.

The White House said it was "deeply concerned" about the verdict, calling it a "selective application" of justice.

Germany said the trial was "a step back".

Khodorkovsky, in custody since 2003, was less than a year from completing his first prison sentence for fraud when he and Lebedev were convicted on Monday.

Khodorkovsky's lawyers dismissed the charges as an absurd pretext to keep the two men behind bars.

One of them, Vadim Klyuvgant, condemned "an unjust verdict by a court that is not free", saying it was "shameful for the country".
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

It is not a bad thing that Khodorkovsky is in jail. But it is a bad thing that others like him are not in jail”

End Quote Sergei M, St Petersburg

* Views from Russia

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the trial had raised "serious questions" about the rule of law in Russia and the verdict would have a "negative impact on Russia's reputation".

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he was "very worried" by the conviction.

"The way the trial has been conducted is extremely dubious and a step backward on the road toward a modernisation of the country," he said in a statement.

"It is in the interest of our Russian partners to take these concerns seriously and to stand up for the rule of law, democracy and human rights."

Richard Ottaway, chairman of the UK parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, said the "due process of law that we in the UK would recognise" had not been followed.

A verdict in Moscow

Editorial
The Washington Post
Tuesday, December 28, 2010; A12

PRESIDENT OBAMA has lavished attention on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the expense of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on the theory that Mr. Medvedev might break with the corrupt authoritarianism that Mr. Putin brought to the Kremlin. On Monday a huge blow to that policy was delivered in a monotone by a Moscow judge, who devoted more than seven hours to reading out a guilty verdict in the most important political trial of Russia's post-Soviet history.

Judge Viktor Danilkin surprised no one with the finding that former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky and co-defendant Platon Lebedev were guilty of stealing $25 billion worth of oil from their own company. The charge was "absurd," as a former prime minister under Mr. Putin testified, and a bumbling prosecution team never clearly explained it, much less provided proof.

Yet Mr. Putin already announced on television 10 days ago that Mr. Khodorkovsky, a political rival who has been imprisoned since 2003, was guilty and "should sit in jail." That brazen confirmation of the trial's political orchestration seemed to embarrass Mr. Medvedev, and no wonder: The former Putin aide promised an end to "legal nihilism" when he took office in 2008.

Mr. Khodorkovsky's conviction should make clear that Mr. Medvedev's project is going nowhere. Russia remains the country of Mr. Putin - where an oil executive who sought to run his company by the standards of Western multinationals saw his firm illegally seized and handed over to state companies headed by Mr. Putin's cronies; and where the price of that executive's funding of liberal political parties and civil society groups is seven years - so far - in a Siberian prison camp. Mr. Khodorkovsky's attorneys say they expect that when the judge finally finishes reading his verdict this week, he will add up to six more years to the original eight-year sentence, meaning that Mr. Putin's nemesis will remain locked up during the next presidential campaign in 2012.

The Obama administration on Monday added its voice to the condemnations across the democratic world of Mr. Khodorkovsky's prosecution. A White House statement said the case "appears to be an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends," adding that Russia's failure to respect the rule of law "impedes its own modernization and ability to deepen its ties with the United States."

That's stronger rhetoric than this president has previously employed with Russia. But it will have little impact unless the administration acts on its hint that the good relations Moscow seeks with the West are at stake. The way to support the alternative that Mr. Medvedev supposedly represents is to enforce accountability for human rights abuses - such as sanctions against those responsible for Mr. Khodorkovsky's prosecution. Support for Russia's membership in the World Trade Organization, including congressional repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, should be put on hold.

If there are no such consequences for the Khodorkovsky case, Mr. Putin's victory will be complete - and Mr. Obama's diplomacy wasted.

Profile: Mikhail Khodorkovsky

BBC
27 December 2010


Mikhail Khodorkovsky Khodorkovsky predicted that the fate of all Russians rested on his second trial

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was first arrested in October 2003 on charges of tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement.

The former head of oil giant Yukos and at the time Russia's richest man, he was jailed in 2005 for eight years and due to be released in 2011.

But in 2009 he was put on trial again, along with his jailed partner Platon Lebedev, on further charges of embezzlement and money laundering - and both were declared guilty again.

Khodorkovsky, 47, made his fortune - estimated at more than $15bn according to Forbes magazine - from the controversial post-Soviet privatisation of state assets.

Before his arrest, he was not just rich but very influential.
Political activities

His lawyers have always maintained that the charges against him are trumped up, carried out on the orders of senior figures in the Kremlin who objected when his activities strayed into the political arena.
Continue reading the main story
Mikhail Khodorkovsky Timeline
Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Oct 29 2010)

* 1963 - Born in Moscow, son of chemical engineers
* 1981 - Enters Medeleyev Chemistry Institute, Moscow
* 1980s - Sets up computer software business with fellow students
* 1987 - Founds Menatep bank
* 1994 - Buys Apatit fertiliser company at auction
* 1995 - Buys Yukos for $350m, with Menatep assuming $2bn in debt
* 2003 - Arrested for tax evasion, embezzlement and fraud
* 2004 - First court case begins
* 2005 - Found guilty on six of seven charges, jailed for eight years
* 2007 - Yukos declared bankrupt
* March 2009 - Second court case starts in Moscow
* December 2010 - Convicted of embezzlement and money laundering

Khodorkovsky had provided funding to nearly all political parties, including the communists, and acquired the rights to publish the prestigious Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper. He also hired a well known investigative journalist critical of then-President Vladimir Putin.

While still in charge of Yukos, he consistently said he was not tied to any particular party. "Large companies cannot finance political parties as their shareholders and employees have different political views."

However he had made no secret of his support for the liberal opposition to Mr Putin.

When asked about Khodorkovsky on live television before the second trial verdict was read out, the former president who is now prime minister compared him to convicted US fraudster Bernard Madoff, saying simply: "a thief must be in jail."

The former tycoon's initial jail sentence kept him behind bars during the 2007 presidential elections and his wife, Inna, said recently she was sure he would remain in jail for the campaign in 2012.
Knockdown price

A native of Moscow and the son of two engineers, Khodorkovsky studied at Mendeleyev Chemistry Institute and began his career as a loyal Soviet-era Communist Party member, running a computer import business under the wing of the party's youth movement (Komsomol) in the 1980s.

In 1987 - four years before the fall of the USSR - he founded what would become Menatep, one of post-Soviet Russia's first private banks.

He made his first millions in the 1990s when the bank acquired massive amounts of shares in companies that were privatised for bargain prices.

Fertiliser firm Apatit was bought in 1994 by Khodorkovsky and Lebedev for $283m, later becoming the focus of the initial trial against them.

His business empire, prosecutors later claimed, was little short of a gangster operation and Apatit shares were alleged to have been picked up illegally via the use of umbrella companies.

In 1995, Khodorkovsky acquired Yukos at a state auction at the knockdown price of $350m.

Yukos had come close to folding but became Russia's second biggest oil company, pumping one in every five barrels the country produced.

It began publishing its accounts to international standards and was soon seen as one of Russia's most transparent, well-run companies with international investors clamouring to own shares.

The man behind its modernisation, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, even served as deputy fuel and oil minister during Boris Yeltsin's presidency.

But after Vladimir Putin came to power, the Yukos chief executive's increasingly political activities aroused suspicions of his own ambitions.
Bankruptcy

In July 2003, fellow Yukos shareholder Platon Lebedev was arrested for fraud in a step widely seen as a warning to Khodorkovsky to keep out of politics. Four months later, armed security forces detained him on his private jet at an airport in Siberia.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

It's not me and Platon Lebedev who are now standing trial, it's all the Russian people”

End Quote Mikhail Khodorkovsky November 2010

Tax police filed enormous claims for unpaid taxes against Yukos and, unable to pay, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2006 Its production assets were sold off at state-run auctions.

As Yukos disappeared as a legal entity in November 2007, Khodorkovsky and his fellow inmate Platon Lebedev served much of their sentences at a Soviet-era labour camp in the Chita region of eastern Siberia, 4,700km (3,000 miles) east of Moscow.

They were moved to Moscow in early 2009 to face their second trial which involved charges of misappropriating nearly 1 trillion roubles ($27.7bn) and laundering almost 450bn roubles ($12.5bn).

As the trial itself drew to an end, Khodorkovsky himself predicted that his release was unlikely but warned that the fate of all Russians rested on the case.

"It's not me and Platon Lebedev who are now standing trial, it's all the Russian people," he told the court in his final address.

He went on to say that he had no wish to die in jail but "if that is what is needed, I have no hesitation".
Man of 'ideals'

His son, Pavel, told the BBC that his father had never even considered pleading guilty to the charges although he was a realist and was ready to spend more time in prison.

"He talked about it and said it outright that 'I am not an ideal man but I have ideals'."

And in the days before the judge announced his verdict, Khodorkovsky made it clear that he saw the prime minister as the cause of his plight.

"I wish for Putin that people did not fear him but loved him" he wrote in an article for Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

He added that he felt pity for someone who seemed "so lonely in front of this limitless and merciless country" and who wore an "armour of ice" that could be penetrated only by "a love for dogs".

The reference was apparently to recent images of the prime minister caressing a Bulgarian shepherd dog but his coruscating remarks only added to the expectation that Mikhail Khodorkovsky's term in jail was far from over.

Oil tycoon Khodorkovsky guilty verdict attacked by US

BBC
27 December 2010

The US and Germany have voiced serious concerns about a second guilty verdict against the jailed Russian former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and considered a political threat to PM Vladimir Putin, was convicted at a new Moscow trial of embezzlement.

The White House said it was "deeply concerned" by the verdict, calling it a "selective application" of justice.

German FM Guido Westerwelle said the trial was "a step back".

The judge said Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were guilty of stealing from their firm Yukos and laundering the proceeds.

Delivering the full verdict and sentence is expected to take several days.
Demonstration outside the courtroom About 200 people gathered outside the court in support of Khodorkovsky

Khodorkovsky's lawyers say the verdict was the result of official pressure, and have promised to appeal.

However, the chairman of the Russian lower house of parliament's Foreign Affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachev, dismissed these concerns.

"I understand perfectly well that this is a very spectacular case and many questions may arise. But I have to respect the decision by the court, as a loyal citizen of Russia," he said.

Several hundred demonstrators could be heard outside the courtroom during the session, chanting "Freedom!" and "Put Putin in jail!" Police made a number of arrests.

Khodorkovsky is currently serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion from his 2005 trial.
'Extremely dubious'

Spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a communique that the White House was troubled by "what appears to be an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends".

"We are deeply concerned that a Russian judge today has indicated that for a second time Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev will be convicted," he said.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

It is not a bad thing that Khodorkovsky is in jail. But it is a bad thing that others like him are not in jail”

End Quote Sergei M, St Petersburg

* Views from Russia

"The apparent selective application of the law to these individuals undermines Russia's reputation as a country committed to deepening the rule of law."

Earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the verdict would have a "negative impact on Russia's reputation".

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he was "very worried" by the conviction.

"The way the trial has been conducted is extremely dubious and a step backward on the road toward a modernisation of the country," he said in a statement.

"It is in the interest of our Russian partners to take these concerns seriously and to stand up for the rule of law, democracy and human rights."

However, the European Union stopped short of criticising the verdict, saying it would be following events closely, including the announcement of the sentence.

A statement by the UK Foreign Office said it would stress to Russia how the law should be applied in a "non-discriminatory and proportional way".
'Sick state'
Continue reading the main story
Mikhail Khodorkovsky Timeline

* 1963 - Born in Moscow, son of chemical engineers
* 1981 - Enters Medeleyev Chemistry Institute, Moscow
* 1980s - Sets up computer software business with fellow students
* 1987 - Founds Menatep bank
* 1994 - Buys Apatit fertiliser company at auction
* 1995 - Buys Yukos for $350m, with Menatep assuming $2bn in debt
* 2003 - Arrested for tax evasion, embezzlement and fraud
* 2004 - First court case begins
* 2005 - Found guilty on six of seven charges, jailed for eight years
* 2007 - Yukos declared bankrupt
* March 2009 - Second court case starts in Moscow
* December 2010 - Convicted of embezzlement and money laundering

In the latest trial, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are accused of stealing hundreds of millions of tonnes of oil from the now defunct Yukos oil company, and laundering the proceeds, between 1998 and 2003.

Khodorkovsky has denounced the charges as rubbish.

He has said that a state that destroys its best companies and trusts only the bureaucracy and the special services is a sick state.

Many critics believe the government wants the former tycoon kept behind bars for as long as possible because he financed the opposition when Vladimir Putin was president.

Mr Putin - now Russia's prime minister - referred to Khodorkovsky in a televised question-and-answer session last week, when he said he believed "a thief belongs in prison".

One of Khodorkovsky's lawyers, Vadim Klyuvgant, has criticised what he described as "an unjust verdict by a court that is not free", describing it as "shameful for the country".

"If the court were free and independent in issuing its verdict, it would have issued an acquittal. What we heard here confirms that the court has faced pressure," he told reporters.

What Kissinger missed about Jewish emigration

By Gal Beckerman
Tuesday, December 28, 2010;

In his op-ed on Sunday, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger apologized for "undoubtedly offensive" comments he made 37 years ago about the fate of Soviet Jews, remarks that recently came to light with the release of tapes by the Nixon presidential library. But in trying to explain the historical context of his words, Kissinger presented a dismissive view of the Soviet Jewry movement as an ineffective irritant. This distorts the important role it played in the Cold War. The movement was a 25-year struggle to force the Soviet Union to allow the free emigration of Jews who were being discriminated against and robbed of their cultural and religious rights. It ultimately made the issue an inextricable part of the U.S.-Soviet relationship and contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union.

At the peak of its success, this movement was also a political force that won passage of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which forced the Soviets to remove all blocks to emigration if they wanted to receive most-favored-nation trading status with the United States. Although the Soviets ultimately rejected these conditions and the accompanying trade deal once they were voted into law at the end of 1974, the amendment shoved this human rights issue into the center of the Cold War. The movement's loud protests, hard lobbying and persistent efforts to publicize its cause eventually made saving Soviet Jewry an objective of U.S. foreign policy. By 1987 one of Kissinger's successors as secretary of state, George Shultz,â?? would attend a Passover seder in Moscow with Jewish activists in between meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev,â?? then general secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.

Kissinger wrote that through quiet diplomacy he managed to get out "more than 100,000" Jews during Richard Nixon's first term and that efforts such as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment actually hindered emigration, which never again reached such levels until after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It was indeed in the early 1970s that the Soviets began to let out a significant number of Jews. But contrary to Kissinger's memory, and according to reliable emigration figures collected by the Israeli government, the total for Nixon's first term (1969-72) was no more than 45,000. And there is no evidence to indicate that this was Kissinger's or Nixon's doing. The decision to begin allowing some Jews to leave came in response to the Leningrad trials of December 1970.The Soviets had sentenced two Jews to death for participating in a plot to hijack a plane and fly it out of the country. Worldwide protests on behalf of the men, who had acted out of desperation after being refused exit visas, forced the Soviet Union to commute their sentences and begin rethinking its hard-line emigration policy.

More than any backroom diplomatic dealings, it was the pressure of a growing movement that provoked the Soviet shift on emigration. A case in point was the 1973 decision by Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev to remove that "diploma tax," which demanded that would-be emigrants reimburse the state prohibitive sums for their educations. In a politburo meeting that March, Brezhnev pointedly told his colleagues, "At this particular time, when the Zionists have incited a campaign around the Jackson Amendment and around the bill granting us [most-favored-nation] status, we need to let them out."

After the amendment passed as part of a 1974 trade law and economic relations with the United States were linked to Jewish emigration, the Soviets had to face this issue every time they wanted rapprochement with the West. In 1979 alone, an unprecedented 51,000 Soviet Jews were allowed to leave - a fact Kissinger did not mention. That year, the Soviets, suffering from a bad harvest, were hoping to secure a grain deal. They also wanted Congress to ratify a round of arms-limitation talks. Jackson-Vanik had taught them that if they wanted something from the United States, the best way to get it was to let Jews out.

When Gorbachev came to power in the mid-1980s and tried to save the Soviet Union from economic ruin, he understood that he would also need to reform his society, including opening the gates. "We have to resolve the Jewish question, the most burning among human rights problems," Anatoly Chernyaev, Gorbachev's closest foreign affairs adviser, wrote in his diary in 1986. After two decades of pressure, the price the Soviets would have to pay was clear. With Gorbachev eager for U.S. economic assistance, the exodus began. He let out 71,196 in 1989, 181,802 in 1990 and 178,566 in 1991 - all before the Soviet Union's demise.

Kissinger discounted the idea that this movement played any role in unraveling the Soviet Union. But it did just that by making human rights a non-negotiable part of any reform. This demand - to allow citizens to freely exit their country - threatened the existence of the communist empire almost as much as the meltdown of its economic model. It armed Soviet citizens with the greatest weapon against their closed society: the opportunity to vote with their feet and leave.

The writer is a reporter at the Forward. His book, "When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry," was published in September.

Egypt's real state of emergency is its repressed democracy

By Mohamed ElBaradei
The Washington Post
Sunday, December 26, 2010; 8:00 PM

Egypt has recently held yet another fraudulent and farcical election. Ballot boxes were stuffed. Votes were bought. People who considered voting for the opposition were subjected to violence by professional thugs. And these transgressions have been well documented by human rights groups.

Democracy must mean more than merely going through the motions.

In theory, Egypt has a constitution and laws that reflect the will of its people. But in reality, the provisions are a hodgepodge that perpetuates the iron grip of the ruling regime. President Hosni Mubarak enjoys imperial powers. There is no legislative oversight of the military budget. No more than five people are permitted to assemble without permission to stage a peaceful demonstration. Universities have security forces on campus to ensure that students do not engage in political activities.

A recent constitutional amendment has made it almost impossible for an independent actor to run for president. Any candidate who is not a member of an officially sanctioned party is forbidden to have a headquarters or to raise funds. Political activists are often blocked from renting venues for meetings. In the 12 months since I began campaigning for reform in Egypt, I have received a flood of requests for interviews, but after the recent crackdown on the media hardly any local TV stations have dared to express interest in talking to me.

In theory, Egypt has multiple political parties. In practice, establishing such a party requires permission from a committee dominated by the National Democratic Party (NDP) - the political machine that has kept Mubarak in power since 1981. And any new party must exist for five years before it can field a presidential candidate.

In theory, Egypt has an elected president. But over the past half-century, the country has had only three rulers. There were differences in their style and vision, but all have presided over an authoritarian and repressive political system. For the past 29 years, Egyptian society has existed under a draconian "state of emergency," a tool that has allowed the president to suspend basic constitutional protections and that has been used to detain, torture and sometimes kill those who dare to dissent.

In theory, Egypt has a democratically elected parliament. In practice, one-third of the members of its upper house are appointed by the president. Of the 508 seats, 440 are held by members of the NDP. In no way is the Egyptian parliament representative of the Egyptian people. Although about 10 percent of Egyptians are Coptic Christians, the Copts hold only 3 seats in parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood, a religious movement that managed to win 20 percent of the seats in the 2005 parliamentary elections, was shut out of the November elections and now holds no seats. The Wafd, the largest liberal party, won six seats. Both boycotted the run-off vote because of the substantial fraud committed and documented during the first-round voting last month.

In theory, Egypt has a court system; in fact, legal decisions are often ignored when they run contrary to government policy.

Egypt's economic and social fabric continues to deterioriate. Despite annual growth in gross domestic product of 5 to 6 percent the past few years, there has been little to no trickle-down effect. The obscene gap between rich and poor worsens daily. The middle class has all but disappeared. More than 40 percent of Egyptians live on less than $2 per day. Nearly 30 percent are illiterate - a sad commentary for the culture that, more than 2,000 years ago, gave the world the Library of Alexandria. In Cairo, a mega-city of more than 15 million, half the population lives in shantytowns next to gated communities that rival the opulence in Southern California.

Egypt urgently needs a new beginning. The voices of dissent are growing in number. We come from many orientations, from different vocations, from different parts of society, from different faiths. But we speak with a single voice in seeking social justice. We demand an accountable and transparent system of government, with meaningful checks and balances. We want economic opportunity for all Egyptians and the right to live in dignity and freedom. Together we are organizing around peaceful change. The international community ought to support our struggle for freedom and hold Egypt to its international commitments with respect to human rights. The rights of the Egyptian people should not be trampled in exchange for an elusive promise of stability.

The present pseudo-stability based on repression is a ticking bomb that is dangerously close to exploding. Lasting stability in Egypt, as in any nation, will come only through genuine democracy that responds fairly to the needs and aspirations of all its people.

The writer, a former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was the 2005 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.