The NYT has a weird article about PowerPoint (over)use in the military, but the last-liner is the funniest thing I've read in the NYT in months:
Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters.
The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”
Thoreau, with what has to be the best one-liner about Obama's Nobel:
...the Nobel Peace Prize was just accepted by a man currently escalating a land war in Asia.
James Bradley wrote a very intriguing Sunday op-ed for the NYT that's been floating around the libertarian blogosphere. The gist of the article is that had Teddy Roosevelt not supported the Japanese against in the Russians in 1905, the Japanese empire might never have materialized and attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941:
In a secret presidential cable to Tokyo, in July 1905, Roosevelt approved the Japanese annexation of Korea and agreed to an “understanding or alliance” among Japan, the United States and Britain “as if the United States were under treaty obligations.” The “as if” was key: Congress was much less interested in North Asia than Roosevelt was, so he came to his agreement with Japan in secret, an unconstitutional act. [...]
Roosevelt had assumed that the Japanese would stop at Korea and leave the rest of North Asia to the Americans and the British. But such a wish clashed with his notion that the Japanese should base their foreign policy on the American model of expansion across North America and, with the taking of Hawaii and the Philippines, into the Pacific. It did not take long for the Japanese to tire of the territorial restrictions placed upon them by their Anglo-American partners.
Japan’s declaration of war, in December 1941, explained its position quite clearly: “It is a fact of history that the countries of East Asia for the past hundred years or more have been compelled to observe the status quo under the Anglo-American policy of imperialistic exploitation and to sacrifice themselves to the prosperity of the two nations. The Japanese government cannot tolerate the perpetuation of such a situation.”
The NYT today has a great profile of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and his penchant for conducting foreign policy. Luzhkov's nationalistic style is similar to that of the Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin, but unlike Dugin, Luzhkov actually has a budget to back himself up. Anonymous sources within the administrated cited "hundreds of millions of dollars" as the total spending of Moscow on regions outside of Russia. These regions included South Ossetia (pre-war), which he plied with food, medical aid, "dump trucks, tents and cranes," and where he repaired a highway that was ultimately used by South Ossetian separatists during the war. And there's also Abkhazia, the old Soviet apparatchiks' favorite beach spot, where the City of Moscow has become a major investor. And though the Russian government (as opposed to the Moscow government) also contributed a lot of aid to these regions before their invasions this summer, the Times notes that "Mr. Luzhkov often seems to take the lead."
More ominously, Luzhkov has also been pouring resources into Crimea, an majority Russian port city deep within Ukraine's territory, and also home of Russia's formidable Black Sea Naval Fleet. In Crimea, Luzhkov has built housing for Russia's military, "a branch of Moscow State University" (??), as well as many other non-military infrastructure projects. He has very open revanchist views about Crimea, "[calling] for Russia to reclaim Crimea from Ukraine."
But ultimately, the article's author notes, Luzhkov "is not a member of Mr. Putin's inner circle." While Putin might find his foreign policy adventures helpful, Luzhkov himself cannot initiate a Russian military invasion simply by building roads and schools. There are a lot of differences between Georgia and Ukraine. Most importantly, Ukraine is not an alternative to Russian energy for Europe. Whereas Georgia is a competitor with Russia when it comes to bringing Caspian Sea natural gas into Europe, Ukraine is not. Secondly, Georgia is ruled by an increasingly authoritarian Mikheil Saakashvili, who has shown himself to not be receptive to Russian subjugation, whereas Ukraine's political establishment is much more vulnerable to Russian meddling.
Like Georgia, Ukraine has value for Russia: namely, its access to the Black Sea. But in the end, I do not think Russia will move to reclaim eastern Ukraine or the Crimean peninsula. It would be much less controversial to simply work to influence Ukraine's leaders (as Russia has done in Belarus), rather than launch an invasion against Ukraine. Whereas Russia could invade Georgia with minimal repercussions, an invasion of Ukraine – so close to Europe – would have a lot more consequences.
File this under too good to be true. And by good, I mean horribly, horribly wrong:
WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency. [...]
The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”
This caught my attention because I've been reading recently a very unflattering biography of Mao called Mao: The Unknown Story. I haven't gotten to the part about the Korean War yet, though it's already been one of the most educational books I've ever read. I didn't know much about Soviet support of the Nationalists and Communists in China, the Asian half of World War II, or the Chinese Civil War, but now I feel like I understand them much better than any history book ever told it. I suppose that's the peril of trying to sound unbiased – sometimes, the radicals happen to be right.
Urban planning has been in the news a lot lately in Philadelphia because of a combination of its sudden trendiness, high gas prices revitalizing urban cores, and its new mayor. Here's a recap of planning news during the last few days in the City of Brotherly Love:
Today, it's my birthday! It's also Ayman al-Zawahiri's birthday – my favorite Islamic jihadist. He merged his terrorist organization Egyptian Islamic Jihad with bin Laden's al-Qaeda throughout the nineties. Osama bin Laden's favored biographer, Hamid Mir, believes that al-Zawahiri is the "real brains of the outfit" once said that "[h]e is the person who can do the things that happened on Sept. 11" Assassinated former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko claimed that right before the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, al-Zawahiri was trained for six months in an FSB camp in Dagestan. The FSB's ties to al-Zawahiri are just another example of Russian sponsorship of most major terrorist groups and rogue nations. In my opinion, it's a way to drive up oil prices (which Putin's cronies' pockets, give them popular support, and threaten Western economies) and thwart the West's liberalization by making totalitarianism more fashionable.
Anyway, for my birthday present, I want anyone who's a regular reader (or, hell, anyone who's reading this) to leave a comment (anonymously will do) saying hello and telling me what they like and dislike about the blog. And, for those who don't know me (don't ruin it!), guess how old I turned today. If not an exact age, then at least a decade.
Israel put the Gaza Strip under siege a year ago when Hamas took power in a coup, but the siege looks to have some pretty counterproductive unintended consequences: Hamas has been heavily taxing the tunnels which are used to smuggle consumer goods ands over from Egypt, and has been operating tunnels itself to maintain its supply of weapons:
Hamas imposes stiff taxes on the tons of contraband that flow beneath the border each night, collecting revenue from the tunnels to fill its own coffers, according to those involved in the trade and international observers. Hamas also gets to decide who receives scarce supplies, allowing it to consolidate its authority. All the while, the group has used its control to commandeer tunnels of its own, ensuring a steady supply of weapons to use in its attacks against Israel.
Israel's rationale is pretty standard: they're hoping that the people will turn on Hamas. And they are – less than 40% support Hamas's leader Ismail Haniyeh, compared with 56% for Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas. But, considering Gaza isn't a democracy, this turn in public opinion isn't enough to change the government, or its stance.
The Israelis come off as hapless, arguing so vigorously for control on the arms coming into Gaza (it was a condition of the maybe truce), while utterly ignoring the economic power that the blockade brings to Hamas. The organization has found the tunnels to be an effective way of collecting taxes, and it has the deleterious effect of severing the connection between taxation and consent to govern. Though they're "well aware of the massive scale of the smuggling and that Hamas benefits from it," the Israelis don't seem terribly concerned:
"The best thing from our point of view is that there would be no smuggling of ammunition. We don't care about the other things," said Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel's Defense Ministry.
Samuel R. Staley from the Reason Foundation has an editorial at the Hawaii Reporter about the irony of Republicans bemoaning high oil and gas prices and blaming the oil companies. An excerpt, recounting the reasons for the recent explosion of energy prices:
The third and most important factor, is what pundits are calling "geopolitical uncertainty."
We are at war in Iraq and still have troops in Afghanistan. Iran wants to rattle our bones by going nuclear and the world is wondering if we will militarily strike them to prevent it. Throw in an anti-Bush politician in charge of Venezuela (our fifth largest supplier of crude oil in February) and the political instability in Nigeria (our fourth largest supplier of crude oil in February) and at least one-fifth of the price of a barrel of oil on the world market is attributed to geopolitical uncertainty according to oil industry analysts.
I'd like to add something: with the exception of instability in Nigeria (of which I know little about), all of the major causes of the uptick in the price of oil have been egged on by the Russia government:
In all of these cases, it wasn't the original sin that made the most impact, but rather then American response to it (or the markets' response to the events in light of recent American posturing). In acts of provocation, the provocateur commits an act that is seen as so egregious that it demands a response, yet the purpose of the attack is not to kill or even to terrorize, but rather to draw the victim into another conflict. When Russian support of anti-American dictators is seen as a tactic for drawing the US into conflict with oil-producing countries, the correct American response is not warmongering, as Putin's American critics would have, but rather a retreat from American imperialism abroad. Just something to think about.
In his book, Bhatia writes that Bhutto brought up the North Korea visit during a discussion in 2003 about her difficulties with Pakistan's military. "Let me tell you something," she declared, before telling Bhatia to turn off his tape recorder. "I have done more for my country than all the military chiefs of Pakistan combined."
At the time, Pakistan was in desperate need of new missile technology that would counter improvements in India's missiles. Bhutto said she was asked to carry "critical nuclear data" to hand over in Pyongyang as part of a barter deal.
"Before leaving Islamabad she shopped for an overcoat with the 'deepest possible pockets' into which she transferred CDs containing the scientific data about uranium enrichment that the North Koreans wanted," Bhatia writes. "She implied with a glint in her eye that she had acted as a two-way courier, bringing North Korea's missile information on CDs back with her on the return journey."
My main question is, why would Bhutto herself be doing this? Pakistan has a very capable and very active secret service, and Bhutto was an elected politician.
Crime – and even threats to national security – have also been allowed to flourish, thanks to the staffing shortages. Working with other agencies, the DOD IG's criminal investigators have brought in "770 criminal indictments, 644 convictions, and over $3.14 billion in criminal, civil, and administrative recoveries." But many other incidents are going unchecked. "Technology/Munitions theft and diversion crimes cannot be adequately investigated allowing these items to fall into the hands of those that would do the United States harm," according to the report.
"There have been massive holes in oversight for years, and in these shadows, criminals have been ripping off taxpayers and depriving our soldiers by wasting and stealing money and supplying defective equipment," Project on Government Oversight investigator Nick Schwellenbach tells Danger Room.
The DOD IG's office has certainly stayed busy. In just the last few months, the DOD IG caught a Philippine corporation bilking $100 million from the military health care system; nabbed a trio trying to bribe their way into drinking water contracts for troops; busted an Air Force general who tried to steer a $50 million deal to his buddies; and launched investigations into the Pentagon's propaganda projects and the youthful arms-dealer who sold tens of millions of dollars' worth of dud ammunition to the government.
What happened at Abu Ghraib, and CACI's refusal to discuss it, stands as a kind of high-water mark for intelligence contracting. In 2006, the year Humphrey delivered his comments, the cost of America's spying and surveillance activities outsourced to contractors reached $42 billion, or about 70 percent of the estimated $60 billion the government spends every year on foreign and domestic intelligence. Unfortunately, we cannot know the true extent of outsourcing, for two reasons. First, in 2007, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) refused to release an internal report on contracting out of fear that its disclosure would harm U.S. national security interests. Second, most intelligence contracts are classified, allowing companies like CACI to hide their activities behind a veil of secrecy.
What this actually is is a sort of retirement plan for intelligence officers: working in the private sector requires a security clearance, which is easiest to have if you've already worked for the government and already posses one – it's a revolving door between government and industry, and of course the private sector pays more. According to the interview, most of the contractors are former government employees. I did a little more research, and apparently this isn't even a new revelation – Salon published an article citing the 70% figure a year ago. I'm just surprised that the figure doesn't get more play in the media.
While the U.S. invasion of Panama provoked a great deal of debate, there was no argument about possible French and Russian intervention in Rumania. And that raises an important question: Could big-power intervention – so often used in the past by Washington and Moscow to establish repressive regimes – now become a positive force wielded on behalf of democracy and human rights?
France offered to send troops if the Rumanian Army had difficulty overcoming the security forces loyal to the ousted and executed dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. And Secretary of State James Baker said America would support any move by the Soviet Union to intervene militarily.
Wow, talk about historical amnesia! (And not just for using an antiquated spelling of Romania.) While at the time the article might have made sense to its editors, in retrospect this is something that the Times should have been ashamed of publishing. First of all, they openly admit that what happened in Romania wasn't a revolution, but a coup d'état. Though the evil dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu might have been toppled, it's a mistake to assume that his enemies were America's friends, or even Romania's friends. After the fall of Ceaușescu's regime, Romania took over a decade and a half to become a stable, functioning democracy. For most of the period in between the events of 1989 and the first real liberal becoming president (Traian Băsescu in 2004), Ion Iliescu ran the country, and not very well. A simple search of the Times' archives (or twenty seconds with a real Romanian) would have sufficed to convince the Times that this was an absurd article, unless meant for its ironic value. Here's the Times, ten years later:
Ten years after a radio announcer exulted, ''The antichrist has been executed on Christmas Day,'' Romanians are still on a national quest to piece together what happened.
Who shot whom? Was it populist, or a coup by disgruntled Communists who months later legitimized it in elections held in a still traumatized country?
''The idea that the wicked witch and her husband the bad tyrant were taken down simply by the people rising up is a fairy tale,'' said Mark P. Almond, an Oxford history professor who studies Romania. [...]
But unlike the revolts in other Eastern European countries, where power passed to accepted heroes like Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel, Romania was taken over by a committee, the National Salvation Front, which quickly splintered into parties now playing what amounts to a national bloodsport: bickering over ''who betrayed our revolution.''
So what was the purpose of the Times story? Unless it was meant to be ironic (and there is no indication that it was), it seems to be legitimizing military intervention by citing the case of Romania. Which in my mind is dishonest and misleading, considering the average Times reader isn't going to know that this particular "revolution" didn't turn out as rosy as it's portrayed.
The first high school dedicated to preparing students for the front lines in the Nation's homeland security has gone from theory to planning in Wilmington.
The Project Manager for the Delaware Academy for Public Safety and Security, New Castle Attorney Thomas Little, signed a contract with Innovative Schools, a professional firm which will coordinate the mechanics of preparing the school for its eventual opening.
The process to find and fund a site for as many as six-hundred young men and women in Wilmington's inner city is underway.
Curriculum choices for students, who are to be called Cadets, range from SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) through prison guard, water rescue, paramedic, fireman, professional demolition and emergency response operator, according to a Board statement.
