Month: May 2011

The Internet one-ups TNR's Tom Friedman parody:

The day of reckoning is waving its white flag from the caboose, and that white flag’s name is Fahd. Fahd, 26, runs a souvlaki stand in Washington DC, and like his American-born counterparts, he enjoys listening to music on his iPod, watching television shows such as MTV’s Cribbage, and he will often communicate with his friends by typing on the tiny keys of his cell phone.

… As a person under thirty running his own business, Fahd is focused only on his immediate needs, and his immediate needs include, whether he wants to admit it or not, a fifty-ish foreign policy expert who can provide global strategies and pithy policy recommendations to guide his sandwich making strategies.

Greg Sargent sees how propaganda can work.

A gallery of NHL players growing beards in the play-offs. As is the tradition. More pics here. I find the term "human toilet brush" somewhat offensive.

The violence there has not abated one bit:

Yemeni forces have opened fire on demonstrators in three major cities, killing at least 18 and wounding hundreds in one of the fiercest bouts of violence witnessed in nearly three months of popular unrest aimed at toppling President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Violence broke out in the capital when a throng of 2,000 protesters tore away from the main sit-in area at Sana'a University and surged en masse towards the cabinet building in downtown Sana'a with shouts of "God is great" and "Allah rid us of this tyrant". As they neared their destination they were halted by republican guards who, after trying to disperse them with tear gas and water cannons, began firing live rounds at the crowd. … The standoff, which lasted for around four hours, climaxed when soldiers loyal to a defected general, Major Ali Mohsin, arrived in pickup trucks and began returning fire at Saleh's troops.

The above footage is from today. This graphic video of a citizen getting shot in the head was captured earlier this week. Live-blog updates here.

John McCain counters the torture apologists by describing the statements of former attorney general Mukasey as simply "false":

I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true.

I watched Hannity's show last night to observe Gingrich. But it was striking that the lie that torture had anything to do with the killing of Osama bin Laden is accepted as a premise on the propaganda network. Marcy Wheeler, meanwhile, analyzes the new facts McCain brings to light. This strikes me as important:

I have noted that a detainee who appears to be Ghul was held for six months–from January to August 2004–before the CIA started getting approval for his CIA-led interrogation. If the detainee who provided the key information on Abu Ahmed was Ghul and did so through noncoercive means, it means that Ghul’s interrogation before CIA got him–presumably, Ghul’s interrogation by military interrogators not using torture–yielded the key piece of information that would eventually lead to OBL. And (such a scenario would further imply) CIA insisted on taking custody and torturing him, even after he yielded information that would lead to OBL. Which might explain the legal sensitivities around Ghul’s torture, because if they got key info without torture the claims they based torture on would all be demonstrably false.

It’s all wildarsed speculation at this point, but such a scenario might explain why the torture apologists have been so vehement.

You think? A prisoner gives a key piece of information under US rules of interrogation, and subsequently is subjected to Gestapo rules of interrogation.

This suggests that two models were competing within the US government – the traditional model of interrogation for the extraction of actionable intelligence; and the Cheney model of brutalizing the psyches and bodies of suspects to create "compliance" and then probing a stream of broken consciousness for further clues. The Cheney model, reverse engineered from the techniques of Communist dictatorships was new to the US. Which is why I suspect they experimented with various torture techniques at Gitmo and elsewhere.

It's perfectly possible that under such experimentation, some prisoners died. But we cannot know this for sure until the Obama administration conducts a thorough and independent study of the alleged Gitmo suicides.

Kevin Drum insists that it's easy:

By 2030, the income-outgo gap is about 1.5% of GDP, so all you have to do is pick and choose from a menu of options that gradually raise revenue and cut benefits by a combined total of 1.5% of GDP. That's it. Your choices will depend a lot on your values and your priorities, but in the end the only thing you have to do is make sure the numbers add up. Simple.

"With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses. … You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be," – Senator Rand Paul.

From Bogota, Colombia:

Matt Stopera compiled 29 more murals composed by street artist BLU.

Josh Rogin worries that we're doing it wrong:

As Congress contemplates cutting U.S. aid to Pakistan in light of the discovery that Osama bin Laden had been hiding there for years, the funds most at risk from disgruntled lawmakers are those currently allocated to the civilian government that is more sympathetic to Washington, rather than the money going to the Pakistani military, which is more wary of ties to the United States.

Catie Bailard explains her research in more detail. She gave Internet access to a group of Tanzanians before their elections. Bailard theorized that "the Internet would encourage individuals to evaluate the fairness of the Tanzanian presidential election and recount more critically than their peers in the control group." She was proven right, but access to new information wasn't an unalloyed good:

Members of the Internet group were 15 percentage points less likely to believe that the election was conducted fairly and impartially.  They were also 12 points more likely to believe that the recount was conducted unfairly when compared to the control group.  However, relative to the control group, members of the Internet group were also 11 points less likely to vote.

This suggests that—although the Internet may have provided better information about the integrity of the election—this supposed democratic boon may carry a negative side effect.  In this case, it appears that Internet users who became more aware of electoral abuses, seemingly also became less likely to believe that their vote mattered.  After all, the belief that an election is not being conducted fairly can produce two very divergent responses: some people may respond by protesting and taking to the streets, while others may simply throw up their hands and stay home.  Perhaps, then, both Internet cynics and enthusiasts have it partially right.