The US and Russia have signed a “joint understanding” for the START follow-on treaty. Oddly, the US has not released the text while Russia has.
The US has only released a fact sheet. Why? Arms Control Wonk and Opinio Juris ask the same thing.
The Obama administration is famed for its tech-savvy, but it has either goofed and not gotten the text on-line or someone decided not to release the actual text.
One would think that major computer technology companies would realize that their customers can discuss the companies’ policies and practices on the Internet, and thereby avoid speculation about their motives and intents by explaining their actions to their customers.
Apple ditched its stand-alone iSight camera in late 2006 without any explanation, even their store emloyees did not know. The built-in one cannot be aimed without moving the screen, and so are often not very useful. Apple never explained why despite repeated entreaties from customers on user forums across the web for an explanation. Apple to customers: “fuck you.”
Google has adopted the Apple model. It recently acquired a database on historical newspaper articles paperofrecord.com. Many researchers used the free service. Then, one day, the site redirected without explanation to Google’s archive, except that the ability to searh the newspapers was gone. Over two weeks later, a Google employee replied but failed to explain why the old site was not maintained until the new one was launched. Altogether, it is an abysmal performance from a company that should know better.
Spencer Ackerman has a good introduction to the divide among the progressive Left and centrist Democrats over the US-led war in Afghanistan. The far left opposed the initial bombing and semi-invasion of Afghanistan, largely on humanitarian grounds (see sentiments expressed in Oct. 2001 here). With the experience of the Iraq war, more people from the center-left are skeptical that greater foreign intervention will improve conditions in Afghanistan. As the insurgency and counter-insurgency there intensify, their opposition increases.
Their concerns over US policy are reasonable. Many of the pragmatic reasons against invading and occupying Iraq apply to Afghanistan. First, like Iraq, Afghanistan is ethnically divided, with one ethnic group, the Pashtun, having strong external support, much like the Sunnis in Iraq had from predominantly Sunni Arab states. In this case, Pakistan, with a sizable Pashtun population itself, backs them. Ethnic division is not inherently conflict-prone, but when those divisions reflect historic political and economic inequalities and when the country is poor, they are sources of conflict.
Second, Iraq’s economy depended on a single commodity export; so does Afghanistan’s, but rather than oil, Afghanistan exports opium. Just as South American farmers find coca more profitable than foodstuffs, Afghan farmers find poppies to be the most economical crop. Given the low price of commodities in the current global downturn and continued developed-world farm subsidies, this is unlikely to change soon.
Third, because Afghanistan has a larger population than Iraq, the recommended soldier-to-civilian ratio will require more soldiers in Afghanistan than at the height of the surge in Iraq. The only hope is that Afghan security forces can increase sufficiently that fewer foreign troops are needed than in Iraq. But that does not seem likely at this point, given the levels of corruption within the Afghan government.
I still have not addressed the ethical arguments against a counter-insurgency that depends heavily on bombing to support ground forces. Many on the left find these compelling reasons to end the war in Afghanistan.
Of course, centrist Democrats, which includes the Obama administration, believe that Afghanistan is the true central front in the war on terror. One their objections to the Iraq war was that it distracted attention from eradicating al Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan. These differences could be ignored when ending the Iraq war was the priority. But now that Obama is fulfilling campaign promises to return US military attention to Afghanistan, leftist opposition is increasing.
President Obama reneged on his promises to reverse Bush administration secrecy policies when he allowed the US to proceed with a “state secrets” privilege in Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. As the ACLU brief points out, this claim is absurd when Jeppesen’s role in renditon flights is a matter of public record. There are public facts available to proceed with the case; the US government is trying to use the state secrets privilege to protect its contractor from a civil suit. That was not the purpose of the privilege; it is intended to prevent the release of information that would harm US national security, not immunize US officials or contractors from judicial sanctions.
The states secrets privilege is a flawed common law doctrine because, as construed by the US courts, it allows the government to prevent those harmed by US government or its contractors action from having their cases heard. An act to reform the doctrine was proposed in 2008, but has not received much support. The act would have the courts review allegedly harmful information to determine whether the case should proceed. Why should the courts perform this role? Because the government frequently over-reaches. in the 1953 case that upheld the state secrets privilege — Reynolds v. United States — the government argued that because a plane that crashed was testing “confidential” electronic equipment, all aspects of its operations should be considered confidential. As the Georgetown Center on National Security Law points out, it turns out that the crash report contained no information electronic equipment. Someone in the US government lied to the courts. The case could have proceeded, but the government abused its authority. (An attempt by the widows to have the case re-opened was denied by the courts on tendentious grounds that the government officials did not lie; they merely misled the courts).
The case the Jeppesen is citing as precedent, the 1875 Totten v. United States is not a valid precedent. Totten decided was that in the case of an espionage contract — a secret agreement to spy for the US — the spy could not sue the government later because the contract itself was understood to be a secret that was not to be revealed. Totten argued that if US courts allowed US-employed spies, not US government officers but private US persons or any foreign persons, to sue for breach of contract in US courts, the US government would be unable to secretly recruit spies
PC Magazine has switched over to a digital subscription system in place of their print issues. So I go to the website they offer:
go.pcmag.com/subscriberservices
I get access to my account and see that the email address they have for me is a defunct account. Since a link to the digital edition will be emailed to me, I need to change it. I do so. It confirms the change but lists both email addresses, the old and the new on the same line. I log in again, and the old address is still there. I’ve tried several times to change it.
Now you would think PC Mag or its publisher, Ziff Davis, would have a help system. They do. It refers me back to the same page at the URL above.
PC Mag’s forum lists an email address. I asked them to send me a refund.
If they cannot get their own IT systems to work, why should I trust their coverage of IT systems.
Timothy Geitner, the designated Treasury secretary, stated in a written response to the Senate Finance Committee that China was manipulating its currency to improve its exports to the US. The Bush admin. was careful to never use the word “manipulation,” so as not to offend China.
There is no doubt that China’s currency is under-valued, but the United States and China under IMF auspices came up with a plan to resolve the imbalances. (Yes, that’s right, the Bush admin. was acting in a multilateral setting — the Multilateral Consultation on Global Imbalances, to be exact). Unfortunately, that plan has not worked out well, in part because of the global financial collapse.
Many in the US believe China is manipulating the exchange rate to maintain the larger trade imbalance. The multilateral options available to the US are limited:
None of these is likely to produce major changes. The MC requires that the US decrease its budget deficit, which it cannot do in the near term. The dumping case would be weak. The frustration case would be weak, since the WTO article refers to IMF agreements.
At stake here is a broader issue. The US argues that major trading states should adopt flexible exchange rates; China does not agree. Most countries have some sort of fixed or pegged exchange rate system; manipulating one’s currency does not violate any international norm.
But the Obama admin., following its campaign statements, wants to limit US imports from China by getting China to make its goods more expensive in dollar terms. This means that China must either re-peg its currency to the dollar or allow its currency to float relative to the dollar. In turn the US will… Well, that’s what makes this a case of unilateralism. The US wants China to conform to US policy preferences, without offering much in the way of concession to Chinese interests.
It looks like President Obama has shut down the use of torture and abusive interrogations by the US government, not just the military, with his recent executive order. It requires that the US conform to the Geneva Conventions’ Common Article 3, which prohibits cruel and degrading treatment, not just torture. It also rescinds all interpretations issued by the Bush admin after 11 Sep. 2001.
A key question is its scope. It covers “individuals detained in any armed conflict” by the USG. The question is whether the Obama admin. will consistently apply “armed conflict” to counter-terrorism activities. Eric Holder stated that the US was “at war” with al Qaeda, and so this order would appear to apply to any suspected al Qaeda members or agents. But this is not always clear. If the CIA seizes or receives a suspected al Qaeda operative who was living in Aden or Manila, has that person been captured in an armed conflict?
I do not think that treating US efforts to suppress al Qaeda and its off-shoots as an “armed conflict” or a “war” is helpful. First, it legitimates al Qaeda since al Qaeda believes it is fighting a war against the US, not engaging in criminal acts or terrorism. Second, violations of the laws of war are different from violations of civilian law. There is no “conspiracy” element in the laws of war. Material support to combatants is not illegal under the laws of war. But theses are crimes under US domestic law, and the US seeks to apply those rules to al Qaeda.
In “Sometimes a Great Notion,” we learn that the Cylon-inhabited Earth was nuked 2,000 years ago. This means that humanoid Cylons existed well before the First Cylon War that occurred some 40 years ago. But the mechanical Cylon rebellion supposedly initiated the First Cylon war, and the people of the Twelve Colonies never heard of humanoid Cylons until recently.
This means that the humanoid Cylons could not have evolved from the Cylons that rebelled, as the series has led us to believe. Instead, the humanoid Cylons must have contacted the original rebelling Cylons separately.
Update: Marc Lynch, one of the country’s top experts on Arab politics, and who blogs for Foreign Policy, was one of those screwed over by the Capitol Police. Here is his account.
NPR is reporting that the crowds along the parade route in DC look relatively sparse compared other parades. In part, NPR reports that this is because the access-points to the parade route is hard to get to.
Meanwhile, thousands of ticket-holders were denied access to the Mall for the inauguration, as NPR and the Washington Post report. Based on comments posted to the WP blog, no one announced to the waiting ticket-holders why they were being held up or what was happening. Many waited for hours, without bathrooms, water or heat. Apparently, the Capitol Police or the contractors hired in their stead don’t really know what they’re doing.
I’ve been to too many public events where security concerns and poor planning have trumped common decency that I simply do not attend them anymore.
