As angry demonstrators gathered once again in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest what many are calling a “soft coup” by the military, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that Washington still expects “a full transfer or power to a democratically elected civilian government” in Egypt.

“There can be no going back on the democratic transition called for by the Egyptian people,” Clinton said in reaction to the news that the Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court had dissolved the country’s elected parliament on the eve of presidential elections this weekend.

“Now, ultimately, it is up to the Egyptian people to determine their own future, and we expect that this weekend’s presidential election will be held in an atmosphere that is conducive to being peaceful, fair, and free.”

But a number of Egypt experts here said the latest moves by both the court and the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which assumed all legislative powers following the court’s decision, have thrown the entire “transition” process into grave doubt and should prompt the administration of President Barack Obama to reassess its expectations and its policy.

“The United States should be examining the actions of the SCAF very carefully and keep in reserve the option of suspending military assistance should the SCAF not take the action it should in this situation,” said Michelle Dunne, the head of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council and co-chair of the Egypt Working Group, an ad hoc task force of Middle East specialists who advised the White House on Egypt policy over the past 18 months.

“The parliament was quite active and enjoyed a lot of popular support,” she told IPS. “Its dissolution creates a highly unstable atmosphere in which the final round of the presidential election will ...

Citing the increased violence, neo-conservatives and other hawks have been pressing their case for Washington to arm opposition forces and aid Turkey and Jordan in creating and enforcing "safe zones" for civilians along their borders with Syria, at the very least. 

"In addition, the U.S. and our NATO allies could strengthen sanctions on Syria by mounting a naval blockade of the Syrian coastline," according to Max Boot, a prominent neo-conservative at the Council on Foreign Relations, this week. 

"This would make it more difficult for Syria's principal supporters, Russia and Iran, to provide arms to the regime," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times, noting that airstrikes to take out the regime's key military assets - as they did in Libya - should also be considered. 

For now, however, the administration, concerned about the possibility of being drawn into yet another Middle East quagmire and worried that further militarizing the conflict risks destabilizing Syria's neighbors, is firmly resisting such advice. 

While expressing growing skepticism about efforts by U.N.-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan to implement a ceasefire and a transition plan that would eventually remove President Bashar al-Assad from power, the administration is standing by the former U.N. secretary-general, who will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton here Friday. 

Citing reports of a massacre of 78 civilians in a village in central Hama province Wednesday, Clinton toughened her rhetoric in an appearance with her Turkish counterpart in Istanbul Thursday. Assad, she said, has "doubled down on his brutality and duplicity". 

"Syria will not, cannot, be peaceful, stable or certainly democratic until Assad goes," she declared, stressing that Washington intends to intensify economic and diplomatic sanctions against the ...

This morning, The New York Times published a report detailing how the Bush and Obama administrations created the cyber weapon known as Stuxnet and used it to disrupt Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

Much has been written about Stuxnet, which, as ProPublica recently reported, remains a threat beyond Iran. But the Times account, based on interviews with unnamed U.S. and Israeli officials, is the most extensive account to date of U.S. cyberwarfare capabilities. Here’s our cheat sheet on what’s new and the fallout:

·       Because of Stuxnet’s complexity, cybersecurity analysts have long suspected it was a U.S.-Israeli effort. The Times story confirms this for the first time, disclosing that the project was code-named “Olympic Games.”

·       Olympic Games began under the Bush administration, and during development, it was known as “the bug.”

·       President Obama has repeatedly expressed concern that if the U.S. acknowledges it is behind Stuxnet, it would give terrorists and enemy states a justification for their own attacks.

·       Stuxnet was introduced into Iran's enrichment facility at Natanz by an unwitting Iranian. “It turns out there is always an idiot around who doesn’t think much about the thumb drive in their hand," a source told the Times.

·       To test the bug in secret Department of Energy labs, the U.S. used aging centrifuges handed over in 2003 by Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, making them into ...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s protracted effort to fight extradition to Sweden suffered a body blow this week. Britain’s Supreme Court upheld the arrest warrant, issued in December 2010. After the court announced its split 5-2 decision, the justices surprised many legal observers by granting Assange’s lawyers an opportunity to challenge their decision—the first such reconsideration since the high-profile British extradition case from more than a decade ago against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The decision came almost two years to the day after Pvt. Bradley Manning was arrested in Iraq for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks. The cases remind us that all too often whistle-blowers suffer, while war criminals walk.

Assange has not been charged with any crime, yet he has been under house arrest in England for close to two years, ever since a “European Arrest Warrant” was issued by Sweden (importantly, by a prosecutor, not by a judge). Hoping to question Assange, the prosecutor issued the warrant for suspicion of rape, unlawful coercion and sexual molestation. Assange offered to meet the Swedish authorities in their embassy in London, or in Scotland Yard, but was refused.

Assange and his supporters allege that the warrant is part of an attempt by the U.S. government to imprison him, or even execute him, and to shut down WikiLeaks. In April 2010, WikiLeaks released a U.S. military video that it named “Collateral Murder,” with graphic video showing an Apache helicopter unit killing of at least 12 ...

Syria has tightened control of its borders with Lebanon and Turkey in recent days, laying fresh fields of land mines and sweeping through areas critical to rebel smuggling operations in a development that raises questions about how aid, lethal or non-lethal, would reach the armed opponents of President Bashar Assad.

The Syrian efforts have been aided, anti-Assad activists say, by the militaries of both Lebanon and Turkey, which have recently taken steps to obstruct actions of both the rebel Free Syrian Army and smugglers operating from their territory.

"We wish the Turks would be softer in allowing the Free Army to operate," said a Syrian activist in Turkey who uses the nom de guerre "Godfather" and helps provide communications and medical aid to activists inside Syria.

"Godfather" said the Turkish military was pushing FSA groups inside Turkey further and further from what are often ambiguously marked areas along the mountainous border with Syria. He also said that Syria 10 days ago had placed new land mines along its side of the border.

At a meeting of countries working for Assad's ouster in Istanbul, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday said the United States was supplying logistical support to the rebels, including communications equipment and would ...

Confronted with popular protest, the country's unelected rulers have doubled down on repression, jailing peaceful activists and killing dozens of civilians who have the gall to exercise their rights. Those who state security forces haven't killed for demanding democracy have been tear-gassed and brought before the perverted justice of a military court, even as the ruling clique promises the world and its red-eyed subjects democratic reform. Eventually.

Were it Syria or Iran, the rhetoric from Washington would be stern, aggressive even. But since the repressive ruling clique is the military junta in Egypt, the lectures are timid – and coupled with a handout. Indeed, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just announced, the Obama administration is waiving a legislative requirement that made military assistance to Egypt conditional on its rulers “implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law.” This allows the U.S. government to send Egypt's rulers $1.5 billion in taxpayer money, more than 85 percent of which is explicitly set aside for the armed forces.

If one only pays attention to what politicians say, ignoring what they do, this may come as a surprise. President Barack Obama, after all, has voiced support for the Arab Spring. He gave a speech in Cairo full of lofty words about the people of the region's legitimate democratic aspirations. So why would his administration lavish a regime that cracks down on pro-democracy forces with money for weapons?

Simple: for America's weapons makers, there's big money at stake. According to “administration and congressional ...

After weeks of rapidly escalating tensions, particularly between Israel and Iran, signs emerged this week both here and in Tehran that serious negotiations over Tehran's controversial nuclear program may soon get underway.

The most concrete step was a long-awaited positive RSVP from Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalali, to an invitation extended last October by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to meet with the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany) for a new round of talks.

"We voice our readiness for dialogue on a spectrum of various issues, which can provide grounds for constructive and forward-looking co- operation," Jalali wrote in his letter.

In response, both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ashton herself emerged from a meeting here Friday expressing cautious optimism about prospects for a resumption of negotiations, which have been effectively suspended for more than a year.

"…(W)e think this is an important step and we welcome the letter," Clinton told reporters, adding that Jalili's letter "appeared to acknowledge and accept" a Western condition that Iran has previously resisted: that any talks "begin with a discussion of (Iran's) nuclear program".

A formal response by the P5+1, whose members are still consulting with each other, may not, however, be forthcoming until after the scheduled visit next week by a high-level delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the second in the past month. If Tehran accedes to certain requests that it denied the delegation in its last visit, confidence will be enhanced, U.S. officials said.

The latest developments come after several months of escalating tensions, the most recent spiral of which began in late December with the adoption of "crippling" sanctions by Washington and the EU and threats by some Iranian officials to close the ...

Official Washington has been rife with condemnation at the decision by the governments of Russia and China to veto an otherwise unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning the ongoing repression in Syria and calling for a halt to violence on all sides; unfettered access for Arab League monitors; and "a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system, in which citizens are equal regardless of their affiliations or ethnicities or beliefs."

Human rights activists were outraged, as they should be. What is striking, however, is the response from US officials and pundits so roundly condemning the use of the veto by these two permanent members of the Security Council to protect the Syrian regime from accountability for its savage repression against its own citizens.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a high-wattage diplomatic push Tuesday to persuade the U.N. Security Council to endorse an Arab plan for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, but she couldn't break the steadfast objections of Russia and China.

As fighting between government and opposition forces continued on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, Clinton said that a failure by the Security Council to respond would mean being "complicit in the continuing violence," which was approaching a civil war.

Clinton, the foreign ministers of Britain and France, and Arab allies appeared at the United Nations to back a draft resolution that calls for Assad to resign within two months, a halt to the violence and beginning a process of political transition. The draft also calls for the release of detainees and for Syria to allow outside observers into the country, including journalists.

"The alternative — spurning the Arab League, abandoning the Syrian people, emboldening the dictator — would compound this tragedy and would mark a failure of our shared responsibility and shake the credibility of the United Nations Security Council," Clinton said.

The Obama administration and its allies are pushing for the Security Council to approve the resolution swiftly, and ...

Who in their right mind wants to talk about, think about, or read a short essay about... civilian war casualties?  What a bummer, this topic, especially since our Afghan, Iraq, and other ongoing wars were advertised as uplifting acts of philanthropy: wars to spread security, freedom, democracy, human rights, gender equality, the rule of law, etc.

A couple hundred thousand dead civilians have a way of making such noble ideals seem like dollar-store tinsel.  And so, throughout our decade-long foreign policy debacle in the Greater Middle East, we in the U.S. have generally agreed that no one shall commit the gaucherie of dwelling on (and “dwelling on” = fleetingly mentioned) civilian casualties. Washington elites may squabble over some things, but as for foreigners killed by our numerous wars, our Beltway crew adheres to a sullen code of omertà.

Club rules do, however, permit one loophole: Washington officials may bemoan the nightmare of civilian casualties -- but only if they can be pinned on a 24-year-old Army private first class named Bradley Manning.

Pfc. Manning, you will remember, is the young soldier who is soon to be court-martialed for passing some 750,000 military and diplomatic documents, a large chunk of them classified, to the website WikiLeaks.  Among those leaks, there was indeed some serious stuff about how Americans dealt with civilians in invaded countries.  For instance, the documents revealed that the U.S. military, then the occupying force in Iraq, did little or nothing to prevent Iraqi authorities ...

Two Internet anti-piracy bills working their way through Congress that are heavily backed by the movie industry could have significant impacts on technology companies, a threat highlighted Wednesday by Wikipedia, Reddit, BoingBoing and other sites that went offline for the day in protest. As a result, some reporters have characterized the standoff over the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s Protect Intellectual Property Act – SOPA and PIPA for short – as a fight between Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

But at an event put on by The New RepublicWednesday, Alec Ross, the State Department’s senior advisor for innovation, pointed out that that this issue is bigger than California. If done wrong, anti-piracy legislation could restrict the rights of Internet users across the country – and put U.S. diplomats in a very awkward position.

“Any attempt to combat online piracy cannot have the unintended consequence of censoring legal online content,” Ross said, referring to SOPA. He suggested that some measures in ...

My political prediction for 2012 (based on absolutely no inside information): Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap places. Biden becomes Secretary of State — a position he’s apparently coveted for years. And Hillary Clinton, Vice President. 

So the Democratic ticket for 2012 is Obama-Clinton.

Why do I say this? Because Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base that’s been disillusioned with his cave-ins to regressive Republicans. Hillary Clinton on the ticket can do that.

Moreover, the economy won’t be in superb shape in the months leading up to Election Day. Indeed, if the European debt crisis grows worse and if China’s economy continues to slow, there’s a better than even chance we’ll be back in a recession. Clinton would help deflect attention from the bad economy and put it on foreign policy, where she and Obama have shined. 

The deal would also make Clinton the obvious Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 — offering the Democrats a shot at twelve (or more) years in the White House, something the Republicans had with Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush but which the Democrats haven’t had since FDR. Twelve years gives the party in power a chance to reshape the Supreme Court as well as put an indelible stamp on America. 

According to the latest Gallup poll, the duo are this year’s most admired man and woman. This marks the fourth consecutive win for  Obama while Clinton has been the most admired woman in each of the last 10 years. She’s topped the list 16 times since 1993, exceeding the record held by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who topped the list 13 times.

Obama-Clinton in 2012. It’s a natural.

Now is the time for President Obama to complete his evolution on the subject of same-sex marriage.

Supporting the right of all Americans to marry the person of their choice would be the right thing to do. Strange as this may sound, it might also be good politics.

More to the point, it would not be the almost certainly disastrous political move it would have been even in the last presidential campaign, when none of the major Democratic candidates supported the right to marry.

Flash forward three years to Hillary Clinton’s remarks this week. “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” declared Obama’s chief primary rival and now his secretary of state, echoing her famous declaration, as first lady, about women’s rights. Clinton did not go so far as to endorse same-sex marriage. Yet the arc of her logic bends inexorably in that direction. As Clinton surely knew when she proclaimed that “no practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us.”

Madame ...

Asia’s return to the center of world affairs is the great power shift of the twenty-first century. In 1750, Asia had roughly three-fifths of the world’s population and accounted for three-fifths of global output. By 1900, after the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America, Asia’s share of global output had shrunk to one-fifth. By 2050, Asia will be well on its way back to where it was 300 years earlier.

But, rather than keeping an eye on that ball, the United States wasted the first decade of this century mired in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it in a recent speech, American foreign policy will “pivot” toward East Asia.

President Barack Obama’s decision to rotate 2,500 US Marines through a base in northern Australia is an early sign of that pivot. In addition, the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, held in Obama’s home state of Hawaii, promoted a new set of trade talks called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Both events reinforce Obama’s message to the Asia-Pacific region that the US intends to remain an engaged power.

The pivot toward Asia does not mean that other parts of the world are no longer important; on the contrary, Europe, for example, has a much larger and richer economy than China’s. But, as Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, recently explained, US foreign policy over the past few years has been buffeted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, concerns about terrorism, nuclear-proliferation threats in Iran and North Korea, and the recent Arab uprisings. Obama’s November trip to Asia was an effort to align US foreign-policy priorities with the region’s long-term importance.

In Donilon’s words, “by elevating this dynamic region to one of our top strategic priorities, Obama is showing his determination not to let our ship of state be pushed off course by prevailing ...

For two years, President Barack Obama’s administration has tried to convey a narrative in which it is winding up wars in Southwest Asia and turning America’s attention to its longer-term – and arguably more important – relationships in East Asia and the Pacific. In recent months, that narrative has gained the virtue of actually being true.

Now, the task will be to balance the need for responsible military drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan with a responsible buildup of activities in East Asia. And that means putting to rest fears that the United States is gearing up for confrontation with China.

Obama’s decision to break off talks with Iraq’s government for a new agreement on the status of US forces there means that, after eight years, those troops are finally coming home (perhaps in time for Christmas). Since US politics no longer stops at the water’s edge, Obama’s decision was greeted with howls of derision by those who argued that he was “uncommitted” to the Iraq venture and somehow did not make his best effort to keep ...

As the Pentagon scrambled Monday to satisfy Pakistani demands for a full accounting of Saturday's lethal air attack on two border posts, official Washington expressed hope that Islamabad's retaliation will be limited in both time and scope.

So far, Pakistan has closed the two border crossings used by the U.S. and NATO convoys to supply their troops in Afghanistan for the first time this year. It has not indicated when the crossings, over which about 40 percent of total supplies for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) travel, may be reopened, although the interior minister, Rehman Malik, suggested Saturday that the blockade may be permanent.

It also ordered Washington to vacate the Shamsi Air Base in Baluchistan within 15 days. The base has long been used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to launch and maintain armed drone aircraft deployed against suspected Taliban forces on both sides of the border.

U.S. officials expressed considerable concern that Pakistan may also decide to boycott a critical international meeting Dec. 5 in Bonn, Germany, on the future of Afghanistan as ISAF prepares to withdraw its forces by 2014. The decision on whether to attend is said to be under review by the Pakistani authorities.

They are also fearful that Islamabad may revoke over-flight rights by U.S. fighter and bomber aircraft on missions to Afghanistan from the Persian Gulf region and surrounding seas.

"If they were to shut that down, then the rupture would be pretty bad," said Shuja Nawaz, the director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council here.

He said the Pakistani government and the upper echelons of the military were under "strong pressure" from both opposition parties and the army's lower ranks to retaliate for the attack in which at least 24 soldiers killed by fire from NATO aircraft at the two border stations Saturday.

Precisely how and why the attacks took place ...

At their recent summit in Cannes, the G-20 shelved, if not buried, the World Trade Organization’s moribund Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations. Crisis-weary Europe and America face a rising tide of protectionism at home, and are trying to find ways to blunt the edge of China’s non-transparent trade competitiveness.

Turning his attention from the Atlantic to the Pacific, US President Barack Obama – with his eye, once again, trained on China – has now unveiled a new regional trade initiative. Why was the US unwilling to move forward on the Doha Round, but willing to pursue a regional free-trade agreement?

The answer lies in the fact that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), launched by Obama and the governments of eight other Pacific economies – Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam – is not just about trade.

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This was not simply a geographic shift. With a presidential election approaching in 2012, the president is emphasizing jobs, not war. When it comes to economic opportunity, Asia is where the action is. 

"No region will do more to shape our long-term economic future than the Asia Pacific region," the president announced at his press conference on Monday. APEC links the United States with 20 other countries, including Japan, Russia, South Korea, Mexico, and Canada, and accounts for nearly half of the world's trade. 

But the president did not have an easy time in Hawai'i steering U.S. foreign policy in a different direction. The Middle East overshadowed the APEC discussions, with the first question for the president at his press conference focusing on Iran and U.S. sanctions.

In fact, aside from the hot-button issue of economic competition with China, none of the journalists seemed very much interested in Asian matters. The chief focus of news coverage of the event was the president's decision to break with the APEC tradition of forcing heads of state to wear native garb for a photo op. 

The Obama administration has long wanted to reorient, literally, U.S. foreign policy. During their years of political exile under the George W. Bush administration, key foreign policy figures like Kurt Campbell complained of how Washington was ignoring Pacific affairs at its peril.

Although Campbell is now in charge of Asian affairs at the State Department and his current boss Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has worked hard to achieve this reorientation by visiting the region and attending regional confabs, the Obama administration has largely continued the Bush-era focus on fighting in Afghanistan and conducting counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan and around the Horn of Africa. 

Even though Obama has largely fulfilled his promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, the Arab Spring has presented ...

More than 10,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Sunday with a simple goal: Encircle the White House. They succeeded, just weeks after 1,253 people were arrested in a series of protests at the same spot. These thousands, as well as those arrested, were unified in their opposition to the planned Keystone XL pipeline, intended to run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas. A broad, international coalition against the pipeline has formed since President Barack Obama took office, and now the deadline for its approval or rejection is at hand.

Bill McKibben, founder of the global movement against climate change 350.org, told me: “This has become not only the biggest environmental flash point in many, many years, but maybe the issue in recent times in the Obama administration when he’s been most directly confronted by people in the street. In this case, people willing, hopeful, almost dying for him to be the Barack Obama of 2008.”

The president, until recently, simply hid behind the legal argument that, as the pipeline was coming from Canada, the proper forum for the decision fell with the U.S. Department of State and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That was until a key Clinton insider was exposed as a lobbyist for the company trying to build Keystone XL, TransCanada. The environmental group Friends of the Earth has exposed a series of connections between the Clinton political machine and Keystone XL. Paul Elliott is TransCanada’s top lobbyist in Washington on the pipeline. He was a high-level campaign staffer on Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House in 2008, and worked as well on Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1996 and Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2000.

Friends of the Earth (FOE) received emails following a Freedom of Information Act request, documenting ...

The debate over the pipeline is both complicated and fierce, and it crosses party lines, with much sparring over the potential environmental and economic impacts of the project. More than 1,000 arrests were made during protests of the pipeline last summer in Washington, D.C.

Here's our breakdown of the controversy, including the benefits and risks of the project, and the concerns about the State Department's role.

Potential benefits — energy security and jobs for Americans — and how they're disputed

Proponents of the project point to two main benefits for Americans. First, it would improve America's energy security, because it would bring in more oil from friendly ...

The State Department has admitted their environmental review of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline was conducted by a contractor paid for by the pipeline company itself, a potentially illegal conflict of interest first reported by ThinkProgress Green. The Canadian tar sands company TransCanada has applied to construct a major pipeline through the United States to pump tar sands crude to Texas refineries for the international oil market, and is awaiting approval by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. The State Department’s approval hinges upon a positive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), required by the National Environmental Policy Act to assess whether the pipeline is in the national interest.

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With the formal debate over on Friday, a decision on an oil pipeline that will cross America's heartland and open up a greater market for Canada's oil sands now rests with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In the last of nine public hearings, people got three minutes each to tell two State Department officials their views about whether the pipeline from the oil sands to Texas refineries is in the nation's best interest.

They spoke of the nation's dependence on oil, the need for a secure source, the risks of pipeline spills, the benefits of pipeline construction jobs, the health risks at both ends of the pipeline and the effects of a relatively high-pollution form of oil on climate change.

For President Barack Obama, the debate also has political weight for the 2012 election. Environmentalists have accused him of going back on promises of cleaner energy and political transparency. They also say that emails and other examples of how Washington works show bias at the State Department in favor of the oil industry.

One speaker on Friday who summed up the pro-pipeline side was Kim Rickard, an official from Montana with the Laborers' International Union of North America. The union wants the $7 billion pipeline because its workers will get jobs building it.

"The reality is, we need the oil, we need it from a friendly nation we can trust, and we need jobs," she said to the cheers of dozens of her union's workers in orange T-shirts.

Alaura Luebbe, 16, urged the two State Department officials to think about jobs from her point of view. A pipeline spill on her family's ranch near Stuart, Neb., "will take away all that we work for," she said.

Others spoke of water pollution threats to people who live downstream from the oil sands, air pollution problems in Texas near the refineries, the mining residues left in large ponds in the oil sands and the destruction of the forest from ...

Actresses Darryl Hannah and Margot Kidder and hundreds of less well-known activists are ending a two-week civil disobedience campaign focused on preventing Obama administration approval of a pipeline to ferry oil extracted from Canadian tar sands to U.S. refineries. They say it threatens forests, water supplies, and will radically worsen global warming.

But climate scientists and oil industry analysts say more is at stake than the fate of the so-called Keystone XL project. It is among a handful of energy projects in North America whose approval could boost investment and create momentum for unconventional sources of fossil fuels. Many scientists believe increased use of such dirtier energy could make it harder to avert a climate crisis.

While protestors want White House officials and the public to notice, investors already are watching developments closely – and the pipeline’s builder, whose chief lobbyist has deep connections in Washington, is spending heavily to influence the outcome. To Wall Street, approval of extending the pipeline to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico would be more than symbolic.

“It could give a signal that the U.S. isn’t necessarily going to step up regulations” on new and dirtier forms of fossil fuels, said Jacob Correll, a commodities analyst at Summit Energy, a consulting firm. “It might give investors more comfort that it’s going to be a country that’s more conducive to continuing these drilling investments going forward.”

If TransCanada Corp., a Calgary, Alberta-based energy company, receives administration approval to build the $7 billion pipeline expansion, it “could add incentives for refineries” to process dirtier grades of crude, said Sparsh Khandeshi, a refineries law fellow at the Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group founded by former Environmental ...

For President Obama, these are the days of never hearing an encouraging word. Not since his own supporters were losing faith in his presidential campaign in the summer of 2007 has Obama confronted so many bad reviews and such widespread frustration and angry criticism from his own side.

Now, the censure is reinforced by terrible tidings from the outside in the form of wildly swinging stock markets, persistent unemployment and divisions in the nation's capital so deep that they make the period around President Clinton's impeachment look like an era of good feelings.

For Obama's lieutenants, his comeback from the '07 summer doldrums provided an overlearned lesson that encouraged them to ignore external criticism and cruise along with complete confidence in their man's almost magical powers of restoration.

The president's loyalists still have faith in him and still love to criticize media narratives they think underestimate him. But this time, both he and they are expressing a level of frustration that may be the healthiest thing happening to Obama in what is an otherwise dismal moment in his presidency. A White House crowd often too sure of itself is fully aware of the ferocious fight Obama faces and the seriousness of the problems he confronts. Their mood and past experience suggests that a new Obama -- or, in many ways, the old Obama of 2008 -- is about to reappear.

The biggest factor is the end of the default threat. Make no mistake: The administration was petrified that conservatives in Congress really would push the country over the cliff in the debt-ceiling fight. GOP leaders may have realized the dangers involved, but Obama worried that if he miscalculated, House Republicans might not muster a majority to ...