WhirledView

We Aren’t Hiding

By PLS

There was a lot of slimy journalism last week. Ugly unattributed stuff.

For unprincipled Conservatives the slime-mongering that dripped from the Insight web site and was slurped up by Fox network figures made a nifty two-in-one: take down Clinton along with Obama, the former for supposedly digging up useful dirt on a rival presidential hopeful, the latter for having possibly unsavory interludes in his life.

The whole story hung on a mysterious unnamed source. There was no way to confirm it and Fox didn't care. But the glory is that most reporters and commentators refused to keep pounding away once CNN checked out the facts. Such restraint bodes well for coverage of what's going to be an excruciatingly long presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, this seems like a good time to reaffirm the kind of journalism WhirledView has been committed to.

When the three of us set out to create an ezine with a concentration on politics and foreign affairs a little over two years ago, we spent a good amount of time discussing whether we’d use exciting and/or devious blog names or write under our own boring natal and/or married names.

It boiled down to a matter of genre. What kind of blog were we going to be? We weren’t interested in purveying gossip or being confessional. We knew from day one we'd take no pleasure in shaming or embarrassing anyone gratuitously, though we’ve never shrunk from strong, even harsh criticism of public figures who deserve (we think) to be slammed. Finally, we decided to write colloquially because we like to (and because that’s the nature of the blogging beast), but we’ve consciously avoided an overload of words the NYT can’t use at all. In short, we want to be responsible, not skulking, and never dull. (Which is one reason we liven up the news analysis with pieces on art, film, books, science, whatever, so WV really is an ezine.) All of which meant we weren't going to hide behind pseudonyms.

We made another commitment. We’d try to authenticate or document the facts behind our claims and conclusions. In fact, like most bloggers, we can’t do much original investigation or research. Although we have lots of significant and relevant personal experiences to draw upon, which is to say, major eye witness stuff, we don’t have the time or the money to compete in daily or in depth news gathering with a press conglomerate or a big newsroom. So we link where we can—and where we can’t we append sources. This kind of attribution comes naturally to WhirledView; our background experiences include journalism, academia and science as well as diplomacy.

In short, we do our best to be lively and provocative. But if we don’t have info enough to support a hunch, we won’t post.

Maybe We Should Learn from Ethiopia

By PLS

A mathematician I know has just pointed out that Ethiopia is better at conducting regime change than the US is. The Ethiopians rumbled into Somalia, drove out the Islamists, re-installed the beleaguered transitional government in Mogadishu and are now withdrawing—all in a few weeks’ time. They know that invaders and occupying powers are never welcome—or not for long—even after they've managed to do a much needed job.

OK. OK. The parallels aren’t perfect, but it’s worth thinking about.

And now, like a bankrupt gambler desperately in need of a twelve step recovery program, President Bush wants to send more troops to Iraq.

How many ordinary citizens in Baghdad are going to feel unalloyed joy about having more Americans on the street? Even if the troops say "ma'am" when they demand to search the house. Even should they say "Sorry!" when carting off a defiant son as a suspected insurgent.

How many really bad guys are going to stick it out in Baghdad when the place is yet more ostentatiously overrun with Americans?

Does anyone really believe that when and if Baghdad (and only Baghdad) is secured the whole country will suddenly become a lovey-dovey menage à trois?

A statue of Saddam Hussein came down a few years ago, but you can be sure that a statue of George W. Bush the Liberator (in naval pilot jump suit perhaps?) will never go up.

A Turkish Tragedy: A Matter of Conscience; A Murder of Hate

By PHK

Last week, a seventeen year old unemployed Turkish youth named Ogun Samast murdered Hrant Dink, the 52 year old popular but controversial founder and editor-in-chief of Agos, the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly, published in Istanbul.

Before his arrest, Samast took little care to hide his identity. This allowed the Turkish police to apprehend the young Trabzon resident who had been identified by his father from a videotape of the killing, in record time. It has also led to the arrest of five others from the same ultranationalist group of young men from the same poor neighborhood in the hills overlooking the city’s airport. Trabzon, an economically troubled city on the Black Sea - with a population under 500,000, is the largest Turkish city nearest the Georgian border.

Yasin Hayal, a 26 year old militant ultra-nationalist and Samast’s neighbor who had served ten months in prison for the 2004 bombing of a McDonald’s, confessed to inciting Samast to murder Dink. Hayal also provided Samast with the money, gun and weapons training to do so.

According to the Turkish mass circulation newspaper Hurriyet, the police, in investigating Dink’s murder, “have also apparently stumbled upon important clues” to the murder of the Roman Catholic priest Andrea Santoro by a 16 year old high school drop out in Trabzon in February 2006. In addition, growing militant nationalism in the city almost resulted “in the deaths of four students distributing leaflets about prison conditions . . . at the hands of a 2,000-strong lynch mob” incited by spurious local television accounts of the students’ activities just the year before.

“The Hard Road Back to Soft Power” – Ambassador Pamela Hyde Smith

By PHK

Meet the author: Former U.S. Ambassador and Georgetown Journal of International Affairs contributing author to speak at Olsson’s Dupont Circle bookstore in Washington, DC on public diplomacy reform, February 5 at 7 pm.

In the winter/spring 2007 issue of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Ambassador Pamela Hyde Smith argues that current approaches to building support for U.S. policies and American values abroad have failed to reverse negative attitudes towards the United States.

The most recent international polling data released by Globe Scan and the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes on January 23, 2007 confirms the Ambassador’s observations.*

America’s image abroad – with a very few exceptions – continues its downward spiral. And as Ambassador Smith points out: “anti-American forces are taking advantage of the collapse of U.S. popularity across the globe, making anti-Americanism a national security threat.” The five-page manifesto from Revolutionary Struggle (EA), a home-grown Greek terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for a missile attack on the American Embassy in Athens on January 12, is the latest corroboration of her grim assessment.

What can and should be done?

In “The Hard Road Back to Soft Power,” Ambassador Smith recommends not only significant changes in US foreign policy and “style of international discourse” but also the critical need for expansion and restructuring of the American government’s soft power infrastructure.

Ambassador Smith will speak at the Olsson’s Books and Records, Dupont Circle (1307 19th Street NW) on Monday, February 5, 2007 at 7 pm. Her presentation and Q and A are free and the public is invited.

Copies of the issue of the Journal in which Ambassador Smith’s article is published will be available for purchase at Olssons. The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs is the official semi-annual publication of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

*This survey of public attitudes towards US foreign policies was conducted for the BBC World Service primarily between November 2006 and January 2007. It included 26,381 respondents in 25 countries including the U.S.

History Began in 2001?

by CKR

I was surveying websites on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty for another project, and I found that the State Department's site has changed since I last looked at it.

The State Department web site below is a permanent electronic archive of information released prior to January 20, 2001. Please see www.state.gov for material released since President George W. Bush took office on that date. This site is not updated so external links may no longer function. Contact us with any questions about finding information.

It appears that material "released" (posted?) before George Bush's accession to power is not being updated.

I'm wondering if this is an indication that this material is now considered irrelevant or if maintaining this material is just another thing we can't afford.

However, this is on the current State Department site.

More prehistory (update): The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Dumb Questions

by CKR

A couple of things have been bothering me lately, and, although it goes against my nature, wise people in my life have urged me to ask the dumb questions. So here goes. There are people out there (like the Armchair Generalist) who know much more about military matters than I do, and people (like nadezhda) who are probably better strategists, along with the many, many people who know more about the Middle East than I do. So please chime in if you can enlighten me.

Dumb Question 1. Why wasn’t more said before the Iraq war about how Iraq’s power in the region balanced Iran’s?

It’s possible I missed hearing the many people who were saying this. But I don’t recall it, and I think its obviousness would have struck me. It was the basis of that famous Rumsfeld-Hussein handshake during the war between Iraq and Iran for dominance in the region. The photo showed up, but I don’t recall this particular commentary.

Now it seems to me that if two nations are duking it out for dominance in the region, and you take one of them out, the other one wins. But I just don’t recall hearing this as a possible consequence of war against Iraq.

Is Pakistan's Musharraf Just Playing aTwo-Faced Game? Is India? Are We?

By PLS

Only if you believe that a simplistic “fer-me-or-agin-me” approach to international affairs is the best way for any country to handle its economic and security needs in the long run.

In that case, talking about international affairs (and conducting international relations) in black and white, good and evil, starkly Manichean terms makes sense.

But the real world is infinitely more complex, as the Bush administration is coming painfully, reluctantly to understand in the Middle East.

America's intricate web of interrelationships with countries in another part of the world illustrates such complexities even more richly. In South, Central and Far Eastern Asia, the US is engaged in a process of balancing vital interests for which a simplistic vocabulary of friends and enemies is of no use whatsover. Let's take a look.

Russia’s Back

The latest news is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to be a guest of honor at India’s splashy Republic Day Parade. Even as India and the US have not quite finished the process of working out an accord that involves US support for nuke-based energy production in India, Russia and India are expected to sign eight to ten bilateral accords, including an agreement on “joint production of a multi-role transport aircraft and fifth generation fighter jets.” The Soviet Union was a major supplier of India’s military needs during the Cold War when the US was closely allied with India’s primary antagonist Pakistan. Now that Russia’s oil rich, the bear is on the prowl again. (Late breaking news: Russia will supply four new nuclear power plants.)

The Porous Pakistani Border

Meanwhile, Pakistani intelligence agents in Quetta roughed up (probably not accidentally) a New York Times reporter and confiscated her computer, notebooks and cellphone long enough to copy what she’d learned and from whom. She had been gathering evidence of Pakistan’s supportive role in the Taliban’s explosive resurgence in Afghanistan. Both Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden are assumed to be hiding somewhere in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan. Yet Pakistan these days is America’s heavily subsidized and supposedly staunch ally in the “war” against terrorism. Of course, Pakistan is also cultivating close military and economic ties with China, whose recent Star Wars demonstration has the US worried.

Libby Trial Coverage

by CKR

If you want to follow the Libby trial in detail and are finding that the MSM just isn't enough, the best places to go are Firedoglake and The Next Hurrah.

For summaries of the MSM and a bit more, check out Dan Froomkin.

Christy Hardin Smith and other Firedogs, along with Marcy Wheeler of TNH, are liveblogging. They also are posting video on YouTube, but I'm not acquainted enough with that medium to be able to tell you how to reach it. TNH has a video up, so you can follow it from there.

It should be interesting. We now know that the CIA had its own copies of the Niger documents, for example.

Marcy untangles the complex web of who did what when, and Christy and others explain the legal intricacies. I'm glad that they're willing to devote their time to it.

Tuesday Albedo Blogging

by CKR

I have skipped some of my Tuesday blogging lately because WhirledView has had so many unscheduled and photogenic visitors. The roadrunner still comes to eat the suet and throw it around. A couple of neighborhood dogs scarffed the suet up the other day, but I can tell when the roadrunner eats, because some of the suet has been tossed around. I didn’t see her yesterday, but she came around noon, which has been her preferred time lately. Then something cleaned it all up last night.

Sometimes she comes by while I’m sitting in the living room reading. She seems to find me as fascinating as I find her and looks curiously through the glass door at me. If I stay reasonably still, she doesn’t flush, although she may casually find a reason to head off into the yard.

We’ve also had a fair bit of snow, too, which keeps me shoveling. Today it was a relief not to wake up to another layer.

As I’ve shoveled and used the snow blower, I’ve thought about albedo and its uses. You may have heard the word in connection with global warming. An easy way to think about it is the ability to reflect light. As we lose ice and snow in glaciers and polar caps, the earth’s albedo goes down and more light is absorbed. That light turns into heat, so the process of losing glaciers and polar caps may be self-stoking.

But lowering the albedo is a good thing when I’m shoveling snow. The difference in albedo between shoveled asphalt and unshoveled snow is obvious in the first photo. Even that inch or two of snow is awfully white and reflective. Leave it on the driveway and it might melt, or it might not. Those little dark pebble peaks absorb the sun, though, and melt the adjacent snow. All the time, as the black patches grow, the albedo is decreasing and more light is absorbed to heat the asphalt. Then there is just wet asphalt, and then, dry. The last photo was taken when the air temperature was 21 F.

On Cats!

By PHK

I have a weakness for cats. For years we had Cleo, a camera-shy Bangkok-born Burmese who would never stay still long enough to be photographed. In Washington, DC her favorite perch was on top of the refrigerator. This gave her a commanding view of the kitchen, the can-opener, her food dish and a place where she could keep a wary eye out for her nemesis, our then young son, who really wanted a dog. He told me much later that it wasn't because he was fond of dogs, it was so he could sic it on my cat.

In Moscow, Cleo lived splayed out across the grill of the warmest radiator in the apartment. In Athens, her favorite sport was catching and eating backyard lizards. Since cats are allergic to lizards, she would return to the house just in time to throw up lizard remains on our bedspread.

We don’t have a cat in New Mexico because my husband discovered he’s allergic to cats or maybe the lizard innards got to him. Anyway, in lieu of a cat, our yard jumps with brown field rabbits of all sizes: Unfortunately, because I have a small vegetable garden. Meanwhile, I have developed immense sympathy for Mr. McGregor and lost all fondness for Peter. Baby bunnies are cute – but if it’s them or me munching the veggies, then the battle lines are
clear.

On my side are the neighborhood predators. I’ve heard we have coyotes, but I’ve only seen bobcats – and then on rare occasion. They eschew vegetables and adore rabbits – I just wish they’d finish the job and dispose of the carcass elsewhere. But they don’t.

Bobcats – despite their slovenly, stealthy, predatory ways - are cute. I first sighted one on a late summer’s eve as it blithely wandered across the patio. It even stopped to look at the lights inside our house – but it then turned and quickly disappeared in the the night.

A week ago, between fourth and fifth snowstorms of the season, a bobcat pair silently appeared. They perched on the tallest cement post on our back wall. We didn’t see them arrive; and we missed their departure.

They stayed in the same position for an hour or more in watch-cat position. Their alert bodies touched one another – back to back, head to rear and rear to head. They were so close to each other that from a distance they looked like a two headed animal with one head on each end of its body. One wary bobcat's head continuously surveilled our yard and the other faced the yard behind. Whether they were looking for food, keeping four eyes out for their own predators or both, I don’t know. And they certainly would not have told me.

Whether they even saw us I don’t know. And I haven’t seen the pair since. Why they appeared that cloud-filtered winter afternoon, where they came from, where they went or whether they’ll ever return remain mysteries that I'll probably never solve.

Photos by PHKushlis - 1) Bobcats - Albuquerque, NM January 2007; 2) Garden in early summer -2006; 2) Bobcats II - Albuquerque, NM January 2007.