Document of the Week: US State Department Cable Declares Saudi Arabia 'a critical source of terrorist funding'

This 2009 Wikileaks cable from US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was published by The Guardian (UK):

Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, LeT, and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during Hajj and Ramadan. In contrast to its increasingly aggressive efforts to disrupt al-Qa'ida's access to funding from Saudi sources, Riyadh has taken only limited action to disrupt fundraising for the UN 1267-listed Taliban and LeT-groups that are also aligned with al-Qa'ida and focused on undermining stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mathew Ingram: Wikileaks Defends Freedom of the Press

From gigaom.com (ht Jeff Jarvis):

The past week has seen plenty of ink spilled — virtual and otherwise — about WikiLeaks and its mercurial front-man, Julian Assange, and the pressure they have come under from the U.S. government and companies such as Amazon and PayPal, both of which have blocked WikiLeaks from using their services. Why should we care about any of this? Because more than anything else, WikiLeaks is a publisher — a new kind of publisher, but a publisher nonetheless — and that makes this a freedom of the press issue. Like it or not, WikiLeaks is fundamentally a journalistic entity, and as such it deserves our protection.

Jeff Jarvis: Transparency Only Sure Defense Against Secrecy

Jeff Jarvis's reasoned defense of Wikileaks, from the Huffington Post:

But as we can see from what has been leaked, there is much we should know -- actions taken in our name -- that government holds from us. We also know that the revelation of these secrets has not been devastating. America's and Germany's relationship has not collapsed because one undiplomatic diplomat called Angela Merkel uncreative. WikiLeaks head Julian Assange told the Guardian that in four years, "there has been no credible allegation, even by organizations like the Pentagon, that even a single person has come to harm as a result of our activities."

So perhaps the lesson of WikiLeaks should be that the open air is less fearsome than we'd thought. That should lead to less secrecy. After all, the only sure defense against leaks is transparency.

But that is not what's happening. In the U.S., the White House announced a new security initiative to clamp down on information. The White House even warned government workers not to look at WikiLeaks documents online because they were still officially secret, which betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of secret as something people do not know. I fear that one legacy of WikiLeaks' work will be that officials will communicate less in writing and more by phone, diminishing the written record for journalism and history.

I have become an advocate of openness in government, business, and even our personal lives and relationships. The internet has taught me the benefits of sharing and connecting information.

This is why I have urged caution in not going overboard with the privacy mania sweeping much of modern society and especially Germany. Beware the precedents we set, defaulting to closed and secret, whether in pixelating public views in Google Street View, or in disabling the advertising targeting that makes online marketing more valuable and will pay for much of the web's free content.

I fear that a pixel fog may overcome us, blurring what should be becoming clearer. I had hoped instead that we would pull back the curtain on society, letting the sunlight in. That is our choice.

More from Charles Crawford on WikiLeaks

The former British ambassador to Poland says the cables released so far show that "US diplomats are doing a fine job."

A key point to remember in all this Wikileaks business is that what you are seeing blabbed out on the Web is only part of what has been sent - it is stupid to draw definitive policy conclusions from any one piece of work or even larger blocs of work.

In particular, if one or two cables contain some disobliging remarks on foreign people and their policies, so what?

One of the key strengths of the US/UK reporting style (unlike eg those of many EU partners) is that diplomats at the coal-face are able to give their personal comments.

But a comment is just that - the thought of the drafter, not a policy conclusion or even recommendation. Policies come from HQ taking myriad comments and working out what is best.

Haitian Election Ousts Ruling Party

No clear winner yet, but a clear loser has emerged, according to Bloomberg:

Haiti’s government will honor the results of the disputed Nov. 28 election, the nation’s ambassador to the United Nations said after ruling party presidential candidate Jude Celestin said he may have lost.

“We are moving forward in terms of a democratic transition of power,” Ambassador Leo Merores said at a UN meeting on Haiti in New York. “The government is firm in its resolve to transition power on Feb. 7 to the newly elected president.”

Results in the election, Haiti’s first since January’s earthquake, aren’t expected until at least Dec. 7. About 4.5 million people were eligible to cast ballots for a new leader to replace President Rene Preval, along with 11 of 30 senators and all 99 parliament deputies.

The election was marred by allegations of fraud and incidents of violence that resulted in a call by 12 of 18 presidential candidates for the vote to be annulled. Celestin, who didn’t support that demand, said on Nov. 30 that he may have lost, Agence France-Presse reported.

More, in French, at HaitiElections2010.com.

Charles Crawford on Wikileaks

The former British ambassador to Poland has an insider's response to Julian Assange's leaks:

Nothing much smaller and faster than a USB stick with tens of thousands of stolen documents on it.

Events such as the latest Wikileaks embroglio exemplify the pell-mell course we are all now on towards a dangerous 'randomising' of world events and a decay in institutional authority.

In the looming conflicts as long-established but in any case Big systems abruptly decay (see the Eurozone), the most ruthless - and least committed to freedom in any sense that matters - may have a clear edge.

Thanks for that, Julian Assange.

Why Aren't Media Companies Helping Wikileaks?

I don't understand why the major media companies that printed excerpts from Wikileaks have not set up mirror sites for all the raw documents to show solidarity and support the public's right to know. Instead, they seem to want to serve as some sort of censorship arm of the US government, "vetting" the material for suitability. If anything undermines media credibility, it is this sort of two-faced exploitation of Wikileaks for raw material (they recycle the documents for their articles) without providing the public with the information needed to make independent judgements.

As noted by Yale Law School Professor Stephen Carter in the Daily Beast:

Indeed, as several observers have pointed out, an interpretation of the Espionage Act sufficiently broad to encompass what WikiLeaks has done would surely cover as well the newspapers that have published the documents. If Assange’s actions have damaged the security of the United States, then the same argument presumably applies to The New York Times. Indeed, it is the publication of the documents by respected institutions of journalism, and not their posting on the Web, that provides sufficient imprimatur to stir the controversy.

The Espionage Act is a broadly written and scary statute. As Geoffrey Stone points out in a recent book, the statute was adopted precisely to chill dissent. Happily, the act has been enforced only rarely over the past half century. Rare is best. Dissent is the lifeblood of democracy, and should be carefully nourished, not scared into hiding. I have no trouble with pursuing the leakers who have done so much damage to the nation’s security; but those who publicize what is leaked are the symptoms, not the problem.

Wikileaks and the Zimmerman Telegram

Richards J. Heuer

The Wikileaks story broke while I was away for Thanksgiving. My own views seem to differ from most of what I've read.

First, I think Julian Assange's redistribution of some 250,000 US State Department documents did the US Government a real favor. Much as the Mark Zuckerberg character told the Harvard committee after he hacked into their databases, in the film "The Social Network," Assange should be rewarded instead of prosecuted.

If one low-level army private could tap into the obviously insecure Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET), it was no damn good in the first place.

So, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange isn't a terrorist. He's not aiding America's enemies. He's helping the USA to make our intelligence agencies better.

As someone I know asked when the news of Wikileaks Cablegate hit the papers: How many agents for foreign governments have been hacking away over the last nine years, secretly secreting secret data from the national SIPRNET, and providing it to countries that might wish to harm American interests?

Has anyone asked, until today? Will Congress investigate this boondoggle?

If one wants to look for someone who has helped America's enemies, one might focus on Richards J. Heuer. Here's a link to his Amazon.com page:

http://www.amazon.com/Richards-J.-Heuer-Jr./e/B0032P1Y7I

From a quick Google search, it looks like Heuer helped set up the defective and easily compromised SIPRNET databank than was easily hacked. According to a short google search, Heuer is a CIA veteran-turned-consultant and author of Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. After 9/11, SIPRNET apparently was part of a move from "stove-piping" to "net-centric" warfare championed by Donald Rumsfeld. Heuer had developed an earlier Automated Briefing System for the intelligence community...which didn't prevent the 9/11 attacks, obviously.

When I tried to find the SIPRNET via google, I got this URL:

http://www.rjhresearch.com.

And this message:

This site is no longer active.

The Customizable Security Guide and Adjudicative Desk Reference are now available for viewing or downloading from the PERSEREC website at www.dhra.mil/perserec. At this site, click on Products and then click on the product name.

The Automated Briefing System is also available at this site, but be aware that PERSEREC is no longer providing technical support to users of this product.

Questions regarding this site or these products should be directed to Richards Heuer by e-mail at richards.heuer.ctr@osd.pentagon.mil or telephone (831) 657-3008.

How much has the US spent on "cyber-security" since 9/11? And this is the result? One wonders: Did Heuer's company have a no-bid, sole-source contract to develop SIPRNET? How much did this system cost to develop and deploy? Can American taxpayers now get their money back?

Strange that critics of Wikileaks haven't focused on this issue. Incredible that the Wall Street Journal and Sarah Palin haven't used the scandal to attack the failed national security strategy of the Obama administration (no doubt Republican Secretary of Defense Robert Gates provides political cover).

But now, thanks to Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and Bradley Manning, the American public and media finally have done so.

And at least today the US government has shut down its expensive "net-centric" electronic database network...that no doubt provided similar data to American adversaries, competitors and enemies for years before Assange and Manning blew the whistle. America will be forced to re-think entirely its post-9/11 response...perhaps changing course in our response to Islamist extremist terrorism, just as the release of the Zimmerman Telegram changed American policy in World War I.

For that, Assange deserves thanks, rather than calumny.

President John F. Kennedy on Government Secrecy

From JFK's address to the American Newspaper Publisher's Association at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City on April 27, 1961:

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

I wish some American politician today at least talked like this, with regard to the Wikileaks story...

Daniel Ellsberg Defends Wikileaks

To the BBC.

30 November 2010 Last updated at 11:22 ET

Help

The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam war in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, has given his backing to Wikileaks.

Speaking to BBC World Service, Mr Ellsberg disagreed with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement that the latest leaks could endanger lives.

"That's a script that they role out every time there's a leak of any sort," he said.

It is not leaks, but "silences and lies" that put peoples' lives in danger, he believes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Going on a Thanksgiving vacation, offline for a few days... Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers!

Bob Woodward: Secret Government Should Be Nation's Greatest Fear

From the Yale Daily News (ht FOIABlog):

lmost 40 years after renowned journalist and author Bob Woodward ’65 reported on the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency, he warned the audience at a Law School panel Thursday that secret government should be the nation’s biggest fear.

Woodward was one of four members on a panel to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the the Freedom of Information Act’s passage in Connecticut. He and the other panelists, including Connecticut Mirror editor Michael Regan and Colleen Murphy, the executive director and general counsel of the state commission that administers FOIA, discussed the difficulties journalists face in obtaining information. The general consensus among the panel was that FOIA had not proven as useful as journalists had hoped.

Woodward started the discussion by sharing an anecdote about a FOIA request he made in the 1980s under the Reagan administration. Just last year, he said, he received heavily redacted copies of the documents he requested almost 30 years ago.

“Government is a closed shop,” Woodward said. “FOIA is one of the tools that should be used to open up government.”

Document of the Week: US State Department Telephone Directory

Thanks to a tweet from PetulantSage, here's a link to the November 15th US State Department Telephone Directory, on Box.Net.

IMHO, this is public information that should be posted on the US State Department's website's home page...

NGOs Banked Aid Donations While Haitians Died of Cholera

No surprise here. Not only is the UN possibly responsible for spreading cholera to Haiti, but NGOs are sitting on piles of unspent cash donated for Haitian relief, according to this oped by Georgianne Nienabe.

House Defeats Republican Move to Cut NPR

Cutting NPR was the top vote-getter on Republican House Whip Eric Cantor's "YouCut" website, I'm pleased to learn. Some people think this has something to do with Juan Williams' firing. I think it is unfinished business from the pre-Bush age...

Here's the story from Radio-Info.com:

Pulling federal funding from NPR, which fired Juan Williams last month, was the latest choice of the "YouCut" website, which lets online users vote on programs that should be cut. Virginia Republican Eric Cantor said "it is not the government's job to tell a news organization how to do its job. But what's equally certain is it should not be the taxpayers' responsibility to fund news organizations with a partisan point of view." The de-funding measure was defeated, 239 to 171. NPR quickly said that "Today, good judgment prevailed, as Congress rejected a move to assert government control over the content of news." It called the bill to prohibit public radio stations from using their CPB grant money to buy programming from NPR "an unwarranted attempted to interject federal authority into local station program decision making."

Let's see, the Republicans gained 61 seats in the 2012 election. If all the Republicans who voted to cut NPR today voted the same way in January, and all the new Republicans voted with them, that would give them 232 votes to cut NPR. There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives. If everyone voted, the next vote could be 232-203 to cut NPR funding.

Message of this vote: Republicans are within spitting distance of eliminating NPR funding (which would clearly reduce media pressure on Congress for increased spending, since it is essentially a DNC lobbying arm, and dominates the radio news business, crowding out possible competition).

Memo to Eric Cantor and the Republicans: If at first you don't succeed--try, try, again!

Swedish Diplomat: Haitian Cholera From Nepal

If true, it means that UN troops brought the cholera epidemic to Haiti--which has killed over 1,000 people so far...

From Haitinews.net:

A Swedish diplomat claimed Wednesday that Haiti's cholera outbreak originated in Nepal.

'Unfortunately that is the case. It has proved that the cholera came from Nepal,' Claes Hammar, Sweden's ambassador to Haiti, told daily Svenska Dagbladet.

Hammar, who visited Haiti two weeks ago, said the information came from 'a diplomatic source. It is 100 percent true. Tests were made and the source was traced to Nepal.'

ACLU Announces TSA Complaint Website

Here's a link to the ACLU online TSA complaint form:https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageNavigator/TSA_Travel_Complaint?JServSessionIdr004=hrq983kwn6.app224a.

From the ACLU's emailed announcement:

Dear ACLU Supporter,

Tell Secretary Napolitano to implement security measures that ensure passenger privacy.

Planning to fly this holiday season? You've probably already braced yourself for long lines, delays and extra fees just to check your luggage.

Unfortunately, you can also expect another hassle at the airport this year. 70 airports around the country are now using controversial body scanners—also known as "naked scanners." These machines use low-dose radiation to produce strikingly graphic images of passengers' bodies, essentially taking a naked picture as passengers pass through security checkpoints.

Yes, authorities at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) say you can opt out of the naked scan. But doing so will subject you to new and highly invasive manual searches of your body, including your breasts, buttocks and inner thighs.

All of us have a right to travel without such crude invasions of our privacy. Tell DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to put in place security measures that respect passengers' privacy rights.

The government is also violating travelers' privacy in another way: by searching and seizing the laptops and other electronic devices of international travelers. Never before in history have customs officers been able to routinely pour through a lifetime's worth of letters, photographs, purchase records and other data. This enormous invasion of privacy peers into people's lives in a way that has never been done before.

There's already an outcry building over all of these new searches. In fact, travelers and the ACLU have pushed back before against invasive screening, and the TSA quietly retreated back to a lighter touch. But if we want to stop these invasive practices, we've got to put our voices together.

Tell DHS to rein in these invasive, out-of-control searches and to implement security measures that ensure passenger privacy.

The ACLU has prepared a useful guide to help you navigate your options at the airport. It details ways to protect your privacy during air travel. It also describes how to file official complaints about any TSA trouble you encounter. View it here.

If you think your rights have been violated while you're traveling, please let us know about it. Just fill out this form online to share your story.

You shouldn't have to check your rights when you check your luggage. With the holiday travel season fast approaching, we need to make sure that security measures are in place that actually make us more secure without compromising passenger privacy.

Please write Secretary Napolitano today.

Thanks for speaking out,


Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
ACLU
© ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004

I was surprised Romero didn't make explicit reference to the Fourth Amendment from the Bill of Rights in his email. Sounds like the relevant text in this regard, so here it is:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The issues of reasonableness and of probable cause have been ignored, IMHO, because of political paranoia about charges of Islamophobia--with the result that worse injustice has been done to a larger population, the violation of the Fourth Amendment by treatment of ordinary citizens as potential criminals. Unreasonable searches and seizures, without probable cause, have become routine, as a result.

I hope the ACLU litigates this matter on behalf of ordinary airline passengers, in order to end unwarranted police-state tactics by the federal government...

Bottom Line for the TSA, and I hope ACLU: Reasonable search and seizure with probable cause: OK. Unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause: NOT.

UPDATE: More reaction from Tools of Renewal:

I am writing this because I just read about John Tyner’s TSA experience. He refused to have his genitals grabbed by TSA screeners, and they forced him to miss a flight. They even manufactured a bogus lawsuit threat, ordering him to leave the airport and then telling him he would be fined and sued if he obeyed. They acted the way threatened bureaucrats always act. The way the Founding Fathers had seen colonial bureaucrats act, prior to the Constitutional Congress.

One commenter on Tyner’s blog said he was making a big fuss over a brief grope. Here is what another commenter said: “Anonymous 3:22: it probably seemed excessive for Rosa Parks to risk arrest over a bus seat.”

Exactly. I guarantee you, there were people who said Rosa Parks was crazy. All she had to do was sit in the back of the bus. She would have arrived at her destination at the same time as the white people up front. She wasn’t even required to let a stranger feel her breasts. But she was right. Dignity matters. A good deal of the Bill of Rights exists purely to protect our dignity. And dignity is exactly what we gave up when we agreed to be photographed naked and allow TSA agents to handle our children’s crotches.

Ask yourself if George Washington would have let the TSA feel up Martha.

Liberals like to tell us “slippery slope” arguments are nonsense, but of course, that’s wrong. The Jews in Germany and Austria lost their rights incrementally. We went from a modest Social Security system to a bankrupt socialist ponzi scheme incrementally. The “slippery slope” concept exists because it has been proven right, time and again. We are seeing it now, in our airports. If you will let a stranger palm your wife’s crotch, what exactly would it take to offend you?

Just blow me up. Really. Kill me. Today. How bad can death be? I am not that scared of it. I ride motorcycles. I’ve flown in private planes. The other day I ate tomato sauce from a dubious can, just because I didn’t want to drive to the store. I’m not that scared of death. A low risk of death is preferable to certain repeated humiliation.

If you think things are bad now, wait until the first rectum bomb goes off on a plane. I guarantee you, most Americans will gladly submit to random rectal exams. When we reach that point, consider me grounded. Eventually, you have to put a firm price on your dignity. I don’t like the idea of being molested just so I can have a short vacation, and when they reach the stage where they’re looking inside anuses and vaginas, there will be no destination I consider sufficiently tempting. Seriously, if I offered you a ticket to California in exchange for letting me sodomize you, would you go for it?

I’ve always been like this. When I was in college, I thought fraternities were disgusting because they made young men strip naked and perform in gay rites.

I can’t wait to see what the next “necessary” violation will be. I don’t think Americans have the guts to stand up to the TSA, so I think the abusive searches will continue, and that will encourage the government, and they’ll go ahead and make things worse.

John Tyner is an inspiration. I don’t have a tenth of the character he has. People like John Tyner are our only hope of an acceptable quality of life in the future. Let the commenters criticize him. Capos criticized people who resisted the Nazis, and history passed judgment. History will be very kind to our John Tyners. It always has.

And from PopeHat.com:

The proponents of the Security State — and the people who make their living from it — think just shut up and obey. Take the blogger Mom vs. the World, a former TSA agent. Even though she questions the value of the scanners, and even though she thinks the enhanced pat-downs are bullshit, she remains captured by the TSA mindset. Her view of the proper relationship between the state and the citizen is typified by her post Shut Up And Get In The Scanner. Aside from asserting, basically, that what should really embarrass us is not being scanned or groped, but the fact that we’re a pack of quarreling, vibrator-carrying, trash-dressing, child-abusing trailer trash, she offers this:

Flying is a privilege not a right. As such, it can be and is regulated. Requirements can and are set up to ensure that everyone who flies is safe. If you don’t like it, then don’t fly. You may not be as concerned as the next guy about the safety or you may be more concerned. Point is the job of TSA is to ensure the entire traveling public is safe not just you. TSA officers don’t care what you as an individual want, they can’t, it just isn’t possible. You may be ok with lax security but what about the next passenger who wants thorough security?

Your right to privacy isn’t being violated at all. You always have the option to drive a car, take a train, grab the bus or start rowing a boat. You do not have to fly, you just want to fly. The minute you decide you want to fly then you have to accept that security is involved and you are going to have consent and submit to it period the end.

Now if you want to fly, suck it up and accept that you have to submit to the security procedures. Yes you think they are stupid or unnecessary but TSA officers and TSA don’t care what you think. They try to make it all warm and fuzzy but they can’t because it is security not a trip to Disney World. Shut up and get in the scanner or don’t fly.

Well, “Mom”, if flying is a “privilege, not a right,” it’s because over the last century we have gradually accepted the proposition that anything the government tells us it can regulate, it can regulate. Unlike “Mom”, Justice Stewart knows a right when he sees it: “The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . occupies a position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union. It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized.” Of course, rights are subject to limitations. Should the right to travel be limited by forced subservience to groping for purposes of Security Theater?

Now, I’m not saying that Mom is herself a perverted thug, like the people she’s saying we should just obey. I’m saying that she’s a sneering, entitled apologist for perverted thugs — and for the canine, un-American value of slobbery submission to the state. Even though she concedes that the groping is retaliatory bullshit, and even though she has no basis to assert that Security Theater actually increases real security, she’s deeply resentful that people are not putting up with it. Her righteous anger — like the anger of of the TSA thugs groping just a little bit harder to punish you for saying no to the body scanner — is the result we should expect from the small-time thugs whose identity is tied up in their petty authority.

Throughout my career — both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney — I’ve observed a consistent inverse relationship: the more petty a government officer’s authority, the more that officer will feel a need to swagger and demand that you RESPECT HIS AUTHORITAH. Your average FBI agent might search your house based on a crappy perjured warrant, invade your attorney-client emails, and flush your life down the toilet by lying on the stand at your mail fraud trial. But he doesn’t feel a need to vogue and posture to prove anything in the process. He’s the FBI. But God above help you when you run into the guy with a badge from some obscure and puny government agency with a narrow fiefdom. He and his Napoleon syndrome have got something to prove. And he’s terrified that you’ll not take him very, very seriously. When I call FBI agents on behalf of my clients, they’re cool but professional and nonchalant. When I call a small agency — say, state Fish & Game, or one of the minor agency Inspector Generals — they’re hostile, belligerent, and so comically suspicious that you’d think I was asking for their permission to let my client smuggle heroin into the country in the anuses of handicapped Christian missionary orphans. They are infuriated, OUTRAGED, when a client asserts rights, when a client fails to genuflect and display unquestioning obedience. They are, in short, the TSA.

The media is trying out the story-of-the-week that the populace is revolting against the TSA, and against Security Theater. It might even be a little bit true.

It’s about godammed time.

Israeli Expert: TSA Full-Body Scanners "Useless"

Israeli airline security expert Rafi Sela testified in Canada against full-body scanners (ht Ann Coulter):

"I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747," Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.

"That's why we haven't put them in our airport," Sela said, referring to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, which has some of the toughest security in the world.

Sela, former chief security officer of the Israel Airport Authority and a 30-year veteran in airport security and defence technology, helped design the security at Ben Gurion.

He told MPs on the House of Commons transport committee via video conference from Kfar Vradim, Israel, that he wouldn't reveal how to get past the virtual strip-search scanners, but said he can provide briefings to officials with security clearance.

Canada this year bought 44 body scanners for major Canadian airports -- three of them for Vancouver International. Each machine cost $250,000 and is being use for secondary screening to detect non-metallic threats, unless the passenger prefers a physical pat-down.

CATSA, the Canadian agency in charge of screening airline passengers, declined to provide comment on Sela's analysis.

Junior Transport Minister Rob Merrifield, who is responsible for the agency, defended the $11-million investment in the machines.

"Full-body scanners are used by dozens of countries around the world and are considered one of the most effective methods of screening," Merrifield said in a statement.

Sela testified it makes more sense to create a "trusted traveller" system so pre-approved low-risk passengers can move through an expedited screening process. That would leave more resources in the screening areas, where automatic sniffing technology would detect any explosive residue on a person or their baggage.

Behavioural profiling also must be used instead of random checks, he said.

BTW, when I last flew to Israel, not only did I not go through a full-body scan, I didn't even have to take off my shoes. On the other hand, they did ask me a few questions...

WSJ: Save Election Day!

From Eliot Cutler's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal:

Finally, I am convinced that we lose something intangible but important when we make voting just another item on our fall to-do list.

As I greeted voters at polling stations around Maine on Election Day, I saw countless sons and daughters casting their first votes, proudly accompanied by their parents. Squeezing into the booths with elders, younger children learn a civics lesson that no book can teach.

The act of voting together on Election Day has represented an important affirmation of democracy and citizenship since the earliest days of our nation. However inconvenient, standing in line to vote reminds us that our democracy is a shared enterprise and that, no matter our individual circumstances, every person in line has just one vote.

Jack Matlock's Blog

I leafed through Jack Matlock's latest book, Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray--And How to Return to Reality, about Russian-American relations, in Politics & Prose yesterday--he had been President Reagan's ambassador to Moscow--and thought it looked interesting.

What Matlock has to say about the failure of the Bush administration's "unipolar" strategy made some sense to me. Likewise, his critique of Clinton's war on the former Yugoslavia and other adventures. Also, his interpretation that Russians believe that Russians dismantled Communism, perhaps with American pressure, rather than surrendered to the US, also makes sense. So, it was interesting to see that he has a blog of his own, here: http://jackmatlock.com/here-now/.

Here's Matlock's own summary of his latest book, from his blog:

Superpower Illusions:
How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray—And How to Return to Reality

by Jack F. Matlock, Jr.

Summary Argument

Myths about the way the Cold War ended, along with ideologies divorced from reality led America into a series of blunders that drained its power and increased the dangers to its national security.

Myth #1: The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

NO! It ended well before the Soviet Union broke up.

Myth #2: Military and economic pressure destroyed Communist rule in the USSR.

NO! Mikhail Gorbachev undermined the Party’s control of the country because it was blocking the reforms he considered necessary.


Myth #3: The USSR collapsed under pressure from the United States and its allies.

NO! Internal contradictions caused its collapse, not external pressure.

These myths stem from a tendency to conflate three geopolitically seismic events which were separate, though connected:

(1) The end of the Cold War (1988-89)

(2) Weakening of Communist Party control of the USSR (1989-91)

(3) Break-up of the Soviet Union (December, 1991)

The Cold War ended peacefully, by negotiation, on terms that were in the interest of a reforming Soviet Union. President Reagan had defined the terms of settlement on the basis of common interests. In time, Gorbachev accepted his agenda, since it was in the Soviet interest. As Gorbachev subsequently observed, “We all won the Cold War.”

The end of the arms race permitted Gorbachev to concentrate on reform at home, which in turn led to his ending the Communist Party’s monopoly of power, using contested elections as a major tool. President Reagan recognized, and stated publicly, that Gorbachev’s Soviet Union was no longer an “evil empire.”

While the United States supported the restoration of independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, it favored Gorbachev’s effort to create a voluntary federation of the remaining twelve union republics. The break-up of the USSR, caused by internal factors, was a defeat for American policy, not a victory.

Myth #4: Russia was defeated in the Cold War.

NO! Today’s Russian Federation was not a party to the Cold War. It was part of a Communist-ruled empire. Its elected leaders in 1990 and 1991 were strongly pro-Western and aspired to replace communist with democratic values.

Myth #5: The Cold War should be considered World War III.

NO WAY! “Cold War” is a metaphor, not the real thing. There was never any direct combat between the United States and its allies with the Soviet Union. If there had been, we would probably not be here today to write about it.

The myths are also connected with the mistaken notion of “superpower.” The United States and the USSR were considered superpowers because they had the means to destroy the world. They were not superpowers in the sense that they could change the world using their superior military power. The end of the Cold War diminished American power since much had derived from its ability to defend countries against Communist aggression and infiltration. The world did not suddenly become “unipolar;” there was not even a “unipolar moment.” (So far as the power to destroy the world is concerned, the United States and Russia both still have that capability with their nuclear arsenals.)

While not a superpower in the sense that it could successfully rule other countries, the United States emerged from the Cold War the pre-eminent power in the world. It had the opportunity to create a safer world by strengthening international structures to deal with local conflicts, failed states, organized crime, and the threat of terrorism. It had the opportunity to reduce its military commitments abroad (there was no longer a Soviet Union to contain) and to accelerate the destruction of nuclear weapons started by Reagan, Bush I, and Gorbachev. Nevertheless, the Clinton administration, lacking a coherent strategy, was drawn into local conflicts not vital to U.S. security and without UN Security Council authority. It failed to bring Russia into the European security structure as a responsible partner but treated it as a defeated nation, thus undermining the prospects for democracy and full cooperation in dealing with global issues.

If the Clinton administration missed opportunities, the Bush-Cheney administration destroyed them. Having ignored warnings of an impending terrorist attack on the United States—which could and should have been prevented—it invaded Iraq without adequate cause or international sanction, ignored or withdrew from treaty commitments, stalled verified nuclear arms reductions, and took a series of actions that encouraged rather than deterred nuclear weapons proliferation. It is ironic that a president who professed to admire President Reagan followed policies that were often the opposite of his, both in substance and in execution.

Myths about the Cold War and its end combined with theories taken to logical but unrealistic extremes undermined America’s strength at home. Market fundamentalism ruled the day and the loosening of controls on banks and financial markets contributed to the sub-prime bubble and a near collapse of the financial system in 2008. Tax cuts despite two wars produced an unprecedented budget deficit and the country as a whole began to live beyond its means, even as education and infrastructure were allowed to deteriorate. The United States became the world’s largest debtor.

Meanwhile what passed for political debate was reduced to distorted slogans. The very meaning of many terms came under assault. There is nothing “conservative” about running large budget deficits, invading countries that are no direct and imminent threat, and exaggerating and sometimes fabricating intelligence reports, yet political spinmasters convinced a significant portion of the public that radical, high-risk, arguably illegal policies were “conservative.” In fact, foreign policy cannot be calibrated on a “conservative-liberal” scale, and neither can many domestic issues.

The Obama administration has made a start, turning the ship of state toward a more constructive course. The book makes illustrative suggestions regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea, relations with Russia, nuclear arms reduction, missile defense, and the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Though President Obama has, in general, set a moderate course of change, obstacles both abroad and at home are substantial. He still must deal with damage to the nation inherited from past administrations and overcome entrenched special interests—some in his own administration–that resist change.