CLINTON OFFERS ADVICE TO YOUNG WOMEN SEEKING TO EMULATE HER

  

BY_ JILL DOUGHERTY

FROM_ CNN - SECURITY CLEARANCE

JUN 12 2012

Whenever Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks before a group of women from other countries she's invariably asked whether she will run for president.

But at Monday's opening ceremonies for the first Women in Public Service Institute at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Clinton pulled the curtain back on some of her personal history, talking to 50 young women from around the world, many of them from the Middle East and North Africa, bringing change to their countries, often in spite of great odds.

"It's a hot kitchen with lots of men," a young woman from Yemen told Clinton.

"If you get elected as the next president, will we..." The question was drowned out by applause. Will there be fewer wars with a woman president, she asked?

Clinton deftly sidestepped the political part of the question, but went on: "If women are not in the halls of government, then women's voices are not going to be heard when budgets are written."

5 BIG IDEAS THAT CAN SAVE OBAMA'S PRESIDENCY

  

BY_ DAVID ROTHKOPE

FROM_ FOREIGN POLICY

JUN 11 2012

Because Romney-bashing just won't cut it.

The disappointment of Barack Obama's supporters is palpable. He has gone from being a vessel for their greatest hopes into being a confirmation of their deepest fears about the American political system.

The excitement he generated was associated not with his gift for oratory or any platform plank but with the promise of longed-for fundamental change. What's more, the change seemed guaranteed. Anyone could see he would not be like other presidents. Merely electing him would undo age-old injustices.

So his election was a transcendent moment. And then we waited to see when the changes would come. But sadly, it thus far seems Obama's singular act of creativity was in winning election. He was what was new. He was the change. Since then, he has gone from defying Washington convention to embodying it. His rhetoric about a new way of doing business, higher standards, a creative vision for the future has proved to be just that: words. Business has been as usual. Values have been murky. Cash and special interests have remained king. And as for that bright shining future, we're still waiting.

Putin's Secret War

  

BY_ ANNA NEMTSOVA

FROM_ FOREIGN POLICY

JUN 11 2012

The bloody Islamic insurgency in Russia's backyard.

MAKHACHKALA, Russia – The officers nervously cocked their rifles as the crowd began to swell. The Kirovsky police station in the capital city of Russia's Dagestan region was now under siege. But the angry cohort outside the station walls on May 27 wasn't composed of the bearded, gun-toting militants one might expect in this insurgency-racked region, but a crowd of enraged women in hijabs and ankle-length dresses. It wasn't the first angry mob the officers had faced down, but a crowd of only women was unprecedented. Their dry faces wrinkled by sleepless nights, the women stormed the courtyard looking for their husbands and sons, locked in the basement cells, where they were thought to be beaten or, worse, tortured with electricity.

Yelling at the top of their lungs, the women, mostly Salafi Muslims, demanded that police let in their lawyers. Desperate to make sure that one of the women's sons, a 19-year-old named Abdurakhman Magomedov, detained a few hours earlier, was not hidden in a trunk of a police car, the women blocked the driveway. They yelled that they would blow themselves up if the authorities didn't answer their demands. After a few phone calls and text messages went out, hundreds of the women's infuriated male relatives and friends drove up to the police checkpoint. With iPads and cell phones held aloft, they began taking photos of the men in uniform.

Child Soldiers Entering Spotlight as Clashes in Lebanon Continue

  

BY_ VERONIQUE ABOU GHAZALEH

FROM_ AL-MONITOR - AL-HAYAT (Pan Arab)

JUN 4 2012

“Childhood” is a meaningless term to the children born in the Lebanese areas suffering frequent security crises. They appear to be children, but their minds carry the ideas of the parties that they have belonged to for years. They assert their beliefs and are not ashamed to carry arms in front of officials in support of this or that political organization. There is no one to remind them that they are still children, many under the age of 10.

Previous disturbing security events in Lebanon leave no doubt that child soldiers exist there, especially after they were seen in a number of Lebanese areas armed with sophisticated weapons and wearing the uniforms of several different organizations.

Lebanese Minister of Social Affairs and President of the Higher Council for Childhood Wael Abu Faour confirmed this, saying that “in the midst of the security problems unfolding in northern Lebanon, children’s rights have been clearly and blatantly violated. Child soldiers have appeared on TV channels.” But this crisis is not limited to the city of Tripoli. In certain neighborhoods of Beirut, children are being trained to take arms and fight in street wars. Their training and participation has been kept a secret, but the security crises soon forced them into the public spotlight.

The Cyberwar May be Headed to Your Computer

  

BY_ DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF

FROM_ CNN

JUN 4 2012

Editor's note: Douglas Rushkoff writes a regular column for CNN.com. He is a media theorist and the author of "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and "Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World and How We Can Take It Back."

(CNN) -- The recently discovered Flame virus bears all the hallmarks of a cyberattack concocted by a nation-state. It's big and complex and pointed directly at a geopolitical hot zone, Iran.

What really gives it away as a government project is the extent to which its programmers sought to keep it out of civilian hands. The malware seems no more designed to protect us from a nuclear Iran than it is safeguarded to keep us from using the program itself against one another.

Flame is sophisticated. It's not a tiny piece of code that nests itself in e-mail and then erases your hard drive. It might better be described as a suite of programs -- the Microsoft Office of malware -- that perform different tasks.

Top 10 Reasons to kick Pakistan Off the Dole

  

BY_ ADAM TURNER

FROM_ FRONTPAGMAG

JUN 4 2012

What does it take for a country to be kicked off the U.S. foreign aid dole?  We might soon be learning the answer to that question, thanks to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and its consistent efforts to antagonize the United States and oppose our interests.  Recently, the U.S. Congress voted to reduce Pakistan’s aid because of our “ally’s” decision to convict a Pakistani doctor for “treason” for helping the U.S. find Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.  The doctor is named Shakil Afridi, and he was recruited by the CIA to run a fake Hepatitis-B vaccination program in Abbottabad to acquire a DNA sample from one of bin Laden’s children in the compound where he was hiding.

Interestingly enough, an investigation by a former member of the Pakistani army has concluded that Afridi probably didn’t even know he was helping the CIA find bin Laden specifically, but the Pakistanis still convicted him, and are now busy trashing his reputation.  If the congressional vote stands, the $1 billion going to Pakistan this year in U.S. aid will be $33 million less, one for each year that the doctor was sentenced to.  The Obama administration originally requested more than $2 billion, but Congress eventually cut this in half.  This is small change overall, though, as since 9/11 alone, the United States has given Pakistan a total of more than $20 billion in foreign aid.

Obama's 'Kill List'

  

BY_ ROBERT GRENIER

FROM_ ALJAZEERA

JUN 4 2012

Washington, DC - "Don't believe what you read in the papers," my father used to say. And as with most of the sage advice I ignored in my youth, experience would later prove him to be right. It eventually occurred to me when in government that if on topics I knew as an insider the press was at least half wrong, it was unlikely that they could be right on everything else.

And so it is with some scepticism that one should greet the latest journalistic sensation which has set tongues wagging and the blogosphere ablaze in Washington: Last Tuesday's blockbuster article in the New York Times concerning drone operations and US President Barak Obama's counterterrorism "kill list". The piece is putatively based on interviews with some three dozen current or former Obama administration advisers. As at least one wag has pointed out, an article featuring that degree of willing cooperation from the administration might more accurately be labelled a press release. Indeed, as one might expect given the context, the take-away is highly complimentary of the President and, presumably, highly advantageous to him politically, save perhaps among the sort of left-leaning hand-wringers with whom Obama's Republican political opponents would love to see him identified.

The Future of US-Chinese Relations

  

BY_HENRY KISSINGER

FROM_ ALJAZEERA

JUN 4 2012

Conflict is a choice, not a necessity.

Kent, CT- On January 19, 2011, US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao issued a joint statement at the end of Hu's visit to Washington. It proclaimed their shared commitment to a "positive, cooperative, and comprehensive US-China relationship". Each party reassured the other regarding his principal concern, announcing, "The United States reiterated that it welcomes a strong, prosperous, and successful China that plays a greater role in world affairs. China welcomes the United States as an Asia-Pacific nation that contributes to peace, stability and prosperity in the region."

Since then, the two governments have set about implementing the stated objectives. Top American and Chinese officials have exchanged visits and institutionalised their exchanges on major strategic and economic issues. Military-to-military contacts have been restarted, opening an important channel of communication. And at the unofficial level, so-called track-two groups have explored possible evolutions of the US-Chinese relationship.

Yet as cooperation has increased, so has controversy. Significant groups in both countries claim that a contest for supremacy between China and the United States is inevitable and perhaps already under way. In this perspective, appeals for US-Chinese cooperation appear outmoded and even naive.

7 Key Moments in Daniel Klaidman's 'Kill or Capture' About Obama's Drone War

  

BY_MATHEW DELUCA

FROM_ THE DAILY BEAST

JUN 2 2012

Daniel Klaidman has reported extensively for Newsweek and The Daily Beast on Obama’s hunt for terrorists. Read seven of the key moments in his new book on the subject, Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency.

President Barack Obama may have inherited the war on terrorism from his predecessor, but in some ways the stakes have only grown since he took the decision maker’s seat in the Oval Office. In his new book, Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency, Newsweek and Daily Beast reporter Daniel Klaidman draws on extensive research, including interviews with more than 200 sources, including current and former officials in the Obama administration, to work his way into the president’s mind as Obama learned what it meant to fight a shadowy enemy in the 21st century.

In the aftermath of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, America’s enemies seemed both everywhere and nowhere. Some of the tactics that would prove most effective over the following years, such as drone strikes and cross-border raids, drew criticism at home and abroad. Obama the former constitutional law scholar has demonstrated a willingness to continually rethink the way America is dealing with the threat posed by religious extremists.

Target: Iran

The 6 Nuclear Sites in the World's Crosshairs

  

BY_ URI FRIEDMAN

FROM_ FOREIGN POLICY

JUN 1 2012

A closer look at the six facilities that could mean the difference between war and peace.

Iran's quest to develop nuclear energy dates back to 1957, when the United States began sending low-enriched uranium and nuclear technology to ally Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi for research purposes as part of President Dwight Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. But Western powers started having second thoughts about the Iranian nuclear program even before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's embrace of nuclear power in the 1990s only hardened that opposition.  

Over the past decade, the West has grown increasingly convinced that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of civilian atomic work, while Iran's leaders have insisted that they are simply diversifying their energy sources and developing fuel for medical research reactors.