Center for a New American Security

Posting will be sparse over the next few days as Londonstani is playing host to the potential future Mrs. Londonstani (who is presently just known as Ms. Henley-on-Thames).

Does Britain collude in the torture of terror suspects or not?

The head of MI5 said in a speech the other day that torturing people might be OK for Jack Bauer, but it's not OK for his officers..  Well, he basically said that without the television reference.

Kerry Lugar is the talk of Islamabad. And as tempted as Londonstani was at first to assume everyone was referring to a new pop star rival to Britney it turns out Kerry Lugar is actually a piece of US legisation that triples non-military aid to Pakistan.

Not to be outdone by AM on the traveling front, Londonstani has spent the best part of 24 hours on planes flying around the Middle East. And, the one good thing about travelling economy class on Emirates air are all the free English and Arabic newspapers.

The Taliban attacks on ISAF forces in Nuristan made for the top story in every single title. The story seems like a pretty straight forward affair, but hidden in its coverage is clue to how the Afghan conflict is being seen within the Muslim world.

Some important weekend reading courtesy of the NYT.

Nicholas Schmidle's portrait of violent extremism in the maghreb pretty much nails it as far as Londonstani is concerned. The six-page article is worth reading if you want to put a personality to the image of a young jihadi, and get a taste of where the "al Qaeda business model" might be going.

Not to overload everyone with NYT copy, but it's very worth reading this op-ed by Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswany outlining the wry but hopeful eying of President Obama by people in the Muslim world.

Yes, Londonstani feels guilty for letting AM do all the heavy lifting recently.. particularly since he well knows Eric Cantona's second biggest fan has an ascent to power to plot. (OK, if you watched that, you might as well watch this)

Londonstani's spent a lot of time looking at Pakistan recently. One of his areas of interest has been the country's nuclear weapons.. where they came from and, even more importantly, where they might go.

In Londonstani's world there's little worse than an overpaid French or Italian banker complaining about British food and weather while living in London and paying less tax than at home. In the same vein, he likes to avoid complaining about U.S. politics, when he doesn't have to have U.S. politicians in charge of him. However, he's making an exception in the case of this NYT op-ed on how a President Obama might change global perceptions of America because ..