I’m up against my usual end-of-month deadline wall. But in the light of this week’s flash mob trashing of the First Lady for not wearing a scarf in Saudi Arabia, here’s a trip down memory lane — what happened in 2007 when Nancy Pelosi DID wear a scarf to visit a mosque in a Muslim country.

The elites of Europe made a mad dash for their smelling salts yesterday when the Greek people rebelled against the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission and elected politicians who promised to govern Greece for the benefit of Greeks, which of course is a crazy far-left radical idea that no sensible elitist would approve. The new members of Parliament and their new Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, ran on an anti-austerity platform that proposed the Greek people shouldn’t have to suffer for the sins of international finance.

Headline at the Wall Street Journal:

Greece Must Repay Debt, Europe Officials Say

Some Officials Concerned Syriza’s Election Win Could Encourage Other Antiausterity Movements

Ya think?

Krugman points out in his column today that the austerity measures crammed down Greece’s throat not only caused untold hardship for Greeks but left the country deeper in debt.

What went wrong? I fairly often encounter assertions to the effect that Greece didn’t carry through on its promises, that it failed to deliver the promised spending cuts. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, Greece imposed savage cuts in public services, wages of government workers and social benefits. Thanks to repeated further waves of austerity, public spending was cut much more than the original program envisaged, and it’s currently about 20 percent lower than it was in 2010.

Yet Greek debt troubles are if anything worse than before the program started. One reason is that the economic plunge has reduced revenues: The Greek government is collecting a substantially higher share of G.D.P. in taxes than it used to, but G.D.P. has fallen so quickly that the overall tax take is down. Furthermore, the plunge in G.D.P. has caused a key fiscal indicator, the ratio of debt to G.D.P., to keep rising even though debt growth has slowed and Greece received some modest debt relief in 2012.

Other commenters are skeptical that the new government can deliver what it promises, for a variety of reasons. But as Krugman says, ” in calling for a major change, Mr. Tsipras is being far more realistic than officials who want the beatings to continue until morale improves.”

Europe is laughing at Fox News, in particular over hysterical claims that Europe is riddled with Muslim “no-go zones” where only Muslims may enter.

…the French equivalent of the David Letterman show, “Le Petit Journal,” managed to convey some much-needed comic relief to a national prime-time TV audience in France where much of the country grieved.

The Petit Journal’s broadcast of the Parisian neighborhoods could not have more patently depicted the absurdity of Fox’s portrayal of Paris, where, in reality, people of different ages, religions and ethnic origins freely go about their business, running errands, pushing strollers, etc.

Le Petit Journal correspondents were shown visiting the “no-go zones,” prompting guffaws from both the live studio audience and the incredulous passersby who were asked if their safe streets were comparable to those in Iraq or Afghanistan, if they ever saw someone wear bin Laden T-shirts, or other absurd questions. The U.S. equivalent would be asking people on the streets in Manhattan if Shariah law was the law of the streets there.

In another broadcast, Le Petit Journal cast members dressed up like U.S. journalists ventured into the “Most Dangerous City in the Universe.” They confronted such dangerous situations as a man with a “terrorist beard” driving a taxi or the site of a couscous restaurant. The sounds of a jackhammer are taken for gunfire as the fake TV reporter rolls on the ground in terror.

The Mayor of Paris threatened to sue Fox News for defaming her city, and British Prime Minister David Cameron famously said he “choked on his porridge” upon hearing the claim that Birmingham UK is “totally Muslim.”

Fox News has uncharacteristically issued apologies for the “no go zone” claims, but that has not deterred Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who made similar “no go zone” claims while in London this week. And unlike Fox News, Jindal is not backing down, but told CNN he was only “speaking the truth.”

Clearly, Jindal wants to be a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, a competition that’s something of a cross between a circus clown car act and “Survivor.” Speaking of which, if you missed Mike Huckabee on the Daily Show, you missed Jon Stewart being a little less kind than usual.

The highlight film:

Some people have no sense of humor:

Republicans were irked by President Barack Obama’s caustic reminder in his State of the Union speech that he defeated them twice.

“I’ve run my last campaign,” Obama said toward the end of the nationally televised address. Republicans in the chamber applauded derisively, which prompted the president to ad-lib a zinger which wasn’t in his prepared remarks: “I know because I won both of them.”

Democrats erupted with applause.

In the Capitol after the speech, Republicans expressed displeasure at being jabbed by the president in the same speech where he asked for their cooperation.

“Probably not helpful when you rub the other guy’s nose in the dirt a little bit,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), a close ally of Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), told reporters.

The problem with Republicans is that they dish it out but can’t take it. Weenies. Maybe the baby party needs a nap.

Elias Isquith saw the SOTU as a repudiation of both Reagan conservatism and Clinton neoliberalism.  This President prefers the long game, Isquith said, and realize it or not, he’s pushed the country’s trajectory to the left. Charles Pierce was less enthusiastic, however, and thinks the President avoided the issue of poverty:

The argument as I understand it is that all these policy initiatives will work to “expand” the middle class by enabling people to rise and to join it. But can it not be argued that this position is merely trickle-down in populist drag, merely trickle-down from a lower height?

Both the issues of the shrinking middle class and poverty have to be addressed, IMO, but let us not forget that this is the President who expanded Medicaid. That may have been the greatest single anti-poverty initiative undertaken in decades, even if it was denied to a lot of people because of the backward ideologies of their governors.

People seem uniformly underwhelmed by the several Republican responses, which were long on either folksiness or whining but short on any actual ideas that might remotely translate into policy.

As many have pointed out, the President has laid down a challenge to Republicans — how can they block his proposals and still claim to care about ordinary Americans instead of just the rich? I’m sure they’re deep into meetings right now to figure that out.

I can remember when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a darling of the American Right. His books, especially The Gulag Archipelago, were cited time and time again as proof of the moral superiority of the West — America especially — over the wicked Soviet Union. The Soviets silenced critics by shipping them off to forced labor camps with no right to a fair hearing, and we didn’t do that, did we?

Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. A manuscript account of his captivity was released today, although not before being heavily redacted by the U.S. government. You can read it online at the Guardian. There’s an abridged version at Spiegel. The manuscript may not rise to the literary quality of Solzhenitsyn’s work, but I’d say it permanently relieves the U.S. of any assumption of moral superiority over the Soviets.

If it’s ever published in book form, the ruling in favor of his habeas petition needs to be an appendix. The judgment ends with these words:

The question, upon which the government had the burden of proof, was whether, at the time of his capture, Salahi was a “part of” al-Qaida. On the record before me, I cannot find that he was. The petition for writ of habeas corpus is granted. Salahi must be released from custody. It is SO ORDERED.

That was in 2010. The government appealed. Slahi remains in Guantanamo.

Slahi is a former mujahideen and al Qaeda member who claimed to have severed ties with al Qaeda in 1992. However, he is also a cousin and former brother-in-law of Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a guy with direct connections to Osama bin Laden. On a couple of occasions he gave money to al-Walid. He is accused of conspiring with members of the “Hamburg Cell,” although according to some accounts all he may have done is let Ramzi bin al-Shibh stay overnight in his house in Germany once in 1999. Late in 1999 he moved to Montreal, where he was a member of the same mosque as Ahmed Ressam. His association with known jihadists got him on the radar, so to speak. He returned to his native Mauritania in 2000, but on the way home he was detained by FBI agents who believed him to be involved in the Millennium Plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport. After three weeks he was released. In November 2001 he was subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and has been in American custody ever since.

Joe Nocera writes,

What was he accused of? Slahi asked this question of his captors often and was never given a straight answer. This, of course, is part of the problem with Guantánamo, a prison where being formally charged with a crime is a luxury, not a requirement. His efforts to tell the truth — that he had no involvement in any acts of terrorism — only angered his interrogators. “Looks like a dog, walks like a dog, smells like a dog, barks like a dog, must be a dog,” one interrogator used to say. That was the best his captors could do to explain why he was there. Yet the military was so sure he was a key Al Qaeda player that he was subjected to “special interrogation” techniques that had been signed off by the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, himself.

“Special interrogation techniques,” of course, is a euphemism for torture. The sections of the book that describe his torture make for harrowing reading. Slahi was so sleep-deprived that he eventually started to hallucinate. Chained to the ground, he was forced to “stand” in positions that were extremely painful. Interrogators went at him in shifts — 24 hours a day. Sometimes during interrogations, female interrogators rubbed their breasts over his body and fondled him.

Yes, Slahi made confessions under torture, which he has recanted.

While it’s always possible Slahi was more directly involved with terrorism than his public record suggests, it appears he is a victim of zealotry on the part of U.S. national security. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and no doubt the Boy Wonder president wanted all the evildoers rounded up and punished, and those charged with carrying out these wishes don’t seem to have been terribly picky about who they nabbed to fill their quotas.

American conservatives, including former POW Sen. John McCain, continue to insist that the men detained in Guantanamo must stay there, because they are dangerous. It’s more like some people are trying to keep their own moral cowardice out of sight.

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I’m not going to live blog the SOTU tonight, but feel free to comment here if you like.