WhirledView

The India Lobby and the Back Door

by CKR

Sunday's Washington Post brought a couple of complementary articles, although the Post didn't run them that way.

Israel Submits Nuclear Trade Plan

Forget the Israel Lobby. The Hill's Next Big Player Is Made in India.

Congress still must approve the nuclear trade deal with India. Although there was quite an uproar in India's parliament over its "loss of sovereignty" in the deal, an accommodation seems to have been reached to damp down the uproar. Since India's parliament does not have to approve, the relative quiet will probably prevail there until the US Congress moves, and then PLS believes (and I tend to agree) that the quiet will continue in India.

It's not at all clear what Congress will do, however. The Democrats are testy over the war in Iraq, but they passed the waivers that paved the way for the deal without a whimper. This could be because of that India lobby, which has been learning from the Israel lobby, according to Mira Kamdar in Sunday's Washington Post.

"This is huge," enthused Ron Somers, the president of the U.S.-India Business Council, from a posh hotel lobby in Philadelphia. "It's the Berlin Wall coming down. It's Nixon in China."

What has Somers so energized is a landmark nuclear cooperation deal between India and the United States, which would give India access to U.S. nuclear technology and deliver fuel supplies to India's civilian power plants in return for placing them under permanent international safeguards. Under the deal's terms, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- for decades the cornerstone of efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons -- will in effect be waived for India, just nine years after the Clinton administration slapped sanctions on New Delhi for its 1998 nuclear tests.

But another player has emerged. Israel, another of the triad outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (Pakistan is the third), has offered its services to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group in determining which non-NPT nations deserve nuclear trade anyway. (Hint: not Pakistan.) The NSG will have to pass on the trade deal if the US Congress approves it, and some of its members are none too pleased. Glenn Kessler says that the Israeli proposal could complicate the politics of the India deal both in Congress and the NSG.

the Bush administration is rejecting the Israeli proposal. "We view the India deal as unique and don't see it as a precedent for any other country, including Israel," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

There is also a hint of Israel's 'fessing up to having nukes.

The Israeli plan offers 12 criteria for allowing nuclear trade with non-treaty states, including one that hints at Israel's status as an undeclared nuclear weapons state: A state should be allowed to engage in nuclear trade if it applies "stringent physical protection, control and accountancy measures to all nuclear weapons, nuclear facilities, source material and special nuclear material in its territory."

Using criteria rather than a flat US say-so on nuclear trade with non-NPT states seems desirable, but Israel's nuclear ambiguity may play against it in the NSG. On the other hand, we can wonder if USINPAC and AIPAC will get together to press the US Congress toward approval of the deal. Or if they've been working together all along.

Sunday Links

by CKR

It’s easy to get depressed looking at the field of presidential candidates, the 392nd (or whatever) campaign debate, and the latest news of our government’s ambitions for more war in the Middle East. Here are some better things to think about.

Phila this week gives us a larger dose of Hope Blogging than usual.

Science magazine reports (3 August issue) on Pilai Poonswad, a biologist who has been working with villagers in southern Thailand to preserve several species of hornbills. Hornbills are large birds with impressively colored and very ornate bills. The communities are minority Islam in the predominantly Buddhist country, so the effort seems to be improving human-human relations as well as human-bird relations.

A much older forest has been unearthed in Hungary. The Taxodium (cypress) trees are still in standing position, and not fossilized. In other words, they are still tree-stuff rather than stone, and it may be that DNA can be collected from the 7-million-year-old trees and the bugs that inhabited them. Here’s a news clip from Hungarian tv:

And a clearer photo:

Arizona State University is making photos from the Apollo missions available. The Lunar and Planetary Institute is planning to post high-resolution scans of 35,000 photos from the Apollo missions. The film has been in a freezer for 30 years. So far only five are posted, but more are promised.

Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has expanded its nestbox livecam coverage to 21. It’s late in the season now, and only the barn owls in California can be seen live. But the others, including seabirds in Alaska, prothonotary warblers in Texas, and barn swallows in Washington have archives you can look at through fall and winter.

[Credits: Hornbill picture from the Hornbill Research Foundation website; ancient forest photo from ABC News]

The Wrong Discussion

by CKR

What bothers me about that question on Dipnotes, and this New York Times editorial, and numerous other discussions of Iran’s nuclear program, is that it’s off on the wrong foot, thanks to the Bush administration’s preference for ignoring treaties and the media’s unwillingness to dig for the facts.

I’ve said much of this before, but it’s probably worth saying again.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty guarantees that its non nuclear weapon signatories can have full access to peaceful nuclear technology. Iran is a non nuclear weapon signatory.

Article IV
1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.

2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also co-operate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.

That means that it is not up to George Bush, or the United States, to decide whether Iran can have peaceful nuclear technology.

The IAEA found Iran in violation of its NPT obligations to report certain types of experimentation, and therefore the UN General Assembly has called on Iran (Resolutions 1696, 1737, and 1747) to suspend its activities in uranium enrichment until Iran explains those experiments satisfactorily.

For the State Department: How To Write A Blog

by CKR

First of all, don’t use a black background. This may be a prejudice of mine, but I find the glaring white words on Dipnotes hard to read. The charcoal-gray background for posts mitigates this somewhat, but when I go back to a white background, my eyeballs are seared.

Second, the latest posts go at the top. Your software probably has an easy way to change this. The latest comments go at the bottom. Blogging has been around long enough to develop some conventions, and this chronology is one of them.

I’ve gotten a comment from one Dipnotes observer that the nuclear question was timely. I’ll agree with that, but I would like to see an attempt at intelligent conversation on a blog from the State Department. Or anywhere, but that’s a bit much to ask. Giving no background, not even a link to the treaty being discussed (and which is quite easy to read), guarantees that the discussion will be incoherent.

There are only a few reasons I comment on blogs. First is to further a discussion. I do this when it appears that the poster has given the subject some thought. If I know the poster from previous interactions, so much the better, and I will add in humor and other ways of introducing color into the discussion. Sometimes it’s to get noticed. I do this on more highly trafficked blogs, but only when I feel that what I have to say contributes to the discussion. Usually it’s also only if I arrive at the top of the comments. This is also known as blogwhoring. Occasionally, it’s to correct a deep misapprehension. I’ve mostly given this up because commenters, particularly later in a thread, happily take leave of the factual world.

Institutional blogs are, in general, boring. Newspapers have introduced many, many of them, and they seldom have the bite or individuality of blogs run by, er, real people. I read very few of them regularly, but it might be informative to consider the ones that I do.

First and foremost, Dan Froomkin of washingtonpost.com. Froomkin does an enormous amount of work to provide links to and excerpts from articles in the MSM and blogosphere relating to the presidency. I’m not pleased that wapo has eliminated the one-page version, but Froomkin is worth the page-clicking.

Next, Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly. Kevin was an independent blogger before WM picked him up. He has kept a snappy style, with commentary on the news and his famous Friday Catblogging.

Those are the only two institutional blogs on my regular daily rounds of the Web. Froomkin has no comment feature, although he seems to be attentive to his e-mail. I find the comments on Drum’s blog to have the same boring quality that any comments from a wide audience do. Very occasionally there is a gem, but the early ones are mostly predictable, and predictably scrappy later.

There are two more that I look at, maybe once or twice a week: FP Passport and Early Warning. Siddarth Varadarajan’s Reality, One Bite at a Time is a useful compendium of his articles written for The Hindu.

There are several other institutional blogs that I read from time to time, but mostly when someone else links to them. These include The Swamp, Swampland (these two say all I need to say about originality in these blogs), The Note, The Huffington Post, and Andrew Sullivan, who, like Kevin Drum, began as an independent. That’s about it.

And no, please no, I don’t want to read about Karen Hughes’s cat.

Wednesday Balloon Blogging

by CKR

Saturday evening I looked out at the sky. Just east of the moon was a bright object, brighter than Venus, and in the wrong place in the sky. I got out my binoculars. It was clearly a balloon. It's pretty obvious from the image as I've posted it, but clearer when you click on the image to enlarge it. Here's the moon at the same magnification, to give you some scale. There have been several balloons in the local sky over the past month, but nobody's told us why.

I've been feeling lately like some apology is needed. Most of my posts have been quick ones, and my Tuesday photo blogging has been highly irregular. The roadrunner was back one day, but I just watched her; no photos. I've also been thinking that I haven't posted any lizard photos this year. There's a cute one out there that lost a tail, and possibly a leg (haven't gotten a good look), and is growing it/them back. A hazard of roadrunner/lizard cohabitation? I've had a squirrel invasion that has required taking in the birdseed, but I'm hoping that is changing for the better. I was thinking about putting the seed back out today.

I've got a couple of more thoughtful posts gestating, but I've been working with my colleagues on a book, and most of my serious-thinking-writing time has gone into that, not to mention a number of other activities that absorb other parts of my time.

The next week or so seems not too busy, although work on the book will have to continue. I'm almost to a point where I can think about getting back to some of those gestating posts for WhirledView, though.

A Nuclear Day

by CKR

Lots of nuke stuff out there today. The Washington Post has devoted its Opinion page to nuclear weapons matters, and the State Department’s new blog “Dipnotes,” asks about nuclear policy in its first question. And I’ve got a meeting tonight.

The Washington Post coverage isn’t much for depth, but maybe that’s not a bad place to start. Matthew Bunn gives some of the basics of securing nuclear materials from the just-released report “Securing the Bomb 2007,” an annual report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Harvard University on progress in keeping nuclear materials and bombs out of the wrong hands. There’s a quiz and FAQs. The FAQs are probably the best of what the WaPo’s given us in this package.

Through a number of comments, in his article and the chat, on how hard it might be for terrorists to make a bomb, Bunn ignores an article that did just that analysis. The article itself is behind subscription walls, so I’ll link to my comments on it.

Nothing new there, except the report, which apparently has nothing newsworthy, but it’s all useful if you want to brush up or clarify some basics. I would like to see a breakdown on how well people collectively did on the quiz.

The State Department has something new, a blog. As I was writing my initial reaction to its name, it occurred to me that Dipnote could be State Department jargon, and sure enough, it is. I just don’t think I’d call my blog by any compound name beginning with Dip-. I’ve also got some thoughts about official blogs, like those on so many newspapers now, but I’ll concentrate on Dipnote’s first question:

In 1968, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was created to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and express the intention of NPT signatories to achieve disarmament. Nonetheless, questions exist as to why the international community approves of some nations possessing nuclear materials and not others.

"What should determine who should be allowed to possess nuclear technology and who should not?"

That’s all the post says. No link to the NPT. No link to anything.

The State Department Blogs

by CKR

DipNote? Who would name a blog DipNote? Aaaarrrrggggh!

More to come.

Thomas Jefferson a Republican?

by CKR

I’ve seen two references in the last two weeks to “the Republican Party” pre-1854. Here’s one, and I don’t recall the other. For those of us who have spent any time at all in Ripon, Wisconsin, “Home of the Republican Party,” those references sound bizarre. (Hey, Bill and Judy!) So I thought I’d check it out.

The Republican Party, according to the history I knew, was formed by a group of businessmen and farmers who felt that the two political parties of the time, the Democrats and the Whigs, were not addressing the abolition of slavery, too wedded to the status quo, too afraid that they would wind up on the wrong side of the issue, too indebted to their big moneymen.

So I wondered what “Republican Party” those recent articles meant. As far as I knew, the party with that name originated in 1854. In researching this on the Web, however, I find that one of the historians of this question says that the 1854 Republicans chose the name because it “had been applied by Thomas Jefferson to his party.”

Thomas Jefferson opposed the Federalists, who wanted a stronger national government and alliance with England. He initially called the party “Republican,” but the name became “Democratic-Republican.” Still later, it dropped the second part of that long hyphenation and became 1854’s and today’s Democratic Party.

The Federalists came apart after the War of 1812 made it hard to argue for alliance with Britain. A few years later, Andrew Jackson was one of those presidents who evoke strong feelings, and those who opposed him began calling themselves Whigs. The Ripon residents who founded their Republican Party included Whigs, Democrats, and Free-Soilers, with perhaps a predominance of Whigs.

The Republicans' candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the 1860 presidential election.

So it’s quite inaccurate to refer to Thomas Jefferson as a Republican, unless you qualify that term. The New Yorker article seems unaware of this history.

And a party with its origins in vehement single-issue antislavery? How did it get to here?

The Blackwater Affair: A Disaster Just Waiting to Happen

By PHK

So who does control the Blackwater contract diplomatic security guards who apparently ran amok on September 16 killing at least 11 Iraqi civilians and wounding 12 at Baghdad’s Al Nisour Square while escorting U.S. Embassy personnel to appointments outside the Green Zone?

Who are these armed escorts, how many are there, who were they protecting, who protects them, under whose laws do they operate, how much is this company paid for their services and are these trigger happy hired guns truly helping to advance America’s best interests if our continued military occupation of Iraq will, in the end, be mostly about “winning hearts and minds” not playing shoot’em up at the OK Corral?

In one of the State Department’s foggier briefings on the Blackwater fiasco last week, spokesman Tom Casey responded to a question from a journalist about a Washington Post story critical of State Department oversight of Blackwater with the following: “Well I guess my basic reaction is: don’t believe everything you read.”

Right on, Tom: I don’t. I’ve also learned not to trust everything State Department briefers say either. Often when faced with questions they’d rather not - or usually can’t - answer, the routine non-response is obfuscation or stonewalling. Occasionally, when they do answer they paint a far too rosy picture. They practice all three tactics particularly well under this administration because the W administration’s approach to information is predicated on the public’s non-right to know - first amendment not withstanding. The traditional State public affairs approach is not to lie, but to avoid providing information requested that might make a higher up look inept, or to spin information so it makes the official in question look good instead of . . . you fill in the rest.

When I was reading last week’s State press briefings on the latest 'affair' Blackwater, it was painfully clear that the briefers had not been told or if they had been, refused to reveal the amount Blackwater is paid to provide U.S. diplomatic security in Iraq.

The reporter who asked the question two days in a row was told to file a FOIA request (and we all know how long a response for that takes) or use his own sources in the Department. Give me a break: As if answering the question might reveal some great state secret as briefer Tom Casey suggested might be the reason for State’s refusal to answer.

It can’t be a problem with basic math – or can it? Contracts have line items – and sub-line items and at the very least some green eyeshade in State’s contracting office as well as someone or ones in Diplomatic Security should have access to the data.

This particular contract is an umbrella affair that covers diplomatic security services “world wide” – as the State briefer said – but the amount of the overall contract and the amount that goes to Blackwater and especially for these kinds of services in Iraq is an open question that deserves an open answer.

We do know, however, the approximate number of diplomatic security guards Blackwater provides State in Iraq because those figures are in a recently updated CRS Report on private security contractors.

The answer: All told, the State Department contract calls for a total of about 945 American diplomatic security guards in Iraq. 744 of them come through Blackwater – according to State Department data cited in Congressional Research Service’s July 11, 2007 report. DynCorp International provides 100 and Triple Canopy 101 more. (See Table I on page 7 of the CRS report for the data on third country and Iraqi nationals on contract security guard duty). True, these 945 represent only the tip-of-the-private-security-guards-in-Iraq-iceberg. Nonetheless it suggests to me that at least in terms of the guarding of U.S. diplomats when they venture outside the Green Zone, the number is small enough that continuing to engage Blackwater for this purpose is not a necessity.

The Blackwater crew operates, according to other sources, primarily in central Iraq. The company provides security for State Department personnel who work in the Embassy in Baghdad and also those on the provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) in the region. State’s contract guard force in Kurdistan comes from Dyncorp International and in the south from Triple Canopy according to other sources. Correct me if this is wrong.

Mum’s the Word: But Why?

I can think of any number of reasons why the Department refuses to release the contract information requested but I sincerely doubt that keeping it from “the enemy” for security reasons is one of them.

Two Guesses

For Women who Think They're Full Fledged Human Beings

By PLS

News Flash: A Christian minister husband has beaten up his Christian minister wife, in public---and this is a woman who was out there preaching that women should defer to their men!

Aside from the question of abuse, my question is: why is Barak Obama accepting this retrograde female preacher as one of his advisers? Women voters, beware! We've had enough of evangelical family values to last us through the century.