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June 27, 2006
The NYTimes and the LATimes, Unelected 4th Branch of Government...
The recent publication by the NYTimes of the SWIFT program (details here). Key points:
- There are legally secret programs carried out the U.S. Government.
- The Press does not have any extra rights beyond normal citizens of the United States to handle secret information.
- The the 9/11 Commission co-chairmen asked the New York Times not to publish the SWIFT report.
- The Secretary of the Tresury asked the New York Times not to publish. (See his letter here)
The New York Times thinks that it can handle secret information and can ignore the U.S. Government. It reserves the right to determin when a secret program should be revealed to the public. It is a better judge than the people who actually know the details.
And if they are wrong? If they shouldn't have revealed this program? What accountability is there for the New York Times? Do we, the voters, get to throw them out of office for their mistakes?
- Why do they hate us? Why does the Times print stories that put America more at risk of attack? They say that these surveillance programs are subject to abuse, but give no reason to believe that this concern is anything but theoretical. We have a press that is at war with an administration, while our country is at war against merciless enemies. The Times is acting like an adolescent kicking the shins of its parents, hoping to make them hurt while confident of remaining safe under their roof. But how safe will we remain when our protection depends on the Times?
Andrew McCarthy writes
- The only way to prevent terrorist attacks is to gather intelligence. It is to collect the information that reveals who the jihadists are, who is backing them with money and resources, and where they are likely to strike. There is nothing else.
[But the New York Times says:] “If you try to intercept enemy communications — as victorious militaries have done in every war ever fought — we will tell all the world, including the enemy, exactly what you’re up to.”
“If you track the enemy’s finances, we will blow you out of the water. We’ll disclose just what you’re doing and just how you’re doing it. Even if it’s saving innocent lives.”
I find the New York Times position to be evil. By trumpeting the details of the SWIFT operation, they are essentially on the side of the barbarians who are trying to kill Americans. And I say this as a long-time subscriber to the New York Times.
My recomendation is as follows. The U.S. Government should begin a criminal investigation into finding out who gave this information to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The people who wrote the news stories should be forced to testify to a Grand Jury. If they will not reveal names, then they should be put in jail until such time as they will reveal the names of the people who revealed this information. I would also punish the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times in other obvious ways. Revocation of press credentials, refusal to allow their reporters into the White House press conferences, etc.
I do not take this harrassment of the Times lightly but they need to stop revealing secret operations conducted by the U.S. Government and they need to appologize.
I'll close with this letter from Lt. Tom Cotton in Iraq today
- Dear Messrs. Keller, Lichtblau & Risen:
Congratulations on disclosing our government's highly classified anti-terrorist-financing program (June 23). I apologize for not writing sooner. But I am a lieutenant in the United States Army and I spent the last four days patrolling one of the more dangerous areas in Iraq. (Alas, operational security and common sense prevent me from even revealing this unclassified location in a private medium like email.)
Unfortunately, as I supervised my soldiers late one night, I heard a booming explosion several miles away. I learned a few hours later that a powerful roadside bomb killed one soldier and severely injured another from my 130-man company. I deeply hope that we can find and kill or capture the terrorists responsible for that bomb. But, of course, these terrorists do not spring from the soil like Plato's guardians. No, they require financing to obtain mortars and artillery shells, priming explosives, wiring and circuitry, not to mention for training and payments to locals willing to emplace bombs in exchange for a few months' salary. As your story states, the program was legal, briefed to Congress, supported in the government and financial industry, and very successful.
Not anymore. You may think you have done a public service, but you have gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis here. Next time I hear that familiar explosion -- or next time I feel it -- I will wonder whether we could have stopped that bomb had you not instructed terrorists how to evade our financial surveillance.
And, by the way, having graduated from Harvard Law and practiced with a federal appellate judge and two Washington law firms before becoming an infantry officer, I am well-versed in the espionage laws relevant to this story and others -- laws you have plainly violated. I hope that my colleagues at the Department of Justice match the courage of my soldiers here and prosecute you and your newspaper to the fullest extent of the law. By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.
Very truly yours,
Tom Cotton
Baghdad, Iraq
We shall see...
Posted by rakhier at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2006
Cobb on the Real World vs. College...
Cobb is back. Mostly. Here is a great post from him about how college isn't like the real world...
- The thing that no student or graduate wants to hear, I'm about to say. Brains are a cheap commodity in the US. Universities are suppliers of moderately priced labor, just as Mexico is a supplier of cheap labor. There isn't a university on this planet which is as well organized and disciplined as a sharp corporation or a halfway decent army, and that's the thing you don't learn until you've spent a couple decades out in the world of work, where people aren't protected like students and faculty are. The beefs with Affirmative Action pale in significance to the ranches of conflict out here where people with tens of millions of dollars compete with people with hundreds of millions of dollars. But that's nothing you can learn while colleges are teaching what they teach. Perhaps the only people who actually do learn that from the brainy side of the equation are those guys who figure out how to build a better medical treatment in school and cash in by building a company around it.
So when it comes down to a black thing, getting into university is just the first step into the American middle class, and quite frankly it doesn't pay as well as learning construction. I wish somebody would have told me when I was in college that I could get 500k in revenue just making and selling plastic water tanks, like the neighbor of an associate of mine is doing. Oh, excuse me. 500k in revenue per month in a 5 person company. I would have avoided white collar, upscale corporate life like the plague.
The real hardball problem is that Affirmative Action's benefits and detractions don't amount to a hill of beans in the big old world. But there are still at least a couple million people who don't much care about the big old world and are just focused on the Affirmative Action world, where SAT scores, skin color and grade point averages make all the difference. I never thought Grutter and Hopwood were worthy of the Supreme Court, so I don't get my briefs in a bunch like our old pal at Discriminations. And I suspect that LaShawn Barber's lack of concern for the veneration so many blackfolks have for those two hallowed words is why she gets verbally dissed. I don't give much of a rat's any longer. Then again, living on the nice side of the six figure glass ceiling for a decade does give this black man a bit of perspective.
Malcolm X was never impressed by Affirmative Action, and as loathe as I am to compare his vision to what we can see 40 years later, he's a good reference point for those still running the OS of Black Nationalism 1.0 on their brain pan. Malcolm could see right through the honeydripping for what it was. A job. A job you get because you symbolically represent 400 years of something irresistable to white liberal guilt. Yeah well, I suppose people get what they deserve.
Meanwhile, I'm perfectly content to see undergrads get whatever Affirmative Action the polity can stomach. Undergrads don't change much. They still get entry level jobs at big employers, and none of them have the brains, experience or guts to get much more. Fine. But I say make the graduates, specifically the professionally certified graduate programs get colorblind. The last thing we need are our experts racially codified.
Yea. He's right.
Posted by rakhier at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
What would you do with 50 billion dollars?
I'm very sympathetic to Bjorn Lomborg. The Economist thinks well of him also. Here is another suggestion that some things are just not worth the money...
- Two years ago, a Danish environmentalist called Bjorn Lomborg had an idea. We all want to make the world a better place but, given finite resources, we should look for the most cost-effective ways of doing so. He persuaded a bunch of economists, including three Nobel laureates, to draw up a list of priorities. They found that efforts to fight malnutrition and disease would save many lives at modest expense, whereas fighting global warming would cost a colossal amount and yield distant and uncertain rewards.
That conclusion upset a lot of environmentalists. This week, another man who upsets a lot of people embraced it. John Bolton, America's ambassador to the United Nations, said that Mr Lomborg's "Copenhagen Consensus" (see articles) provided a useful way for the world body to get its priorities straight. Too often at the UN, said Mr Bolton, "everything is a priority". The secretary-general is charged with carrying out 9,000 mandates, he said, and when you have 9,000 priorities you have none.
So, over the weekend, Mr Bolton sat down with UN diplomats from seven other countries, including China and India but no Europeans, to rank 40 ways of tackling ten global crises. The problems addressed were climate change, communicable diseases, war, education, financial instability, governance, malnutrition, migration, clean water and trade barriers.
Given a notional $50 billion, how would the ambassadors spend it to make the world a better place? Their conclusions were strikingly similar to the Copenhagen Consensus. After hearing presentations from experts on each problem, they drew up a list of priorities. The top four were basic health care, better water and sanitation, more schools and better nutrition for children. Averting climate change came last.
This comment from Pejman Yousefzadeh: And what is my reaction? My reaction is that once again, Palmerston is vindicated. Nation-states have no permanent friends, nor have they permanent enemies. They only have permanent interests. This article neatly lays those interests--those priorities--out for the reader to see. How policymakers and would-be policymakers like Al Gore respond will, of course, attract a great deal of interest and attention.
Posted by rakhier at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2006
The Democratic Platform: Withdraw from Iraq before we win...
This article by David Horowitz captures the current world view the Democratic Party. Its sad and it bears NO RELATION to the Democratic party of 45 years ago. JFK would spit on the people in the party today who want to lose, who want to see America humiliated and defeated.
- As the fall elections approach, the Democrats have formally unveiled their platform for the war in Iraq: snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
At the very moment that documents captured from the Zarqawi death site indicate that Al Qaeda feels it is losing its war against the Iraqi future and has become so desperate that its only hope to prevail is by embroiling the U.S. in war with Iran; at the very moment Iraq’s democratically elected government is establishing itself as a functioning regime, and its increasingly capable military becomes more successfully engaged against the insurgents —at this critical moment for the future of Iraq and the Middle East, more than three quarters of the House Democrats have voted against a resolution to “complete the mission.”
For the first time in American history, a major political party wants America to run from a war we are winning...
Sad to see. It would be nice to have a major political party that wasn't composed of people who want America to lose. At the moment, there is only one such party.
Posted by rakhier at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2006
Political Correctness = Hidden Socialism
A very long essay by Fjordman, published on the Gates of Vienna web site. It starts with the brilliant observation by Theodore Dalrymple
- Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
Fjordman's point is: Multiculturalism and Political Correctness are in ascendecy in the West and they are opposed to core values of the Western world such as:
- Individual Responsibility
- Rationality and Logic
- Freedom of Speech
Cultural Marxism — aka Political Correctness — and Islam share the same totalitarian outlook and instinctively agree in their opposition to free discussion, and in the idea that freedom of speech must be curtailed when it is “offensive” to certain groups.
Yes. They do.
Posted by rakhier at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)
The Press has no more rights than the People...
The New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today are in deep trouble - for publishing secret information.
Read this detailed analysis by an expert in Constitutional Law (these were remarks addressed to a Congressional Committe, May 26 2006, and reprinted by the Wall Street Journal).
To summarize:
- The press has no more rights than normal citizens of the United States. This is a fact, clearly established by case law over 200 years.
- The government has the right to keep some things secret from the public. This is established in the Constitution, supported by Federalist Paper 71 and by long established case law.
- Citizens are not allowed to disclose secret information on their own discretion. People who do this are subject to penalties up to and including charges of treason.
Every citizen, including--particularly including--those employed with major media organs have a responsibility to prevent ongoing operational secrets from falling into the hands of our enemies by complying with the law regarding classified information. It is one of those "basic and simple duties" of citizenship that rests equally "on taxi drivers, Justices, and the New York Times."
Bottom line: there is no legitimate defence for revealing secret information about on-going wartime intelligence operations. For the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today to take the position that the law on secrecy doesn't apply to them flies in the face of clear, well established case law. They need to appologize fast and they need to stop doing it in the future.
Posted by rakhier at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2006
On the obligations of citizens...
I think this post by Joe Katzman is a very important analysis and it captures why the talk from various people about how they "support our troops" is so much garbage.
I haven't talked about Haditha because I don't know much about it. I will say from the get go that (1) War is ugly. People die. Innocent people are killed. Sometimes (rarely) our soldiers lose their composure and bad things happen. (2) Counter-insergency wars are really ugly. You can't tell the good guys from the bad guys. Even when you are doing the right thing, people who are innocent can be killed. (3) I knew all this before the war started. I continue to be impressed by the skill and discipline of the US Soldiers in Iraq. Under the most trying circumstances our forces have behaved correctly the vast majority of the time.
Now, as to the incident at Haditha. First, our US Marines have the presumption of innocence. No one has the facts clearly spelled out. No one should start with the presumption that the US Marines are guilty. As Katzman says
- The Left gets this wrong two ways. One, by abolishing it for their fellow citizens whenever convenient - one sees that readily in the kangaroo quasi-courts and star chamber proceedings that prevail in universities and other realms in which the Left achieves dominance. The second mistake is the Left's frequent attempts to deflect all discussion of inconvenient civilian criminal cases by arguing that until someone is convicted, one should not discuss the case.
Both of those approaches are dead wrong, of course. Extending the presumption of innocence does not stop a reasonable person from making moral judgments. So long as one is not a public official whose statement could pejudice or influence the result, one can even say "I think they're guilty" and argue why.
What the presumption of innocence DOES do, however, is prevent citizens from treating the verdict against a fellow citizen as a foregone conclusion - a mentality that would make any trial pointless, and undermine the very foundations of the American justice system.
Second, we, as citizens have an obligation to those men and women that protect our state and kill other people on our behalf. Its an ugly job at times but it is necessary. Period. The bottom line is, our soldiers are out there, risking their lives on behalf of all of us and we owe them. We owe them (to quote Katzman again)
- a greater duty than usual to consider their side of the story and give it a fair hearing.
Now, we have argued here before, correctly, that soldiers, police, et. al. are not some form of super-citizen with greater authority on the political issues of the day. That remains true. At best, there are some issues wherein their personal experiences may inform their judgments in ways that enhance the baseline credibility of some of their arguments. This is no more, and should be no less, than the qualified benefit one accords to anyone with personal expertise in an area.
Where soldiers, police, et. al. do deserve and even require additional consideration is in the performance of their duties, wherein they put their lives on the line at the explicit request of a free polity. In other words, on behalf of Andrew as a citizen of that free polity. That potential sacrifice makes their jobs qualitatively different, and that difference places a moral burden on the citizens they serve. As such, they are morally as well as legally entitled to having their side of the story heard respectfully and fully before any rush to judgment.
Whether Andrew personally wishes the Marines to be in Iraq or not is irrelevant; the decision was made and the situation remains. Which means the corresponding moral duty remains as well.
Basic honesty requires us to admit that we don't know the facts. However our obligation to the people that fight for this country requires that we need to give these people the benefit of the doubt.
The "left wing" in the US delights in pointing out our military failures, both tactical and moral. Guess what people: you can not pay people enough money to die for their country. If by constant criticism you erode away the willingness of young people to join the military then eventually you will find (like the Roman Empire of 400 CE) that too few people are willing to protect the state against those who wish to destroy it. This can happen. It has happened in the past.
Posted by rakhier at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)
June 07, 2006
Sweden is in deep, deep trouble...
This lengthy essay shows what happens when democracy gets perverted into the tyranny of moral convictions.
- On the surface, Sweden is a tolerant nation and peaceful democracy. In reality, there is massive media censorship by a closed elite that is scared of having a debate about immigration. Opinion polls have revealed that two out of three Swedes doubt whether Islam can be combined with Swedish society, and a very significant proportion of the population have for years wanted more limitations on immigration. Yet not one party represented in the Swedish Parliament is genuinely critical of the Multicultural society or the current immigration policies. The Swedish elite congratulate themselves that they have managed to keep “xenophobic” parties from gaining a foothold while the country is sinking underneath their feet.
It gets worse.
- 85 per cent of the convicted rapists were born on foreign soil or by foreign parents.
- Rape cases involving children under the age of 15 are six times as common today as they were a generation ago.
- The Jewish congregations in major cities Stockholm , Göteborg and Malmö are forced to spend up to 25 percent of their membership fees on security and hired guards.
- The Swedish government is looking at a proposal to reduce the size of Sweden's army to jut 5,000 men.
"It is an international embarrassment to Sweden as a nation that Swedes travel around the world to lecture about women’s rights, and at the same time their own young women are finding that their most basic rights, such as being able to go outside wearing normal clothes without being harassed."
Why are the people letting this happen? Has the welfare state turned the Swedes into a population of dump, helpless sheep?
Posted by rakhier at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)
Too Much Praise, too Late...
This from Powerling Blog:
Professor David Gelernter of Yale University is a man of formidable learning with little patience for phonies. He has previously detected a tidal wave of phoniness in the celebration of "the greatest generation" by folks with a profile that eerily resembles mine: "Too much, too late."
As a remedy for the phoniness he detected, Professor Gelernter prescribed the teaching of our children the major battles of the war, the cruelty of the Japanese, the attitude of the intellectuals, and the memoirs and recollections of the veterans. Professor Gelernter failed to assign a paper topic for the course he has prescribed. I would assign an essay on the subject of sacrifice. Do we deserve the sacrifice made on our behalf? What we can do to become worthy of it? Is the disparity between those who sacrifice and those who reap the benefit too great to bridge?
The battle of Omaha Beach that occurred sixty-two years ago today of course represents only a small part of Operation Overlord and the other battles that occurred on the Normandy beaches. But the story of Omaha Beach is deserving of special recognition.
Interesting essay suggestion. Why can't I think of questions like that?
Posted by rakhier at 01:08 PM | Comments (0)