You know there’s less to a disarmament treaty than meets the eye when it thrills the director of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
New START: Once Again, Where Is the Disarmament in This Picture?
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North America
One November’s Dead: The American War Dead Disappear into the Darkness
Remember as the invasion of Iraq was about to begin, when the Bush administration decided to seriously enforce a Pentagon ban, in existence since the first Gulf War, on media coverage and images of the American dead arriving home at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware? In fact, the Bush-era ban did more than that. As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote then, it “ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers’ homecomings on all military bases.”
Spotlight Cancun: Cancun Success – Compared to What?
Cancun was not a surprise. Nor was it a failure. This much is easy to say.
But was it a success? This is a more difficult question. I used to have an irritating friend. Every time you made a strong, implausibly simple claim – something like “Cancun was a success” – he would reply “Compared to what?” It was a pedantic device, but it worked well enough. It made you think, which, I suppose, is why it was irritating.
Lighting the Terrorist Fuse
Terrorist plots are suddenly everywhere. In Baltimore last week, a 21-year-old construction worker tried to blow up a military recruitment center. In late November, federal law enforcement officials arrested a Somalia-born teenager for plotting to bomb a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. In October, a jury found the Newburgh Four guilty of planning to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx.
In all three cases, the major accomplice was not al-Qaeda or the Taliban. It was the FBI.
WikiLeaks XVIX: Guatemalan Concerns Get Short Shrift in Cables About Illegal Border Crossings Into Mexico
Documents reporting how easy it is to illegally cross the Mexican/Guatemalan border reveal Mexican security conflicts but fail to address Guatemalan concerns.
In Today’s Open-Source World, Low-Tech Attacks by “Other Guys” Rule
Talk about return on investment. When it comes to low-tech attacks, will governments ever get the, uh, point?
WikiLeaks XVIII: What About Bob? (Woodward, That Is)
Given how frequently government officials leak classified information to their own ends, it’s more than a little disingenuous of them to be upset by WikiLeaks.
Torture and the Ticking Time Bomb (Read: Nuclear) Scenario
Its uniqueness and unreality render it useless as a justification for torture. Perfect for a movie, though.
Rio Rumbles
Win or lose, the gangs in Rio and drug cartels in Mexico need to reinvent themselves to provide stability, security, and even livelihoods for communities, or they’ll disappear.
“Tory scum! Off with their heads!”
The reactions of British youth to university fee increases can serve, to a certain extent, as a lesson to American youth.