The Officious Intermeddler

Unanswered Questions on COIN in Afghanistan

2009-12-02T11:19:00.002-05:00

I just got done listening to the President's speech on Afghanistan this morning. Unfortunately, I didn't get what I was looking for out of it.

To me, the big questions on Afghanistan are (1) What are our strategic goals in the Afghanistan conflict and (2) what strategy will we use to achieve those goals, and (3) why is this strategy superior to our other alternatives? What I got out of the speech did more or less answer (1) and (2), but the answer to (2) was lacking and (3) was non-existent.

The President does seem to think that preventing another attack is the primary strategic goal, and I think that's appropriately narrow. In theory, we could go for a "integrating the gap" goal as well, although that's probably too ambitious at this time. But, that leads us to the deficiency in the second answer. A COIN strategy will be pursued--much like in Iraq--perhaps too much like Iraq. But a COIN strategy is very likely above and beyond the level of commitment necessary to achieve the stated strategic goal, and is more in line with a grander objectives of bringing Afghanistan into the community of nations and improving regional stability--objectives which are not on the table.

I would like to hear from the President (or the Pentagon) why alternative approaches wouldn't be better. Why is it vital to our security interests that Afghanistan's current government retain power (or perhaps it would be better to say, gain control of the "nation")? Sure, we don't want the country to become a haven for terrorists again. But it's not like the "nation" of Afghanistan (without our help) will have the military might necessary to keep us out. So where is the "safe haven?" We can have ISR assets there at any time, operators on the ground at any time, bomb a training camp at any time, arrest suspected terrorists at any time, etc. etc. Obviously, from a legal perspective, that wouldn't involve treating Afghanistan as a co-equal Westphalian nation-state--which makes perfect sense, because it is not.

Hence the problem with a COIN strategy. Missing completely from the President's speech was any statement suggesting any consideration of the differences between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq has been a relatively stable united nation-state with a well-developed national government and an educated middle-class. Success of COIN in Iraq comes largely from providing security to allow the political process to run its course so that the new government can do its job. Afghanistan is entirely different. It isn't a nation-state at all, but a collection of tribes, none of whom care about the non existent "nation" of Afghanistan. There very little civil society or government institutions to build on. A COIN strategy in Afghanistan isn't just about providing security, it is attempting to fundamentally transform the Afghan society in an incredibly radical way. It is an enormous task that is going to take an incredibly long time to achieve, assuming that it can be achieved at all.

And for the President to insist that we can achieve this, with short-term timetables about creating a domestic security force, like Iraq, and benchmarks for political progress, like Iraq, just seems disingenuous. There is no way an Iraq-style surge is going to work as well in Afghanistan. So what we have here is a strategy that is going to require a massive, open-ended, long term commitment, but we are obviously not committed to the level of effort it's going to take.

This administration needs to take a long look at what we need to accomplish, what we can accomplish, and what we're willing to accomplish, and fit our strategy to those parameters. Funny, but I thought that's what we were supposed to be doing with our review of the Afghanistan strategy.

Don't Rush to Condemn Kane

2009-08-11T07:59:00.004-04:00

It's amazing what people will believe.

Buffalo police say Patrick Kane beat a cab driver over not being able to get 20 cents in change. 20 cents, people. That is incredible and warrants some skepticism.

What's happened since then?

Jan Radecki, the cab driver has hired an attorney, Andrew Lotempio. But, instead of seeing dollar signs and signing up a personal injury attorney to go after Kane, the cab driver hired a criminal defense attorney. That suggests, of course, that the cab driver is worried about going to jail over this. So there is definitely a possibility that the cab driver was the one in the wrong.

Said attorney then goes public, saying the incident is "overblown" and definitely "not a robbery" as had been accused. Again, consistent with the theory that the cabbie was in the wrong--because if LoTempio can get the prosecutor to drop the charges against Kane, Kane can be persuaded not to go after the cabbie. If LoTempio wanted cash in a civil suit, it would not be in his interest to diminish the criminal case. The civil case would be much stronger after a conviction, obviously.

Now, ABC is reporting that a witness stated that the Kanes were the victims, and Radecki's neighbors are accusing him of "having a short temper and being involved in disputes with customers in the past." And that he locked the pair in the cab while "waiting for payment." But even according to the police, the fare was paid, with change due.

My theory: Mr. Radecki wasn't pleased with his tip, and locked the pair in his cab to try to extort more from them. The Kanes then resisted with force. It fits the facts, makes more sense than the $.20 motive, and explains why Radecki hired a defense attorney who has been playing this incident down.

Golden Mori---"Maersk II?"

2009-08-10T20:51:00.003-04:00

Found an interesting link regarding what could become a pirate standoff similar to that of the Maersk Alabama. This time, the ship is Japanese with a mostly Phillipino crew, so our press probably won't touch it much. Unfortunately, this story is already several days old...

The U.S. Navy said Thursday that it intended to remove pirates from a hijacked Japanese tanker monitored by American warships off the coast of Somalia. A crew member's sister said negotiations were under way for the release of the ship.

The Navy came to the aid of the chemical tanker this week, at one point opening fire to destroy pirate skiffs tied to it.

***

Negotiations have started for the release of the Japanese tanker, anchored in Somali waters with 23 crew members from the Philippines, South Korea and Myanmar, said Josefina Villanueva, whose brother Laureano is a Filipino supervisor aboard the Golden Nori.

"The pirates are still on board with the crewmen. They can't leave," she said, relaying information families had received from the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs.

She said there had been no ransom demand from the pirates. "The talks are just starting. I think the pirates will later on demand something," she said.

Another interesting tidbit from the same story: The USN rendered assistance to a DPRK ship attacked by pirates. First time I heard it. I suppose it's possible that I'm lagging behind on current events, but it seems these are pretty important events that aren't getting much coverage.

It also helped a North Korean ship whose crew overpowered pirates in a clash that left several crew members wounded and one hijacker dead. The hijackers were being held aboard the ship until they can be handed over for prosecution at a port. After the clash, Navy personnel boarded the North Korean boat to treat the wounded.

H/T: Subsim

Photo of the Year

2009-06-24T11:21:00.003-04:00

Sweet!!!

Here's the article.

Iran "Crackdown"

2009-06-21T08:33:00.002-04:00

Depending on the source, the Ayatollah's crackdown has netted anywhere from a handful to 200+ fatalities. It's hard to tell for sure as most information is coming out through Twitter instead of news organizations, and there isn't much to corroborate claims.

Except this one. Her name was Neda. Apparently her only "crime" was observing a protest with her father.

Facta Non Verba

2009-05-04T17:28:00.010-04:00

Funny how the athletes with the biggest mouths are the ones who always end up eating their words:

[Willie] Mitchell may have given the Hawks some bulletin board material when he dissed Kane, who scored two goals in Thursday night's 5-3 Vancouver win.
"He was Johnny on the spot," Mitchell said of Kane, a 70-point player for the Hawks in the regular season.
"That's his thing, he got a gift on a turnover on one in front of the net and the other one was just a power play and it was kind of a rebound that went right to him. That's kind of his game, he's kind of like [Sidney] Crosby that way. Crosby will stand off to the side of the net and not really be involved in things and get a lucky rebound and put it in the net. He kind of has that puck luck.
"Like I said, I think he got a gift on both goals and he was really quiet, I thought, and for the most part their team was really quiet. He's a fine player, but I think where he is going to do his damage is on the power play. He is not a guy who is really going to hurt us even strength, so that is kind of where we have to be aware of him."

Later that night, Patrick Kane responded with deeds instead of words:

Per
3

Time
5:48

Str
EV

Team
CHI

Goal Scorer
88 P.KANE(5)

Assist
19 J.TOEWS(5)

Assist
22 T.BROUWER(1)

VAN on Ice
1, 8, 13, 17, 38, 55

The reason Kane was able to get this goal? Willie was covering him, then decided to stop paying attention to him, and left him alone in the corner. (Willie is #8.) Kane took a pass and got to the net unopposed, thanks to Willie having better things to do than cover his man.

How's that taste, Willie?

Honor: Never Do Anything Today That You Won't Be Proud of Tomorrow

2009-04-23T16:41:00.005-04:00

As humans, we are all fallible.

Such was the case two nights ago when New Jersey Devils Goaltender Martin Brodeur blew a gasket over the official not calling interference over a bump outside the crease, just prior to the Carolina Tropical Storms* scoring the game-winning goal.

Brodeur had a fit, swearing at the officials in his native French, smashing his stick against the boards, and then throwing it to the ice.

After that, he had to answer to a power higher than the referees, or even the commissioner:

And when he woke up at home in New Jersey on Wednesday morning, his youngest child, Annabelle, walked into his room and said:

"I saw what you did last night, Daddy," Brodeur recalled.

The goaltender then asked his daughter what he did. She refused to say.

"So I said: 'OK, I won't do it again, sorry,"' Brodeur said with a laugh indicative of a proud father.

I think he gets it.

*The team formerly known as the Carolina Hurricanes has been downgraded. See this and this.

Morality of Interrogation: A Thought Experiment

2009-04-23T13:19:00.005-04:00

I have always been a person who believes that the United States should always hold the moral high ground, and I didn't change my mind about that after 9/11. If there is anything revealed by the debate sparked by the "torture memos," though, it is that it is hard to see where that moral high ground is. In this post, I'm going to try to work through this and see if I can arrive at a conclusion.

I watched a great debate between FNC anchor (and attorney) Megan Kelly and Sr. Legal Correspondent Judge Andrew Napolitano on Beck yesterday. As interesting as it was, it also demonstrated the limits of using legal thought to work through this issue. The debate came down to an argument about the definition of torture. Kelly relied on a definition created by Congress that is used for interpretation of the Torture Convention, a standard which the Judge correctly pointed out is so narrow that it wouldn't include medieval torture devices. The Judge offered up a universal standard, “Any intentionally inflicted cruel or inhumane or degrading treatment, unauthorized by a court of law, perpetrated for the punishment of the victim, to extract statements from the victim, or to gratify the perpetrator,” which IMO makes a lot more sense intuitively. So I think in terms of definitions, the Judge has it right (although in legal terms, the "universal" definition doesn't have the weight that Congress' definition has, so Kelly won on the law).

Unfortunately, I don't really care that much about the law or the definition for their own sakes. I care about knowing where to draw the line, and that isn't necessarily determined by a definition. And the law should be based on that line, not the other way around.

I think the Judge's definition of torture makes sense linguistically, but morally, I cannot say that it is categorically wrong to "inflict cruel or inhumane or degrading treatment to extract statements" from a terrorist. (I can say that it is categorically wrong to do so for the purpose of punishment--without authorization by a court, or for the gratification of the perpetrator). Which means this definition isn't the last word for the purpose of drawing any lines. I think we need another principle.

What principles should be in effect for the boundaries of interrogation? Well, going back to the definition for what it is good for, I think it should be a principle that we do not punish a person without sanction of a court. This is the same principle that forbids vigilantism and is one of the pillars of the Rule of Law. A second useful principle we can take from the Judge's definition is that we should never inflict harm/cruelty/inhumanity/degradation/whatever on a person for sadistic purposes. Again, this should be obvious, the interrogator is an agent of the state and must act in the interests of the state, not his/her own. These two principles are easy because they both involve purposes which are illegitimate.

But the other purpose--extracting information--is a legitimate purpose because it is a necessary part of the executive's responsibility to protect the lives of its citizens. Knowing that the state has the power to do this, we must use the rights of the individual to define the boundaries of this power. The rights I think applicable here are life, and what I'll call a freedom of bodily integrity (which would be violated by, e.g., a battery). Liberty might be applicable in some cases, but since this issue is based on detainees being terrorist suspects or enemy combatants, the confinement of both are questions settled epochs ago. Life might be easy enough because of its magnitude. Or is it?

I do see a balancing relationship at work here, involving the weighing of the state's duty to save innocents (indeed, we could even weigh the lives of those innocents themselves) and the rights (including the lives) of the suspects/detainees. And I feel it necessary to point out that it is universally accepted in civilized countries that it is NOT wrong to kill when it is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to an innocent, or sometimes even to prevent a forcible felony. So, although I feel a natural urge to categorically say it is wrong to kill a suspect/combatant under any circumstances short of a capital conviction, the aforementioned principle gives me pause. Of course, this principle usually applies to a criminal being killed while attempting a crime, while what we are considering involves a suspect/combatant that is in custody, while his/her comrades are attempting an attack. Is that an important distinction?

Perhaps it is. In the case of a criminal in the middle of a crime, there is no doubt. Whoever is using deadly force to stop the criminal knows the person he/she is about to shoot is the the criminal and knows what harm is being threatened if he/she does not act. When a person is in custody, there is always the question of whether we have the right person. We also cannot always be sure what the person knows, and whether obtaining that knowledge will be sufficient/timely enough to prevent an attack. We may not even know that there is an attack planned to begin with. There is an enormous difference between killing someone knowing it will save an innocent and killing someone hoping that it will. Also, when a person kills a criminal to prevent a crime, the criminal being killed and the person threatening the harm are one and the same person. A terrorist/combatant in custody is not the person threatening the harm; his/her comrades are. The issue here is one of (potential) innocence. So, we have at least two useful principles here.

One principle involves third parties. As mentioned above, the suspect/combatant in custody is not the one who will carry out the attack. In other words, the person who might be killed to prevent the attack may be innocent of the planned attack, while in the justifiable homicide example the person killed is not innocent. The third party issue also comes up on the issue of death, and perhaps harms less than death as well, because death would have to be inflicted on a person other than the person who has the information if the interrogators had any hope of getting it. (Threatening death unless the person talks doesn't work, because killing the person with the information will not result in getting the information, therefore, the purpose of killing must have been punitive, sadistic, or some other illegitimate purpose). I see a bright moral line against harming innocents in order to extract information from another. Doing so would be to become the very evil we are fighting against. However, it should be noted that co-conspirators are NOT innocent. So threatening to kill a suspect's/combatant's family is out-of-bounds, while threatening to kill another member of the plot may not be.

The other principle we can derive from the homicide justification is that that one of the key lines in this issue is formed by what we know. When we know that there is an attack planned, when we know that the attack would kill a large number of people, when we know that a suspect/combatant in custody has knowledge of the attack, and when we know that we could prevent the attack if we obtained that information, it is morally justified to kill to obtain that information. A fortiori, (and for the sake of avoiding the logical absurdity of a dead person giving up information), harms less than death are also morally justified. But, as our knowledge decreases, then so does our justification.

I can think of a few key points on the scale that would effect the balance and determine the level of coercion that would be justified. Permanent injury would be a big one. Like death, permanent injury is an extreme violation, where the rights of the suspect/combatant are at their highest ebb. Arguably, some sorts of permanent injury may be worse than death. So this has to be off the table in all but the most extreme circumstances; i.e., cannot be done unless the interrogators know for sure that inflicting the harm will save many innocent lives.

If the interrogators know for sure that a suspect/combatant has knowledge of an attack, but do not know enough about the attack to know whether the information the suspect/combatant has will enable them to prevent it, the government's interest is still at a very high ebb. Some level of coercion is therefore justified in these circumstances. Death and permanent injury are not. But I cannot say it is wrong to inflict pain, discomfort, humiliation, etc. upon a person who has information about an attack and refuses to disclose it otherwise.

In the vast majority of cases of individuals being detained, we will not know what information they might possess. The will of course still be interrogated. But without knowing for sure, or at least having probable cause to believe that they have information, inflicting any sort of harm upon them cannot be morally justified. In these cases--the vast majority of cases--the lines that Judge Napolitano described are appropriate. Whether criminal suspects or enemy combatants, they should simply be detained and questioned prior to being charged or detained for the duration of the conflict, respectively.

Summary

The debate about interrogation should be on moral, not legal terms. The law should be written such that it tracks the moral boundaries at issue.
The moral boundaries of this issue are defined by a balancing of the duty of the government to protect innocent lives (and the value of those lives themselves) vs. the rights of the suspect/combatant in his/her own life and bodily integrity.
Purposes such as punishment and sadism are illegitimate in the context of interrogation. Punishment may be inflicted only upon sanction by a duly authorized tribunal. Sadistic purposes are never legitimate.
The principle of justifiable homicide, widely accepted in the civilized world, is assumed to be morally correct and is used as a benchmark. It is morally justified to kill when doing so is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to innocents, and when the person to be killed is involved in bringing that threat of harm upon the innocents.
Therefore, it is morally justified to harm or even kill a terrorist/combatant when doing so will prevent the death of innocents. This assumes (1) actual, certain knowledge of the interrogators that the knowledge obtained will in fact prevent an attack, and (2) the person the harm will be inflicted upon is culpable in a meaningful way for the planned attack (i.e., a co-conspirator). This combination will almost never be occur in reality.
The balancing of interests and rights tips in favor of the suspect/combatant as the interrogators' knowledge becomes less certain. "Enhanced interrogation techniques" that do not cause permanent injury can be justified when the interrogators know that the suspect/combatant has information that, if obtained, might lead to innocents being saved.
Any infliction of harm, pain, cruelty, degradation, etc. is inappropriate in the majority of cases where interrogators have no knowledge that the suspect/combatant has information about a planned attack and is simply being subject to routine questioning.

Closing Remarks
I think the tactics revealed in the "torture memos" are consistent with what I've concluded can be justified when the interrogators have specific knowledge that the suspect/combatant has information about an attack. According to the memos, the interrogators did in fact have such knowledge. I therefore do not morally condemn what was done, but rather applaud the use of these techniques, within the boundaries described in the memo, as being quite reasonable and appropriate, especially if they prevented planned attacks. I do worry, however, that there is a danger that these techniques might be used more routinely, which would be a problem.

When I started this, I thought I would end up condemning waterboarding and the "caterpillar treatment." The justifiable homicide benchmark was not something I had thought about until I was halfway through this, and it's changed my mind about the issue. I think I had an association in my mind between "torture" and our enemies--our enemies use torture, therefore torture is wrong and we should not do it. This is faulty reasoning, as our enemies also do things like punish murderers and enforce contracts, but those are obviously not wrong. By analyzing this issue on purely moral terms, I was able to dispense with this association.

I don't think "enhanced interrogation techniques" makes us evil or more like our enemies. I don't feel any moral outrage over the idea that someone in the DPRK, for example, harmed a domestic terrorist to prevent a bombing that would have killed hundreds--that is not evil. I feel outrage over the idea that someone in the DPRK was mutilated to get a family member to confess to a thoughtcrime against Dear Leader--that IS evil. The moral boundaries I've outlined prevent us from crossing the lines that our enemies cross. We will still hold the moral high ground.

I'll close with a quote I read about the piracy issue that is equally poignant here:

Piracy, of course, is hardly the only form of barbarism at work today: There are the suicide bombers on Israeli buses, the stonings of Iranian women, and so on. But piracy is certainly the most primordial of them, and our collective inability to deal with it says much about how far we've regressed in the pursuit of what is mistakenly thought of as a more humane policy. A society that erases the memory of how it overcame barbarism in the past inevitably loses sight of the meaning of civilization, and the means of sustaining it.
--BRET STEPHENS

Blame Canada! (Counter-terror edition)

2009-04-22T19:47:00.005-04:00

When I heard that our DHS head said that the 9/11 terrorists were among those who supposedly crossed into the US, the South Park song "Blame Canada" came to mind.

So, I thought I'd share my version of the song. Disclaimer: It's about as PC as the original, so if you thought the original was insensitive, just skip this post.

Times have changed
Terrorists are pouring in
We won't kill them overseas anymore
So how do we hope to win?
Should we blame the government?
For our lack of security?
Or should we blame our open society?

Frack no! Blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
With all their Mounties getting high
Letting terrorists drive right by
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
It's not a baseless insult
It's Canada's fault!

Don't blame me
For my son Stan
He met someone from Canada
Then left for Afghanistan

And my boy Eric once
Only made fun of Jews
But now he's paying Hamas and Hezbollah dues!

Well, blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
It seems that everything's gone to shit
Since the Pentagon took a hit
Blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
They're too polite to get angry anyways.

My son could have a doctor or a lawyer straight and true
Instead his name is coming up on the suicide bomber cue
Should we blame bad intelligence?
Should we blame the Koran?
Or should we blame the troglodyte running Iran?

Fuck no!
Blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
With all their pacifist hullabaloo
And that bastard Bertuzzi too!
Blame Canada!
Shame on Canada!

We'll make up the facts
About 9/11 attacks
Drug smuggling and guns
Terror Infiltration
So the real problem border won't be closed
Whatever it takes to win the hispanic vote!

A Confusing Lack of Policy

2009-04-19T13:09:00.003-04:00

Twice in the last several days, our allies have captured pirates, only to release them:

The Netherlands nabed seven, and had this to say:

He said the hostages had been held since last week. The commandos briefly detained and questioned the seven gunmen, he told Reuters, but had no legal power to arrest them.

"NATO does not have a detainment policy. The warship must follow its national law," he said.

"They can only arrest them if the pirates are from the Netherlands, the victims are from the Netherlands, or if they are in Netherlands waters."

The Canadians got a few too, with the same result:

Lt. Cmdr. Fernandes said Sunday that the pirates were released because they cannot be prosecuted under Canadian law. He said the decision to detain pirates was a matter for national authorities not NATO.

What the hell? Before, it seemed the normal M.O. for the US, UK, and EU was to send these guys to Kenya for prosecution. Maybe there is something weird going on, with different commands having different policies. There are at least 4 different task forces (CTF150, CTF151, NATO Standing Maritime Group, and EU NAVFOR) operating in the area.

The Dutch ship, HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën (F802), is part of the NATO group, and the only Canadian ship on the OOB is the HMCS Winnipeg (FFH 338), also in the NATO group. So, I'm guessing that the NATO chain of command hasn't bothered with setting a policy here, while the CTF's and possibly EU NAVFOR probably have.

In any case, both the lack of a NATO policy, and the lack of domestic univseral jurisdiction anti-piracy laws in the Netherlands and Canada, is appalling.

An Ounce of Prevention... (updated)

2009-04-15T12:04:00.009-04:00

An important victory for the French was reported today. Maybe there is something to a pro-active approach after all.

Somali pirates vowed to hunt down American ships and kill their sailors and French forces detained 11 other brigands in a high-seas raid as tensions ratcheted up Wednesday off Africa's volatile eastern coast.

* * *

The French forces launched an early morning attack on a pirate "mother ship" after spotting the boat Tuesday with a surveillance helicopter and observing the pirates overnight.
A "mother ship" is usually a seized foreign vessel that pirates use to transport speedboats far out to sea and resupply them as they plot their attacks. The ship was intercepted 550 miles (900 kilometers) east of the Kenyan city of Mombasa.
The French Defense Ministry said the raid thwarted the sea bandits' planned attack on the Liberian cargo ship Safmarine Asia. The detained pirates were being held on the Nivose, a French frigate among the international fleet trying to protect shipping in the Gulf of Aden.

It's encouraging to see that naval forces were apparently able to tell pirate from fisherman before an attack ever took place. And that they did it with only air assets is even better, because it means a larger area can be searched.

UPDATE:
CNN is now reporting the same story, but according to them, the pirates had already attacked:

The Navy tracked the pirates overnight after they attacked a ship called the Safmarine Asia. The French launched a helicopter from the frigate Nivose to head off the attack Tuesday night, then seized the suspected pirates Wednesday morning, the statement said.

So which is it? Did they "head off an attack" that had taken place, or did they "prevent a planned attack?" There is a huge policy difference between the two.

Details, Details...

2009-04-14T14:12:00.003-04:00

The Navy has released 3 more pictures from the Maersk standoff since the release of the Scan Eagle pictures. One of them in particular tells a bit of a story.
Note the grouping of 3 bulletholes on the starboard window. (You can see the whole image here)

It's possible that those were outgoing rounds, but otherwise it would seem that the SEALs did not take out all 3 pirates with single-shots.

Hail to the Engineer!

2009-04-12T23:41:00.003-04:00

CNN has filmed some interesting footage of the crew of the Alabama Maersk. The crew emphatically states that the pirates, contrary to early reports, never had control of the ship. As the bridge was being taken, Captain Phillips directed his chief engineer to take control, and the bridge controls were taken offline.

This explains why the pirates left the ship on a lifeboat with only Phillips as a prisoner. And it suggests that the one pirate the crew captured may have been overpowered when he was separated from the others while searching the engineering spaces.

Captain Phillips played his hand brilliantly, but it appears it was his chief engineer that dealt him that hand.

Every Kirk has his Scotty.

Never Waste a Good Crisis

2009-04-12T21:43:00.006-04:00

Now that the USN has successfully rescued Captain Phillips and eliminated or captured all four pirates, we should be using the increased public awareness of the piracy problem to improve our anti-piracy policy. A few remarks:

Implications of Somali Piracy
1. Piracy in and of itself represents a threat to the economic interests of the United States. In addition to shipping companies paying out ransoms, insurance rates are going through the roof, and in some cases shipments are being re-routed, making the voyages longer and more expensive. Quite simply, piracy is an intolerable drain on commerce.

2. Although it is my opinion that the Somali piracy is organized crime, not terrorism, the success of the pirates thus far highlights weaknesses of the sort that terrorists can exploit. We should anticipate that terrorists will hijack vessels in the future, but with much more sinister intentions than holding the ship and crew for ransom. Possible terrorist missions could include threatening execution of hostages in exchange for political demands being met, causing a massive oil spill, sinking a ship in a narrow channel to block it, exploding a liquefied natural gas carrier, or attempting to collide with other vessels. It should therefore be a high priority to develop effective anti-hijacking tactics, as well as deploying technologies appropriate to this mission.

3. The limitations of the USN in dealing with piracy was demonstrated by this situation and others. Pirates are well-aware that they can succeed provided they are able to stay in possession of the captured ship and crew, allowing them to get to land.

4. The lethal violence used by the French Navy and USN may have second-order effects. On one hand, it may deter pirates into finding another line of work (this would surely happen if enough pirates met their demise that they could could count on being killed or captured). On the other hand, the pirates have already vowed revenge against US and French mariners. The gauntlet has been thrown, and over the short term, we should be prepared for an escalation of violence against US and French targets.

Developing Anti-Piracy Policies
1. Current ROE: CTF-151 will come to the aid of ships in distress and attempt to capture pirates caught in the act. This represents an evolution from previous ROE where pursuit was not authorized. Captured pirates are usually handed over to Somali authorities in Puntland, or to Kenya.

2. I agree with other commenters that the protection of US-flagged ships should be a priority for the US Navy. I am all in favor of our warships continuing to act to protect international trade in general, but, when a US-flagged ship is transiting this area, US assets should be allocated to them first, and to other traffic second. The vow of the pirates to take revenge upon US mariners should underscore this imperitive.

3. Merchant ships are generally unamred. This is not due to any international law prohibiting the carrying of arms, but rather because of legal difficulties that would arise in various destination ports. The use of small/mounted arms has been successful in preventing successful boardings, as the attempted attacks against the USNS John Lenthal and a German supply ship. The pirates use small, open skiffs to approach their targets, often having to chase them and overtake them slowly. They are relatively easy targets and will usually turn and run if fired upon. The lack of defensive arms on merchant ships is one of the principal factors enabling piracy, and is likely the lowest-cost solution (not considering legal difficulties or increases in insurance rates---i.e. legal BS).

In my opinion, arming merchant crews is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, foreign laws will likely make that impossible, and little can be done about that. It is a shame, because the purpose of law is to protect the lives and rights of people, and to facilitate efficient business. In the case of piracy, these laws are making people vulnerable while making business more difficult. These laws ought to be changed, but there is no way to "reach into" the domestic sphere of foreign states to change these laws.

Perhaps, alternatives could be considered. For example, private security firms could embark teams on merchants at one side of the transit, and disembark them on the other side. Cost, of course, would be a major factor, because this would require substantial logistical support. Another option may be to embark a small craft on which the weapons could be disembarked when the merchant makes a port call. The downside of this would be that some crew would not be available for loading/unloading operations while they "babysit" the weapons.

4. The current "area patrol" defensive tactics are clearly inadequate to deal with piracy. More effective tactics are needed. However, it must also be observed that the area is simply too large and too populated to completely lock down with any defensive tactics. Our goal should not be to stop every instance of piracy, but to deter it. Deterence will be acheived by killing and capturing enough pirates that the risk is not something that can be ignored. Therefore, our defensive tactics should be oriented towards apprehending as many pirates as possible.

5. Rather than responding to distress calls as the primary means of attempting to prevent hijackings/capture pirates, I propose a more pro-active approach. Merchant traffic should be corralled into designated corridors, chosen for their distance from heavily-fished areas. This should not be terribly difficult, because they already more or less use known shipping lanes. Those lanes might just need to be moved a little. CTF-151 and other anti-piracy vessels will then actively scout those sea lanes. Using ISR assets such as P-3 Orions, UAVs, and shipborne helicopters, vessels in those lanes should be identified. Those craft will then be subject to search, prior to the merchants arriving. If any craft is found with weapons, or especially ladders and grappling hooks, the occupants would be arrested. The motherships and skiffs should be seized, and, after checking to make sure any motherships aren't themselved captured craft, burned.

This approach poses two problems: logistical and legal. Legally, a navy cannot board a ship without consent, unless that ship flies the flag of its navy or is inside the territorial waters of that navy. So, a UN Security Council resolution will be necessary to carry out this strategy. Although, frankly, I think we'd be better off carrying out the boardings anyways. The consequences for illegally boarding some fishing boats is far less than the cost of allowing hijackings to continue.

Second, there is the logistical problem of getting out the boarding teams to the site. It will not be possible to saturate the sea lanes such that all potential pirate craft can be searched. But this is no reason not to do it. CTF-151 ships should patrol in the designated lanes, casting dragnet as they go, sprinting from craft to craft and sending out RHIBs to inspect them. Additionally, helicopter carriers like the Boxer can be used to transport small boats and crews greater distances than can be done with a frigate or destroyer. US ships should prioritize sanitizing the area ahead of US-flagged merchants.

Going forward, the DoD should take note of the kinds of platforms that are useful for sanitizing these sea lanes. As remarked earlier, we may need to develop these operations for counterterrorism at some point, as well as maritime security operations, or perhaps even protecting an amphibious operation from irregular or hybrid warfare. The more boarding teams and helicopters, and the better protected our people are, the better. And all the antiship missiles in the world aren't as useful as a well-trained sniper team.

6. A legal framework for trying pirates needs to be developed. Is this something the ICC could handle? The best option would be an international tribunal of some sort. Alternatively, I don't see any reason why Congress couldn't amend our own antipiracy statute to confer universal jurisdiction to the Federal courts as against pirates (edit: it would appear that the statute as written already does confer universal jurisdiction). I'd also be in favor of nonjudicial punishment at sea of pirates, but somehow I doubt that would happen in this day an age.

What not to do
While an ultimate solution to piracy must be on land, now is not the time to carpet-bomb Eyl or anything else we're hearing from the hawks along those lines. One thing to consider is that the pirates currently hold more than 200 hostages. There would also be a lot of collateral damage, which is bad enough on its own, but in addition, laying waste to pirate strongholds would have the 3rd-order effect of strengthening the fundamentalist terrorist insurgents to the south, possibly allowing them to sieze control of Somalia. A more responsible approach would involve an all-out nation building strategy, which no one has the resources or the stomach to follow through on.

I think our best bet is to reduce piracy through deterrence, and that the pirates will then turn to other ways to eke out a living, such as fishing and trade. If that transition is gradual, then soft-power techniques might be useful in slowly civilizing the area.

Questions About Controlling the Scene of a Hostage Situation at Sea

2009-04-10T21:45:00.013-04:00

This post raises questions about the tactics employed in a counter-piracy hostage situation, such as the one ongoing right now. Before I get into the substance, I feel it necessary to express some reservations about going here. I think that uninvolved commenters like myself need to show deference to the people who are involved, both because we don't know the facts and because we don't know what it takes to run a command. That being said, I think the situation as it has unfolded over the last 24 hours warrants some pointed questions being raised.

My understanding is that in a hostage situation, the first order of business of the police is to isolate the hostage takers, and take tactical control of the environment surrounding the area controlled by the hostage takers. For example, police will evacuate all civilians to a safe distance, prevent any non-LEO personnel from entering the area, prevent the hostage-takers from leaving the area, occupy the area, observe with all means any activity within the area under control by the hostage-takers, and be prepared to react.

I don't know what steps the USN did to maintain tactical control over the area surrounding the Maersk lifeboat, but I think when this is over the Navy owes us all an explanation. What we do know is that Captain Phillips was able to temporarily escape his captors, get off the boat, and get into the water. Captain Phillips was taken back into pirate custody after a pirate swam after him, and after shots were fired by the pirates. This outcome suggests, to me, that the Navy did not have tactical control of the surrounding area.

Imagine, for a moment, the situation is on land. A hostage is being held inside a school, surrounded by a SWAT team. The hostage runs outside. But, no SWAT member is there to take the hostage into custody. Worse yet, as the hostage is running towards the police in the distance, one of the hostage-takers appears behind the escaping hostage and begins firing his weapon. And the police do nothing.

Unless there is something about this situation that I don't understand--and I recognize that there may well be--I find this outcome to be appalling. And our government owes us an explanation.

Specifically, I want to know:
(1) What was done to contain the pirates to the lifeboat?
(2) What methods of observation were used to observe the situation on the lifeboat? Was the boat constantly illuminated at night? Were personnel stationed close enough to the boat to observe the situation well?
(3) What plan did the Navy have in case the hostage escaped the boat? What would have been there response time?
(4) What plan did the Navy have in case they observed a weapon being discharged? What would have been their response time?
(5) What prevented the immediate elimination of all pirates on the lifeboat once the hostage was no longer on it?

and also, although it is not implicated yet, but soon may be:
(6) What was done to prevent non-Coalition platforms/personnel from entering the area isolating the lifeboat?

Because I am an uninvolved civilian, I will pose these as questions and will not speculate about the answers nor second-guess the commanders.... at least not until all the facts are known. But I think when this is all over, we are owed these answers.

Update 11 Apr 09:
We have a new fact and a rationale courtesy of the AP:

Sailors on the USS Bainbridge, which has rescue helicopters and lifeboats, were able to see Phillips but at several hundred yards away were too far to help him. The U.S. destroyer is keeping its distance, in part to stay out of the pirates' range of fire.

I am not comfortable with this. If the question is, "why wasn't the Bainbridge close enough to rescue Phillips and suppress/deter/eliminate his pursuers?" then the answer "we didn't want the Bainbridge to get shot at" is impotent. They are 4 guys with rifles; they do not get to push a US Warship (nor its helicopters [if it had any], nor its armed boarding parties) around.

This does raise some interesting questions about littoral warfare, though. Assume for a moment that returning fire is not an option; that the apparent "rule set" here is that the pirates are allowed to take pot shots at USN platforms and personnel but the USN cannot respond for fear of triggering the execution of Capt. Phillips. In the analogous SWAT situation, the police would not retreat to a distance greater than the effective range of a Kalashnikov, they would get behind cover. At sea, the only cover is the ship itself. Thus, this incident may be teaching us that a true littoral combatant needs to have armored gun positions and/or guns fired without exposed crew, and should probably also not have large, expensive, sensitive sensors or other things on deck that "don't react well to bullets." Just like insurgency at land, we are seeing the irregular warfare at sea requires armor, not speed.

Qat-Chomping Scumbags Rock Out on the Yasa Nesliham

2009-04-10T16:53:00.002-04:00

Possible Escalation of the Pirate Situation

2009-04-10T13:50:00.008-04:00

Some disturbing news:

The pirate, speaking to Reuters from Haradheere port, also said other pirates were taking a hijacked German ship, with foreign crew on board, toward the scene in the Indian Ocean where the lifeboat is floating, watched by U.S. warships.
"Knowing that the Americans will not destroy this German ship and its foreign crew, they (the approaching pirates) hope they can meet their friends on the lifeboat," said the pirate, who has given reliable information in the past but asked for his name not to be used.
{snip}
The 20,000-tonne German container vessel, Hansa Stavanger, was hijacked a week ago, about 400 miles off south Somalia, between Kenya and the Seychelles. It is thought to have 24 crew, of whom five are German.

This is a rather clever approach. Pirates know they have the advantage when they have people on a captured ship. They didn't have the luxury of that situation here, and it looked like the USN had a very strong hand to play, with the lifeboat out of fuel (or running out of fuel, depending on the report). The pirates, hundreds of miles out to sea, are in every bit as much need of rescue now as Captain Phillips. A fishing boat or skiff would never make it past the Bainbridge and USN air assets, but how do you stop a 20,000 ton ship, short of sinking it?

The Tom Clancy in me wants a SEAL team to come up underneath the ship and sabotage the shafts, stopping it dead in the water, but I have no knowledge whether we have the capability to sabotage a ship while it is underway.

Physically blocking a ship that size is not an option. Could naval gunfire disable the engines? Probably, but flooding or even fire would likely result as well. Can the crew perform damage control? Would the pirates execute a hostage if the ship was fired upon?

And that's what bothers me the most here--the implication that this may be an escalation by the pirates. Previously, hostages were simply detained for ransom. There was never any demand other than money, and there was no threat of execution if that demand for money wasn't met. The hostages would simply continue to be detained. If it is the case that the pirates have a new demand--to be allowed to rescue their comrades adrift at sea--and if this demand is not met, hostages will be executed, then the pirates will have crossed a very, very important line that so far they've stayed away from. They will have crossed from organized crime into terrorism.

I hope they understand the implications of crossing that line and fear its consequences.

Then again, with the current administration no longer describing our situation vis-a-vis terrorists as a "war," I'm not really sure what those consequences are anymore.

U.S. Weapons Being Smuggled to Mexican Cartels?

2009-04-10T02:34:00.005-04:00

There's been some back-and-forth going on over the last few weeks over whether the majority of weapons used by Mexican drug cartels came from American dealers or came from South America or the Mexican army itself. Neither side had any meaningful numbers to back up their claims. Until now:

You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

{snip}
There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:
It's just not true.
In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.
What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."
But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.
"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.
Video:Click here to watch more.
A Look at the Numbers
In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.
But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.
In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

Full article here.

Unbelievable!

2009-04-08T13:27:00.011-04:00

I've been watching FNC's coverage of the Maersk Alabama incident, and they've got LTG Tom McInerney (ret.) on making recommendations on how to deal with this incident.

His suggestion? Use the F-22.

What would it do against pirates? They'd be on patrol, and since they can fly at Mach 2, they could respond quickly. Respond and do what, you ask? Answer: strafing runs. And the good General doesn't even think the F-22 could hit the pirate skiffs, just put fire in their vicinity.

Unbelievable. How many US commanders would risk a $178 million fighter (and that's not counting "sunk costs") on a strafing run against a pirate skiff that may have SA-14s on board? Are we really so desperate to plug the F-22 in the wake of the Gates recommendation that we're making these claims?

The F-16 has the same gatling gun the F-22 has for strafing runs, and can shoot it just as accurately. You can get 10 $18 million F-16s for the price of 1 F-22. Having 10x more aircraft on patrol will improve response time a hell of a lot better than the extra .2 Mach or so of speed. And if we get unlucky and lose an F-16 to a shoulder-fired SAM, it will be a major loss, but not the fraking disaster losing an F-22 would be.

Apparently, the case for the F-22 is so weak that we need to pretend we need it as an anti-piracy weapon.

M/V John McClane?

2009-04-08T12:05:00.004-04:00

This morning, I awoke to learn that a US-flagged cargo ship with a US crew was hijacked.

Now, we're being informed that the crew took back control of the ship. At least one pirate is in custody.

That's.... amazing. Thought that shit only happened in Die Hard movies.

Photo: A rigid hull inflatable boat leaves USS Bainbridge (DDG 96) on its way to FGS Hessen (F 221) during the Neptune Warrior training course. Neptune Warrior is a course designed to increase interoperability in NATO coalition forces. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Coleman Thompson

Strategy Makes A Comeback

2009-04-06T19:05:00.003-04:00

Secretary Gates presented his recommendations for the restructuring of our armed forces to the president today. Overall, it's a sound, bold new plan. The best thing about the plan is that it comes from a strategic view, not politics, ambition, or...whatever the hell it is we base our procurement on these days.

The Big Winner in all of this is the small-wars crowd, while the Cold Warriors take quite a thumping. Gates summarized the strategy that the force will be built on as: "we must rebalance this department's programs in order to institutionalize and enhance our capabilities to fight the wars we are in today and the scenarios we are most likely to face in the years ahead, while at the same time providing a hedge against other risks and contingencies." Short and sweet, that means small-wars, crisis repsonse, counterinsurgency and the like is the new "meat and potatoes" of our armed forces. The Cold Warriors who wanted to maintain a high-end force that could hand China's ass to it with 0 casualties are not going to get what they want. Which is as it should be, since major wars are rare and becoming rarer, while our military in constantly invovled in crisis response and small wars.

Last week, in his statement to the HASC, Thomas Barnett aptly described this choice:

It is my professional opinion that the United States defense community currently accepts too much risk AND casualties AND instability on the low end of the combat spectrum while continuing to spend far too much money on building up our combat capabilities for high-end scenarios. In effect, we over-feed our Leviathan force while starving our SysAdmin force, accepting far too many avoidable casualties in the latter while hedging excessively against theoretical future casualties in the former. Personally, I find this risk-management strategy to be both strategically unsound and morally reprehensible.

Gates shares the same sentiment:

But, it is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk – or, in effect, to "run up the score" in a capability where the United States is already dominant – is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take.

Here are the highlights of the recommendations:
*Army and USMC come out ahead in personnel.
*Moar Choppars for the army, lots more ISR, including UAVs and some turboprops that I'll need to look into. I'm guessing relatively cheap aircraft with modern IR sensors.
*Improved air/sea lift capabilities
*Reaffirmed committment to LCS
*F-35 comes out as a winner
*F-22 to end at 187.
*Land and Sea Based theatre missile defenses reaffirmed (winners: SM-3, THAAD. Losers: Alaska, ABL, Multiple Kill Vehicle)
*Reaffirmed KC-X
*Replacement for Ohio SSBNs
*NO NEW (nuclear?) BOMBERS
*10-carrier Navy
*CG-X delayed
*DDG-1000 ended at 3, DDG-51 class restarted
*Reduced procurement of the surface fleet
*Amphib programs delayed (this surpises me)
*VH-71 Cancelled
*CSAR-X Cancelled
*FCS to be replaced with a new program

ACQUISITION REFORM
*Wants mature technology requirements, realism in anticipating threats, end requirements-creep
*more acquisition staff, greater oversight, stricter contact terms

For the most part, this looks like a very sensible plan. My only major concern is that we over-emphasize air supremacy over what we do when we have that supremacy. Between the F-22 and F-35, it makes some sense that the F-35 comes out the winner, but what we really need are dedicated CAS aircraft (although, to be fair, the plan does call for an increase in Army helicopters) and high-endurance bombers. The report does say no new bombers, but I'm not clear if they mean no bombers at all or no new bombers as part of our nuclear forces. I don't think we need nuclear bombers; SSBNs and ordinary strike aircraft can take care of that. What I don't want, however, are high-end aircraft like the F-22 and F-35 loitering over countries like Afghanistan or Iraq waiting for a call to go drop a JDAM on some insurgents, burning millions of dollars of jet fuel while they wait. I want a cheap aircraft like a dedicated CAS plane or a high-endurance plane like a bomber (more loiter time=less sorties=less operating costs and less wasted fuel) or even a high-endurance armed UAV to do that. The good news on this front: increased ISR, including UAVs and high-endurance turboprops. The bottom line is that once you have air supremacy, you don't need to be flying every mission with superfighters that can handle MiGs, SAMs, jamming at the same time while supporting the troops on the ground. You can fly the support missions with cheap planes designed for the specific missions they're going to be performing. Something like an A-10 or AC-130, even a B-52. Just have a few superfighters flying CAP on the borders to keep the airspace safe for the support aircraft and you're golden.

I'm also having some difficulty reconciling how Gates says his missile defense focus "on the rogue state AND theater missile threats" while funding only the theatre-defense programs but not those designed to protect against long range missiles from, e.g., Iran or the DPRK. I would be OK with focusing the technology on the theatre threat, while leaving the long range threat from the rogues to deterrence/preemption/anti-proliferation, but that's not what Gates said.

Those gripes aside, this is a very welcome change.

AIG: A Joke of a Scandal

2009-03-18T17:02:00.003-04:00

This whole thing is stupid.

The Federal government knows how to, and is quite good at, placing conditions on receiving federal funds. Don't tell me that they couldn't have expressly required that the cash they gave to AIG did not go to bonuses, or anything else deemed wasteful. Of course they could have.

They chose not to. It was deliberate.

And now that the funds are being used for that, everyone's pissed at AIG, and it's Congress rousing the rabble.

Does anyone else find that at least a little disconcerting?

RKB Nunchaku?

2009-03-05T16:40:00.004-05:00

Didn't see this coming. I expected that, after incorporation, the Heller line would go after other gun bans. Perhaps targeting state-level handgun or "assault-weapon" bans. Or, instead of focusing on the scope, they'd focus on getting an explicit ruling requiring Strict Scrutiny, and proceed to go after laws placing an undue burden on the right.

But now it appears that the next case is going to be about your right to keep and bear Nunchucks. And the case is being appealed to SCOTUS by none other than "BigLaw" Kirkland & Ellis, LLP.

Technically, it's an incorporation case, because that was the ground it was decided on under appeal. So, if it gets to the issue of scope, it will probably be after remand and coming back up again. But it is interesting nevertheless.

Heller contains some problematic and self-defeating language. The scope of the 2A, according to Heller, is weapons "in common use." The problem is that the government can regulate/ban weapons to make them NOT in common use, and having done that, those weapons are removed from the protection of the 2A. I call this the circularity problem. And it's something that needs to be addressed before the Heller line implodes on itself before it can effect meaningful change in the law. What we need is a holding that expressly defines common use around prior laws; i.e. common use includes weapons that were in common use prior to government intervention or would be in common use but for government regulation. Without this, the government gets to define the limits of its own power, which is a constitutional absurdity.

What does this have to do with nunchucks? Everything. As I mentioned earlier, the most likely route to the Heller line seemed to be to go after something like an AWB. There is a problem with that strategy, both politically (such a ruling would be controversial and contentious) and legally (Justice Thomas inserted some language which might have been an endorsement of bans on M-16s). Enter the nunchaku. These are not "especially dangerous" military weapons, nor do they provoke controversy the way so called "assault-weapons" do. That makes them fertile ground for a relatively safe "common use" argument.

Are they in common use? Probably not. But, the facts on the appellate record suggest otherwise. The challenged law prohibiting nunchucks was actually enacted because they had become prevalent, both among gang members and martial arts enthusiasts. The do-gooders got nervous and enacted the ban. So there's that. But, in all likelihood, "common use" will be a national, not local standard ("...being necessary to the security of a free state..." speaks to national security, not local security). Nevertheless, we don't know how "common" is "common." Martial arts enthusiasts around the country could well be common enough. As a generally nonlethal weapon, nunchucks aren't "particularly dangerous" in the meaning of Heller.

Bottom line: arguing about common use for martial arts weapons is a safe, conservative approach to expanding upon the Heller precedent. If the case loses, it would not be likely to reinforce the circularity problem, but to lose on a "safe" ground (not common enough, not related to militia service---yes, Miller is still alive, and this area was referenced in Heller and was the basis for the common use scope---etc. etc.).

No word on whether Chuck Norris plans to file an amicus brief.

New Star part II

2009-02-20T11:10:00.001-05:00

China Summons Russian Ambassador

BEIJING - China summoned Russia's ambassador Friday to express shock over the sinking of a Chinese cargo ship by a Russian warship and urge a thorough investigation, the foreign ministry said.

Eight of the 16 crew members on board were killed when shots from a Russian naval vessel sank the Chinese-owned cargo ship the New Star off Russia's east coast on Sunday.

Russia has blamed the cargo ship's captain for the incident.

"The Chinese side expresses shock and deep concern over this incident," china's Vice Foreign Minister Li Hui told Russia's Ambassador to China, according to a foreign ministry statement.

"The Chinese side... strongly urges the Russian side to... quickly and thoroughly investigate this incident.

"We call on the Russian side to begin with a humanitarian spirit... and continue to make all efforts to find the missing personnel."

Russian diplomatic spokesman Andrey Nesterenko expressed regret over the incident, but said the Chinese ship had failed to heed warning shots.

"We regret the tragic consequences of this incident," he told the Ria-Novosti news agency.

"But at the same time, we put all the responsibility on the captain of the New Star, who acted in a totally irresponsible manner.

"We took exhaustive measures to stop the boat: the border guards fired warning shots, but the New Star continued on its way without reacting to the orders," he added.

Russian prosecutors said 10 Chinese and six Indonesian sailors were on board the vessel, Interfax reported.

Russian news reports said eight people had been killed in the incident, although these figures have yet to be confirmed by authorities.

The Sierra Leone-flagged, Chinese-owned vessel New Star had earlier fled the Russian port of Nakhodka where it had been impounded for alleged smuggling, media reports said.

In a video posted online that purportedly captured the incident, a man, apparently a Russian naval officer, is heard repeatedly urging the New Star to halt.

The Russian navy fired over 500 rounds to try to force the cargo ship back to port, China's state-controlled Global Times newspaper said.

Russian news agencies said the eight surviving crew members were rescued and taken to hospital.

Chinese Cargo Ship New Star Sinks off Vladivostok

2009-02-18T23:20:00.003-05:00

Early reports are often wrong, so take the following with a grain of salt. But to paraphrase this article, the Russians detained a vessel suspected of smuggling, it left port without permission, and was prosecuted by a cruiser. Tried to limp back to port, but didn't make it. And neither did all the crew.

Bravo Zulu!

2009-02-18T12:52:00.004-05:00

H/T: USNI Blog

Curtailing Extreme Searches at the Jail

2009-02-14T15:12:00.004-05:00

I'm sure many will disagree, but I see this as a positive development:

NEWARK, N.J. (WPIX) -- A federal judge has ruled thousands of strip searches carried out at jails in Burlington and Essex counties in New Jersey were illegal. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez says the searches violate the Fourth Amendment and are unconstitutional.
The suspects who were searched were arrested for minor offenses, such as traffic tickets. The searches have been taking place at the Burlington County Jail and Essex County Correctional Facility since 2003.
Susan Chana Lask, who represents the plaintiffs, says approximately 10,000 people were strip searched. She says she plans to file a motion for a jury trial to determine damages. Lask says a jury could award as much as $10,000 to anyone who has been strip-searched while in custody for a minor offense. The plaintiffs may be entitled to millions of dollars.
At least eight similar suits are pending against jails in Union, Middlesex and Bergen counties.

Can there be people being "checked in" who may be hiding weapons? Sure. But strip and cavity searches for routine arrests are a bit excessive (I know cavity isn't mentioned in this article, but I know it happens in IL). You can find a weapon with a pat-down. The real purpose of these searches isn't safety, but degradation. They want to make the process of being arrested as difficult as possible, which allows them to harass innocent people. Take the case of Roderick Pritchett, for example:

The evening of Roderick Pritchett's descent into hell on earth started with an ordinary shopping trip to Safeway for his mom last November 21st. The 25 year-old African/Jamaican-American frequently ran errands for her; he was the sole car owner in his family.
On the way out of his south side Chicago apartment, he went back inside and grabbed his Taurus 9 mm pistol -- which was unloaded and in its case as Chicago law requires -- and tossed it in the passenger seat. Roderick liked to stop by the shooting range to practice his marksmanship once a week to stay sharp and keep his groupings tight.
In his wallet behind his driver's license was his FOID (Firearms Owner Identification Card) which he obtained before purchasing the gun in 2000. In accordance with the strict gun control laws enacted by Mayor Daley and the city legislature, Roderick kept the gun in his apartment and never carried it on his person. This seemed strange to him; the law essentially said that defending his property was more important than defending his life from the numerous predatory south side hoods. Pritchett however always followed the law, even the ones that defy common sense.
As he drove down South Ada St. toward the range, he noticed a police car tailing him. It was early evening and Roderick was a young black man with dreadlocks driving alone. In Chicago, that's lights-and-siren time. Sure enough, Police Officer Edward Kos and Officer Rodolfo Camarillo pulled him over at 87th and Ada for a burned out taillight.
The officers approached and asked if he would mind if they searched his car. Pritchett didn't object. He knew beyond a doubt that his 9 mm was 100 percent legal. He even had a copy of the Illinois gun laws in his case. When he handed over his driver's license, he also gave them his FOID and volunteered that he had a legal firearm in the vehicle. He knew he had nothing to fear.
Unfortunately, his confidence was short-lived. The police ordered him to take a seat in the back of their black-and-white. "The officers began questioning me from the front seat of their squad car before they even let me know I was under arrest," says Pritchett. "They giggled a couple of times before sarcastically asking me why I didn't run. I was shocked speechless at their rude treatment of me."
Pritchett couldn't understand why they were hassling him. With all the crime in the city, why should they bother someone with a legal gun? He pleaded that he was only going to the range and that his gun was legal, but to no avail. Pritchett was arrested for violating 720 ILCS 5/24-1.6 Aggravated Unlawful Use of Weapons.
One of the officers left the squad car and got behind the wheel of Pritchett's station wagon to drive it to the station. Apparently, Officers Kos and Camarillo were either ignorant of the laws regarding the legal transportation of firearms, or chose to ignore them. In any case, Roderick Pritchett was on his way to 72 hours of misery that he would never forget.
Pritchett had his legal gun confiscated and was transported to the Cook County lockup and charged with a Class 4 Felony. Next, he endured the standard treatment of any run-of-the-mill accused felon within Chicago city limits -- a quite thorough strip search that left no body orifice sacred, incarceration, long days and sleepless nights in a cramped, urine-stinking cell chockablock with accused rapists and thieves, and meals of stale bread and cold soup in the company of accused child molesters and slightly more palatable muggers.
When his mother finally scraped together the $500 bond to secure his release three days later, Pritchett had one more treat awaiting him, courtesy of the Chicago PD -- a $700 fee to spring his station wagon from the impound lot. He begged the police before they impounded his car to let his girlfriend pick it up. The cops refused.

Maybe I'm a little jaded from growing up in Cook County, IL. I've been fortunate that in all my dealings with (suburban) police, they've always been professional and courteous. But I'm also white and middle class, and I haven't done anything to get myself on, say, Dick Devine's shit list (at least I don't think so). So for the most part, I do trust the police, but strip/cavity searches at arrest pushes that trust beyond its limit. I see what you're doing there, and it's not OK.

Assigned Reading

2009-02-05T09:56:00.001-05:00

Here is a very thoughtful analysis of the Palin candidacy, what it meant politically, the reality vs. the perception, and how it went down like it did. It gives a very thorough trashing of all the assumptions made on both sides. Very, very highly recommended. (Hat tip: Conservative Wahoo)

One thing I really liked about the theory behind the article is that it offers a sensible explanation for why Palin was mocked for inexperience but Obama got a free pass, in a way that goes beyond the O'Reilly "in the tank" line.

I'm still trying to figure out the "worldview" part. True, McCain did fail to be more than an "attitude poltician with an appealing biography," and would have benefited from articulating a vision of what "his" America would look like. But if McCain was an "attitude" candidate, Obama was an "emotion" candidate, also without a clear vision articulated. All people really knew about Obama's future America was that it would have Hope and would not have Bush. Well, maybe that's just it, when you're able to run against an unpopular administration, maybe emotion is enough, and the substance of the outgoing Pres is all the substance you need.

But, I think he's absolutely right about the need to tie substance with cultural populism. Cultural populsim was demonstrated to be stronger than people have given it credit for, and it's something that would do us some good if it found a voice in power. Maybe that detached-ness, the senselessness that DC has become could be corrected with a dose of some good old common sense and the wisdom the comes from life experience. So maybe the next candidate needs to be able to tap into that, like Palin did. But, whoever that is also needs to have some intellectual depth to his/her candidacy, if for no other reason than to prevent the "blank slate" effect where everyone just throws their own projections at the candidate.

Well, at least somebody stopped it...

2009-01-31T16:17:00.002-05:00

It turns out that not only did we not scuttle the Iranian arms shipment (yes, I know that's a pipe dream), but we let it go, lacking legal authority to detain it.

Fortunately, the Cypriots were not lacking as well:

JERUSALEM, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Cypriot authorities have detained an Iranian ship en route to Syria with a cargo of weapons, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

Quoting a European Union diplomatic source, it said Cyprus had acted after Israel and the United States requested that the Cypriot-flagged vessel be stopped.

Authorities contacted the ship and demanded that it dock in Limassol for inspection. Customs officials had unloaded part of the cargo and a large amount of weaponry, including artillery rounds and rockets, the paper said.

Cypriot authorities declined comment.

Israel believes the weapons were destined for the Lebanese Islamist guerrilla group Hezbollah or for Islamist Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, Haaretz quoted Israeli sources as saying.

On Wednesday, U.S. military officials said personnel from the U.S. Navy vessel San Antonio last week boarded the Cypriot-flagged "Monchegorsk", a cargo vessel travelling from Iran to Syria, and found a weapons shipment but for legal reasons did not confiscate the cargo.

The officials declined to say what kind of weapons were found or how many. They also would not be specific about where or when the incident occurred.

It was unclear whether this was the same ship which Haaretz reported had been apprehended by the Cypriot authorities.

Officials in Washington said the search was conducted as part of the U.S. Navy's normal maritime security role in regional waters that stretch from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean.

The U.S. officials said the arms could not be shown to violate U.N. weapons sanctions against Iran and the vessel was allowed to continue on to Syria.

The incident came to light amid media reports that the U.S. navy has been ordered to intercept suspected Iranian shipments to rearm Hamas following Israel's 22-day Gaza offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. (Additional reporting by Michele Kambas in Nicosia, writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Speaking of Intermeddlers...

2009-01-24T18:11:00.002-05:00

I really wish we would scuttle ships caught red handed like this. When there are no consequences, we come out looking like fools, even when we do pull off a minor tactical victory like this.

U.S. Navy stopped Iran ship carrying weapons and headed to Gaza

TEL AVIV — U.S. defense sources said the U.S. Navy tracked and intercepted an Iranian ship in the Red Sea that was headed for the Gaza Strip.

The sources said U.S. marines found ammunition, including artillery shells, concealed in crates aboard the cargo ship.
"There was a huge amount of crates on board and we called for help," a defense source said.
The U.S. television network CBS News reported that the ship was intercepted by the U.S. Navy near Egypt's Suez Canal. CBS said the U.S. Navy vessel requested that Egyptian authorities direct the Iranian ship to port for a thorough search.

The Antithesis of Hope

2009-01-24T10:00:00.004-05:00

What a depressing week.

As if the stuff from yesterday wasn't bad enough, today I found this bad omen. Pres. Obama decided to become the first President to skip the Salute to Heroes (see below), preferring to rub shoulders with celebrities instead of with veterans and Medal of Honor recipients. It's appalling, and frankly, shocking as well. I was prepared for President Obama to be a bit of an elite snob, but not to this extent. And as much as I want to be part of the "loyal opposition" and stay away from toxic language, I can't help but describe this choice to prioritize celebrities over genuine American heroes as unpatriotic. Yeah, I went there, and I'm sorry, but I can't think of a less-toxic word that describes it.

But the part that really shocks me the most is the blatantness of it all. Now that he's President, he doesn't care to keep up appearances anymore. I expected the performance to continue, but instead, he's decided to stand up in front of the Nation and tell us all that he intends to use the office of the President to enjoy the high life, and that he'll get around to more important matters when he gets around to it. He has so much contempt for us that he insults our intelligence, confident that 50% +1 of us in an electoral majority of states will still be stupid enough to vote for him in four years.

Obama Snubs Nation's Heroes, Becomes the First President to Skip Ball Honoring Medal of Honor Recipients in Over 50 Years
Barack Obama may have stumbled over his words briefly during his inauguration, but he made an even bigger blunder later Tuesday evening. The newly sworn-in President opted not to appear at what should have been one of the most important Balls on his agenda that evening - The Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball.

The Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball was begun in 1953 for President Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration. The event recognized recipients of the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. There were 48 Medal of Honor recipients in attendance, who were undoubtedly disappointed by the Commander-in-Chief's failure to show. Over the past 56 years and 14 inaugurations, no President has skipped this event - until now.

The Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball is sponsored by the American Legion, and co-sponsored by 13 other veteran's service organizations, including those such as the Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

Instead of attending this ball honoring our nation's heroes, Obama was busy making stops at 10 other official balls. Obama and his wife's first stop was at the Neighborhood Ball. From there they went to the Home State Ball for Illinois and Hawaii, the Commander-in-Chief Ball, the Youth Inaugural Ball, and the Home State Ball for Delaware and Pennsylvania. They finished off the night with brief appearances at the Mid-Atlantic, Western, Midwest, Eastern, and Southern regional Balls.

Celebrities were a plenty at the balls, with Stevie Wonder, Shakira, Mary. J. Blige, Faith Hill, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, Adam Levine, will.i.am, Sting, Mariah Carey, and Leonardo DiCaprio in attendance at the Neighborhood Ball. In addition, the other nine balls also featured a star-studded lineup including Kanye West and Kid Rock at the Youth Ball, Marc Anthony at the Western Ball, and Cheryl Crow at the Western Ball.

It was the party without all of the celebrities that Obama skipped. The very people who he sought to have support him during his candidacy and campaign, who have fought to protect this country, were snubbed in favor of publicity and the opportunity to rub shoulders - yet again - with the out-of-touch Hollywood elite.

Off To a Great Start, Aren't We?

2009-01-23T12:55:00.003-05:00

Wow. What a great first week.

First, we got a glimpse of the new politics of civility.

Then, the new President decides to close the Gitmo detention facility. Without having any idea what else to do with them. Great plan! You know someone isn't serious about putting good governance before ideology when they take the ideological action and save the difficult questions for later. Strange.... that reminds me about a certain heavily criticized ex-President who invaded a country without any plan for handling the occupation and insurgency to follow. But, this is what passes for "CHANGE" these days.

Oh, news flash to the new administration: released detainees are popping up again fighting against US troops. Just recently, one was identified as a new AQ leader in Yemen. So you might want to figure this one out, you know, before people start getting killed for your cause.

The pledge for transparency in government lasted all of two days. I can give the snubbing of press reporters/photographers a pass for now--that was likely just a n00b gaffe that will sort itself out (although, between the retaliatory curtailing of access to some networks during the election, the pay-to-play angle to that story has additional credence). But, the new SECSTATE concealing donors is unforgivable. The only way she received any serious consideration was by promising transparency. But no, the Clintons had to renege on their promise and a cloud of corruption already hangs over the executive branch.

Not even a week in.

An Overdue and Indirect Response to "Maurer" School of Law

2009-01-10T12:18:00.005-05:00

I found this over at The Stupid Will Be Punished and it just reminded me of the renaming thing. It was originally published last April 1 (obviously, before DDG-1001 had been named the Michael A. Monsoor).

New U.S. Ship Naming Guidelines Announced

In a move long expected, the Secretary of the Navy today announced that the process for determining the names of Navy ships will "finally enter the 21st century":
"In these days of tighter budgets, all government agencies must find creative ways to raise money for operating funds. As a result, I have today directed that naming rights for future naval vessels will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

"This does not mean we won't continue to honor our heritage. Traditionally, names of all ships within a class have been related. Therefore, naming rights for follow-on Ford-class carriers will be limited to automobile manufacturers. I expect to announce the official naming of USS General Motors (CVN 79) within the next week.

"Bidders for naming rights to major surface ships will be limited to companies listed on the Fortune 500. The second Zumwalt-class destroyer will be christened USS Microsoft (DDG 1001). Amphibious ships will be named for foreign countries; each winning bid comes with a guarantee that the ship will not be used to invade its namesake.

"In another return to tradition, submarines following USS Mississippi (SSN 782) will be named after fish... restaurants. The keel for USS Long John Silver (SNN 783) will be laid early next year."

Welcome Back, Sully!

2009-01-10T09:24:00.003-05:00

Hope you play well tonight. (But not too well)

I wonder if there's any way we can get him back.... he'd fit right in with this new team.

Linked: Voter Intimidation by Black Panthers Leads to Charges

2009-01-07T17:43:00.003-05:00

Recall these videos from election day:

From America's Right:

PHILADELPHIA -- In a nine-page complaint, U.S. Attorney Gen. Michael Mukasey has sued the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, along with four of its members, in response to an Election Day incident at a polling location in Philadelphia, PA, citing the defendants' intimidation of voters, intimidation of poll workers, and attempted intimidation of poll workers.

On November 4, 2008, defendants and Black Panther Party members Jerry Jackson and Samir Shabazz, dressed in military-style uniforms replete with black berets, combat-style boots, bloused battle dress pants, rank and organization insignia, and black jackets, blocked access to a Philadelphia polling place. Shabazz, according to the complaint, "brandished a deadly weapon," appearing on Fox News video (see below) to be a nightstick or baton, and the pair hurled racist comments and racial slurs at voters both black and white. The complaint stated more details:

Throughout the course of this deployment at the polling location, and while the polls were open for voting, Defendant Samir Shabazz pointed the weapon at individuals, menacingly tapped it [in] his other hand, or menacingly tapped it elsewhere. This activity occcurred approximately eight to fifteen feet from the entrance to the polling location. Defendant Samir Shabazz was accompanied by Defendant Jerry Jackson during this activity, and the two men stood side by side, in apparent formation, throughout most of this deployment.

Full Article

...and another one

2009-01-07T12:28:00.005-05:00

Looks like the increased Op Tempo is just a bit too much for the Ruskies. Although to be fair, fatalities are fairly common on US CSG deployments, just not from fires.

One dead in fire aboard aircraft carrier ”Admiral Kuznetsov”

One sailor died in a fire yesterday aboard Northern Fleet’s aircraft carrier “Admiral Kuznetsov”, which currently is on a tour of duty in the Mediterranean.
During take-off and landing drills on the evening of January 6 a fire broke out on the aircraft carrier. One conscript sailor died while trying to extinguish the fire, a military source told Russian news agency Interfax.

According to the source, the fire caused only minor damages to the ship, and the tour will continue as planned.

Interfax has not yet received any official confirmation on the information.

Watch video from “Admiral Kuznetsov’s” unofficial visit to Turkey here

A quick recap of recent Russian naval accidents:
Fire on the Marshal Shaposhnikov (PAC Fleet), two dead (18 Sept 2008)
Accidental Discharge of fire suppression system on the Nerpa (PAC Fleet), 20+ dead (9 NOV 2008)
Fire on Neukrotimy, (BAL Fleet) 1 dead (8 DEC 2008)

The only fleet not having fatal mishaps recently is the Black Sea Fleet. That might be coincidental, or perhaps indicative of better readiness since that fleet had to fight a war recently.

Walker v. Jovanovski's Face

2009-01-07T09:38:00.003-05:00

Strange that the NHL never posts the game pics you really want to see. Enjoy!

Next time you want to start something, be ready to finish it, okay Jovo?

Photo credits: 2 from http://newshopper.sulekha.com/photos/slideshow/Sports/1/616406.htm, the other is unknown (posted to photobucket)

Googletrippers: Ed Jovanovski, Matt Walker, Phoenix Coyotes, Chicago Blackhawks, January 6 2008, fight, blood

Don't Mess With EU Privacy Laws

2008-12-19T10:11:00.003-05:00

Copyright cop wedding crashers fined by Spanish court

The next time you have a wedding, make sure your videographer isn't a secret spy for the RIAA or similar copyright group. This real-life scenario happened to a couple in Spain thanks to the efforts of the Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE), a rights group for musicians and artists. But although the group managed to bust the reception venue for copyright violations, SGAE itself has been fined for violating the privacy of the newlyweds.

The incident originally took place back in 2005, when SGAE snuck a private detective into the wedding reception acting as a cameraman. The group had suspected the venue—La Doma restaurant near Seville, Spain—for using music without paying royalties. Predictably, this series of events have horrified privacy advocates who argue that the couple's privacy was breached. As noted by The Sunday Times, however, the issue has come to light recently because SGAE has increased its efforts to catch venues that are avoiding royalty payments, and another, similar case is about to go to court.

SGAE claims that the video was taken by guests. However, in the case of the La Doma video, a Seville court ruled that it could not be used as evidence of copyright violations because it was "a clear violation of the constitutional rights to a person's own image." Despite this, La Doma was fined €43,179 for illegally using the music. La Doma got off lightly compared to the SGAE, which was nicked for €60,101 for the privacy violations. So the SGAE's copyright enforcement cost it nearly €18,000—not including court costs.

SGAE apparently doesn't feel that it has done anything wrong, and apparently plans to continue crashing weddings in order to catch venues in the act (and maybe sneak a slice or two of cake in the process). "Using private detectives to investigate fraud is common. We will carry on doing it," SGAE director Pedro Farre told the Times. On the other hand, with cameramen being fined upwards of US$86,000, SGAE may soon find itself hard-up for volunteers to carry out its dirty deeds.

I think the article is overblowing the risk to investigators here. The privacy violation is NOT about the intrusion into the wedding party ("wedding crashers"), it's about the information that was collected about identifiable individuals--in this case, I'd guess embarrassing video of drunken guests dancing horribly ("constitutional right to a person's own image"). The message is clear: don't take video. The only information the investigator needs is the song played, and the time and place. Record more than that and you're asking for trouble.

Report: Russia's Venezuela Visit Filled With Mishaps

2008-12-18T14:05:00.001-05:00

Not the dangerous kind, the funny kind.

Tal Cual, a Venezuelan daily newspaper, described the exercises as a “clash of civilizations” due to the strange and even hilarious events that occurred. To start with, the Cuban officers brought along by the Venezuelan navy as interpreters were not allowed by the Russians, who could not understand why the Venezuelan navy had to rely on Cuban personnel. When Venezuelan strongman Chavez tried to visit the ship “Admiral Chabanenko,” his bodyguards were not allowed to go aboard. A fistfight broke between the Russian sailors and the bodyguards -- one Russian sailor suffering a broken nose.

The Venezuelan participation in the exercises was finally reduced to two frigates, F21 and F24, and the transport ship T81, since the other units were not seaworthy. The access of Chavez to the flagship Russian “Peter the Great” was not allowed. In retaliation, Chavez refused to receive Russian President Medvedev at his arrival, sending his colorless vice president Ramon Carrizales instead. Medvedev was reportedly not amused, but his visit had objectives to fulfill that were more important than his irritation at Chavez’s faulty protocol.

Source.

Insulting: Jim Ryan Calls for Leaders with "Moral Compass"

2008-12-10T09:43:00.002-05:00

Jim Ryan--the former IL AG who ran for Governor and lost to Blagojevich--needs to shut the hell up and just fade away.

In response to the corruption charges against Blago, Ryan had this to say:

"I feel bad for the people of Illinois," said Jim Ryan. "They need to rise up and say we need authentic leaders with a moral compass and we haven't had that in a while."

This, coming from a guy who tried to advance his career through entrapment schemes.

Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan is trying to make a name for himself in law enforcement circles by conducting his own sting operation against private-party firearms sales. Ryan has been pushing his agents to violate Illinois law in order to get people to sell them "illegal" firearms over the Internet. Could this "tough-on-crime" charade be a political ploy by Ryan? After all, in Illinois primary elections are in March and 2002 is an election year.

According to the Associated Press, Ryan’s agents were able to procure some firearms: a semi-automatic pistol and two so-called assault weapons. However most of the cases could not be prosecuted either for a lack of evidence, or because Ryan violated an Illinois law prohibiting entrapment operations. The sting, which resulted in only one conviction -- Christopher Tocco of Goodrich, Michigan who pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a machine gun--has been severely criticized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF)...

Trying to trick innocent people into breaking the law and sending them to prison so your political career might take off. Yeah, some moral compass.

Fuck off.

Linked: British Purge Commanders Over Iran-Hostage Drama

2008-12-10T03:13:00.002-05:00

THE British navy has completed a discreet clean-out of the senior figures involved in the debacle over the arrest by Iranian Revolutionary Guards of 15 British sailors and marines.

Those involved in the Royal Navy's humiliation at the hands of Tehran have been pushed out of their high-profile jobs as part of an attempt to sweep away any reminder of the debacle...

The victims include two vice-admirals, the captain of the ship on which the boat crews served and a senior official in the failed public relations operation that followed their return to Britain.

Full article

OI Fails at Reading Comprehension

2008-12-09T07:44:00.004-05:00

I really dropped the ball on this one. In the beginning of November, I said the natural born citizenship issue was dead because Hawaii authorities confirmed the validity of the birth certificate.

I'm a fucking moron.

Here is the story in its entirety:

State officials say there's no doubt Barack Obama was born in Hawai'i.

Health Department Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said today she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate.
Fukino says that no state official, including Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, ever instructed that Obama's certificate be handled differently.
She says state law bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.
Some Obama critics claim he was not born in the U.S.
Earlier today, a southwest Ohio magistrate rejected a challenge to Obama's citizenship. Judges in Seattle and Philadelphia recently dismissed similar suits.

Notice the sentence "State officials say there's no doubt Barack Obama was born in Hawai'i" is NOT attributed. The attribued statements are "Health Department Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said today she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate," "She says state law bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest," and "Fukino says that no state official, including Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, ever instructed that Obama's certificate be handled differently." None of these statements answers the question as to the contents of the birth certificate. All we have is an unattributed assertion by the reporter that the contents are in order.

The question of the eligibility of the President-Elect is still live. And it seems that we don't have an effective legal mechanism to get a look at that damn thing to end this issue once and for all. The only thing I can think of right now is that a subordinate of the then sworn-in President would have to replicate the Berg suit. Berg lost on standing of course; standing being satisfied by a subordinate being the plaintiff, the court could not dismiss the case prior to discovery, which would mean that damn elusive little piece of paper could be taken as evidence and the relevant official deposed under oath. Short of that happening, I'm out of ideas.

So yeah. I blew it by sucking at reading comprehension. I guess I just wanted it to be over and I saw what I wanted to see instead of what was actually on the page.

H/T: Conservative Thinker

Sometimes It's Easy to Tell Who the Good Ones Are

2008-12-08T14:52:00.002-05:00

081207-M-6159T-144 CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan (Dec. 7, 2008) U.S. Senators John McCain, left, and Joe Lieberman leave the airfield aboard Camp Bastion. U.S. Military service members and British Royal Army personnel briefed U.S. Senators McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham on the progress and status of their area of operations in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. (Official U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Pete Thibodeau)

I tried Googling this meeting and came up empty--no news coverage, except for this photo taken by a USMC photographer--er, sorry. Joker--combat correspondent. I much prefer the politicians who still Give A Shit when the campaign is over and attention is elsewhere.

Not Again

2008-12-08T13:46:00.002-05:00

MOSCOW, December 8 (RIA Novosti) - One naval officer died in a fire on Russia's Baltic Fleet frigate the Neukrotimy (Indomitable) on Monday, a senior Navy official said.
"The body of an officer was discovered during a thorough search of the ship," Captain 1st Rank Igor Dygalo, an aide to the Russian Navy commander, said.

Earlier reports said no one had been hurt in the fire that broke out early on Monday on the frigate anchored at Baltiisk, the Baltic Fleet's main base.

A regional emergencies official said the fire was put out at 14:00 Moscow time (11:00 a.m. GMT).

He said five firefighting teams, including a special firefighting boat, had been involved in extinguishing the fire.

The Baltic Fleet press service said only insignificant damage had been caused to the vessel, while the cause of the fire had yet to be established by a special investigations commission.

Dygalo said the frigate, at the end of its operational life span, was due to be taken out of service, adding there had been no weapons on board the ship when the fire started.

The Krivak-2 Project-1135 Neukrotimy, built in 1978, was damaged in 2005, when a practice mine exploded during rehearsals for Russia's Navy Day, causing a 3-meter hole in the ship's hull and flooding the ship's engine room.

This is senseless. These guys really need to work on their safety procedures.

Rest in peace.

Source.

US in the ICC?

2008-12-08T09:59:00.002-05:00

Boldly said, but I remain unconvinced. ("You are not prepared!!!" Ahem.)

Maybe for no other reason other than that it was just a lousy article. Of course, on the issue of the ICC, what really matters is the risk of the body being used as a political weapon against American Soldiers. Out of 19 paragraphs, only 3 sentences are dedicated to this issue:

Initial U.S. fears that the court would be politically motivated have proved groundless. The court’s respect for the principle that it can exercise its jurisdiction only when national courts prove unwilling or unable to do so has proved unbending. Attempts to bring British forces in Iraq before the court for alleged crimes have been rejected by the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina.

That definitely got my attention, and it's worth considering. But this issue needs to be explored comprehensively to make an informed decision here, and two supporting facts is hardly weighty analysis. The rest of the article? Fluff about how the everyone else is doing it and whining about how unilateral Bush is. Crap we've heard 1000 times before that isn't all that convincing.

For what it's worth, Cohen has a point about us needing to shake the perception that we don't care about international law, because the development of new international rule sets is going to be vital to winning the GWOT. We need to be leading in that area, not be pariahs. But there is a lot more to international law than just the ICC. Right now, the crucial issue in this realm is the UNSC, and that should be painfully obvious to everyone. It's possible that we can make progress with the ICC, but there are serious practical issues that have to be worked out that can't simply be dismissed as "groundless."

China Stepping Up

2008-12-04T13:16:00.003-05:00

Major General Jin Yinan has announced China's intention to get involved in anti-piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden. This has the potential to be huge---for once, instead of being the UNSC member obstructing solutions to international problems, they're going to play an active part. This comes on the heels of a unanimous UNSC reslolution that renewed authorization to persue pirates into Somali waters, authorized the detention and disposition of suspected pirate vessels, and perhaps most significantly, called on member states to establish laws to enable them to prosecute those arrested.

I've been looking forward to the opportunity for the US to start working with China as a partner rather than as a rival. And for that to happen, China has to start realizing that its interests coincide with ours---in open, secure markets, regional stability, and increased connectedness. Their intention to get involved in the piracy issue means that they're starting to think about more responsibilities as a major power and less about the Taiwan issue or a potential rivalry with us. (EDIT: Galrahn beat me to it: "that might be the smell of maturity.") As this plays out, we can look forward to an increasing partnership with China, which means the looming war between us becomes less likely, and hopefully at some point we'll be able to reallocate part of that part of the defense budget to something more useful. Good times.

WANT

2008-11-29T23:07:00.003-05:00

Too bad I don't like crying and/or puppies.

Thinking Strategically (Or, How Galrahn Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pirates)

2008-11-25T10:03:00.002-05:00

Gal's given me another reason to plug Information Dissemination with two of his latest insightful posts. So seldom do we find anyone who thinks about the big picture.

I'm not going to bother quoting key passages, as these are definitely worth taking in in their entirety:

Observing the Strategic Success of US Policy Toward Somali Piracy

Are Pirates the Problem, Or the Solution?

(Related OI post: Piracy a blessing in disguise?)

One Less Vertical Scenario Playing Out

2008-11-25T09:44:00.002-05:00

I guess we can sleep a little easier knowing that the BrahMos will not be exported as widely as previously feared:

There were initial hopes that Russia and India could export up to 2,000. China and Iran have expressed interest in the weapon, but only Malaysia, Chile, South Africa, Kuwait and the UAE (United Arab Emirates) have been approached with a sales pitch. No one has placed an order.

Smart people, not selling to China and Iran. India apparently realizes that its relations with us are a bit too important to throw away to make an easy buck or two. It also seems that we figure into the poor sales elsewhere.

Earlier this year, India ordered 800 more of the new PJ-10 BrahMos missiles. Attempts to find export customers, however, have not succeeded. India believes this is because they have not previously been a major arms exporter, and have not developed the skills and techniques to sell high-tech weapons. Another reason, which the Indian arms salesmen don't like to dwell on, is that BrahMos was originally designed to go after heavily defended American aircraft carriers. Few countries see attacking the U.S. Navy as a promising military strategy. That, and the high price of the BrahMos probably accounts for most of the sales resistance.

I might suggest that they could find potential customers in NATO, but I doubt India's partners will like that idea. What a pity.

Such an Odd Place...

2008-11-19T12:39:00.002-05:00

I knew the Somali pirates were getting rich and living the glamorous life, but I didn't realize the size of the boom they're causing:

But in northern coastal towns like Haradhere, Eyl and Bossaso, the pirate economy is thriving thanks to the money pouring in from pirate ransoms that have reached $30 million this year alone.

In Haradhere, residents came out in droves to celebrate as the looming oil ship came into focus this week off the country's lawless coast. Businessmen started gathering cigarettes, food and cold glass bottles of orange soda, setting up small kiosks for the pirates who come to shore to re-supply almost daily.

Dahir said she is so confident in the pirates, she instituted a layaway plan just for them.

"They always take things without paying and we put them into the book of debts," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "Later, when they get the ransom money, they pay us a lot."

For Somalis, the simple fact that pirates offer jobs is enough to gain their esteem, even as hostages languish on ships for months. The population makes sure the pirates are well-stocked in qat, a popular narcotic leaf, and offer support from the ground even as the international community tries to quash them.

"Regardless of how the money is coming in, legally or illegally, I can say it has started a life in our town," said Shamso Moalim, a 36-year-old mother of five in Haradhere.

"Our children are not worrying about food now, and they go to Islamic schools in the morning and play soccer in the afternoon. They are happy."

I find this curious because of the warlord situation there. As I see it, the warlords' primary interest is to hold onto power. That means they'd either be in on the piracy business or demanding a shit ton of "protection" money. And maybe they are. But an economic boom is empowering to the common folk. They're getting jobs, vehicles, going to school.... not exactly the picture of dependency that we've come to identify with Somalia since the 90's. They're even doing business overseas and getting wired up on the 'net--getting connected with the rest of the world.

This may seem perverse, but maybe this piracy thing is a bit of a blessing in disguise. It's hard to keep a population dependent on you when they're doing business and getting connected. No, that's not a justification, but it is food for thought, because disconnectedness is what defines danger and instability these days. Right now, it seems Somalia is too far gone to connect to the rest of the world (much like Afghanistan) and not suitable for a nation-building type program, but maybe as the seeds of connectedness are sown through this piracy, that will start to slowly change.

Silver lining or not, I still think more aggressive measures need to be taken to stop this problem.

Piracy Leading to Disruption in Int'l Trade

2008-11-14T16:47:00.003-05:00

You know it's serious when you can't get your Wii games.

Alarmed at the growing number of attacks off Somalia, international merchant shipping is edging closer to doing the unthinkable in peace time: by-passing one of world's most vital trade routes.
Somali pirates have been plundering ships off the Horn of Africa for years, but the recent surge in attacks has spilled out into the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, threatening access to the Suez Canal.

Now big firms employed in moving everything from oil, gas and coal to toys, are urgently considering whether to travel round South Africa's Cape of Good Hope instead.
***
The alternative voyage round the Cape of Good Hope would add upwards of three weeks to a typical journey, delaying goods to buyers and increasing transport costs.
***
Giles Noakes, chief maritime security officer at BIMCO, a big industry association, said two operators, one a gas carrier and a tug operator Svitzer, a maritime logistics group, were already routing their fleets via the Cape.

"The next group that I expect to be going round the Cape are the big dry bulkers -- carriers of coal, grains and iron ore -- who also cruise at lower speeds," Noakes said.

How long are we going to let these mosquitos bite us before we spray the nest?

Peek-A-Boo

2008-11-12T19:34:00.004-05:00

The JMSDF sees you!

No info yet on how close they came to the G-Dub. Hans are noisy fiddle luckers, though, so hopefuly not that close.

I can't help but wonder if this story was intended to coincide with the SCOTUS news, as it doesn't say when the subs were detected.

Victory!

2008-11-12T17:02:00.002-05:00

SCOTUS is full of awesome and win today:

U.S. Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on Navy Sonar (Update3)

By Greg Stohr

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court lifted restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar during training exercises off the Southern California coast, ruling that national security needs trumped environmental concerns.

A divided high court rejected arguments by environmentalists that the judge-ordered restrictions were warranted to protect whales and other marine mammals.

The environmental interests ``are plainly outweighed by the Navy's need to conduct realistic training exercises to ensure that it is able to neutralize the threat posed by enemy submarines,'' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

Well, not that divided... two dissents and two concurrences for a 6.5 to 2.5 majority. Not bad.

I See What You Did There

2008-11-09T15:18:00.005-05:00

First, giving credit where credit is due, Conservative Wahoo saw it first.

Here is a story about how the press covered the election. It is amazing in three respects. First, if there was ever any doubt about the widespread perception that the mainstream media has a liberal bias, this should prove it once and for all. Second--and I was surprised by this--it shows that Fox News Channel really is living up to its "Fair and Balanced" motto (I thought they would have had a slight conservative tilt, but the data shows otherwise). Finally, it's remarkable because despite what the raw data shows, the Pew Research Center still managed to present the data in a form that made it appear that FNC was skewed right and that the network news outlets were right in the middle.

Absolutely amazing. The problem with Pew's presentation is that it compares each outlet to the average of all of them, and then decides that if a network is to the left or right of that average, then they are left or right politically. The obvious problem with that is it assumes that the media as a whole is centrist. But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the media as a whole can be on one side or another--especially when you have a network like MSNBC out there pulling the average way, way out to the left. A better method of analysis is not to assume anything, but to compare the way the networks treated the candidates. No spin, just straight up.

So here is the raw data that the story is based on. The data tells a pretty clear story, when you look at is for what it really is. So, here is what it looks like when you compare how the networks covered the candidates:

FNC
Negative Stories
Obama: 40%
Mcain: 40%
-BALANCED-

Positive Stories
Obama: 25%
McCain: 22%
-BALANCED- (slightly Obama favoring)

MSNBC:
negative stories:
Obama: 14%
McCain 73%
--Tilted against McCain by 5 to 1 ratio--

Positive stories
Obama: 42%
McCain: 10%
--Tilted for Obama by 4 to 1 ratio--

CNN:
Negative Stories
Obama: 39%
McCain: 61%
--Tilted against McCain by 1.7 to 1 ratio--

Positive Stories
Obama: 36%
McCain: 13%
--Tilted for Obama by 2.8 to 1 ratio--

NBC
Negative Stories
Obama: 20%
McCain: 54%
--Tilted against McCain by 2.7 to 1 ratio--

Positive Stories
Obama: 43%
McCain: 17%
--Tilted for Obama by 2.5 to 1 ratio--

CBS
Negative Stories
Obama: 27%
McCain: 57%
--Tilted against McCain by 2.1 to 1 ratio--

Positive Stories
Obama: 21%
McCain: 8%
--Tilted for Obama by 2.6 to 1 ratio--

ABC
Negative Stories
Obama: 27%
McCain: 56%
--Tilted against McCain by 2.1 to 1 ratio--

Positive Stories
Obama: 49%
McCain: 15%
----Tilted for Obama by 3.3 to 1 ratio--

So there you have it. When FNC says "Fair and Balanced", at least in this election, they meant it. CNN, MSNBC, and the old networks favored Obama in their coverage by a 2-5 to 1 margin. The data proves it.

Peril On the Sea

2008-11-08T16:57:00.010-05:00

Developing:

RIA Reports a major tragedy at sea:

Over 20 killed in Russian submarine accident

MOSCOW, November 9 (RIA Novosti) - More than 20 people were killed in an accident at a nuclear submarine of the Russian Pacific Fleet, an aide to the Russian Navy commander said Sunday.

"More than 20 people were killed during sea trials as a result of accidental launch of the fire-extinguishing system at a nuclear submarine of the Pacific Fleet on November 8," Capt. 1st Rank Igor Dygalo said. "Shipyard workers and servicemen are among the victims."

He said the Navy commander-in-chief had ordered to stop the trials and the submarine was heading to a temporary base.

Dygalo said 208 people, including 81 servicemen were onboard the submarine.

First Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Kolmakov and Navy commander-in-chief, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky are heading for the site of the accident, Dygalo added. He did not specify the type and name of the submarine.

A source at the Russian Pacific Fleet told RIA Novosti that the accident had not damaged the submarine's reactor.

The most serious accident regarding Russian submarines occurred on August 12, 2000, when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank following an onboard torpedo explosion, killing all 118 crewmembers.

The story does not identify the sub, but the Nerpa seems like the likely candidate, as it is known to have been undergoing sea trials at the time.

Update: They are calling freon gas the cause of death.

The Cynicism Returns

2008-11-08T12:41:00.002-05:00

It's the 2nd half of the video that's worth watching. I don't know what the deal is with that prop sword he had on his back, but the officers clearly have more of a problem with him being there than the object he was carrying at first, because after someone removes it they continue to demand that he leaves, while he insists on being able to exercise his 1st Amendment rights. And he gets arrested for it.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Positive Signs from SCOTUS on Sonar

2008-11-07T13:40:00.004-05:00

It would appear that the Supreme Court has a bit of a pro-Navy leaning in the "Sailors v. Whales" case.

In a closely watched environmental case, justices Wednesday morning repeatedly sounded sympathetic to Pentagon officials who want to run large-scale Navy exercises off the Southern California coast. While the resulting underwater sonar storm disturbs marine mammals, it also helps prepare sailors for combat.

"I thought the whole point of the armed forces was to hurt the environment," Associate Justice Stephen Breyer said, half-jokingly. "Of course they're going to do harm."
***
Chief Justice John Roberts raised the specter of an undetected "North Korean diesel submarine to get (closer) to Pearl Harbor" if sailors couldn't train with sonar, and Associate Justice Samuel Alito asked pointedly if a judge could be considered "an expert on anti-submarine warfare." Alito added that there is "something incredibly odd" about a trial judge making a decision "contrary" to the Navy's requirements.

Even Breyer, who at times has been skeptical about other claims of executive authority, suggested that "an admiral (who) comes along with an affidavit that seems plausible" might outrank a "district judge who just says" the training should stop.
***
Associate Justice David Souter pressed Garre vigorously, insisting that the Navy may have brought the emergency circumstances on itself, but Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy added that a presidential declaration of military necessity "certainly must be given great weight."

Full story here.

Linked: Michael Crichton on the meaning of Science

2008-11-07T11:45:00.003-05:00

The late Crichton reminds us of that consensus is not science.

Let's be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results.

(From the Wall Street Journal)

A Respite from Cynicism

2008-11-05T11:33:00.004-05:00

We made history yesterday by electing our first (half-) black President, and whatever else this election means, all Americans should be proud of this accomplishment. Aside for South Africa under apartheid, I can't think of any racial minority heads of state (a few ethnic/nationality minorities according to a quick google search), so we've earned some real progressive cred that few if any of our critics could dream of having.

More importantly, we've turned a page on race relations here in the US. For too long, entire communities have felt like they were not part of the American dream because of their race and that the system was rigged against them. Many believed that the white majority valued whiteness more than ideas. These feelings created bitterness, and sometimes, violence. But now, a post-racial America is within our grasp. To be sure, the racial antagonists will be there to remind everyone of that tiny part of the path to equality that is still in front of us, trying to cultivate the anger they thrive on; but, the reality of a President Obama will illuminate the reality the antagonists don't want America to see. The reality, as shown as clear as can be by a white majority voting without regard to their race, that racism is no longer prevalent. The reality that the American Dream is accessible to anyone who applies him/herself to achieving it. The reality that the culture of victimhood is a dead end.

Radicals on the left, for too long, have told Americans that their country should be despised, and many Americans became corrupted by this expanding culture of toxicity and cynicism. Too many of us were not proud to be Americans.

So, instead of being angry or depressed about the outcome, I think we should enjoy this moment and make the most of it. Let us affirm our values, our optimism, and our faith in each other. We'll need them in the times ahead.

Election day: fraud, intimidation, and other irregularities watch

2008-11-04T13:37:00.006-05:00

Black Panthers block polling place doors; possible arrest

GOP pollwatchers thrown out of 12+ polling places in Philly.

100,000 Georgia Voters Also Registered in Either Ohio or Florida

Man Confesses Fraud to CNN; CNN says "that's OK"!

Accuracy of State Polls

2008-11-03T16:17:00.002-05:00

Something to keep in mind:

The first thing that jumps out at you if you read the state polls, is that there are a lot more polling groups doing polls at the state level, than at the national level. Also, most of the polling groups which do national polls, do not also do state polling, probably because it is expensive and difficult to try to cover all of the states on a consistent and timely basis. I have written before that national polls often focus on urban centers, which means that many of the states would require a functionally different methodology to work than what is used nationally. State polling tends to be smaller in respondent pool size, smaller in budget, and less frequent. Some polling groups only do one poll for the whole campaign, and it's common for even major groups to do a poll only once a month....
2006 was a bad year for republicans... it's not surprising that democratic party supporters gained a few points (usually 1 to 3 points) relative to 2004 in voter participation. So I went back and looked at voters by party affiliation, and compared those balances to this year's weighting by Survey USA. In thirty-six states, the party affiliation weights for democrats used by SUSA was five points or more higher than in 2006, a high-water mark for democrats. In twenty states, the party afiiliation weights for democrats used by SUSA was ten points or more higher than in 2006, and in eight states, the party affiliation weights used for democrats by SUSA was thirteen points or more higher than in 2006. Significant battleground states affected by this bias are as follows:

Pennsylvania: D+5 in 2006, SUSA using D+19, 15 point variance
Indiana: R+14 in 2006, SUSA using R+1, 13 point variance
Nevada: R+7 in 2006, SUSA using D+6, 13 point variance
Colorado: R+3 in 2006, SUSA using D+9, 12 point variance
Iowa: R+2 in 2006, SUSA using D+10, 12 point variance
Virginia: R+3 in 2006, SUSA using D+9, 12 point variance
Ohio: D+3 in 2006, SUSA using D+13, 10 point variance
Missouri: R+1 in 2006, SUSA using D+7, 8 point variance
North Carolina: R+1 in 2006, SUSA using D+5, 6 point variance
I've looked at the publicly available records on historical election participation, 2008 new voter registrations, and the Census information on these states, but I can find no valid reason for such large and arbitrary changes in political affiliation weightings. I would therefore submit that the models being used for many of the state polls have design flaws, which threaten the credibility of their published results.

Source.

A Sign of the Scale of Fraud?

2008-11-02T14:56:00.004-05:00

I hope not. But we'll never know until we get serious about stopping it.

From Election Journal

Found: 2000 people registered in Indiana and Florida from one county

November 2, 2008 by Soren

The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette compared the Allen County, Indiana voter file to the Florida voter file and found 2,000 probable overlaps with the same name and birthday:

The Journal Gazette compared the list of 222,000 active registered voters in Allen County with the list of more than 12 million registered voters in Florida and found that 2,172 registrations have the same first and last names, middle names or initials and the same birth dates and are listed as active, eligible voters in both places.

This could be very significant. Both Florida and Indiana are close states, and Allen County contains a significant portion of the votes in IN-03, where Congressman Mark Souder is in a close re-election race.

How many more of these are there? How many have voted?

Recall that when the Indiana voter-ID law went to Supreme Court, one of the plaintiffs was Faye Buis-Ewing, who was registered in both Indiana and Florida and was fraudulently claiming homestead tax exemptions in both states.

The Homestretch

2008-11-01T09:04:00.003-04:00

We're almost there, and like the rest of you I'll be happy when it's finally over. These things seem to be starting earlier every cycle, and this one's been draining.

I've got two good reads for you. I can't vouch for the validity of either, but they purport to be from sources within the Obama campaign. The message: don't trust the polls, this is closer than we think.

Here's #1: I can't say I care for a lot of the comments on the attached video, but there's a lot of editing going on there so hopefully it's not a representative sampling. Communist? Close enough. Muslim terrorist? No.

...and I'll post #2 directly (highlighting mine). If this is really from the inside, you can't get better strategic insight.

What you were never intended to know in this election

A Hillary staffer comes clean

Posted by: Anonymous_14

Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 04:52PM CDT

26 Comments

After a long and careful consideration of all the implications and possible consequences of my actions today, I have decided to go through with this in the hope that our country can indeed be guided into the right direction. First, a little personal background… I am a female grad student in my 20’s, and a registered Democrat. During the primaries, I was a campaign worker for the Clinton candidacy. I believed in her and still do, staying all the way to the bitter end. And believe me, it was bitter. The snippets you’ve heard from various media outlets only grazed the surface. There was no love between the Clinton and Obama campaigns, and these feelings extended all the way to the top. Hillary was no dope though, and knew that any endorsement of Obama must appear to be a full-fledged one. She did this out of political survival. As a part of his overall effort to extend an olive branch to the Clinton camp and her supporters, Obama took on a few Hillary staff members into his campaign. I was one such worker. Though I was still bitterly loyal to Hillary, I still held out hope that he would choose her as VP. In fact, there was a consensus among us transplants that in the end, he HAD to choose her. It was the only logical choice. I also was committed to the Democratic cause and without much of a second thought, transferred my allegiance to Senator Obama.

I’m going to let you in on a few secrets here, and this is not because I enjoy the gossip or the attention directed my way. I’m doing this because I doubt much of you know the true weaknesses of Obama. Another reason for my doing this is that I am lost faith in this campaign, and feel that this choice has been forced on many people in this country. Put simply, you are being manipulated. That was and is our job – to manipulate you (the electorate) and the media (we already had them months ago). Our goal is to create chaos with the other side, not hope. I’ve come to the realization (as the campaign already has) that if this comes to the issues, Barack Obama doesn’t have a chance. His only chance is to foster disorganization, chaos, despair, and a sense of inevitability among the Republicans. It has worked up until now. Joe the Plumber has put the focus on the issues again, and this scares us more than anything. Being in a position to know these things, I will rate what the Obama campaign already knows are their weak links from the most important on down.

1 – Hillary voters. Internal polling suggests that at best, we are taking 70-75% of these voters. Other estimates are as low as 60% in some areas – particularly Ohio and western PA. My biggest problem with this campaign’s strategy was the decision NOT to offer Hillary the VP slot. She was ready and able to take this on, and would have campaigned enthusiastically for it. This selection would have also brought virtually all of her supporters into the fold, and the Obama campaign knew it. Though I have no way of knowing this for certain, and I do admit that I am relying on internal gossip, Senator Obama actually went against the advice of his top advisors. They wanted him to choose her, but the only significant opposition to this within the campaign came from Barack and Michelle Obama. In short, he let personal feelings take precedence over what was the most logical thing to do. Biden, by the way, has been a disaster inside the campaign. Everyone cringes whenever he gives an interview, and he creates so many headaches as the campaign has to stay on their toes in order to disseminate information and spin whatever it was he was trying to say.

2 – Sarah Palin. Don’t believe what the media is telling you about how horrible a choice she was. Again, our internal polling suggest that though she has had a minimal impact on pulling disaffected Hillary Democrats to McCain, she has done wonders in mobilizing the base for McCain. Another thing – we were completely taken by surprise with her pick. In my capacity in the research department, I looked into the backgrounds of Leiberman, Romney, Pawlenty and Ridge, and prepared briefs. I don’t mind bragging that we had pretty good stuff on all of them. With Leiberman, the plan was to paint him as an erratic old-timer who didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing (pretty much a clone of McCain). In Romney, we had him pegged as an evil capitalist who cut jobs. Pawlenty was going to get the “Quayle treatment”, or more precisely: a pretty face, with no valid experience. Tom Ridge was going to be used to provide a direct link from McCain to Bush. As you can see, we were quite enamored of all of them. Then the unexpected happened – Sarah Palin. We had no clue as to how to handle her, and bungled it from the start. Though through our misinformation networks, we have successfully taken some of the shine off. But let there be no doubt. She remains a major obstacle. She has singlehanded solidified “soft” Republican support, mobilized the McCain ground game, and has even had some appeal to independents and Hillary voters. This is what our internal polling confirms.

3 – Obama’s radical connections. Standards operating procedure has been to cry “racism” whenever one of these has been brought up. We even have a detailed strategy ready to go should McCain ever bring Rev. Wright up. Though by themselves they are of minimal worth, taken together, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfelger, and now, Rashid Khalili, are exactly what the campaign does not need. The more focus on them, the more this election becomes a referendum on Obama. The campaign strategy from the very beginning was to make this election a referendum on Bush. Strategists have been banging their head on how successfully McCain has distanced himself from Bush. This has worked, and right now the tide is in his favor. People are taking a new look at Barack Obama, and our experience when this happens tells us this is not good news at all. When they take a look at him, one or more of these names are bound to be brought up. McCain has wisely not harped on this in recent weeks and let voters decide for themselves. This was a trap we set for him, and he never fully took the bait. Senator Obama openly dared him to bring up Ayers. This was not due to machismo on the part of Obama, but actually due to campaign strategy. Though McCain’s reference to Ayers fell flat in the last debate, people in the Obama campaign were actually disappointed that he didn’t follow through on it more and getting into it. Our focus groups found this out: When McCain brings these connections up, voters are turned off to him. They’d rather take this into consideration themselves, and when this happens, our numbers begin to tank.

4 – The Bradley Effect. Don’t believe these polls for a second. I just went over our numbers and found that we have next to no chance in the following states: Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire and Nevada. Ohio leans heavily to McCain, but is too close to call it for him. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa are the true “toss up states”. The only two of these the campaign feels “confident” in are Iowa and New Mexico. The reason for such polling discrepancy is the Bradley Effect, and this is a subject of much discussion in the campaign. In general, we tend to take a -10 point percentage in allowing for this, and are not comfortable until the polls give us a spread well over this mark. This is why we are still campaigning in Virginia and Pennsylvania! This is why Ohio is such a desperate hope for us! What truly bothers this campaign is the fact that some pollsters get up to an 80% “refuse to respond” result. You can’t possibly include these into the polls. The truth is, people are afraid to let people know who they are voting for. The vast majority of these respondents are McCain supporters. Obama is the “hip” choice, and we all know it.

As part of my research duties, I scour right wing blogs and websites to get somewhat of a “feel” as to what is being talked about on the other side. Much of it is nonsense, but there are some exceptions which give the campaign jitters. A spirited campaign has been made to infiltrate many pro-Hillary sites and discredit them. A more disorganized, but genuine effort has also been made to sow doubts among the unapologetically right wing sites such as redstate.com. Don’t you guys get it? This has been the Obama campaign’s sole strategy from the very beginning! The only way he wins is over a dispirited, disorganized, and demobilized opposition. This is how it has been for all of his campaigns. What surprises me is that everyone has fallen for it. You may point to the polls as proof of the inevitability of all of this. If so, you have fallen for the oldest trick in the book. How did we skew these polls, you might ask? It all starts with the media “buzz” which has been generated over the campaign. Many stories are generated on the powerful Obama ground game, and how many new voters were registered. None of this happens by coincidence. It is all part of the poll-skewing process. This makes pollsters change their mixes to reflect these new voters and tilt the mix more towards Democratic voters. What is not mentioned or reported on is not the “under-reported cell phone users or young voters” we hear so much about. What is underreported is you.

I changed my somewhat positive opinion of this campaign during the unfair and sexist campaign against Sarah Palin. I will never agree with her on the issues and will probably never vote for her, but I am embarrassed of what has happened. I can’t ignore our own hand in all of this. What I do know is that I will not be voting for Obama this time around. Treat that as you will.

It's dead, Jim UPDATED: NO, It's Not, I Need To Learn to Read

2008-11-01T02:44:00.004-04:00

UPDATED 9 DEC 2008: After reviewing the content of the linked story (below), I must retract this post. The attributed remarks do not substantiate Hawaii as the place of birth; they establish that Hawaii is in possession of a valid certificate but NOT its contents. The reporter does make an unattributed statement that the President-elect was born in Hawaii, but without attribution to an official this statement has zero significance (and is really, really bad reporting).

The Obama "natural born citizen" issue is over.

Hawaii officials have confirmed the validity of the birth certificate. Granted, I would have preferred this come out in a deposition under oath than in an AP story, but this is what we have, and considering the standing issue, this is as good as it's going to get. It'll have to do. So, it's over, and that's a good thing.

I urge other anti-Obama citizens to drop it.

And no, the Indonesia issue is not worth pursuing. As accomplished as Berg seems to be, the idea that you can define the meaning of "natural born citizen" in terms of statutory law is quite simply fallacious. You can surely use statutes to inform your interpretation of the constitution, but statutes cannot by themselves establish the meaning of the constitution. And if you think the Court is going to interpret the meaning of the phrase in anything but the broadest sense possible--which would easily include anyone who is a citizen at birth according to the 14th Amendment--you've simply lost touch with judicial and political reality.

It's over. This will be won or lost at the ballot box, as it should be. Cast your vote and accept the outcome. We're better than the Gore supporters of 2000.

About Time: USN Establishes Anti-Piracy Command

2008-10-30T16:05:00.002-04:00

Better late than never, I guess.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008
U.S. Navy establishes anti-piracy command

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has established a unit to fight Somalian pirates in the Gulf of Aden.
U.S. Central Command has formed the Maritime Security Patrol Area, comprised of air and naval assets, to battle pirates from Somalia. MPSA has been augmented by warships from allied countries and operations would be directed by Combined Task Force-150.
"A force of coalition navy warships will patrol the area, and aircraft will fly in the airspace above," Centcom said.
The new U.S. navy unit was launched in August 2008. MPSA was said to have monitored, tracked and boarded suspected pirate ships.

Freedom of Speech on the 'Net: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

2008-10-30T15:34:00.003-04:00

AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.

The revelations emerge as US tech giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.

The government has declared it will not let internet users opt out of the proposed national internet filter.

Source.

On the corporate side, this is encouraging. Yahoo and Google's past cooperation with China's censorship efforts was analogous to a farmer being paid to spread agricultural pests and believing the deal was profitable for him. It's good to see that they've pulled their heads out of their asses and realized that taking a stand on the principles that make their livihoods possible is, *gasp!* , good for business too!

Australia... I just don't know what's wrong with them. Haven't they learned curtailing freedom is not the answer?

Linked: European Transplants Worry about Socialism

2008-10-30T14:51:00.002-04:00

Credit goes to Uppity Woman, once again, for finding this article.

The protesters waving signs along College Avenue before Barrack Obama speak had more in common than just their opposition of the senator. Nearly half of them were foreign born.
***
“I lived under socialism and we were taxed hug amounts and it was going to people who did not work,” said Dijkstra, who moved to the United States in 2003. “That is part of the reason I fled home.”

Reminds me of an older post here.

Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.

Caught, But Not Prosecuted

2008-10-30T13:10:00.004-04:00

It looks like 13 people got caught not only committing "registration fraud," but actually cast fradulent ballots. And the prosecutor is letting them go.

Thirteen campaign workers for Barack Obama yesterday yanked their voter registrations and ballots in Ohio after being warned by a prosecutor that temporary residents can't vote in the battleground state.

***

On Thursday, [prosecutor] O'Brien cut a deal with 13 out-of-staters, including four from New York, who tossed out their already-cast ballots and admitted they didn't meet residency requirements.

Cut a deal? YGTBFKM!!! Unless this deal includes prison time, this prosecutor is abdicating his duty.

Let's Raise Taxes During a Recession!

2008-10-29T23:41:00.001-04:00

Linked: Obama Campaign Website Set Up To Accept Fictitious Names!

2008-10-26T13:27:00.004-04:00

Check this out. Looks like the Obama Campaign deliberately omitted standard safeguards to prevent donations under false names.

This simply should not, and could not, happen in any business or any campaign that is honestly trying to confirm the legitimacy of its donors. Furthermore, I don’t see how this could possibly happen without some kind of help from a credit card company. Card companies as a rule simply do not alow any business to process credit card transactions where the name on the card doesn’t match the purchaser’s name.

In short, under the current Obama contribution system setup, any eager friend from any country can contribute unlimited amounts of money by simply making up fake names and addresses.

And Obama’s system is set up to facilitate this fraud. This is truly scandalous.

Image: The author's credit card statement after donating under the names John Galt, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Bill Ayers. As you can see, all of the transactions were processed.

From Uppity Woman (who herself is relaying from No Quarter).

API and the Michelle Obama Tapes

2008-10-23T13:18:00.003-04:00

API's latest post says they need more time to go over the tapes to redact parts that may jeopardize national security?

What could Michelle Obama possibly have said that could jeopardize national security? Bullshit. Others have called shenanigans, and I'm inclined to agree. It's definitely put up or shut up time.

Thoughts on the Financial Crisis, From a Democrat

2008-10-22T23:50:00.002-04:00

And by far the best article I've read this campaign season.

I'm just glad that someone in the business has the courage to speak up when something is going horribly, horribly wrong.

H/T: Neptunus Lex

Thoughts On the Looming Citizenship Scandal

2008-10-20T13:54:00.003-04:00

Mountain Sage and America's Right have been following a lawsuit against Senator Obama and the DNC to force them to prove Obama is a "natural-born citizen" as required to be eligible for the office of President.

The lawsuit seems frivolous at first blush, although my perception did a 180 after reading that Obama filed a motion to stay discovery pending the outcome of the already-filed motion to dismiss. Staying discovery is somewhat extraordinary and is done to prevent undue expense; here, the most crucial discovery issue is simply turning over a birth certificate, which should be dispositive of one issue in the case, if not the whole thing. It's not about cost--they're acting like they have something to hide.

The suit is two-pronged. The first prong alleges the Senator is not a natural born citizen because he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. The second prong alleges that the Senator was adopted by an Indonesian stepfather and therefore lost his US citizenship; and, that he is currently either a naturalized citizen (not "natural born") or not a US citizen at all.

In a telephone interview that is about to be released to major media outlet, Michelle Obama allegedly admits that Obama was adopted, making the factual case for the 2nd prong.

My take on this is that only the first prong is constitutionally meritorious. The Constitution does not define terms like "natural born citizen" or "naturalized citizen," so the argument that if he was naturalized he cannot be natural born is illogical. As far as I'm aware, this has never been litigated (and I don't have Westlaw or convenient access to a law library, so I'm not looking it up!) so the courts will get to interpret the meaning of natural born citizen as they see fit. I see no reason to define it in such a way that a person loses his/her status as natural born if his/her citizenship changes, at especially if that change was due to the decision of parents and not the individual in question. I must admit, however, that I have not fully researched this, so if there are source materials explaining the rationale for the citizenship requirement, written contemporaneously with the founding, that preclude my interpretation, then I would probably change my position.

Of course, the first prong is cut-and-dry, and I'm rather afraid that Obama isn't turning over the "vault" birth certificate to resolve this issue one way or another BEFORE the election. I do NOT want to find out he's ineligible after he's already been elected, as that would be a Constitutional crisis of the highest order.

As an aside, from the reports I've seen about this Michelle Obama interview, there is more to it than the admission of the adoption. Mrs. Obama apparently goes on a rant about the citizenship allegations being a plot by white racists and about questioning his patriotism. It's hard to judge tone on the printed page, but I get the impression that the remarks were paranoid and inflammatory, and may prove to be more politically significant than the admission.

Related posts: McCain's Citizenship and Eligibility

This Ad Sums It Up Perfectly

2008-10-15T18:58:00.003-04:00

I just don't get how we are where we are right now.

This one's almost as good:

A Proposed Solution to Voter Fraud

2008-10-13T15:31:00.004-04:00

And it can be implemented quickly.

Start with the common sense answer: require ID, like a driver's license, that has a valid current address that matches the registration. Some states, like Indiana, already do this (as Sara pointed out).

But the objection to an ID/address requirement is the plight of the homeless, who don't have an address. We need a way to let them vote that doesn't allow nefarious individuals to vote multiple times by registering fictitious people, allowing the individual to go from polling station to polling station voting under fake names. We need to make sure the homeless can vote, but only vote once.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Iraqi voter.

Easy. Cheap. And we can do it in time for this election.

Happy Birthday!

2008-10-13T04:54:00.005-04:00

H/T to Eagle1 for the reminder.

Now, to send those apps off to NAVAIR...

Voter Fraud and Irregularities Watch Part II (updated)

2008-10-10T12:59:00.008-04:00

Missouri officials suspect fake voter registration

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states.
Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

1 VOTER, 72 REGISTRATIONS: 'ACORN PAID ME IN CASH & CIGS'

CLEVELAND - A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.

Local 2 Investigates Dead Voters

Voting records show Alexis' mom, Gloria Guidry, cast her ballot in person near her South Houston home."It was just very shocking, a little unsettling," said Alexis Guidry.It's unsettling because Gloria Guidry died of cancer 10 months before the March Primary.

Vote Early & Often? -- 105% of Indianapolis Residents Now Registered to Vote

So we have 644,197 people eligible to be registered in Marion County/Indianapolis, and 677,401 people registered. Congratulations go to Indianapolis for having 105% of its residents registered!

Ohio SECSTAE Is Violating Election Law

A federal judge ruled this evening that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is breaking federal law by not giving county elections boards the chance to determine whether new voter registrations are fraudulent.

Update
Convicted Felons on the Rolls in Florida

More than 30,000 Florida felons who by law should have been stripped of their right to vote remain registered to cast ballots in this presidential battleground state, a Sun Sentinel investigation has found.

Many are faithful voters, with at least 4,900 turning out in past elections.

Another 5,600 are not likely to vote Nov. 4 — they're still in prison.

Of the felons who registered with a party, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.

Two to one? Figures.

Update 2:

CBS Investigates ACORN

Joseph Borges, the registrar of voters in Bridgeport, Conn., says his office has been overwhelmed by bogus forms filled out with thousands of fake and duplicate names - two boxes alone packed with non-existent addresses - all submitted by ACORN.

Since June, election officials in at least a dozen states have raised red flags over more than 10,000 voter registration forms filed by ACORN. For example, in one Ohio county ACORN registered the same person 17 times.

ACORN Registers a 7-year Old

The Connecticut girl is 11 years too young - and nobody in her family knows how she ended up on a voter registration form submitted by ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

"Massive Fraud" in PA has completely compromised the integrity of the system

Retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Sandra Newman says that she is "not confident we can get a fair election" in the state come November.

...ACORN, submitted over 252,595 registrations to the Philadelphia County Election Board" with 57, 435 rejected for faulty information. "Most of these registrations were submitted by ACORN, and rejected due to fake social security numbers, incorrect dates of birth, clearly fraudulent signatures, addresses that do not exist, and duplicate registrations. In one case, a man was registered to vote more than 15 times since the Primary election."

Obama A Member of a Socialist Party in 1996??

2008-10-08T22:10:00.004-04:00

Politically Drunk found a newsletter from the socialist "New Party" which stated that Obama was a member of their party at the time he was elected to the Illinois Senate. Source.

I'm going to hold off judgment until this is run down by closer to mainstream sources, but I'd be surprised if it turned out to be false.

The "new party" advocates an end to private donations in election campaigns, a government takeover of the banking system, socialized health care, "[f]ull employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal "social wage" to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training," and ending unilateral military interventions.

H/T: Mountain Sage

Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).

The Truth Is Out There

2008-10-08T12:02:00.002-04:00

TheMouthPeace has released another video. The message: Don't trust the media. Don't trust the politicians. Do your own research. And TMP has a few Google suggestions for you.

The Campaign According to BSG

2008-10-07T23:04:00.005-04:00

It's hard not to notice the parallels between some of the key people in this election campaign and many BSG characters.

Senator Barack Obama=Gaius Baltar
Hope. Change We Can Believe In.
A relative newcomer to politics, Baltar wants to run on people's hopes, not their fears as his opponent Laura Roslin is doing. Baltar capitalizes on the social conditions of the time to seize an issue which resonates with the people--permanent settlement on the planet New Caprica. Obama uses the unpopularity of President Bush and the financial crisis to attract voters. Both Baltar and Obama are intellectual heavyweights, and have the ego to go with it. Baltar believes he's the chosen one, destined for greatness and an instrument of God. Obama believes he is our savior as well. Both men have been very careless about who they associate with and who they get advice from. Both men are chaismatic leaders, and very popular with the ladies.

Rev. Jerimiah Wright = Number Six

Barack Obama receives his spiritual advice from the Rev. Jerimiah Wright, who preaches that America's is evil and that it is responsible for causing the attacks of 11 Sept. 2001. Baltar's spiritual guidance comes from an apparition of Number Six, who tells Baltar that humans were responsible for their exile from Kobol because of their barbarism and brutality. Six inspires Baltar to enter politics and helps him discover God's plan for him.

William Ayers = Tom Zarek
William Ayers and Tom Zarek are both former domestic terrorist who now seek to influence politics through other means. In both cases, the other means has involved grooming a presidential candidate.

President George Bush = Admiral Helena Cain

Both are very strong leaders who respond forcefully in a crisis. Both seek to channel anger into the warfighting effort. Both are prone to excess in the use of executive power and are known to bend the rules. More specifically, Bush allowed Kaleed Sheik Mohammed to be transferred to a jurisdiction outside the US so that he could be tortured to gain intelligence; and this was successful. Cain ordered the torture of her Cylon prisoner, Gina, to get intelligence; Gina became suicidal enough to give up critical intelligence about the nature of the Cylon Ressurection Ship.

Governor Sarah Palin = Lee Adama

Both are bright, promising young leaders who rise through the ranks quickly. Palin quickly progressed from city councilwoman to mayor to Governor, and may soon become Vice President. Lee Adama started his military career as an arrogant pilot, but was quickly given command of the Galactica's air wing and went on to command the Battlestar Pegasus. Governor Palin is best known for taking on corruption in her own party, and has already defied running mate John McCain on drilling in ANWAR and pulling the campaign out of Michigan. Similarly, Lee Adama has a strong moral compass, openly defying President Roslin by committing her to hold elections:

Apollo: Madam President, with respect, you're serving out the remainder of President Adar's term. When that term is up in seven months, the law says there's an election. I only committed you to obeying the law. Roslin: You are not authorized to make any deal... Adama: You sound like some kind of a lawyer... Apollo: I swore an oath... to defend the articles. The articles say there's an election in seven months. Now, if you're telling me we're throwing out the law, then I'm not a Captain, you're not a Commander and you are not the President. And I don't owe either of you a damned explanation for anything.

Lee Adama went on to make enemies of both his father and President Roslin by participating in the defense of Gaius Baltar.

Senator John McCain = Admiral William Adama

Both are veteran pilots of a prior war that now find themselves setting policy and strategy. Although fierce and determined, there are some lines they will not cross to accomplish their missions. McCain opposes waterboarding and similar arguably cruel, inhuman and degrading forms of interrogation. Adama talked Roslin out of stealing an election and often acts as her conscience, and defied Admiral Cain when she convicted two of Galactica's crew for murder (despite the fact that the "victim" had been raping a prisoner at the time he was killed). Adama and McCain also both have failed first marriages.

Voter Fraud and Irregularites Watch

2008-10-07T19:19:00.003-04:00

Stories about possible fraud are adding up. I'll periodically post new topics under this tag to create a sort of link-archive of potential fraud or other irregularities.

Older links:

Bad Voter Applications Found
14 Sep 2008

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.
The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN...

1,100 Voter Cards Suspect County Clerk Notified N.M., Federal Officials
17 Sept 2008

More than 1,000 new voter registration cards received by the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office in advance of the November general election might be frauds, the county clerk said Tuesday.
Maggie Toulouse Oliver said she has notified prosecutors in state and federal law enforcement agencies about the problem.

And today's...

ACORN office in Vegas raided in voter-fraud probe
7 Oct 2008

A Nevada secretary of state's office spokesman said Tuesday that investigators are looking for evidence of voter fraud at the office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.

No one was at the ACORN office when state agents arrived with a search warrant and began carting records and documents away.

Secretary of State spokesman Bob Walsh says ACORN is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names.
The raid comes two months after state and federal authorities formed a task force to pursue election-fraud allegations in Nevada.

The Record Obama Doesn't Want You to Know About

2008-10-06T18:13:00.003-04:00

Slowly the facts are starting to accumulate about the period of time between Obama's college years and the beginning of his term in the Illinois Senate.

One of his efforts was apparently a campaign to undermine the constitution through paid-for law review articles, which, he hoped, would have created a result opposite of what was reached in Heller this summer (which he now claims to support).

During Obama’s tenure, the Joyce Foundation board planned and implemented a program targeting the Supreme Court. The work began five years into Obama’s directorship, when the Foundation had experience in turning its millions into anti-gun “grassroots” organizations, but none at converting cash into legal scholarship.

The plan’s objective was bold: the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment.

Joyce’s directors found a vulnerable point. When judges cannot rely upon past decisions, they sometimes turn to law review articles. Law reviews are impartial, and famed for meticulous cite-checking. They are also produced on a shoestring. Authors of articles receive no compensation; editors are law students who work for a tiny stipend.

In 1999, midway through Obama’s tenure, the Joyce board voted to grant the Chicago-Kent Law Review $84,000, a staggering sum by law review standards. The Review promptly published an issue in which all articles attacked the individual right view of the Second Amendment.
In a breach of law review custom, Chicago-Kent let an “outsider” serve as editor; he was Carl Bogus, a faculty member of a different law school. Bogus had a unique distinction: he had been a director of Handgun Control Inc. (today’s Brady Campaign), and was on the advisory board of the Joyce-funded Violence Policy Center.

Bogus solicited only articles hostile to the individual right view of the Second Amendment, offering authors $5,000 each. But word leaked out, and Prof. Randy Barnett of Boston University volunteered to write in defense of the individual right to arms. Bogus refused to allow him to write for the review, later explaining that “sometimes a more balanced debate is best served by an unbalanced symposium.” Prof. James Lindgren, a former Chicago-Kent faculty member, remembers that when Barnett sought an explanation he “was given conflicting reasons, but the opposition of the Joyce Foundation was one that surfaced at some time.” Joyce had bought a veto power over the review’s content.

H/T: The Real Barack Obama

A Time To Choose

2008-10-04T02:34:00.003-04:00

The last few days, I've been griping to friends and family about the possibility of a sweeping defeat--not just the White House, but the Congress to, and what that would mean. My frustration, I told them, stemmed from the feeling that our backs were against the wall. Not so for the other side. For one thing, even if socialist policies weren't implemented on the national level, they could it could still be done on the state level. That way, we could choose based on our own beliefs whether we wanted to be a part of a socialist state or a free state. Consent of the governed is, of course, one of our fundamental principles. But they want to do it on a federal level, to cram it down our throats (or more accurately, to take our labor and property from us) whether we like it or not. So they give us no such option. And if the United States doesn't flip over to European-style socialism, they still have other foreign states to choose from, if that's what they really believe in. Again, if we don't hold the line, we have no such option.

If freedom dies here, that's it. Game over.

I was poking around the intertubes and found that someone else had expressed this same view, but much more eloquently. I shouldn't have been surprised who it was.

[I]t has been said if we lose that war, and in doing so lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.
Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.

I know we've still got a month to go and a lot can change in that time. We'll probably even see a change in the polls thanks to the debate undoing some of the media spin over the last few weeks. But I can't help the feeling that even if we win this time, we've still lost. Because as much as socialism has been discredited, we the People, collectively, no longer have the character necessary to be free men and women. If we did, then promises about what the government could "provide" to us would not win votes. If we did, then we wouldn't have passed a "bail-out" of businesses without so much as having a public discussion about why, and which, businesses had a legitimate claim to taxpayers' money.

I don't want to abandon all hope just yet, but I don't want to paint a naively optimistic view of the future, either. A permanent socialist majority is a possibility in the medium-term. And if that were to come to pass, it would mark a fundamental change in the nature of our Republic.

But it's not lost yet.

Grace and Class

2008-10-03T21:50:00.001-04:00

Right up there with the flags incident.

What turns people into this?

H/T: Neptunus Lex

Palin/Biden Debate and Public Expectations

2008-10-03T14:23:00.004-04:00

CNN's Navarette had this to say about the debate:

As the debate wrapped up, I was pulling into a parking lot for an evening speech to a local Democratic club. The person who greeted me shook his head and suggested that Palin had faked-out her critics by weaving a caricature of an airhead. Then, underestimated, the lipstick-wearing pit bull mauled poor Joe Biden.
Could be. The conversation brought to mind the classic film, "The Hustler." The late Paul Newman pretends to be dreadful at pool, and then, with his mark on the hook, clears the table.
Don't look now, Democrats. But you've been hustled.

We've also seen a trend of early polls from both left-leaning CNN and right-leaning FNC (and I'm sure many others) showing that Palin exceeded expectations. But, what I disagree on is this "hustle" notion. Expectations weren't low because Palin hustled anyone. Expectations were low because there was a deliberate propaganda effort in the MSM which was successful, I'm sure, "beyond their wildest expectations." So successful that even voices on the right were bamboolzed.

The bottom line is that the picture of Palin that's been painted in the MSM has been very, very different from the real Palin we see on live, unscripted, unedited TV. If that isn't proof positive that we're not being given the news straight, I don't know what is. The fact of the matter is that the MSM has collectively engaged in a deliberate effort to destroy her in any way they can. Early efforts were not very well thought out--they got too personal and it backfired, fueling her popularity. But, once the MSM caught their breath and thought things through, they shifted to a strategy of re-defining her identity. She would no longer be the immensely popular maverick governor with accomplishments in ethics reform and energy infrastructure. She would be the radically right wing, dangerously ignorant no-nothing. And to accomplish that, lies were circulated about book banning, CNN lied about the authority of commanders-in-chief of the National Guard, and the press pulled a bait-and-switch gag to try to fool people into thinking she forced rape victims to pay for evidentiary medical exams. As if that wasn't bad enough, they deliberately edited the interview with Charlie Gibson to protray her as unknowledgable and ultra-right wing. And over the last week, instead of seeing the entire Couric interview, we're being fed spittets of Palin being caught in gotcha moments (which I might add, were bad questions to begin with... "tell us what McCain has done to regulate Fannie May besides the bill he sponsored to regulate Fannie Mae? How the hell can you ask a question and demand that the response not include the answer!?!?!). How do you suppose they decide which clips are newsworthy and which are not, hmmm? And then the comedians took over to take the message to the masses of people that don't watch the news on a regular basis.

The scary part is that it worked. Not against committed Dem's, we know where they stand and that's fine. But it's scary that the middle bought it too, because by now they should know that they can't get their news from the network news, CNN, or MSNBC and expect to get the whole picture. (Nor should they believe they could get both sides all the time from FNC, but in this instance, they would have.) And it's scary because they started to change conservative minds as well. For the people that weren't too worried about the power of the slanted MSM in the age of FNC and the internet--myself included--we have been proven horribly, horribly wrong.

They've succeeded in convincing America that someone isn't who she really is by manipulating the information we have. Perception has become unhinged from reality to serve a political end.

I suppose next thing we'll be convinced of is that "we are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia."

Straight, But Not Narrow (Minded)

2008-10-01T15:59:00.003-04:00

Senator McCain has become the first GOP nominee to be interviewed by a gay publication. As someone who is dismayed about the degree of influence the religious right has on the GOP and our politics as a whole, I find this development to be quite refreshing.

The Senator does try to walk a fine line and equivocates at times, but he also articulates some very clear principles, such as the Federalist principle that family law issues should be left to the states, that people should not be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, that sex-ed should be based on scientific data of what works, that "criminal sentences for terrible crimes should [not] be longer because of the views of the perpetrator or the identity of the victim," and that courts should not legislate from the bench.

I think the most significant aspect of the interview is that it tries to build a bridge of inclusiveness between the straight majority GOP community and the LGBT community, by emphasizing common values. In particular, I think the best part of the interview would be better directed at the social conservatives who seem to believe that gay people are morally inferior to "good Christians":

I had the humbling experience of speaking at Mark Bingham’s funeral after the attacks on Sept. 11. Mark had supported me during the 2000 campaign. Unfortunately, I barely knew him, but our country learned about him after 9-11. He was one of the heroes on 9-11 who tried to retake control of United Flight 93. His efforts along with the other brave patriots could have saved hundreds of lives. I honor and respect Mark. Memories of his sacrifice and the other victims from 9-11 motivate me everyday to make sure we keep our nation safe from the terrorists who want to attack our way of life because freedom is a threat to their message of hate.

Here’s what I said during his eulogy:

I love my country, and I take pride in serving her. But I cannot say that I love her more or as well as Mark Bingham did, or the other heroes on United Flight 93 who gave their lives to prevent our enemies from inflicting an even greater injury on our country. It has been my fate to witness great courage and sacrifice for America's sake, but none greater than the selfless sacrifice of Mark Bingham and those good men who grasped the gravity of the moment, understood the threat, and decided to fight back at the cost of their lives. (The full eulogy is available at tampabaycoalition.com/files/0921McCainPR.htm)

This is the civil rights issue of our time, and the GOP needs to get on the right side of it.

Arming Yourself With Facts

2008-10-01T08:36:00.005-04:00

The Mountain Sage has taken the time to link each and every article in Burning Down the House. Check it out. H/T: The Real Barack Obama.

UPDATE: Sage has also provided links to all the articles listed in another MouthPeace video.

As a bonus, here's a short history lesson from FNC, posted to the same site.

Friends of Freedom

2008-09-30T17:41:00.004-04:00

OI will be monitoring which sites are taking down political videos like "Burning Down the House" to see where free speech is valued by the site owners and where it is not.

I want to be very clear on this point. This is in essence, not a free speech issue per se, but a property issue. Sites like YouTube are the property of their owners, who have the right to decide how their property is used.

But, the internet users of the world can and should exercise their "dollar votes"/"site-counter votes" on forums and sites where censorship is not tolerated. We just need to know where those sites are and choose to use them instead politically censored sites like YouTube.

As of the time of posting, I'm aware of two sites that have posted Burning Down the House that have not deleted it. They are LiveLeak and DailyMotion.
I'll be watching to see if that changes.

UPDATE: MetaCafe has a censored version of the MouthPeace video. They didn't approve of the language in "Money for Nothing." Well, neither to I, but I can't approve of this form of censorship either. They differ from YouTube in degree, but not in kind.

OUTRAGE: Political Blackout by YouTube (Financial Crisis Part V)

2008-09-30T14:45:00.004-04:00

It was only a matter of time, I suppose.

For all the talk about how the internet was a bastion of free speech, the truth is that too few people own the primary public forums on the net. Which means those forums are their personal property and are good for free speech for only as long as the owners allow them to be.

The outstanding political infomercial, posted on this site and elsewhere around the internet, has been removed by YouTube. As of last night, only V1 was deleted; but V2 and V3 have since been removed as well. YouTube claims that these were deleted due to copyright claims over the soundtrack used.

Let's test that theory. Right now.

The soundtrack of the video is as follows:
Dire Straits--Money for Nothing
Tom Petty--Free Falling
Talking Heads-Burning Down the House
Bonnie Tyler--Holding Out for a Hero
AC/DC--Money Talks
Remy Zero-- Save Me
Survivor--Eye of the Tiger

The following videos, as of 1400hrs CDT 9/30/2008, were found on YouTube. All of the examples I'm posting are apparently unauthorized uses, such as DVP rips, Guitar Hero hacks, amatuer music videos, et. cetra.

Money for nothing:

Free Falling

Burning Down the House

Holding Out for a Hero

Money Talks

Save Me

Eye of the Tiger

YouTube is 0/7. Quite simply, YouTube's argument holds no water.

As for the legal side of this, this is called Fair Use.

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

The copyright argument is just a cover for censorship. There was a video spreading on the internet that presented facts that, if known by the average voter, could hurt Obama's chances of winning the election. So it was silenced. It's that simple.

Unless we do something very quickly about who controls the public fora in this country, our democracy will be a fig leaf as well.

PS: Here's the link to the video on another site: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6wxmr_burning-down-the-house-what-caused_news

Let Them Die? (Financial Crisis Part IV)

2008-09-30T14:20:00.003-04:00

The news of the week is that the bailout failed. And interestingly enough, it seems that the reason the bailout failed was that millions of motivated voters jammed the phone and fax lines of their representatives, demanding that the bailout not be passed. That impresses the hell out of me--maybe the voters just saved us big time.

I'm not an economist, so I'm not entirely clear on what we can do to get out of this mess. To a large degree, I have to defer to the judgment of others. But, as Neptunus Lex so succinctly put it:

Does it occur to anyone else that the only people qualified to really explain to us the consequences of the “credit crisis” - not the politicians who dither, not the newscasters that blather - but the ones who really understand the consequences are 1) the ones who got us here in the first place, and 2) the ones who have the most to gain from our intervention saving their bacon.

Color me a Luddite, but if the same doctors that sent me into toxic shock assured me that only they could fix me, given another $700 billion, I’d be a little skeptical.

Nevertheless, I still can't write my own recovery plan. My instinct, though, is that a controlling principle of any whatever we do must be "the stupid will be punished." Any company that made or bought up these high-risk loans (other than, perhaps, the ones that only did so because of government-arm twisting) deserves everything bad that happens to them. They deserve to fail. Let them die. What I would want from a recovery package would be to protect the companies that are only in the situation they're in because they were forced to.

And at least one guy who knows a few things seems to agree:

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.
Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.
In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.
Thoughtful advocates of the bailout might concede this perspective, but they argue that a bailout is necessary to prevent economic collapse. According to this view, lenders are not making loans, even for worthy projects, because they cannot get capital. This view has a grain of truth; if the bailout does not occur, more bankruptcies are possible and credit conditions may worsen for a time.
Talk of Armageddon, however, is ridiculous scare-mongering. If financial institutions cannot make productive loans, a profit opportunity exists for someone else. This might not happen instantly, but it will happen.

H/T: Neptunus Lex

Buring Down the House (Responsibility for the Financial Crisis Part III)

2008-09-29T06:24:00.009-04:00

I came across some amazing videos today.

This video walks you through the origins of the financial crisis, from its foundation to the explosion, complete with a clever soundtrack including Freefalling and Money Talks. It includes the efforts in 2003 and 2005 that I posted about earlier, but it puts all the pieces of the puzzle in place better than I ever could. This is a must see for any informed voter, and I highly encourage people watching it to pause it to read the posted articles, take notes for Google follow-ups, and to do everything in their power to see to it that others see this video as well.

This one is some old C-Span coverage getting people on the record--some sounding the alarm against Fannie and Freddie; others sticking their heads in the sand.

And finally, here's a link to McCain's Senate Testimony in support of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

UPDATE: As of Tuesday 30 SEPT 2008, all three versions of the video infomercial above have been removed by YouTube. I found another copy here

Burning Down The House - What Caused Our Economic Crisis ?
Uploaded by Ibn-Khaldun

Newport News Flutag!

2008-09-28T06:26:00.002-04:00

Instead of getting some shuteye, I opted to stay up late watching the Military Channel and caught a show on carrier construction. The best part: the catapult tests. They take these massive red sleds that weigh as much as combat-loaded aircraft and shoot them off the deck right into the water. It looks just like the Red Bull Flutag, except much faster. And surprisingly funny.

This is the shortest video I could find that features the test for CVN-77.

Killing Speedboats

2008-09-26T16:47:00.003-04:00

The USS Boxer just got an upgrade for its old-school SeaSparrows, integrating an EO/IR camera into the fire-control system. The camera allows the crew to ID small craft out to 11nm, and the FCR was able to illuminate a 7-foot RRIB well enough to get 3/3 direct hits at 4nm. Essentially, this means we're using a SAM as an ATGM. That's not at all unreasonable, especially considering the apparent difficulty the Russians had dealing with a swarm of Georgian gunboats on the Black Sea. I would hope the EO/IR camera system would be equally capable of integration with VLS ESSMs as well.

It does bring up an interesting question though. We're loading up ships of all sizes now with .50cals, manually aimed 25mm chain guns, EO/IR directed remote gun mount chain guns, and we've even given the Phalanx an upgrade for use against small craft. It seems we've got those bases covered, especially now that we're using guided missiles at short ranges (which, after the Black Sea skirmish, I think is preferable to gun mounts).

Why then is the entire LCS ASUW module designed to blow up speedboats? We don't need a module specifically designed for this task; it's part of the expected capability of all our ships. In my mind, an ASUW package should give it the capabilty to take on other warships, something that, again, I think should be part of the expected capability of our ships, independent of any mission module. If we're going to have SeaSparrows (and maybe ESSMs) to blow up speedboats, then it seems even more senseless for the LCS's primary ASUW package to be the NLOS/Netfires missile system. The only added capabilty the NLOS/NetFires has over a speedboat-killing SeaSparrow is over-the-horizon capability. That isn't all that significant, because ROE is going to require a ship to fire warning shots, sound the horn, etc. to warn the craft off before they kill it. So the over-the-horizon engagements would only be against craft you can tell are hostile by looking at them from the UAV's IR camera. Things like gunboats, FACs, and corvettes. News flash: we already have an over-the-horizon weapon for these guys. It's called the Harpoon. It's already receiving an upgrade to enhance its littoral targeting capability--include with that an IR capability (like it's cousin, the SLAMM-ER) to keep it ahead of the stealth-ship game and you're golden.

I just don't get it. With ESSM and Harpoon, you can protect yourself from the littoral ASCM threat, deal with FACs and warships OTH, and still deal with the small craft swarming threat. What sense does it make to sacrifice meaningful AAW and ASUW capability just so you can blow up a speedboat a bit futher out than you otherwise could--a capability unlikely to ever be utilized?

It seems to be the NLOS/NetFires system would be better utilized in a Strike mission module, to attack small targets ashore. (You know, like counterfire on the C-802 battery that just fired a salvo at you. Assuming, of course, you have the air defense capabilty to survive that salvo.)

Real Pirates Steal Tanks? YGTBFKM!?!

2008-09-25T23:55:00.001-04:00

Via CNN:

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- The Foreign Ministry says pirates have seized a Ukrainian-operated ship off Somalia.
The ministry says the Faina was sailing with 21 people on board under the Belize flag, though it is operated by Ukrainian managing company Tomax Team Inc.

The ministry says in a statement that the ship's captain reported being surrounded by three boats of armed men Thursday afternoon.
The ship's passengers include 17 Ukrainian citizens including the captain, as well as three Russians and one Latvian citizen.
The ministry had no information on the ship's cargo. But the Interfax news agency cited an unnamed source as saying the ship was loaded with about 30 T-72 tanks and spare parts for them.

How long until someone takes Eyl down?

Wars and Rumors of Wars

2008-09-24T13:50:00.003-04:00

There are two emerging sensitive situations worth following in the days or weeks to come.

First, the Gulf of Aden piracy situation is has taken a disturbing twist. Apparently, an Iranian freighter sailing from China to the Netherlands arrived around Aden a few days early and was scheduled to transit the Suez a few days later than it should have needed. In addition to whatever planned detour it was taking, it was captured by Somali pirates and taken to Eyl.

Within days, pirates who had boarded the ship developed strange health complications, skin burns and loss of hair. Independent sources tell The Long War Journal that a number of pirates have also died. "Yes, some of them have died. I do not know exactly how many but the information that I am getting is that some of them have died," Andrew Mwangura, Director of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Program, said Friday when reached by phone in Mombasa.

The syndicate set the ship's ransom at $2 million and the Iranian government provided $200,000 to a local broker "to facilitate the exchange." Iran refutes that it agreed to the price and has paid any money to the pirates. Nevertheless, after sanctions were applied to IRISL on September 10, Osman says, the Iranians told the pirates that the deal was off. "They told the pirates that they could not come because of the presence of the U.S. Navy." The region is patrolled by the multinational Combined Taskforce 150, which includes ships from the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

In a strange twist, the Iranian press claims that the U.S. has offered to pay a $7 million bribe to the pirates to "receive entry permission and search the vessel." Officials in the Pentagon and the Department of State approached for this story refused to comment on the situation. Somali officials would also not comment on any direct U.S. involvement but one high-level official in the Puntland government told The Long War Journal "I can say the ship is of interest to a lot of people, including Puntland."

Thin. But worth watching. H/T: Galrahn.

The other development is at the Lebanon-Syrian border.

Syria has massed thousands of troops along its border with northern Lebanon in what officials in Beirut fear is a prelude to the first incursion since Syrian forces pulled out three years ago.
Although Damascus insists that its forces are conducting an antismuggling operation, the Lebanese Government is eyeing the moves with unease, believing that the unusual scale of the deployment has more to do with tensions between the two countries over recent sectarian clashes in northern Lebanon.

H/T: Small Wars Journal

Linked: Palin's UN Speech...

2008-09-22T13:24:00.002-04:00

...from the event she was un-invited from because Clinton had a hissy-fit.

Link.

The Bill that Would Have Averted Financial Disaster

2008-09-22T12:52:00.004-04:00

Last week, I mentioned a Bush administration proposal in 2003 to clamp down on Fannie and Freddy. This week, Bloomberg reports on a 2005 Fannie/Freddie reform bill that was shot down was supported by Republicans in committee but kept from a full vote in the Senate by Democrats.

Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''
What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.
But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

And the icing on the cake:

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.
Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.

Well, folks, the facts are in. We know how we got here. We know who tried to fix it, and who tried to keep it broken (and we know he was paid off to do so). So the only question now is, why the fuck are Obama's numbers climbing from the Wall Street news? Why is the "failed Bush policies"/"failed economic philosophy" argument winning with the public when the facts say exactly the opposite?

2 out of 3 ain't bad (I hope)

2008-09-19T13:15:00.004-04:00

The Navy unveiled the 3rd and final mission module for the LCS yesterday--the ASW module. While many details still need to be filled in (or perhaps won't be, because this kind of stuff tends to be more classified than others), my first impression is very positive.

Although the package accepted yesterday probably does not have everything to be included in the final module, here's what should be there when it's done:
1 MH-60R
1 Fire Scout Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
2 USV's
2 Remote Multimission Vehicles (semi-submersible)

The USVs will either have a sonar similar to a dipping sonar or a towed array. The RMMVs are meant to work in tandem with one using active sonar and the other listening for returns (bi-static). The UAV is a data relay that allows the USVs and RMMVs to operate beyond the horizon from the LCS mothership.

All in all, quite brilliant. It creates a web extending outward from the ship, without using expendible sonobouys (which can get expensive if you use a lot of them); and, it allows the use of active transmissions without giving away the location of the mothership. It's a quantum leap forward in ASW capability, both in terms of effectiveness and survivability.

Well, survivability against torpedoes anyways. I'd feel better about this thing if it had the ESSM and a few Harpoons, but apparently being able to blow up a speedboat is good enough these days.

The Russian Crossroads

2008-09-19T13:15:00.003-04:00

For those of us that missed it (and yes, that included me; I had to watch it a day late on grainy State Dept. video), Secretary Rice gave a major speech on Russia yesterday, which might be considered something of an epilogue on the war in Georgia. It's worth reading/watching in its entirety, but here is a summary and some highlights:

Rice lamented an emerging pattern of behavior by the Russians:

I’m referring, among other things, to Russia’s intimidation of its sovereign neighbors, its use of oil and gas as a political weapon, its unilateral suspension of the CFE Treaty, its threat to target peaceful nations with nuclear weapons, its arms sales to states and groups that threaten international security, and its persecution – and worse – of Russian journalists, and dissidents, and others.

The picture emerging from this pattern of behavior is that of a Russia increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad.

Rice admitted that Georgia had been foolish in responding to S. Ossetian shelling with an offensive operation; however, this did not amount to fault:

But Russia’s leaders used this as a pretext to launch what, by all appearances, was a premeditated invasion of its independent neighbor. Indeed, Russia’s leaders had laid the groundwork for this scenario months ago – distributing Russian passports to Georgian separatists, training and arming their militias, and then justifying the campaign across Georgia’s border as an act of self-defense.

Regarding the aftermath of the war, Rice said an EU force of peacekeepers was ready to deploy to the separatist regions, but Russia has refused to allow international monitors and NGO's into the regions, "despite ongoing militia violence and retribution against innocent Georgians." (Do recall that a lack of a neutral peacekeeping force in the regions was one of the principal causes of the war.) Predictably, there was no tough talk about restoring Georgia's borders; only a softly-spoken line about hoping that the provinces will be turned back peacefully at some point in the future.

Rice also commented about Russia's lame "how would you like it if our military assets were in the Carri bean" attempt to punish us for having warships (well, really, just one "warship"--a DDG--and a command ship and a coast guard cutter) in the Black Sea. She said Russia was free to associate with countries in the Western hemisphere...

But we are confident that our ties with our neighbors – who long for better education and better health care and better jobs, and better housing – will in no way be diminished by a few, aging Blackjack bombers, visiting one of Latin America’s few autocracies, which is itself being left behind by an increasingly peaceful and prosperous and democratic hemisphere.

Rice also hit the familiar points about Russia isolating itself from world economic institutions, and how this war only hurt them without accomplishing any "enduring strategic objective." The language of liberalism appeared frequently, especially with regard to globalisation and democracy.

Moving onto the more strategically consequential parts, Rice noted an apparent shift in the world-view of the Russians from the liberal, globalised outlook to a rather backward looking view; which she impliedly attributed to Putin.

But perhaps the worst fallout for Moscow is that its behavior has fundamentally called into question whose vision of Russia is really guiding that country. There was a time recently when the new president of Russia laid out a positive and forward-looking vision of his nation’s future.

This was a vision that took into account Russia’s vulnerabilities: its declining population and heartbreaking health problems; its failure thus far to achieve a high-tech, diversified economy like those to Russia’s west and increasingly to Russia’s east; and the disparity between people’s quality of life in Moscow, and St. Petersburg, and in a few other cities – and those in Russia’s countryside.
This was a vision that called for strengthening the rule of law, and rooting out corruption, and investing in Russia’s people, and creating opportunities not just for an elite few, but for all Russian citizens to share in prosperity.

This was a vision that rested on what President Medvedev referred to as the “Four I’s”: investment, innovation, institutional reform, and infrastructure improvements to expand Russia’s economy. And this was a vision that recognized that Russia cannot afford a relationship with the world that is based on antagonism and alienation.

This is especially true in today’s world, which increasingly is not organized around polarity – multi-, uni-, and certainly not bi-. In this world, there is an imperative for nations to build a network of strong and unique ties to many influential states.

And that is a far different context than much of the last century, when U.S. foreign policy was, frankly, hostage to our relationship with the Soviet Union. We viewed everything through that lens, including our relations with other countries. We were locked in a zero-sum, ideological conflict. Every state was to choose sides, and that reduced our options.

Well, thankfully, that world is also gone forever, and it’s not coming back. As a result, the United States is liberated to pursue a multidimensional foreign policy. And that is what we are doing.

This view, one might assume, is what leads to the differences in how Russia and the West view the role of the NATO alliance. Rice described our view of NATO as:

With the end of the Cold War, we and our allies have worked to transform NATO – form – to bring it from an alliance that manned the ramparts of a divided Europe, to a means for nurturing the growth of a Europe whole, free, and at peace – and an alliance that confronts the dangers, like terrorism, that also threaten Russia.

We have opened NATO to any sovereign, democratic state in Europe that can meet its standards of membership. We’ve supported the right of countries emerging from communism to choose what path of development they pursue and what institutions they wish to join.

But, the Russians:

[V]ew the emergence of free and independent democratic neighbors – most recently, during the so-called “color revolutions” in Georgia, and Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan – not as a source of security, but as a source of threat to Russia’s interests.

Where do we go from here?

[O]ur strategic goal now is to make clear to Russia’s leaders that their choices could put Russia on a one-way path to self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance....We cannot afford to validate the prejudices that some Russian leaders seem to have: that if you press free nations hard enough – if you bully them, and you threaten them, and you lash out – they will cave in, and they’ll forget, and eventually they will concede.

The United States and Europe must stand up to this kind of behavior, and to all who champion it. For our sake – and for the sake of Russia’s people, who deserve a better relationship with the rest of the world – the United States and Europe must not allow Russia’s aggression to achieve any benefit. Not in Georgia – not anywhere.
***
We will resist any Russian attempt to consign sovereign nations and free peoples to some archaic “sphere of influence.”
***
And we will not allow Russia to wield a veto over the future of the Euro-Atlantic community – neither what states are offered membership, nor the choice of states that accept it. We have made this particularly clear to our friends in Ukraine.

Analysis

Overall, I think this is very consistent with our strategic thinking. We are trying to pressure Russia to deepen its ties to the world economic market, become more democratic, thus attempting to capitalize of the peace dividends from economic interdependence and the "democratic peace." Russia's partial integration, as they are now, threatens this system and creates the potential for conflict.

Moving onto the details, I find encouragement in that she showed some empathy for the Russians, both in terms of their paranoia (quoted) and their desire to regain their previous strength (not quoted). It's also encouraging that this empathy is not simply words; Rice has highlighted our invitations to offer the Russians transparency on our ABM systems and the seat Russia has at every NATO summit. There is no doubt we are trying to assuage their fears--the problem is that they still don't believe us.

And therein lies the problem. We don't want NATO to be about opposing Russia anymore. That world, to us, is over. But clearly, it's not to the Russians. They see NATO as the same enemy they did during the Cold War; and when NATO expands to their border they lose their post-WWII "buffer." When they attack Georgia, threaten Poland, foment riots in and cyber-attack Estonia, and speculate about an invasion of Crimea, they are forcing NATO to live in their world. The prophecy becomes self-fulfilling. So, while we insist NATO is about terrorism and more generalized collective security (which is true as an ideal), the reality is that NATO is very much concerned about preventing another Georgia. Which in turn confirms Russia's (Putin's) worldview and puts the (Medvedev's) integration/reform agenda on hold.

...and that puts us on a track to a new cold war. I don't see anything here that gets us off that track. Sure, there is clearly a lot of economic pressure on Russia, but can we expect them to place their comfort over (what they believe is) their security?

Peril On the Sea

2008-09-18T10:39:00.002-04:00

Yet another tragic accident for the Russians. This time, it was a fire on the Udaloy-class Marshal Shaposhnikov. Two dead. The Udaloys seem to be just about the only Russian escort ships at sea these days, too. Well, those and the ocean-going tugs that always head out with the fleet.