Uh huh, asking how this is supposed to help the Palestinians is a "fake conundrum."
You know, some of us actually consider the issue of getting to the establishment of a Palestinian homeland to be important in and of itself, and not merely a jumping off point for talking about how much he hate Israel and the US.
I asked you for a plan, and you gave me angry boilerplate about what a terrible person I am for asking.
I recall a conspiracy theory being floated that the rising food prices during the MB government period were being engineered by the military to undermine them.
Despite cynical presuppositions by Snowden’s critics, there is no evidence whatsoever that he has shared sensitive intelligence with either China or Russia.
So he didn't turn over several laptops loaded with classified information to Russian authorities?
Note that Obama’s own spokesman, P. J. Crowley, publicly criticized Manning’s treatment and was fired for it. Obama had been in a position to stop the torture but did not.
Again, back in the real world, the brig commander responsible for Manning's treatment was removed from command and disciplined.
This is an appalling fact-free journey through imaginationland.
"the evenness of its tone and appreciate the historical perspective"
You mean like asserting that, under Obama, Seymour Hersh would have been executed or given life in prison, despite there being not a single example of anyone receiving anything remotely close to those sentences?
There is a very interesting answer to that question, BruceJ: because he wasn't an analyst, but a systems administration.
The lowly guy in IT who reboots your computer at work when it freezes up? He has the capability to go into the CEO's email and read the messages he sends to his mistress.
Analysts, managers, and section chiefs far above Edward Snowden couldn't do what an IT at an NSA contractor can do. It's an interesting problem.
No arrests. No punishment. No orders issued. No cases before the courts. No jobs lost.
Nothing has happened, except an employer has blocked some sites on work computers.
There are something like 3 million people employed by the government. Don't you think somebody would have noticed if they'd started arresting people for reading Wikileaks cables?
with a comment asking “Why does it feel like this article is about 18 months too late? Coal is already on the rise again…”
This is global-warming-denial-grade hackish.
Looking at a chart that shows a long, stable trend characterized by small annual wobbles, a commenter proclaims that the latest annual wobble represents a reversal of the trend, and JT cites it as gospel.
This is directly from the global warming denial playbook. It is exactly what they do every time the annual wobble goes the wrong way.
I'm "ignoring it" because it's not really relevant to the question of gas vs. no gas.
By all means, let's do everything we can to encourage China to make the switch, too.
And of course the U.S. needs to further reduce its carbon emissions, and will, through a step-by-step switch from a coal-based power supply to, ultimately, a renewable-based power supply. The shift from coal to gas is a step in that process.
The author completely ignores the actual argument for ramping up gas production: ramping down coal usage. In fact, in the entire piece, he doesn't provide any discussion at all about what's happened to coal since the expansion of gas drilling, and no wonder: it completely demolishes his point. The usage of coal - the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive, most polluting fossil fuel in use - has plummeted since shift to natural gas. Coal plants across the United States are closing, and no new ones built to replace them.
The consequence of this ramp-up of natural gas? The United States has seen the largest drop in greenhouse gas emissions of any country on the planet.
Replacing coal plants with gas plants is the most successful carbon-reduction scheme ever adopted. If you oppose the ongoing shift from coal to gas, you oppose the most successful method of reducing greenhouse gases ever developed.
Whatever, JT. Wake us up when you have a point other than "I really hate that guy on the internet."
Mike, I don't think "tweaking Russia" matters very much to the United States these days. The U.S. continues to be a major focus of Russian foreign policy, but Russia just doesn't occupy the same space in American thinking that it did during the Cold War. The damage to our bilateral relationship from the Syria crisis is a cost to the United States, not a goal. Remember that Obama (as well as Bush before him) came into office seeking better relations with Russia.
It's a bit like the Blue Jays and the Yankees. The Blue Jays talk about their rivalry with the Yankees, while the Yankees view the Blue Jays as just another team they play.
Yes, this is all small-time stuff. Even Syria: while that country may be very important to Russia (only regional client left, Mediterranean naval base), it's basically a hobby for the U.S. There is no way the U.S. allows that dispute to interfere with the actually important interests you list.
That's bogus reasoning: Clearly the ability to refi ad a much higher price than the condemnation price is proof in and of itself that the condemnation price was too low.
False. The removal of the risk of default makes the loan more valuable.
The city is taking the loans, not the homes. The city doesn't end up owning any land. The city is doing this not to provide parks or streets, but to deal with an economic problem. There is no public land, no use of any property seized by the public.
Remember the controversial Kelo Supreme Court case, that upheld the taking of private homes to allow the redevelopment of the neighborhood into a higher-value commercial project? These eminent domain takings are legal under the Fifth Amendment because of the doctrine, upheld in that decision, that allows the use of eminent domain for economic development, and not just to acquire land that will be used by the general public.
This is not a coup. It is the second wave of the 2011
revolution.
The thing is, it's both. The second wave of the revolution expressed itself as a group of senior officers seizing power from an elected government by force, without authority. And yet, that act of seizing power was also an expression of dissatisfaction with Morsi's undemocratic tendencies.
Both of these things are true at the same time. It is a very complicate situation, loaded down with irony. A military coup for democracy vs. a democratically legitimate assault on democracy.
This is exactly why the American response has been so delicate and nuanced.
Point is, Sawsan, yes, it was. This is true, even if you think it was a good idea to do so. This is true, even if millions of people cheered while the clique of officers overthrew the government.
They don't have the legitimacy of constitutional authority. They don't have the legitimacy of an election victory. A clique of officers, acting on no authority but their own, overthrew the elected government.
Even if it was a good idea for them to do so, and even if they had a great deal of support, Egypt is still going to be balanced on a knife's edge unless there can be democratic and constitutional legitimacy.
That's Obama's America: pampering and cuddling new democratic governments. Had some nationalist or leftist party won the elections, the U.S. would have been pampering and cuddling them, too.
I'm sorry you find that so bothersome. I find it a refreshing change of pace.
But the United States can't talk to, and Egypt can't operate its state through, millions. That's what governments are for.
Of course any political leadership is going to have its freedom of action limited by the need to keep its base of support satisfied. The U.S. State Department and the McCain/Graham delegation are similarly constrained by the American millions. Still, statecraft requires interaction between parties capable of sitting down, coming to a decision, and acting.
Apparently, State isn't getting through to the generals, and the administration thinks that the McCain faction will meet with more success. They speak the generals' language.
Our concern should be for a government with which we can work to protect the US interest, not to become exercised over whether or not it meets our definition of “democracy.”
Things have changed, Bill. Once upon a time, authoritarian, undemocratic regimes could be relied upon to adequately protect American interests (as long as we were willing to overlook their bloody acts). Today, such a regime is going to be wracked by protests (or civil war) and/or export its instability to its neighbors, destabilizing an entire region (like Gadhaffi used to do). There is no such thing as a quiet, reliable dictatorship anymore.
It is very common practice for the President to send opposition figures as envoys to governments that are more ideologically aligned with the opposition. For instance, George W. Bush sent Jesse Jackson to talk to Gadhaffi.
McCain and Graham aren't going to mediate between the military and the Brotherhood. They're going to talk to the military. The State Department is talking to the Brotherhood.
The military is more comfortable with the pro-military hawks, and the MB is more comfortable with the relative doves in the State Department. The Obama administration is simply picking its messengers based on the audience.
McCain and Graham are perfect picks for this job, just like Jesse Jackson was a perfect pick for George W. Bush to send to Gadhaffi during the rapprochement in the 00s.
The people charged under the Espionage Act haven't been charged under the Act's espionage section, but under its release of classified information section.
Although it's called the Espionage Act, it actually contains a lot more than just espionage.
Did anyone else notice the irony of Professor Cole writing, on August 6 no less, that the warning about al Qaeda wanting to strike the US was just the intelligence agencies covering their ass?
There have certainly been people insisting that there is no real connection between al Qaeda and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Since several "old guard," core al Qaeda figures have been killed in Yemen, including one killed in the strike that hit Anwar al-Awlaki, this claim has never been terribly reality-based.
Two years before 9/11, Yemeni al Qaeda operatives blew a hole in the U.S.S. Cole. This line that al Qaeda isn't al Qaeda if it's in Yemen has never bee plausible.
I don't think you realize this, but #8 is flat-out right-wing, endless war propaganda.
Your argument is that the existence of any terror threat shows that al Qaeda has not been beaten down, or beaten down sufficiently, and that only the complete absence of threats would indicate success against them.
This is exactly the opposite of what someone who wanted this war to come to and end should be saying. John Kerry was right about what victory in this war would mean - not the complete eradication of any terror threat, but its reduction to the level of a "nuisance."
You are the last person I would expect to be echoing this pernicious doctrine.
On the eve of resumption of peace talks between Israel and Palestine, the far right Israeli nationalist government of Binyamin Netanyahu attempted to torpedo them with a series of provocative announcements.
Back in the 1990s, it was Hamas that would attempt to torpedo peace talks by carrying out terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Likud and Hamas need each other.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism itself has done so.
They show drone strikes having a considerably lower civilian casualty rate than "other covert actions."
US Covert Action in Yemen 2002–2013
Confirmed US drone strikes: 47-57
Total reported killed: 243-358
Civilians reported killed: 15-52
Possible extra US drone strikes: 83-102
Total reported killed: 294-468
Civilians reported killed: 23-48
All other US covert operations: 12-77
Total reported killed: 148-377
Civilians reported killed: 60-88
If we take the highest-end estimates of everything, then known drone strike casualties included 14.5% civilians, possible drone strike casualties included 10.3% civilian casualties, and other US covert operations included 23.3% civilian casualties.
They don't exactly go out of their way to hype that finding, because DRONEZ!
So, just to be perfectly clear, the universal assumption here is that a threat to American embassies on the anniversary of the al Qaeda attacks on two Americans embassies must necessarily be bogus.
Of course. Because al Qaeda isn't really a threat or anything, just a bunch of harmless fuzzy bunnies.
Following up "The Administration you so often plump for has never lied to the rest of us, or mis-led us, or been caught doing things that are maybe not so very good for most of us?" with a statement from the oh-so-reliable Pakistani intelligence services is weak even for you, JT. Is there anything you don't gullibly swallow, as long as it supports your point?
And no, the terror alert is not based on a threat from the non-Nusra Front factions of the Syrian opposition. That is an embarrassingly stupid argument, and only makes sense if you buy into an "all those people look alike" view of the Muslims.
In four and a half years, through some much-more difficult political stories than anything that his happening now, the administration has never used terror warnings as a distraction. Not during the 2010 election season, not during any of the terrible economic reports that have sometimes come in, not during any of the scandal stories, nothing. Not once.
During the previous administration, when they were changing the color on the National Mood Ring every few months, with highly suspicious political timing, such speculation would have been warranted, but this administration has no such pattern of behavior.
Leaping to the conclusion that this must be a political ploy is a real stretch.
UH, JT? Nothing I have ever written has the slightest connection to realist foreign policy. I frequently denounce realist foreign policy, including when you took up the mantle to argue against he Libyan intervention. Oil wars are an example of a foreign policy that puts national interest above values.
I think you're using big words you don't understand again.
I'm really not interested in chasing your nonsensical babble around. I just wanted to clear up that one point.
Actually, Juan, I was talking about your description of the program, and its drift over the years.
I was one of the people who "upbraided" you for insisting that there was no military aspect to the program whatsoever, and was pleased when you started allowing the breakout capacity/nuclear deterrent motive to enter into your commentary.
I said from the beginning that there was no evidence Iran had a nuclear weapons program under his presidency, and 8 years later he went out of office without one. I was upbraided 7 years ago and told that Iran was five years away from the bomb. There’s still no evidence that the country even has a weapons program.
I guess the little soft-shoe number, moving from "a purely civilian energy program" to "the achievement of breakout capacity to provide a military deterrent," isn't worth mentioning.
Protesting for the dissolution of the Ennhada government because of al Qaeda attacks is like American conservatives in 1978 protesting for Jimmy Carter to resign because of the Weather Underground.
Hey, JT: what we to make of the fact that the administration didn't play any hardball with the military aid during the Morsi administration, but is doing so now?
If the judge - tribunal? Huh? - who convicted Manning was looking to make an example of him, he wouldn't have acquitted him on the Aiding the Enemy charge.
So it seems to me that Pope Francis is just saying what many evangelicals say– hate the sin, love the sinner, celibate gays are welcome in the congregation, etc.
Oh, please. How many evangelicals have concluded with "Who am I to judge?" How many evangelicals have said that the "tendency," that is, the innate sexual orientation, is not sinful?
Sending troops to track extremists, and nine of them getting killed in the process, doesn't sound to me like a government that fails to recognize the threat of extremists, or is going easy on them.
Apparently Libyans (non-Greens) (Who knows how many?) are now saying Gaddafi was right about the Islamists’ attempts to take over Libya and North Africa.
Really? What LIbyans are those? Links?
Moreover since the US & Nato’s humanitarian military bombed entire cities to rubble in Libya
Yeah, no. That never happened. There were no cities in Libya subjected to major aerial bombardment - although some suffered significant damage from ground forces. You might remember the ground if you try hard enough to recall who else, besides NATO, was involved in the overthrow of Gadhaffi.
Because the CIA had been trying to get rid of him for decades
Except, of course, for the years leading up to Arab Spring, when George Bush was welcoming him back into the international community, Haliburton was signing drilling deals with his government, and John McCain was tweeting about what an "interesting man" he was while visiting one of his estates.
"The fact is" is one of those placeholder statements that means "I'm about to say something I can't support with facts," like "Everyone knows," or Josef Stalin's favorite, "It is well know that..."
Personally, my favorite is "We hold these truths to be self-evident."
This - where "this" is "post-revolutionary instability" - was predicted by those of us who supported this completely legal, UN-authorized Protective Mission as well, since anyone with even the vaguest knowledge about world history knows that the achievement of complete stability immediately after a revolution is an impossibility, and the only people who pretend that it is a meaningful measure of whether a revolution was a mistake are the dishonest and the ignorant.
Also, good job writing the Libyan people out of their own history. Again. Yeah, Samantha Power, she's the person most responsible for the overthrow of Moammar Gadhaffi.
You can't bang on about how important the rule of law is, and then advocate the blatantly illegal action of overthrowing the government.
The real answer, of course, is that talking about prosecuting either of those power-grabbing dictators when they are in office, using the organs of state to maintain their power, is a silly fantasy. You might as well talk about prosecuting the Pharaoh. Can he bring his throne to the courtroom?
I'm starting to suspect that discussing "the Egyptian military" as a single, cohesive actor is not good enough.
Remember, the Egyptian officers in Cairo refused Mubarak's order to open fire, and helped protect the protesters when the old regime's defenders opened fire. They're clearly not all on the same page.
You will continue to wait until the body count reaches the thousands before the Western Powers consider a humanitarian intervention like that in Libya.
We should hold Egyptians democrats to the same standards as we observe in the West.
OK: this long after the start of the American Revolution, the country was still in the midst of an active shooting war. It would be more than another decade before an effective, legitimate constitutional system was in place. In between, there were numerous national political crises and several armed rebellions that were put down the government and led by the generals who'd also led the revolution.
The 6.5 average years of schooling sounds a lot like the United States in its early years.
It was common during the late 1700s/early 1800s for candidates in the western states (what were then the western states) to send out their supporters with bottles of whiskey, to give people who promised to vote the right way a big slug.
There is no way to get ready for democracy, except through trial and error.
Are you under the impression that the people who set out to change the regime in Tripoli - that is, the Libyan people - didn't realize they were engaged in a war?
I'm having serious trouble figuring out your point.
And no, the security problems wouldn’t justify keeping Gaddafi in power.
It's depressing to me that this needs to be pointed out. When did people on the left start making arguments that "Those people needs strong hand," or "Order is more important that liberation?"
I know he wasn't accusing Obama of governing like Milosevic. I understand his argument; I just don't buy it. Milosevic didn't come to power because he had an ineffective liberal predecessor, nor was there any liberal mainstream in Serbia.
The Weimar comparison seems to capture the dynamic you're describing, and it seems plausible, but Serbia is a different case.
Hedge's comparison between Obama and Yugoslavia is silly. Was Slobodan Milosevic "unable to be effective?" Quite the opposite - he has massive, unchecked executive power and a broad mandate from a big majority of the Serbian people.
In the United States, Obama's liberal efforts are checked and checked again by the Congress. He's making the mistake, very common among leftist critics, of leaving the Republican Congress and its record use of the filibuster out of his equation, and assuming that anything Obama hasn't done, he doesn't want to do.
If human society collapses to a pre-industrial stage because of climate change, CO2 levels and the amount of energy in the atmosphere and oceans will, indeed, fall back down to their natural levels. Eventually.
The two findings are not strictly comparable. The 2007 report talks about equilibrium temperatures in the very long term (over centuries); the forthcoming one talks about them in 2100. But the practical distinction would not be great so long as concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse-gas emissions were stable or falling by 2100. It is clear that some IPCC scientists think the projected rise in CO2 levels might not have such a big warming effect as was once thought.
There are several caveats. The table comes from a draft version of the report, and could thus change. It was put together by the IPCC working group on mitigating climate change, rather than the group looking at physical sciences. It derives from a relatively simple model of the climate, rather than the big complex ones usually used by the IPCC. And the literature to back it up has not yet been published.
South Florida is going to be uninhabitable long before it is underwater. It sits on porous rock, which allows the sea water to infiltrate into the groundwater. As more groundwater is pumped out, its water pressure decreases, allowing more and more salinity to enter the water supply.
Decades ago, they built canals in which fresh water would pool at a higher elevation, increasing the water pressure and resisting the infiltration. Now, with just a few inches of sea level rise, that water isn't high enough anymore, and the salinity is increasing again.
South Florida's water problems make New Orleans look easy. That part of the country is doomed, and will need to be written off in the not-too-distant future.
What politicians have tried to use their power to get Niall Ferguson or Victor David Hanson's actual historical work removed from classrooms?
When Ferguson and Hanson write about contemporary politics, people argue with them. Comparing this to a governor trying to ban a historian's actual historical texts is absurd.
Zinn's book is popular history, written for a general audience.
No, it's not top-flight academic scholarship, but how many text books used for non-historians (undergraduates, high school teachers doing professional development, and the like) are top-flight, primary-source-based research?
"Those people" can't handle democracy and need a strong dictator to hold them down, and can't hope for anything better than the bloody oppression of a Saddam or a Gadhaffi.
Palestinian response: (sorry, we have just learned that the Palestinian representatives are waiting in line at various checkpoints so as to proceed home.)
Back in the real world, Palestinian negotiators go to the White House, Camp David, Wye River....
the disadvantage of entering them while in a weak position
The Palestinian's position is only getting weaker as time goes on. It's not as if they are about to gain the upper hand.
and the problem of legitimizing one’s adversary as they continue stealing, etc.
We're talking about peace talks; that your enemy is doing terrible things is always the case during peace talks.
Playing along may only assist in the deception and delaying tactics of the Zionists.
This is what makes no sense to me. Look at the status quo, with settlements being built and land taken. There is no countervailing force, which could restrain the Israelis' deception and delaying tactics, to be undermined.
What do you imagine the Israelis are going to be doing for "weeks" while being pounded by rockets? Watching the invaders polish their tanks?
If the much-better Israeli tanks are vulnerable to cheap weapons, what do you think the very expensive Israeli armaments are going to do to those invaders?
The military transformation you're talking about has served to make thing much more difficult for invaders, even well-armed ones. How this is supposed to translate into the invasion of Israel becoming easier is...not entirely obvious.
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Uh huh, asking how this is supposed to help the Palestinians is a "fake conundrum."
You know, some of us actually consider the issue of getting to the establishment of a Palestinian homeland to be important in and of itself, and not merely a jumping off point for talking about how much he hate Israel and the US.
I asked you for a plan, and you gave me angry boilerplate about what a terrible person I am for asking.
I guess that answers that question.
All of these anti-peace-talks comments seem to overlook a rather important point:
Not engaging in talks is 100% guaranteed to result in the continued expropriation of Palestinian land.
What's the plan here?
What are the steps that come between "Don't engage in talks" and "Secure a Palestinian homeland?"
Mollify hardliners?
Or blow up the talks?
It looks, to me, very similar to the way Hamas used to carry out terrorist bombings when Arafat was about to begin talks with Israel.
I recall a conspiracy theory being floated that the rising food prices during the MB government period were being engineered by the military to undermine them.
I guess we can do away with that theory now.
Obama was posturing against a bill that was guaranteed to pass.
The contemporary Republicans, as they have demonstrated, are actually screwing around with not raising the debt limit.
Not the same thing at all. Making sure the debt ceiling bills passes 60-40 instead of 99-0 doesn't crash the world economy.
Despite cynical presuppositions by Snowden’s critics, there is no evidence whatsoever that he has shared sensitive intelligence with either China or Russia.
So he didn't turn over several laptops loaded with classified information to Russian authorities?
Really? You're sticking with that story?
Note that Obama’s own spokesman, P. J. Crowley, publicly criticized Manning’s treatment and was fired for it. Obama had been in a position to stop the torture but did not.
Again, back in the real world, the brig commander responsible for Manning's treatment was removed from command and disciplined.
This is an appalling fact-free journey through imaginationland.
"the evenness of its tone and appreciate the historical perspective"
You mean like asserting that, under Obama, Seymour Hersh would have been executed or given life in prison, despite there being not a single example of anyone receiving anything remotely close to those sentences?
There is a very interesting answer to that question, BruceJ: because he wasn't an analyst, but a systems administration.
The lowly guy in IT who reboots your computer at work when it freezes up? He has the capability to go into the CEO's email and read the messages he sends to his mistress.
Analysts, managers, and section chiefs far above Edward Snowden couldn't do what an IT at an NSA contractor can do. It's an interesting problem.
I find the discussion of the issue from the authorities to be much more even-handed, fact-based, and level-headed than that which appears here.
Which is a pretty sad commentary on Dr. Cole.
That's a bit of climb-down, Professor, from "There is no more First Amendment."
An intelligent discussion could have been had about that action.
But you'd rather have OMG JUST LIKE THE NAZIS yelling, instead.
My source is the stories reporting the alleged "ban" - that is, the very same sources Professor Cole is (mis)using for his claim.
No arrests. No punishment. No orders issued. No cases before the courts. No jobs lost.
Nothing has happened, except an employer has blocked some sites on work computers.
There are something like 3 million people employed by the government. Don't you think somebody would have noticed if they'd started arresting people for reading Wikileaks cables?
Hi, professor.
Here's a link to the content of the wikileaks cables.
http://wikileaks.org/cablegate.html
When do you think the Wikileaks Police are going to come for me? I'd like to put out a cheese plate.
Government employees have NOT been forbidden to read Wikileaks cables.
They have been forbidden to do so at work.
Can we discuss what's going on without lying about it?
The first amendment doesn't exist if court orders are sealed.
Forbidding the use of government computers to access something is the same as making it illegal to read books.
Yeah, this isn't hysterical or anything.
Your second sentence had nothing to do with your first.
GHG levels are far too high, so therefore, the piece does discuss the reduction in coal usage and the role of natural gas?
How does that work?
with a comment asking “Why does it feel like this article is about 18 months too late? Coal is already on the rise again…”
This is global-warming-denial-grade hackish.
Looking at a chart that shows a long, stable trend characterized by small annual wobbles, a commenter proclaims that the latest annual wobble represents a reversal of the trend, and JT cites it as gospel.
This is directly from the global warming denial playbook. It is exactly what they do every time the annual wobble goes the wrong way.
I'm "ignoring it" because it's not really relevant to the question of gas vs. no gas.
By all means, let's do everything we can to encourage China to make the switch, too.
And of course the U.S. needs to further reduce its carbon emissions, and will, through a step-by-step switch from a coal-based power supply to, ultimately, a renewable-based power supply. The shift from coal to gas is a step in that process.
The author completely ignores the actual argument for ramping up gas production: ramping down coal usage. In fact, in the entire piece, he doesn't provide any discussion at all about what's happened to coal since the expansion of gas drilling, and no wonder: it completely demolishes his point. The usage of coal - the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive, most polluting fossil fuel in use - has plummeted since shift to natural gas. Coal plants across the United States are closing, and no new ones built to replace them.
The consequence of this ramp-up of natural gas? The United States has seen the largest drop in greenhouse gas emissions of any country on the planet.
Replacing coal plants with gas plants is the most successful carbon-reduction scheme ever adopted. If you oppose the ongoing shift from coal to gas, you oppose the most successful method of reducing greenhouse gases ever developed.
So now photo ops are the prime force in global politics.
Good to know, JT.
Whatever, JT. Wake us up when you have a point other than "I really hate that guy on the internet."
Mike, I don't think "tweaking Russia" matters very much to the United States these days. The U.S. continues to be a major focus of Russian foreign policy, but Russia just doesn't occupy the same space in American thinking that it did during the Cold War. The damage to our bilateral relationship from the Syria crisis is a cost to the United States, not a goal. Remember that Obama (as well as Bush before him) came into office seeking better relations with Russia.
It's a bit like the Blue Jays and the Yankees. The Blue Jays talk about their rivalry with the Yankees, while the Yankees view the Blue Jays as just another team they play.
Mainly because Obama's presidency has been successful.
to cancel a summit meeting because of Russian’s asylum to Snowden is even more laughable
The summit hasn't actually been cancelled. It's still going to happen, just as the level of foreign minister.
What was cancelled was basically photo-op time with both heads of state.
Yes, this is all small-time stuff. Even Syria: while that country may be very important to Russia (only regional client left, Mediterranean naval base), it's basically a hobby for the U.S. There is no way the U.S. allows that dispute to interfere with the actually important interests you list.
That's bogus reasoning: Clearly the ability to refi ad a much higher price than the condemnation price is proof in and of itself that the condemnation price was too low.
False. The removal of the risk of default makes the loan more valuable.
The city is taking the loans, not the homes. The city doesn't end up owning any land. The city is doing this not to provide parks or streets, but to deal with an economic problem. There is no public land, no use of any property seized by the public.
Remember the controversial Kelo Supreme Court case, that upheld the taking of private homes to allow the redevelopment of the neighborhood into a higher-value commercial project? These eminent domain takings are legal under the Fifth Amendment because of the doctrine, upheld in that decision, that allows the use of eminent domain for economic development, and not just to acquire land that will be used by the general public.
In the meantime, let’s maintain friendly relations with the government in power in order to advance and protect our interests.
IOW, takes sides with the military regime.
I'm sure an MB government that comes to power if they country blows up will "protect our interests" if we do that.
Stocking up on canned good and bottled water?
This is not a coup. It is the second wave of the 2011
revolution.
The thing is, it's both. The second wave of the revolution expressed itself as a group of senior officers seizing power from an elected government by force, without authority. And yet, that act of seizing power was also an expression of dissatisfaction with Morsi's undemocratic tendencies.
Both of these things are true at the same time. It is a very complicate situation, loaded down with irony. A military coup for democracy vs. a democratically legitimate assault on democracy.
This is exactly why the American response has been so delicate and nuanced.
Point is, Sawsan, yes, it was. This is true, even if you think it was a good idea to do so. This is true, even if millions of people cheered while the clique of officers overthrew the government.
They don't have the legitimacy of constitutional authority. They don't have the legitimacy of an election victory. A clique of officers, acting on no authority but their own, overthrew the elected government.
Even if it was a good idea for them to do so, and even if they had a great deal of support, Egypt is still going to be balanced on a knife's edge unless there can be democratic and constitutional legitimacy.
Amir,
That's Obama's America: pampering and cuddling new democratic governments. Had some nationalist or leftist party won the elections, the U.S. would have been pampering and cuddling them, too.
I'm sorry you find that so bothersome. I find it a refreshing change of pace.
But the United States can't talk to, and Egypt can't operate its state through, millions. That's what governments are for.
Of course any political leadership is going to have its freedom of action limited by the need to keep its base of support satisfied. The U.S. State Department and the McCain/Graham delegation are similarly constrained by the American millions. Still, statecraft requires interaction between parties capable of sitting down, coming to a decision, and acting.
Apparently, State isn't getting through to the generals, and the administration thinks that the McCain faction will meet with more success. They speak the generals' language.
Our concern should be for a government with which we can work to protect the US interest, not to become exercised over whether or not it meets our definition of “democracy.”
Things have changed, Bill. Once upon a time, authoritarian, undemocratic regimes could be relied upon to adequately protect American interests (as long as we were willing to overlook their bloody acts). Today, such a regime is going to be wracked by protests (or civil war) and/or export its instability to its neighbors, destabilizing an entire region (like Gadhaffi used to do). There is no such thing as a quiet, reliable dictatorship anymore.
The US treated the elected government with more deference than the clique of officers who overthrew it?
You don't say. What a terrible double-standard.
We should let the Egyptians work these issues out for themselves
We should let the wolves and the sheep work out their problems for themselves, too. I'm sure all the fighting will be over very quickly.
We've seen how this Egyptian military government "works out" issues with the MB.
It is very common practice for the President to send opposition figures as envoys to governments that are more ideologically aligned with the opposition. For instance, George W. Bush sent Jesse Jackson to talk to Gadhaffi.
Credibility with whom?
Do you think the Egyptian military establishment holds it against John McCain that he's a hawk, or anti-Iran?
McCain and Graham aren't going to mediate between the military and the Brotherhood. They're going to talk to the military. The State Department is talking to the Brotherhood.
The military is more comfortable with the pro-military hawks, and the MB is more comfortable with the relative doves in the State Department. The Obama administration is simply picking its messengers based on the audience.
McCain and Graham are perfect picks for this job, just like Jesse Jackson was a perfect pick for George W. Bush to send to Gadhaffi during the rapprochement in the 00s.
The people charged under the Espionage Act haven't been charged under the Act's espionage section, but under its release of classified information section.
Although it's called the Espionage Act, it actually contains a lot more than just espionage.
Did anyone else notice the irony of Professor Cole writing, on August 6 no less, that the warning about al Qaeda wanting to strike the US was just the intelligence agencies covering their ass?
A well-established fact that is easily found by looking somewhere other than your belly-button, Captain Gut-check.
Dear Bill,
Only JT gets to make wholly unsupported assertions without a shred of evidence. As your moral superior, he gets all sorts of benefits.
Last you heard, where?
There have certainly been people insisting that there is no real connection between al Qaeda and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Since several "old guard," core al Qaeda figures have been killed in Yemen, including one killed in the strike that hit Anwar al-Awlaki, this claim has never been terribly reality-based.
Two years before 9/11, Yemeni al Qaeda operatives blew a hole in the U.S.S. Cole. This line that al Qaeda isn't al Qaeda if it's in Yemen has never bee plausible.
I don't think you realize this, but #8 is flat-out right-wing, endless war propaganda.
Your argument is that the existence of any terror threat shows that al Qaeda has not been beaten down, or beaten down sufficiently, and that only the complete absence of threats would indicate success against them.
This is exactly the opposite of what someone who wanted this war to come to and end should be saying. John Kerry was right about what victory in this war would mean - not the complete eradication of any terror threat, but its reduction to the level of a "nuisance."
You are the last person I would expect to be echoing this pernicious doctrine.
I'm pretty sure al Qaeda would rather do without the "security" they've been hit with over the past few years.
Hamas isn't squatting in basements afraid to move.
On the eve of resumption of peace talks between Israel and Palestine, the far right Israeli nationalist government of Binyamin Netanyahu attempted to torpedo them with a series of provocative announcements.
Back in the 1990s, it was Hamas that would attempt to torpedo peace talks by carrying out terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Likud and Hamas need each other.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism itself has done so.
They show drone strikes having a considerably lower civilian casualty rate than "other covert actions."
US Covert Action in Yemen 2002–2013
Confirmed US drone strikes: 47-57
Total reported killed: 243-358
Civilians reported killed: 15-52
Possible extra US drone strikes: 83-102
Total reported killed: 294-468
Civilians reported killed: 23-48
All other US covert operations: 12-77
Total reported killed: 148-377
Civilians reported killed: 60-88
If we take the highest-end estimates of everything, then known drone strike casualties included 14.5% civilians, possible drone strike casualties included 10.3% civilian casualties, and other US covert operations included 23.3% civilian casualties.
They don't exactly go out of their way to hype that finding, because DRONEZ!
Zero civilians, lots of militants and al Qaeda.
Good July. Let's hope that keeps up in August.
So, just to be perfectly clear, the universal assumption here is that a threat to American embassies on the anniversary of the al Qaeda attacks on two Americans embassies must necessarily be bogus.
Of course. Because al Qaeda isn't really a threat or anything, just a bunch of harmless fuzzy bunnies.
Following up "The Administration you so often plump for has never lied to the rest of us, or mis-led us, or been caught doing things that are maybe not so very good for most of us?" with a statement from the oh-so-reliable Pakistani intelligence services is weak even for you, JT. Is there anything you don't gullibly swallow, as long as it supports your point?
And no, the terror alert is not based on a threat from the non-Nusra Front factions of the Syrian opposition. That is an embarrassingly stupid argument, and only makes sense if you buy into an "all those people look alike" view of the Muslims.
In four and a half years, through some much-more difficult political stories than anything that his happening now, the administration has never used terror warnings as a distraction. Not during the 2010 election season, not during any of the terrible economic reports that have sometimes come in, not during any of the scandal stories, nothing. Not once.
During the previous administration, when they were changing the color on the National Mood Ring every few months, with highly suspicious political timing, such speculation would have been warranted, but this administration has no such pattern of behavior.
Leaping to the conclusion that this must be a political ploy is a real stretch.
UH, JT? Nothing I have ever written has the slightest connection to realist foreign policy. I frequently denounce realist foreign policy, including when you took up the mantle to argue against he Libyan intervention. Oil wars are an example of a foreign policy that puts national interest above values.
I think you're using big words you don't understand again.
I'm really not interested in chasing your nonsensical babble around. I just wanted to clear up that one point.
"There is an argument that..."
Do you buy the argument that more nuclear proliferation means more peace? I never have - I'm an old-fashioned anti-nuke guy.
Actually, Juan, I was talking about your description of the program, and its drift over the years.
I was one of the people who "upbraided" you for insisting that there was no military aspect to the program whatsoever, and was pleased when you started allowing the breakout capacity/nuclear deterrent motive to enter into your commentary.
I said from the beginning that there was no evidence Iran had a nuclear weapons program under his presidency, and 8 years later he went out of office without one. I was upbraided 7 years ago and told that Iran was five years away from the bomb. There’s still no evidence that the country even has a weapons program.
I guess the little soft-shoe number, moving from "a purely civilian energy program" to "the achievement of breakout capacity to provide a military deterrent," isn't worth mentioning.
11. The new guy is a hell of a lot more reasonable:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/world/middleeast/irans-president-puts-new-focus-on-the-economy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Mr. Rouhani said that interactions with the world, meaning talks with Europe and potentially the United States, were a way out of the crisis
Protesting for the dissolution of the Ennhada government because of al Qaeda attacks is like American conservatives in 1978 protesting for Jimmy Carter to resign because of the Weather Underground.
No fair, Professor!
There are beaches all over the world that have solar, wind, and tidal power spilling all over them.
Hey, JT: what we to make of the fact that the administration didn't play any hardball with the military aid during the Morsi administration, but is doing so now?
Hey, I know this game, JT: "Why don't Muslims denounce terrorism?"
"Uh, they do. Here's a story about it."
"Yeah, well, why don't they do it more?"
Narrative uber alles. Yes, CNN is lying to you, and if they're not, well...
Who are the military's international backers?
The Obama administration is putting pressure on them to go back to their barracks and make with the elections already.
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/24/u-s-to-delay-f-16-delivery-to-egypt/
The military regime needs to step down ASAP. Negotiate an acceptable caretaker government and get some elections scheduled.
Whether you think the revo-coup-tion was the right thing or not, a bunch of generals can't be running the country like it's Guatemala 1960.
If the judge - tribunal? Huh? - who convicted Manning was looking to make an example of him, he wouldn't have acquitted him on the Aiding the Enemy charge.
I'm guessing somewhere between 8 and 15 years.
Roman Catholic here, Mr. Lewis.
If priests have to be male for that reason, does that mean they also have to be Jewish?
In their 30s?
Subversive political radicals?
My theory: An Italian that they could pretend was Latino.
So it seems to me that Pope Francis is just saying what many evangelicals say– hate the sin, love the sinner, celibate gays are welcome in the congregation, etc.
Oh, please. How many evangelicals have concluded with "Who am I to judge?" How many evangelicals have said that the "tendency," that is, the innate sexual orientation, is not sinful?
Sending troops to track extremists, and nine of them getting killed in the process, doesn't sound to me like a government that fails to recognize the threat of extremists, or is going easy on them.
That's just common sense, Chris.
Apparently Libyans (non-Greens) (Who knows how many?) are now saying Gaddafi was right about the Islamists’ attempts to take over Libya and North Africa.
Really? What LIbyans are those? Links?
Moreover since the US & Nato’s humanitarian military bombed entire cities to rubble in Libya
Yeah, no. That never happened. There were no cities in Libya subjected to major aerial bombardment - although some suffered significant damage from ground forces. You might remember the ground if you try hard enough to recall who else, besides NATO, was involved in the overthrow of Gadhaffi.
Because the CIA had been trying to get rid of him for decades
Except, of course, for the years leading up to Arab Spring, when George Bush was welcoming him back into the international community, Haliburton was signing drilling deals with his government, and John McCain was tweeting about what an "interesting man" he was while visiting one of his estates.
Maybe this will jog your memory: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/condoleezza-rice-muammar-gaddafi_n_1032468.html
"The fact is" is one of those placeholder statements that means "I'm about to say something I can't support with facts," like "Everyone knows," or Josef Stalin's favorite, "It is well know that..."
Personally, my favorite is "We hold these truths to be self-evident."
This - where "this" is "post-revolutionary instability" - was predicted by those of us who supported this completely legal, UN-authorized Protective Mission as well, since anyone with even the vaguest knowledge about world history knows that the achievement of complete stability immediately after a revolution is an impossibility, and the only people who pretend that it is a meaningful measure of whether a revolution was a mistake are the dishonest and the ignorant.
Also, good job writing the Libyan people out of their own history. Again. Yeah, Samantha Power, she's the person most responsible for the overthrow of Moammar Gadhaffi.
Criticizing the security efforts of the Libyan government, which isn't Islamist, is a statement that Islamists can't run an economy?
What are you talking about? The coverage of the violence in Egypt is all over the American press, and the administration is threatening aid cutoffs.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/24/205149247/delivery-of-f-16s-to-egypt-halted-pentagon-says
No, because he was never democratically elected
So?
Do you follow the law or not?
You can't bang on about how important the rule of law is, and then advocate the blatantly illegal action of overthrowing the government.
The real answer, of course, is that talking about prosecuting either of those power-grabbing dictators when they are in office, using the organs of state to maintain their power, is a silly fantasy. You might as well talk about prosecuting the Pharaoh. Can he bring his throne to the courtroom?
Should Mubarak have been "prosecuted as per the Egyptian Law, not deposed?"
And the Obama sends a shot across Sisi's bow:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/24/205149247/delivery-of-f-16s-to-egypt-halted-pentagon-says
It's amazing how quickly people forget point #2, just because it doesn't fit into their unalterable narrative.
Obama embraced Morsi, and worked closely with him on the cease-fire in Gaza.
I'm starting to suspect that discussing "the Egyptian military" as a single, cohesive actor is not good enough.
Remember, the Egyptian officers in Cairo refused Mubarak's order to open fire, and helped protect the protesters when the old regime's defenders opened fire. They're clearly not all on the same page.
You will continue to wait until the body count reaches the thousands before the Western Powers consider a humanitarian intervention like that in Libya.
We should hold Egyptians democrats to the same standards as we observe in the West.
OK: this long after the start of the American Revolution, the country was still in the midst of an active shooting war. It would be more than another decade before an effective, legitimate constitutional system was in place. In between, there were numerous national political crises and several armed rebellions that were put down the government and led by the generals who'd also led the revolution.
And this shows that Snowden was only bound by a confidentiality agreement, and not federal law, how, exactly?
Why does correcting a factual error amount to an endorsement of a position in the debate?
the only thing he violated was a confidentiality agreement with Booz, Allen
No.
Not even remotely accurate.
The very worst work you do, professor, comes when you try to discuss law.
Cagri,
The 6.5 average years of schooling sounds a lot like the United States in its early years.
It was common during the late 1700s/early 1800s for candidates in the western states (what were then the western states) to send out their supporters with bottles of whiskey, to give people who promised to vote the right way a big slug.
There is no way to get ready for democracy, except through trial and error.
Are you under the impression that the people who set out to change the regime in Tripoli - that is, the Libyan people - didn't realize they were engaged in a war?
I'm having serious trouble figuring out your point.
Since the Libyan regime change began with a bloody civil war, I'm having a very hard time agreeing that yours is a better question.
And no, the security problems wouldn’t justify keeping Gaddafi in power.
It's depressing to me that this needs to be pointed out. When did people on the left start making arguments that "Those people needs strong hand," or "Order is more important that liberation?"
I know he wasn't accusing Obama of governing like Milosevic. I understand his argument; I just don't buy it. Milosevic didn't come to power because he had an ineffective liberal predecessor, nor was there any liberal mainstream in Serbia.
The Weimar comparison seems to capture the dynamic you're describing, and it seems plausible, but Serbia is a different case.
Hedge's comparison between Obama and Yugoslavia is silly. Was Slobodan Milosevic "unable to be effective?" Quite the opposite - he has massive, unchecked executive power and a broad mandate from a big majority of the Serbian people.
In the United States, Obama's liberal efforts are checked and checked again by the Congress. He's making the mistake, very common among leftist critics, of leaving the Republican Congress and its record use of the filibuster out of his equation, and assuming that anything Obama hasn't done, he doesn't want to do.
If human society collapses to a pre-industrial stage because of climate change, CO2 levels and the amount of energy in the atmosphere and oceans will, indeed, fall back down to their natural levels. Eventually.
This does not make me feel any less worried.
The two findings are not strictly comparable. The 2007 report talks about equilibrium temperatures in the very long term (over centuries); the forthcoming one talks about them in 2100. But the practical distinction would not be great so long as concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse-gas emissions were stable or falling by 2100. It is clear that some IPCC scientists think the projected rise in CO2 levels might not have such a big warming effect as was once thought.
There are several caveats. The table comes from a draft version of the report, and could thus change. It was put together by the IPCC working group on mitigating climate change, rather than the group looking at physical sciences. It derives from a relatively simple model of the climate, rather than the big complex ones usually used by the IPCC. And the literature to back it up has not yet been published.
South Florida is going to be uninhabitable long before it is underwater. It sits on porous rock, which allows the sea water to infiltrate into the groundwater. As more groundwater is pumped out, its water pressure decreases, allowing more and more salinity to enter the water supply.
Decades ago, they built canals in which fresh water would pool at a higher elevation, increasing the water pressure and resisting the infiltration. Now, with just a few inches of sea level rise, that water isn't high enough anymore, and the salinity is increasing again.
South Florida's water problems make New Orleans look easy. That part of the country is doomed, and will need to be written off in the not-too-distant future.
This is a bogus comparison.
What politicians have tried to use their power to get Niall Ferguson or Victor David Hanson's actual historical work removed from classrooms?
When Ferguson and Hanson write about contemporary politics, people argue with them. Comparing this to a governor trying to ban a historian's actual historical texts is absurd.
Zinn's book is popular history, written for a general audience.
No, it's not top-flight academic scholarship, but how many text books used for non-historians (undergraduates, high school teachers doing professional development, and the like) are top-flight, primary-source-based research?
"Those people" can't handle democracy and need a strong dictator to hold them down, and can't hope for anything better than the bloody oppression of a Saddam or a Gadhaffi.
Uh huh.
Good news on the coal front:
The World Bank won't be funding any more coal fired power plants:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/07/17/2313211/july-17-news-world-bank-wont-finance-coal-plants-anymore-because-climate-change-hurts-the-poor/
The US Export-Import Bank won't be funding any more coal fired power plants:
http://priceofoil.org/2013/07/18/u-s-export-import-bank-rejects-dirty-coal-plant/
Palestinian response: (sorry, we have just learned that the Palestinian representatives are waiting in line at various checkpoints so as to proceed home.)
Back in the real world, Palestinian negotiators go to the White House, Camp David, Wye River....
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_Clinton,_Yitzhak_Rabin,_Yasser_Arafat_at_the_White_House_1993-09-13.jpg
This is not an answer.
the disadvantage of entering them while in a weak position
The Palestinian's position is only getting weaker as time goes on. It's not as if they are about to gain the upper hand.
and the problem of legitimizing one’s adversary as they continue stealing, etc.
We're talking about peace talks; that your enemy is doing terrible things is always the case during peace talks.
Playing along may only assist in the deception and delaying tactics of the Zionists.
This is what makes no sense to me. Look at the status quo, with settlements being built and land taken. There is no countervailing force, which could restrain the Israelis' deception and delaying tactics, to be undermined.
What do you imagine the Israelis are going to be doing for "weeks" while being pounded by rockets? Watching the invaders polish their tanks?
If the much-better Israeli tanks are vulnerable to cheap weapons, what do you think the very expensive Israeli armaments are going to do to those invaders?
The military transformation you're talking about has served to make thing much more difficult for invaders, even well-armed ones. How this is supposed to translate into the invasion of Israel becoming easier is...not entirely obvious.