The great game
I don’t pretend to understand American empire or why the U.S. does anything at all. I don’t have any special knowledge. But for some reason, I’ve never believed the U.S. version of what’s happening in Ukraine.
I look at this stuff now and think, Well, there may be activity on Russia’s borders or inside Ukraine, but maybe not. Those two soldiers may be Russian and may be on active duty, but I cannot draw any conclusion.
I do not appreciate having to think this way—not as a reader and not as a former newsman. I do not like reading Times editorials, such as Tuesday’s, which institutionalizes “Putin’s war” and other such tropes, and having to say, Our most powerful newspaper is into the created reality game.
A few things can be made clear in all this. Straight off the top it is almost certain, despite a logical wariness of presented evidence, that Russia has personnel and weapons deployed along its border and in Ukraine.
I greatly hope so, and whether they are on duty or otherwise interests me not at all.
First of all, it is a highly restrained approach to a geopolitical circumstance that Moscow recognizes as dangerous, Washington does not seem to and Kiev emphatically does not. In reversed circumstances, a troubled nation would have long back turned into an open conflict between two nuclear powers. Fig leafs have their place.
I have written before on the question of spheres of influence: They are to be observed if not honored. Stephen Cohen, the Russianist scholar, prefers “spheres of security,” and the phrase makes the point plainly. Russia cannot be expected to abandon its interests as Cohen defines them, and considering what is at issue for Moscow, the response is intelligently measured.
Equally, Moscow appears to recognize that without any equilibrium between the Russian-tilted east and the Western-tilted west, Ukraine will be a bloodbath. Irresponsible as it has proven, and with little or no control over armed extreme rightist factions, Kiev cannot be allowed even an attempt to resolve this crisis militarily.
One has to consider how these things are conventionally done. I had a cousin who piloted helicopters in Vietnam long ago. When we spread the conflict to Laos and Cambodia he flew in blue jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers and without dog tags. “If you go down, we don’t know you,” was the O.D.
A directly germane case is Angola in the mid-1970s. When the Portuguese were forced to flee the old colony, the CIA began supplying right-wing opportunists in the north and south with weapons, money, and agency personnel. Only in response did Cuba send troops that quickly proved decisive. I remember well all the howls of “aggression”—all of them hypocritical rubbish: American efforts to subvert the movement that still governs Angola peaceably continued for a dozen more years.
The Times editorial just noted is headlined, “Vladimir Putin Hides the Truth.” This is upside-down-ism at its very worst.
It is not easy to put accounts of the Ukraine crisis side by side to compare them. Think of two bottles of unlabeled wine in a blind taste test. Now read on.
I do not see how there can be any question that Moscow’s take on Ukraine and the larger East-West confrontation is the more coherent. Read or listen to Putin’s speeches, notably that delivered at the Valdai Discussion Club, a Davos variant, in Sochi last October. It is historically informed, with a grasp of interests (common and opposing), the nature of the 21st century environment and how best outcomes are to be achieved in it.
Altogether, Moscow offers a vastly more sophisticated, coherent accounting of the Ukraine crisis than any American official has or ever will. This is for one simple reason: Neither Putin nor Lavrov bears the burden American officials do of having to sell people mythical renderings of how the world works or their place in it.
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It’s time to let Edward Snowden come home
John Cassidy in the New Yorker says what so many of us think:
Rather than transmitting information to foreign powers, Snowden handed over his electronic stash of documents to reporters from the Guardian and the Washington Post, with the stipulation that they treat its contents sensitively and carefully. Although the leak led to some sensational stories—Michael Morell, a top C.I.A. official, called it “the most serious compromise of classified information in the history of the U.S. intelligence community”—the journalists largely adhered to Snowden’s stipulation.
The news stories brought to light many details about domestic surveillance, such as the bulk collection of phone records and the PRISM program, which enabled the N.S.A. to retrieve users’ e-mails and search histories from Internet companies such as Google and Facebook. Another story revealed that the N.S.A.’s own internal auditor had concluded that the agency had breached its own privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times a year since 2008. But despite some embarrassing details about overseas operations (such as the fact that the United States had tapped the phone calls of world leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel), the stories based on the Snowden leaks didn’t reveal much about specific U.S. intelligence operations around the world. Nor did they compromise individual intelligence agents.
As Snowden intended, the primary impact of the leaks was on political debate inside the United States. Based partly on the information that Snowden released, a federal judge, Richard J. Leon, ruled in December, 2013, that the N.S.A. had violated the Constitution, calling the bulk-data-collection program “almost Orwellian.” That same month, a panel of experts appointed by Obama issued a report calling for some restrictions on the powers of the FISA court and for an end to the N.S.A.’s bulk-data-collection program, which, the panel said, “creates potential risks to public trust, personal privacy, and civil liberty.” Led by the Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, and the G.O.P. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, of Wisconsin, a bipartisan effort emerged to rein in the N.S.A., which Sensenbrenner, one of the original authors of Patriot Act, accused of misusing and overstepping the powers that Congress had granted to it. The newly passed legislation is an amended version of the original bill that Leahy and Sensenbrenner put forward in the fall of 2013.
To repeat, none of this would have happened without Snowden’s intervention. Doubtless, the intelligence agencies are pressing the White House to stick to its hard line about prosecuting him, on the grounds that dropping the charges, or making some sort of plea bargain, would encourage other leakers. But that is a self-serving argument, and it doesn’t stand up to inspection. In a free society, we want whistle-blowers who have persuasive evidence that great wrongs are being carried out to come forward and tell us about them. The President has argued in the past that Snowden could have taken his concerns to his seniors, and that he would have been protected by an executive order affording protections to whistle-blowers in the intelligence agencies. The notion is risible. As the Times editorial board pointed out last year, the executive order that Obama was referring to didn’t even apply to government contractors like Snowden.
Americans understand that they live in a world that contains people and organizations intent on doing harm to the United States, and they are willing to grant the federal government some intrusive powers in order to protect the country and its citizenry. But they also want reassurance that the authorities aren’t monitoring the every move and communication of ordinary people who have nothing to do with terrorism or any other form of wrongdoing. In the words of the high-level panel of experts appointed by Obama, “Free nations must protect themselves, and nations that protect themselves must remain free.”
After 9/11, for a variety of reasons, some of them eminently understandable, the trade-off between security and liberty tipped too far in the direction of intrusion and authoritarianism. Historians will record that Snowden’s leaks helped, at least somewhat, to right the balance. At great risk to himself, he stood up to the immensely powerful system for which he worked, and cried foul. Rather than seeking to incarcerate Snowden for decades, which was the fate that met Chelsea Manning, the WikiLeaks whistle-blower, the U.S. government ought to be seeking some sort of deal with his lawyers that would allow him to return home and carry on with his life.
Senate Dems introduce bill to stop low-wage non-compete agreements
If the Dems would just stick to laws like this, they would have no problem winning elections:
Chiding companies such as Jimmy John’s and Amazon.com, Senate Democrats introduced a bill Wednesday that would forbid employers from requiring low-wage workers to sign noncompete agreements, a practice they said locks workers into their jobs and depresses wages.
The bill, called the Mobility and Opportunity for Vulnerable Employees Act, or MOVE ACT, would bar non-competes for workers earning less $15 per hour, and would require companies to inform job seekers ahead of time if they will be asked to sign such an agreement.
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Congresswoman on tech industry: ‘They know more about TPP than we do’
Well, of course! It’s for the benefit of Big Business and telling Congress critters the pesky details would only get in the way:
The technology industry knows more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal that many members of Congress, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said Wednesday.
Speier, who opposes President Obama’s plan to fast-track the deal through Congress, has lamented the secrecy surrounding the draft text of the trade agreement.
“This process has been going on for a long time without our benefit. I was sitting in a meeting with tech execs from the valley who knew more about the TPP than I did,” she said on the “The Bill Press Show.”
“Because they’re the ones drafting it,” she told Press, who is a columnist for The Hill.
“I think we’ve got to go back to you know a Democratic process to forge a deal that will provide for TPP and the kind of transparency that we expect.”
The Senate passed the fast track trade promotion authority last month but it faces opposition from most Democrats and some Republicans in the House.
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Scott Walker is a douchebag
There’s a crowded field, but I’d say he and Marco Rubio are tied for sheer enthusiasm in performing fellatio on extremist right-wing donors. They will do or say just about anything in pursuit of the Republican nomination:
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said he is prepared to sign into law a 20-week abortion ban without any exceptions for victims of rape or incest, arguing that women are concerned with those issues “in the initial months” of pregnancy.
Walker, a Republican who is expected to run for president in 2016, made the comments ahead of a public hearing in the Wisconsin legislature on proposed legislation that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Local television station WKOW aired Walker’s claim that an exception for rape or incest is not necessarily needed in the bill.
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Woo hoo! Wikileaks does it again
We don’t know how recent they are, of course, but it’s better than nothing:
WASHINGTON — The latest trove of secret trade documents released by Wikileaks is offering opponents of the massive deals currently being crafted by the Obama administration more fodder to show that such agreements can impact United States laws and regulations.
The latest leak purports to include 17 documents from negotiations on the Trade In Services Agreement, a blandly named trade deal that would cover the United States, the European Union and more than 20 other countries. More than 80 percent of the United States economy is in service sectors.
According to the Wikileaks release, TISA, as the deal is known, would take a major step towards deregulating financial industries, and could affect everything from local maritime and air traffic rules to domestic regulations on almost anything if an internationally traded service is involved.
The pact would be one of three enormous deals whose passage through Congress could be eased with passage of Trade Promotion Authority, also known as fast-track authority. The Senate has passed fast-track, and it could be taken up in the House this month.
Layla
Derek and the Dominoes:
Where is my mind
The Pixies:
Silver lining
Rilo Kiley: