Polanski.

What Ta-Nahesi says.

Of course, that "We live in a country . . ." bit he uses in his second-to-last paragraph is probably a big factor in the international/artistic outcry here. My sense is that the American criminal justice system tends to get into the international press primarily for its death penalty cases (particularly those which seem not just more vengeful than the European norm, but also explicitly unfair), or for its sheer scale, and these would not be factors that would earn it the benefit of the doubt. If you're a tree-hugging fringe leftist - and I write this very much as a tree-hugging fringe leftist, by American standards - and you're told that a famous European filmmaker is facing deportation to the States on thirty-two year old sex charges, nine times out of ten the side of the argument you're going to be reflexively distrustful of is that of the state. For the most part, that may not even be a bad thing! Always, always be suspicious of government overreach! RAH!

And, yes, Polanski's trial seems to've been badly flawed - with prosecution and defense ultimately banding together to get the judge removed.

Still, in this particular case, we're talking about a man who really does seem to have raped a teenage girl. Not in a potentially ambiguous "She was seventeen and consented, but was too young to consent legally!" sense, either; he apparently drugged and sodomized a thirteen year old who'd tried very hard to get away from him. Maybe he never did anything like that again, and maybe he's not a danger to society - I hope both are true - but he's not an innocent victim either; the righteous outrage of some of his defenders strikes me as being a tad misplaced. I mean, Google has so far given me no indication that he discovered contrition later in life.

- - -

That said, the person whose opinion should matter most is that former thirteen year old girl - and now I see from the Polanski Wikipedia page that she filed a motion in February to have the charges against him dismissed so that she could finally get on with her life.

Instead, thanks to this arrest, she's back in a media circus.

Super.

- - -

Of course, none of that would be the case if Polanski had just stayed in the country and received his sentence - but, then, if his lawyers are to be believed, he only left because he believed that the judge in the case was improperly in collusion with the prosecution: an argument for which they now have evidence. Ugliness all around.

I don't know what'll happen if he comes back to the States - I suspect there's a decent chance that the judge currently saddled with the mess would toss it all out and make an end of it. I kinda hope for Ms. Geimer that that's so.

In the meantime, though, let's not forget that this all started when a grown man did something terrible to someone he himself described as a "young girl."

Albeit in this context:

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

It's kind of hard for me to see him as a hero.

Damn.

Good-bye, Senator Kennedy.

Iran today.

Over on Nico Pitney's invaluable Iran feed, people in Tehran characterize what happened as war.

I don't know that I can summon up the faith in the arc of the moral universe becoming manifest in the immediate moment in quite the way Obama is daring us all to do, but, my God, I can almost believe that by courage alone the Iranian people have dragged their country irrevocably across a long, deep historical line. So much hinges on Rafsanjani and the Assembly (and Ayatollah Sistani as well, apparently) - but every day the protests and the bloodshed persist, the more inescapable it becomes that Khamenei is serving his ego, not Islam. At what point does his removal become inevitable? And what will the Revolutionary Guard do if Ayatollah Montazeri gets the top spot, or if Rafsanjani institutes the clerical council he's said to have wanted all along?

God help and keep the people of Iran. They have been so very brave.

The latest from Mousavi.

Up at Andrew Sullivan's increasingly essential blog.

As I am looking at the scene, I see it set for advancing a new political agenda that spreads beyond the objective of installing an unwanted government. As a companion who has seen the beauties of your green wave, I will never allow any one’s life endangered because of my actions. At the same time, I remain undeterred on my demand for annulling the election and demanding people’s rights. Despite my limited abilities, I believe that your motivation and creativity can pursue your legitimate demands in new civil manners.

Be sure that I will always stand with you. What this brother of yours recommends, especially to the dear youth, in terms of finding new solutions is to not allow liars and cheater steal your flag of defense of Islamic state, and foreigners rip the treasures of the Islamic republic which are your inheritance of the blood of your decent fathers. By trust in God, and hope for the future, and leaning on the strength of social movements, claim your rights in the frameworks of the existing constitution, based on principle of non-violence.

In this, we are not confronting the Basij. Basiji is our brother. In this we are not confronting the revolutionary guard. The guard is the keeper of our revolution. We are not confronting the army, the army is the keeper of our borders. These organs are the keepers of our independence, freedom and our Islamic republic. We are confronting deception and lies, we want to reform them, a reform by return to the pure principles of revolution.

We advise the authorities, to calm down the streets. Based on article 27 of the constitution, not only provide space for peaceful protest, but also encourage such gatherings. The state TV should stop badmouthing and taking sides. Before voices turn into shouting, let them be heard in reasonable debates. Let the press criticize, and write the news as they happen. In one word, create a free space for people to express their agreements and disagreements. Let those who want, say “takbeer” and don’t consider it opposition. It is clear that in this case, there won’t be a need for security forces on the streets, and we won’t have to face pictures and hear news that break the heart of anyone who loves the country and the revolution.

"Unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice."

It's a bit late, but let me just take a moment to flag the most wrong-headed Supreme Court decision so far this year. The synopsis of the synopsis goes something like this: John Roberts and four of his less humane friends concluded that allowing a prisoner to pay to have potentially exculpatory DNA evidence tested - not requiring the state to do it, mind you, but allowing the condemned to assume the burden of the costs of utilizing a properly accredited batch of technicians - could jeopardize the integrity of the judicial process. Determining innocence is of less importance than . . . I dunno, ensuring that prosecutors' reputations go unchallenged?

OK, yes, I'm being willfully obtuse. We're not talking about providing DNA-based appeals only to those who can afford them, and it wouldn't just be the innocent that filed appeals. The criminal justice system, already legendarily inefficient, would require a vast infusion of cash and trained professionals or else it'd get choked to a trickle - at least for a few years.

That said, the point - the whole point - of the justice system is to protect the innocent; to argue otherwise, to sacrifice the innocent to preserve the illusion of efficiency, involves either a really bizarre sense of professional exceptionalism or a kind of complacency that approaches derangement.

I wish it weren't par for the course.

More analysis.

The goals behind the coup include the following:

The first goal is to purge first-generation revolutionary leaders (with the exception of Ayatollah Khamenei). The main target here is former president Rafsanjani, a powerful politician who heads two important Constitutional bodies, the Assembly of Experts (AE), and the Expediency Council that arbitrates the differences between the Majles (parliament) and the Guardian Council. Also included in this group are Mr. Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri, a mid-ranking cleric, former Speaker of the Majles, and a strong critic of Mr. Ahmadinejad; Mr. Mahdi Karroubi, the second reformist candidate in the election and a disciple of Ayatollah Khomeini; and Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main reformist candidate, and Iran’s Prime Minister in the 1980s.

Why do they want them out of the scene? For two reasons. One is that the coup leaders consider themselves — and rightly so — as the saviors of Iran. They are the ones who fought Iraq for eight years. Secondly, at least part of the IRGC high command wishes Iran to be in a perpetual revolutionary state, but believes that the first-generation of revolutionaries have sold out the ideals of the 1979 Revolution.

In his “victory” speech on Sunday, Mr. Ahmadinejad never once mentioned Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic, or even Ayatollah Khamenei, his main supporter. The significance of the intentional omissions should not be missed. Just as Joseph Stalin and Deng Xiaoping kept Vladimir Lenin’s and Mao Zedong’s pictures everywhere, they always acted in the opposite way of what they appeared to be advocating; Iran’s second-generation revolutionaries will keep Ayatollah Khomeini’s pictures everywhere, but will act against his teachings, including his most famous saying,

The scale [for people’s acceptance of a politician] is people’s vote.

The second goal of second-generation revolutionaries is moving the country closer to an “Islamic Government,” and further away from an “Islamic Republic.” This is done by making elections a meaningless process by resortign to any means available, including rigging and manipulation. This move has marginalized reformist and democratic groups in Iran.

The third goal is to start preparations for the eventual successor to Ayatollah Khamenei. He is known to be ill. By accusing Mr. Rafsanjani of corruption, the second-generation revolutionaries wish to eliminate him — the head of the Assembly of Experts appoints the Supreme Leader — as the natural successor of Ayatollah Khamenei, hence paving the way for Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi who is a member of the AE. Everything appeared to have been planned well in advance, but the coup leaders did not expect the people to stand up to them.

This is a pivotal moment in Iran’s history. If the reformists and the Iranian people cannot reverse the outcome of Iran’s rigged elections, Iran will enter a dark period of dictatorship, with no light at the end of the tunnel. The country will be controlled completely by the military/security forces, with an unelected Supreme Leader as its titular head, and no elections (or extremely meaningless ones). This would be a terrible development for the rest of the world as well.

More here - and, yes, the article proposes a degree of behind-the-scenes orchestration of events from a cabal of clerics too right-wing even for Khomeini. I don't know enough to say whether that's the proper way to frame the facts, but it seems pretty clear that Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi is the cleric most closely associated with Ahmadinejad and the basij movement, that he's reasonably well situated (or he was last week) to make a grab for the Supreme Leadership in the event of Khamenei's sudden fall, and that he'd be really, really terrible in the job - both for Iran and for its neighbors.

Just something else to worry about.

By the way, part 2.

That Danielle Pletka article I cited this morning? Boom:

Danielle Pletka's article on Iran is the academic equivalent of mad libs. The form is set by the neoconservative agenda, and she mobilizes a narrative that fills in the blanks to serve that agenda. Unwilling if not incapable of producing an article any other way, she is more than content to reverse engineer her position with a strict liner logic. Her final statement is telling. "...Iran neither needs nor wants accommodation with the West," and it is clear to me this would have been her conclusion regardless of what the preceding 800 words had been. At AEI, whether by design or not, "scholarship" serves only one master - ideology, and no matter what may change or may not change in the broader world, it would be naive to expect the conclusions of AEI scholars including Pletka to deviate from neoconservative ideology to which they have attached themselves.

And, yeah, that's harsh - but probably fair. That said, the fact that the thesis is rubbish doesn't mean the hunks of analysis in the middle are worthless; the sense I have is that the relative decline of the power of the clerical establishment in Iran is real.

Still, caveat emptor.

By the way . . .

I find the opening to this piece a bit problematic - it would be one thing if the authors opined that the rallies in Iran were doomed, but . . . well, instead, they're asserting that they've already been crushed by the Revolutionary Guards, and all the stories we're seeing about growing numbers and amazing solidarity are basically illusory. I can't authoritatively say that they're wrong, but I can say that that's an interpretation that's way outside the continuum of opinions I've been reading all day.

Still, the rest of it seems fairly valuable - a sketch of how Ahmadinejad's rise has coincided with the political empowerment of the basij movement and other military and paramilitary factions, and the relative decline of the clout of the clergy (and, implicitly, the ideas behind the state that rose out of `79 revolution). I think there's a lot of truth to it - and I think that when we in the West refer disparagingly to the rule of the mullahs (at least, these days), we're actually giving more secular thugs a degree of political cover they don't really deserve.

Ayatollah Montazeri.

Supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main rival in the disputed presidential election, Mir Hossein Mousavi, massed in competing rallies Tuesday as the country's most senior Islamic cleric threw his weight behind opposition charges that Ahmadinejad's re-election was rigged.

"No one in their right mind can believe" the official results from Friday's contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad. Montazeri accused the regime of handling Mousavi's charges of fraud and the massive protests of his backers "in the worst way possible."

"A government not respecting people's vote has no religious or political legitimacy," he declared in comments on his official Web site. "I ask the police and army personals (personnel) not to 'sell their religion,' and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before God."

Khamenei, let's recall, isn't a grand ayatollah; he isn't a proper ayatollah at all, really - his religious credentials received an honorary bump when he assumed political power, but he doesn't have the training and the adherents that this man does.

The statement above is a challenge to more than Ahmadinejad's presidency.

There's more here. Even more here.

Daily Show fodder.

On Tuesday, CNBC's Erin Burnett made a broad comparison between the Employee Free Choice Act and what's going on in Iran. Hearing this, one might think, "Surely she said something like, "The Employee Free Choice Act, if passed, will allow would-be union members the opportunity to organize without the sort of brutal crackdowns and authoritarian intimidation associated with Iran's ruling mullahs and crazypants dictators." No. This is not at all what happened!

Instead, Burnett compared the lack of a "secret ballot" in Iran to the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow unions to form via signed cards. Yes, on CNBC, "card check" equals creeping Ahmadinejadism. This is the sort of perspective that can only be taken by those at a safe remove from the concerns of both American workers and Iranian reformers. Burnett got attaboys from the sage genius Jim Cramer for her heroic observation. As you'll see, their primary concern with the Iranian election is how it will effect the price of oil.

And people wonder why younger Americans are becoming more open to socialism.

All the footage you can bear is available here!

Killing with kindness?

The House Republicans are apparently pushing a resolution that . . . well, basically, that calls for things that the Iranian protesters don't actually want, and risks tarring them with our big, nasty brush. Over at TAPPED, Adam Serwer's halfheartedly floating the idea that this is might be a backhanded show of support for Ahmadinejad, the stuff of neocons' most passionately held Manichean thought experiments, but let's be fair: I think most of us want to stand up and be counted with the good guys here. [Insignificant green-fonted bloggers can even get away with it!] The U.S. as a nation, though, has to be a lot more careful; Mike Pence may not think our role in Mohammed Mossadegh's downfall is relevant to the current scene, but I guarantee that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad would love - love! - to have a pretext for arguing the contrary.

If nothing else, I'd think it should really come down to this: the demonstrators and the political figures associated with them aren't clamoring for dramatic shows of support, and it's their show.

Also worth reading . . .

Laura Secor.

From Sullivan:

This list was being passed around among the resistance in Iran today:

1. Remove Khamenei from supreme leader because he doesn't qualify as a fair supreme leader

2. Remove Ahmadinejad from president because he took it forcefully and unlawfully

3. Put Ayatollah Montazeri as supreme leader until a review group for the ghanooneh asasi ( "constitution" ) is set up

4. Recognize Mousavi as the official president

5. A goverment by Mousavi and start a reform of the constitution

6. Free all political prisoners without any ifs ands or buts, right away

7. Call off any secret organization such as "gasht ershad"

For what it's worth.

There's more on Ayatollah Montazeri here, for the curious among us; oddly enough, his religious credentials are actually considerably stronger than Khamenei's - but, of course, he got himself barred from power in the `80s for telling Ayatollah Khomeini that torture and murder were un-Islamic.

Iran, part 2.

I've been feeding my news cravings with the help of Andrew Sullivan, Nico Pitney, and, of course, all the Iranian people who're sharing their experiences on Twitter. [See Ambinder for more on that last approach.]

Amazing, amazing work being done here.

Iran.

Last night, I plonked down this much . . .

Some tweets snagged from the front of Andrew Sullivan's blog:

Hospitals around Tehran are surrounded by security forces who refuse to let those with injuries pass, humanity at its worst

Friend: 17 y/o killed infront of me couldn't get to him in time guards beating us up went to hospital but he stopped moving

I've spent an hour trying to wrench something detached and cerebral from that, and I can't. I just can't. This is like watching a mugging.

. . . and then blogger went down for maintenance.

The mood today, for all the blood that's been shed, is different. Rafsanjani and the Guardian Council may well be going after Khamenei himself, the military has maintained its "neutrality," and Ahmadinejad isn't strutting around Tehran throwing himself parties; the violence and the loss of life are appalling, but the Iranian people are holding onto their dignity - and that's nothing less than amazing.

What worries me about the Green Revolution - or, rather, a potential weakness I haven't seen much addressed - is that, ironically enough, I don't see a Ruhollah Khomeini. Not in terms of the man's politics - one was quite enough! - but in that the movement doesn't seem to have a strategist with obvious goals, and with a clear and easily articulated view of Iranian society's next stage. Moussavi, from what I've been able to piece together, has fairly limited ambitions - possibly as modest as just ensuring a new round of elections - and it's not at all apparent to me that that's what the bulk of the crowds in the streets want. [To be clear, I'm not saying they yearn for a perfect reproduction of American democracy, but even arriving at an Islamic Republic cleansed of parasitical basijis and an unresponsive clerical class would take more than just dropping Ahmadinejad down a couple of pegs.] My concern, basically, is . . . well, a movement that self-organizes over Twitter is in a lot of ways cleaner and stronger and more vibrant than one manipulated from on high, but it has a very, very complicated job when it comes to arriving at an end-game (even when it's winning!). Even if the people in the streets hang on in the face of terrifying force, where do they go from here?

That said, I'm curious about Rafsanjani's master plan; the man may be corrupt, but I gather he has a reputation as a big thinker.

That said, I'm still painfully cognizant of Kristof's axiom: when it comes down to might versus right, the smart money's on the bad guys.

But, man, I hope the Iranians can pull it off.

Grumbling for the sake of grumbling.

Sorry to say that the blogging drought isn't gonna let up anytime soon (though I'm actually enjoying the work that's the proximate cause) - but I did want to break silence long enough to flag one recent bit from Glenn Greenwald. I've been quite happy with Team Obama so far (the collapse of the economic world order notwithstanding), but his Justice Department is tarnishing itself pretty badly with this crap.

Let there be sunlight, by God!

And on that note I go back to the mines.

Potentially extremely good news from Iraq.

Sorry for the latest round of silence; between work and stomach flu and flu flu, the last week has been more tense than I would've preferred. [And, fair warning: I don't know that this week is promising to be a whole lot better.] All of that said, I want to point to this bit and acknowledge that my inner pessimist is somewhat stunned. I'm still really worried about the politics of the Kurdish north, but the idea that demagogic warlordism may actually be in decline in the country as a whole is a thing better than anything for which I dared hope a year ago.

Drive-by nitpicking.

Richard Cohen has a particularly galling piece in the Post today arguing in favor of a prosecution-free truth commission system to get to the bottom of torture in the Bush years. Since I concur that that's likely to be the best we can get - since the bulk of the responsibility rests with figures who'll never, ever be dragged before an American court of law - you'd think that I'd let bygones be bygones and gloss over the points in which Cohen is being obtuse and/or disingenuous. And I probably would!

It's just that his icy contempt for people who have cleaner hands than his own is really ticking me off. [Plus, I'm sick, and in something of a bad mood anyway.]

So, a few points: first, one of the strengths of our constitution as it was designed is that it's meant to stand immune - or at least resistant - to the vicissitudes of public opinion, particularly when individual rights are at stake. Anyone who says with a straight face that torture (in some cases the torture of innocent people) shouldn't be prosecuted because lots of Americans were really afraid at the time the policy was enacted and sincerely thought that torture was appropriate is setting up a lovely umbrella argument for anti-immigrant violence from coast to coast.

Second, the fact that everyone Cohen hung with in early `02 may have been down with beating the crap out of captive prisoners doesn't mean he gets to accuse America as a whole of being hypocritical in finding torture unpalatable now. I'd argue it means instead that he needs a wider (and preferably more humane) group of friends and sources.

Third, okay, maybe it is unfair to prosecute torturers when the people who make policy go unscathed. That said, there's a lot to be said for setting some institutional precedent down - isn't there at least an argument to be had that there might be some positive value in teaching future generations of spooks that it might just be in their own best interests to refuse to carry out orders that are clearly contrary to the spirit of American law? It seems like a point that shouldn't just be shrugged away, even if one disagrees.

I'm just sick of people urging me to remember what irrational fear felt like.

It really is a different world.

US President Barack Obama promised to work towards a "durable peace" in the Middle East during a phone call to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday, Palestinian officials said.

Obama called the Palestinian leader a day after taking the oath of office and assured him that he intended "to work with him as partners to establish a durable peace in the region," Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.

Obama told Abbas that the president was the first foreign leader he called since taking office, Rudeina said.

"This is my first phone call to a foreign leader and I'm making it only hours after I took office," Rudeina quoted Obama as telling Abbas.

Yes, yes. It's only symbolism.

Still: holy crap.

The new guy.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

I'm not as exuberant today as I was in the approach to it; the stock market took a hit, Ted Kennedy's back in the hospital, and all the world's impossible tasks are coming back into focus. Even if Obama's everything I want him to be - and, of course, that's not gonna prove to be the case - getting him into office is barely the end of the beginning of the great generational slog.

That said, I can't even begin to describe what a relief it is to be able to cut and paste passages like the one above and then to say that they came from the President of the United States.

One thing about the Bush administration . . .

Now that it's done, I don't think I can overstate the extent to which it - by its crimes and errors - informed and fed my sense of myself as an American, rather than as a more nebulously defined global citizen. If the cost weren't so horrifically high, I might even be tempted to be grateful; giving me a kind of adversarial context in which to test and explore my views on public ethics and appropriate policy forced me, in my own mind, to clarify positions that had always been vague and even a bit unsteady in more morally comfortable years.

All told, though, that's one sorry-ass silver lining to all those years of decay and shame - to say nothing of the environmental damage that was done along the way.

Good riddance.

I (belatedly) wonder if Ehud Olmert is on drugs.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.

Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.

The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.

"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."

That's the Prime Minister of Israel, publicly gloating about humiliating the U.S. Secretary of State and dictating policy to the hapless president. One might take that as a sign of his state of mind almost three weeks into the Gaza offensive - playing to the domestic hardcore, rather full of himself, and not terribly mindful of the fact that his actions don't seem to be aimed at any clear and beneficial end.

But he's clearly enjoying being able to swagger a bit after the last few years of ineptitude and scandal.

Another mess for the Israeli Supreme Court to clean up.

Israel's Central Election Committee banned all Arab parties from participating in February's elections today, as part of a desperate effort to retroactively strip away as much strategic legitimacy from the assault on Gaza as possible by making allegations of outright racism that much harder to refute.

Meanwhile, Ha'aretz has now called for the cessation of hostilities. It's something, at least.

Mea culpa.

Long-time readers of the Wall will probably recall that I spent most of 2007 and 2008 grappling with a recurring worry that the Cheneyites were in ascent and that open hostilities with Iran were never less than extremely likely.

My fears, happily, were not borne out.

And, in fact, the Times is now reporting that President Bush personally squashed plans for an Israeli attack in `08. To be clear, there were a lot of good reasons for abstaining from any such strikes - both political, once the 2007 NIE made a nuclear Iran seem like a less than imminent threat, and practical - but I didn't think the Bush administration had the good sense to recognize those reasons, and I gave the most prominent players a lot of grief on this blog (not that they'd particularly care) as a result.

I'm delighted to have been embarrassingly wrong.

Random Gaza quote.

If we want to argue that Israel will have to deal with Hamas, cannot pulverize it at gunpoint, cannot "eliminate" it, and indeed heightens its prestige by piling up the bodies of civilians whether they are deliberately targeted or not--and I don't know any alternative in the real world to dealing with them as a political force--we mustn't think we can win the argument cheaply by pretending that it will be easy. It will not be easy. It's only necessary.

Todd Gitlin.

Undoing Ledbetter.

It's about time.

Cui bono?

It's clearly not the people of Gaza, but it's not looking like Israel and its regional allies, either.

As the war in Gaza burned through its 14th day, Arab governments have felt their legitimacy challenged with an uncommon virulence. With each passing day, and each Palestinian death, the popularity of Hamas and other radical movements has ratcheted higher on the Arab street, while the standing of Arab leaders has suffered.

Nowhere in the Arab world is the gap between the street and the government so wide as here in Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel and has refused to allow free passage of goods and people through its border with Gaza, a decision that has been attacked by Islamic and Arab leaders and proved deeply troubling to many Egyptians. And so the government of President Hosni Mubarak appeared to lean back on its standard formula for preserving authority at Friday Prayer, relying on its security forces to keep calm on the street and government religious institutions like Al Azhar to try to appease public sentiment, in this case by lashing out at the Jews in response to Gaza.

Obviously, Egyptian domestic politics are a major factor here as well; the Mubarak regime is unpopular and authoritarian all on its own, and an ascendant Hamas in Gaza represents both a direct threat and - insofar as it makes other Islamist groups (i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood) look good - an indirect threat as well. Conversely, opposing the Israeli alliance against Hamas is a relatively mild (and therefore relatively safe) way for Egyptian citizens to express some hostility to the policies of their own powers that be. [At least, that's how it starts out.] Anyway, there are metapolitical factors here that the Israelis simply can't control, and I'm not pretending otherwise.

But, regardless, the assault on Gaza comes at a cost of regional support for diplomacy as well as a cost in human life - and at this point I think my pessimism about Israel's chances of getting anything good in return is fairly well established.

The inevitable caveat.

Or, if not caveat, a possible flash of silver lining - Ezra Klein has made the very reasonable observation that calamitous financial news at least improves the political leverage of people who have useful and necessary changes in mind, and more power to him for having done so.

Obviously, though, the caveat to the caveat is that the Republicans in Congress are, by and large, far more radicalized than they were in the immediate aftermath of Clinton's election (the Gingrich hordes didn't arrive at their Contract and sweep into office until `94, IIRC). Worse still, the Democratic leadership is in some cases pretty heavily insulated from the pain, and far more respectful of the institutional roadblocks available to the minority party than it probably should be. Leverage is only meaningful insofar as it's actually utilized.

More than half a million jobs lost in December.

The closest thing to good news I can point to today is Obama's admission that he's aware of Paul Krugman's concerns about the stimulus package; an optimist might dare to hope that the ensuing silence on Krugman's blog indicates that the professor is indeed pulling together the most persuasive argument he can make - but, of course, there's no way to know.

There's also some indication that the Obama administration is gonna do more creative things with TARP (or the remainder thereof) than had been popularly assumed, and . . . well, that would be really reassuring were I not fairly confident that the more highly esteemed alarmists hadn't forgotten that that money was in the mix.

Bleah. Just a dismal day.

What my super-genius friends are up to.

Not naming any names, but . . . well, one of them went and revolutionized telecommunications again. As I understand it, there's no official date for release for the sleek doohicky at hand - it's gotta undergo a love-in at the FCC first - but I gather it's reasonably safe to assume that it'll be out in the U.S. by summer.

Also? I hear it'll give you super powers.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

If this is to be believed, the Bushies seem determined to remain embarrassing to the country to the very end.

Paul Krugman says we're doomed.

Or, more to the point, he thinks the current stimulus plan isn't going to be up to the job. Super.

That said, I caught a bit of Obama on Rachel Maddow tonight, and he seemed to suggest that he thought funding might be added to the plan as it works its way through Congress - which, okay, seems counterintuitive. On the other hand, the guy's better at politics than I am, so . . . well, wait and see.

Reading the tea leaves in Israel.

According to Aluf Benn in Ha'aretz, Obama's recent comments expressing concern for civilian life seem to have been received as something between a masterfully pointed epigram and a gun to the head by the powers that be in Tel Aviv:

The announcement from the Bush White House that for the time being Israel could carry on its offensive was little consolation. Obama made it clear that starting on January 20 the rules of American involvement in the region will change, and his administration will be a lot more active in pushing the diplomatic process between Israel and the Arabs forward.

Obama's timing, after the strike on the school, signals the direction the U.S. will turn in its attitude to the region: It will support Israel, but will oppose any harming of Palestinian civilians. This means that Israel will find it difficult to close the crossings into the Gaza Strip at will.

Senior officials in Jerusalem said yesterday that Israel has two to four days, at most, for this operation. The talks of the political leadership yesterday also revolved around the question of how Israel should end the operation.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would like a diplomatic agreement that will center on countering the smuggling into the Strip. The problem is that Egypt is unwilling to be party to an agreement that will lay the responsibility at its feet, and is opposed to the deployment of foreign observers on its soil. Cairo is also worried that Israel is trying to dump the Gaza Strip on Egypt, by opening the Rafah crossing. So far the American efforts to promote a deal through Egypt are stuck.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel should hold direct talks with Egypt to reach a tacit agreement on preventing smuggling. Israel would agree to a bolstered Egyptian presence in the Sinai peninsula - and President Hosni Mubarak invited Israel to talks on improving the current security arrangements.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is concerned that a diplomatic agreement may be imposed on Israel - which would elevate Hamas, equating it to a sovereign state like Israel. Livni favors a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza the minute the IDF says its mission is completed.

So, apparently the end is in sight.

No matter what the Israelis do, of course, what's left of Hamas will claim victory for just having survived; for all that the Israeli forces were very disciplined in keeping their mission objectives vague, the scale of the Gaza incursion is such that it can't help but be susceptible to a kind of maximalist spin. Maybe tighter border controls will be imposed, but I don't have a lot of faith that the quality of anyone's life will be a whole lot better in eight months.

Except, perhaps, for the masterminds (such as they are) behind al-Qaeda.

Tell me again how this is supposed to cost Hamas popular and international support.

The way this is set up politically means that Israel has to have a ceasefire imposed on it - this seems to be what Defense minister Barak is looking for and he favored the French proposal for a truce last week even before the ground invasion began. The speculation among Israeli commentators is that an international demand for a ceasefire is pretty much the only exit strategy Israel has up its sleeve, even suggesting that Israel may intentionally exacerbate a humanitarian crisis in order to force the international community to act (that was the expert analysis on Israeli channel 10 TV last night). Things are made even more complicated by the fact two of the ministers leading the country are competing in the elections next month - MoD Barak and FM Livni. So it's not just Israel that needs a winning narrative - each minister needs his/her own particular winning narrative. So an outside push is a prerequisite for ending this.

Makes sense.

Bombing a U.N. school might help them out there.

Seriously, there's been a robust dialogue between a great many American bloggers about whether this constitutes a just war, and whether arguments for proportionality are themselves moral, and the more I read the more I pull out what's left of my hair. Insofar as combat here strikes me as being fundamentally destructive to Israel's long-term security interests, the question of the legitimacy of the grievance strikes me as being almost beside the point. How can military action be ethically defensible if it's ultimately pointless?

Full disclosure: I never thought that Israeli deterrence was hugely undermined by the 2006 fiasco - Olmert's reputation as a strategic thinker was in the toilet, true, but that's not the same thing as saying that Israel's military capabilities were suddenly exposed as hollow. Yes, there's a threat inherent in the reputedly expanding range of Hamas weaponry, but the current operation doesn't seem to address that problem in any definitive way at all - if anything, I'd expect that it'll make the borders even more porous over the next several months, and the population of Gaza even more hostile.

It's just frustrating. I don't see what long-term objectives - beyond possibly making a bunch of politicians feel tough for a few weeks - this assault is meant to further, and yet the humanitarian cost is already appallingly high.

Ackerman on Gaza.

The invasion of Gaza has begun. As the bombardment of Gaza has failed to break Palestinian "will," now the gamble is that ground troops will. According to Ha'aretz, a significant portion of Israeli "top commanders" dissented from the decision to invade, arguing that the airstrikes had already dealt Hamas a "heavy blow" and that Israeli casualties could be heavy as well. Clearly they shared the concern that Israel was escalating the war without regard for strategy. How will Israel de-escalate? How can it invade Gaza on the empty goal to engage in an "all-out war" with Hamas and plausibly leave before that unfulfillable end-state is achieved? How can Israeli commanders and politicians who believe a war is going well be persuaded to back down before they commit hubristic blunders that decimate the people of Gaza and make sustainable peace and security less achievable?

This is a plea for what amounts at this point to cynicism. Israel should arbitrarily declare victory and get the hell out of Gaza. Hamas will claim victory too. But it was always going to claim victory, and every hour Israel is in Gaza pummeling them without destroying them is an hour that Hamas will be able to claim that more plausibly, just like Hezbollah did in 2006. That's how these types of asymmetric wars work; and also why it's better for the larger party not to launch them. Israel may not want to hear this now, but it's playing on Hamas' strategic terms. Stepping back is the truer "success" at this point.

It's a couple of days old, but still convincing - and, by the way, it came from here.

He's tried so hard to be patient.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is expected to form a new government by the end of February despite stalled talks with the main opposition party, the state-run Herald newspaper said Monday.

The veteran leader, who started a month-long holiday this week, began preparations for a new administration last week when he fired nine ministers and three deputies who lost seats in last year's parliamentary election.

The move was seen as the clearest sign yet he had lost patience with talks on forming a power-sharing government with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

And he so wanted them to be able to give him the illusion of legitimacy.

More here.

Fighting in Gaza continues.

Five Israelis dead, and over five hundred Palestinians. Not a lot of direct reporting from the combat zone - in no small part because the Israeli forces seem to be ignoring last Friday's Supreme Court ruling to allow admission of the foreign press - but the impression one gets is that Israeli operations are about as surgical and precise as can be managed, given the weapons they employ.

Hamas is still somehow firing its rockets, and the Palestinian people don't seem likely to be catching any breaks anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has apparently decided that the most helpful thing it can do is read from its scripts from Israel's doomed attack on Lebanon in 2006.

Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address on Saturday, said the United States did not want a “one-way cease-fire” that allowed Hamas to keep up its rocket fire, and Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday echoed the point, declaring that only a “sustainable, durable” peace would be acceptable.

And you know no one feels the suffering of the innocent more than those two!

"Great Depression II?"

I'm disconcerted to note that (Nobel Prize in Economics winner) Paul Krugman is currently worrying that certain major Congressional players aren't taking the crisis seriously enough. I'd like to propose rocketing them into the sun, but the whole problem is that pragmatic expenditure is the kind most likely to be blocked . . . .

Minor procedural observation.

Y'know, if the Republicans are, in fact, going to try to block the seating of a guy that genuinely seems to be the duly-elected junior senator of Minnesota, they should probably be forced to filibuster for real - holding the floor until they all fall over - rather than getting to enjoy the usual polite convention that announcing an intent to filibuster is the same thing as doing it. If these guys want to set a precedent for refusing admission to the Senate until arbitrary legal hurdles have been cleared, then I'd like to see a parallel precedent that establishes one really has to work for it.

Disenfranchisement - even temporary disenfranchisement - shouldn't be easy.

A bit closer to home.

Today's Washington Post offers a bit of insight into how former Maryland governor Robert Ehrlich spent my tax dollars. It's absolutely delightful.

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored -- and labeled as terrorists -- activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation.

One of the possible "crimes" in the file police opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: "civil rights."

According to hundreds of pages of newly obtained police documents, the groups were swept into a broad surveillance operation that started in 2005 with routine preparations for the scheduled executions of two men on death row.

The operation has been called a "waste of resources" by the current police superintendent and "undemocratic" by the governor.

Police have acknowledged that the monitoring, which took place during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), spiraled out of control, with an undercover trooper spending 14 months infiltrating peaceful protest groups. Troopers have said they inappropriately labeled 53 individuals as terrorists in their database, information that was shared with federal authorities. But the new documents reveal a far more expansive set of police targets and indicate that police did not close some files until late 2007.

The surveillance ended with no arrests and no evidence of violent sedition. Instead, troopers are preparing to purge files and say they are expecting lawsuits.

Ah, law and order.

Just when the U.S. is finally getting rid of Bush . . .

. . . the E.U. accidentally raises up a disappointment.

The European Union's new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state.

The views of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, 67, have left the government of Mirek Topolanek, his bitter opponent, determined to keep him as far away as possible from the EU presidency, which it took over from France yesterday.

The Czech president, who caused a diplomatic incident by dining with opponents of the EU’s Lisbon treaty on a recent visit to Ireland, has a largely ceremonial role.

But there are already fears that, after the dynamic EU presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy - including his hyper-active attempts at international diplomacy over the credit crisis and Georgia as well as an historic agreement to cut greenhouse gases - the Czech effort will be mired in infighting and overshadowed by the platform it will give to Mr Klaus and his controversial views.

The long, slow slide continues.

After her visit to Paris on Thursday to explain to French authorities why she thought this was not the time for a quick cease-fire, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel said, “There is no doubt that as long as Hamas controls Gaza, it is a problem for Israel, a problem for the Palestinians and a problem for the entire region.”

Vice Premier Haim Ramon went even further Friday night in an interview on Israeli television, saying Israel must not end this operation with Hamas in charge of Gaza.

“What I think we need to do is to reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern,” Mr. Ramon said on Channel One. “That is the most important thing.”

Neither Prime Minister Ehud Olmert nor Defense Minister Ehud Barak has made such a statement. Still, there is a growing and shared concern among Israeli leaders that any letup against Hamas would be problematic for Israel’s broad goals in the long term because it could bolster and validate the group, which says Israel should be destroyed.

“If the war ends in a draw, as expected, and Israel refrains from re-occupying Gaza, Hamas will gain diplomatic recognition,” wrote Aluf Benn, a political analyst, in the newspaper Haaretz on Friday. “No matter what you call it,” he added, “Hamas will obtain legitimacy.”

Israeli ground forces have entered Gaza, so we're long past the point of meaningful discussion. Still, it's worth noting that Hamas gained legitimacy in the conventional sense because it was elected to power, and it was elected to power largely because it promised to deliver social services that Fatah couldn't. To the extent that the narrative then became that Hamas failed to make life better for the Palestinians because the Israelis and the Americans wouldn't let them, the group has been able to conflate its craziness - and its ability to endure - with its Palestinian nationalist credentials. And, yeah, that sucks!

But, basically, as long as the Palestinians are trapped in the hungry side of the late nineteenth century by forces beyond their control, and as long as even the West's preferred Palestinian leadership can have its funding cut off whenever it complains about illegal settlements, there's always going to be room for a second political party that embraces demagoguery and, yeah, violence. Even if Hamas is totally killed off, the sentiments that enabled it aren't going to be defused.

If Israel really wants Hamas to self-destruct, it seems to me that they should limit their military actions to limiting Hamas's military actions, while simultaneously giving them enough space to demonstrate their incompetence at actual governance.

Instead, if the speculation is to be believed, the Israelis are contemplating a full takeover of Gaza - or maybe they're just flirting with the idea of creating a state of total anarchy. It won't bring them security in the long run, but one gets the sense that the powers on high have decided that manageable chaos is a perfectly viable alternative.

Daniel Larison predicts disappointment.

The incoming administration will almost certainly abide by Obama’s campaign pledges not to force Israel to make concessions or “drag” them to the negotiating table. It will maintain what Weiss and perhaps even Greenwald will find to be an incredibly out-of-touch position of absolute support for ongoing military operations in Gaza (assuming the operations will still be going on in three weeks’ time) just as Obama supported Israeli actions in Lebanon in 2006 to the hilt. The public stance of the administration will be staunchly, almost embarrassingly supportive of the actions of Olmert’s outgoing government and whatever new government forms later this year. Of course, he might surprise everyone by departing from everything he has said and done for the last four years regarding this subject, but I don’t think it likely.

He's probably right.

My congresswoman, on the other hand, is apparently doing pretty well by me.

M.J. Rosenberg speaks.

Or, rather, he writes.

Just a few years ago, Israel's situation was entirely different. It was close to achieving virtually universal acceptance.

Some of Israel's most vocal supporters want us to forget that. They cling to the idea that "the world has always hated Israel" (and the Jews), rejecting as irrelevant the idea that Palestinian statelessness is at the root of the problem.

They reject that fact because it suggests that Israel is in charge of its own destiny. It can determine where it stands in the eyes of the world, and especially the Arab world, by changing its relationship with the Palestinians.

How do I know that? Because it happened once before.

Following Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's decision to recognize both the PLO and the Palestinians' right to a state in the West Bank and Gaza, nine non-Arab Muslim states and 32 of the 43 Sub-Saharan African states established relations with Israel. India and China, the two largest markets in the world, opened trade relations. Jordan signed a peace treaty and several of the emirates began quiet dealings with Israel.

The Arab boycott ended. Foreign investment soared. Israel's isolation appeared to be over.

The most graphic demonstration of Israel's changed international standing occurred at Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's funeral in 1995, which rivaled President Kennedy's in terms of international representation.

Leaders from virtually every nation on earth came to pay homage to Rabin. From President Clinton and Prince Charles to President Hosni Mubarak, King Hussein, and the leaders of every country in Europe, most of Africa and Asia (including India and China), Latin America, Turkey, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, and Tunisia. Yasir Arafat wept at Leah Rabin's apartment in Tel Aviv.

The world mourned Rabin because under him, Israel had embraced the cause of peace with the Palestinians. The homage to Rabin was a clear demonstration--as was the opening of trade and diplomatic relations with formerly hostile states--that Israel was not being isolated because it is a Jewish state, but because of its conflict with the Palestinians.

Once Rabin moved to end the conflict, he ended Israel's isolation as well. (If the problem was undying Jew-hatred, Rabin's opening to the Palestinians would not have affected Israel's standing).

We need to remember this as the hard-liners insist that anti-Israel sentiment is unconnected with anything Israel does. That is simply not true. Even Ariel Sharon, hated more than any Israeli by most Arabs and Muslims, saw his image transformed overnight when he moved to relinquish Gaza. He actually received an ovation at the United Nations, leaving the old man in shock.

All along the watchtower.

After a week of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza strip, Israel, Arab countries and the United States are discussing how to create an international force that would safeguard an eventual cease-fire, diplomats said Friday.

A key part of the arrangement, they said, is that the main Palestinian rival to the ruling Hamas party would be asked to take charge of border crossings. The diplomats spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the proposals are still in their infancy and could be overtaken by events, such as an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza. Israel's bombardment already has killed some 400 people, as many as a quarter of them civilians.

The most difficult aspect under discussion was how to bring Gaza's border crossings under the control of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah security forces, which Hamas violently ejected from the Mediterranean enclave in 2007.

Diplomats said they saw no chance now for restoring Fatah's control over Gaza, but it's a different question whether Hamas would agree to Fatah taking charge of border crossings if Israel opened them fully.

My pessimistic streak is, of course, inflamed. Even if Hamas gives this the green light, it would associate Fatah even more closely with the policies of the Americans and Israelis - and for that to have any positive effect at all, the standard of living in Gaza would have to skyrocket. Otherwise, the moderates just look like collaborators again.

And, to be blunt, does Fatah even have the resources to mount a successful police effort along the border now? I mean, even if we trust that hostility between the two Palestinian groups is so profound that the intent would be there to secure every foot of the line, it's not like Abbas's side is rolling in tax dollars.

I don't know. This seems at a glance like another undercooked effort to give a local favorite a leg up in a political arena we don't adequately understand. I hope I'm wrong - and, if I'm not, I hope there's a Plan B on the table - but I'm not confident in my hopes.

I am a slave to gossip.

I don't know when Hillary Clinton's planning to resign her senate seat - though her plans may well be public - and so I don't know how much more time Governor Paterson is going to get to spend trying to choose between self-inflicted wounds; Congress convenes next week, though, and the Obama administration stands up on the 20th, so I've got to assume that the clock is running down. The latest well-publicized rumor - or the latest iteration of an old well-publicized rumor - is that the governor's on the verge of naming Caroline Kennedy to the vacancy.

I think it's a slightly terrible idea, of course. I'm sure she'd do a fine job, but if we're going to let our country descend further into the twilight realm of halfassed dynasticism, I'd personally rather the electorate directly make the call. Handing senatorial appointments out to the nearest available member of a prestigious clan without contest just seems a tad feudal to me - and, of course, it seems like something that might one day happen to another freakin' Bush. I'd prefer to keep the precedents as sparse as possible.

But the whole point, of course, is that I and my ilk don't get a vote.

> 9000!

I have no particular reason to trust that it'll last - particularly once Obama gets into office and the Republicans in Congress formally begin obstructing the steps necessary to avert long-term structural collapse - but it is worth noting that the Dow Jones and its cousins all said hello to the new year in extremely satisfying ways.

Ezra Klein states the (seemingly) obvious.

Palestinians see the settlements and outposts as very simple, and very traditional, land grabs. They create a built reality in which Israel controls as much land as possible, and in which Israel's settlements act as barriers between various Palestinian population centers, thus ensuring the impossibility of a viable Palestinian state. And that is the point. It may not be Israel's point, but it is the point. The outposts and settlements alike are home to extreme elements of Israeli society -- elements that don't believe in a peace process, and that believe in full Israeli control of the Biblical lands. And these settlements -- which are supported and protected by the Israeli state -- expanded during the whole of the peace process.

It is true that Hamas does not believe in Israel's right to exist. But it is also true that Palestinians don't believe that Israel means ever offer them a dignified and autonomous existence, and thus far, the evidence has supported their position. For a state, survival is analogous to land. And for the past decade, the Israeli state has taken more and more Palestinian land. Even the Israelis admit this, calling the outposts "illegal." That doesn't justify the Palestinians' violent response, which has been both morally atrocious and wholly ineffective, but it's important to understanding why Palestinian society sees itself in a war for it's own survival, not for Israel's.

Not that that would make Israeli parents in Sderot feel any better about the risk of their kids getting shelled - but it is true, and it's something American coverage generally overlooks.

Flagged for merit. [And so is this one, while we're on the subject.]

Well, crap.

There were growing fears in Israel last night that Hamas missiles could threaten its top-secret nuclear facility at Dimona.

That's certainly not going to make anyone in Tel Aviv any less tense.

Let's all watch Spencer Ackerman flip Fredo the bird!

It's not like the odious little jerk doesn't have it coming.

Zimbabwe.

A Zimbabwean judge has ruled that 16 activists accused of organising military training to topple President Robert Mugabe must remain in jail.

The group includes human rights activist Jestina Mukoko, who went missing for three weeks before being brought to court last week.

The police had initially denied they were holding Ms Mukoko, who was seized from her home by a group of armed men.

The abduction and arrests have raised doubts about a power-sharing deal.

Gotta love the understatement there.

The full article's over here.

The view from inside the bubble.

Not that my opinion determines the direction of the wind, but I don't think Tzipi Livni is helping Israel much with moments like this:

Reiterating Israel's rejection of the 48-hour humanitarian cease-fire proposal, Livni said "there is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce."

In her remarks to reporters, Livni said Israel had been careful to protect the civilian population and had kept the humanitarian situation in Gaza "completely as it should be".

Surely - surely - she knows that Gaza is a hellhole right now, and that its inhabitants are terrified; presumably, she considers that the responsibility of Hamas, or of the citizens (for want of a word that better reflects the status of participants in a demi-nation) themselves, but the conditions in which they live are objectively verifiable. By suggesting that much ado is being made of nothing, she's damaging Israeli credibility in ways that seem completely unnecessary to the transoceanic bystander.

[Conversely, I read a quote earlier today from a Palestinian who claims that Ismail Haniyeh is on a short-list for a Nobel Peace Prize. Distortions abound.]

Anyway, my point is cynical and short: if you consider yourself to be in an existential struggle, you really can't afford to cling to romantic idealizations of your own tactics. If your foreign minister can't defend your actions in terms that convincingly reflect - or at least effectively rebut - the experience of the outside world, you're undermining yourself.

Meanwhile, the campaign has gone for six days, and continues apace. Four Israelis are dead, and over four hundred Palestinians - of whom the UN estimates about a quarter to have been civilians.

An oldish one from Gershom Gorenberg.

We're currently on day five of the Israeli strikes on Gaza, and the depressing politics of the region have already pretty much determined the course of events. The Israelis locked down the Palestinians for months, which led Hamas to earn some street cred by firing hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory at the end of the last cease fire, which led to Israeli politicians demonstrating their own resolve by blasting the strip even further back into the stone age than shortages and infrastructural failures had already arranged. There are hundreds dead, and more to come, compromise is even more politically impossible than it was six months ago, and the upcoming Israeli elections are ever more likely to go to the faction most able to exploit popular fears and prejudices.

That, of course, probably means another climb up from the ashes for Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's Republican. Obstructionist, demagogue, enemy of pragmatic "elites," I've looked at him with the sort of dread I usually reserve for heroes of the American deep south since the late `90s; even Ariel Sharon, pre-rehabilitation, seemed like a step up.

Now Gorenberg's here to remind me that Netanyahu is actually the lesser of the Likud's factional evils this time around. Meet Moshe Feiglin and his friends:

Until recently, Feiglin hasn't hidden his goals. On the Jewish Leadership website, a Hebrew document proposes principles for a constitution for Israel. It would include a high rabbinic court, chosen only by clergy, that would overturn any legislation it saw as contradicting Jewish religious law. A newly established senate, with a guaranteed Jewish majority of over 80 percent, would have to consult the rabbinic court on all national issues. Israel would lay claim not only to the West Bank and Gaza, but also to all of Jordan.

An article by Feiglin on the group's website, describing what he'd do if he gained power, has been blocked to public access since the Likud primary. In it, one step he proposes is holding a ceremony at every army base in which all non-lethal weaponry would be destroyed. Faced with Palestinian demonstrators, soldiers could only shoot to kill. On Jewish Leadership's English website, another Feiglin tract contrasts parliamentary democracy with an "authentic Jewish regime" that would express the "organic unity of the Nation of Israel." Put simply, Feiglin's ideology is the meeting point of fundamentalism and fascism.

Feiglin's strategy for conquering the Likud exploits the structure of Israeli politics. In national elections for the 120-member Knesset, voters cast a single ballot for a party. If a party wins 10 percent of the vote, the first 12 candidates on its slate will enter parliament. The head of the largest party in the Knesset normally becomes prime minister. The head of the party and the rest of the slate are chosen by a relatively small number of dues-paying party members. A well-organized, disciplined group that turns out in high numbers can have disproportionate influence.

Last summer, the Likud held a primary for party leader. Less than 40,000 people voted. Netanyahu won 73 percent to Feiglin's 23 percent -- a showing for the far-rightist that Netanyahu found embarrassing and threatening.

In the general election, Netanyahu's main rival for the premiership is Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima party. A marketing executive before he went into politics, Netanyahu has tried to rebrand himself and his party as pragmatic center-rightists. To do so, he sought respected figures, perceived as moderates, to run for the Knesset slate -- a popular ex-chief of the national police, Asaf Hefetz; retired general Uzi Dayan; a famous ex-basketball player, Tal Brody. He even brought back former finance minister Dan Meridor, who left the Likud in disgust during Netanyahu's term as prime minister.

Before the party's vote for Knesset candidates, Netanyahu encouraged Likud members to vote for his recruits. Feiglin, meanwhile, endorsed a list of candidates including well-known party hardliners outside his own circle.

Feiglin won. The top of the Likud ticket is dominated by hardliners in debt to Feiglin. Of Netanyahu's moderate recruits, only Meridor placed high enough to enter the Knesset.

Bodes really well, doesn't it?

As of a week or so ago, Gorenberg seems to have felt that momentum was sliding back toward Kadima and Lipni - and, yeah, I'm fairly confident the severity of the current response to Hamas rockets owes a lot to the "centrist" party currently in power needing to demonstrate its willingness to respond decisively to Palestinian aggression despite international pressure to the contrary; the fact that it doesn't ultimately advance Israeli interests is necessarily unimportant to the blunt calculations of the moment. Maybe it'll even work for them - though recent experience in Lebanon is hardly reassuring.

Still, chaos and fear always seem to serve the most dangerous people in the room.

Because Russia is something of an ongoing concern . . .

I'll just point out the latest bundle of anecdotes from McClatchy. This isn't really news anymore, but it's worth repeating the rough state of play: Putin and Saakashvili's ballet of adventurism in August scared the crap out of Russia's foreign investors, who'd previously seen the country as fundamentally stable in matters of governance. Autocratic tendencies are lamentable, but predictable; recklessness is something rather different. Meanwhile, the price of oil has been plummeting, which basically shreds the entire motivating force behind the economic expansion of the Putin era (which, to be frank, was never managed all that well); the Russian stock markets have imploded, but too few Russians actually had a stake to notice immediately. Now, though, construction is drying up, Christmas sales are way below those of recent years, and there's a certain amount of nervousness in the air.

[We're also getting, for the first time, some minor media indications that Medvedev might be looking to step out from Putin's shadow - even as constitutional changes that promise the old KGB lion another twelve years on the figurative throne have been rushed through the Duma.]

I can't help but think that 2009 is the year that comfortable political apathy in the former Soviet Union is set to explode. I don't know what comes after, but I don't envy the Russians the discovery.

Happy New Year!

Just a few hours late . . . .