Month: February 2010

Google Fail

Gmail's new social-networking feature, Buzz, is getting a wave of backlash:

One problem that immediately caused concern was Google's decision to automatically give users a ready-made circle of friends based on the people they most frequently e-mailed.

Unless users changed settings in their profile, this list could automatically be made public, allowing anyone to see who a user corresponded with most frequently.  [P]rivacy experts immediately pointed out this could cause problems for journalists, businesses or even people having an illicit affair.

"If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government,"  [Evgeny Morozov] wrote.

Morozov continues here.

The Ten Year Rule

Matt Steinglass discusses Ehud Barak breaking the “apartheid” rhetorical barrier:

If American Jews want a pointer as to how to approach this problem, here is a rule of thumb: think of the most impossible concession you can imagine, the bitter point of contention you absolutely refuse to give way on. In 1970, it was the existence of a Palestinian (not Arab) people; in 1980, it was accepting that Israeli forces had expelled the Palestinian refugees in 1948 and thus bore responsibility for their plight;

in 1990, it was accepting Yasser Arafat and the PLO as the representatives of the Palestinian people; in 2000, it was the idea that Israel might legitimately be compared to an apartheid state. Then understand that within ten years, you will have given way on that point.

What on earth is the point of this resistance? Do you want, once again, to give way on the point when it is too late, and the deal is no longer available? Mr Nusseibeh says his next move will be to demand that Israel annex the West Bank and grant Palestinians at least “third-class citizenship”: economic and residential rights, without political ones. On what grounds will you defend Israel’s inevitable refusal of such a demand? How long before Mr Barak’s words are not taken as dire prophecy, but simple description?

Assassination vs Missiles

Sonny Bunch defends the Dubai assassination. He assumes Israel carried it out, which has not been proven:

So let me see if I can wrap my head around this: Israel tracked a Hamas terrorist to Dubai and executed him at close range and by hand so as to avoid any collateral damage to civilian life. Shouldn’t we be celebrating this as the way war should be conducted instead of putting our noses up in the air and acting as though we’re so much better when we lob a missile at a terrorist from an airplane?

Baradar’s Capture: Two Theories

Radio Free Europe reports:

Senior Afghan officials tell RFE/RL that Baradar is a key piece of Kabul's efforts to reconcile with the Taliban and has been engaged in the process with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's administration for months. From this, alternative theories have emerged: One is that his capture is all part of a plan that will pave the way for him to enter Kabul and become the key figure in reconciling with moderate elements of the insurgency he once organized.

The other — and one that sharply contradicts initial assessments that Baradar's capture exhibited Pakistan's willingness to go after Taliban militants on its soil — is that Pakistan caught wind of Baradar's role and swept in to forestall the process and detain him for questioning.

Goldblog On The Dish

AVIGDORUrielSinai:Getty

Read Jeffrey’s latest. He makes a point that improves on my own formulation:

I disagree with his formulation about Israel’s suicide, though not entirely. If anything, Israel may wind up the victim of murder-suicide. The long and brutal strategy of Arab Muslim extremists is to keep up the pressure on Israel until it makes a fatal mistake (the Gaza invasion, many believe — and I do, on some days — was an example of a non-fatal, but pretty damn serious strategic mistake) or until Israelis simply give up.

I think that murder-suicide is a better formulation. I despise the idea that Israel doesn’t have as much a right to exist as any other state, that it doesn’t have the right to self-defense as much as any other state, and I do believe that in the 1990s, the Israeli governments and people made good faith efforts to make peace that were largely, but not entirely, unreciprocated. I think Taba was more complicated than many neoconservatives made it out to be, but I had little difficulty in taking Israel’s side unequivocally in those years.

What concerns me – and concerns many – is what has happened since.

I’m sorry I haven’t had time to respond fully to Jeffrey and Jon yet – I thought it more urgent to tackle Marc Thiessen and this blog’s incessant pace makes the kind of reflection necessary to be fair in a real response in real time very hard. (And I hope Jeffrey saw my “tear his argument to shreds” point had a tongue-in-cheek quality to it. I certainly didn’t write, as his headline has it, that I would tear him to shreds. )

What concerns me is the hardening of attitudes in Israel, the emergence of a radical right in the mainstream, a foreign minister who is a vicious racist, and a response to Obama’s offer to hold a mirror up to Israel that amounted to a Cheneyite attempt to smash that mirror to pieces. Since the 1990s, the population of settlers on the West Bank has doubled, while the entire world has shifted deeply against Israel – and not solely because of rampant anti-Semitism. I do not single out Israel for war crimes – look at my record on the US. But I do believe that the Gaza war was worse than a mistake. It was, in many respects, along with the blockade, a pre-meditated crime.

And if Ehud Ohlmert were still prime minister, we might have made huge strides this past year. But Olmert is not prime minister. Netanyahu is – a wily, deeply cynical pol. And Avigdor Lieberman is Israel’s face to the world. No less than Marty Peretz has described Lieberman as a “neo-fascist … a certified gangster … the Israeli equivalent of Jörg Haider.” This is Israel’s foreign minister – and he’s there because the domestic politics of Israel put him there. We have the equivalent of Rove-Cheney in power in Israel, and we are approaching a terribly dangerous moment with Iran. I fear terrible consequences and I see in Washington the same neoconservatives upping the ante more and more.

Jeffrey doesn’t see it quite that way, but he does see the problem, and his writing has helped me understand more deeply the problem:

I’ve been writing since 2004 that Israel will one day be considered an apartheid state if it continues to rule over a population of Arabs that doesn’t want to be ruled by Israelis. That is why it is vital for Israel to establish permanent, internationally-recognized borders that more-or-less adhere to the 1967 border. Unlike Andrew, I believe that Israel has tried to free itself from ruling these Palestinians (the pull-out from Gaza is an example, as is Ehud Olmert’s recent, unanswered offer to the Palestinians to pull out from virtually 100 percent of the West Bank). But the reality remains: It will be very dangerous for Israel to engineer this pull-back, but it will be, over time, fatal for it to stay in the West Bank.

(Photo: Avigdor Lieberman by Uriel Sinai/Getty.)

“May The Judgement Not Be Too Heavy Upon Us” Ctd

A reader writes:

In invoking Just War Theory Marc Thiessen stresses the legitimate right of self-defense to justify our actions in regards to treatment of prisoners. In doing so he is attempting to address the Just War Theory of Jus ad Bellum,  that is, one can only wage war and take life for a truly just cause, usually in defense of self or innocent others. As you point out, the torture of defenseless prisoners can hardly be said to be "self-defense".

However, no matter how just or righteous the cause is, the second and equally important tenant of Just War Theory is Jus in Bello – the means with which you wage war. While these have developed over time and are subject to some varying interpretations, they have always been known to include, amongst other things, prohibitions against the targeting of civilians, the doctrine of proportionate response and of course humane treatment of prisoners.

It is impossible to wage a just war, or what we might call a morally justified use of lethal violence against others, unless both of these standards are met.  One without the other is not morally defensible no matter the nature of the threat (be it Nazis or Osama Bin Laden).

Father Winters, who headed the Ethics and International Relations Department at Georgetown University when I was there, always would stress when challenged on this, that as great a gift as our temporal life is from our creator, it pales in importance when compared to our eternal soul. 

The Rise Of Polarization?

Frum answers Erick Erickson's attack:

As many political scientists have demonstrated, the parties are becoming more polarized even though the electorate is not. The cause of the “disconnect” (as Morris Fiorina calls it)? Party elites, both Democratic and Republican, have found ways to take command of party institutions and steer their organizations further and further away from the broad preferences of the country. Activists wish their parties to be as conservative (or as liberal) as they can get away with – and voters are confronted at election time with the job of deciding which of two unappealing alternatives is the less obnoxious. It’s endlessly ironic to me that the people most enthusiastic about commandeering parties in this way will describe themselves as “populist” – and condemn as “elitist” those who think that good politics tries to solve the problems that most voters regard as most important.

Chait thinks extreme partisanship is inevitable. Jonathan Bernstein doesn't.

When Will Housing Recover?

Ryan Avent peers into his crystal ball:

I suspect that as economic conditions improve, twentysomethings living at home will quickly look to move out and start their own households. This, in turn, will support housing demand, housing prices, and housing construction, buoying the initial uptick.

To put this another way, everything comes back to unemployment. If you get steady job growth, many housing concerns (though not all) will begin to take care of themselves. Unfortunately, America has still had only one month of payroll growth since the onset of recession.