C Raja Mohan, Radicalization: Climate of suspicion, A surge at $57,077.60 a minute, Top Ten Videos of 2009: Nat Geo News's Most Watched

Top Ten Videos of 2009: Nat Geo News's Most Watched

DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA : A surge at $57,077.60 a minute It will cost American taxpayers US$57,077.60 per minute to get President Barack Obama's additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, based on the (low) figure of $30 billion overall that he has offered. This is a drop in the bucket when it comes to what may turn out to be a trillion-dollar war. - Jo Comerford

Pulse: Foreign Policy editor Joshua Keating is generous in referring to PULSE’s 20 Top Global Thinkers of 2009 list as ‘a welcome addition to the conversation‘. However, he misses our point, and in part this is because he misreads (or misrepresents) our argument.

It is clear from our post that we are referring specifically to the incongruity of having individuals such as Dick Cheney, General Petraeus, Larry Summers, Thomas Friedman, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salam Fayyad, The Kagans and Ahmed Rashid on a list of thinkers. So we surmised that it may have to do with the fact that the main thrust of their work aligns with the US military and economic agenda worldwide. We could not possibly have been referring to FP’s entire list, since, as Keating correctly notes, several of our choices overlap with FP’s, and there are others on the list that we actually respect and admire.

C. Raja Mohan Whether he quits or not, President Asif Ali Zardari has been so severely weakened that he no longer poses a threat to Pakistan's permanent establishment. In fact the Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani might prefer holding a de-fanged Zardari prisoner in Islamabad's presidential palace and run the country with the pliable Yousuf Raza Gilani as the Prime Minister.

James Zogby: Israel's near hysterical reaction to a Swedish proposal to recognise East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, their stubborn refusal to include East Jerusalem in their questionable "settlement freeze" and their defence of repressive policies imposed on Palestinians in the area of that holy city are framed in language that masks their real intent.

Radicalization: Climate of suspicion The ‘judgments’ were swift and quick. Mere days after the arrests of the five American males apprehended in Sargodha, both the New York Times and the Washington Post loudly proclaimed the need for increased scrutiny of Muslim Americans on their front pages. The New York Times coupled the news of the arrests with the recent killings of soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas. Other newspapers added the arrest of Afghan American Najibullah Zazi to the mix, eager to demonstrate a growing pattern of radicalisation among Muslim American youth. he five men, whose varied ethnicities are representative of the diversity of the American Muslim community, are still being interrogated by FBI and Pakistani officials. In the meantime, Muslim American groups, living under the ever-present shadow of suspicion, leapt to action.