With assassination suspects possibly still on U.S. soil, the Dubai assassins have dragged America into row over fake passports, says Times Online in London.
With police investigations already underway in Australia, Ireland, and Germany, the Obama administration is going to deal with this. WashPost and NYT are still playing the story inside, appropriate in light of the fact that there has been no official U.S. reaction, but that’s not going to last long.
For the Obama administration, this is where the rhetoric of the president’s Cairo address meets the realities of Middle East decisionmaking. Of course, Israel has the right to defend itself, and of course the U.S. assassinates al-Qaeda leaders every day. But the leaders and the publics of Arab countries (like the United Arab Emirates, where the hit took place) that are open to peace with Israel (and some of whom want U.S. help to deter Iran) are not going to be satisfied by the talking points that go over well in Washington and on cable TV.
New evidence that the FARC, Colombian leftist guerrilla movement, has executed hundreds of their own members –from Colombia Reports via Semana.
Luis Posada Carriles, former CIA operative deeply implicated in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airline jet that killed 73 people, is facing perjury charges in El Paso. Venezuela and Cuba want to try him for the crime. The United State is balking.
Jose Pertierra, a Washington lawyer who represents the Venezuelan government in the case (and full disclosure: a personal friend), describes the latest twists and turns in this long-running saga in Machetera.
WOS samples what they’re saying in the (Spanish-language) Latin American media about Rep. Peter Hoekstra’s charge that the U.S. intelligence has not been held accountable for the anti-drug attack that killed an American missionary and her child
Media navel-gazers are obsessing that the son of Ethan Bronner, a New York Times correspondent in Israel, recently joined the Israeli Defense Forces. Times ombudsman says Bronner should take a different assignment. The blog of NYT insiders sees no conflict of interest. Natcherly. Ditto for left-liberal Haaretz in Tel Aviv. Double Natch. Times editor Bill Keller stands by his man. Triple natch.
But Electronic Intifada and Angry Arab beg to differ, saying Bronner’s coverage tilts toward the Jewish state.
There’s a measure of truth in that charge, if only because Bronner’s reporting inevitably embodies some of the cultural assumptions of his workplace. At the New York Times, those assumptions include secular liberalism, moral relativism, empiricism, cynicism, feminism, Zionism, and a few other -isms too scandalous to mention here. Calling for his reassignment is a way of calling attention to those assumptions.
It is also true that Bronner, like many a journalist in the region who tries to adhere to professional standards, is vulnerable to being smeared as “pro-Palestinian,” (in this case by my old friend Steve Emerson. I met Steve when we both worked for Marty Peretz at TNR. Steve had the more agreeable personality; Marty, the more capacious mind, relatively speaking.)
Proceed to Thought Experiment #1: Imagine Anthony Shadid, former Washington Post and current NYT Lebanese-American correspondent in the Middle East, has a son or daughter who is active in the boycott and divestiture movement targetting Israel on the American college campuses? (Full disclosure alert: I’ve shaken Shadid’s paw a couple of times. I don’t know if he has kids or if they are pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian; both, I hope.) Would/should such a filial political commitment disqualify Shadid from covering Israel for a newspaper of record?
Quite apart from what I think (no), I suspect that Israel’s supporters would be able to make it enough of an issue that the Post/Time senior editors would discretely choose not assign him to Jerusalem. Does anybody with elite media newsroom experience disagree?
The matter at hand is Bronner. The probable difference in the treatment of a Jewish journalist and an Arab-American colleague is the issue.
Hoekstra says ‘Justice Denied’ in CIA Shootdown of Missionaries in Peru – ABC News.
People keep asking me, “What’s up with the lawsuit?”
Its a hurry up and wait type of deal. Judge Richard Leon, a Bush II appointee in the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, will rule sometime this year on which, if any, of the JFK files of the deceased CIA officer George Joannides, must be made public. If you want regular updates, friend me on Facebook.
If you’re wondering, Who the hell was George Joannides and what is this story about, here’s how to find out.
I broke the story of Joannides’ curious role in the JFK story in the weekly Miami New Times back in 2001. I sued the CIA for his records in 2003. Many, if not most, of the serious JFK scholars agree with me that the CIA should comply.
If you want more detail about the Joannides investigation has evolved since, check out this video interview I did for the MaryFerrell.org, the most useful site on the Web for JFK scholars because it is more devoted to data than theories.
If you want diverse political perspectives on the Joannides story, Jacob Hornberger has applied the libertarian scapel. Blogger Machetera comes at the story from the perspective of the Latin left.
And if you are daunted by the mere idea of JFK details and polemics, you are not alone. For the K.I.S.S. version of the story, you only need to read my piece last spring in Talking Points Memo. It has an exclusive photo of Joannides getting a medal for his espionage.
One final point: If you Google “George Joannides” you will see a number of stories and blog posts linking him to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. I won’t comment on or link to these stories because they are based on a weak 2007 BBC report that proved to have no foundation in fact.
Some conspiracy theories are obvious b.s. and there’s no harm in saying so.
Yes, says Times of London columnist David Aaronovitch in an interview with Salon.
We want to believe theories that contradict the idea that young, iconic people died senselessly. If a story takes away the accidental from their death, it gives them agency. After the JFK assassination, it was unbearable to many people that they could live in a country where a lone gunman could kill a president.
This familiar trope has a general psychological cogency–yes, we all turn to History for meaning–but, in the particular case of Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, it lacks a specific historical foundation. Aaronovitch is touting a book about conspiratorial thinking, with the appealing tag line “When smart people believe dumb things.” Yet his pitch neglects the disconcerting fact that there were plenty of smart people who concluded that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy of his political enemies–and they did so rationally.
Real Documented Threat or Circumstantial Specter? asks theCouncil on Hemispheric Affairs.
The pairing now known as FARQaeda would represent a disturbing alliance because of the unexamined but equally important backflow, or two-way flow, in this illegal embrace of smuggling junctions.
But how real is the threat? wonders COHA’s Leah Chavla.
no convincing evidence has demonstrated that all or even some of the African drug trafficking agents involved in this lucrative ring are actually members or affiliates of any terrorist organization.
That’s not how the transnational drug traffickers work (for the most part).
Non-simplistic discussion on the jump.
