24 prisoners at Guantanamo are on a prolonged hunger strike. The strike is a way of drawing attention to their plight: imprisonment without any clear charges or any specified legal processes leading to a determination of guilt or innocence. The prisoners at Guantanamo are casualties of the war on terror and the inability of the US government to figure out the legal processes by which to try them. The legal limbo is a serious violation of the human rights of the prisoners and a profound failure of the American commitment to the rule of law.
President Obama is scheduled to visit Israel and the first topic of conversation between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will be the Iranian nuclear program. Obama clearly does not wish to be put into a corner by Netanyahu, but the evidence suggests that Israel is moving closer to taking action on its own. The BBC has an interesting piece on Israeli calculations on the merits of a pre-emptive strike on Iran.
The Cypriot Parliament has rejected the Troika’s bailout offer–not a single member of Parliament voted in favor of the tax on depositors. It’s difficult to overestimate how serious the situation is: Cyprus’s banks are virtually insolvent and the banks deposits are 8 times larger than the entire GDP of Cyprus (due to the attractiveness of the country as a offshore tax haven and money launderer). The Parliament will likely make another offer, but any deal that involves another tax on deposits will be problematic. Then Germany will have to decide whether to continue to insist that depositors have to pay for the sins of their banks or chance Cyprus’s departure from the eurozone. The stakes are very high and no matter what happens, the ripples will spread far and wide.
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