Agendas vs. analysis
Started reading this WaPo article on the terror watch list with my hackles up, ready to dismiss the criticism as the usual whining from the usual suspects. Now, I’m not so sure.
The criticism is that the watch list of overly broad and results in degrading or frightening encounters with the innocent, while doing little to track the guilty. They cite low level of arrest-to-encounter ratio as an indicator of inefficiency and intrusiveness. They also claim that a system awash in spurious data and names will not be able to filter out the truly threatening.
Defenders of the program point out that the goal is not arrests but deterrence, and insist that it is functioning well.
I find myself in a typical quandary. I know that bureaucracies can be mindless and abusive, and I know that they can become so overwhelmed with collecting details that they loose track of their real objectives. Yet I know that many on the right will reflexively defend such programs, regardless of the merits.
I also know that the Washington Post is selectively citing sources, looking for “critics” among the usual suspects, and generally supporting the pulse of the Left against national security efforts at home.
How do you parse these kinds of issues when everywhere you turn agendas are clouding analysis?
We are greatly concerned ;)
China understand the West better than the West understands itself. They understand that when it comes to balancing the Beijing Olympics against something so penny ante as, say, human rights we won’t even blink.
So this poor woman tries to travel to Manila to receive an award on behalf of her blind husband, who is jailed for human rights activism, specifically exposing forced sterilizations and forced late term abortions. And the government intercepts her at the airport and won’t let her go.
A British Embassy official, who had gone to Mrs Yuan’s house to see if she would be allowed to leave, voiced concern at the harassment. She said: “This is a case we have raised at the highest levels with the Chinese. We are concerned both for the safety of human rights defenders and for the ability of journalists to report freely.”
For me, this evokes very vivid memories. I was a college student in 1989, when the Berlin wall came down, and the iron curtain crashed as if in one motion. And I watched with the whole world, to see how China would respond from the demands for openness from its own people. We found out at Tiananmen Square when hundreds or thousands, depending on who you believe, were gunned down.
But one Chinese dissident hopes the world will take note of this latest insult:
Mr Hu added: “Their deeds today only make the world sick of China. Does the Government not understand this? They just do everything in the worst possible way.”
No, Mr. Hu, China understands things better than you give them credit for. The West will stand fiercely for the jailed dissidents of the world, unless they are in the prisons of a major trading partner about to host a major sporting event.
Why haven’t the dudes come forward?
Is it possible that–after the furor throughout the country and the Seattle PI’s refusal to run the pictures–that the two men in the photo don’t know that the FBI wants to talk to them? Possible yes, but I think highly unlikely.
If there are no grounds for concern, the most obvious thing would be quietly come forward, allow the FBI to resolve appropriate questions, and reassure everyone that there is naught to fear.
Remember that this is not a random photo. It is one of a large number repeated observations that involved picture taking, suspicious inspections, and inappropriate questions, all consistent with a casing for terror.
I realize it’s a bit awkward if they are completely benign, but we do not live in a world where that assumption is always rational. Given the world we live in, it is incumbent on these men and others like them to be as helpful as possible.
Civil libertarians, the ACLU and Muslim organizations will be angry at this suggestion, but that anger is wishful thinking. You can’t wish your way into a cozy world in which large numbers of devious people–generally males 18-30 of middle eastern extraction–no longer want to kill us.
Again, it is possible that they are not aware of the FBI inquiry, but it is, I think, highly unlikely. If they are aware, their failure to come forward is not reassuring.
Feeling dumb?
They didn’t read it, OK? They were in a hurry and they couldn’t go on recess without a little national security CYA. So they passed this blinkin FISA bill, but it’s not their fault that it gives expanded powers beyond what Bush asked for:
The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought.
Three observations are in order, for the one or two of you who are shocked by this:
- Members of Congress are not that smart. They are sometimes more ambitious, and often less scrupulous, sometimes of average intelligence, and sometimes somewhat above. But on average, they are very average.
- They often don’t read bills or know what’s in them. Usually this is on things like prescription drug benefits, catastrophic health care for the elderly, education reform, transportation bills … things that no one ever calls them on.
- They generally don’t care what is in them. Most bills are symbolic gestures. They care what the title is and how key interests will interpret it. Witness the recent “ethics” reform, which everyone knew actually weakened recent earmark reforms. But everyone was afraid to oppose it because, well … it was ethics reform.
There’s good news and bad news
Just kidding. Actually, all news is good news!
See, they really, really, really don’t get it. I’ve argued before that the West is safe and responsive to consumers in part because openness, dissent and diverse oversight contains corruption. Instead, the Chinese respond with executions of the corrupt, and then further stifle openness.
Now, they have decreed that only good news be reported:
Most state media have also been banned from reporting on the collapse of a bridge in southern China which killed at least 41 people. Reporters said local officials punched them and chased them from the scene of Monday’s disaster.
On Wednesday the government issued new regulations that prohibit false news and illegal TV coverage. This is ostensibly a response to a fabricated report last month about cardboard being used as a filling for steamed buns. Zi Beijia, the TV journalist held responsible for the fake story, has been jailed for a year.
It’s moments like this when you realize that it isn’t, really, “a small world after all.” It’s a frickin enormous world. At least in terms of fundamental distance between cultures, we might as well be in different solar systems.
Crossing a dried creek bed Rubicon
What is the point of idolizing Castro if you can’t be dictator for life yourself? Chavez has just crossed whatever dried up creek bed passes for a Rubicon in Venezuela, proposing constitutional changes that will allow him to be “re-elected” [with the help of his armed street thugs] for life. You know, managed elections with tame voting machines and a domesticated media, not those messy unpredictable kind.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday that the United States would wait for details of Chavez’s proposal before commenting on it, but said Chavez in the past “has taken a number of different steps … that have really eroded some of the underpinnings of democracy in Venezuela.”
A Cheney tribute at WSJ
At WSJ Stephen Hayes has an tribute to Dick Cheney’s decisive role after 9/11. In sum: at every turn, Cheney cleared the roadblocks that prevented us from identifying and disrupting plots. He had unrelenting focus, and a willingness to stretch current limits to detect and disrupt terror. Here’s a sample:
The policies he has advocated have been controversial. But they have also been effective. Consider the procedures put in place to extract information from hardcore terrorists. Mr. Cheney did not dream up these interrogation methods, but when intelligence officials insisted that they would work, the vice president championed them in internal White House debates and on Capitol Hill. Former CIA Director George Tenet–a Clinton-era appointee and certainly no Cheney fan–was asked about the value of those interrogation programs in a recent television appearance. His response, ignored by virtually everyone in the media, was extraordinary.
“Here’s what I would say to you, to the Congress, to the American people, to the president of the Untied States: I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. . . . I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together, have been able to tell us.”
Reasonable people may differ on these interrogation methods, and they do. But no one can question Cheney’s urgency and sincerity in engaging a ruthless enemy.
More Russians behaving badly II
I promised more from that wascally wabbit Putin, and, sadly, I have delivered. The Telegraph has a morbid and shocking story of how mental hospitals in Russia are being used to silence dissent and torture dissenters, in a chilling flashback to the days of Stalin.
At a rally in the city in June, she delivered as a member of the United Civil Front - the opposition party of Garry Kasparov, ex-chess champion - a powerful denunciation of Mr Putin’s crackdown on dissenters.
Such unorthodox views are enough to get anyone labelled an eccentric in Russia these days. But the state psychiatrists holding her insist she has a history of mental instability, pointing out that she sought counselling for stress and insomnia in 2004. [!]
Because she is forbidden from seeing anyone apart from her immediate family - who were also threatened with enforced treatment after they demanded visiting rights - it is impossible to judge Mrs Arap’s state of mind.
I’ve said it before but it cannot be said enough: Russia is burdened with an unreconstructed Viking/Mongol culture which never had a Renaissance, Reformation, or Enlightenment, and never discovered the sanctity of the individual that runs from Locke through Jefferson to Lincoln.
Culture matters. Their’s sucks. Stop being surprised.
Please note the obvious
China is poised to launch a remarkable new citizen tracking program that will involve 20,000 cameras just about everywhere that will automatically recognize the faces of suspects, etc..
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
In case you missed the Minority Report overtones, the friendly NY Times reporter makes sure to point them out:
Security experts describe China’s plans as the world’s largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with police work to track the activities of a population and fight crime. But they say the technology can be used to violate civil rights.
Ya think?
Fun with possessive pronouns
So the Russians take the outspoken member of the Kasparov anti-Putin resistance movement, arrest her without cause, truck her off to a mental hospital and hold her against her will. This, of course, raises fears that Putin’s Russia is heading toward a new Stalinism. But not to worry:
A press spokesman of the regional governor declared that, although he’s not aware of this particular case, it is impossible for her to have been placed in a mental institution on political reasons. “I completely rule out the idea that it’s a case of political repression. There is no persecution of opponents. Everyone can express his point of view. It’s absurd.”
Much hinges on which noun the possessive pronoun modifies. In this case, it seems clear that the spokesman meant to say, “Everyone can express his [Putin’s] point of view.”
Putin is possessive–very possessive.
Details emerge on Libyan torture of medics
The Palestinian doctor who was held in Libyan custody along with five Bulgarian nurses on charges they infected hundreds of children with HIV, has described in detail how they were tortured during their eight-year ordeal. Ashraf Alhajouj, 38, said he was beaten, held in cages with police dogs and given electric shocks, including to his private parts. He said that he and the nurses were sometimes put together naked in the same room and tortured.
In a harrowing first-person account, published in the latest edition of the German news magazine Der Spiegel following the release of the six last week, Dr Alhajouj described how following his initial arrest in January 1999, along with the nurses, he was taken to a police dog training centre outside Tripoli.
Again, it is almost gratuitous to note, the fatuous United Nations gave Libya the chair of its ludicrously named Human Rights Commission as recently as 2003. What more do we need to know about the UN?
And will the EU and its member states now follow through on the ridiculous extortion agreements they made to secure the release? Does Libya walk away from this not only unscathed, but materially strengthened?
Kasparov on a more deadly form of chess
Gary Kasparov on Putin’s Russia:
But if you really wish to understand the Putin regime in depth, I can recommend some reading. No Karl Marx or Adam Smith. Nothing by Montesquieu or Machiavelli, although the author you are looking for is of Italian descent. But skip Mussolini’s “The Doctrine of Fascism,” for now, and the entire political science section. Instead, go directly to the fiction department and take home everything you can find by Mario Puzo. If you are in a real hurry to become an expert on the Russian government, you may prefer the DVD section, where you can find Mr. Puzo’s works on film. “The Godfather” trilogy is a good place to start, but do not leave out “The Last Don,” “Omerta” and “The Sicilian.”
Read the whole thing. Really.
The libertarian security conundrum
Cathy Young has an interesting piece in Reason. The upshot: civil libertarians will have to accept some compromises.
If they insist on a purist libertarian position and we suffer another devastating attack, they will no longer be part of the conversation on response. To be part of that conversation in that event, they need to make it clear now that they are serious about safety, not just individual liberty:
No society can regard large-scale casualties from terrorist acts as an acceptable risk. An individual can personally prefer a higher risk of death in such an attack over some expansion of government powers, but telling others to make the same choice is not a winning argument.
In the past, wars and other national security threats led to far worse assaults on American liberties than anything being contemplated now. Already, the majority of Americans seem willing to accept at least some curtailment of civil liberties in order to reduce the threat of terrorism. Even one more major attack, let alone three a year, could usher in some very dark days for freedom. If champions of civil liberties want to prevent that, they need to take a different approach: to show that the compromises we are being asked to accept will not make us safer, or that there are ways to make us more secure without sacrificing our bedrock principles. If they want to be heard when they warn about loss of liberty, they cannot afford to sound cavalier when they talk about loss of life.
Amen to that.
