Iranian Atomic Urgency
• CNN: Iran to investigate the death of an imprisoned blogger Sattar Beheshti. I can’t wait to see what excuse they come up with:
The human rights group said Beheshti, 35, was arrested October 30 by men thought to be from Iran’s “cyber police.” His family was told to pick up his body on November 6, Amnesty International said.
• Diplomats behind a cancelled confab pushing for a nuclear-free Mideast will simply say the timing wasn’t right. AP coverage.
Arab Spring Winter
• Syrian opposition groups took another stab at organizing some unity. According to the LA Times, the National Coalition for Revolutionary Forces and the Syrian Opposition is intended to serve as an umbrella organization and (hopefully) the single address for financial, military and humanitarian aid. Their leader?
Dissidents elected a Sunni Muslim cleric, Moaz Khatib, as the coalition’s president. Khatib was described as a moderate former preacher at the historic Umayyad mosque in Damascus, the capital, who fled the country during the summer after he was arrested. He is said to retain a considerable following inside Syria.
• Hezbollah lost Robert Fisk. What else is there to say?
Today, it looks more like yet another Arab “security” institution – or insecurity institution – as it flies drones over Israel and continues to support, to the increasing condemnation of many Lebanese, the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
• Will a water crisis and Nile neighbors make Egypt pay for years of fixation on the Zionists? The LA Times ain’t ruling it out:
An advisor to the president quoted in Al Ahram Weekly said this of Morsi: “The man was shocked when he received a review about the state of ties we have with Nile basin countries. The previous regime should be tried for overlooking such a strategic interest.”
For decades, Egypt had concentrated on problems closer to home, including keeping the Arab-Israeli peace . . .
• Worth reading: Mandela and the Arab Spring
Rest O’ the Roundup
• The brother of the Toulouse gunman says his family was raised on a steady diet of anti-Semitism. AP writes:
According to excerpts published in Le Figaro and other newspapers, Abdelghani made a silent vow on the day of Mohamed’s funeral to tell the world how they were raised on anti-Semitism.
“I will explain how my parents raised you in an atmosphere of racism and hate before the Salafis could douse you in religious extremism,” he writes in “My Brother, That Terrorist,” due out Wednesday . . .
In an excerpt publish in Belgian media, Abdelghani remembers how his mother drove home a message of anti-Semitism.
“My mother always said, `We, the Arabs, we were born to hate Jews.’ This speech, I heard it all throughout my childhood,” Abdelghani says in the documentary, according to the RTL.be website.
• U.S. Fears Hezbollah Operative Held in Iraq May Go Free
A senior Iraqi official has told the Obama administration that Iraq no longer has a legal basis to hold a Lebanese Hezbollah operative who has been accused of helping to kill American troops in Iraq, and United States officials are concerned that he may soon be released, American officials said Sunday.
• The Daily Mail was on hand as the chairman of the British Press Complaints Commission spoke out on the future of UK media regulation.
(Image of Nile via Wikimedia Commons/NASA Earth Observatory)
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