The Odd Politics Behind Torture, Zero Dark Thirty and John Kiriakou

January 30th, 2013 by Michael Youhana

Over winter break, Kathryn Bigelow brought the Bush administration’s draconian regime of torture back in vogue with the release of the hit film Zero Dark Thirty. Oddly enough, some still object to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” in spite of Bigelow’s slick flick.

One can probably count Khaled el-Masri among this stubborn group.

Darryl Li, of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University, recently wrote an intriguing article for Al Jazeera on el-Masri, the debate swirling around Bigelowe’s movie, and the legal framework underlying Bush’s torture and rendition policies. Quoting the European Court of Human rights, Li highlights a dreadful scene, following the early 2004 handover of el-Masri to CIA agents in Macedonia, in which he was “beaten severely from all sides” and “dragged to a corner of the room, where his feet were tied together.”

The horror of this episode is compounded by the fact that el-Masri was an innocent man.

Read more…


Obama Was Super Boring, So We Got Drunk And Blogged The Debate Instead

October 4th, 2012 by Ari Lipsitz, Brett Chamberlin, John Surico, Ava Kiai, Raj Sidhu, and Michael Youhana

All right, so we’re at Bobst right now after watching the first presidential debate at Brad’s. (It was a packed crowd, which confirms we go to a weird school.) We are drunk right now. This is what we thought about it:

Ari

Drink of choice: rum and coke

So basically this debate was silliness pretending to be seriousness. Romney and Obama took the crowd’s apparent desire for absurd statistical analysis, and just churned out number after number. The problem is, “wonky” figures =/= actual substance. This debate was wispy and hilariously antagonistic—at some point, Romney and Obama were like “nu-uh, I’m not gonna raise taxes, YOU’RE gonna raise taxes!” They lived in two different universes—the trick of this election will be to convince their respective bases to vote. (Undecided voters are like the tooth fairy and Social Security. My face feels weird.)

But liberals gotta check it: Romney was clearly the edgier one tonight. His punchiness translated well to a debate environment (apparently he didn’t sleep last night, which reminds me of a final I aced once), while Obama came off as a college professor whose lecture I fell asleep in. President Obama may have been correct in his facts, but he sounded less convincing than Mr. “I like Big Bird and coal.” And that’s really what matters.

Read more…


While You Were Out, Syria Caught On Fire

September 6th, 2012 by Michael Youhana

Last week at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Tehran, Egypt’s new President Mohammed Morsi smacked down the Syrian regime, right in the heart of one of the Assad regime’s last remaining support centers in the world. Morsi, a member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, called for members of the NAM to demonstrate solidarity with Syrians oppressed by President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime.

With exception to Tom Friedman, nobody should be too surprised by these developments. The Muslim Brotherhood has an unhappy history with the Assad dynasty. Yesterday, Morsi brought up Syria again at an Arab League conference, calling on Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to join Egypt in crafting a solution to what has become a full-blown civil war.

Read more…


Trouble In Sudan: South Kordofan And ‘War Is War’

April 23rd, 2012 by Michael Youhana

Sudan and South Sudan look to be on the brink of all-out war, with ICC-indicted Sudanese President Omar Bashir exclaiming, “There are two choices: Either we end up in Juba, or they end up in Khartoum. The old borders cannot take us both,” last week.

But prior to the frenzied rallies and South Sudan’s occupation of Heglig, an oil-rich region on Sudan’s southern border, the Sudanese government was waging a quiet and ruthless war against rebels in its province, South Kordofan.

The humanitarian situation in parts of South Kordofan (and the Blue Nile States) has been deteriorating since last year. The government of Sudan’s indiscriminate attacks have been particularly monstrous in South Kordofan’s Nuba Mountains region. Read more…


A Bahraini Hunger Strike And An Inhumane Argument

April 13th, 2012 by Michael Youhana

Two years after the Iranian Revolution, Iran attempted to back a coup to overthrow the Bahraini al-Khalifa monarchy in favor of a Shiite theocracy. The plot was foiled, and things for the majority-Shiite island state haven’t quite been the same since.

Two other alleged coup attempts followed in the coming decades, along with periods of considerable civilian unrest followed by government crackdowns. Looking beyond the ascendancy of politicized Shiite fundamentalism in the 1980’s, Bahrain and Iran have had what can best be described as a tense relationship for at least the past 50 years – with Iran unsuccessfully pursuing the annexation of Bahrain as its 14th province from 1957 to 1971. Read more…


News Corp.’s Sky News Is A Wannabe Anonymous

April 6th, 2012 by Michael Youhana

Yesterday News Corp.’s Sky News announced that it authorized journalists to hack into private email accounts on two occasions. While the TV station’s press release further corroborates claims regarding Rupert Murdoch’s woeful incompetence and News Corp.’s clear lack of effective self-regulating mechanisms, Sky News’s defense for its illicit actions is, perhaps, the aspect of this story that is most worthy of comment.

In his statement, John Ryley, executive editor of Sky News, argues that the TV station’s email hacking was “justified and in the public interest.” Now where have we heard that before? It’s the same premise that hacktivists groups like LulzSec and Anonymous –Anonymous coincidentally hacked several Chinese government websites yesterday — operate on in many of their politically motivated hacks. Does the line of reasoning offered by Ryley shield discovered members of Anonymous or Lulzsec from prosecution? Read more…


If The UK Won’t Put Up With The Murdochs, Why Do We?

April 5th, 2012 by Michael Youhana

“This terrible thing happened on your watch, Mr. Murdoch.”

Conservative British MP Julie Mensch uttered the line at a parliamentary hearing back in July, called in response to News Corp.’s phone hacking scandal. Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, had all but wrapped up their testimony. The Murdochs essentially blamed lower levels of management for failing to stop News Corp.-owned tabloid, News of the World, from hacking into the private voicemails of thousands of British citizens. Mensch saw through the Murdoch’s faulty line of reasoning, and, apparently, so too did the British public.

On Tuesday, James Murdoch resigned from his role as Chairman of BSkyB, a major British pay-TV company. In his own words, James Murdoch has become something of a “lightning rod for” – or liability to – BskyB due to his former role as chairman of News International, the subsidiary of News Corp. that owned News of the World. Read more…


Syria Update: 9000 Dead And Counting, Meanwhile Questions About Iraq

March 30th, 2012 by Michael Youhana

It has been over a year since the Arab Spring came to Syria and Bashar Al-Assad’s monstrous regime started its crackdown on the people of Syria. 9000 Syrians have been killed over this period.

A bit over a month ago, I wrote about the complicity of China, Russia, and Iran in the mass murder being perpetrated in Syria and the role that those states have played in propping up Assad. Appallingly, since the post was published, around 2000 to 3000 more Syrians have died.

As of Tuesday, Assad has reportedly accepted a 6-point peace plan, proposed by Kofi Annan on behalf of the UN and the Arab League. Whether the plan will actually be implemented or not remains to be seen. Read more…


Wikileaks And Kony 2012: Does the U.S. Allow The Ugandan Government To Commit War Crimes?

March 20th, 2012 by Michael Youhana

In the piece from last week on the ‘incisive’ body of Kony 2012 coverage produced by herds of journalists in the days after the viral video was released, I cited several leaked diplomatic cables, published by Wikileaks, which provide some insight on the U.S. role in the hunt for Kony.

Unsurprisingly, the massive cache of leaks does provide valuable, direct insight on many matters related to the content of Kony 2012. So, as a follow-up to last week’s article, here’s a roundup of some more noteworthy information, gathered from a handful of the cables, on the hunt for Kony and on Invisible Children. Read more…


Knee-Jerk Contrarianism And Kony 2012

March 12th, 2012 by Michael Youhana

Many ‘journalists’ are up in arms over last week’s release of Kony 2012, a viral video produced by an NGO called Invisible Children. The video, which has generated millions upon millions of views over the past few days, calls attention to the extremist Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and their brutal thug of a leader Joseph Kony.

No mention is made of Uganda’s tumultuous modern political history, the plight of the Acholi, Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirit Movement, the abundant misdeeds of Yoweri Museveni, regional politics, the obstacles the pursuit of justice has posed to attempts to foster a peace process, and a lot of other contextual details that help to explain the current state of affairs in Uganda and the rise of the LRA. So, the video is not very informative.

But let’s get something straight — As its (kind of annoying) narrator states very clearly, the trendy video was produced with two very simple, relatively benign objectives in mind: to raise the profile of a barbaric war criminal, and to ensure that 100 American military advisers remain in Uganda to provide support in the transnational hunt for Kony. Read more…


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