Juan Cole bring his informed opinion to bear on today’ headline story about car-bomb attacks against Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia.  The morning news showed Benjamin Netanyahu stating with certainty the hand of Iran was responsible, and that vengeance would be forthcoming.

Cole says:

Indian Investigators do not Suspect Iran in Israel Embassy Blast

there is no evidence for this cynical allegation, which makes no sense. India is Iran’s economic lifeline, and Tehran would not likely risk such an operation at this time.

India gets 12% of its oil from Iran and sees an $8 billion annual export opportunity in filling the trade vacuum left by unilateral US and European boycotts of Iran. Contrary to a bad Reuters article, Indian officials denied Tuesday that the bombing would affect trade ties. (Logical because no evidence points to Iran.)

Indian investigators are first rate. Based on the modus operandi, their initial thesis is that the attack was the work of the “Indian Mujahidin” group. It had used a similar remote controlled sticky bomb, placed by a motorcyclist, in an attack on Taiwanese tourists outside the Jama Masjid cathedral mosque in 2010. IM is a Sunni group, not connected to Iran, and doesn’t like Shiite Muslims (Iranians are Shiites). IM like other Sunni radicals support the Palestinians and they are unhappy with increasingly close ties between India and Israel.

American media that just parrot notorious thug, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in this unlikely allegation are allowing themselves to be used for propaganda. Why not interview Indian authorities on this matter? They are on the ground and have excellent forensic (“CSI”) abilities. Stop being so lazy and blinkered; that isn’t journalism.

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“With the possible exception of Israel, the United States is the only developed and democratic nation in which a belief in war’s efficacy continues to enjoy widespread acceptance.  Others, the citizens of Great Britain and France,  of  Germany and Japan took from the 20th century a different lesson.  War devastates.  It impoverishes.  It coarsens.  Even when seemingly necessary or justified, it entails brutality, barbarism, and loss of innocence.  To choose war is to lead into the dark …

Americans persist in believing otherwise..

(Continued…)

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In the Armed Forces Journal no less…

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

More on Davis in the NY Times

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“The Serthar area of eastern Tibet remains under tight lockdown after three Tibetan herders, including a 60-year old man, set themselves on fire on Friday (February 3). This brings the total number of self-immolations by Tibetans in Tibet since February 2009 to 20.

The three self-immolations by Tibetan herders are the first by laypeople in Tibetan areas – the 17 Tibetans who self-immolated since February 27, 2009, have been mainly monks or former monks, and include two nuns. (ICT self-immolation fact sheet). The Tibetans who set fire to themselves in Serthar are also older than most others who have self-immolated, with one of them being 60 years old. Most of the self-immolations have been carried out by Tibetans in their late teens and early twenties, with the exception of Lama Sobha, the first reincarnate Tibetan religious figure to self-immolate

TibetCustom.com and CampaignForTibet.

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From Link TV

Protests have erupted in the Greek capital with thousands of people joining strike action over the prospect of more budget cuts. Unions say the economy is being driven downwards by the government. Greece’s EU partners are also frustrated but they blame the government’s failure to implement reforms. Despite all night talks with the “troika” of lenders, the EU, IMF, and the ECB, Greece’s Finance Minister, Evangelos Venizelos, said more time is needed to agree on the right package.

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“This small city in northern France has few immigrants and little crime. But in the last local elections here, the candidate of the far-right National Front eliminated the standard-bearer of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party in the first round of voting and then won 30.2 percent of the vote in the runoff, losing to a Socialist.

With the presidential election less than three months away, Mr. Sarkozy’s party fears the same results on a national scale. The president is facing strong competition on the right from the National Front and its leader, Marine Le Pen, and his party is worried that she may eliminate the sitting president in the first round of voting on April 22.

What is most striking is how well she and the party are doing not only in the south of France, where immigration and radical Islam are traditional issues, but here in the post-industrial north, where the issues are more economic: unemployment, factory closings, competition from inside the enlarged European Union, from Poland and Slovakia, and from outside, particularly China.”

NY Times

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“A feared wave of homegrown terrorism by radicalized Muslim Americans has not materialized, with plots and arrests dropping sharply over the two years since an unusual peak in 2009, according to a new study by a North Carolina research group.

The study, to be released on Wednesday, found that 20 Muslim Americans were charged in violent plots or attacks in 2011, down from 26 in 2010 and a spike of 47 in 2009.

Charles Kurzman, the author of the report for the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, called terrorism by Muslim Americans “a minuscule threat to public safety.” Of about 14,000 murders in the United States last year, not a single one resulted from Islamic extremism, said Mr. Kurzman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina.”

NY Times

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Several sites have picked up on claims by Anonymous that it has hacked into American Third Position (A3P) and discovered a trove of data linking Ron Paul with members of A3P and the Board of Directors, as well as Nick Griffin of the British National Party.

International Business Times was the first to report, but it has been followed by Little Green Footballs, a formerly dependable right-wing site (now not so much,) which  calls A3P  “racist Neanderthals,” and Pensito Review.

Paul’s campaign denies any connection with A3P.

I can’t find any of the actual “dump,” from Anonymous, just their statement about what it found, and a list of racist sites it  claims to have defaced.   Release them, please.  We’d like to see.

The New Republic in its January 17, 2012 edition posted a long article detailing the articles that appeared under Ron Paul’s name in his newsletter Survival Report, in the 1990s — most of which Paul has recently claimed were not actually his thoughts. Yes, of course, people do change their minds over matters as serious as these.  To be convinced of a change, however, ownership of both before and after has to be acknowledged.

From left, Paul at the 2007 Values Voters debate with Don Black, of the neo-Nazi web site Stormfront, and his son, Derek Black

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I for one can’t watch the Repugnant Debates.  I have to depend on others to give me the details textually so I can skip and skim. Newtie, as usual, slung his tongue around without much relation to the facts of his own life, or that of others.

In Monday night’s debate, Gingrich characterized the end of his Congressional career after the 1998 midterms as wholly volitional, making his exit sound like a self-sacrificing blaze of glory rather than the acrimonious firestorm it was.

With Gingrich, the distance between reality and rhetoric isn’t shrinking but growing, and the incongruities mount. He has lately fallen in love with his rants against “the elites,” and casts himself as their most determined foe, but I can’t for the life of me figure out a definition of elite that doesn’t include him.

Frank Bruni in the NY Times

I’m with Bruni is his caution to those Dems who think Newt would be the easiest for Obama to wallop.  Sanity would suggest so, however the American people gave W Bush a second term despite knowing what he had given us in the first four years.

In a country which celebrates loud-mouthed braggarts it isn’t a given that one wouldn’t be elected in a kind of American Idol p0erversion of the thoughtful consideration of men and matters the forefathers imagined.

The lead editorial in the NY Times reminds us, as does Bruni, that the Gingrich contempt for the “elites” must surely be self contempt.

Newt Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina turned on an almost comically broad deception, an inversion of the truth in which the insider whose personal wealth and political experience are entirely creations of Washington becomes the anti-establishment candidate. That it worked speaks poorly of voters who let themselves be manipulated by the lowest form of campaigning, appealing to their anger and prejudices.

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From Jeff Masters at Wunderground.com

The calendar says it’s the coldest month of winter, but today’s weather is more typical of March, as a vigorous spring-like storm system has spawned a rare and deadly January tornado outbreak. Twenty tornadoes were reported in Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee last night and this morning, killing at least two, injuring 100, and causing major damage.

…during the 61-year period 1950 – 2010, 1223 January tornadoes occurred–an average of twenty per year. There have been two Januarys with no reported tornadoes–2003 and 1986. Thus far in 2012, there have been 44 preliminary tornado reports, so we are already at double the historical January average, with a week still to go in the month.

In my opinion this is God talking to the good people of Alabama:  Wake up!  Wake way up!  The pot is boiling and you gotta turn the heat down!

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Very good remembrance of Vaclav Havel by Paul Wilson, in NYRB, who was in Prague during his death and subsequent mourning:

All his life, Havel lived by the belief that if you wanted something to happen, you had to do something to make it happen, and damn the consequences, including arrest and prison, and possibly even death. Speaking about the early days of the post-Stalin thaw, he once said: “The more we did, the more we were able to do, and the more we were able to do, the more we did.” It is a fine summary of his attitude, and, in a sense, his legacy. Havel was continually pushing the boundaries of the possible, and in doing so, he was able to create space for others to follow.

This quality is what, quite properly, put him in the same league as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. But what put him in a league of his own is the corollary: you act not to achieve a certain outcome; you act because it is the right thing to do. That is what he meant by “living in truth,” a notion he explores in some depth in his most radical and enduring work: The Power of the Powerless.

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Uff! This will make you tear up… What a great woman! from NPR

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is stepping down from Congress in order to focus on her health. The Democratic congresswoman from Arizona made the announcement on a YouTube video posted to her Facebook page Sunday.

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