In-home nuclear reactors, anyone?

Here’s something interesting (via The Wall Street Journal’s Informed Reader blog): Democracies generally might not torture as much as totalitarian regimes do, but they did invent a lot of torture’s modern incarnations, writes Darius Rejali, a professor of political science in Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Democracies’ open courts and free press discourage blatant rack-and-thumb-screw torture methods. But in the 20th century that obstacle led police and soldiers in democracies...

Note: This is a follow-up to Saturday’s post. Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif’s recent revision of his longstanding jihadi views have raised some interesting questions about whether his ideological transformation is genuine, or if it was forced by torture-happy Egyptian authorities. No one knows the answer, although there is much speculation. Interestingly, Egypt has the largest “de-radicalization” program in the Arab world — the same program which Al-Sharif was allegedly exposed...

A translation seems superfluous. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

One of the jihadi movement’s most prominent figures, Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif (more commonly known as “Dr. Fadl”), has published a sweeping retraction of many of his former views. Al-Sharif, along with Ayman al-Zawahiri, was one of the founders of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a violent splinter group that broke off from the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s. His books have long been required reading in jihadi circles –”The Essentials of Making Ready for Jihad” has been...

Anti-establishment candidate Garry Kasparov, who has been energetically running for the Russian presidency, was forced out of the race yesterday. Is anyone else not surprised?

Dr. Ahmad Yousuf, a senior advisor to Ismail Haniyeh (left), recently wrote an open letter to Condoleezza Rice calling for the Bush administration to engage in unconditional dialogue with Hamas. (Hat tip: Jeff Dexter) Couched in flowery diplomatic language, Yousuf’s portrayal of Hamas is of a benign organization with only peaceful intentions. He writes: “Many people make the mistake of presuming that we have some ideological aversion to making peace. Quite the opposite; we have consistently...

Like a Slavic Mike Huckabee, Dmitri Medvedev has ascended to new prominence from the chaff of presidential candidates. As a Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Medvedev was already on the short list for the Russian presidency, along with fellow Deputy PM Sergei Ivanov and Premier Viktor Zubkov. But after Mr. Zubkov’s surprising anointment as prime minister just months before the election, he seemed the more likely choice to be Mr. Putin’s chosen successor. After all, president (and likely PM-to-be) Putin...

A couple of thoughts on the recent Russian Duma elections: First, and most obviously, this was a huge blow for Russian democrats. Putin’s party, United Russia, pulled in over 60% of the vote and they now hold 2/3rds of the seats in parliament, enough to override the objections of all other dissenting parties. The only significant opposition party that got over the 7% threshold was the Communist party, which is not considered to be a major threat (nor a strong proponent of democracy). The...

Matt Dupuis has an interesting follow-up post on the how of the recent NIE report. He also starts to consider the important question of why exactly Iran decided to halt its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.

This week’s defeat of a government-backed constitutional referendum in Venezuela was a huge blow for Hugo Chavez. Since taking power in 1999, the Venezuelan president has historically received broad support for his domestic agenda and he has won several overwhelming electoral mandates. Interestingly, though, his loss raises the possibility that Venezuelans are becoming increasingly skeptical of their populist president. The blatant attempt to establish himself as president-for-life has raised...

Tagging on to Shaun’s excellent coverage, I wanted to point TMV readers to non-proliferation guru Matt Dupuis’ very interesting analysis of the recent NIE report.

Last Tuesday, November 20, Jordan held parliamentary elections to broad international acclaim. The vote was the second since Jordan’s monarch, King Abdullah II, took power in 1999, and independent Jordanian observers certified the election as free and fair. Indeed, the elections went smoothly, a record number of female candidates competed and won seats, and voter turnout was an impressive fifty-four percent. But these facts belie the tenuousness of Jordanian democracy: voter fraud was practically...

The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration, since 9/11, has been sending terrorism suspects to Jordan to be questioned and tortured by its intelligence service (known as the General Intelligence Department, or “GID”). As the article notes, the GID had gained a reputation for “persuading tight-lipped suspects to talk, even if it meant using abusive tactics that could violate U.S. or international law.” In fact, abuse is what the GID appears to specialize in: ...

Lots of credit to John McCain who eloquently articulated his objection to torture in a testy exchange with Mitt Romney at the recent presidential debate. Romney’s ambivalence on this issue is disturbing, and we can only imagine the kind of administration that he would lead. As Steve Benen points out, Romney’s top counterterrorism advisor is Cofer Black, the man at the CIA responsible for setting up the chain of “secret prisons” in Eastern Europe. Black famously told Congress...

There’s been a lot of hype about the alleged recent return of thousands of Iraqi refugees from neighboring countries like Syria and Jordan. American officials have touted this development as a clear indication that security is improving and that Iraqis feel safe enough to return to their homes. Not surprisingly, though, we’re not being given an accurate picture. For starters, reports of Iraqis returning appear to be badly distorted. Although an Iraqi official recently announced that over...

There is a lot of contradictory reporting about Afghanistan. Part of the problem, as Joshua Foust notes, is that there are few reporters in the country for more than two or three months at a time (and fewer still that ever leave Kabul.) If you believe Ann Marlowe at The Weekly Standard, for example, the Taliban are on their way out. Such an assessment seems a bit optimistic, however. Thankfully, I would venture to say that a more accurate — but much more depressing — picture of what’s...

I just finished reading a report about efforts by Indonesian authorities to “deradicalize” hard-core jihadi members of Jemaah Islamiya and other groups. This isn’t the only place that such a thing has been tried — similar programs have been instituted in countries like Singapore, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Britain. By using a variety of tactics, the aim of these programs is to convince extremists to reconsider their views. Typically, efforts to “deprogram” jihadis...

Since the British started to withdraw troops from Iraq’s southern city of Basra at the end of the summer, observers have been watching carefully. Because Basra is seen as an important indicator of what would happen in the event of a broader troop withdrawal, both sides of the “should we stay or should we go” debate have been looking for evidence to bolster their case. It’s no surprise, then, that it’s so hard to get any idea of what’s actually going on. On the...

I’m out of my league in commenting on the crisis in Georgia, but I wanted to pass along two video clips of the opposition TV station, Imedi, being shut down recently by Georgian security forces. (For more detailed coverage of events in Georgia, click over to Joshua Foust and Nathan Hamm’s excellent blog, Registan.) Clip 1: This is the first clip in a two-part set. It’s entirely in Georgian, but even if you don’t know the language, the faces of the two reporters convey a lot...

Lebanon’s parliament has again delayed a session to elect the next president, scheduling the vote (perhaps we should say tentatively) for Friday. The delays are the result of continuing conflict between Parliament’s anti-Syrian March 14 Alliance on the one hand, and pro-Syrian groups, including Hizballah and the Amal movement (also Shiite) on the other. The pro-Syrian groups have enough power in parliament that if a consensus can’t be reached, the next president will be politically castrated...

I’ve commented before (here and here) about what I see as the ineffectiveness of traditional public diplomacy. Real public diplomacy is accomplished through actions, not words. Sending Cal Ripken Jr. off to China to teach baseball skills to youngsters is not going to transform our image in the world; nor, for that matter, are lame assurances by Karen Hughes (the head of public diplomacy at the State Department) that America is indeed a force for good. John Burgess, a former FSO who writes...

Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute: Rather than expend effort on winning Muslim friendship for America, our engagement with Muslim publics — what we call “public diplomacy” — should focus on identifying, nurturing and supporting anti-Islamist Muslims, from secular liberals to pious believers, who fear the encroachment of radical Islamists and are willing to make a stand. This strategy would involve overt and covert ways to assist anti-Islamist...

Chris Dodd, at the presidential debate earlier this week: Be careful what you wish for. If there were totally free elections in many of the countries we’re talking about today, the Islamic Jihad or the Islamic Brotherhood would win 85 percent of the vote. That’s not a great outcome for us at this point either. There are numerous problems with this assertion. Thankfully, Shadi Hamid systematically refutes Dodd’s response over at Democracy Arsenal. Money quote: Maybe I’m being...

Vladimir Putin, writes David Dryer, is doing some crazy handstands in order to secure himself another term (this time as Russia’s power-behind-the-throne prime minister).