February 14th, 2008, 10:53 am by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
Sadly, this blog is going on hiatus — not a permanent one, I hope, but a hiatus nonetheless. Two factors have determined this. The first is that this blog has not found a lot of readers — perhaps because we haven’t promoted it well enough, perhaps because there isn’t that much of an audience for my saucy and informative comments on international affairs. The second is that with the election on, it seems more important to direct my attention (there’s only so much of it to go around) to the Horeserace’08 presidential election blog. Whatever comments I think need to be said about national and international issues will go on the Orange Punch blog.
Those of us who go into raptures about the marketplace sometimes find it inconvenient to have to live by the marketplace’s verdict, but there it is. We haven’t given up on the idea of an international/foreign blog focusing on the American empire’s activities and interests, and what has been done so far will be preserved so that when we resume it all the archives will be available for readers. But for now, a bittersweet farewell.
Posted in: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
February 13th, 2008, 1:06 pm by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
In response to a couple of comments on my partially tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the accused spies for China get medals for shipping space shuttle info to China, I have (bless me for I have sinned) worked for the government and I have had clearance for classified material. My father worked for a defense contractor and got me summer jobs there for two years before I went off to college. As a wet-behind-the-ears high school kid I handled classified information constantly — and observed that it was mostly screws, nuts, bolts and small components that were perfectly standard and could probably have been purchased at a hardware store, probably for much less. The classification system seemed to me to impede productivity because so much was classified that had nothing to do with national security but with the power of people to classify things.
Later, when I worked in Washington, DC, I had numerous friends who worked in jobs where they had access to classified material, and every one chuckled at how much perfectly innocuous stuff was classified. For a short time when I worked for a Congressman on the Hill I was cleared for access to Secret and couldn’t imagine why the stuff I perused was so classified. Much more interesting stuff was quite openly available. The strong impression I got was that things were classified more to facilitate capital power games — information is another way people express and exercise power in the hothouse — than anything that really had much to do with national security.
There may be a case for the government keeping some things secret, but it’s really out of hand now. The country would be better off if we declassified at least 90 percent of what is now classified.
Posted in: Domestic Impact • Homeland Security | Post a Comment »
February 12th, 2008, 6:20 pm by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
Meanwhile in Pakistan, with an election coming up Monday and President Prevez Musharraf deeply unpopular, the government has called a cease-fire in an offensive begun just a couple of weeks ago designed to kill or capture Baitullah Mehsud, the tribal leader/insurgent who has been named as responsible for the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. This raises questions (yet again) about just how serious Pakistan is in conducting the war on terrorists. Pakistan was always going to be something of a frail reed in this struggle because of its inherent instability. Now one wonders — making full allowances for Musharraf’s problems in a country many experts describe as downright ungovernable — if it will have any effectiveness at all. If that’s the case, is there any reason to continue sending foreign aid beyond what’s needed to help secure the nukes?
Posted in: Pakistan • Terrorism (jihadist) | Post a Comment »
February 12th, 2008, 6:14 pm by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
It’s not an official decision yet, by a long shot, but a recent poll shows that Canadians rather decisively reject keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan beyond the current commitment, which runs to February 2009. An Angus Reid poll shows that 58 percent of Canadians reject extending the mission, while 61 percent say the government has not effectively explained what the mission is all about anyway. That’s not surprising since the mission is ill-defined.
Conditions in Afghanistan may be seen in something of a microcosm in a tent city just outside Kabul where people have fled from half a dozen different conflicts and are eking out a miserable existence during the harsh Afghan winter. In Kandahar Province in the south, where the fighting is fiercest, the regional governor just survived a bomb attack aimed at him. Insurgency-related violence killed about 6,500 people in 2007, the largest number of deaths since 2001.
Posted in: Afghanistan • Domestic Impact | Post a Comment »
February 12th, 2008, 6:00 pm by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has traded for quite a while on the fact that he is NOT RUMSFELD, which insulates him from a good deal of criticism and gives him the opportunity to be a little more candid than some top officials are. In addition, many hopeful liberals saw him as Daddy’s way to try to put at least one adult into the administration to temper W’s childishness. So he has been able to chide the Europeans for not sending enough NATO troops to Afghanistan – even though the mission there is not what the Europeans signed on for and there is still apparently no plan except reacting to insurgent attacks.
With the announcement that he now supports the idea of a pause in troop withdrawals from Iraq (what a strange formulation for sticking with the status quo, “pausing” something that never started), it’s obvious that for whatever bits of independence he has shown, he’s not about to contest the essentially presidential decision to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq at least through the end of the Bush administration. It’s hardly surprising for an official who serves at the pleasure of the president, of course, but it puts an end to a certain amount of hope that Gates would serve as an influence in the administration to move things in the direction of the Baker-Hamilton commission, preparing for a withdrawal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gates’s teflon starts to wear thin.
The gamble of keeping around 130,000 troops in Iraq instead of 100,000 or less may pan out for the administration. But it is a gamble. There are rumblings that Muqtada al-Sadr will end the cease-fire most of the Mahdi Army has observed and Shia-on-Shia as well as Sunni-Shia violence will return with a vengeance. If the central government doesn’t find a way to integrate the Awakening forces into some kind of national constabulary they could change sides again. For all our military prowess (and it is substantial) we Americans have less real control in Iraq than we think.
Posted in: Afghanistan • Domestic Impact • Iraq war • Western Europe | Post a Comment »
February 12th, 2008, 2:02 pm by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
The Justice Department has announced the arrest of two people, including Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 72, a former Boeing engineer, of Orange County, for passing secrets to the Chinese.
Since most of what Chung (is alleged to have) passed along to China involved the space shuttle, maybe we ought to think about giving him a medal instead. The space shuttle has been a long blind alley for the United States, wasting all kinds of resources for marginal advances in space at best. If a couple of spies can help push China down a similar road, it just might waste billions on a space shuttle too. While that would be a net loss to science, it might be a net gain for the United States in terms of the old nation-state power game. Is it better for China to waste money too? Given that it will be the government building whatever, you can be sure there will be plenty of waste anyway, but might it not be a coup if China decided to build something like the useless space shuttle too.
Even if the info didn’t push China toward a wrong path, of 100 classified documents, approximately 99 don’t deserve to be classified in the first place, and the one is probably subject to question. Like most governments ours has a fetish about secrecy, putting millions of dubious documents beyond public scrutiny and retarding innovation in the process.
Maybe these guys — a Defense Dept. employee was arrested in Virginia as well — deserve medals instead of an indictment.
So what do you think?
Posted in: China • Domestic Impact • Homeland Security | 2 Comments »
February 12th, 2008, 11:21 am by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
The European Commission will propose that all foreign travelers entering and leaving Europe be fingerprinted. That would increase databases that are shared amng friendly governments around the world. The U.S. and Japan already require foreigners to be fingerprinted before entering the countries.
A Dutch parliamentarian questions whether all this tagging of people really makes us safer. I think it’s a question worth asking, and my inclination would be to suggest that it really doesn’t, or that the safety purchased is illusory and not worth the price of invaded privacy, let alone all the tax money being spent. But it looks pretty inevitable.
Posted in: Civil Liberties • Domestic Impact • Homeland Security • Surveillance of Americans • Transnational Threats • Western Europe | Post a Comment »
February 11th, 2008, 6:14 pm by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, facing a declining economy and increasing popular unrest, took a step toward the generally most reliable ploy for Latin American dictators — bashing the United States. Seems a couple of courts have ruled tentatively that Exxon0Mobil (another attractive target for demnagogues) just might be owed something after the Venezuelan government seized control of a couple of Exxon-operated joint ventures as part of a campaign to completely nationalize the oil industry. If the courts eventually rule in Exxon-Mobil’s favor, Chavez says, he’ll refuse to sell oil to the United States.
Not bloody likely. The U.S. is Venezuela’s prime market for oil and oil accounts for some 90 percent of its export earnings and about half of its government revenue. Oil revenue is the main reason Chavez can even think about running his country in such a high-handed way. And even with that windfall, the economy is in shreds as almost always happens with leaders who really try to put socialism in place. Even if Venezuela did decide not to sell to the U.S., the oil market is a global market. The U.S. would get it elsewhere (perhaps even indirectly from Venezuela), and Venezuela simply isn’t a big enough producer to have a huge impact on the global market price.
Posted in: Latin America • Venezuela | Post a Comment »
February 11th, 2008, 6:02 pm by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
Public opinion polls in Pakistan show President Pervez Musharraf losing support among potential voters — there’s an election scheduled for next Monday. Musharraf gets the approval of just 15 percent of Pakistanis, half as many as expressed approval in November. The two opposition parties won the support of 72 percent of prospective voters. Three quarters of Pakistanis say they want Perv to resign.
If these results are accurate, it could make things very interesting come Election Day. Most observers have assumed that the government would find a way to engineer a victory for Musharraf supportere, through vote-rigging of various kinbs, at which Pakistanis are pretty expert. But if the margins against Musharraf’s forces are that strong, can they possibly do enough cheating to get q victory for him? Stay tuned.
Posted in: Pakistan | Post a Comment »
February 11th, 2008, 2:58 pm by by Alan Bock, Register editorial writer
From Alan Bock
Well, not like the old Soviet purges, where the person disappeared into the Lubyanka prison and was never heard from again, but a number of the clerics who came into power after Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution in 1979 and their followers and successors are being shunted aside. Khomeini’s grandson, Ali Eshragi, was among the clerics disqualified from running for parliament by local election councils.
This is not necessarily a good sign from a western perspective. Many of those older clerics had independent power bases and some of them had called for mending relations with the US and othere Western countries, and even gradual steps toward semi-genuine democracy. The newer political leaders, former military leaders and mayors and the like, tend to be more behold to current president Ahmadinejad.
Some hints about the durability of this trend will come in next month’s parliamentary elections. If parties loyal to former presidents Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami prevail it will weaken Ahmadinejad’s power (which was more nominal than real anyway). By Iranian standards Rafsanjani and Khatami are moderates, interested in opening more conversations with the U.S. (though “moderate” is a relative term and R&K weren’t able to get much done in the way of improving relations in the 1990s).
Posted in: Iran | Post a Comment »
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