A guest post from Foreign Policy contributor and human-rights activist Rebecca Hamilton.

Last week, the State Department partnered with two U.S.-based advocacy organizations (Save Darfur and STAND) to launch AskUS -- a web 2.0 initiative to connect the Obama administration with citizen activists.

More than 500 citizens emailed and used the Twitter hashtag #AskUS to submit questions on Sudan policy that they wanted Save Darfur to ask; students around the country voted online for the questions they wanted answered. The exercise culminated yesterday with a meeting, web-streamed live and cross-posted on the State Department's Facebook page. Leaders from Save Darfur and STAND asked a selection of the citizens' questions to U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Scott Gration and Director of Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council Samantha Power.

The event was not quite as "live" as its billing implied. Advocates had to give the administration their questions in advance. One former State Department official I interviewed referred to Darfur activists as "noise we had to manage" -- and I feared that AskUS would be nothing more than a web 2.0 opportunity for the administration to "manage" a vocal and often critical advocacy movement.

As it turned out, the shoe was on the other foot. Activists were given the opportunity to ask follow-up questions, and they pursued that avenue with such vigor that any fear of them being co-opted by their well-publicized access to the White House ceased to be a concern. What was a concern was the administration's inability to provide concrete answers to the advocates' questions.

During the session, Gration explained that there are some aspects of policy that cannot be shared publicly, and presumably no one would disagree that the need to keep some material confidential is inherent in any nation's diplomatic activities. But Gration's backtracking caused confusion among advocates who had eagerly tuned in: Despite the AskUS initiative being promoted as a forum for open dialogue, the administration was cagey on some fairly rudimentary points about its new Sudan policy.

Indeed, the Obama administration's Sudan strategy, rolled out on October 19, focuses on calibrating pressures and incentives on the basis of "verifiable changes in conditions on the ground." Yet during yesterday's meeting, advocates were told that the benchmarks for measuring progress were "a process we're working through."

The best summation of the State Department's first foray into citizen engagement 2.0 is, appropriately enough, encapsulated in a tweet by TechPresident blogger Micah Sifry. Responding to the frustration advocates were expressing in real-time to the vagueness of the administration's answers, he wrote, "Whatever you may think about substance of Gration/Power's answers, State Dept just raised the bar on admin transparency efforts." Indeed. 

It's not by chance that AskUS was launched around an issue that has such a strong U.S.-based constituency. Let's hope the next meeting sees activists on Congo, Burma, Sri Lanka, or any of the other many neglected crises, get an invite to the White House.

AFP/Getty Images

Daniel Freifeld of NYU's Center for Law and Security attended Barack Obama's speech in Prague yesterday and was kind enough to write up an account of the event for us:

Here at President Obama's first public speech abroad since being elected President, I found two actors from the hit HBO show "The Wire" standing in the VIP section.  Tristan Wilds, who played the heart rending part of Michael Lee, and Andre Royo  who played recovering drug addict Reginald "Bubbles" Cousins (seen here with his daughter). They, along with a handful of other actors on location in Prague to film the forthcoming movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, "Red Tails," took some time off to catch the speech (Lee explained that although the film is set in Italy, director George Lucas chose Prague because it more closely resembles the Italy of World War II than Italy itself does today).

Warm-up music for Obama included a live performance by Druhá Tráva, a Czech bluegrass band, and recorded music by U2, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Kanye West (whose music I doubt would have ever been used to warm up a George W. Bush crowd).  

Hanging out off to the side was Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough and senior adviser David Axelrod:

Another interesting note: disparate cheers were heard in the crowd when Obama said "The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against [potential Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile activity]," a statement he immediately hedged by setting Iranian "persistence" as a condition precedent for following through with the proposed radar installations.  Recent opinion polls suggest the Czechs are becoming increasingly worried that the installation would unnecessarily antagonize Russia and make Europe less secure, not more.  Judging by that tepid response following Obama's statement, the crowd seemed to be a fair reflection of where Czech opinion is heading on this issue.  

Daniel Freifeld is the Director of International Programs at the NYU Center on Law and Security 

STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

On Sunday, Tony Blair, in his new job as Middle East peace envoy, spelled out plans for getting an Israeli-Palestinian peace process moving again. He is to work on building up Palestinian institutions and nudging Israel to ease impediments to the economy in the West Bank, in the hope that this will boost Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas and weaken support for Hamas in Gaza. He is supposed to leave the big political issues to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to hash out in advance of a November summit—though nobody seriously expects him to stay away from them. But can he do better than James Wolfensohn, the last Quartet envoy, who ultimately failed to make headway with an even more limited mandate? Gideon Lichfield, Jerusalem correspondent for The Economist and blogger on fugitivepeace.com, offers him some practical advice.

1. Don't underestimate the Palestinian street’s distrust of you. Not because you supported the Iraq war—Palestinians care much more about their own problems. But most of them assume that you are here to recreate a pro-Western Palestinian client state in the best case (which is essentially true), and cooperate with Israel to ensure that an independent Palestine never arises in the worst case.
2. Don't underestimate the extent to which Palestinian leaders will undermine the national interest to protect their personal ones. Learn all the rivalries—those within Fatah especially—and assume that they take precedence over good sense and decency, unless you see evidence to the contrary.
3. Don't underestimate the incompetence and backstabbing at senior levels in the Palestinian institutions, including Abbas's office. Improving equipment for the Palestinian police or training for mid-level bureaucrats is easy. The stumbling blocks to progress will be individual officials with privileges and influence who want to hold on to them.
4. Don’t rely too much on Abbas to make changes. He is timid and non-confrontational. He has got to where he is by making his peace with some of the most corrupt and obstructionist Fatah leaders. His reluctance to remove difficult people, create enemies and upset political balances will be one of your main constraints.
5. Similarly, don't overestimate Israeli leaders' ability to deliver on promises. One reason is political: Ehud Olmert’s coalition government looks solid at the moment, but the winds can shift and allies can become opponents with astonishing rapidity. The other reason is operational. Even if the government orders something, its authority can quickly peter out on the ground in the West Bank, where settlement leaders and local army commanders are used to a high degree of autonomy, and sympathetic bureaucrats often help them find ways around the law.
6. At the same time, don’t buy all the Israelis’ excuses. Olmert knows better than anyone how to use coalition politics to his advantage—including to make it look like he’s hemmed in when he isn’t.
7. Be wary of the support of other Arab leaders. Having them on board for the November summit and beyond is essential to this process's credibility, and yours. But each has his own agenda on the Palestinian question, which depends on how it affects his internal domestic issues. You'll need to find a balance between having them involved and keeping them at arms’ length.
8. For all these reasons, try to create a clear and public plan with identifiable goals. If you don’t set goals, the street will distrust your motives and the leaders will exploit uncertainties to their own ends. Setting goals may set you up for failure, but at least then you’ll be able to pin blame on those who deserve it.
9. Don’t take your eye off the long term. It’s tempting to focus on what's immediately achievable—some checkpoints removed here, better policing there, more funding for schools, more ties between Israeli and Palestinian businesses. These are good, but they will make no difference to Palestinians' opinions of Fatah—or of you—unless they perceive them as stepping stones in a longer-term plan with statehood at the end. Israel wants to keep this timetable vague; you need to find something that can give Palestinians hope.
10. Resist the urge simply to forget about Gaza "for the time being". It’s a natural temptation; indeed, your mandate pretty much requires it. Hamas is in charge there; it hates Israel; Israel and America hate it; Fatah hates it even more. Surely the best thing is to leave Gaza to fester so Hamas loses popularity. But watch out: The more Hamas weakens, the more Gaza’s clan chieftains will take over. Every clan contain members of both parties, and their clan loyalty comes first. Once Gaza is run by warlords, imposing any sort of political order there will be extremely hard. Even though it’s not part of your mandate, start thinking about the mechanism for the eventual transition, otherwise your efforts will be worthless.

This bizarre animated film aired on Tehran TV on February 21, 2007. It shows the completion of nuclear plants in several Iranian cities by the year 2023. In Tehran TV's view of the future, the United States, encouraged by Israel, mobilizes the international community to stop Iran's efforts, but fails. 

On the Chinese calendar we are entering the Year of the Boar—which does not bode well for long conferences in general. But this year's Davos seemed flatter than usual, at least to most of the observers with whom I spoke. Perhaps it was the deliberate and publicized decision not to have as many movie stars. Perhaps it was the strong attendance from business leaders (900 CEOs, according to one senior forum executive with whom I spoke). Perhaps it was the fact that, at over three decades and with a finely-tuned formula designed to provide something for everyone, it is now very hard for the event to surprise. Or perhaps old hands just grow blasé at the familiar sight of Bill Gates, Tony Blair, and John McCain, or at former Iranian presidents debating with perennial American candidates like John Kerry (there's a debate certain to have no clear winner). Yes, of course, they're all here, think the inured. And no, I don't expect the politicians to tell the truth. And yes, I do expect CEOs to justify their amazingly high salaries and to blame performance problems on external factors.

Still, despite its rustic village setting, Davos is clearly not my great-grandmother's shtetl. Maybe Brangelina were not there, but Claudia Schiffer made a showing, as did the ubiquitous Bono. Most of the politicians present did not surprise, but 25 trade ministers grappling with how to save the Doha Round is no small affair. And the contrast between Brazil's Luiz Inácio da Silva ("Lula"), as he outlines a $250 billion spending plan, and Mexico's new president Felipe Calderón, who embodies the modern Latin American pro-business technocrat, offered a useful glimpse into the choices being weighed by the emerging nations of Latin America. Quirky exercises, like sessions in which a blind person led delegates around in a darkened room, were a fun diversion even if they opened the conference to the inevitable blind-leading-the-blind jokes. (more after the jump)

Natanz, Feb. 2006

Last week, the Associated Press reported a setback in Iran's pursuit of uranium enrichment technology: 50 newly installed centrifuges had "exploded". 

The Washington Note seized on the explosion as a definitive "reality check" on Iran's nuclear capability. As Paul Kerr points out, though, this incident actually happened last April. Setbacks can be expected in such a technically challenging operation (picture fragile vacuum cylinders—filled with hot gas, spinning faster than the speed of sound, and linked together in cascades—and you'll see what I mean). That same month, the International Institute for Strategic Studies reported that Iran would be able to master centrifuge technology (i.e., be able to prevent explosions) within a few months. If the IISS analysts were right, the problem has likely been solved by now.

A centrifuge

The exact number of centrifuges lost also needs to be put into context. As of December, Iran had installed two cascades of 164 centrifuges, as well as several 10- or 20-centrifuge cascades, for a total of 350+ (keep in mind this is the number remaining after the April explosion). The Natanz plant, where these cascades are located, can ultimately hold upwards of 50,000 centrifuges (though 3,000 seems to be the near-term goal). Alongside such large numbers, a loss of 50 seems less momentous, though still a significant setback.

Nevertheless, Iran is still a long way from making large amounts of bomb-grade uranium on its own—even if problems with supply of parts, testing, and implementation of larger cascades are ignored. Some of the installed centrifuges were still being tested late last year, and even with 3,000 operational centrifuges it would take almost a year for Iran to produce enough material for just one bomb. With the roughly 350 known to be installed, it would take over six years.

JOEL SAGET/AFP

The star of the first day of Davos was a homely middle-aged woman from a declining region of the world. Not very stylishly dressed in a burgundy blazer, looking vaguely professorial, thoughtfully and without pretext staring off into the half-distance as she framed her thoughts, she nevertheless held 1,000 people in the Congress Center's main hall rapt as she spoke about globalization, her own experiences, the relationship between the developed and the developing world, and her sense of Europe's role.

Addressed by session chairman Klaus Schwab as "Frau Bundeskanzler", Angela Merkel is an unlikely focus for such a glamorous event—or rather she would be if not for the fact that she leads Europe's most important country, and that she is doing such a good job of it.

I overheard two American CEOs discussing her, hints of envy filtering into their assessment. "She was good," said one, "Substantive. Impressive but not flashy." "Yes," replied the other, "I especially liked the slow way she spoke, enunciating her German. It was easier for me to understand." "Ah," said the first, "You are a real globalist. But for us who were listening to the translation ... she was good. Though she did say, 'we're Europe, our role is changing, don't look at us for solutions." "Still," said the other, "at least I didn't cringe when she spoke. Full sentences. Complete ideas." (more after the jump)

The theme for this year's Annual Meeting is "Shaping the Global Agenda, the Shifting Power Equation." According to the Forum:

Over the course of the five-day Meeting, 2,400 participants from 90 countries will convene in Davos, including 24 heads of state or government, 85 cabinet ministers, along with religious leaders, media leaders and heads of non-governmental organizations. Around 50% of the participants are business leaders drawn principally from the Forum's members [....] The programme will follow four main themes that are high on the global agenda in 2007. These range from "Economics: New Drivers" and "Geopolitics: The Need for Fresh Mandates" to "Business: Leading in a Connected World", and "Technology and Society: Identity, Community and Networks".

ERIC FEFERBERG/AFP

Of course, the real meat of each Annual Meeting typically lies outside the official program, which sounds roughly the same every year given the obligation to cover hundreds of issues in a way that is offensive to none of over 80 organizations cited as sponsors or supporters of the event. Rather, the substance comes less from the big speeches than it does from the buzz in the corridors of the main Congress Hall and the scores of receptions that take place each night in the character-less hotels of Davos.

Inevitably, a considerable component of this year's side meetings will focus on the following issues: the situation in Iraq, the fate of a unipolar world when the one superpower seems to be bent on self-destruction, the absence of Bill Clinton and Angelina Jolie (two of last year's stars), the absence of a big contingent from China and what that may portend about the future of Davos, the presence of a large delegation from India, what to wear to the Malaysian-themed black-tie gala, what top speakers like Angela Merkel, Tony Blair, Mahmoud Abbas, Bill Gates, Lakshmi Mittal, and others might say or not say, and—above all—on the deals large and small that will be cut in silence. Davos is mostly about what is not on the official program, not covered in the papers. It's not a breeding ground for conspiracies per se, but rather a place where self-interests come to mate in their native habitat of low lighting and high cholesterol. As FP's anthroblogologist for this expedition, I'll try to get up close and recount some of their mating behaviors without scaring off any of the subjects.

The following are excerpts from an address by Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, which aired on Qatar TV on January 5, 2007:

Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi: I would have liked the Iraqi people to be interested, first and foremost, in the resistance against the occupation, in liberating its land from the American occupation, and in liberating its will from the new American colonialism, and only after liberating its land and its will - to place Saddam and others on trial. But when the American ruler gives the order to set up the tribunal, and when the Americans supervise the trial, and their generals are present in it – this is unacceptable to us.

I do not accept the trial of Saddam under American rule. This is not an Iraqi trial, but an American one. The Americans want to quench their thirst for vengeance against this man, whose neck they could not twist, and whose will they could not bend. This is the man who launched 39 missiles against Israel, and Israel has not forgotten this. This is the man whose nuclear reactor they destroyed, so that there would be no nuclear power in the region, whether peaceful or military, except for Israel. This is the man who adopted the Palestinian cause throughout his life. This is the man who said "No" to the Americans, and who never agreed to be blindly subservient or grovel. He could have settled for partial solutions, or to meet them halfway and show flexibility, and they might have been content with this – but this man refused. That is why the Americans insisted that he be tried and executed. Then, the death sentence was carried out on the holiday. The Americans denied responsibility for this, and their ambassador said: "I asked the Iraqi government to postpone the execution for two weeks, but the government insisted that it be carried out on the holiday." Unfortunately, some of the [Shiite] religious and political leaders said that this was not their holiday, and that their holiday was celebrated the next day – on Sunday, not Saturday. Accursed be he who said this.

The Saudi Gazette writes:

Under Siege, a sequel to Under Ash, is just one of the new video games targeting Arabs and Muslims and stirring controversy in the West.

"The game gives young Muslims and Arabs a chance to see themselves in the role of good guys, which will help bolster self-esteem," said 31-year-old Radwan Kasmiya, the author of Under Siege. [...] Just [like] the violence in Western computer games such as Grand Theft Auto, Under Siege along with other war games is also facing criticism for their violent content."

The following are screenshots from Under Siege, available here.

Editor's Note: this post has been edited; the above quote from the Saudi Gazette was shortened.

 
The following are excerpts from several programs in which Saudi intellectuals discuss the Saudi education system. They were aired on LBC TV on November 5, 2006, and on 'Ein TV on August 13, 2006. 

LBC TV, November 5, 2006:

Saudi journalist Hussein Shubakshi: When a Saudi researcher published a serious study about the curricula, and about using astronomy to observe the [Ramadhan] moon, he was sentenced to thousands of lashings. This demonstrates clearly how much we accept dialogue.

I would like to focus on a very important point regarding the training of the teacher to deal with students. There are, of course, great fears, which in many cases are justified, about the "covert curriculum," which brings the teacher's personal convictions into the classroom, as well as out of the classroom, when he deals with a certain student or groups of students during their breaks. He passes on to them his convictions, views, books, booklets, and cassettes, which contain many views that are considered "extremist" - or, at the very least, different views that involve an extremist framework, and which are packaged in a political wrapping. This is very dangerous.

Interviewer: Is this done beyond the framework of the curricula?

Hussein Shubakshi: Yes, it is done out of the classroom, but of course, under the mantle of education and "extra knowledge." This way, one can inject a lot of poison, as indeed was the case for many years. One aspect of this phenomenon was the restriction of the liberty that was traditionally available for extra-curricular student activities. I myself was in the scouts and on the school's soccer team. I participated in school plays and other artistic activities – all within the official educational framework. All this has stopped. Today, such activities are fought against.

[...]

Saudi university lecturer Nasser Al-Hanini: Every society has marginal groups... How large is the group that perpetrated the bombings, compared to the number of our youth? In addition, the ideological writings of this group, which committed killings and bombings, are not part of the curricula at all. They have different writings. They published their research on the Internet, and everybody is familiar with them. They have nothing to do with the curricula or with the extra-curricular activities.

View the entire transcript.

The Middle East Media Research Institute contributes a regular series of posts about media in the Middle East for Passport.

The following are excerpts from an interview with the state-appointed executioner of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Abdallah Al-Bishi. The interview aired on the Lebanese LBC TV on November 4, 2006.

Reporter: "This is the most renowned executioner in Saudi Arabia, Abdallah Bin Sa'id Al-Bishi, who carries out the executions. His sword delineates the border between seriousness and play. There is no negotiating with him once the heads have ripened. When it's harvesting time, he is the most suited for the job."

Abdallah Al-Bishi: "I started to work in this field after the death of my father – about a week or 10 days after his death, in 1412 [1991-92]. I was surprised that the people who supervise this field summoned me, saying I had a mission. Allah be praised. Of course, I did not have swords or anything back then, but I used the swords of my father, may he rest in peace, and carried out the execution. My first mission was to execute three people."

Reporter: "Abu Bader's swords have cut off a hundred heads and more. His eldest son, Badr, is training in the same profession. He inherited this profession from his father, Sa'id Al-Bishi. He remembers how, when still a small boy, he accompanied him to the beheading of a criminal in Mecca. That sight, Abu Badr says, was the turning point in his life."

Abdallah Al-Bishi: "I was at school, and an execution was set for my father in Mecca. It was to take place in front of the King Abd Al-'Aziz Gate. Before all that happened at the Al-Haram Mosque, the executions were held there. We showed up. I was a little boy. The first thing that came to my mind when people talked about executions was the digestive system. I wanted to see it. At that time, we had an exam at school on the digestive system, and we had to explain about the digestive system and whatever... So I came along, and the moment my father executed the man, I ran to see the digestive system, but all I could see was the man's head flying, and where the neck used to be, there was a kind of well. It went down. That's it. I couldn't take it anymore. I woke up in the car on the way home. At night, I tried to go to sleep, but couldn't. I had nightmares, but only once. Then I got used to it, Allah be praised. "

View the entire transcript.

The Middle East Media Research Institute contributes a regular series of posts about media in the Middle East for Passport.

At first glance, this year's crop of Nobel prizes came out quite nicely for the United States. Americans, after all, swept the prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry and economics. But a closer look suggests room for improvement. Americans dominate in the "easy" sciences—fields where it is comparatively less difficult to establish consensus—but lag in the arguably more complex realms of advancing culture and establishing peace.  

The Nobel for Medicine went to Andrew Fire of Stanford and Craig Zire of University of Massachusetts for their work on RNA interference; the Nobel for Physics went to John Mather of NASA and George Smoot of UC, Berkeley, for "their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation"; the Nobel for Chemistry went to Roger Kornberg of Stanford "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription" and Columbia University professor Edmund Phelps won the Nobel in Economics for his work on the relationship between employment and inflation.

In fields where it is more difficult to establish consensus, by contrast, the two winners were from non-western developing countries. Orhan Pamuk of Turkey won the Nobel for Literature, for "discover(ing) new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures." And the Nobel Peace Prize went to Muhammed Yunus, the Bangladeshi architect of micro-credit programs for his "efforts to create economic and social development from below."

Decoding the forces driving cultural differences or alleviating poverty, it turns out, is far more difficult than, say, advancing our understanding of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription. The last Americans to be recognized by the Nobel Foundation in these "hard" subjects were Peace laureate Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Literature winner Toni Morrison in 1993.

Louis Goodman is Professor and Dean of the School of International Service at the American University.

Gideon Lichfield, Passport's esteemed guest blogger and Jersusalem correspondent for The Economist, offers up another dispatch today on the moral minefield of assessing degrees of 'civilian'.--CO

Proportionality? Passé. The mot du jour is "civilianality". While the rest of the world debates whether Israel's attack on Hezbollah is "proportionate" in light of the fact that the Lebanese are suffering about ten times as many civilian casualties as the Israelis, Alan Dershowitz proposes weighting the numbers according to how "civilian" the civilians really were, ie, how complicit with Hezbollah. Just as passive accomplices to a crime are not free of guilt, he argues, nor are those who allow terrorists to store their rockets in the basement. And as to those who just happened to be living next door:

The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. 

I like Dershowitz's free and easy use of the word "voluntarily"—as if deciding to pick up your family at a moment's notice, abandon friends and relatives who may depend on you, leave behind a home and belongings you may never see again, and flee along roads that are being bombed daily, using transport that hundreds of thousands of other people are competing for, requiring money that you may not have (I've heard anecdotally that the cost of a taxi trip from Beirut to Amman has gone up from $200 to $3,000), is like choosing which flavor of yoghurt to have for breakfast. (More after the jump.)