It appears that European governments are wondering why they should detainees from Gitmo whent he US is not willing to do so.
Go figure.
We seized them under the sketchiest of evidence, and then tortured them, and now that we’re done, they are less than enamored at cleaning op our mess.
And hopefully, he already might have lost.
There was every indication of a knock down drag out fight inside the Democratic party over the Panama free trade agreement, dealing with the fact that it did nothing about Panamanian money laundering or labor and environmental protections.
Well, after over 50 Dem Representatives sent a letter on this matter, Obama agreed to hold back on submitting the Panama free trade deal until there is a “framework” for protecting labor and the environment.
One of the unspoken consensuses in Washington, DC is that a bad free trade deal is better than no free trade deal, because free trade, raises living standards, spreads democracy, prevents rain on picnics, and keeps your daughter from dating the guy with the studs and tattoos.
I don’t believe that this pause is real. It is merely a ploy to get the votes he needs to pass the deal(s), which also include Columbia and Korea.
When you look at the people around him, like Austan Goolsbee, it’s pretty clear that these folks are free trade (except when it comes to IP) fanatics, and they keep coming back until they either win, or are slapped down firmly.
I think that Benyamin Netanyahu is a corrupt nutjob, and his economic policies, specifically his his economic and fiscal embrace of Thatcherism, are almost as crazy as his security policy.
That being said, one of the goals of negotiation is to negotiate and the Palestinians have been consistently infantilized in this process.
In any other negotiation, whether it be the UAW and General Motors, Croatia/Slovenia border discussions, or two people dickering over a used car, people try to maximize their advantage in a negotiation.
To use the case of the used car, it means that the price on the window is higher than the dealer really needs to sell it at, and the car has been repainted, and the customer comes with a magnet to look for bondo and paint jobs, and parhaps a carfax.com report, and they start off very far apart.
This is what happens in negotiations. Both sides take positions as a starting point that are more extreme than they expect to actually get, and try to define the situation on the ground (paint jobs, bondo, etc.) to bolster their positions.
This is what happens, and once this does happen in negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, things will move forward, toward an (inevitable) Palestinian state.
People who believe that the normal give and take of a negotiation process is somehow unfair and unjust, and must be somehow avoided, it will forestall meaningful negotiations. It raises unrealistic expectations, and in the case of the Palestinians, those expectations mean that real negotiations, which will produce a less than optimal solution for everyone on both sides, create a very real risk of the death of whoever signs off on such a deal.
It probably won’t be Netanyahu who will be the one to finish the deal, but someone will.
As to the what a Palestinian state would look like, I rather imagine that it will be a typical failed Arab government, much like the corrupt and autocratic Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, UAE, etc., but it will be their failed government, and that is what they want.
One final note: A solution to this problem will not solve any other problem in the world. The idea that all of the problems in the Middle East somehow run through Jerusalem and Ramallah is as nonsensical as it is widely held.
This does not make the problem not worth solving. This is worth solving on its own merits.
Israel has just been denied access to the computer systems of the F-35 JSF that would be required to maintain the aircraft.
Israel maintains that they need they need access to these systems, because in a wartime scenario, that they would need to repair the systems in real time, while the US maintains that there will be spares that can be replaced under those circumstances.
So Israel is now making noises about looking at the F-15 Silent Eagle upgrade as an alternative to the JSF, which I think is just blowing smoke.
I also think that both sides are talking around the real issues, the first being sticker shock, with a reporter $20 billion for 75 aircraft giving a $266 million price tag, but the second one, and perhaps the one that the Israelis are more concerned with, is the ability to independently integrate their own weapons and their own systems into the aircraft.
There is also the concern, at least amongst those of us who watched the recent Battlestar Galactica series, that there may be an “off” switch somewhere in those millions of lines of code.
Matthew Yglesias wonders why we have to beg the government in Islamabad to take action against the Pakistani Taliban as opposed to their begging for help, when it is clear that they are an existential threat to their government.
First and foremost, I think that the level of threat is exaggerated, but more importantly, the political culture of Pakistan is amongst the most profoundly dysfunctional in the world.
It has much to do with its founding as a nation, which was not so much born in nationalism, but British colonial tactic.
Simply put, the British maintained control in many of their colonies, particularly in what is now India and Pakistan, was to encourage ethnic rivalries, and so as movements for autonomy, and later independence, grew in India, the British authorities encouraged Muslim leaders to agitate for a separate state, which they believed would make the independence less likely.
This was followed by the war over Kashmir in 1947-8, in which the British, particularly Mountbatten, continued to meddle in South Asian affairs.
When combined with the later wars, particularly the humiliation suffered in the Bangladeshi war of independence, it left the state security apparatus, particularly the ISI, focused on one goal: to win the next war against India, and secure all of Kashmir.
This is not going to happen. India and Pakistan both have something on the order of 50 combat militarized nuclear warheads, and as such a full out shooting war would result in horrific losses to India, and something very close to the complete elimination of the Pakistani state.
Even so, there remain elements in the military, and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, that remain exclusively focused on the prospect of a final apocalyptic battle with India.
As such, they support extreme Muslim fundamentalists on both sides of the border with Afghanistan, even though these are the same people who are a threat to the stability of the state, because they believe that the conflict with India is the primary focus of the state, and that by supporting these the Taliban, they can minimize India’s influence in Afghanistan.
Personally, I think that it’s nuts, and a does much harm to Pakistan, but that is what the mind set is.
The BJP is saying that if the US rescinds a tax break used to outsource workers that they will remove India from the nuclear deal with the US, and buy their civilian reactors from the French.
Note that the tax break subsidizes shipping jobs from America to India, but then again, as the spectacle of appropriations bills and the agriculture bill show, everyone wants their subsidy.
Of course, the French don’t subsidize outsourcing software and support to India, and the number of Francophones is relatively small in India, so the couldn’t move much business there if they tried.
Additionally, the BJP, the Hindu Nationalist (or as I like to call them, Fascist) Party is not the party in power, that’s the Congress Party, though there is a campaign ongoing.
It’s electioneering, and means nothing, though if I were Barack Obama, I would call their bluff.
It would not even effect the nuclear industry for the next few years, as lead times are very long for such projects.*
*Full disclosure, I did work for a brief time in the nuclear industry last year, on plant shutdown and cleanup of waste.
This is actually a very good idea, see also here.
Of course, you will hear a lot of hand wringing about “free trade,” and “global competitiveness,” but the real reason that there will be objections is because these folks believe that only the little people pay taxes.
Personally, I would go further, and label the worst of them as money laundering nations, which is what they are, and forbid US banks from doing business with them.
About 7 months ago, I noted that Turkey was looking to buy Russian SAM Systems.
We have another report , and this adds the S-400 (NATO Code Name SA-21 Growler) to the list.
It is arguably the most capable SAM system in the world with a range in excess of 400 km, and a sophisticated control system that may allow for some anti-stealth capabilities through sensor fusion and data processing, along a significant anti-missile capabilities, which might very well provide coverage from something fired from Iran.
What is interesting here is that the story is not that the manufacturer is saying that Turkey wants the system, not that a contract has been inked, and the system has yet to be exported, and I am not sure that if I were Russian authorities, I would want a NATO ally, who would be very likely to pass along data on this system to the US, to get their mitts on this.
This is a good thing, though there are still a number of road blocks, most likely bureaucratic resistance, because it’s a black eye for the military’s determination to hold them in the first place, and ‘Phant grandstanding.
They were held at Guantanamo Bay for years despite the fact that they were not terrorists, and they were tortured at the request of the Chinese government, and they have no where else to go.
One hopes that this translates into significant reductions in nuclear stockpiles for both the US and Russia, though I have my doubts.
Unofficial reports from a “senior Indian Defence Ministry” are that, “Dassault was unable to give full technical bid requirements, but this is obviously a rather vague and uninformative.
I find this very odd. Dassault and India have a long and established relationship, with India owning and operating Mirage 2000s, and at one point, offered to transfer the whole Mirage 2000 line to India.
The idea that they did not cross their “I”s and dot their “T”s, and thus was dropped from the Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition is curious.
In any case, it appears that the Official MMRCA trials in August, with the, Boeing F/A-18, Lockheed Martin F-16, Eurofighter Typhoon, RSK MiG-35 and Saab Gripen.
The case is Golan v. Holder (originally filed when Gonzalez was Attorney General), and challenged the provision of the URAA that restored copyright to out of copyright works, and rendered derivative works that had been made when there was no copyright illegal, and now a Federal District Court has ruled it an unconstitutional violation of the first amendment, after a remand from the appeals court (PDF of opinion at link).
This is the first time ever that, “a court has held any part of the Copyright Act violates the First Amendment and the first time any court has placed specific constitutional limits on the government’s ability to erode the public domain,” so it is very significant.
This differs from Eldred, in which the Supreme Court allowed copyright extension, in that the speech of the plaintiffs was already legally created, and so the change was an infringement on their legally created speech (derivative works of then public domain items).
It is my understanding, that this applies only to legally created derivative works, and one would assume, newly created derivatives of those derivatives, but not new derivatives of these works, but I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!*
In either case, this is a recognition that IP law is a restriction of the rights of the rest of society, and as such there needs to be a showing a serious state interest in order to override that, and this is IMHO, a major step forward.
*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
My guess is that vociferous international condemnation of the new Shia Sharia law, which, amongst other provisions, legalized marital rape, triggered a delay from the Afghan justice department
It looks like the White House will be linking future aid to Pakistan to their performance fighting the Taliban and limiting cross border incursions.
This is a very good idea.
There are elements in Pakistan who are still supporting the Taliban, because they see it as a way of offsetting Indian influence in Afghanistan, and much of the military establishment that isn’t doing this is completely focused on a future conflict with India, so they do not spend resources to assert a level of control in the “tribal regions.”
If they realize that spare parts for their F-16s is contingent on their performance in keeping the Taliban from using northern Pakistan as a staging area, maybe elements of the Pakistani security apparatus will get on the ball, as opposed to spending most of their time and energy on planning for an apocalyptic conflict with India.
It looks like the US and its NATO allies are looking to appoint a Prime Minister to bypass and diminish Hamid Karzai’s role in the day to day operations in the Afghan government.
The US and its European allies are preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned.
The creation of a new chief executive or prime ministerial role is aimed at bypassing Karzai. In a further dilution of his power, it is proposed that money be diverted from the Kabul government to the provinces. Many US and European officials have become disillusioned with the extent of the corruption and incompetence in the Karzai government, but most now believe there are no credible alternatives, and predict the Afghan president will win re-election in August.
Hooccoodanode that George “Heck of a job, Brownie” Bush would appoint people completely inept and corrupt to critical positions?
This may be a negotiating ploy because while they have announced plans to activate regiment of RS-24 missiles with MIRVs, they are also saying that they want to negotiate a new arms control agreement.
Not sure how much is solid plans, and how much is gamesmanship.
She has accepted the offer to be the undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, and this means that a line is already forming for the special election.
This is a safe Democratic district, so let’s hope that she is replaced by a member of the “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.”
Word is that Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher has been tapped as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, which means that the head of the New Democrat Caucus, and a shill for the banking industry would be replaced in a special election.
The fact that this DINO in a safe Dem district would be out would be a very good thing.
They don’t have the votes right now to get approval, as they cannot convince the opposition to vote for it, though they say that they will reintroduce it later.
I’m not sure if this is an outbreak of sanity, or if it is because there are concerns that Obama will drop or move the interceptor location, and that they will be left dealing with Russian blowback.
It appears that there is a reason why Lawrence Summers seemed to capitulate to AIG’s bonus contracts for its financial products division, as I mentioned yesterday: They specifically wrote the contracts so that the counter-parties could consider it a default and demand an immediate payment if they did not get their bonuses.
So, basically, they wrote blackmail terms into their contract, which seems to me a awful lot like a sysop writing a back door into the computer network, and at least as illegal.
With the Serious Fraud Office in the UK investigating them, as well as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo investigating their bonus, I think that the best alternative at this time is for American authorities to seek their extradition under the terms of the recent treaty.
I think that though of facing the United States generally inhumane prison system will have them folding like overcooked broccoli for the privilege of spending a few years in a British prison.