These comments are full of tough talk (from several thousand miles away, as usual) about how the Palestinians should not engage in talks.
I don't understand how that is supposed to either advance Palestinians interests, or restrain/punish Israel. It's not as though a lack of talks is getting the Palestinians what they want.
What's the theory here? How is refusing to even enter into negotiations supposed to be good for the Palestinians?
Correct; the change in the military situation over the past forty years makes Likud's arguments obsolete.
What Arab armored force is going to drive to the Med and cut Israel in half? Jordan's? Syria's? Jordan and Syria's? It is to laugh; the Merkavas would turn them into road base within an hour. Israel's ally Egypt?
The Israelis use the anachronistic vision of poor, besieged Israel, surrounded by powerful enemies as a cynical pretext.
While this story is supposed to demonstrate something about American decline and China's rise, I fail to see how China using 1960s technology to do something useless, while the United States continues to launch Mars rovers and space telescopes while holding a dominating position in the military and commercial satellite industry, makes that point.
For the Chinese, going to the moon is a step forward in the development of their space program, and a symbol of advancement. For the US to do another moon landing would be a step back, a waste of money that could otherwise be spent on space operations that actually accomplish something.
While a federal civil rights conviction would be a stretch, given the burden of proof for a criminal conviction, George Zimmerman will almost surely lose (cut a deal to avoid trial, most likely) in a wrongful death civil suit.
I don't think you can say that the post-Rodney King efforts "went nowhere." Compare the Darryl Gates LAPD to that of today. Look at the community policing movement. The old "occupying army of outsiders" model of policing in minority neighborhoods has declined a great deal.
...and then John Kerry says to the Israelis, "Look out, man, my partner is crazy! You'd better make some kind of a deal with me before he comes back here, because I don't know if I'm going to be able to stop him. He's got a real bad temper."
There is no foundation for the claim that Zimmerman assaulted Martin
What claim that Zimmerman assaulted Martin? Could you quote it for me?
Here's my comment. Please point out the part where I "made up" a "claim that Zimmerman assaulted Martin."
True story: the conflict between the armed, larger George Zimmerman and the unarmed, smaller teenager he was following only began when Zimmerman began losing the fight.
The History of the Universe: First the Big Bang happened, and then Trayvon Martin was hitting Zimmerman.
Oh, wait, there is none.
That's a nice bit of projection on your part, accusing me of making up a claim that occurs nowhere in my comments, right before you start throwing out wholly unevidences assertions like "Martin sucker-punched Zimmerman."
No, the jury did not consider the influence of race. The jurors brag about how they didn't consider race. They also report that they didn't consider any of the events that led up to the confrontation, which means that the issue of whether Zimmerman profiled Martin was never considered.
Meanwhile, we have years worth of Zimmerman's police call transcripts, in which he consistently, only calls the police about black people.
Just so we're absolutely clear: for Obama to denounce racial profiling, even after repeatedly urging people to respect the verdict, is what this commenter is calling "indirectly encouraging murder."
That's it, that's the problem, that's what Obama is not supposed to do.
True story: the conflict between the armed, larger George Zimmerman and the unarmed, smaller teenager he was following only began when Zimmerman began losing the fight.
The History of the Universe: First the Big Bang happened, and then Trayvon Martin was hitting Zimmerman.
Just in case using the diminutive form of a black man's name, someone you don't know and who doesn't use that name himself, didn't demonstrate your racism clearly enough, it was nice of you to change Jesse Jackson's title to Revvin', to make sure you left no doubt.
After the last twelve years, I didn't think it was possible for the word "terrorism" to be abused even more egregiously than it has been. Congratulations.
Anyway, so the US told Morsi there was going to be a coup, advised him to step down, and tried to get elections as soon as possible.
When were you going to get to the part where the US did something wrong? Or supported, as opposed to being a bystander to, the coup?
What we need is a conscious, deliberate message about an end to the wars, a peace dividend, and a "Return to Normalcy."
There are three factions in American politics right now: the people who continue to think that the Iraq War was a good idea, and who think that the United States is involved in a civilizational contest with "the caliphate," comparable to the Cold War, that justifies a permanent war footing for a generation (basically, Bush/McCain/Romney voters); the people who opposed the Iraq War and permanent war, but who consider targeting al Qaeda and the war in Afghanistan (at least initially) legitimate (basically, Obama voters); and a much smaller faction that opposed both the Iraq War and the war against al Qaeda, considering them the same thing (basically, Nader voters).
The real fight is between people who want to fight a permanent War on Terror, and people who do not. People who do not want to be on a permanent war footing are a majority, but only if they work as a coalition on the policies they agree on.
Remember when Donald Rumsfeld replied to stories about the looting of museums in Iraq by saying, "Freedom is messy?" That was stupid. Looting museums has nothing to do with negotiating a democratic political order.
What we're seeing in Egypt is what messy freedom looks like. This long after the American Revolution began, young men were still blasting holes in each other across fields. We didn't get a functional constitution in place for twelve years, and some pretty ugly things happened in between.
And now we see the goal posts move - from "didn't call it a coup" to "didn't call it a military coup."
Perhaps the reason they didn't call the illegal coup a military coup was that it was ordered by the Supreme Court, and wasn't a military coup, but a political coup.
Yes, the US cut off non-humanitarian aid but let humanitarian aid - anti-hunger efforts, an AIDS program, rural road-building projects - continue. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it would have been a good idea to punish Honduras' rural poor for the coup. I recall that such a strategy when implemented towards Iraq didn't go over very well. How, exactly, the US should react to a situation like this requires some nuanced thinking, and a legitimate case can be made that the actions the US took in opposition to the coup should have been different.
What cannot be reasonably argued is the claim that the US backed the coup, supported it, or failed to denounce it or take action to oppose it. Despite what one reads on the internet.
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and would set a "terrible precedent" of transition by military force unless it was reversed.
"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
A couple days later, the US cut off aid to the regime, and didn't restore it until the coup regime was replaced in the regularly-scheduled democratic elections.
A truly bizarre, fact-averse mythology has developed on the internet around the US response to that coup. It's as if people couldn't believe what they were seeing, so they made up a narrative more in keeping with their preconceptions.
It’s difficult to believe that the Army acted without Washington’s approval.
More or less difficult to believe than the American denunciation of the Honduran coup as an illegal coup?
its purpose everywhere is gaining influence with opposition figures and movements, not promoting democracy.
Why would the United States be interested in gaining influence with the Mubarak-era democratic opposition, if it didn't want to see them come to power?
Again, the Karl Rove definition of whistle-blowing: if I don't like it, I get to publicize it.
Under actual whistle-blowing law, one needs to uncover illegal activity, not merely policy with which one disagrees. I can't believe I actually have to explain this, but apparently, I'm so far through the looking glass that I actually think there is a difference there.
The general disappointment with the Obama administration on issues of surveillance, drone warfare, the surge in Afghanistan, extension of the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, labor issues and the environment felt by anyone to the left of David Brooks appears to be a factor in Snowden’s whistleblowing.
This is the Karl Rove/Scooter Libby definition of whistle blowinig: divulging classified information to punish people over political disagreements.
Perhaps we can send over John McCain to tell them to cut the bullshit.
It's 2013, Tahar, and Egypt is a major regional power with a huge population. Even if the United States forcing the Egyptians to do something was a good idea, the world just doesn't work that way anymore.
Silly Jack, all the True Progressives know that stories about violent racism are just a distraction from the media-genic President's incompetent foreign policy. The media is protecting him, you see, to distract us from the black helicopters, chem trails, and Benghazi -er, I mean, Cairo.
When did you start re-running Michelle Malking columns?
In both cases Obama and his foreign policy team have been caught flat-footed, and in the wrong, but don’t expect much in the way of explanation or apology. The White House has a non-answer to everything; spin, spin, spin.
But why fret about such things when you have a charming President who’s got game? There’s a little bit of something for everyone, nothing concrete of course, but a little symbolic something.
The media-pleasing president tours Africa, part work, part family vacation that sees him whisked him from one impoverished land to another, all inside the billion-dollar bubble of the Secret Service sterile zone. It’s only right that he should find little ways to pay back the public that supports his caravan with their tax-money. As a show of gratitude, working class American men and women can tune into the news and get some “wish you were here” postcards in the form of carefully crafted photo ops and that delightful video clip of the president dancing. Hey, he’s got some good moves. Smooth moves.
I suppose if you are really determined to pin this on the United States, you could complain that Obama didn't use heavy-handed methods to impose America's political will on Egypt. We could have cut off aid, imposed a naval blockade, or implemented Operation Egyptian Freedom.
Morales’s pathetic (not to say bathetic!) suggestion that the Europeans disrespected him because he is an indigenous Bolivian is too cute for words and demonstrates his self-pitying lack of understanding of why his plane was searched.
Oh, bull. I'd say it demonstrates a rather brilliant understanding of how to play the media and his domestic constituencies, as well as maximize international sympathy.
He's playing this brilliantly. If I was his campaign advisor, I'd be telling him to do exactly what he's been doing.
Considering that nearly all foiled terrorist plots (many of them non-Islamic, mind you) are the result of good police work and not mass surveillance, yes, they must value the haystack itself.
The first set of your sentence does not demonstrate the second half. Because most Xs are Ys, no Xs are Zs, and nobody thinks that some Xs are Zs. Most foiled break in are the result of a barking dog, yes, the people who buy security systems are not actually trying to prevent break ins. That's what you're arguing, and it is a logical fallacy.
BTW, looking at things like security camera footage and call data is done all the time in police investigations. It's a subset of "good police work."
I mean they haven’t found any needles besides the ones they place there
ORLY? When did you get your security clearance, and how many investigations did you include in your data set? Or are you just blowing hot air?
The Obama administration says it has to have all this data to fight a handful of terrorists, which is not plausible. The real question is what in the world they are actually doing with it.
And Target trains video cameras on the aisles of its stores, collecting thousands of hours of video of ordinary shoppers every day. They say they are doing this to fight a handful of shoplifters, which is not plausible. The question is what in the world they are actually doing with it.
Because, Lord knows, when one looks for a needle in a haystack, one must really be going after the haystack itself; after all, that's where one is looking. Ergo, looking for a needle in a haystack means one thinks haystacks are made of needles.
And yet, Tahar, it was the Army that defended the protesters in Tahrir Square in the Spring of 2011, when the ruling elite's thugs started shooting at them.
The same Army that refused Mubarak's orders to open fire.
Any American who defends this must also believe that the US military would have the right to over-throw Obama (or Bush back then) if enough people took to the streets.
Define "enough." The American Declaration of Independence reads, in part, "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed." If "the governed" - that is, the people - cease to consent to the government, the government becomes illegitimate.
You write as if the democratic Egyptian government was humming along, doing its thing, and then the mean old military overthrew it because they didn't like the President's tone of voice. In reality, the Egyptian government failed some time ago, and the military stepped in late in the game to provide a coup de grace and achieve a swift transition. It's a sad day for Egyptian democracy, no question, but it is not the equivalent of the US military staging a coup after some Tea Party rallies.
Like most beginners, the Egyptian people as a whole probably don't understand democracy very well. Then again, in the early 1800s, it was common for supporters of American electoral candidates to travel around with jugs of whiskey, and let people have a slug if they promised to vote the right way. Andrew Jackson's campaign developed the innovative practice of bringing along a rope of tobacco, so the voter could replace the chunk he'd spit out when he took the slug of whiskey. These things take time.
You think Sisi's statement looks like the military leadership warning both sides? It looks more like a threat directed at the protesters, in defense of the government.
#1 is false. The government did not request all data from Verizon, but from a subsidiary called Verizon Business Services, which does not handle home phones or ordinary cell phone accounts.
This error has been known for weeks. The determination not to correct it, but to keep pushing information, does not fill me with confidence in the credibility of the people pushing this story. They keep asking us to take them at their word, and they keep getting caught passing bad information.
But, hey, it gets people more riled up than the truth, and that's good enough for a certain variety of journalist.
I had such high hopes for him, and for the MB government. Their decision to opt out of large numbers of parliamentary races in order to give competing parties a chance was a remarkable act of decency and responsibility. Remember when Morsi worked with the US to get Israel to enter into a cease-fire in Gaza? I thought that was going to be his debut as a major international statesman. And then, the very next day, he puts on the pharaoh's crown and starts dismissing judges.
The effects of global warming are only "incremental" if you look at them in the aggregate, but in practices, they manifest themselves suddenly and dramatically.
For instance, a 2cm increase in local ocean levels at some city may sound incremental, but if that means the difference between the sea wall being overtopped by a storm and not, then the difference is not incremental.
Since Big Oil, Big Gas, and Big Coal will be profoundly threatened by any new White House policy on these issues, we can expect a political battle royale.
We can certainly expect a battle royale, but President Obama's strategy on this major issues involving multiple big interests has been to divide and conquer - to carve one target out from the herd, and appease the ones left standing enough that they won't interfere when he takes down his selected victim.
For example, the PPACA singled out the health insurance industry for regulation that made AHIP (the health insurers' trade organization) howl, while treating the drug makers, hospitals, and doctors in a much friendlier manner.
Similarly, during his first term, the administration cracked down hard on coal-fired power plants, while being relatively friendly to the gas and oil industries.
I would predict something similar here. Limits on carbon emissions from power plants, for instance, would hit the coal-fired plants very heavily, while being much easier for the gas-fired plants (which reduce carbon emissions by half per unit of energy) much less, if at all.
Since coal fired power plants generate 40% of American carbon emissions, that certainly makes sense as a place to start.
OK, I'm going to save this link to use the next time someone insists that they aren't just freaking out over the technology, but have very serious points to make about policy.
And go on an cheerlead. Keep talking about how important it is to close the coal plants. Keep talking about how well the economics work. We need to replace the coal plants with solar and wind, and we can do that.
There are many real-world examples of states and countries getting 15% and 20% from renewables in just 6 or 7 years.
Sure there are, and I don't question that plucking the lowest-hanging fruits could bring about a similar-sized shift in the United States, but the next 15% will be harder, and the subsequent 15% harder still. But even if we were to assume that this rate of increase would remain steady, a rate of switching over 20% every six years still puts the complete switchover on a 30-year timeline. In 15 years, when (optimistically) half the capacity in the US is shifted over to renewables, do you want coal power providing a large part of the other half, or not?
I vote "not." You?
Solar and wind are falling in price so fast that getting rid of the rest of the plants in the following 3-4 years would be entirely feasible.
Your reasoning here is unsound: the falling cost of solar and wind energy does not make the logistical problem of getting all of that capacity up and running any easier. More affordable, yes, but we still have to build everything, and that takes time. You don't need to convince me that the economics work; I'm right there with you. Replacing coal with renewable can be done. The issue here is the speed at which it can be done. Even under your optimistic scenario, we're talking about a 30-year rollout.
"Dirty coal is killing us and killing the earth," but let's not do anything about it unless the solution is 100% without cost, and fits in perfectly with my other political goals.
I don't disagree about the cost of switching to renewables. The issue I brought up was the timing of phasing them in, and what to do in the meantime.
You say there are "still questions" about the leakage; are there "questions" about the emissions from the coal plants that would operate in the place of gas? We have a lot more than "questions" about the consequences of keeping the coal plants open; we have, instead, many thousands of absolute, for-certain deaths. You seem very concerned about deaths from coal plants - right up until the point where reducing them involves doing something that doesn't jibe with your ideological preferences.
You write every day on this blog about the world-shattering significance of a 20 mega-watt solar plant here and a 10 mega-watt wind installation there, but you're going to waive away "cutting carbon emissions in half with "only?" Cutting carbon emissions from coal plants "only" in half would mean a net reduction of total American carbon output by 20%!
To put your "only," "not nearly good enough," "1billion metric tons is laughable" comments into perspective: the Keystone XL pipeline, if built, is projected to increase carbon emissions by 19 million (with an m) tons per year. That represents less than 1/50th of 1 billion (with a b) tons - yet you use terms like "game over" to describe the pipeline, while waiving away the world's largest reduction in carbon emissions, which is more than fifty times larger.
This is not the behavior of someone who is serious about reducing carbon emissions.
Here in Michigan, we just need to build the grid out to the northern Lake Michigan coast and put a couple thousand new large wind turbines. Could be done tout suite.
Sure, throw a cooler in the truck, we'll knock those bad boys out this weekend. Tout suite. No problem. Are you serious with this?
"Islamic State" is a vague term, encompassing everything from the liberal democracy in Libya to the Saudi monarchy. That figure tells me nothing about the rebels' goals.
The characterizations of the rebels provided in the interview are much more useful, as well as reassuring.
Don, could you kindly quote anything I said in which I trusted the reassurances of the government?
I specifically wrote in my comment that we needed to create legal safeguards to prevent abuses by those in authority. If that strikes you as too trusting, I really don't know what to tell you.
Noting glaring logical and factual holes in one side's case does not, in fact, commit me to an unquestioning acceptance of the other side's case. I thought we would have this concept pretty well understood after all of the "You love Saddam" nonsense a decade ago.
No, professor, who you call on your phone is not a "personal effect." You work at a university. You must know someone at the law school. Kindly run that theory by him, and let us know what he says.
No, professor, an unwarranted search is not a theft. Again, run this by any of your law-school friends.
You seem to be making quite a leap from "surveillance" to "snooping into my phone calls."
You are being terminally naive if you think the government can store all those records and that there won’t be abuses of our rights.
...and exactly which part of my question, "...or do we build legal protections to their usage?" struck you as being naive about the possibility of abuses?
The "treason" talk is ridiculous. Snowden was on a political crusade, not working on behalf of the enemy.
Which is also why the claim that he has reason to fear a drone strike is equally ridiculous. Has he joined al Qaeda? Is he even suspected of joining al Qaeda?
You went to the passive mood. My phone records didn’t ‘get dumped.’ They were stolen by the government, which then stored them permanently.
Well, no. For one thing, you don't own your phone records. If we're going to have an intelligent conversation about what's going on, we need to use words that are accurate, not merely emotionally gripping.
(What am I to make of this deflection, anyway? Suddenly we're out of the arena of privacy rights and searches, and into pseudo-llibertarian intellectual property rights flights of fancy? What does that say about the privacy/search issues?)
For another, "the government" in your first usage is a computer program that operates automatically. The passive voice is the right one to use here, because it accurately conveys the very lack of active involvement in going through and storing the records that is the actual case. It is when the FBI or NSA looks into the box that the active case becomes appropriate.
Snowden maintains that the analysts all have direct access to them at will, and he would know.
Just as every cop on the beat, with his flashlight and slim-jim, maintains the capacity to look in windows and enter cars when he shouldn't be doing so. Do we take away flashlights and slim-jims, or do we build legal protections to their usage?
A Russian naval base at Tartus is completely insignificant to the United States. In terms of US/Russian competition, there seems to be a one-sided Cold War going on. Checking the United States remains a top-tier goal of the Russians, while checking Russia is just not very important to the US. We certainly have regional interests driving this, including opposition to Iran, but talking about this episode as an American-Russian conflict is like talking about a Yankees-Blue Jays rivalry in the AL East: only the Blue Jays think there's one.
To answer your question about aid: the US has committed about half a billion dollars to refugee assistance so far.
Apparently, the people of Libya just don't understand as well as you do why they were better off in their "beautiful Country" with a psychotic dictator instead of a parliamentary democracy.
a desperate diversionary move when his administration is caught up deep in the cesspool over the Snowden controversy.
Yeah, no.
The notion that the Snowden "controversy" is harming the Obama administration politically is the sort of wishful thinking one can only indulge in from a few thousand miles away.
It's an interesting variety of American Exceptionalism, much beloved among the so-called-anti-imperialist left, to shoe-horn the United States into the center of any and all events in the world.
Clinton's thinking on foreign policy is haunted by his decision to do nothing during the massacres in Rwanda. He may be over-applying that lesson.
These actions in Washington may presage progress towards a negotiated settlement to the conflict, along the track that John Kerry was pursuing in his visit to Moscow. The hawks seem to be acting like time is of the essence. Meanwhile, the biggest rebel faction said that getting more arms shipments from the west was a precondition for talks, and now they are going to get those shipments.
The Syrian conflict is not about religion, even a little bit.
It's not about religion to whom? It seems to be clearly about religious conflict to the people in that video.
It is certainly true that the Arab Spring protests-turned uprising-turned rebellion were not about religion, but what a war is about has a way of changing as the war goes on. The American Civil War was not about ridding the South of slavery, until it was. World War II was about protecting Poland from foreign domination, until it wasn't.
The Air Force was the victim of ‘sabotage’, according to service chief General Rashed al Janad. The latest Su-22 was caused by ‘shots hitting the engine’ as it prepared to land he explained, adding ‘the black box of the aircraft was hit’.
Uh huh. Boy, it's too bad that the only instrument that could definitively prove why the plan went down was destroyed. I find the head of the Yemeni Air Force's statement about when a plane crashed to be completely plausible. I would also like to subscribe to his newsletter.
This distinction really should matter, especially in a discussion about Total Information Awareness and a narrative about the government snooping on everyone.
They did not get "all US telephone calls, mobile and otherwise, within the US and between the US and abroad, from mid-April of this year."
They got all of the calls handled by a unit of Verizon called Verizon Business Services, which does not handle any residential lines, or ordinary cell phone contracts.
There are real issues raised by this story. We don't need to make up silly stories about Big Brother snooping on everyone.
The effort to insist that both sides are equally to blame falls flat.
In a seemingly escape-proof blame game President Obama insists that the U.S. Congress prevents him from closing the prison while Congressional Republicans insist either that he has failed to offer a workable plan to dispose of the prisoners or that the prison is an irreplaceable asset.
One of these statements is true. One of them is false.
It is bad journalism to merely report what both sides say, without making an effort to report on what is true and what is false. That practice is how we ended with the existence of global warming being in doubt.
In a sense, Bashar al-Assad is a corollary of the French policies put in place over forty years before he was born. The resistance to his leadership – part of the wider Arab Spring uprisings beginning in 2011 – is a rejection of both his regime and European-American hegemony, present and past.
If the resistance to Bashar al-Assad's leadership is a rejection of European-American hegemony, then why are the rebels begging the west for support, while Assad is operating as a Russian client?
The author stretches in places to make the evidence fit his narrative.
You're that sure the Turkish government is going to start killing people in the streets like the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian governments did prior to Obama making those statements?
Perhaps, Jack, but at what cost? I have no doubt that, if Israel's core interests depended on it, they could neutralize this system, but how many pilots and planes would Israel lose doing so?
Air defenses function largely as a deterrent, by imposing an unacceptable cost.
Since the Russian and Chinese reaction post-Libya is exactly the same as it was pre-Libya, it doesn't make sense to view the UN mission over Libya as some kind of a turning point, but as an unusual, one-off event.
Their hostility to collective action against dictatorships is just a reversion to the norm.
Vladimir Putin embodies the consistent thread that binds together Russian policy, especially foreign policy, from the czarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras.
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US Secretary of State John Kerry very tentatively announced...
Actually, he was trying to be definitive and certain.
It just came out that way. John Kerry could make the score of last year's Super Bowl sound like an open question.
These comments are full of tough talk (from several thousand miles away, as usual) about how the Palestinians should not engage in talks.
I don't understand how that is supposed to either advance Palestinians interests, or restrain/punish Israel. It's not as though a lack of talks is getting the Palestinians what they want.
What's the theory here? How is refusing to even enter into negotiations supposed to be good for the Palestinians?
Correct; the change in the military situation over the past forty years makes Likud's arguments obsolete.
What Arab armored force is going to drive to the Med and cut Israel in half? Jordan's? Syria's? Jordan and Syria's? It is to laugh; the Merkavas would turn them into road base within an hour. Israel's ally Egypt?
The Israelis use the anachronistic vision of poor, besieged Israel, surrounded by powerful enemies as a cynical pretext.
Actually, the Soviet Union crashed a rocket into the moon in 1959 - a much less impressive achievement than actually landing one.
Ditto the 1971 Mars mission. The lander crashed and was destroyed.
While this story is supposed to demonstrate something about American decline and China's rise, I fail to see how China using 1960s technology to do something useless, while the United States continues to launch Mars rovers and space telescopes while holding a dominating position in the military and commercial satellite industry, makes that point.
For the Chinese, going to the moon is a step forward in the development of their space program, and a symbol of advancement. For the US to do another moon landing would be a step back, a waste of money that could otherwise be spent on space operations that actually accomplish something.
While a federal civil rights conviction would be a stretch, given the burden of proof for a criminal conviction, George Zimmerman will almost surely lose (cut a deal to avoid trial, most likely) in a wrongful death civil suit.
I don't think you can say that the post-Rodney King efforts "went nowhere." Compare the Darryl Gates LAPD to that of today. Look at the community policing movement. The old "occupying army of outsiders" model of policing in minority neighborhoods has declined a great deal.
...and then John Kerry says to the Israelis, "Look out, man, my partner is crazy! You'd better make some kind of a deal with me before he comes back here, because I don't know if I'm going to be able to stop him. He's got a real bad temper."
There is no foundation for the claim that Zimmerman assaulted Martin
What claim that Zimmerman assaulted Martin? Could you quote it for me?
Here's my comment. Please point out the part where I "made up" a "claim that Zimmerman assaulted Martin."
True story: the conflict between the armed, larger George Zimmerman and the unarmed, smaller teenager he was following only began when Zimmerman began losing the fight.
The History of the Universe: First the Big Bang happened, and then Trayvon Martin was hitting Zimmerman.
Oh, wait, there is none.
That's a nice bit of projection on your part, accusing me of making up a claim that occurs nowhere in my comments, right before you start throwing out wholly unevidences assertions like "Martin sucker-punched Zimmerman."
No, the jury did not consider the influence of race. The jurors brag about how they didn't consider race. They also report that they didn't consider any of the events that led up to the confrontation, which means that the issue of whether Zimmerman profiled Martin was never considered.
Meanwhile, we have years worth of Zimmerman's police call transcripts, in which he consistently, only calls the police about black people.
"marking every single American, on the suspicion that every one of us is a potential participant in terror plots"
No.
It's amazing how that story has become a blank canvass on which people are projecting their own stories.
"which, in fact, Obama is indirectly encouraging"
Just so we're absolutely clear: for Obama to denounce racial profiling, even after repeatedly urging people to respect the verdict, is what this commenter is calling "indirectly encouraging murder."
That's it, that's the problem, that's what Obama is not supposed to do.
True story: the conflict between the armed, larger George Zimmerman and the unarmed, smaller teenager he was following only began when Zimmerman began losing the fight.
The History of the Universe: First the Big Bang happened, and then Trayvon Martin was hitting Zimmerman.
Just in case using the diminutive form of a black man's name, someone you don't know and who doesn't use that name himself, didn't demonstrate your racism clearly enough, it was nice of you to change Jesse Jackson's title to Revvin', to make sure you left no doubt.
After the last twelve years, I didn't think it was possible for the word "terrorism" to be abused even more egregiously than it has been. Congratulations.
Anyway, so the US told Morsi there was going to be a coup, advised him to step down, and tried to get elections as soon as possible.
When were you going to get to the part where the US did something wrong? Or supported, as opposed to being a bystander to, the coup?
Oh, I'd say intolerance, ignorance, and incompetence reflect on the philosophy of avowed secularists just as much as on "people of faith."
Lord knows the intolerance, ignorance, and incompetence of the avowed secularists in Moscow reflected on their banner.
Trotskyists.
Quite a bit, it turns out.
Good post.
My understanding that followers of Trotsky like to be called "Trotskyists."
"Trotskyite" is, apparently, a pejorative term that Stalinists uses for Trotskyists.
Seconded.
What we need is a conscious, deliberate message about an end to the wars, a peace dividend, and a "Return to Normalcy."
There are three factions in American politics right now: the people who continue to think that the Iraq War was a good idea, and who think that the United States is involved in a civilizational contest with "the caliphate," comparable to the Cold War, that justifies a permanent war footing for a generation (basically, Bush/McCain/Romney voters); the people who opposed the Iraq War and permanent war, but who consider targeting al Qaeda and the war in Afghanistan (at least initially) legitimate (basically, Obama voters); and a much smaller faction that opposed both the Iraq War and the war against al Qaeda, considering them the same thing (basically, Nader voters).
The real fight is between people who want to fight a permanent War on Terror, and people who do not. People who do not want to be on a permanent war footing are a majority, but only if they work as a coalition on the policies they agree on.
I wish more people wrote about America's Philippine adventure.
There are so many useful lessons for us today.
Remember when Donald Rumsfeld replied to stories about the looting of museums in Iraq by saying, "Freedom is messy?" That was stupid. Looting museums has nothing to do with negotiating a democratic political order.
What we're seeing in Egypt is what messy freedom looks like. This long after the American Revolution began, young men were still blasting holes in each other across fields. We didn't get a functional constitution in place for twelve years, and some pretty ugly things happened in between.
Good luck, Egypt.
RJLynn,
And now we see the goal posts move - from "didn't call it a coup" to "didn't call it a military coup."
Perhaps the reason they didn't call the illegal coup a military coup was that it was ordered by the Supreme Court, and wasn't a military coup, but a political coup.
Yes, the US cut off non-humanitarian aid but let humanitarian aid - anti-hunger efforts, an AIDS program, rural road-building projects - continue. Reasonable people can disagree about whether it would have been a good idea to punish Honduras' rural poor for the coup. I recall that such a strategy when implemented towards Iraq didn't go over very well. How, exactly, the US should react to a situation like this requires some nuanced thinking, and a legitimate case can be made that the actions the US took in opposition to the coup should have been different.
What cannot be reasonably argued is the claim that the US backed the coup, supported it, or failed to denounce it or take action to oppose it. Despite what one reads on the internet.
The United States denounced the coup in Honduras as an illegal coup the day after it occurred.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/29/us-honduras-usa-sb-idUKTRE55S5J220090629
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and would set a "terrible precedent" of transition by military force unless it was reversed.
"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
A couple days later, the US cut off aid to the regime, and didn't restore it until the coup regime was replaced in the regularly-scheduled democratic elections.
A truly bizarre, fact-averse mythology has developed on the internet around the US response to that coup. It's as if people couldn't believe what they were seeing, so they made up a narrative more in keeping with their preconceptions.
It’s difficult to believe that the Army acted without Washington’s approval.
More or less difficult to believe than the American denunciation of the Honduran coup as an illegal coup?
its purpose everywhere is gaining influence with opposition figures and movements, not promoting democracy.
Why would the United States be interested in gaining influence with the Mubarak-era democratic opposition, if it didn't want to see them come to power?
You did read the part about this funding and training going to the anti-Mubarak opposition for years, right?
There is no answer to that question "in the abstract," only in practice, considering the specific circumstances.
Except nobody seems to agree which side Obama has taken
On the contrary, every faction is Egypt seems to agree that President Obama has take the other side.
Again, the Karl Rove definition of whistle-blowing: if I don't like it, I get to publicize it.
Under actual whistle-blowing law, one needs to uncover illegal activity, not merely policy with which one disagrees. I can't believe I actually have to explain this, but apparently, I'm so far through the looking glass that I actually think there is a difference there.
The general disappointment with the Obama administration on issues of surveillance, drone warfare, the surge in Afghanistan, extension of the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, labor issues and the environment felt by anyone to the left of David Brooks appears to be a factor in Snowden’s whistleblowing.
This is the Karl Rove/Scooter Libby definition of whistle blowinig: divulging classified information to punish people over political disagreements.
Congratulations.
So I'm misrepresenting JT's position, but everything in Egypt really is controlled from Washington.
Thanks, Matthew.
Perhaps we can send over John McCain to tell them to cut the bullshit.
It's 2013, Tahar, and Egypt is a major regional power with a huge population. Even if the United States forcing the Egyptians to do something was a good idea, the world just doesn't work that way anymore.
Being a superpower ain't what it used to be.
Yes, JT, Egypt doesn't actually have it own politics, so it's best to assume that everything happening there is planned out of Langley.
Anyone who believes that the French and German governments are engaged in similar activities should provide some evidence that it’s true.
Were you making similar demands of people who asserted six months ago that the US was engaged in date mining?
I doubt that any, except maybe the UK, come anywhere close to the scope and reach of the US.
Really?
China?
Russia?
Anyone who believes the French and German governments aren't engaged in similar activities is a sucker.
Someone would have taken credit.
Great post, bad headline.
A disaster caused by rail transport is not a terribly compelling argument against a pipeline, particularly one intended to replace rail transport.
Silly Jack, all the True Progressives know that stories about violent racism are just a distraction from the media-genic President's incompetent foreign policy. The media is protecting him, you see, to distract us from the black helicopters, chem trails, and Benghazi -er, I mean, Cairo.
When did you start re-running Michelle Malking columns?
In both cases Obama and his foreign policy team have been caught flat-footed, and in the wrong, but don’t expect much in the way of explanation or apology. The White House has a non-answer to everything; spin, spin, spin.
But why fret about such things when you have a charming President who’s got game? There’s a little bit of something for everyone, nothing concrete of course, but a little symbolic something.
The media-pleasing president tours Africa, part work, part family vacation that sees him whisked him from one impoverished land to another, all inside the billion-dollar bubble of the Secret Service sterile zone. It’s only right that he should find little ways to pay back the public that supports his caravan with their tax-money. As a show of gratitude, working class American men and women can tune into the news and get some “wish you were here” postcards in the form of carefully crafted photo ops and that delightful video clip of the president dancing. Hey, he’s got some good moves. Smooth moves.
You tell 'em, Professor Palin.
Actually, Jurgen, the US government worked to prevent the coup and achieve a negotiated solution to the crisis:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/world/middleeast/morsi-spurned-deals-to-the-end-seeing-the-military-as-tamed.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I suppose if you are really determined to pin this on the United States, you could complain that Obama didn't use heavy-handed methods to impose America's political will on Egypt. We could have cut off aid, imposed a naval blockade, or implemented Operation Egyptian Freedom.
Morales’s pathetic (not to say bathetic!) suggestion that the Europeans disrespected him because he is an indigenous Bolivian is too cute for words and demonstrates his self-pitying lack of understanding of why his plane was searched.
Oh, bull. I'd say it demonstrates a rather brilliant understanding of how to play the media and his domestic constituencies, as well as maximize international sympathy.
He's playing this brilliantly. If I was his campaign advisor, I'd be telling him to do exactly what he's been doing.
Slavery wasn't unconstitutional. That's why Congress had to pass the 14th amendment.
"Unconstitutional" and "bad" are two different concepts.
There has never been a court case or law passed by Congress defining the collection of transactional data as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Considering that nearly all foiled terrorist plots (many of them non-Islamic, mind you) are the result of good police work and not mass surveillance, yes, they must value the haystack itself.
The first set of your sentence does not demonstrate the second half. Because most Xs are Ys, no Xs are Zs, and nobody thinks that some Xs are Zs. Most foiled break in are the result of a barking dog, yes, the people who buy security systems are not actually trying to prevent break ins. That's what you're arguing, and it is a logical fallacy.
BTW, looking at things like security camera footage and call data is done all the time in police investigations. It's a subset of "good police work."
I mean they haven’t found any needles besides the ones they place there
ORLY? When did you get your security clearance, and how many investigations did you include in your data set? Or are you just blowing hot air?
The Obama administration says it has to have all this data to fight a handful of terrorists, which is not plausible. The real question is what in the world they are actually doing with it.
And Target trains video cameras on the aisles of its stores, collecting thousands of hours of video of ordinary shoppers every day. They say they are doing this to fight a handful of shoplifters, which is not plausible. The question is what in the world they are actually doing with it.
Because, Lord knows, when one looks for a needle in a haystack, one must really be going after the haystack itself; after all, that's where one is looking. Ergo, looking for a needle in a haystack means one thinks haystacks are made of needles.
And yet, Tahar, it was the Army that defended the protesters in Tahrir Square in the Spring of 2011, when the ruling elite's thugs started shooting at them.
The same Army that refused Mubarak's orders to open fire.
Any American who defends this must also believe that the US military would have the right to over-throw Obama (or Bush back then) if enough people took to the streets.
Define "enough." The American Declaration of Independence reads, in part, "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed." If "the governed" - that is, the people - cease to consent to the government, the government becomes illegitimate.
You write as if the democratic Egyptian government was humming along, doing its thing, and then the mean old military overthrew it because they didn't like the President's tone of voice. In reality, the Egyptian government failed some time ago, and the military stepped in late in the game to provide a coup de grace and achieve a swift transition. It's a sad day for Egyptian democracy, no question, but it is not the equivalent of the US military staging a coup after some Tea Party rallies.
Like most beginners, the Egyptian people as a whole probably don't understand democracy very well. Then again, in the early 1800s, it was common for supporters of American electoral candidates to travel around with jugs of whiskey, and let people have a slug if they promised to vote the right way. Andrew Jackson's campaign developed the innovative practice of bringing along a rope of tobacco, so the voter could replace the chunk he'd spit out when he took the slug of whiskey. These things take time.
Democracy: whiskey, but not always all that sexy.
That's the mindset of an internet troll, and Greenwald would be more convincing if he'd grow up.
11. General Cartwright won't collaborate with the Chinese and Russian intelligence services.
Obama's embrace of "Clean Coal" technology is the greatest bluff-calling of all time.
"What, me? A war on coal? How can you say that?"
If Barack Obama wasn't so wishy-washy, aircraft carriers could turn on a dime.
This time around the government is democratically elected.
It's hypocrisy to treat democracies differently from military dictatorships?
You think Sisi's statement looks like the military leadership warning both sides? It looks more like a threat directed at the protesters, in defense of the government.
#1 is false. The government did not request all data from Verizon, but from a subsidiary called Verizon Business Services, which does not handle home phones or ordinary cell phone accounts.
This error has been known for weeks. The determination not to correct it, but to keep pushing information, does not fill me with confidence in the credibility of the people pushing this story. They keep asking us to take them at their word, and they keep getting caught passing bad information.
But, hey, it gets people more riled up than the truth, and that's good enough for a certain variety of journalist.
I had such high hopes for him, and for the MB government. Their decision to opt out of large numbers of parliamentary races in order to give competing parties a chance was a remarkable act of decency and responsibility. Remember when Morsi worked with the US to get Israel to enter into a cease-fire in Gaza? I thought that was going to be his debut as a major international statesman. And then, the very next day, he puts on the pharaoh's crown and starts dismissing judges.
The effects of global warming are only "incremental" if you look at them in the aggregate, but in practices, they manifest themselves suddenly and dramatically.
For instance, a 2cm increase in local ocean levels at some city may sound incremental, but if that means the difference between the sea wall being overtopped by a storm and not, then the difference is not incremental.
Since Big Oil, Big Gas, and Big Coal will be profoundly threatened by any new White House policy on these issues, we can expect a political battle royale.
We can certainly expect a battle royale, but President Obama's strategy on this major issues involving multiple big interests has been to divide and conquer - to carve one target out from the herd, and appease the ones left standing enough that they won't interfere when he takes down his selected victim.
For example, the PPACA singled out the health insurance industry for regulation that made AHIP (the health insurers' trade organization) howl, while treating the drug makers, hospitals, and doctors in a much friendlier manner.
Similarly, during his first term, the administration cracked down hard on coal-fired power plants, while being relatively friendly to the gas and oil industries.
I would predict something similar here. Limits on carbon emissions from power plants, for instance, would hit the coal-fired plants very heavily, while being much easier for the gas-fired plants (which reduce carbon emissions by half per unit of energy) much less, if at all.
Since coal fired power plants generate 40% of American carbon emissions, that certainly makes sense as a place to start.
OK, I'm going to save this link to use the next time someone insists that they aren't just freaking out over the technology, but have very serious points to make about policy.
Because that piece is just embarrassing.
I can never figure out whether Karzai is crazy, or crazy like a fox.
And go on an cheerlead. Keep talking about how important it is to close the coal plants. Keep talking about how well the economics work. We need to replace the coal plants with solar and wind, and we can do that.
But don't mistake cheerleading for planning.
There are many real-world examples of states and countries getting 15% and 20% from renewables in just 6 or 7 years.
Sure there are, and I don't question that plucking the lowest-hanging fruits could bring about a similar-sized shift in the United States, but the next 15% will be harder, and the subsequent 15% harder still. But even if we were to assume that this rate of increase would remain steady, a rate of switching over 20% every six years still puts the complete switchover on a 30-year timeline. In 15 years, when (optimistically) half the capacity in the US is shifted over to renewables, do you want coal power providing a large part of the other half, or not?
I vote "not." You?
Solar and wind are falling in price so fast that getting rid of the rest of the plants in the following 3-4 years would be entirely feasible.
Your reasoning here is unsound: the falling cost of solar and wind energy does not make the logistical problem of getting all of that capacity up and running any easier. More affordable, yes, but we still have to build everything, and that takes time. You don't need to convince me that the economics work; I'm right there with you. Replacing coal with renewable can be done. The issue here is the speed at which it can be done. Even under your optimistic scenario, we're talking about a 30-year rollout.
"Dirty coal is killing us and killing the earth," but let's not do anything about it unless the solution is 100% without cost, and fits in perfectly with my other political goals.
Think globally, act counterproductively!
I don't disagree about the cost of switching to renewables. The issue I brought up was the timing of phasing them in, and what to do in the meantime.
You say there are "still questions" about the leakage; are there "questions" about the emissions from the coal plants that would operate in the place of gas? We have a lot more than "questions" about the consequences of keeping the coal plants open; we have, instead, many thousands of absolute, for-certain deaths. You seem very concerned about deaths from coal plants - right up until the point where reducing them involves doing something that doesn't jibe with your ideological preferences.
You write every day on this blog about the world-shattering significance of a 20 mega-watt solar plant here and a 10 mega-watt wind installation there, but you're going to waive away "cutting carbon emissions in half with "only?" Cutting carbon emissions from coal plants "only" in half would mean a net reduction of total American carbon output by 20%!
To put your "only," "not nearly good enough," "1billion metric tons is laughable" comments into perspective: the Keystone XL pipeline, if built, is projected to increase carbon emissions by 19 million (with an m) tons per year. That represents less than 1/50th of 1 billion (with a b) tons - yet you use terms like "game over" to describe the pipeline, while waiving away the world's largest reduction in carbon emissions, which is more than fifty times larger.
This is not the behavior of someone who is serious about reducing carbon emissions.
Here in Michigan, we just need to build the grid out to the northern Lake Michigan coast and put a couple thousand new large wind turbines. Could be done tout suite.
Sure, throw a cooler in the truck, we'll knock those bad boys out this weekend. Tout suite. No problem. Are you serious with this?
Getting down to sustainable levels of carbon emissions is a multi-step process, and using natural gas to replace coal is step one of that process.
Leaving out natural gas means the coal plants stay open for a decade or two longer, until solar and wind can be ramped up to sufficient levels.
We don't have that decade or two.
"Islamic State" is a vague term, encompassing everything from the liberal democracy in Libya to the Saudi monarchy. That figure tells me nothing about the rebels' goals.
The characterizations of the rebels provided in the interview are much more useful, as well as reassuring.
Don, could you kindly quote anything I said in which I trusted the reassurances of the government?
I specifically wrote in my comment that we needed to create legal safeguards to prevent abuses by those in authority. If that strikes you as too trusting, I really don't know what to tell you.
Noting glaring logical and factual holes in one side's case does not, in fact, commit me to an unquestioning acceptance of the other side's case. I thought we would have this concept pretty well understood after all of the "You love Saddam" nonsense a decade ago.
No, professor, who you call on your phone is not a "personal effect." You work at a university. You must know someone at the law school. Kindly run that theory by him, and let us know what he says.
No, professor, an unwarranted search is not a theft. Again, run this by any of your law-school friends.
You seem to be making quite a leap from "surveillance" to "snooping into my phone calls."
You are being terminally naive if you think the government can store all those records and that there won’t be abuses of our rights.
...and exactly which part of my question, "...or do we build legal protections to their usage?" struck you as being naive about the possibility of abuses?
The "treason" talk is ridiculous. Snowden was on a political crusade, not working on behalf of the enemy.
Which is also why the claim that he has reason to fear a drone strike is equally ridiculous. Has he joined al Qaeda? Is he even suspected of joining al Qaeda?
You went to the passive mood. My phone records didn’t ‘get dumped.’ They were stolen by the government, which then stored them permanently.
Well, no. For one thing, you don't own your phone records. If we're going to have an intelligent conversation about what's going on, we need to use words that are accurate, not merely emotionally gripping.
(What am I to make of this deflection, anyway? Suddenly we're out of the arena of privacy rights and searches, and into pseudo-llibertarian intellectual property rights flights of fancy? What does that say about the privacy/search issues?)
For another, "the government" in your first usage is a computer program that operates automatically. The passive voice is the right one to use here, because it accurately conveys the very lack of active involvement in going through and storing the records that is the actual case. It is when the FBI or NSA looks into the box that the active case becomes appropriate.
Snowden maintains that the analysts all have direct access to them at will, and he would know.
Just as every cop on the beat, with his flashlight and slim-jim, maintains the capacity to look in windows and enter cars when he shouldn't be doing so. Do we take away flashlights and slim-jims, or do we build legal protections to their usage?
I don't know about Bill, but I am honored to be included in the fascinating cosmology that is the topic of your every comment.
The government doesn't "see" your phone records without a warrant. That's the point.
The data files get dumped into a metaphorical box, but they aren't allowed to look into the box without a warrant.
Anyway, "George Bush did it so therefore everybody does it" is not a terribly compelling argument.
Has it occurred to you that there is a third option?
From an American perspective, watching the pro- and anti- Morsi factions in Egypt calling each other American puppets has been hilarious.
No YOU'RE the CIA tool!
No, YOU ARE!
Go for it, Morsi!
The Saudis have a very good air force, too. The Qataris and Kuwaitis sport some spiffy American-made aircraft. Not to mention the Turks.
You go on with your bad self.
A Russian naval base at Tartus is completely insignificant to the United States. In terms of US/Russian competition, there seems to be a one-sided Cold War going on. Checking the United States remains a top-tier goal of the Russians, while checking Russia is just not very important to the US. We certainly have regional interests driving this, including opposition to Iran, but talking about this episode as an American-Russian conflict is like talking about a Yankees-Blue Jays rivalry in the AL East: only the Blue Jays think there's one.
To answer your question about aid: the US has committed about half a billion dollars to refugee assistance so far.
To answer your question about the Nusra Front - the US has been trying, with varying degrees of success, to steer the arms coming from the Gulf states away from them and towards more moderate, democratic factions of the rebellion: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all
As far as long-term growth prospects go, I'd rather be Brazil then Russia.
Apparently, the people of Libya just don't understand as well as you do why they were better off in their "beautiful Country" with a psychotic dictator instead of a parliamentary democracy.
Um, when you have half of the world's wealthiest nations on your side, you are not "isolated."
Isolated means the opposite of "having a large coalition of supporters."
a desperate diversionary move when his administration is caught up deep in the cesspool over the Snowden controversy.
Yeah, no.
The notion that the Snowden "controversy" is harming the Obama administration politically is the sort of wishful thinking one can only indulge in from a few thousand miles away.
The Balkans prepared the ground for Iraqi Freedom
Huh?
In the sense that one happened after the other, I suppose so. Otherwise - no, not in any imaginable sense.
Danny, Professor Cole is so reflexively anti-interventionist that he supported the mission in Libya.
Someone is being reflexive here, Danny, and it's not Professor Cole.
It's an interesting variety of American Exceptionalism, much beloved among the so-called-anti-imperialist left, to shoe-horn the United States into the center of any and all events in the world.
The people of Mali have suffered greatly because of the Libyan civil war and the Western intervention therein.
Those mean Libyans, driving the Malian mercenaries out of their country! How dare they?
Why should I believe you, Brian?
It looks like you have nothing but wishful thinking and snark to back up your claims, and you got very defensive when asked about them.
That is not how someone telling the truth acts.
Prove me wrong.
Or don't, and I'll draw my conclusions from that.
A couple of other points:
Clinton's thinking on foreign policy is haunted by his decision to do nothing during the massacres in Rwanda. He may be over-applying that lesson.
These actions in Washington may presage progress towards a negotiated settlement to the conflict, along the track that John Kerry was pursuing in his visit to Moscow. The hawks seem to be acting like time is of the essence. Meanwhile, the biggest rebel faction said that getting more arms shipments from the west was a precondition for talks, and now they are going to get those shipments.
The Syrian conflict is not about religion, even a little bit.
It's not about religion to whom? It seems to be clearly about religious conflict to the people in that video.
It is certainly true that the Arab Spring protests-turned uprising-turned rebellion were not about religion, but what a war is about has a way of changing as the war goes on. The American Civil War was not about ridding the South of slavery, until it was. World War II was about protecting Poland from foreign domination, until it wasn't.
Yes! Great month for the drone program!
The Air Force was the victim of ‘sabotage’, according to service chief General Rashed al Janad. The latest Su-22 was caused by ‘shots hitting the engine’ as it prepared to land he explained, adding ‘the black box of the aircraft was hit’.
Uh huh. Boy, it's too bad that the only instrument that could definitively prove why the plan went down was destroyed. I find the head of the Yemeni Air Force's statement about when a plane crashed to be completely plausible. I would also like to subscribe to his newsletter.
My view about the Verizon program?
No. Why would I?
The PRISM program is a completely different ball of wax.
JT,
That the facts of the story don't matter to you in the formation of your opinion is not something most people would brag about.
I make this same point below.
This distinction really should matter, especially in a discussion about Total Information Awareness and a narrative about the government snooping on everyone.
It won't, but it should.
This write-up doesn't have its facts straight.
They did not get "all US telephone calls, mobile and otherwise, within the US and between the US and abroad, from mid-April of this year."
They got all of the calls handled by a unit of Verizon called Verizon Business Services, which does not handle any residential lines, or ordinary cell phone contracts.
There are real issues raised by this story. We don't need to make up silly stories about Big Brother snooping on everyone.
The effort to insist that both sides are equally to blame falls flat.
In a seemingly escape-proof blame game President Obama insists that the U.S. Congress prevents him from closing the prison while Congressional Republicans insist either that he has failed to offer a workable plan to dispose of the prisoners or that the prison is an irreplaceable asset.
One of these statements is true. One of them is false.
It is bad journalism to merely report what both sides say, without making an effort to report on what is true and what is false. That practice is how we ended with the existence of global warming being in doubt.
In a sense, Bashar al-Assad is a corollary of the French policies put in place over forty years before he was born. The resistance to his leadership – part of the wider Arab Spring uprisings beginning in 2011 – is a rejection of both his regime and European-American hegemony, present and past.
If the resistance to Bashar al-Assad's leadership is a rejection of European-American hegemony, then why are the rebels begging the west for support, while Assad is operating as a Russian client?
The author stretches in places to make the evidence fit his narrative.
I always get a chuckle out of so-called-anti-imperialists declaring that non-Russian parts of the world are "in Russia's back yard."
It's silly, and offensive, enough to see this formulation used to describe the 'Stans of Central Asia; at least they are actually near Russia.
But the Arab Southwest Asia? Russia's back yard?
Classic enemy-of-my-enemy thinking. The Soviets couldn't really be that bad if they were against the Americans, emirate?
You're that sure the Turkish government is going to start killing people in the streets like the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian governments did prior to Obama making those statements?
My favorite part of this map: the Basque area of Spain is not included in the Terrorism Zone, but the rest of Spain is.
Sure, why not? That makes sense.
It's interesting to watch a one-sided Cold War.
Checking the United States is still as central to Russian foreign policy as it was in 1980, but checking Russian influence is meaningless to the US.
Cervantes,
The question isn't how important Mediterranean access actually is for Russia, but how much they value it.
Securing access to the Mediterranean Sea has been a high priority for every Russian government for centuries.
Perhaps, Jack, but at what cost? I have no doubt that, if Israel's core interests depended on it, they could neutralize this system, but how many pilots and planes would Israel lose doing so?
Air defenses function largely as a deterrent, by imposing an unacceptable cost.
Since the Russian and Chinese reaction post-Libya is exactly the same as it was pre-Libya, it doesn't make sense to view the UN mission over Libya as some kind of a turning point, but as an unusual, one-off event.
Their hostility to collective action against dictatorships is just a reversion to the norm.
Just a perfect comment, Mr. Fischer.
Vladimir Putin embodies the consistent thread that binds together Russian policy, especially foreign policy, from the czarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras.