News and Analysis (4/23/14)

“The no-fly list is supposed to be about ensuring aviation safety, but the FBI is using it to force innocent people to become informants,” said Ramzi Kassem, associate professor of law at the City University of New York. “The practice borders on extortion”:

• Lawsuit Says FBI Uses No-fly List in Bid to Recruit Muslim Informants (Washington Post)

“Some rights groups have voiced opposition to the initiatives, warning that they could ‘potentially allow the authorities to bring a terrorism case against virtually any peaceful activist’” …

• Egypt’s Proposed Anti-terror Legislation Could Broaden Definition of ‘Terrorism’ (UPI)

… but that hasn’t stopped the Obama administration continuing arm sales in flagrant violation of U.S. law:

• US to Deliver Apache Helicopters to Egypt (Guardian)

Under the proposed plan “the amount of plutonium produced in the Arak reactor could be reduced drastically … [but]  would not reduce the usefulness of the reactor for making radioisotopes and conducting research…. Thus, this approach would meet Iran’s needs and would address the concerns of the international community”:

• Possible Arak Compromise Seen Bolstering Confidence in Iran Talks (Al-Monitor)

In Iran’s appeal over the Obama administration’s “unique” attempt to block “permanent representative to the U.N. “, the Committee on Relations with the Host Country has chosen to punt. “North Korea, Cuba and Belarus spoke up in support of Iran” but “no other country spoke in support of the U.S. position”:

• UN Committee Takes No Action on Iran Envoy Dispute (AP / abc News)

The agreement “to begin negotiations to form a unity government within the coming weeks … comes as peace talks between the Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel face collapse”:

• Palestinian Hamas-Fatah Unity Deal Announced (BBC)

Moammar Gaddafi considered himself an anarchist, but as events in Libya since his execution have demonstrated, there’s anarchy and then there’s anarchy …

• Libya’s Absurdist Anarchy, as Told by Two Militias (Washington Post)

… meanwhile, an official briefing prepared for AFRICOM chief General David Rodriguez in the fall of 2013 … highlights the U.S. military’s penchant for simple solutions to complex problems — with a well-documented potential for blowback in Africa and beyond”:

• Militias and Mayhem: The Truth About American Military Assistance in Libya (Salon)

“The history of both Persian and Arab bourgeois nationalism is solidly predicated on a sustained genealogy of racist bigotry…. Today the legitimate criticism of the Islamic republic easily degenerates into a nasty Islamophobia among a wide spectrum of Iranian bourgeois liberalism that fancies itself ‘secular’”:

• Overcoming the Arab-Persian divide: On bigotry and racism (Al-Jazeera)
• Overcoming the Arab-Persian divide: Who owns the Gulf?  (Al-Jazeera)

“He just took his shoes and socks off and said, ‘You can take these, don’t worry about me — I live close by and can walk’”:

• Muslim Man Gives Needy Bus Rider The Shoes Off His Feet And Walks Home Barefoot — Because There Is Good In The World (Huffington Post)

Is India at a tipping point in abandoning secularism?

• India’s Modi Slams Anti-Muslim Remarks, Ally Remains Defiant (Reuters)
• Tired of Current Situation, Muslims in Search of an Alternative to Cong (Hindustan Times)
• Teachers Force Muslim, Lower Caste Students to Clean Toilets in India: Report (Times of India)
• Bhavnagar Model: Muslim Buys House, Can’t Move In (India Express)

ImadadDean