From The New York Post
by HEATHER ROBINSON

In a phone interview from Baghdad yester day, an Iraqi member of parliament said he believes he and other liberals are being shortchanged votes by an Iraqi Electoral Commission that has been corrupted by Iran.

“The citizens of Iraq went to vote in the election; they have done their job,” said Mithal al-Alusi of the Iraqi Nation Party. “But bad games have been played in the election.”

Alusi’s secular party champions human (including women’s) rights as well as free markets, a free press and alliance among democracies. He first won election in December 2005 after his two sons were murdered by terrorists.

The killings were seen as “payback” for Alusi’s decision to visit Israel — but Alusi, a Sunni Muslim, refused to be intimidated. He stayed in Iraq, got his then-little-known party onto the ballot, won his seat — and continued to visit Israel.

Now he warns of massive tampering in the tallying of the March 7 votes.

For evidence, he points to discrepancies between the Iraqi Electoral Commission’s report of the vote count and the results cited by independent election monitors.

Release of the final results has already been delayed, with an announcement now expected today. But initial numbers for select districts are out — and the Electoral Commission’s vote counts for Alusi’s party and other liberals don’t match the independent monitors’ numbers, he says.

“I’ll give you one example,” he told me. “We have a lady [running as part of our list], Jamila Feily. We collect paper from the monitoring people. We know how many did vote for us. [Jamila Feily] did receive 5,000-something votes. [But] the election commission declared she received 57 votes.

“This lady, she has 600 people working [as volunteers] for her, friends and supporters. How then she could get 57 votes?”

The overall pattern, he claims, is a massive “vanishing” of votes: “They just take the zeros out.”

He says these discrepancies show up not only in votes for his party, but also for other progressives, such as the Shiite liberal Iyad Jamal Al-Din — who also campaigned against Iranian meddling in Iraq.

How could such fraud occur under the supervision of independent monitors? Many, if not most, of the monitors “can’t read Arabic,” Alusi explained.

His strongest evidence may be that the emerging “official” vote count for his party is far below what he drew a year ago, when he was virtually a national pariah.

The Iraqi Electoral Commission says Alusi’s party got 10,000 votes in Baghdad this time around. But in January 2009’s provincial elections, he got 60,000 votes in the city. And back then, he was facing prosecution for treason because he had visited Israel. (Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court has since struck down the charges, ruling that it was no longer a crime for Iraqis to travel, including to Israel.)

“[At that time] they were preaching in the mosque, ‘Mithal is Mossad’ and we received 60,000 votes in Baghdad.”

Alusi also fears the Obama administration will remain passive in the face of possibly rampant fraud, even if Iran and its pawns are the likely culprits. The White House might see maintaining a facade of stability in Iraq as important enough to let Iran to hijack the Iraqi election.

“I hope I am wrong,” he said. If not, then “the American government is making a huge mistake. They will be pushing Iraq, and Israel, into a death corner.

“You can sell this [to the American people and the world] for one week, one month, six months, but the fascists in Iran will be getting stronger all the time.

“Then what?”

I have struggled mightily and sincerely to keep an open mind, and my respect for the Presidency–as well as my sincere hope that President Obama will do the right things vis a vis U.S. security and U.S. allies–have prevented me from being too critical of him thus far about anything, including foreign policy. But last week’s brouhaha struck me as unfair towards Israel. It also struck me initially as downright weird, and given deeper thought, as potentially ominous.

At the center of the controversy is the decision–announced by a bureaucratic entity, Israel’s Interior Ministry–to approve construction of 1,600 new homes for Israelis in East Jerusalem. This announcement, which was made during Vice President Biden’s visit to discuss the “peace process,” unleashed a tsunami of anger and reprimand by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and VP Biden towards Israel. Or so we are to believe.

In the name of diplomatic protocol, Clinton berated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for 45 minutes. Apparently, her words suggested that this announcement of apartment building construction in Israel’s capital city threatens the U.S.-Israel relationship, because she not only called it “insulting” to the U.S., she used the opportunity to question Israel’s commitment to its relationship with America.

Hmmm. Could there be some projection going on here?

For his part, Netanyahu apologized for the timing of the announcement. He said he had been surprised by the timing also. But he did not apologize for Israel’s decision to build apartment buildings within its capital city.

Another thread in the drama concerned U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, who was said to have been gravely “embarrassed” by this announcement of building construction, to the point that he, too, rang up Bibi to express his mortification. (It’s surprising, by the way, that if Biden were so embarrassed, he would voluntarily call so much attention his alleged embarrassment).

Is it credible that an Israeli announcement of building construction inflicted grave embarrassment on Biden? Or does it strike anyone as more likely that this claim is manufactured - as is this “crisis?”

For starters, these apartment buildings are not settlements in some disputed outpost. They are to be built in Jerusalem. Granted, in East Jerusalem, which is largely Arab. But the units are to be located in Ramat Shlomo, a large Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Apparently Ramat Shlomo is next to French Hill, a neighborhood of apartment buildings in Jerusalem where I stayed for a month when I visited Israel during college. Having spent quite a bit of time there, I can say it is no remote outpost, but squarely in the heart of Jerusalem.

Since when does Israel have no right to announce the building of apartment houses in its capital? Since when does any country have to get clearance to build on its sovereign territory?

It’s true that Palestinians envision East Jerusalem as their capital city some day. But for now, and until Palestinians, including Palestinian leadership, demonstrate they want peace, East Jerusalem is not under their control. East Jerusalem is Israel. There is nothing illegal about building apartment buildings there. (Incidentally, I can entirely believe Netanyahu did not know about the timing of the announcement; as anyone who has spent time in Israel knows, it is a socialist state where almost any enterprise involves red tape and bureaucracy. It is not a stretch to imagine that Netanyahu had no idea when exactly this building project was scheduled to break ground, much less when it was going to be announced).

Moreover–and this is significant–last fall, in discussions with Netanyahu over settlement construction, President Obama accepted a limited 10-month moratorium that did not include the East Jerusalem area where the construction announced this week is to take place. In other words, President Obama knew Israel might build in this area - and had accepted it. Clinton at the time characterized Israel’s concessions as “unprecedented.”

Thus it is the Obama Administration–not Netanyahu’s government–that is reneging. The Obama Administration knew–and even explicitly agreed to–accept construction in the very area where these housing units are to be built. It is the Obama Administration that is pulling the rug out from under Israel–and trying to characterize it as the reverse.

This crisis seems like an excuse–and a flimsy one, at that–to put distance between the U.S. and Israel.

Why might the Obama Administration want to do that?

The white elephant in the room is Iran. Sadly, it is appearing likely that, at least while Obama is in office, Israel will stand alone in the face of this existential threat.

I do not want to make too much of one incident, or to jump to conclusions. As an American, I believe that this great country would not abandon or turn on a small ally in a time of great need. I have faith in the U.S. Congress, which reflects the solid moral instincts of the American people. But this wedge between the Obama Administration and Netanyahu’s is concerning.

Given its highly staged quality, it could be a sham designed to fool Iran’s radical leadership into thinking there is a rift between the U.S. and Israel so that the U.S. can in fact support regime change in Iran more effectively, without incurring suspicion. Or, similarly, if it could be a decoy to lull Iran’s radical leadership into thinking the U.S. would never participate in military action to produce regime change in Iran, when in fact the latter is actually a possibility.

Recently I shared these theories with Iraqi Parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi, one of my best sources in Iraq. Mr. Alusi’s only two sons were murdered by terrorists after he visited the Jewish state, and he–refusing to be intimidated–stayed in Iraq and built a political party championing human rights. He characterizes Israel as “a modern state and an important part of the middle east” and believes it is in Iraq’s security interest cooperate with Israel on counter-terrorism and other issues.

He is interested in not only Israeli/Iraqi alliance but also Iraqi alliance with other democracies including the U.S., Turkey, and Jordan. A practical man, he sees no benefit in maintaining what he terms the “Israel complex”–or the obsession with hating Israel that he thinks ultimately holds many Arab countries back from true progress.

Although we were speaking about other matters (he has been consumed with the Iraqi provincial elections, in which he is running as an incumbent), we took a break to discuss this diplomatic crisis.  I asked him if he thought this flap could be staged - to pacify radical elements in the Arab world. If so, could it indicate that, behind the scenes, the U.S. is preparing to take a tougher stand against against Iran, or at least to support Israel in defending itself?

“Not likely,” Alusi said. “Why would America need to do that?”

He pointed out that many Arab countries–all those that are considered comparatively more moderate including Jordan, Turkey, the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Iraq–are afraid of Iran and would not object to the U.S. and Israel preventing Tehran from getting nuclear weapons. Mr. Alusi believes instead that this action reflects President Obama’s world view, and his desire to appease Iran by “bringing them closer.” Mr. Alusi qualified his thoughts by saying he hopes he is wrong.

So do I.

Last Thursday The Lawfare Project, a non-profit founded by attorney Brooke Goldstein (pictured above) to confront “lawfare” –  which Goldstein defined in her opening remarks as “the use of the law as a weapon of war” — held a conference at the New York County Law Building in downtown Manhattan to examine ways terrorists and terror-sponsoring regimes and networks are trying to use Western democracies’ legal systems to fight a jihadist war against the citizens of these very countries.

Some of the tactics terror groups are using include filing nuisance lawsuits against writers who are critical of Islam and training terrorists to claim, upon capture, that they are being abused/tortured in order to tie up their prosecutions in the U.S. legal system and fight a public relations war for world opinion.

In addition to raising awareness about these trends, the conference addressed some possibilities for combating “legal jihad.”

Goldstein did a yeoman’s job of assembling a remarkable constellation of legal lights. Participants included former New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau; former Canadian Justice Minister and member of the Canadian Parliament Irwin Cotler; Gabriella Shalev, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations; Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff; former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton; Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations; Dr. David Scharia, former senior deputy of the Israeli attorney general’s office; Marvin Kurtz, a member of the national council of the B’nai B’rith League for Human Rights and partner in the firm of Dale, Streiman & Kurz LLP; James Taranto, editorial board member of the Wall Street Journal and editor of opinionjournal.com; former BBC Legal Correspondent Joshua Rozenberg; and Anne Herzberg, legal advisor to NGO Monitor, a new non-profit dedicated to promoting accountability on the part of human rights organizations that weigh in on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. 

In his remarks concerning why Lawfare is a threat, Cotler focused on the United Nations’ use of legalistic-sounding language to single out Israel as a pariah state. He opened his remarks by pointing out that this kind of lawfare “is not a new phenomenon” and that this year marks the 35^th anniversary of the United Nations’ infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution, which “gave the abomination of anti-Semitism the appearance of international legal sanction.”

He pointed to the egregious double standard practiced by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which has dedicated itself almost exclusively to the condemnation of Israel, while countries like China, Sudan, and Iran enjoy “exculpatory immunity.”

It is a stinging irony, Cotler contended, that the United Nations launches its distorted, out-of-context gang-ups on Israel under the cover of international law, when Israel was the first nation “to apply universal jurisdiction, in the Eichmann case.”

The result of this uneven and sloppy application of principles of international law by singling out one member state for disproportionate and often unjust condemnation is not merely discrimination against Israel, but a deterioration of respect for international law, according to Cotler.

“It diminishes the credibility of the United Nations,” he said. “It diminishes the credibility of international law.”

Likewise, Cotler argued, the fallacious characterization of Israel as an “apartheid state” in pseudo-legalistic language at events like the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, known as ‘Durban I’ undermines the genuine struggle against racism worldwide.

“It insults and assaults the genuine struggle against racism to make that slanderous analogy between Israel and South Africa [under apartheid],” he said.

Mark Shurtleff, Utah’s attorney general, also spoke about the treatment Israel receives in the United Nations, specifically the Goldstone Report.

He took issue with this report, which was commissioned by the United Nations in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter to halt Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.

The report, which Shurtleff contended was highly critical of Israel while barely criticizing Hamas, is an example of the effort to “misuse [international] law for political ends.”

First, the report did not take into account the defensive nature of Israel’s military operation, Shurtleff contended. Second, the report was frequently factually inaccurate or omitted facts and context essential to a true understanding of the situation.

“Nobody in the history of warfare—from calling Hamas leaders ahead of time to get their families out, to dropping bomblets to get families out before dropping bombs to get rid of the weapons” has made such a concerted effort to avoid civilian casualties as the Israel Defense Forces did during this operation, Shurtleff asserted.

“That was an extraordinary effort by Israel [to avoid causing civilian casualties in a war situation,]” he said. “Mr. Goldstone made it sound like Israel deliberately went after civilian infrastructure – and that is a vicious slander,” he said.

David Harris, director of INSIGNIS Strategic Research Terrorism Project and former chief of strategic planning for Canada’s security intelligence service, on the panel on  “Legal Efforts Aimed at Inhibiting the Right and Ability of Democracies to Defend Against Terrorism,” offered some questions to the audience:

“Would Hitler’s assassination have been an international war crime?

“What about the interception of Japanese and German communications, including in the years before World War II?

“Would each of the Japanese and German prisoners of war been entitled to the range of legal provisions of the people at Guantanamo?

“Could we have won the war” he asked, if standards of international law that exist today, or that some argue should exist, were applied to the allies during World War II, or would Hitler’s “work” towards the Jews and others been completed?

Malvina Halberstam, professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, also speaking during the section of the conference on jihadists’ efforts to use the legal system to inhibit democracies’ ability to defends themselves, discussed the Christmas Day bomber, whose explosive device malfunctioned on a plane from Amsterdam to Detroit.

In that much-publicized case, the would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was questioned for 50 minutes before receiving a Miranda warning, after which he refused to cooperate.

Professor Halberstam argued there is legal precedent to support the argument that police or national security officers can question terrorists without reading them a Miranda warning. She cited a case in which the Supreme Court established a “public safety exception to Miranda.” In that case, police officers arrested a robbery suspect they had reason to believe had hidden a gun in a supermarket. They demanded the whereabouts of the gun before reading him his rights. The Supreme Court upheld their right to have first questioned him about the gun’s whereabouts before reading him his rights on the grounds that concern for public safety trumped his right to remain silent.

Halberstam argued the precedent would apply in a case examining the law enforcement officers’ decision to stop questioning Abdulmutallab.

“The likelihood that other planes were in danger was at least as strong as the likelihood a customer might discover the gun” in the supermarket case, she said.

Dr. David Scharia, former senior deputy for the attorney general’s office of Israel, talked about the “misuse and abuse of the criminal justice system by terrorists and their supporters.”

A unique challenge of gathering intelligence from a terrorist foot soldier, or “a person who is willing to commit suicide” is that that person, however despicable his intended actions, believes in his cause and “is not corrupt [so] it is hard to offer them an incentive,” he said.

Nevertheless, in 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the use of violence is illegitimate in gathering intelligence from terrorists. This ruling has resulted in stagnated investigations and, ultimately, enabled terror attacks to take place that would probably not have otherwise, according to Scharia.

“Sadly, terrorists know there are sacrifices we are willing to make to adhere to the principle” of nonviolence, he said, and as a consequence, “There were times [during my tenure in the attorney general’s office] people who had information that could have prevented attacks did not talk, and the attacks took place” and killed and injured innocent Israelis. 

Claims of abuse or torture by terrorists are often problematic because terrorists, as a result of their personal psychology, often see themselves as victims, no matter the reality, according to Scharia. Additionally, terror networks typically instruct trainees to claim torture, and even to provoke physical harm at the hands of their captors, so as to make legal and moral claims against their captors, such as the Americans or Israelis.

This tactic of tempting the captor to engage in physical violence so that the detainee can try to claim the moral high ground and wage a legal battle was initiated by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 1960’s, according to Scharia. Today, Islamist terror groups have explicitly adopted the tactic in training manuals.

These manuals say things like, “They will not [voluntarily] harm you; they must be temped to do so,” Scharia said.

Despite these serious obstacles, counter-terror efforts must, in Scharia’s view, remain above reproach.

“Commitment to civil liberties is a fight we cannot afford to lose,” he said.

More on the conference to follow.

Millions of voters braved the threat of bombs and bullets to participate in yesterday’s Parliamentary elections in Iraq. As usual, the terrorists tried to intimidate voters but again as usual, the sorry few cowards could not intimidate the courageous majority. What a triumph for democracy.

In the election’s aftermath, Mithal al-Alusi, an Iraqi Parliamentarian up for re-election, told a member of the Australian media he thanks former U.S. President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Here is what he said:

”Whoever would have imagined this day would ever come? I think you people in the West, who criticise those two great leaders, don’t understand that it is beginning to work. We are the beginning of true democracy in the Middle East and it is starting to spread and have an impact on the other countries.”

Last week I spoke with Mr. Alusi, whom I have interviewed many times through the years, and whose words and brave actions have blazed a trial towards a brighter future in Iraq. He is optimistic that the Iraqi Nation Party, his grassroots, secular party, which champions human rights, free press, and alliance with other democracies, will gain an additional seat in the Parliament in this election.

More to come.

Tonight the 2010 Winter Olympics ended. Canada squeaked past the U.S. to win in men’s ice hockey, with Pittsburgh Penguins team captain Sidney Crosby scoring the winning goal.

Since Crosby has brought his great talent to Pittsburgh over the past several years, we are inclined to forgive him for playing his heart out for Canada, where he was born (there is no place like home, after all).

In total, what a phenomenal sweep for Canada, with the most gold medals ever won in a Winter Olympics in history -14! With the most medals overall, the U.S. did well, too.

However, it looks like our Prez will soon be buying Canada’s PM, Stephen Harper, a case of Molson Canadian.

Could any of this possibly be good karma for a good decision?

My brilliant and beautiful writing partner and friend Jennifer Ginsberg is scheduled to appear tomorrow (Wed. February 24) night on the TV show EXTRA as an addiction expert discussing Charlie Sheen.

In addition to being an author, Jennifer is a clinical social worker and expert in addiction who has worked as clinical coordinator of the country’s largest Jewish addiction rehab center, Beit T’shuvah, in Los Angeles.

Jen is the hottest, smartest–and toughest–relationship pundit to bring brains, compassion, and spiritual insight to the work of helping humans since Dr. Laura.

If I were Charlie sheen, I’d sober up.

Tonight on the Factor, Bill O’Reilly put forward an interesting, sobering argument regarding the classification of President Obama as a socialist by some conservatives.

“When you have a country starting to define a sitting President as a socialist, is that working? Remember how the far left defined President Bush, as a ‘liar,’ he ‘lied’ about Iraq, as a ‘dummy.’” O’Reilly said in an interchange with Fox anchor Brit Hume. “That [the classification of President Obama as a socialist] is gaining traction and that’s going to be a hard moniker for the President to get off him.”

Hume and O’Reilly proceeded with a debate about the definition of socialism, with O’Reilly arguing the definition is that the citizens have no right to private property, which can be usurped at the whim of an autocratic leader (and that therefore Obama is not a socialist), and Hume arguing that the way the term is generally used, it can refer to Western-European style combination economies in which private property exists alongside huge social welfare programs and heavy government regulation in many areas of life. By that definition, Hume maintained, Obama critics like Glen Beck and Newt Gingrich are correct to characterize the President as a socialist.

I tend to agree with O’Reilly that President Obama, no matter what his core beliefs, is not fundamentally trying to turn the country socialist (he came close, though). For one thing, I believe the President has a pragmatic, success-oriented personality and it’s increasingly clear he couldn’t turn the country socialist if he wanted to (tea, anyone?), at least not if he wants a chance at re-election. It’s still a center (slightly) right country overall, and the health care fiasco (which arguably would have brought us closer to becoming a socialist economy, over time) has demonstrated that the President can’t impose an extremely leftist agenda on the country against the wishes of the majority. Knowing President Obama as I believe we are coming to, he will continue to push for reform, but will tack slightly more to the center on it. I think O’Reilly is correct that, whether the President holds socialist views or not, he is not enough of a true socialist to sacrifice his ambition to them (in other words, like many armchair socialists who have any chance at personal success, when it comes to his own advancement, he’s a capitalist).

What was striking to me in O’Reilly’s back-and-forth with Hume was what I felt Bill was inching toward without coming out and saying directly: much as vigorous criticism of the President may be in order, conservatives might keep in mind the way the deluge of vitriol and attempts to de-legitimize President Bush affected the morale of the country and, possibly, the perception of the U.S. to allies and enemies alike. Although O’Reilly characterized it as coming from the “hard left” (perhaps he was thinking of his viewers, many of whom are Democrats), the reality is, as his Presidency wore on, bashing President Bush became a mindless blood sport and a favorite pastime of many Americans, not just hard leftists. In reality, this mass characterization of President Bush as a “dummy” was intensely, and hypocritically, anti-intellectual (most critics who flattered themselves they were qualified to disparage the President’s intelligence knew precious little about the details of his polices, about geopolitics, about world history, and had not taken the time or exercised the personal discipline to examine the complex issues our country faced in an intellectually honest way). Bashing him became an extremely easy way to appear - and feel–intelligent, and in the end actually worked against intelligent examination of complex issues, because people who knew relatively little became complacent in the fantasy that they knew much. Ironically, the down side of our complete freedom is freedom to be closed-minded, which is what many of the President’s most vicious, name-calling critics actually were. Look no farther than the fact that President Obama has kept in place many of President Bush’s security policies, from so-called “warantless wiretapping” to the housing of enemy combatants at Guantanamo, to the maintenance of troops to keep the peace and help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan build democracy. If those policies were the evil work of an atrocious moron, as most leftists relentlessly characterized President Bush, why has President Obama kept these policies in place?

One of the points O’Reilly made in his broadcast tonight was that the relentless groupthink characterizing President Bush as a “liar” and a “dummy,” “hurt the President.” Although he was not more specific, I think O’Reilly is suggesting that it may have weakened President Bush’s abilities to effectively negotiate and leverage American power in the world, because it possibly added to America’s enemies’ — and allies’ — perception that he lacked power at home. This erosion of basic respect for the President probably reduced respect for him, and for the U.S., among our allies, and reduced fear of him on the part of our enemies.

I think O’Reilly is cautioning the right against engaging in the kind of un-nuanced personal attack against President Obama that leftists made commonplace during the Bush years. The point, I suspect, is not so much that conservatives must wear the white hat to be morally superior, but that disparaging and attempting to de-legitimize a sitting President could, if it becomes the norm, have negative real world consequences.

Today it was reported that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) acknowledges “the existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.” Although that’s hardly plain English, a close examination of the statement suggests that the IAEA is saying that, in addition to the secret uranium enrichment facility discovered in Qom last fall, the Iranians have even more secret programs to develop a nuclear weapon that could be shot via missile. I’m no scientist, but it seems clear that even the IAEA, a left-leaning, Iran-sympathizing internationalist body, is stating clearly its contention that Iran’s program is for nuclear weapons, not peaceful energy.

This statement by the IAEA jibes with what Iraqi Parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi has warned about for months, and which I published in a story in The Jerusalem Post on Christmas Day. Alusi has told me that, based on reports from sources with direct access to information about Iran’s nuclear program, Iran is racing to build both a nuclear bomb and the missiles to launch it.  Alusi also told me something this IAEA report suggests may be accurate: in addition to the six known nuclear production sites in Iran monitored by the IAEA, there are additional secret sites.

It seems a brutal, autocratic regime with genocidal intent is indeed on the threshold of nuclear capability. It is difficult to imagine, at this critical juncture in world history, what could be more urgent than stopping them from attaining that capability.

Last week at UC Irvine, a large group of extremist students repeatedly shouted down Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. You can watch a video of this debacle here.

When appeals to the values of liberal education, free speech, and even threats of expulsion failed to quiet the disruption, Ambassador Oren appealed to the attendees on the basis of the middle eastern tradition of hospitality. That failed, too.

The fanaticism, lack of civility, and lack of respect the disruptive students demonstrated in this incident were not only an offense towards Israel or the ambassador. Their behavior appeared to be a proud demonstration of contempt for liberal education and the values that sustain it. It is also worth noting that, as evidenced here, the people who really hate Israel tend to hold America and its institutions in contempt as well.

Choudhury, who faces prosecution by his government on charges of “blasphemy, treason, and sedition”– for writing articles favorable to Israel, and for exposing the rise of radical Islam in his country — has been the victim of harassment and torture at the hands of his government since 2003.

While he does not necessarily believe the government perpetrated this recent break-in, Choudhury believes the government may be complicit.

“When my office was attacked we were sure they were government agents,” Choudhury told me. “In this latest incident we don’t know why they came or what their motives were… When police refuse to record the case and are reluctant to investigate the whole matter, as a journalist I feel there is something fishy.”

In February, 2009, members of Bangladesh’s ruling party, the Awami League, ransacked the office of Choudhury’s newspaper, The Weekly Blitz, physically assaulted Choudhury and Weekly Blitz employee Amanur Rashid Aman, and drove them out of their office. Since then, they have been unable to enter their office, and Choudhury has needed to hire additional bodyguard protection for himself and his family.

Choudhury tells me the Bangladeshi government, initially hailed as a left-wing improvement on the previous, right-wing government, is becoming more repressive all the time. Crazy (there’s no other word) actions the Awami League government is perpetrating include arresting a journalist “for cursing the prime minister” and “digging up the bones of their political opponents,” from a cemetery, according to Choudhury.

Additionally, the Awami League is persecuting minorities and physically attacking political rivals, according to Choudhury.

Choudhury e-mailed me yesterday, “The present ‘Grand Alliance’ government has virtually turned Bangladesh into a country of no law and order. If you will read Bangladeshi newspapers, you will see, almost every day, ruling party activists are killing someone here and there. Corruption is everywhere …The government is doing everything in suffocating the voice of all political opponents. Recently in the Parliament, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and another senior lawmaker named Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim [cousin of the PM] demanded removal of the remains of the late President Ziaur Rahman [founder of Bangladesh’s main opposition party named Bangladesh Nationalist Party] from the graveyard and throwing away his remains in the river. They [the ruling party] wants to delete every existence of the political opponents in Bangladesh.”

Geez. And we thought American politics lacked civility.

In all seriousness, it sounds from Choudhury’s front-lines report like there has been a  deterioration of law and order in Bangladesh. Choudhury himself has been abused and beaten so severely since 2003—by his own government—that he has sustained hearing loss. He has also lost vision after being denied his glaucoma medication during his incarceration.

He says freedom of the press is under attack by Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister, whose father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s first prime minister, at one time “banned all newspapers” in that country, according to Choudhury.

He adds that a “black law” is still on the books in Bangladesh allowing government and law enforcement agencies to arrest anyone without any reason and place them on detention for an indefinite period.

When a free press is banned, corruption is not far behind. And this courageous independent journalist, who has exposed the rise of radical Islam in his traditionally moderate Muslim country, remains in the crosshairs of his own government.

His next trial date is February 18^th.

More to come.