The Skeptical Bureaucrat

"Nobody But Us" Russians Against Putin

2012-01-30T16:20:00.000-08:00

I just saw this great video on the New York Times' The Lede blog. It looks like Vladimir Putin has some vocal opposition to his plans for re-investiture as Russia's Prime Minister on March 4th.

A video of a musical group, apparently featuring former Russian paratroopers, performing a song with lyrics sharply critical of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, quickly became an Internet sensation after it was posted to YouTube on Thursday. By Friday evening, the band had performed the song on a private television channel, TV Dozhd (Russian for TV Rain).

The video had been viewed over 120,000 times by Friday night. Posted under the title “Putin and Paratroopers,” the song portrays Mr. Putin as nothing more than a corrupt bureaucrat who has “destroyed the armed forces” along the way. It pits the prime minister — who claimed in December that he thought the white ribbon, the symbol for the protest movement, was a condom — against the common man.

You’re no different from me.
A man and not God.
I’m no different from you.
A man, not some hick.

We won’t let you keep lying, we won’t let you keep stealing
We’re liberated troops who defended the motherland
Ribbons of freedom are positive for all, but for you…
[they're] nothing – just condoms.

I love the gusty guttural sound of the Russian language! It sounds fantastic when shouted, I think.

The banners in the background of the video are displaying versions of the post-Soviet era Russian Army Airborne Troops badge.

"Россия" = Russia. "ВДВ" stands for "Воздушно-десантные войска" = Air-Landing Forces.

Their unit motto is "Nobody But Us," which is also the title of the song.

A Foreigner Responds to The State-of-the-Union Address

2012-01-29T14:55:00.000-08:00

British publications frequently offer some of the sharpest and most plain-spoken commentary on American politics.

Take, for example, this piece by Christopher Booker, a Sunday Telegraph columnist, on his reaction to President Obama's State of the Union address - How I woke up to the untruths of Barack Obama:

When I happened to wake up in the middle of the night last Wednesday and caught the BBC World Service’s live relay of President Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress, two passages had me rubbing my eyes in disbelief.

The first came when, to applause, the President spoke about the banking crash which coincided with his barnstorming 2008 election campaign. “The house of cards collapsed,” he recalled. “We learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them.” He excoriated the banks which had “made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money”, while “regulators looked the other way and didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behaviour”. This, said Obama, “was wrong. It was irresponsible. And it plunged our economy into a crisis that put millions out of work.”

I recalled a piece I wrote in this column on January 29, 2009, just after Obama took office. It was headlined: “This is the sub-prime house that Barack Obama built”. As a rising young Chicago politician in 1995, no one campaigned more actively than Mr Obama for an amendment to the US Community Reinvestment Act, legally requiring banks to lend huge sums to millions of poor, mainly black Americans, guaranteed by the two giant mortgage associations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was this Act, above all, which let the US housing bubble blow up, far beyond the point where it was obvious that hundreds of thousands of homeowners would be likely to default. Yet, in 2005, no one more actively opposed moves to halt these reckless guarantees than Senator Obama, who received more donations from Fannie Mae than any other US politician (although Senator Hillary Clinton ran him close).

I have two bones to pick with the above paragraph. First, not to take anything away from Obama, but it is Congressman Barney Frank who deserves the title of Fannie Mae's most active defender on Capital Hill in 2005. Watch the video of Frank, then the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, assuring the House that "you're not going to see the collapse that people see when they talk about a [mortgage] bubble."

Second, Booker understates exactly how much money Obama received from those government-sponsored mortgage associations. According to OpenSecrets.org, Obama was the second-biggest recipient of all Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions for the years 1989 to 2008. That's especially impressive when you recall that Obama was not sworn in as a U.S. Senator until 2005, and was elected to the Illinois State Senate only in 1998. The only office-holder who received even more boodle from the mortgage bankers was Christopher Dodd, who had been a U.S. Senator since 1974, and who, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, could give Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the best return on their influence investment. FYI, Senator Hillary Clinton was the 12th biggest recipient, which is not far behind.

Booker continues:

A few months after Obama entered the White House, I suggested here that the slogan on which he was elected – “Yes we can” – seemed to have changed to “No we can’t”. It was already obvious that, having won election as an ideal Hollywood version of what “the first black President” should look and sound like, he was in reality no more than a vacuum. His speech last week was as weaselly as any politician’s performance could be, not least in its references to the sub-prime scandal.

I sense a little typical English reserve there, don't you? Hey, don't sugarcoat it for your American readers, Mr. Booker, tell us what you really think.

Friday Document Dumpster Diving

2012-01-28T07:31:00.000-08:00

The administration did another Friday night document dump yesterday, this time delivering to Congress a series of Justice Department e-mails concerning the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Officer Brian Terry and the ATF's Project Fast and Furious, which permitted the illegal purchase and "controlled [sic] delivery" to Mexican crime cartels of the rifle used to murder Terry.

All the back-and-forth messages between AFT Field Offices, DOJ headquarters, then-US Attorney Dennis Burke, and the DOJ Attache in Mexico City, will provide more grist for the investigatory mill of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Who knew what, and when did he know it?

See the dumped documents here. The big enchilada is a discussion of “controlled deliveries” of straw-purchased weapons to Mexican crime cartels. Most of that occurs in several heavily redacted messages from the DOJ Attache in Mexico City reporting on the U.S. Government's belated (on February 4, 2011) disclosure to Mexican officials of Fast and Furious. Oh, yeah, that must have been a cordial meeting.

NPR was the administration's favored news media recipient of a late-night leak of the disclosed material. Here's their report:

For the first time, the Justice Department has made public a series of sensitive messages that passed to the highest levels of the agency within hours of an ambush that killed a U.S. border patrol agent along the Southwest border in December 2010, igniting a national scandal over a gun trafficking investigation gone wrong.

Justice officials sent the documents to Congress late Friday evening, only a few days before Attorney General Eric Holder is set to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The email messages show the former top federal prosecutor in Arizona, Dennis Burke, notifying an aide to Holder via email on Dec. 15, 2010 that agent Brian Terry had been wounded and died. "Tragic," responds the aide, Monty Wilkinson. "I've alerted the AG, the acting Deputy Attorney General..."

Only a few minutes later, Wilkinson emailed again, saying, "Please provide any additional details as they become available to you."

Burke then delivered another piece of bad news: "The guns found in the desert near the murder [sic] ... officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store."

That investigation, dubbed Fast and Furious, was supposed to follow U.S. weapons into the hands of kingpins in the violent Sinaloa Mexico drug cartel, building a big case against the gangs. Instead, it cost Burke his job, got the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reassigned, and has prompted multiple federal probes by Congress and the department's own inspector general.

The Justice Department also sent a letter to lawmakers Friday night outlining several changes they had made within their own ranks and at the ATF: from requiring additional oversight in cases that involve wiretaps and confidential informants to extra procedures at the ATF for putting weapons purchases under surveillance to a realignment at the U.S. Attorney's office in Phoenix and the ATF itself.

The new documents are certain to stoke the fires among congressional Republicans, who have questioned what the attorney general knew about the botched investigation and asked why the chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, Lanny Breuer, didn't do more when he found out about other questionable tactics used by ATF in gun trafficking probes in the Bush administration.

In a meeting with Mexican government officials in February 2011, for instance, Breuer "suggested allowing straw purchasers cross into Mexico so [police] can arrest and [prosecutors] can convict. Such coordinated activities between the US and Mexico may send a strong message to arms traffickers."

A Justice official, speaking on background, said Breuer's proposal involved coordination between the governments and didn't contemplate agents losing track of guns, as happened in the Fast and Furious debacle.

A few days after the meeting between Breuer and Mexican authorities, the department's attache to Mexico raised this issue, according to an email: "there is an inherent risk in allowing weapons to pass from the U.S. to Mexico. The possibility of the [government of Mexico] not seizing the weapons, and the weapons being used to commit a crime in Mexico."

The attorney general, in testimony to the House and Senate last year, said he feared the Justice Department could be living with the consequences of more than 1,000 guns connected to Fast and Furious that remain unaccounted for years to come.

Market Downshift To Automatics

2012-01-25T20:31:00.000-08:00

I made a hasty remark in my previous post, to the effect that only blue collar men and rich old geezers are stick-shift drivers anymore. Within a couple hours I heard from several women who also prefer driving manuals, so the stick-shifting driver demographic may be broader than I'd assumed.

But I wondered: what percentage of cars in the United States have manual transmissions, regardless of the driver's gender, age, or income, and where could I find an authoritative source for that information? And immediately I realized: by asking the federal government, of course, since they know everything and put it all on the internet.

Sure enough, the EPA's data on light-duty vehicle trends (see the executive summary excel tables) reports that in 2010 only 7 percent of our cars had stick-shifts, compared to 13 percent in 1998 and 29 percent in 1987. So, our stick-shift cars are slowing becoming a niche market for driving enthusiasts.

Not so in Europe. I've seen news media reports that as many as 85% of European cars are sold with manual transmissions. That accords with my own observations while traveling abroad, however, I haven't found an official source on the subject. For some strange reason, European governments don't seem to be so loquacious as ours.

Next I wondered: what American car brand sells the highest percentage of its cars with manual transmissions? (And I'm not including paddle shift transmissions or 'manualmatics' here; it has to have three foot peddles to count.) Is it Porsche, or BMW? Maybe Audi, or Volkswagen? Mazda?

It's none of those. I learned that Mini Cooper sells more of its cars with stick-shifts than any other maker in the U.S., as much as 50 percent. Mini has a whole ad campaign directed at that market segment. See this informational video on becoming a manual, for example.

I might wave to the next Mini driver I see while on my way to work tomorrow morning. We stick-shifters are a rare breed, and getting rarer.

How Thick Is Your Bubble?

2012-01-25T10:57:00.000-08:00

I took this quiz ("inspired by American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray's new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," which explores the unprecedented, class-based cultural gap in America. How culturally isolated are you?") and scored a 13-to-16 out of a possible 20.

Those results mean that I don't even have a bubble. However, I'll admit I could not name the NASCAR guy. Maybe you can.

I would guess that most of my immediate co-workers are pretty bubble-free, as well. Of my less immediate State Department co-workers, and especially among the more rarefied types of FSO, I suspect the class-based cultural gap bubbles get much, much, thicker.

In my experience, a good quick indicator of class-based cultural position is whether or not a person can drive a stick-shift. (This test is not applicable in Europe, where manual transmissions are common, but it works just fine among Americans.) Pretty much the only stick-shift drivers left in America are blue collar men and rich old geezers. Cultural book-ends, as it were. The Mustang GT drivers, and the Porsche Club of America types.

By the way, most BMW drivers are excluded since the large majority of beemers on the road in America - or bimmers, to use their enthusiasts' preferred term for the BMW car versus the motorcycle - are automatics.

That automotive range pretty much defines my personal class-based cultural odyssey, as well. Having been born a Mustang guy, I am now shopping for an entry-level Porsche hobby car with which to entertain myself in my senior years.

State Department Defends Jay Leno

2012-01-24T18:28:00.000-08:00

So, Jay Leno told a joke about Mitt Romney, and now we have half of India in a sulk, and the State Department spokeswoman defending Leno's Constitutional right to perform satire? Lighten up, people.

State Department Defends Leno After Joke Offends Sikhs:

Though most comedians hope that their material stands on its own, some additional support from their country now and then doesn’t hurt either: The State Department stood up for Jay Leno after the “Tonight Show” host offended some Indian Sikhs with a joke that implied that a holy shrine in India was a home owned by Mitt Romney.

Previously, Vayalar Ravi, India’s Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs, said he planned to speak with the State Department about a comedic bit that he called “quite unfortunate and quite objectionable.” The segment, during Mr. Leno’s monologue on Thursday night, showed the homes of various Republican presidential hopefuls, but when Mr. Romney’s summer house on Lake Winnipesaukee was mentioned the screen showed the Golden Temple in Amritsar, which is holy to Sikhs as well as to members of other Indian faiths.

Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the State Department, told BBC News that though United States and Indian officials had not communicated about the issue, the United States Constitution protected Mr. Leno’s freedom of speech.Ms. Nuland said she hoped that Mr. Leno would “be appreciative if we make the point that his comments are constitutionally protected in the United States under free speech, and frankly, they appeared to be satirical in nature.” She added that “Sikh Americans have contributed greatly to the United States” and noted that President Obama celebrated the birthday of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, at the White House.

Neither Mr. Leno nor representatives for “The Tonight Show” have commented on the matter.

Change We Can Believe In ... Hillary, Not So Much

2012-01-23T18:13:00.000-08:00

The New Yorker magazine has a look back at the Obama campaign of 2008, and notes the personal nature of his attack on his rival candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Another hard-edged decision helped make him the Democratic Presidential nominee. In early October, 2007, David Axelrod and Obama’s other political consultants wrote the candidate a memo explaining how he could repair his floundering campaign against Hillary Clinton. They advised him to attack her personally, presenting a difficult choice for Obama. He had spent years building a reputation as a reformer who deplored the nasty side of politics, and now, he was told, he had to put that aside. Obama’s strategists wrote that all campaign communications, even the slogan — “Change We Can Believe In” — had to emphasize distinctions with Clinton on character rather than on policy. The slogan “was intended to frame the argument along the character fault line, and this is where we can and must win this fight,” the memo said. “Clinton can’t be trusted or believed when it comes to change,” because “she’s driven by political calculation not conviction, regularly backing away and shifting positions. . . . She embodies trench warfare vs. Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done. She prides herself on working the system, not changing it.” The “current goal,” the memo continued, was to define Obama as “the only authentic ‘remedy’ to what ails Washington and stands in the way of progress.”

Obama’s message promised voters, in what his aides called “the inspiration,” that “Barack Obama will end the divisive trench warfare that treats politics as a game and will lead Americans to come together to restore our common purpose.” Clinton was too polarizing to get anything done: “It may not be her fault, but Americans have deeply divided feelings about Hillary Clinton, threatening a Democratic victory in 2008 and insuring another four years of the bitter political battles that have plagued Washington for the last two decades and stymied progress.”

Neera Tanden was the policy director for Clinton’s campaign. When Clinton lost the Democratic race, Tanden became the director of domestic policy for Obama’s general-election campaign, and then a senior official working on health care in his Administration. She is now the president of the liberal Center for American Progress, perhaps the most important institution in Democratic politics. “It was a character attack,” Tanden said recently, speaking about the Obama campaign against Clinton. “I went over to Obama, I’m a big supporter of the President, but their campaign was entirely a character attack on Hillary as a liar and untrustworthy. It wasn’t an ‘issue contrast,’ it was entirely personal.” And, of course, it worked.

Ninety-Eight Thousand Of My Fellow Feds Are Deadbeats

2012-01-23T17:27:00.000-08:00

It is an annual ritual in Washington to publish the list of tax delinquencies by federal employees. The WaPo ran it today, and it turns out that federal employees owe $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes:

Congressional staffers owed about $10.6 million in unpaid taxes in 2010, a slight increase from the previous year and a growing slice of the roughly $1 billion owed by federal and postal workers nationwide.

The figures come as Republican efforts to pass legislation allowing federal agencies to fire tax delinquent federal employees have slowed and as the White House continues to crack down on improper payments made by agencies to delinquent government contractors and federal beneficiaries.

About 98,000 federal, postal and congressional employees owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of fiscal 2010, according to records provided by the Internal Revenue Service. The total number of delinquent employees dipped slightly from 2009, but the amount owed jumped by $32 million.

The WaPo provided a beakdown by agency, which shows that Treasury employees have the lowest rate of delinquency at under one percent (as you might expect, since they must make a special effort to avoid tax embarrassments), and the biggest scofflaws among cabinet agencies were Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education, at 3.88 and 3.99 percent delinquent employees respectively.

Department of State employees were reasonably law-abiding, with just under three percent of them - 394 employees to be precise - owing a total of $3,958,293.

Take My Advice, I'm Not Using It Anyway

2012-01-23T16:20:00.000-08:00

H/T to Reason magazine for this tidbit: Uncle Sam tells Americans how to get out of debt:

After saddling the country with as much new debt as the rest of the world combined in one year flat, one would think that Uncle Sam wouldn’t have the cojones to dish out debt advice to others. But one would be wrong. In an unwitting self-parody worthy of Froma Harrop on The Daily Show, the Federal Trade Commission has created a step-by-step web guide for Americans “Knee-Deep in Debt.”

The first step, says the agency, which represents a government that went over 800 days without passing a budget, is: create a budget! Get a “realistic assessment of how much money you take in and how much money you spend,” it lectures those in financial doo-doo, seemingly oblivious of the fact that its own bosses have promised $60 trillion to a $100 trillion more in entitlements than the country has money to pay for.

It continues: [L]ist your "fixed" expenses — those that are the same each month — like mortgage payments or rent, car payments, and insurance premiums. Next, list the expenses that vary — like entertainment, recreation, and clothing. Writing down all your expenses, even those that seem insignificant, is a helpful way to track your spending patterns, identify necessary expenses, and prioritize the rest.

Prioritize! Who knew that the word even existed in the federal lexicon? But “irony” obviously does not because the FTC, with a straight face, goes on to offer advice for those who are not “disciplined enough to create a workable budget and stick to it.” And by this it doesn’t mean our elected representatives.

And its advice is not that over-extended Americans call their credit card company and demand that it raise their credit limit every time they max out their card, as Uncle Sam has done 75 times since 1962. It suggests that they consider —wait for this!—“debt settlement.” And if no one is willing to settle, then the option of last resort is bankruptcy, although it warns its repercussions can be “long-lasting and far reaching.” No kidding!

No word on whether the White House of Capitol Hill have glanced at the guide. Or maybe they are waiting for the agency to create one for those “Neck-Deep In Debt But Too Stupid to Know And Too Obtuse to Care.”

Napoleonland Theme Park (What's Next, Six Flags Over The Somme?)

2012-01-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

Doesn't he just seem to be saying: "Allons enfants de la Patrie, this way to the gift shop"?

H/T to GWB for pointing out to me this fascinating historical / commercial proposal from France.

A former French minister and history buff named Yves Jégo is proposing to build a Napoleonland theme park as a showcase for Napoleon's greatest victories and to compete with Disneyland Paris.

The park would go on the site of the Battle of Montereau, about 70 miles - oops, I mean, 112 kilometers - south of Paris. Montreau, BTW, was a great victory for the French but a relatively small action by the bloody standards of the Napoleonic Age, since fewer than 9,000 were killed there on all sides.

The theme park will reportedly have a museum, a hotel, shops, restaurants, battle reenactments, and Napoleon-themed attractions. If it is to compete with Disneyland Paris, you know they'll also have to have fun stuff for the kids, like rides. And if the developers have any sense at all, they'll put up signs in front of the roller coasters and log flumes saying You Must Be This Short → To Ride, because a little easygoing self-deprecating humor would help to release the tension caused by, well, the whole Napoleon Complex thing.

Meanwhile, the kids' parents could kick back with a couple Whiff of Grapeshot Wine Coolers. I see great commercial possibilities here.

But, I get creeped out by this part:

Other curious potential attractions include a ski run through a battlefield "surrounded by the frozen bodies of soldiers and horses" and a recreation of Louis XVI being guillotined during the revolution – the precursor to Napoleon’s rise to power.

"It's going to be fun for the family,” [Yves Jégo] told the Times.

Napoleon's retreat from Moscow must be the inspiration for that "curious" - not to say macabre - ski run. I'm sure it will be much more fun for the tourists than it was for Napoleon's Grande Armée. They were half a million troops strong when they invaded Russia in August of 1812, but only 27,000 of them came back out the following December.

Some fun.

Something about this whole idea is just wrong. Napoleonic warfare isn't suitable for a theme park treatment. The developers ought to repackage the whole deal into a battlefield preservation project, which would also have potential for economic development, but without the cringe-inducing factor of frozen corpses and such.

Yves Jégo should look at how the U.S. government promotes heritage tourism as an example of how he could combine economic development with French history.

Facilitating Big-Spending Tourists

2012-01-19T19:03:00.000-08:00

Here's a tip - avoid calling it "Visa Express" this time.

Visa Pilot Program:

Today the President announced that the Departments of State and Homeland Security are working together to improve and speed up the visa process for certain categories of travelers.

Since 9/11, the United States has developed an intensive, multi-layered visa screening process, including multiple biographic and biometric checks, all supported by a sophisticated global information technology network. We perform these checks on every visa applicant, without exception.

Under a new initiative, in select circumstances, qualified foreign visitors who were interviewed and thoroughly screened in conjunction with a prior visa application may be able to renew their visas without undergoing another interview. Eliminating interviews for these applicants will save them time and money and encourage them to choose the United States again as their tourism destination. It will also free our resources to interview more first-time applicants.

The pilot program will streamline visa processing for certain low-risk applicants, such as individuals renewing expired visas, or some categories of younger or older first-time applicants. We expect that this will benefit tens of thousands of applicants in Brazil and China; saving them time and money, and encouraging them to choose to visit the United States again. However, given that national security remains this Administration’s highest priority, individuals identified as higher-risk will remain subject to interviews – in addition to the full screening and review all visa applicants receive.

For example, this will make it much easier for many Chinese tourists to renew their visas – a group that spends more than $6,000 per person, per trip, according to the Department of Commerce. Over the course of the year, this policy could open as many as 100,000 interview appointments for Chinese travelers applying for visas for the first time. That increase in tourism could support as many as 1,500 travel and tourism-related jobs.

Consular officers will continue to use their authority to interview any visa applicant as required for national security.

Boldly Going Where No Historic Preservationist Has Gone Before

2012-01-18T19:44:00.000-08:00

To the moon, that is, where unregulated commercial activity might eradicate the remains of our first lunar landings.

[F]or archaeologists and historians worried that the next generation of people visiting the moon might carelessly obliterate the site of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, [the designations by New Mexico and California of historic artifacts left behind on the moon by the Apollo program] were important first steps toward raising awareness of the need to protect off-world artifacts.

“I think it’s humanity’s heritage,” said Beth L. O’Leary, a professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University. “It’s just an incredible realm that archaeologists haven’t begun to look at until now.”

-- snip --

NASA held a workshop a year ago about the preservation issue. Then [Robert Kelso, manager of lunar commercial services at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston] led a team that cataloged what was left on the moon after the six Apollo landings, and it recommended how to balance historic preservation with the likely desire in the future to investigate how well the materials have lasted.

The recommendations, issued in the fall, place greater protections on items from the first moon mission, Apollo 11, and the last one, Apollo 17. For Apollo 11, the recommendations ask that any visitor, robotic or human, stay at least 75 meters from the lander.

“In that case, it would protect every footprint from Neil and Buzz and all the flight hardware,” Mr. Kelso said.

I'd never thought about lunar preservation before, but it makes sense. We already have 936 World Heritage Sites here on Earth, and I would rank the Apollo 11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquility a good deal higher in heritage value than many of those.

SecState Cuts The Ribbon On Fortress Embassy #88

2012-01-17T19:05:00.000-08:00

Hillary is the one on the left. On the right is US Ambassador to Liberia Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

United States Dedicates New Embassy Compound in Monrovia, Liberia:

In an important symbol of America’s commitment to an enduring friendship with the people of Liberia, as well as the importance of our bilateral relationship with the Liberian Government, the United States dedicated its new embassy in Monrovia today. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in connection with her visit to attend the inauguration of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, presided at an in-house dedication ceremony yesterday [see her remarks here]. U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Liberia, Linda Thomas-Greenfield attended the public ceremony today, joined by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; Minister of Foreign Affairs, Toga Gayewea McIntosh; Pro Tempore of the Liberian Senate, Senator Gbezongar Milton Findley; and Managing Director for the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations’ (OBO) Office of Construction, Facility, and Security Management, Rodney Evans.

Occupying a 12-acre site in Mamba Point, the multi-building complex creates a secure, sustainable, and pleasant workplace for approximately 400 employees. The Embassy’s permanent art collection features artworks by 51 celebrated American and Monrovian artists, curated by OBO’s Office of Art in Embassies. These artworks focus around the themes of tradition and renewal through lively images of agriculture, education, music, African American history and culture, and a love of homeland.

The new embassy incorporates numerous sustainable features, most notably, a rainwater collection system with a 264,000 gallon tank to handle the majority of potable and irrigation water needs, a photovoltaic system located on the parking canopy structure, high-efficiency mechanical chillers, and a building automation system. The facility is registered with the Green Building Certification Institute and is entering the formal review process with enough credits to earn a LEED Gold rating. B.L. Harbert International of Birmingham, Alabama constructed the project, which was designed by Page Southerland Page of Arlington, Virginia. The $164 million project generated jobs in both the United States and the Republic of Liberia.

Since the 1999 enactment of the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act, the Department has moved more than 26,000 people into safer facilities. OBO has completed 88 diplomatic facilities and has an additional 41 projects in design or construction.

Che - He's Not Just For Selling T-Shirts Anymore

2012-01-15T14:32:00.000-08:00

The Mercedes-Benz unit of Daimler AG rolled out a new advertising campaign with a revolution theme this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. One of the cutesy advertising gimmicks was to use the image of Che Guevara - see the Mercedes emblem on Che's beret? - to appeal to Mercedes' customer base.

Why would they do that? Because, as everyone knows, upscale geezers love vicarious association with Latin American communists.

The ad was yanked after predictable complaints from Cuban-Americans, including U.S. Sen. Robert Melendez (D-N.J.) and Florida State Sen. Mario Diaz-Balart.

But I am left wondering, what did Guevara drive during his post-revo years in Havana? Surely not a Mercedes (way too bourgeois). Did he stick with his political convictions and drive a Russian ZiL limo, as would befit a commie bureaucrat? Or maybe he went proletarian, and dug out that old Norton motorcycle from his 1952 road trip.

After some Googling, I found out that Che was a Chevy man. Specifically, a mint green 1959 Chevy Bel Air, a swooping road monster with tail fins that looked like it was about two models years ahead of the original Batmobile. [NOTE: I stand corrected on the brand of Che's car. According to a commenter who has actually seen it, Che drove an Oldsmobile. I should have realized that myself since, now that I blow up the photo of the car, I can see the Oldsmobile name in the grille. Back in the day, an Olds was a classier and more bourgeois ride than a Chevy.]

This is it, currently on display at Havana's Depósito del Automóvil:

See a slideshow of the Depósito's exhibits here. If I ever get a TDY to Havana, I'm going to check that place out.

Haiti Two Years Later - All This, And Cholera Too

2012-01-14T10:16:00.000-08:00

It's been two years since the devastating earthquake in Haiti. At least one quarter million people were killed outright, another million were made homeless, and one of the largest humanitarian crises in modern history ensued.

After two years of massive relief efforts on the part of the U.S., the UN, and others, reconstruction is moving at a snail's pace. Only half of the earthquake rubble has been removed, half a million people are still living under tarps and tents, and less than half of the promised relief funds have actually been disbursed (which probably says something about ~~the risk of public corruption~~ traditional business practices in Haiti).

The cherry on top of this towering heap of tragedy is that thousands of Haitians have died of a cholera outbreak. Incredible as it may seem, especially if you are familiar with Haiti, cholera is A BRAND NEW DISEASE there. It was perhaps the only form of misery that Haitians had not already experienced. And it appears that the disease was inadvertently brought to the Island of Hispaneola by the UN itself.

ABC News: UN Soliders Brought Deadly Superbug to Americas:

Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera -- a super bug -- into the Western Hemisphere for the first time.

The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged the country on Jan. 12, 2010 -- two years ago today. Haiti had never seen a case of cholera until the arrival of the peacekeepers, who allegedly failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base.

"What scares me is that the strain from South Asia has been recognized as more virulent, more capable of causing severe disease, and more transmissible," said John Mekalanos, who chairs the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School. "These strains are nasty. So far there has been no secondary outbreak. But Haiti now represents a foothold for a particularly dangerous variety of this deadly disease."

More than 500,000 Haitians have been infected, and Mekalanos said a handful of victims who contracted cholera in Haiti have now turned up in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and in Boston, Miami and New York, but only in isolated cases.

How cholera landed in Haiti has been a politically charged topic for more than a year now, with the United Nations repeatedly refusing to acknowledge any role in the outbreak despite mounting evidence that international peacekeepers were the most likely culprits. The UN has already faced hostility from Haitians who believe peacekeeping troops have abused local residents without consequence. They now face legal action from relatives of victims who have petitioned the UN for restitution. And the cholera charge could further hamper the UN's ability to work effectively there, two years after the country was hobbled by the earthquake.

-- snip --

"The scientific debate on the origin of cholera in Haiti existed, but it has been resolved by the accumulation of evidence that unfortunately leave no doubt about the implication of the Nepalese contingent of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti," said French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux, whose research on the outbreak was published by a U.S. Centers for Disease Control journal.

-- snip --

Louise C. Ivers, an infectious disease specialist and professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School ... witnessed firsthand the destruction it caused as hundreds of villagers started dying from an unfamiliar malady.

"It was overwhelming," she said. "There were no reported cases in Haiti before 2010, ever. Really people had no idea what was happening. To hear the fear and the suspicions and the lack of understanding about how this was happening is very, very sad. The outbreak put a huge stress on what was already a very fragile health system. I'm afraid it will be a problem for the foreseeable future."

She said what has made Haiti so vulnerable was a lack of latrines and clean potable water. She said there have been small outbreaks in the Dominican Republic, but nothing on the scale of what hit Haiti because conditions are more modern and sanitary.

-- snip --

Mekalanos said ... "Cholera is a disease of the impoverished ... When the standards of living are already at the lowest levels, cholera is a killer of historic proportions. If it spreads to other parts of the world, in those kinds of settings, I fear there will be a very high rate of death."

Relief and development organizations ought to take something like a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.

A Novel Idea For Funding Diplomatic Security In Iraq

2012-01-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

U.S. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska believes that the Iraqi government, and not the U.S. taxpayer, should pay the cost for securing our diplomatic mission in Iraq. And he thinks he knows of a legal loophole that makes the Iraqi government responsible for that cost.

He wrote a letter to the Secretaries of State and Defense today urging them to look into that angle:

Dear Mr. Secretary and Madam Secretary:

As you know, the United States concluded its military mission in Iraq in 2011. With that end, the U.S. Department of State now assumes responsibility for the civilian mission, which I understand will be heavily reliant on private contractors for security. I support ensuring the success of our efforts in Iraq, but am concerned about continuing to provide assistance to Iraq’s government, with the total cost being borne by the United States.

As a nation, our government continues to look for ways to reduce spending and find efficiencies within the U.S. Department of Defense. Therefore, I believe it is completely reasonable and in line with our agreements with other nations for the Government of Iraq to pay for the security of our remaining State Department personnel.During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in November 2011, General Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke about the costs of retaining an American presence in Iraq. He noted that “in any nation in which [the United States is] present diplomatically, the first responsibility for security is the host nation.” Thus, if Iraq is unable to provide security for U.S. personnel, then the Iraqi government should pay for the cost of doing so – rather than our nation’s taxpayers. Therefore, I encourage your departments to enter into an agreement with the Iraqi government to underwrite the costs associated with our continued diplomatic presence there.

-- snip --

While I understand there are many challenges facing the Government of Iraq, it is important for the United States to make it clear that we expect the new government to be responsible for shouldering the cost of security in their nation. I would, therefore, greatly appreciate learning from the Administration what agreements are being made with the Government of Iraq for further missions and how the cost of those missions will be covered. Thank you both for your consideration in this matter. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,E. Benjamin Nelson,United States Senator

The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations doesn't say anything about the obligation of a host government to hire guards and protection contractors for diplomatic missions, does it?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Evidentally It's An Election Year

2012-01-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

The website whitehousedosssier ("dedicated to preserving freedom by holding the White House to account") has a nice feature where you can check Obama's daily schedule.This week was a busy one for fundraisers; Obama did two on Monday, three on Wednesday, and one more today.

Those bucks add up. The WaPo reported yesterday that Obama raised $42 million for his re-election campaign and another $24 million for the Democratic National Committee over the final three months of 2011.

U.S. Embassy Further Reduces Staff In Syria

2012-01-11T19:34:00.000-08:00

As the security situation in Syria worsens, the State Department today issued a new travel warning:

This Travel Warning replaces the Travel Warning dated December 21, 2011, and is being updated to reflect that on January 11, 2012, the Department of State has ordered a further reduction in staffing of the U.S. Embassy in Syria. Due to security concerns in Syria, in October 2011, the embassy was designated an unaccompanied post with restricted staffing. The Department has decided to further reduce the number of employees present in Damascus, and has ordered a number of employees to depart Syria as soon as possible. U.S. citizens should avoid all travel to Syria. The U.S. Department of State urges U.S. citizens currently in Syria to depart immediately while commercial transportation is available. The number of airlines serving Syria has decreased significantly since the summer months, and many of the remaining airlines have reduced their number of flights. U.S. citizens who must remain in Syria should limit nonessential travel within the country. Due to further reductions in U.S. Embassy staff and as a result of the deteriorating security situation, the Consular Section will no longer have hours during which it is open to the public. Effective immediately, all consular services are by prearranged appointment only. Our ability to assist U.S. citizens in an emergency is extremely limited and may be further constrained by the fluid security situation.

Read the whole thing here.

Mexico's Drug Wars Got A Little Worse In 2011

2012-01-02T19:09:00.000-08:00

The WaPo has one of those end-of-the-year-wrap-up stories today about the drug wars raging in that nation to our south, the one with which we share a 1,951 mile-long border - in Mexico, 12,000 killed in drug violence:

The daily newspaper Reforma, one of the most respected independent outlets, reported 12,359 drug-related killings in 2011, which it said was a 6.3 percent increase over the previous year. As a comparison, there were 2,275 drug murders in 2007.

-- snip --

Other media reported similar numbers. Daily Milenio recorded 12,284 drug-related deaths in 2011. The La Jornada newspaper counted 11,890 deaths in 2011, which it said was an 11 percent decrease from the previous year.

The Mexican government has not reported the official figures yet (they say they will next month), which might be a clue that the figures are too embarrassing for them to report in a national election year.

But the figures are out there, all the same. The Justice in Mexico Project, sponsored by the Trans-Border Institute of the University of San Diego, has tons of excellent data sets and analysis of the drug wars here.

The bottom line is the situation got just a little bit worse last year. About six percent more people were killed than in 2010, with a slightly higher incidence of women and innocent victims. Beheading became a little more popular as a signature method of execution. The weapons and tactics got somewhat more military - is that an AT4 anti-tank rocket next to the hand grenades in the photo above?

The geographic distribution of violence within Mexico changed a bit, probably reflecting a trend toward more cartel-on-cartel battling. The result was that some parts of the borderlands got calmer while previously quiet interior places such as Veracruz and Guadalajara got much more dangerous. The WaPo put a positive spin on that change:

One of the few bright spots is that the murder rate appears to be down in border manufacturing hub of Ciudad Juarez, dubbed Murder City, by about a third. Baja California and Tijuana also saw decreases in homicides.

The murder rate is down by a third in Juarez? Sounds good, but that might be because more Mexicans are fleeing the violence. The University of Texas El Paso's student reporting project on the Mexodus indicates that over a quarter million people have either been internally displaced to safer regions in Mexico or have crossed the border. Anyone in Juarez with two pesos to rub together has most likely sought a safe haven elsewhere.

What's the right word for a tragedy that got just a little more tragic?

Amplifying The Counter-Extremism Narrative In Pakistan

2011-12-31T11:02:00.000-08:00

As I wait for the New Year's ball to drop in Times Square, I see the Associated Press has some good news to end the year on, US Ups Extremist Fight in Pakistan:

The U.S. has created a new unit in Pakistan that aims to leverage such grassroots efforts by working with local moderates to counter violent extremism — the first of its kind set up by an American embassy anywhere in the world, according to U.S. officials here. The existence of the unit has never before been reported.

[Fazal ur Rehman, a cleric who conducts madrasa lectures aimed at countering violent extremism] and other clerics attempting to challenge extremism in Pakistan recently met with U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter in Islamabad, though the 50-year-old Rehman says he has not yet received support from the Americans.

-- snip --

The U.S. chose Pakistan as the site for its new venture because it is home to a vast network of Islamist militants who have been fighting U.S.-led troops in neighboring Afghanistan for over a decade and have even organized attacks on American soil.

The three-person unit in the U.S. Embassy public affairs section was established in July. It plans to work with local partners, including moderate religious leaders, to project their counter-extremist messages and push back against the militants' extensive propaganda machine, said U.S. officials.

It will use TV shows, documentaries, radio programs and posters. It also intends to ramp up exchange programs for religious leaders and public outreach to conservative Muslims who previously had little contact with American officials.

"There are a lot of courageous voices speaking out against extremism here in Pakistan," said Tom Miller, head of public affairs at the U.S. Embassy. "Our job is to find out how we can amplify those narratives."

The unit is just now ramping up operations, said officials. It was funded with an initial budget of $5 million that officials hope will grow. Officials declined to provide details on specific programs they are funding or plan to fund, for fear that publicly acknowledging U.S. involvement would discredit their partners.

That's a major worry in this country where anti-American sentiment is rampant. Any cleric known to be taking U.S. help is likely to be shunned by many. There are other challenges as well. Many among clerics and the public who are considered moderates have mixed views — they often oppose the killing of innocent civilians in Pakistan, but support jihad against U.S. forces in Afghanistan or against neighboring India.

-- snip --

The ambassador's visit to the 900-student Jaamia Salafia was unusual because the madrasa teaches a puritanical strain of Islam followed by some Pakistani militant organizations, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, although Zafar said he does not support the group.

-- snip --

"They might disagree with how the U.S. is conducting some aspects of its foreign policy, but there is a huge opportunity to partner with these groups because of the mutual goal of stopping the Taliban," said Mehreen Farooq, who recently studied grassroots counter-extremism efforts in Pakistan for the U.S.-based World Organization for Resource Development and Education.

The most intensive component of the new U.S. initiative will be a media campaign focused on raising awareness about civilians harmed by militant attacks, said Miller, the embassy public affairs chief.

"We are trying to discredit these acts and take away the narrative that the militants are some kind of ideological heroes," said Miller.

Surveys have shown that despite varying levels of support for militant groups within Pakistan, a majority of citizens oppose attacks that target civilians. Militants in Pakistan often deny responsibility for civilian casualties.

This is intelligent strategic messaging. If drawing attention to the deaths of innocent (Muslim) victims is a tactic that will reduce public support for Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, then, by all means, let's support Pakistani clerics like Rehman and "amplify those narratives." We need not agree with them on anything else.

May 2012 be a better year for our relations with Pakistan.

A Christmas Decoration From Your Government

2011-12-24T06:24:00.001-08:00

You might have to squint a bit to make it out, but those star-gazing romantics at NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission see a Cosmic Wreath 1,000 light-years from Earth in this mass of warm dust and metallic particles that was blown about by stellar winds and is softly lighted green and red by varying wavelengths of infrared energy.

NASA published the photo three days before Christmas, thereby coming perilously close to committing a government-subsidized expression of a religiously themed sentiment.

Wow, it's beautiful and slightly scandalous. My favorite sort of thing.

Merry Christmas to all my fellow Americans and other readers, wherever in the galaxy you may be.

RIP U.S. Public Diplomacy Commission

2011-12-22T17:24:00.000-08:00

U.S. Government programs are the closest things to perpetual motion machines that the first and/or the second law of thermodynamics will allow. But don't call them immortal, because sometimes they do, actually, really, and in truth, get closed down.

The U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy is no more, a sudden victim of our vastly overextended federal budget and of a sunset provision in its last legislative authorization.

See Missing! One Advisory Commission for details.

In The Spirit Of Juche, Dance Your Troubles Away

2011-12-19T16:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a little something to cheer up the grieving masses in North Korea today, a dance remix of a Kim Jong-il birthday extravaganza.

Let's remember him in happier times, as the great (North Korean People's) party animal he was.

.

The First Amendment Got Railroaded By The Istanbul Express

2011-12-17T08:42:00.000-08:00

What do you have to do to get thrown out of a Free Speech & Sensitivity Fest like the one we hosted this week to further implementation of the "Istanbul Process" on religious tolerance?

That's what the Traditional Values Coalition is asking the State Department after its observer was removed from a reception on the closing day of the Istanbul Process Conference, purportedly because of an anonymous report that she posed a threat to SecState Hillary Clinton.

I don't know any details of the incident, but that strikes me as a remarkably inept way to handle a critic.

The Traditional Values Coalition had asked for observer status at the conference. I don't know whether their request was granted, but other critical outside observers were allowed in. One of them - Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom - wrote about the conference proceedings in a New York Post piece:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday ended the “Istanbul Process,” a three-day, closed-door international conference hosted by the State Department on measures to combat religious “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization.”

The conference was intended to “implement” last March’s UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, on the same subject. Notwithstanding Clinton’s final speech defending freedoms of religion and speech, the gathering was folly.

Resolution 16/18 was adopted in the place of one that endorsed the dangerous idea that “defamation of religion” should be punished criminally worldwide. That call for a universal blasphemy law had been pushed relentlessly for 12 years by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an essentially religious body chartered to “combat defamation of Islam.” It issues fatwas and other directives to punish public expression of apostasy from Islam and “Islamophobia.”

Leading OIC states behind this campaign — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Pakistan — imprison and/or sentence to death “blasphemers.”

Resolution 16/18 deplores religious intolerance but doesn’t limit speech — the result of a deft State Department maneuver. The administration should have let matters rest there.

- snip -

While the Washington conference ended inconclusively, it should not have been held because:

* It offered a transnational venue for the OIC to reintroduce its anti-defamation push, just as the issue had been laid to rest at the United Nations. The administration erred in viewing resolution 16/18 as a meeting of minds between the OIC and America on freedoms of religion and speech.

- snip -

* By standing “united” (as the OIC head put it in a Turkish Daily op-ed) with the OIC on these issues, America appears to validate the OIC agenda, thus demoralizing the legions of women’s rights and human-rights advocates, bloggers, journalists, minorities, converts, reformers and others in OIC states who look to the United States for support against oppression.

* It raises expectations that America can and will regulate speech on behalf of Islam, as has happened in Western Europe, Canada and Australia.

The European Union mandated religious-hate-speech codes after global riots and other similar violence erupted in 2006 over a Danish newspaper’s publication of caricatures of Mohammad. America is facing pressure to conform to this new global “best practice”; this will only intensify it.

-- snip --

US diplomats should stop the “Istanbul Process” and begin to energetically and confidently promote the virtues of our First Amendment freedoms. They should be thoroughly briefed about the OIC’s intractable position on blasphemy laws and the extent of atrocities associated with them. They must end signaling that there is common ground on these issues between us and the OIC.

So, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation finally gave up it's 12 year-long fight for a U.N. resolution that would proscribe criticism of Islam, and accepted the "Istanbul Process" to promote religious tolerance as a consolation prize. That sounds like progress to me.

But then, instead of defending our First Amendment rights and explaining them to the OIC, we promised to unleash the Political Correctness Police on our domestic critics of Islam. To subject them to peer pressure and shaming, in the words of our SecState.

I guess the Nanny State will finger-wag and shush those troublemakers, and maybe send them to their rooms without dinner.

We missed an opportunity to teach the OIC about our Constitutionally-protected tradition of mutual tolerance, which holds that the solution to offensive speech is more speech, not suppression of speakers. Of course, that tradition is only suitable when you treat your fellow citizens as adults.

A video of the conference's opening remarks has been released. You can view it below but, speaking freely, I don't recommend that since it's 40-something minutes long and a paralyzing snore monger.

Internet In A Suitcase

2011-12-15T16:23:00.000-08:00

Occupy DC doesn't have a drum circle, but it does have a dictator-proof shared local network of wireless internet nodes that was funded by a State Department grant.

See Wired.com's post, U.S.-Funded Internet Liberation Project Finds Perfect Test Site: Occupy D.C.:

When Sascha Meinrath saw the Occupy encampment in D.C., he saw something few others would — a testbed for technology.

Meinrath has been chasing a dream for more than a decade, ever since he was a liberal arts grad student in Urbana, Illinois: community wireless networks. From that small beginning, Meinrath now runs a State Department-funded initiative to create an Internet in a Suitcase — the Voice of America of the digital age.

If he has his way, Meinrath’s project will lead to low-cost, easy-to-use wireless connections around the globe, all lashed together in mesh that can withstand the whims of dictators willing to pull the plug on the internet to quash dissent. He and a team of software engineers are developing open-source software to turn cheap wireless access points and Android smartphones into nodes on the network, which could then be used by dissidents to evade censorship and to spread low-cost connections everywhere around the world. Proponents of the plan include the U.S. State Department, which has given Meinrath a $2 million grant to develop the code.

That's the most interesting thing going on in McPherson Square.

The website for the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative is here.

Over One Million Served

2011-12-15T12:57:00.000-08:00

One million visas, that is, served up this year to Chinese applicants. Here's the
press release:

On December 14 at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Ambassador Gary Locke presented the one millionth visa adjudicated in China this year. With the help of additional personnel and process improvements, Mission China has also successfully reduced the average wait time for a visa interview appointment to less than one week.

Since taking up his post in China, Ambassador Locke has emphasized the importance of travel and trade between the two nations. According to the Department of Commerce, in 2010, more than 800,000 Chinese visitors contributed $5 billion to the U.S. economy.

More Chinese visitors will create more jobs and opportunities in the U.S. travel and tourism industries. In addition to ongoing efforts to keep visa wait times low, the United States is encouraging the Chinese government to extend visa reciprocity to allow both U.S. and Chinese travelers longer validity visas, which is in the interests of both nations.

Next year's goal is to adjudicate more than 2 million visas in China (see this interview).

Federal Free Lunch

2011-12-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

The WaPo interviewed some of the DC office workers who showed up at a Gov.Loop promotional event Thursday, one of whom works in public diplomacy.

Federal workers enjoy a free lunch:

Hundreds of federal employees braved the cold Thursday and enjoyed a free meal courtesy of , the social media Web site for public sector employees. The site, marking its 50,000th subscriber, bought more than 500 free lunches for any federal, state and city employees who showed up with a government-issued ID.

As you’ll see in the video above, employees from the Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Arts, State Department, Justice Department, Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies enjoyed free macaroni and cheese and shared their thoughts on public perceptions of the public sector.

If the pay and benefits aren't enough to attract more citizens to a career in government, then maybe free macaroni and cheese from a sidewalk lunch wagon will do the trick.

DC's Best Mayor Ever

2011-12-09T17:38:00.000-08:00

Now I'll have to subscribe to HBO, because I have got to see the Marion Barry bio-pic:

HBO Films is developing an untitled television biopic centered on former Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, whom [Eddie] Murphy would play should the project move forward, a source confirms to The Hollywood Reporter.

Spike Lee is attached to direct with John Ridley (Red Tails, Da Brick) to pen the script. Murphy, Lee and Ridley would all serve as executive producers as the Washington Post first reported.

Journalists Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood have been tapped to consult, along with The Nine Lives of Marion Barry filmmakers Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer. Jaffe and Sherwood penned a book published in 1994 entitled Dream City detailing politics in D.C.

Barry served as the D.C. mayor from 1979 to 1991 and again from 1995 to 1999, and is currently a member of the D.C. City Council representing the city's eighth ward. In January 1990, Barry was caught smoking crack cocaine at the Vista International Hotel in downtown and was arrested on drug charges, serving six months in prison.

Untitled? Allow me to suggest a title - "I'm Addicted ... To Public Service"

You're welcome, Spike Lee.

History Of The DS Bureau Published

2011-12-09T15:39:00.000-08:00

The Office of the Historian did a wonderful job with this. Download it here.

The new Diplomatic Security history, professionally researched and written by the State Department Historian’s Office, is an authoritative reference source and an archival record of the many critical duties, milestone events, prominent personalities, and worldwide locations with which DS has been associated over the past century. The first comprehensive, detailed history ever prepared, it is dedicated to the men and women who have served the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and its predecessors – the Office of Security (SY) and the Office of the Chief Special Agent of the U.S. Department of State – from the inception in 1916 up to the present.

This is some great stuff. I'm going down Memory Lane with it, reading about so many people I have worked for or with, and so many events I was privileged to see or participate in over the years.

It occurs to me that the publication of a document full of Matters of Official Concern makes those MoOC blog-able via the 'referenced from existing publicly available information' loophole. So, I shall have some posts coming up about people and things I was not free to discuss before. Yea, internet freedom!

Somewhat Less Than Universal

2011-12-07T15:39:00.000-08:00

SecState Hillary Clinton made some remarks on human rights yesterday in Vilnius, including this one that was directed at the winning Islamist parties in Egypt:

Now, in Egypt, new actors will be seated in the parliament, including representatives of Islamist parties. Transitions require fair and inclusive elections, but they also demand that those who are elected embrace democratic norms and rules. We therefore expect all democratic actors and elected officials to uphold universal human rights, including women’s rights, to allow free religious practice, to promote tolerance and good relations among communities of different faiths, and to support peaceful relations with their neighbors. Democracies are guided by the rules of the game, including the inevitable transfers of power from one party to another. And the Egyptian people deserve a democracy that is enduring.

I don't understand why people refer to "universal human rights" in the first place, since there is obviously no such thing. Can anybody name a human right that is not culturally relative but actually exists universally? But put that aside.

Don't Islamic political "actors" such as those in Egypt have their own very specific concept of human rights? I think they do. The member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation long ago adopted the Cairo Declaration of human rights, which appears to constitute the democratic “rules of the game” for Islamic states.

The preamble of the Declaration is quite clear that human rights are not universal, but are conditional on Islamic law:

Reaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation [TSB note: see Koran 3:110 for the "best nation" citation] that has given mankind a universal and well-balanced civilization in which harmony is established between this life and the hereafter and knowledge is combined with faith; and the role that this Ummah should play to guide a humanity confused by competing trends and ideologies and to provide solutions to the chronic problems of this materialistic civilization.

Wishing to contribute to the efforts of mankind to assert human rights, to protect man from exploitation and persecution, and to affirm his freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari'ah.

The Declaration goes on at length about fundamental rights, universal freedoms in Islam, and revealed divine will. The most troublesome part of it in regard to political freedoms is Article 22:

(a) Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari'ah.

(b) Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari'ah

(c) Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith.

(d) It is not permitted to arouse nationalistic or doctrinal hatred or to do anything that may be an incitement to any form or racial discrimination.

So according to the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, you are only free to advocate what is right and good, and are forbidden to misuse information or to express an opinion contrary to the principles of Islamic law. Well, the devil - pardon the expression - is really in the details of that declaration of human rights.

We don't need to lecture the Islamist parties that will come to power in Egypt. They already have a lock on this human rights and freedoms stuff.

Google Versus Bing On December 7

2011-12-07T06:50:00.000-08:00

It worked out the way I expected it would.

The British Ambassador To Tehran Experiences a 1979 Flashback

2011-12-05T07:31:00.000-08:00

Let's go way back for a photo of the November 1979 mob take-over of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran (above).

Compare that to the November 2011 mob take-over of the British Embassy in Tehran (below).

You've come a long way, Iran. Congratulations.

So much animosity toward video cameras, back then, and satellite dishes today! I suppose such objects represent the Industrial Revolution and modernity to Islamist extremists, explaining their outrage.

The WaPo has an interview today with Dominick Chilcott, the British ambassador to Iran in which he recounts the embassy siege:

Q. The embassy’s main Ferdowsi compound in central Tehran has been the site of many protests, hasn’t it?

A. Yes. But in the five weeks since I arrived in Tehran, we hadn’t had a protest. I’d heard about them, and oddly enough I was quite looking forward to getting in one demonstration before I had to leave. They are generally noisy affairs with lots of chanting and maybe some stone throwing — and there was no reason to suspect this would be any different. The police had told us to expect one, and we approached it the way we would any other demo by going into what we call “lockdown.” The essential staff stays put, locked into the embassy buildings and guard house. Local staff leave. Other staff and spouses went to our second compound, Golhak, a few miles away. We had mobile phones and land lines to stay in touch, and the police didn’t say anything about a demonstration there.

So, the embassy staff assumed they would have sufficient warning of a 'serious' mob attack, as opposed to a 'normal' rock-and-bottle throwing demonstration, and that they could send the non-essential staff and dependents home where they would be safely out of the way. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

When and how did you realize this was something other than routine?

The first hour or so was much as we expected. It’s hard to know how many students there were — a few hundred, with just under half of them women. I was on the top floor of the chancery building — there were 10 of us up there — and we went to the windows to look down. Stones were hitting the building, and it was intimidating. But it wasn’t until we saw some protesters run across in front of our building, straight to the flagpole, and begin hauling the Union Jack down that we realized things had gone beyond routine. It was a major invasion, and the Iranian police were making no effort to help. We have our own guards, maybe a dozen of them, but they are not armed or equipped to resist this kind of incursion. The students raised the Iranian flag — though not very well.

Going to the windows is a very bad practice. I hope British embassies have technical means for seeing what's happening outside without needing to expose staff to bullets and flying glass.

Did it make you think back to the crisis of 1979, when 52 Americans were held hostage for more than a year?

I was busy trying to direct our response, and I also had our dog, Pumpkin, in my arms. She hates noise — and the last thing I needed was for her to bolt for cover and disappear. She is a terrier.

There were sounds of students trying to get into our building, smashing the windows. And there were also alarms going off — at 140 decibels. I was in touch with my wife, Jane, who was with Iranian friends, by phone. But it’s alarming for anyone to hear you speak against that background noise. You also have to make a real effort to think clearly and carefully.

Then the students lit a fire below us. Two of my colleagues went down to put it out but couldn’t. I was standing at the top of the stairs, worried that they may have become asphyxiated — and that if anyone came back up, it might be students, not our colleagues. We also knew that the Golhak compound had been attacked, which was very worrying, and, as we learned later, in many ways the seven staffers there had a worse time: They were rounded up and made to sit on the floor in silence for two to three hours while the intruders looted the buildings.

I am guessing that the residential compound was less well protected against mob attack than was the embassy office building. Bottom line: the non-essential staff and dependents were "rounded up" - i.e., captured and held hostage - unlike the staff who were locked down in the embassy. That's enough to make a reasonable man ask whether foreign missions in unstable places shouldn't protect their residential compounds to the exact same degree they do their office buildings.

So, yes, the 1979 precedent was always there, but most of the time we were too busy coping with the here and now to think about it.

Eventually, the smoke got so bad I decided we had to evacuate.

You went out with the mob?

We went to the ground floor and looked out through a spy hole in the door, and the invaders seem to have moved on. Strangely, it was a relief to be out on the lawn. I didn’t have a leash for Pumpkin, so I tied my silk tie through her collar. We tried to put the fire out, but the students had taken the heavy metal keys for the hydrants and used them as battering rams. Then we heard the fire brigade coming. This must have been about two to three hours after the start of the protest.

Improvised tools picked up at the scene of the attack are usually very inefficient for forcible entry. My prediction: if the day ever comes when an embassy is attacked by a mob of outraged farmers or construction workers, it will be a different story.

Did you have time to take anything with you?

Again, this is part of our emergency procedure. We each had a small bag with our passports and one or two things — I had a camera and a spare fleece, not much else. The Golhak staff had their bags taken from them and their passports stolen.

It was about then that two plainclothes policemen came up, identified themselves, and told us to take cover in the club, which is set apart from the other buildings.

You trusted them?

I didn’t see any other options.

The club was already trashed, with broken glass everywhere. As dark fell, we sat inside, away from the windows, and waited. Several riot policemen came and stood sentry. But we still didn’t know why the police weren’t there in force to stop the vandals — or how the situation might develop.

Classic British understatement. Of course, Ambassador Chilcott knows very well why the regime's police didn't stop the rioters.

In fact, it became absolutely surreal. The students — several hundred of them — were allowed to march in triumph through our compound, as though they were celebrating the climax. A couple of senior policemen and a man from the protocol department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs came in, and we learned that some senior figure had told the students, enough’s enough, time to go. And off they all went in buses and coaches. The tension dissipated.

So you could leave?

No, this was another alarming time. The police wouldn’t let us leave, and we didn’t know why. They weren’t armed, but they had batons, helmets and body armor. For two to three hours we argued with them. It seems they were keeping us until the chief of police from Tehran had done an inspection tour of the damage. At the end of it, I was allowed to go and talk to him. It was a peculiar confrontation in the middle of the British compound. He said, “It’s okay, I’ve rescued you.” And I said, “This was clearly state-supported, and there will be serious consequences.” He didn’t contest that.

That’s when we were picked up in cars from a friendly embassy.

Could you take any possessions?

Not that evening. There were a total of 23 of us in the two compounds, if you include spouses. Sixteen left first thing in the morning on a plane, with just 130 pounds of baggage between them. Essentially nothing. Just the clothes they were standing in.

The other seven of us returned to the embassy for a few hours to take stock. I went back to the residence to survey the damage and take pictures. Our possessions had just arrived and had been still in boxes. It was all ransacked — our books, piano, our family photographs and pictures, all the stuff you take around the world with you that makes where you live your home. My study was also smashed up, and the hard drive from my computer gone. So it wasn’t just mindless vandalism: They were looting anything that could provide them with information — just as they did in 1979 — to provide them with propaganda about our activities.

I believe you can still find reassembled documents from our embassy on sale in Iran. I hope the British had better shredders than we did in 1979.

Back to Ambassador Chilcott:

Our main interest on that last day was to do the absolutely necessary things — arrange for guards at the compound and for smashed doors and windows to be boarded up or repaired. It was the end of the month, and we took care to pay the local staffers.

We also took down the Iranian flag. But we couldn’t raise the original British one. It had been taken away or burned.

Would you go back?

I would like to go back. Iranians are delightful people, and the vast majority will be appalled by what the regime has done in their name. But as a foreign diplomat, you can’t work in a country that does not respect the norms of the Vienna Convention. So I don’t see how it will be possible to reopen a mission in this place with its fascinating culture and remarkable history.

The French and Italian governments may be edging up to the same decision to close their missions in Iran, according to press reports.

The day after the attack, Nov. 30, was the anniversary of the famous 1943 dinner held in the residence to celebrate Winston Churchill’s 69th birthday, when he sat between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. Jane and I were planning to commemorate that gathering, and I had invited the Russian ambassador and the Swiss ambassador (who represents U.S. interests) to join me as reminders of the ghosts of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. I had got out of our embassy archive the minutes of the conversation held at the Tehran Conference, at which the Big Three planned the strategy against Nazi Germany. The papers were headed “Most Secret.” And they were among the things missing from the study last week. I’m afraid that means our plans for D-Day have been compromised . . .

The minutes of the Tehran Conference still haven't been released from the Official Secrets Act? My hat is off to the British Foreign Office. That's what I call secrecy.

The Hawk 'n' Dove (Democratic Party, Not The Capitol Hill Bar)

2011-12-03T10:06:00.001-08:00

The dove became a symbol of pacifism when Picasso's lithograph La Colombe was used for the poster of the World Peace Congress in Paris, April 1949.

If you are under the age of 50, it might come as news that there was once a time when the Democratic Party was not to the left of the Republicans on defense and foreign affairs. Foreign Policy's Passport blog has a piece today about how and when Democrats became doves:

Forty-four years ago this week, the senior senator from the state of Minnesota, Eugene McCarthy, stepped to a podium in the Senate Caucus Room and transformed the Democratic Party. Angered by the war in Vietnam and his belief that President Lyndon Johnson would "set no limit to the price" he was "willing to pay for a military victory," there McCarthy announced his intention to challenge the incumbent president of his own party in four presidential primaries.

McCarthy didn't even bother to declare he was seeking his party's nomination -- after all, in the fall of 1967 everyone knew that Johnson was practically a shoo-in to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 1968.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Democratic Convention in Chicago. McCarthy didn't end the war, but he ended Johnson's political career and in the process heralded the shift of the Democratic Party from Cold War hawks to anti-war doves. By creating a political opportunity for Democrats, opposed to the war in Vietnam, to directly engage in the electoral process McCarthy helped change the way that all political leaders -- Democrats and Republicans -- talk about national security policy. No longer could national Democrats ignore liberals skeptical of American power; and Republicans were given a renewed opportunity to cast Democrats as a party beholden to their anti-war base. Quite simply, McCarthy's quixotic presidential bid is the gift that keeps on giving.

-- snip --

Two events would ensure that McCarthy's run would be far more than that. First the Tet Offensive on Jan. 30, 1968 ... the surprise Tet attack, which struck at every provincial capital in the country as well as the U.S. embassy in Saigon, shattered the illusion of progress. In the process it exposed Johnson and the members of his administration as serial liars about the war.

Tet set the stage, but it was the "Clean for Gene," anti-war activists that sealed the deal. Trudging through the snows of New Hampshire for the country's first presidential primary, McCarthy's army of well-scrubbed volunteers (no beards or long hair for this crew) spoke to two-thirds of all New Hampshire Democrats in just a six-week period.

[Robert] Kennedy attacked the war in Vietnam with great and laudable venom; but McCarthy became the first presidential candidate to take on the very conceits of American foreign policy. In perhaps his best speech of the campaign, at San Francisco's Cow Palace in May 1968, McCarthy aimed his verbal assaults at the assumptions underpinning the bipartisan consensus that had shaped America's view of the world since the dawn of the Cold War.

"Involvement in Vietnam," McCarthy said, "was no accident. It did not happen overnight. It was a direct result of America's conception of itself as the world's judge and the world's policeman." He ridiculed the beliefs held dear by both Humphrey and Kennedy: "America's moral mission in the world; the great threat from China; the theory of monolithic Communist conspiracy; the susceptibility of political problems to military solutions; the duty to impose American idealism upon foreign cultures" calling them "myths and misconceptions, so damaging in their consequences."

-- snip --

Although the hawks won the battle in 1968, they would in short order lose the war, as a new generation of Democrats inspired by the campaign -- and its model of grass-roots anti-war activism -- would re-shape the party's views on foreign policy. In 1972, they nominated the dovish McGovern, who was as suspicious of American power as McCarthy. In 1977, a Democratic president -- Jimmy Carter -- focused on human rights as an overarching national security priority would take office; in the nearly two decades that followed the doves would maintain a tight hold on the foreign policy direction of the party, opposing the arms build up of the 1980s and the proxy wars fought by the Reagan administration in Central America. Their influence was so pervasive that the party's remaining hawkish wing would abandon the Democrats for Reagan's GOP.

-- snip --

The liberal wing of the party still views Democratic elites and party leaders who supported the war in Iraq with contempt and suspicion (not unrightfully so). For many, it was the ultimate betrayal of the movement that emerged out of the tumult of 1968 and re-opened a wound first gashed by McCarthy in that Senate Caucus Room, 44 years ago. To this day, Democrats continue to be a party defined at its grassroots by reluctance to use military force, support for multilateral institutions, and opposition to the more aggressive elements of the war on terror. There is perhaps no policy issue where the divide between party and president is more acute -- from civil liberties to the war in Afghanistan.

-- snip --

[T]he foreign policy shift that began in 1968 has consistently provided a political opening of its own for Republicans. It became an opportunity to tar Democrats with the broad brush of weakness and fecklessness on national security (a recurrent GOP political attack since the "Who Lost China" debate of the 1950s). This week came word that the Obama administration is reluctant to apologize for a recent cross-border raid that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, for fear of being portrayed by Republican presidential contenders as soft.

Even today, when Democrats debate national security -- torn between anti-war liberals and hawkish centrists, and reluctant to be cast as wimps and weaklings by Republicans -- they are arguing on a battlefield seeded by Gene McCarthy.

Ten years before Gene, that other Senator McCarthy, the one from Wisconsin, had already caused a shift in public perception about the Democrats and foreign policy. Historian Arthur Herman, my former professor, showed in his re-examination of Joseph McCarthy how the McCarthy era realigned working class, Catholic, and ‘ethnic’ (which in the 1950s meant southern or eastern European) voters from the Democrats to the Republicans over the issue of communism.

Fun fact: that other McCarthy was a great friend and political ally of the Kennedy family. Old Joe Kennedy contributed to McCarthy's campaigns, and frequently invited him to family gatherings at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. McCarthy was particularly close to Robert Kennedy, becoming godfather to his first child and hiring him as an assistant counsel for his Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (January 1953 to August 1953, after which Robert became chief counsel to the minority side until January 1955).

Have you ever seen the two of them together in a photo before? Probably not. The fact that the Kennedy-McCarthy political alliance has dropped down the memory hole of American politics is itself an indicator of how completely Democrats have denied their hawkish past.

FYI, you can browse through the official records of the McCarthy Committee's 1953-54 hearings here, courtesy of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee. There is so much misconception and convenient mis-remembering about those hearings that going to original sources is necessary.

Must ... Break ... Lock ... Somehow

2011-11-29T18:04:00.001-08:00

I think there must be something about being in a mob that makes a person stupid, or stupider.

Take, for instance, those two Iranian students, or Basiji militiamen or whatever they are, who tried to force open the gate of the British Embassy in Tehran yesterday. The gate was being held shut by a length of chain wrapped around the two leafs of the gate and secured with an ordinary padlock. The two students - and I think they really are students, judging by their complete lack of mechanical aptitude - tried repeatedly to break the lock off using two little spindly sticks.

They could have popped the padlock in two seconds with bolt cutters, or cut the chain with a hacksaw, or shimmed the lock open. All quick and easy methods that require no more sophistication than a junkie burglar would possess. But, no. Instead, these regime supporters decided to poke at the brass lock with sticks. Good luck with that.

Honestly, it looked like the Dawn of Man scene in 2001 - A Space Odyssey, where the apes are trying to learn the use of tools. The biggest difference was the lack of that great Also Sprach Zarathustra sound track. That, and the fact that the apes figured it out in only two minutes and 17 seconds, whereas the Iranians had made no progress at all by the end of this three-minute video clip.

Somebody got the gate open eventually, but I doubt it was those two. I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the regime's riot cops who did it, out of pity or impatience.

The New York Times has a lot of good coverage of yesterday's mob invasion in the Lede blog. No British diplomats were killed or injured, so in the end it was all just good clean fun.

Pepper Spray: Better Than A Wood Shampoo, But Still Too Much For Some

2011-11-23T09:31:00.000-08:00

The casual manner in which the University of California campus police sprayed those protesters reminds me of myself watering the shrubs around my house. It definitely wasn't an instance of self-defense, and it might just have political consequences that won't go away with a little water and a few minutes in the open air.

The New York Times has an article today about the fallout that could result from police forces using pepper spray as a compliance tool rather than as a less-than-lethal option for self-defense.

As pepper spray has become ubiquitous in this country over the last two decades, it has not raised many eyebrows. But now, after images of the campus police at the University of California, Davis, spraying the Kool-Aid-colored orange compound on docile protesters on Friday, pepper spray is a topic of national debate.

It has become the crowd-control measure of choice lately by police departments from New York to Denver to Portland, Ore., as they counter protests by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

-- snip --

To Kamran Loghman, who helped develop pepper spray into a weapons-grade material with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1980s, the incident at Davis violated his original intent.

“I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents,” Mr. Loghman said in an interview.

Mr. Loghman, who also helped develop guidelines for police departments using the spray, said that use-of-force manuals generally advise that pepper spray is appropriate only if a person is physically threatening a police officer or another person.

The last time we had prolonged civil disturbances in the U.S., in the late 60s and early 70s, police didn't have any riot control chemical agents that were as selective as pepper spray. Back then it was tear gas grenades, and they could indiscriminately effect an acre or so of demonstrators and bystanders. I don't recall any great controversy about them, but maybe that was because they were pretty much the only alternative to wedge formations of police swinging long wooden riot batons.

Such wonderful memories! When we trained at doing the 'stomp and drag' in Military Police School, our instructors told us to swing our batons for the feet because hippies wear sandals. I see that the feet are still the preferred target area, according to page 68 of this Field Manual, and that hitting the head with a riot baton - AKA a 'wood shampoo' - is still strictly prohibited, so apparently some things never change.

Being doused with pepper spray sounds to me like a good alternative to getting your toes smashed. However, I don't think today's elected officials, or juries, will take such a pragmatic attitude.

The NYT quoted Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University who is studying the social impact of pepper spray incidents such as that at UC Davis:

Those jarring images ... were a reminder that “this is a new generation of subduing people, and while the decision to use it may not be right,” he added, “we are in the age of pepper spray, not the age of real bullets.”

Maybe someday somebody will invent a Nerf ball tool for dispersing rioters and non-violent demonstrators, but until then, it will hurt when you get hit.

Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act Signed

2011-11-22T18:06:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Peace Corps has experienced a large number of assaults on its volunteers overseas, especially sexual assaults, more than one thousand of which were reported between 2000 and 2009 out of a volunteer population that barely exceeded 8,000 in any of those years. And the Peace Corps as an institution has been accused of not handling volunteer safety and security well.

Yesterday, the Peace Corps Director announced that:

President Obama [has] signed into law the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011, codifying a number of the reforms the Peace Corps has put into place over the past two years to better protect and support Volunteers. The Act is named in honor of Kate Puzey, a Peace Corps volunteer who died while serving in Benin in 2009.

The new law codifies and expands many of the reforms the agency has put in place to enhance safety and security and ensure compassionate and effective response and support to all volunteers. The Peace Corps has:

• Hired a nationally recognized leader in victims’ rights to serve as the agency’s first victim advocate. Victims of crime can now turn to a skilled and experienced Peace Corps staff member dedicated to making certain volunteers receive the emotional, medical, legal, and other support they need both during and after their service.

• Updated and expanded training for volunteers and staff on sexual assault awareness, risk-reduction strategies, bystander intervention, and reporting and response procedures.

• Created an external body of leading experts in the field of sexual assault and returned Peace Corps volunteers to provide advice on Peace Corps’ sexual assault risk reduction and response strategies.

• Established procedures to ensure that allegations by Peace Corps volunteers are handled confidentially and appropriately.

You can read the bill at the Library of Congress website, here.

In addition to codifying measures the Peace Corps already has in place, the law also creates a new requirement that will involve Diplomatic Security more directly with the safety and security of PC volunteers.

SEC. 7. CONFORMING SAFETY AND SECURITY AGREEMENT REGARDING PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEERS SERVING IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.

(a) IN GENERAL.— Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of the Peace Corps shall consult with the Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security and enter into a memorandum of understanding that specifies the duties and obligations of the Peace Corps and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the Department of State with respect to the protection of Peace Corps volunteers and staff members serving in foreign countries, including with respect to investigations of safety and security incidents and crimes committed against volunteers and staff members.

This MOU will be something to watch. Exactly what duties and obligations concerning Peace Corps volunteers will DS pick up? And how much can anyone really do about volunteer safety and security, given the very isolated nature of volunteer assignments?

Egypt's Homeland Security - The Sincerest Form Of Flattery?

2011-11-22T13:31:00.000-08:00

H/T to gwb for sending me a link that led to this tidbit in a Financial Times article about ongoing political repression in Egypt - Egypt state security feelers still active (registration required by FT):

After some initial moves to purge the security forces, attempts at systemic reform were halted, say analysts and political observers. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior, the 100,000-strong state security service has been renamed homeland security and personnel moved around.

I can't believe the Egyptian secret police are actually copying the infelicitous name we gave to DHS. Maybe something got lost in translation.

Does the phrase "homeland security" sound innocuous in Arabic? Or does it have the same unfortunate association with European fascism that it has in English, where "homeland" is a second cousin to "Fatherland?" I'm afraid I'll find out it's the latter.

On second thought, the old name was perfect: the Egyptian State Security Investigations Service. If they need to rebrand, the name "Stasi" is available, and would really suit the situation perfectly.

CG Dubai Moves To More Horizontal Surroundings

2011-11-21T12:35:00.000-08:00

Consulate General Dubai used to be embedded in a small part of this high-rise office tower, which I believe is the largest and most populous in the Middle East. But now, CG Dubai has its own nice, new, secure and sustainable Fortress inside Dubai's diplomatic enclave.

U.S. Dedicates New Consulate Compound in Dubai, United Arab Emirates:

The multi-building complex, featuring a Consulate Office Building with an interior atrium and a multimedia center, has quickly become a platform to increase U.S. interaction with the Emirati people. The Consulate’s permanent art collection celebrates the exchange of artistic expression between the United States and the UAE through work by contemporary Emirati, American, and regional artists, curated by OBO’s Office of Art in Embassies. Occupying a six-acre site in the heart of Dubai’s diplomatic enclave on the Dubai Creek, the new facility creates a secure, sustainable, and pleasant workplace for approximately 280 employees.

The new Consulate incorporates numerous sustainable features, most notably solar hot water as well as zero use of potable water for irrigation. The facility is registered with the Green Building Certification Institute and is entering the formal review process with enough credits to earn a LEED Gold rating. B.L. Harbert International of Birmingham, Alabama constructed the project, which was designed by Page Southerland Page of Arlington, Virginia. The $147 million project generated jobs in both the United States and UAE.

I notice that OBO and the post have managed to keep photos of the completed new facility off of the internets, for now. If you're curious about what the new place looks like, you can view pastel watercolor artist renderings full of smiling people - a major part of every architect's portfolio - here. A new embassy or consulate never looks as good in real life as it does in those pretty paintings, so take what you see there and dial it down about 20%.

The press release goes on to note:

Since the 1999 enactment of the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act, the Department has moved more than 26,000 people into safer facilities. OBO has completed 87 diplomatic facilities and has an additional 41 projects in design or construction.

You can see photos of those completed new facilities here on OBO's website, in a sort of Fortress Embassies On Parade slideshow.

American Centers vs Fortress Embassies

2011-11-18T06:49:00.000-08:00

Photo - The Archer K. Blood American Center Library at the American Center, Dhaka, Bangladesh (from Embassy website)

Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not referenced from publicly available sources of information.

H/T to John Brown's Press and Blog Review for posting a link to the agenda transcript for the May 2011 Public Meeting of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

Check the date of that meeting - May 2011. And yet the transcript was only released a couple days ago. Did it take that long to clear the publication? Better late than never.

One part of the transcript piqued my own personal special interest. In the presentation by Ms. Betsy Whitaker, Strategic Communications Officer, Office of the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, she remarked on the ongoing attempts to maintain some public diplomacy outreach facilities outside of the Department's famously forbidding Fortress Embassies:

American Spaces are clearly an area of great importance to generations of public diplomacy officers, and platforms of course that can be used sometimes as a sort of politically neutral venue where people can gather and simply learn about the United States through a variety of different media, and also interpersonal interaction.

We have, with, again, the assistance of IIP, created an office for the support of American Centers. In fact, we have the acting director over here, Anne Barbaro. And in working with IIP, we have also worked very, very hard for 18 months now, I think, to create a very good working relationship with our colleagues in Diplomatic Security and the Overseas Building Operations Bureau.

Why? Because we have sought, and I think are gradually achieving, an all-of-department approach to these spaces. DS clearly we need as a partner as we – because one of the reasons, as you know, that many of these centers have been shuttered or called back or pulled back behind embassy gates is simply because of security concerns.

And what we have been doing with OBO is twofold. One, as posts are anticipating the construction of new embassy compounds or new consulate compounds, working with the mission, if it has been part of the planning discussion to think about bringing some of these centers and spaces back in with the rest of the mission, we’re simply asking people just to stop for a second and ask the question, is this a wise move in terms of our outreach, and, you know, is this absolutely necessary in terms of security?

Let me be clear: Under Secretary McHale says security trumps all. And if it is indicated that these facilities must be brought – relocated or brought behind a fortified line of some sort, she of course understands that. But I think what she’s asking is for people just to simply stop and think and consider this, consider whether or not the mission would be interested in coming in for what we call a co-location waiver, whether or not there is a circumstance in which that space could be apart from the mission offices and such.

And we’ve had some good luck. We’ve had a couple of waivers granted in the past year, one in Ouagadougou I recall. And, you know, others are coming in as our missions – and this is, again, an all-of-missions thing – the chief of mission must sign off on these requests – as missions decide, you know, whether or not they’d like to make the request for a co-location waiver.

The issue here is the legal requirement that all U.S. diplomatic offices abroad be collocated on a single embassy compound in the principal place of USG business in that city. You can read all about it here, in 12 FAM 300. The requirement is invoked whenever a new embassy office facility is constructed or acquired.

(By the way, "collocation" is the correct spelling of the word, with two "l"s and no hyphen, although it is almost always misspelled as "co-location." That misspelling is my pet peeve, and correcting it is my lost cause.)

The collocation requirement may be waived, and so the R Bureau routinely puts up a fight to keep public diplomacy outreach facilities outside whenever new embassy compounds are planned. The position as Ms. Whitaker stated it, i.e., that the Department ought to consider waiving the collocation requirement on a case-by-case basis, is impeccably reasonable. This is basic risk management. The program benefits of making public diplomacy facilities easily accessible to the public can, in a rational world, be articulated and weighed against the security risks, and the increased security costs, of having a comparatively 'soft target' official facility in an annex across town from a new embassy compound.

Let the Ambassador make the request, and let the Secretary decide. Everyone signs on the dotted line, and accountability is established. Fair enough.

My personal interest in this matter is only indirectly with public diplomacy, in that I liked the old independent American Libraries and think they ought to be brought back into the mix of PD platforms, but I am directly interested in good risk management. As the wise man who hired me for my first job in DS said when he gave me the Foreign Affairs Handbook that contained our security standards: "These are the standards, but, of course, they have to be applied by reasoning human beings." I have always tried to apply reason to them, and I find they are much more persuasive that way.

Boston Illegal: Uncle Omar Goes To Court

2011-11-17T11:12:00.001-08:00

Onyango "Uncle Omar" Obama, that distant-but-not-distant-enough Kenyan relative of President Obama, appeared in Framingham Mass District Court today and filed a motion to suppress evidence from his drunk driving arrest last August. He's going to argue that his arrest was improper and therefore his subsequent search was unconstitutional. Meanwhile, he remains free and continues to be employed at a Framingham liquor store (photo above, courtesy of tmz.com).

The stakes are high. Since Uncle Omar is an illegal alien and federal fugitive with an outstanding deportation order hanging over his head, his conviction on a drunk driving charge could threaten, however implausibly, to end his long sojourn in America.

I've posted about Uncle Omar before, as well as about his charming sister "Aunt Zeituni," both of them long-time illegal residents of the Boston area. Zeituni's own deportation from the USA was finally avoided when she was granted political asylum on her third try. Hint-hint, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

By coincidence, I just finished reading an excellent biography of President Obama's father (The Other Barack) written by Boston Globe reporter Sally Jacobs. She untangles the complicated family tree that connects the Onyango siblings to our chief executive, and also explains why they are so drawn to the Boston area. It turns out that both Massachusetts and alcohol abuse are reoccurring themes in the history of the elder Obama and his fragmented family.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatchagonna Do When The Kingdom Comes For You?

2011-11-17T08:59:00.000-08:00

H/T to Crossroads Arabia for posting news of this development.

[T]he Saudi government is going to establish its own bureau of Diplomatic Security, Saudi Gazette reports. The move seems to be setting up an office somewhat similar in its mission to that of the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) in that it will protect missions and diplomats abroad as well as foreign missions within the Kingdom.

The Saudi Gazette story is linked in the Crossroads post, and it says:

The government is setting up a special security unit to protect Saudi ambassadors and diplomatic missions abroad. The unit will also be responsible for providing protection to foreign diplomatic missions in the Kingdom.

Teams of commandos, officers and non-commissioned officers will be trained specifically for the unit known as the “Special Forces for Diplomatic Security”.

It will fall under the Ministry of Interior, said Al-Hayat Arabic daily, quoting informed sources.

This new unit sounds similar to DSS in that it will protect Saudi Ambassadors and diplomatic missions abroad, however, I suspect its function might be limited to personal protection, i.e., bodyguard stuff, rather than encompassing the full range of security responsibilities. The fact that the unit will be located in the Ministry of Interior - the police and counterterrorism arm of the Kingdom - rather than in the Foreign Ministry, reinforces my assumption that this is more of a bodyguard and armed response force.

Of course, this being a Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia operation, the unit will lack for nothing in the way of hardware and resources:

Members of the unit will be armed with the latest sophisticated weapons.

They will be trained to protect diplomatic facilities and residences, and escort ambassadors on official business.

They will also have special training in anti-terrorism methods and air-borne exercises and drive special armored vehicles used to guard diplomats and missions.

With all that stuff, the Kingdom ought to field a totally kick-ass DSS equivalent unit. Not unlike the 2007 movie, only without a Jennifer Garner equivalent, I assume.

All Aboard The Tequila Train!

2011-11-16T15:21:00.000-08:00

I don't know what ad man came up with this pitch, but he must have juevos in both hands to even attempt to draw gringo tourists back to Mexico. And especially to Guadalajara, the lovely city that is likely to become the next hotspot in Mexico's drug wars.

The National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism, Guadalajara cordially welcomes you to experience our legendary train ride that is our pride and joy: The Tequila Express.

Culture, diversion, entertainment and much more is in store on this magical journey. We invite you to discover it.

Come aboard and immerse yourself in Mexico’s past! Let’s begin!

Will the attractions of tequila and Mariachi music draw tourists back to a region where the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas are battling each other with drive-by shootings, kidnappings, and beheadings? Not to mention the Mexican government's response to the drug wars, which is credibly alleged to include systematic torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

I wish the Guadalajara boosters well, but, as much as I'd like to see the place again, I think I'll plan my next vacation for somewhere north of the border.

No "Silly Shirt" Group Photo For APEC Honolulu

2011-11-13T18:35:00.001-08:00

And so a grand tradition ends - poof - just like that. The leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum are off the hook this year, and will not have to do the customary, cringe-inducing, Native Costume group photo.

I think the "silly shirt" thing brought a welcome touch of the Monty Pythonesque to the last twenty APEC meetings, but apparently someone thinks otherwise.

Costume Shot Unnecessary, Obama Says:

To the chagrin of White House photographers but the relief of the 21 leaders at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that took place over the weekend, President Obama, as the host this year, may have packed away for good the two-decade tradition of having the group pose for a “family photo” in some garb representative of the host country.

-- snip --

It was hard to imagine that Mr. Obama — he of cool reserve, given to unflashy white shirts and plain ties — would ever submit to such apparel. And indeed, the president confirmed late Saturday at a luau for the leaders that he was giving them Hawaiian shirts, but that they could wear business suits for their photo.

Business suits? Wearing a business suit in Hawaii ought to be a crime. If ever there was a venue that cried out for the extremely casual, it is Hawaii.

Obama is such a drag. Nothing at all like Bill Clinton, who started the whole costume shot thing twenty years ago in Seattle. Now that was a President who was always the life of the party.

DS Agent Arrested In Honolulu Shooting Incident

2011-11-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

Photo: Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Truly, nothing good happens after 2AM.

Here's a local press report on the arrest of a DS Agent in Honolulu in the early hours of last Saturday, Federal agent from mainland arrested for killing man in Waikiki:

A U.S. State Department law enforcement agent from the mainland was arrested early Saturday on suspicion of fatally shooting a Windward Oahu man at the Kuhio Avenue McDonald's in Waikiki.

Honolulu police identified the alleged shooter as Christopher W. Deedy, 27, and sources who asked to remain anonymous confirmed that he is a federal agent who was off-duty at the time of the incident. The victim was identified by family and friends as Kailua resident Kollin K. Elderts, 23, a Kalaheo High School graduate.

State Department officials refused to confirm that Deedy was here in connection with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference that begins Tuesday.

-- snip --

Reached in Washington Saturday night, a State Department spokeswoman said only, "We are aware of the incident and we cannot comment on an ongoing investigation."

-- snip --

Police said four males got into a confrontation and the victim suffered a single gunshot wound. Paramedics took him to the Queen's Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Deedy had not been charged as of Saturday night and was at the main police cell block on South Beretania Street.

-- snip --

YELLOW CRIME TAPE blocked off the entrance to the normally crowded McDonald's, which is usually open 24 hours a day and is one of the few places late-night visitors to Waikiki can have a cheap bite before going home after a night of partying. Signs on the front doors said it would reopen for business today.

Keo Evans, a bartender at Lojax at Kuhio and Seaside, said he was just leaving work when he heard two or three shots, and then screaming, coming from the McDonald's.

A man wearing a collared shirt ran from the restaurant, heading in the Ewa direction, Evans said. Inside McDonald's, Evans said, a man was holding on to the victim, trying to keep him from collapsing.

"There was already a big crowd of people out there (in front of McDonald's)," Evans said, noting that was unusual. Usually the early-morning action in the neighborhood occurs one block Diamond Head in front of the Waikiki Trade Center, notorious for fights after bars and discos in the building close, he said.

A Honolulu television station had this bit of further information in a story Sunday morning:

Police say 23 year-old Kollin was with a group inside the McDonalds on Kuhio Avenue. Witnesses tell KHON2 Kollin appeared to have been drinking and calling people derogatory names. Police say he got into an altercation with Christopher Deedy, an off-duty U.S. State Department special agent, and was shot.

Bearing in mind that initial reports are usually wrong, or at least incomplete, it looks like we know this much about what happened: some drunken local yoots were trash-talking in the only fast food place that stays open after most of the Waikiki bars have closed, when a haole came in [check out the reader comments after the Honolulu TV story for local sentiments toward those Caucasian outsiders], leading to an "altercation" in which Deedy drew his duty weapon and fired a round into Elderts.

Was the shooting justified, i.e., was Deedy acting in self-defense? Possibly. Even if the victim and his posse were unarmed - and the news reports do not mention anyone other than Deddy being armed - there were at least three of them, and they could have given Deedy reason to believe he was in danger.

More to come.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Taxed

2011-11-04T19:04:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street has reportedly received about $500,000 in donations so far, which is an interesting amount of capital for a bunch of anti-capitalism demonstrators to compile in about six weeks. And you know what that means. Inevitably, there has been fighting over the money that belongs to this avowedly leaderless movement:

Occupy Wall Street is awash with cash, some $500,000 by one estimate, thanks to generous donations. However, questions about spending that money have provoked controversy among the people who have gathered at Zuccotti Park to protest greed. Various groups of people are finding that the utopian society that they have created comes with bureaucratic red tape.

There is a Finance Committee that grabs as much of the money it can and is reluctant to dole it out. That sounds very much like the government outside Zuccotti Park. In effect, the Occupy Wall Street protestors are finding out that their taxes are too high.

Speaking of taxes, who does the IRS see about getting its slice of OWS's $500,000?

Nobody, that's who. OWS has hired a certified 501(c)3 non-profit entity to receive and disperse its money, which makes OWS's stash non-taxable to them and tax-deductible by the donors. Their 'fair share' of the nation's tax burden, then, is zero.

The tax haven for OWS is the Alliance for Global Justice, which explains the relationship this way:

What do OWS and our other fiscally sponsored projects get out of the relationship? They get additional accounting and administrative staff support and advice. They get to offer their donors tax-deductions for their donations. They get online donation capacity and staff to process and deposit donation checks as well as to send the IRS-required form for donations of $250 or more. They don’t have to worry about IRS forms and deadlines. They are covered by our liability insurance. If they have paid staff, which OWS does not, we handle their payroll and enroll them in our group health policy. For an organization like United Students Against Sweatshops, which rotates an entirely new staff in every couple of years, we provide continuity and organizational memory.

Many supporters ask if AFGJ takes a portion of the donations. We charge a relatively low rate for fiscal sponsorship, at a flat 7% of all money that passes through our channels for processing.

It's a good thing all these guys are part of the 99%, otherwise that could be called greed and corruption.

Wartime Contracting Commission Records To Be Sealed

2011-11-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) blog noted yesterday that the records of the Wartime Contracting Commisssion, that watchdog on government fraud, waste, and mismanagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, will soon be sealed and put beyond access by the public.

Wartime Contracting Commission's Move to Seal Records for 20 Years: Just Plain Wrong:

The recently dissolved Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC) did just about everything right. Created in the spirit of the Truman Commission, the CWC identified as much as $60 billion in contracting-related waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the process, the CWC held 25 hearings, released 8 reports, and published detailed recommendations intended to prevent waste and fraud from occurring in future overseas contingencies. Perhaps most important, the bipartisan commission was unanimous in its findings and recommendations, notable in a city known for its partisan gridlock.

But the Commission’s decision to seal its internal records for 20 years is just plain wrong. The decision, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, blocks the public and watchdog groups from using the CWC’s source material to build upon the important work of the Commission and to help prevent waste and fraud in overseas contingency contracting in the near term.

Clark Irwin, the CWC’s spokesman, told the Wall Street Journal the seal was justified because “there is sensitive information in there.” He cited proprietary company information, attorney work products, and classified documents as examples of such records. Another source told the Journal that the expectation that the CWC’s records would be sealed was necessary to encourage sources to speak candidly.

But Irwin’s argument ignores the fact that documents are only released by the National Archives after first going through an extensive vetting process. So whether the seal is 20 years, 20 days, or even if there were no seal at all, the truly sensitive material would be redacted or withheld.

Sources close to the CWC have told POGO that the commissioners agreed to the 20-year seal after being informed that it was standard practice. But 20 years doesn’t appear to be anywhere near standard. Congress has created six investigative commissions in the last 20 years, the most well known being the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission).

The 9/11 Commission, which investigated issues of the most sensitive nature, sealed its records for just five years. And even that length of time seemed too long for Thomas Kean, the 9/11 Commission Chairman, who “said publicly that he was eager for most of the records to be released as quickly as possible.” He later told Reuters that there was “no justification for withholding most of the unreleased material.”

As was the case with the 9/11 Commission, the CWC’s records aren’t available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) because the CWC is a congressional entity and Congress isn’t subject to FOIA. But the public should be able to request from agencies records that those agencies provided to the CWC.

A source told the Wall Street Journal that the “vast majority of the commission's records would put you to sleep.” And that may be true. But until the public has the opportunity to view the documents for ourselves, we can’t be certain of their actual value or use them to make wartime contractors more accountable. We hope Congress takes action to right this wrong by legislating a far shorter seal—or better yet, no seal at all.

There is no good reason to seal the records, and plenty of reasons why the public interest would benefit from making them accessible, especially as the USG ramps up to do even more contracting in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Congress can reverse this decision. Please write to your representatives.

"Don't Take The Brown Acid"

2011-10-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the Woodstock reference - anyone who gets that is probably old enough to need a knee replacement - but I can't help thinking how, all these years after Woodstock, New Yorkers still can't handle being outdoors.

Anyway, that's the impression I'm getting from watching the Occupy Wall Street streaming video. The Fire Department seized OWS's generators this morning due to fire safety violations, so now they are hunkering down under tarps and wondering what they'll do when they get covered with snow tonight.

The Livestream comments are more interesting then the video. There has been a thread all day alleging that today's unseasonably early snow in the Northeast is really an attack on OWS by the Military Industrial Complex via its HAARP program. Maybe somebody got into the brown acid after all.

From other comments I learned that:

-- Brandon is barefoot because somebody stole his shoes
-- Another guy had his MacBook Pro broken when somebody stepped on it
-- Homeless guys are stealing stuff from the food tent
-- Abraham, OWS's "real big" security guy is keeping "the riffraff" [!!] away
-- Somebody thinks Kosher salt will de-ice the concrete in Zuccotti Park
-- Somebody is asking for baked potatoes as organic hand warmers
-- Somebody is quoting "Frm Secretary of State Brzezinski" [sic]
-- "Brian from the Comfort Section" is begging for tents and dry clothes

This has become my favorite reality show.

Slow Motion Suicide In Sarajevo

2011-10-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

The WaPo report on today's shooting incident in front of U.S. Embassy Sarajevo quotes the AP and Sarajevo city officials saying that the shooter was a Muslim from Novi Pazar, Serbia, and that he wounded a policeman guarding the embassy before being shot by responding police. None of the Embassy employees was injured.

Radio reports are saying the embassy office building was struck by rifle rounds. Fortunately, the building is a new Fortress Embassy, completed almost one year ago, so the bullets bounced right off. Ha!

Bosnian TV identified the shooter as a follower of Wahabi Islam, and noted that he was dressed in "an outfit typical for followers of the conservative Wahabi branch of Islam." That must explain the highwater pants, since they are fashionable among young Bosnian Muslims, apparently in imitation of the shortened thobes (the white man-dresses) worn by the more devote Wahabbis of Saudi Arabia, who in turn are imitating the dress of the companions of the Prophet.

There is a good set of photos at the UK Daily Mail, here.

After Highpants paced back and forth for about 30 minutes, essentially daring the police to shoot him, they finally did so with a single head shot. Naturally, that moment was captured and posted to YouTube. The video is tastefully non-graphic.

You Don't Want To Die With A Full Magazine

2011-10-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

Now that Muammar Gaddafi is dead and his Old Regime overthrown, Libya is moving on to Act Two of the classic four-act structure of revolutions, i.e., the Rule of the Moderates. You can take that from Mustafa Abdel Jalil himself.

Historically, the Rule of the Moderates has been followed by the Rise of the Radicals, and finally the cycle culminates in a Thermidorian Reaction and the consolidation of power in the hands of a new dictator. Anyway, that has been the pattern of modern revolutions.

So now is a good time for historian Andrew Robert's piece in The Daily Beast about How Dictators Die, since he points out the extremely unusual manner of Muammar Gaddafi's death and the favor he did the Libyan people by staying in the country and fighting rather than escaping into exile.

Usually dictators do not actually die on their feet, weapon in hand, as Gaddafi appears to have done. All too often they escape from the countries they brutalized, or are captured and not executed, or (most often) they die in office, full of honors, surrounded by sycophants and only loosening their grip on power when their hands go cold. For Gaddafi to have fought to the last, not escaping to Chad or Niger, but believing in his diseased mind that the silent majority of Libyans still loved him, is quite exceptional for dictators.

Quite exceptional, indeed. Maybe even unique. I had not noticed before how very, very, hard it is to find an example of a dictator who went down fighting.

Roberts notes that Hitler killed himself. Benito Mussolini and Nicolae Ceausescu both surrendered and were promptly shot to death. Josef Stalin, Francisco Franco, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Marshal Tito, Papa Doc Duvalier, Vladimir Lenin all died in power, as will, most likely, Robert Mugabe, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chávez. Saddam Hussein was pulled out of a hole in a bedraggled state and gave up without a fight. Idi Amin, Ferdinand Marcos, Alfred Stroessner, and Mobuto Sese Seko all died in exile. Pol Pot died under house arrest in 1998 and Slobodan Milosevic died while on trial in The Hague, where Charles Taylor of Liberia is currently on trial. Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic was removed from power, imprisoned, then died in his home country. Jan Kambanda of Rwanda is serving a life sentence in Mali.

It seems that dictators, as a group, have almost no willingness to go out like James Cagney in a 'come and get me coppers!' blaze of glory.

But if, like Gaddafi, they do, then that removes a potentially destabilizing influence that could impede the new regime's normal political development.

Robert's piece concludes:

The moral of the Gaddafi story is that it is very rare for dictators to meet their end bravely, still inside the country they are fighting to recapture. It was fortunate that he chose to stay and fight, rather than destabilizing Libya from abroad, perhaps for decades to come. As he was never going to go quietly, the manner of his demise at long last gives Libyans something for which they can thank Colonel Gaddafi.

Thank you Colonel, for rendering that one last service for your country.

I Was So Much Older Then

2011-10-23T20:15:00.000-07:00

Apropos of nothing, except that I've been listening to it on my iPod while flying back from TDY today, this is from Bob Dylan's 30th anniversary concert.

Dylan wrote My Back Pages in 1964 to step away from the more strident kind of protest song.

Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

The Byrds did a popular cover version, but it didn't include all six versus. Dylan, of course, recorded the full version, but, frankly, his rendition is too eccentric for me. This collaborative version is the best of both worlds - you get the entire song, and you can understand the words.

My Kind Of Town

2011-10-22T20:15:00.001-07:00

Also known as: the City on the Make, Hog Butcher for the World, Paris on the Prairie, and - my favorite - the Miami of Canada.

I'm working in Chicago tonight, on my first trip ever to the city, and I must say I am loving the place. Yesterday, I walked past blocks and blocks of wonderful architecture on Michigan Avenue, and tonight I found this red brick Victorian Gothic building of "luxury flats" from 1882.

It's a historical landmark building, one of the first significant pieces to be completed after the Great Fire, and today it contains a Starbucks (of course). I am all over that like white on rice.

The Lexus And The Olive Tree Ball Cap And The Browning

2011-10-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

According to a BBC report from Sirte, the Libyan rebel who discovered Qaddafi, a kid named Mohammed al-Bibi, was wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap at the time. That's him in the photo, holding up a gold-plated Browning P-35 pistol that he took from Qaddafi. (An excellent pistol, by the way; I used to have one myself, but just in plain blued steel.)

There are surely more important things to say about the end of Qaddafi, but I'm kind of struck by the weird mashup of cultural artifacts in that photo: dusty peasant militiamen, designer sunglasses, American ball caps, and a pimped-out pistol made in Belgium. There is a story about globalization and consumption somewhere in there, twisted around a political narrative about oppression and post-colonial violence.

Mo' Better Fortresses

2011-10-19T16:04:00.000-07:00

Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not referenced from publicly available sources of information.

We all hate those Fortress Embassies, don't we? Well, some of our diplomatic premises aren't nearly fortress-y enough but, in general, yes, we all hate them.

So it was good news when the Office of Overseas Buildings Operations met with its Industry Advisory Panel yesterday, and then sent out a press release about how it is exploring ways to design less fortress-y embassies. This is all part of the Design Excellence initiative that is slowly replacing OBO's established practice of standardized embassy design.

Here's the press release. Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations Introduces New Perimeter Design Concepts for Diplomatic Facilities:

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) announced the new Embassy Perimeter Improvement Concepts (EPIC) initiative during its Industry Advisory Panel meeting today. The EPIC team studied compound perimeter designs to improve the quality and appeal of the built environment surrounding United States diplomatic facilities abroad. The EPIC initiative [see a summary here] is one of many efforts OBO is undertaking in its renewed commitment to Design Excellence.

OBO and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security collaborated with Davis Brody Bond Aedas, Rhodeside & Harwell, and Weidlinger Associates to observe and document the perimeters of four existing embassy compounds. After analyzing the function and aesthetic realities of perimeter designs, the team developed a range of alternate approaches to achieving mandated security requirements.

The goal of EPIC is to design new embassy perimeters that present a more positive and welcoming image of the United States abroad, while meeting all perimeter security standards and the functional needs of these facilities.

Design Excellence, implemented in 2010, is a holistic approach to building U.S. diplomatic missions abroad. Using the Guiding Principles of Design Excellence in Diplomatic Facilities as a road map, Design Excellence furthers OBO’s mission to provide safe, secure, and functional facilities that represent American values and the best in American architecture, engineering, technology, sustainability, art, culture, and construction execution.

OBO has gotten away from the standard embassy design a couple times in recent years to do one-offs, most notably in Beijing. See some photos of that Unfortress Embassy here, and an artist's rendering from the embassy's website, below.

Wow. All that glass, water features, fancy landscaping, and cultural sensitivity. What's not to like? No Fortress there. Why not do more of those?

Here's my take-away from OBO's Design Excellence guidance and how it might affect future embassy construction:

-- Urban site selection for most new buildings. We can expect to see taller chancery buildings on smaller plots of land closer to the urban core. At least, we can expect that in those cities where OBO doesn't need to provide on-compound amenities like dining and recreation facilities, or on-compound housing. For the worst of the Third World, and for the highest-threat posts, big compounds in - necessarily - remote locations will continue to be needed.

-- Representational (not just functional) embassy buildings that are fitted into the surrounding architectural environment. No more Big Box diplo-kitsch productions that all come from the same template.

-- Grounds and landscaping will be an important part of the design. They will no longer be ignored, value-engineered away, or left for the regional bureau to pay for later. I could rant a little here about one of this year's new construction projects in which the entire compound is landscaped with a foot-deep cover of loose rock that looks like a barren moonscape, can't be safely walked on, soaks up solar heat until it feels like a frying pan, makes it impossible to establish a helicopter landing zone for emergency evacuations, and would become secondary fragmentation in the event of a bomb attack. I could rant about that, but I'm trying to ease up about it.

-- A higher value will be placed on selecting excellent designers (“seek to hire the highest quality American architects and engineers”), as opposed to hiring anyone willing to sign a firm fixed price contract for less than the next guy.

-- Designs will take lifecycle analysis into account, thereby reducing long-term costs for operations and maintenance.

-- Historical, cultural, and architectural legacy buildings will be preserved. OBO does this now, however, I hope it will more fully develop adaptive work-arounds for meeting security requirements, especially perimeter security requirements, in protected cultural properties. I see no reason why such buildings can't be preserved both in the cultural sense and in the literal sense of being preserved from destruction by mobs and vehicle bombs.

-- OBO will seek the best value when contracting. The guidance states that "current [OBO] policy emphasizes low first cost at the expense of design quality and lifecycle costs." Indeed, it does. They can admit that kind of thing now that General Williams isn’t around.

Come to think of it, General Williams has been gone for almost four years. What took OBO so long to shake off his influence?

'Happy Fire' In Tripoli (What Goes Up, Must Come Down)

2011-10-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

Listen to that joyously unrestrained celebratory gunfire in Tripoli! Unconfirmed reports say that six people were killed by falling rounds. If so, then it was even worse than a typical New Year's Eve in Puerto Rico, where only two people get killed. Arriba!

Someone has started a Twitter campaign to make Libyans a little more careful about where they point the muzzle when they empty a magazine.

Libyans cry #NotoCelebullets as 'unconfirmed news kills':

With troops loyal to Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) close to a complete rout of pro-Gadhafi forces in Sirte, a bloody evening of gunfire reportedly left six dead and many more injured 500 kilometers away in the capital Tripoli. Shortly after the explosion of small arms fire, ambulance sirens joined the din as scores of innocent victims were rushed to hospital. Property was destroyed and the streets of the Libyan capital once again became a place of extreme danger – all in the name of celebrations. A rumour that the NTC had captured Gadhafi’s son, Mutasim Gadhafi, in Sirte set off massive celebrations with hundreds of jubilant Libyans firing into the air. Activists called for a halt to the dangerous celebrations by tweeting under the hashtag #notocelebullets. In the morning, there was no Mutasim Gadhafi, as activists attempted to count the toll from so-called celebratory gunfire. The news remained unconfirmed 24 hours later.

Good luck with that hashtag. If it works, maybe we can tackle Puerto Rico next.

U.S. Embassy Bandar Seri Begawan, On The Cutting Edge Of Diplomatic Water Efficiency

2011-10-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

(Photo from embassy website.)

OBO (the Office of Overseas Buildings Operations) cut another ribbon this week, this time on the 84th new building to be completed under the capital security construction program. That program is a tragic legacy of the 1999 Embassy Bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

Here's the press release. United States Dedicates New Embassy in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam:

Occupying a 5.3-acre site in the Diplomatic Enclave, the new Embassy compound replaces the prior facility in the Teck Guan Plaza building located in downtown Bandar Seri Begawan.

The new Embassy compound incorporates several sustainable features, most notably an irrigation system that utilizes Brunei Darussalam’s abundant natural rain. The facility is registered with the U.S. Green Building Council, and will be submitted for certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) green building rating system.

-- snip --

OBO’s mission is to provide safe, secure, and functional facilities for the conduct of U.S. diplomacy and the promotion of U.S. interests worldwide. These facilities should represent American values and the best in American architecture, engineering, technology, sustainability, art, culture, and construction execution.

The local press in Brunei has some more on that LEED® green building sustainability stuff:

According to Mr Evans, the Managing Director for the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operation (OBO) Construction, Facility and Security Management Directorate, "The new embassy is registered with the US Green Building Council and will be submitted for certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system. The building uses advance irrigation system that utilises natural rainwater, waterless urinal as well as energy efficient lightings in the building.

Waterless what now? Urinals? Yes, and you can expect to see them coming to an embassy office building near you because waterless urinals play a major part in OBO's initiative on water efficiency:

Indoor strategies that OBO incorporates include low-flow plumbing fixtures, faucet aerators, dual flush toilets and waterless urinals. OBO further supports posts with a waterless urinal replacement program for older, more water-intensive plumbing fixtures in facilities that demonstrate high consumption and high cost.

I kind of understand how those waterless devices work, with a liquid sealant vapor block and so forth. Still, I find the whole concept a bit disconcerting. Would it really be asking too much for a little water to flush that bad boy? Considering that Brunei has 7.5 feet of "abundant natural rain" annually, compared to just 2.5 feet for the United States, why are we going to extremes to save a little water there?

I like LEED®-green-sustainable-ecological-efficient building design as much as anybody, but, please, how about a little more concern for the microclimate inside the men's room?

Che™ Was Launched On This Date In 1967

2011-10-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

He just won't lie still, will he?

Career-wise, getting killed in Bolivia at age 39 (see the declassified documents reporting all the details here) was the best move Che could have made. If he had made it back to Cuba he would probably be in the same nursing home as Fidel Castro today, the two of them trying to remember their glory days of show trials and firing squads while nurses spoon soft food into their mouths.

Che avoided that pathetic fate by being re-branded from a failed revolutionary into an enduring image of adolescent revolutionary romanticism, thanks to the famous photo shot by Alberto Korda in 1960, seven years before he was killed.

The British art historian Martin Kemp identifies that Korda photo as one of the most iconic images of all time in a book to be released next month, Christ to Coke, How Image Becomes Icon:

Christ to Coke is the first book to look at all the main types of visual icons. It does so via eleven supreme and mega-famous examples, both historical and contemporary, to see how they arose and how they continue to function. Along the way, we encounter the often weird and wonderful ways that they become transformed in an astonishing variety of ways and contexts. How, for example, has the communist revolutionary Che become a romantic hero for middle-class teenagers?

Here's the face that sold a million tee-shirts:

Call me crazy, but doesn't that photo bear a certain resemblance to that other great cultural product of the 1968, Planet of the Apes? There is definitely a stylistic similarity.

I Know Just The Guy You Should Talk To

2011-10-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

The Office of the Historian recently launched an oral history program that will have a special focus on contemporary Foreign Service experiences in Iraq:

[T]he Office of the Historian has also collaborated with the Center for Army Lessons Learned and the Office of Provincial Affairs of Embassy Baghdad to capture the experiences of State Department officers working on the frontlines of expeditionary diplomacy at Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq.

Now, where is HO going to find people who have experience in military-embedded PRTs in Iraq, and are eager to go on the historical record about what they saw and did there? Ideally, people with a flare for pithy description.

That's a tough one. Hmmm.

Declassified Document Of The Week

2011-10-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

H/T to Unredacted at the National Security Archive for a very timely find on this week's Document Friday.

It's a State Department INR memo to the SecState dated November 7, 2001, reporting that "urban Pakistanis" polled immediately after 9/11 supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan at greater levels than before. In fact, almost half of respondents favored increasing support to the Taliban.

The survey was conducted amongst “urban Pakistanis,” beginning “shortly after September 11″ 2001 and “almost all interviews” were conducted before the United States started bombing Afghanistan. In other words, the window that a westerner would assume that Pakistanis would probably have had the absolute lowest amount of support for the Taliban.

Not the case. The survey asked: “As you may know, our [Pakistani] government has been generally supportive of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. In the future, would you like to see our government strengthen its support for the Taliban, reduce its support, or maintain support for the Taliban at about the same level as now?”

The vast majority –46 percent– favored “increasing support for Mullah Omar’s regime.” Only a paltry 14 percent favored reducing support. The INR concluded that the Pakistani public “saw the Taliban more favorably than it had before the September 11 attacks.” And that Pakistanis “believed by a sizable majority that the Taliban are not a threat to stability in the region and that Pakistan’s ties with the Taliban are good.”

In a week when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accused the Pakistani government of supporting the Afghan Taliban, it is sobering to realize how deep and pervasive popular support for the Taliban runs in Pakistan.

Flags Made To Be Burned - A New Public Diplomacy Metric?

2011-10-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Protestors like to burn flags, and those flags have to come from somewhere. In Pakistan, that somewhere might be a specialty shop run by an entrepreneur named Syed Mohammed Hussain who has flags to burn. I mean, he makes combustible flags to order:

Syed Mohammed Hussain has seen his one-off experiment [producing Danish flags to be burned] turn into a profitable little sideline as he produces American and Israeli flags to order.

This week brought fresh demand for the Stars and Stripes with a wave of demonstrations against American allegations that Pakistan was using an Afghan insurgent group to wage a proxy war against US forces.

But it all started with protests at caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed printed in a Danish newspaper in 2006. Pakistan witnessed some of the fiercest demonstrations, with two people shot dead.

"I was also very angry about the Danish cartoons but I wouldn't have gone out on the streets myself. Instead I decided to get Danish flags printed," Mr Hussain, who sells his flags for 500 rupees or about £3.50, told The Express Tribune

Word spread fast and he couldn't keep up with the orders.

Today, bulk buyers – looking for more than 100 flags – are given a discount.

And there has been no shortage of business this year as relations with the US have fluctuated between poor and catastrophic.

The killing of Osama bin Laden in May ignited a spate of flag-burning protests. Many Pakistanis were angry that the US could launch a secret, unauthorised raid on Pakistani territory.

Today his storeroom has a selection of western flags, including the Union Flag and French Tricolour, ready to be stamped, trampled or burned.

So here's my idea for a metric of Public Diplomacy success in places like Pakistan: monitor fluctuations in the local demand for U.S. flags.

If Syed Mohammed Hussain's unsold inventory of Stars and Stripes grows, that would be quantifiable good news about the U.S. image in Pakistan. If he has to work overtime to make more product and raises his prices, that would be a leading indicator of a spike in public outrage.

You're welcome, United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy!

Is Uzbekistan The New Pakistan?

2011-10-01T07:12:00.000-07:00

- Google Earth map marked with the Northern Distribution Network, from CSIS.

After breaking up with Pakistan, it looks like we are rushing into a new relationship with Uzbekistan on the rebound. Isn't that always the way?

Both Hillary and Obama chatted up their Uzbek counterparts this week, and Congress is considering increasing our military assistance to Uzbekistan provided that it can find a way to overlook the regime's egregious human rights abuses and corruption.

The UK Telegraph has a story today on this bad romance:

The past fortnight has seen relations between Islamabad and Washington sink to new lows over allegations that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency was working with the Haqqani network to direct attacks on American targets in Afghanistan.

The crisis, the latest in a turbulent year, has seen both countries scrambling to build up alternative regional alliances.

However, more than a third of supplies to Nato forces in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan, giving Islamabad a strong bargaining position.

A White House official said President Obama had discussed sending more supplies through the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan during a phone call with the country's president, Islam Karimov.

At the same time, Hillary Clinton met her Uzbek counterpart on Thursday, and Congress is considering legislative changes that would allow more military aid to the Central Asian despite its poor human rights record.

"We value our relationship with Uzbekistan. They have been very helpful to us with respect to the Northern Distribution Network," said Mrs Clinton.

That route winds its way through Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia to Afghanistan and has already become more important in the past year as the US began switching supplies from Pakistan's roads.

But closer ties will anger human rights organisations which have protested proposed plans to send military aid to Uzbekistan for the first time since 2004, when funds were choked off as penalty for the country's poor human rights record.

Twenty groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and International Crisis Group, signed a letter of protest sent to Mrs Clinton before her meeting with Mr Ganiev.

"We call on you to stand behind your strong past statements regarding human rights abuses in Uzbekistan," the letter said.

"We strongly urge you to oppose passage of the law and not to invoke this waiver."

As bad as the Uzbekistan human rights situation may be, Congress seems to be at least as concerned about corruption. According to Eurasianet:

Capitol Hill wants the Pentagon to be more transparent in the way it manages the Northern Distribution Network ... The US Senate in particular has voiced alarm that a lack of oversight over the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) has turned it into a gravy train of graft for Uzbekistan’s ruling elite.

“The [U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations] is concerned with reports of pervasive corruption in Uzbekistan and therefore expects to be informed of public and private entities that receive support, directly or indirectly, from United States Government funds used to pay the costs of Northern Distribution Network supply routes through that country,” a Senate report on foreign aid bill S. 1601 states.

-- snip --

A well-placed source in Washington, DC, indicated to EurasiaNet.org that the use of subcontracted local firms on DoD contracts is an area of intense interest within some branches of the US government. Some officials worry that Uzbek political and security elites may be profiting from below-the-radar partnerships with international firms.

Another source familiar with Pentagon contracting practices in Central Asia alleges that Defense Department planners are aware that some US military contractors have cultivated relationships with companies that have been linked to friends and relatives of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

“Pentagon logistics certainly knew some contractors were using companies controlled by the Karimov family to perform aspects of their contracts in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. But it's very clear they didn't view this as a negative, just the opposite," the source said.

Maybe we shouldn't rush into this. Do these rebound relationships ever work out?

O-Tay! U.S. Consulate Tijuana Has A New Home

2011-09-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

They just cut the ribbon today.

Here's a nice video from the Consulate web site that introduces TJ's many clients to its new office compound, which is located next to the Otay Mesa crossing, practically straddling the border.

Consul-General Steven Kashkett gave an interview with a San Diego newspaper that covers the basics, like the cost of the new compound ($120 million), its size (100,000 square feet in the main building), staffing (50 U.S. and 100 local employees), number of visas issued annually (190,000) and resident U.S. citizens (250,000).

The new compound is an antiseptic and boring bit of standard embassy architecture, of course. But that's a big improvement over the old consulate, a ratty little hovel located a few steps away from the Agua Caliente racetrack, a greyhound and horse racing joint that was like a living fossil from the 1930s culture of border sleaze.

[ Download ]

The Hidden Side Of A Soul Revealed

2011-09-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

I feel that unique kind of nausea that arises from learning that someone you might have worked with, or next to, has been arrested on child pornography charges.

A co-worker called this sad news to my attention today - Undercover FBI Porn Site Snares Federal Agent:

The bureau’s operation last month snared a Department of State diplomatic security officer, according to court records. James Cafferty, 45, who was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in London, was named in an August 29 felony complaint charging him with possession of child pornography.

-- snip --

During a search last month at his Florida home, Cafferty reportedly confessed to using his PayPal account to purchase subscriptions to about 10 child porn web sites. He also admitted to “having approximately 10,000 to 15,000 files of child pornography” and accessing the FBI undercover web site, according to the confidential affidavit. Cafferty, a federal investigator noted, “provided a hand written confession to agents wherein he admitted to having child pornography on the computer media seized from his residence that he had transported home from London.”

-- snip--

As detailed in a confidential affidavit, recipients of the e-mail were provided the undercover web site’s url and a unique password (which was needed to advance beyond the site’s home page). Site visitors are met with a greeting welcoming them “to the hidden side of your soul, where you view the yung and innocent.”

-- snip --

Free on $50,000 bond, Cafferty has been placed on home incarceration by a federal magistrate who has barred him from using the Internet or having any unsupervised contact with minors.

Just wow.

"Massachusetts Man" Plotted To Bomb The Pentagon And Capitol Building

2011-09-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

That's how all the news media are reporting it, anyway. Just a "Massachusetts man" of no special interest. And if his name happens to be "Rezwan Ferdaus," it would be very wrong of you to infer from that any foreign national origin, non-Western civilization, or religious identity.

You can take it from U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz herself that Ferdaus's actions do not reflect on any particular culture, community, or religion. She says so right there in the FBI press release announcing Ferdaus' arrest:

“Our top priority is to protect our nation from terrorism and national security threats. The conduct alleged today shows that Mr. Ferdaus had long planned to commit violent acts against our country, including attacks on the Pentagon and our nation’s Capitol. Thanks to the diligence of the FBI and our many other law enforcement partners, that plan was thwarted,” said U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz. “I want the public to understand that Mr. Ferdaus’ conduct, as alleged in the complaint, is not reflective of a particular culture, community, or religion,” she added. “In addition to protecting our citizens from the threats and violence alleged today, we also have an obligation to protect members of every community, race, and religion against violence and other unlawful conduct.”

But wait. What about this statement in the very same press release?

During various recorded meetings, Ferdaus envisioned causing a large “psychological” impact by killing Americans, including women and children, who he referred to as “enemies of Allah.” According to the affidavit, Ferdaus’ desire to attack the United States is so strong that he confided, “I just can’t stop; there is no other choice for me.”

Enemies of Allah? Are they a big problem in Massachusetts?

The affidavit and complaint filed in the case says the same thing:

"Ferdaus ... began planning to commit violent "jihad" against the United States, which he considers an enemy of Allah."

Why don't we just come clean and say that a "Muslim man in Massachusetts" was plotting to commit terrorism against the United States? That's what happened, after all.

Back to the press release, we learn that the FBI toyed with Ferdaus for a year before hooking him up with the weapons and explosives that are the basis for most of the charges against him:

According to the affidavit, at today’s meeting the [FBI's undercover agent] allowed Ferdaus to inspect the explosives and firearms (a quantity of C-4 explosives, three grenades, and six fully-automatic AK-47 assault rifles) that the [undercover agents] delivered, and that Ferdaus had requested for his attack plan. After inspecting the components, Ferdaus brought them to his storage unit, took possession of the explosives and firearms, and locked them in his storage unit. Ferdaus was then immediately arrested.

Maybe Ferdaus didn't read chapter seven of the al Qaeda manual, which instructs the jihadi on precautions he should take when buying or transporting weapons. In particular:

"Prior to purchasing, the seller should be tested to ensure that he is not an agent of the security apparatus."

Good advice, that.

All in all, Ferdaus ought to have stuck with his bitchin' Freestyle Americana band, the Silk Road. He made a better drummer than terrorist.

That's An Excellent Point, LTC Peters

2011-09-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

While channel-surfing TV news programs this morning, I caught a few seconds of the retired Army officer and writer/columnist Ralph Peters commenting on the Afghanistan situation and how it forces us into a highly troubled relationship with Pakistan.

Quoting him from memory, he said this:

“When I went to Command and General Staff College, I would have flunked out if I proposed to put 100,000 troops at the end of a single supply line that ran through a thousand miles of hostile territory.”

That is an excellent point. After ten years, we still haven't found an alternative to routing all our Afghan-bound truck convoys from the port of Karachi through the Khyber Pass, thereby putting ourselves at the mercy of Pakistan's ISI and its Taliban allies. Shouldn't the CGSC have revoked some diplomas by now?

Take A Hike, Shane

2011-09-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

The WaPo photo, above, had the caption: "Shane Bauer, center, greets fiance Sarah Shourd."

I'm glad they indicated which one was Shane, since otherwise I would have been at a loss. I guess it's true that some couples start to look like each other over time.

Anyway, this remark in the WaPo story on the release of the two U.S. hikers from Iran is what prompts me to comment on Mr. Bauer:

“Two years in prison is too long,” Bauer said. He expressed hope that Wednesday’s release would lead to “freedom for political prisoners in America and Iran.”

How's that again? Who are these political prisoners in America? Later in the story we get a clue:

News of the release was welcomed Wednesday by officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who were part of a delegation of U.S. religious leaders and American Muslims who traveled to Iran to ask that the hikers be allowed to leave.

“We believe the efforts of the recent interfaith delegation to Iran offer a positive example of bridge-building initiatives that may be undertaken to help promote mutual understanding and cooperation between nations,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement. “We hope our government will now address the issue of Iranian citizens detained in the United States with the same spirit of compassion.”

Apparently these unnamed detainees are persons convicted of illegally exporting U.S. military equipment and restricted items to Iran, like this guy, plus a few who have gone missing in other countries. The first group belongs in prison, and the second group is not under our control.

Maybe Shane was suffering from some kind of late onset Stockholm Syndrome when he made that remark about political prisoners. Or maybe he's just a jerk.

Shane's freedom was purchased by a $1 million bail payment sent by Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman to the account of the Iranian judiciary. Is it too late for the Sultan to return Shane and get his money back?

So I Asked Starbucks For The Government Discount ...

2011-09-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

... and they charged me $16 for a muffin.

Congress and the Washington media are in a frenzy over MuffinGate, and Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell has had about enough of it:

The latest tempest in a teapot in this season of austerity? Congressional outrage over the Justice Department's spending on food and beverages at one of its conferences in 2009. An inspector general's audit report [here] found that the department paid $4,200 for 250 muffins and $2,880 for 300 cookies and brownies.

"By itemizing these costs, with service and gratuity, muffins cost over $16 each and cookies and brownies cost almost $10 each," the report reads.

-- snip --

OK, let's stipulate that spending $16, or even $10, for a muffin is excessive, and a waste of taxpayer money. But give me a break -- this kind of spending is hardly the problem.

Not only are spiraling health-care costs the real cause of America's long-term budget woes -- something Congress has done hardly anything to address -- but defense spending is by far the biggest chunk of annual discretionary spending. The Pentagon can't even pass an audit, and won't be able to do so until 2017, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's Senate testimony today. With the enthusiastic patronage of Congress, the U.S. military spends tens of billions of dollars on weapons systems that either don't work as adverstised (Future Combat Systems, anyone?), cost far more than budgeted (all of them), or are wholly unnecessary (remember the Kafkaesque fight over the Joint Strike Fighter's "alternate engine"?).

The Justice Department's entire budget request for 2012 is $28 billion -- less than what the U.S. spends in Iraq and Afghanistan in three months. Before it was cut to only $200 million in July, the Pentagon's budget for military bands was $325 million. Military bands!

But by all means, rant about the muffins...

Truth to tell, the $16 muffin meme is a bit off-base anyway since DOJ was really paying for hotel meeting space rather than fancy noshes, as the New York Times calmly explained yesterday:

A five-day conference in August 2009 at the Capital Hilton in Washington to train immigration lawyers saved money by serving only snacks. But it still cost $4,200 for 250 muffins and $2,880 for 300 cookies and brownies, more than $16 a muffin and nearly $10 per cookie and brownie.

- snip --

Moreover, the department told auditors that some food costs were exaggerated because of the way deals with the hotels were often structured: the hotels provided “free” meeting space in exchange for an agreement to use their pricey food and beverage services.

Planners often did no cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it would have been thriftier to pay for the meeting space directly and obtain cheaper catering, the report said. But it noted that the conferences often ended up spending tens of thousands more on food and beverage than the minimum necessary to secure the “free” meeting rooms.

DOJ was spending other people's (tax) money on this training conference, and they spent it with predictable abandon. But how much damage can they possibly do with their comparatively small budget?

Meanwhile, Congress has appropriated $1.283 trillion in the last ten years for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, with no end in sight.

This Could Have Made Me Go For A Ph.D.

2011-09-18T05:53:00.000-07:00

What a bummer that this was removed from the staff directory:

Trinity College Dublin has said it is taking seriously an incident in which a profile page, complete with image, was inserted on its website for a fake staff member named ‘Dr Conan T. Barbarian’.

-- snip --

His full title and academic qualifications were given as: “Dr Conan T. Barbarian, B.A.(Cimmeria) Ph.D. (UCD). F.T.C.D. (Long Room Hub Associate Professor in Hyborian Studies and Tyrant Slaying).”

His profile indicated he had been “ripped from his mother's womb on the corpse-strewn battlefields of his war-torn homeland, Cimmeria, and has been preparing for academic life ever since”.

“A firm believer in the dictum that ‘that which does not kill us makes us stronger,’ he took time out to avenge the death of his parents following a sojourn pursuing his strong interest in Post-Colonial theory at the Sorbonne.”

The profile went on to say Dr Barbarian completed his PhD, entitled ‘To Hear The Lamentation of Their Women: Constructions of Masculinity in Contemporary Zamoran Literature’ at UCD and was appointed to the School of English in 2006, “after successfully decapitating his predecessor during a bloody battle which will long be remembered in legend and song”.

“In 2011/12, he will be teaching on the following courses: ‘The Relevance of Crom in the Modern World’, ‘Theories of Literature’, ‘Vengeance for Beginners’, ‘Deciphering the Riddle of Steel’ and ‘D.H. Lawrence’.

Whoever put that profile up is just the kind of academic mentor I'd like to have.

Hillary Benefits From Presidental Buyer's Remorse

2011-09-18T03:35:00.000-07:00

There is no reason to think Hillary Clinton will run for President again - she has said she won't - but, if she does, it looks like she would have a surprising level of support. According to a recent Bloomberg National Poll, Hillary is now the most popular politician in America:

The most popular national political figure in America today is one who was rejected by her own party three years ago: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans hold a favorable view of her and one-third are suffering a form of buyer’s remorse, saying the U.S. would be better off now if she had become president in 2008 instead of Barack Obama.

The finding in the latest Bloomberg National Poll shows a higher level of wishful thinking about a Hillary Clinton presidency than when a similar question was asked in July 2010. Then, a quarter of Americans held such a view.

And take a look at where some of that wishful thinking is coming from:

Republicans are slightly more inclined than the national average to think the U.S. would be better off with Clinton running the country, with 39 percent saying so. A majority of Democrats -- 57 percent -- say things would be the same.

-- snip --

A plurality of Tea Party supporters -- 44 percent -- say the U.S. would be better off with Hillary Clinton as president, even though 59 percent of those respondents have an unfavorable impression of her.

The Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll currently has Obama at 43% "strongly disapprove" to 23% "strongly approve." Approval is even lower among independent voters.

Apparently, Hillary has benefited big-time by having been sequestered from domestic politics as SecState during the Obama administration.

It looks like there is agreement all around, then. She ought to run in 2012. We already know she'll have Dick Chenney's vote.

I've Got Pictures Of A U.S. Government Facility (Including Security Countermeasures!)

2011-09-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I've got them right here on the internet.

But I'm not violating the prohibition against posting pictures of U.S. Government facilities because my pictures are of the remains of the former U.S. embassy in Kuwait City.

That's the embassy that was attacked by a suicide bomber in 1983, and was later placed under siege when Saddam Hussein invaded and annexed Kuwait in 1990. The embassy moved to a nice new compound a few years later after the Gulf War, leaving nothing but rubble behind at the old site.

I find it irresistible to poke around in places that are rich in memories, so I dropped by the former embassy location. It's an empty lot today, with one lonely palm tree growing there amid the debris of the former chancery, administrative annex, pool, Marine House, and Ambassador's residence.

The Kuwait Tower - those three spires that were seemingly in every CNN camera shot during the Gulf War - are located just up the street.

The rubble piles contain remnants of the buildings that stood there from around 1960 to 1995. Lots of little bits of marble, red octagonal terrazzo tiles, water pipes, bricks, rebars, power conduits, and so on. The detritus of a diplomatic facility.

Local employees who remember the old embassy immediately identified the different bits by their color and finish. 'This was from the wall in the Ambassador's residence' or 'this was the floor in the Marine House,' etc.

Pieces of door sill and concrete flooring. Exciting, no? Maybe just to me.

Large concrete planters still line the sidewalk where the embassy perimeter wall was located.

The only intact structure on the site is this sheet metal shed.

This Jersey barrier is the only other part of the old embassy that is still upright.

The most striking thing to happen at the old embassy was the suicide bombing that occurred on December 12, 1983, one of the first such attacks in modern history. A truck laden with gas cylinders and plastic explosives broke through the front gates of the embassy and exploded against the administrative annex building. The blast killed five people and wounded over 80. Greater loss of life was averted because the explosive device only partially detonated, and because the driver hit the annex and not the more heavily populated chancery building.

This plaque is not located at the former embassy. It reads:

In memory of our colleagues who gave their lives in the tragic events of December 12, 1983

Ahmad Samarra
Mufeed Al-Hakeem
Ali Al-Jamal

I'm Famous, Kind Of

2011-09-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

I'm still a little bit jet lagged while TDY-ing it, and have been staying up much too late at night, surfing the internet in my hotel room. Tonight, I came upon a surprise when I found my name in the latest batch of WikiLeaks cables.

These are the cables that were released without redactions, and they can be searched via an online database. I was browsing the database for cables on a particular topic of interest to me, when I saw one that granted me country clearance for a visit of a few years ago.

Material for my memoirs, I guess.

Touring About, Trying To Keep Cool

2011-09-12T14:43:00.001-07:00

I'm currently doing the Grand Tour of the Persian Gulf, and on Sunday I attended the 9/11 commemoration at one of the posts in the region. Very well done. Dignified, and featuring personal recollections by the embassy staff.

But it is seriously hot over here. I just landed at my next TDY post, and at 10PM the temperature was still 96 degrees. If I don't melt, I'll be home next week.

Bollard Envy

2011-09-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

In this 9/11 anniversary week Foreign Policy is running a rather nice retrospective article on how the threat of terrorism has changed the built environment of Washington DC, and in particular, the perimeters of federal facilities. See The Blast-Proof City, and its accompanying slideshow Washington's Barriers to Entry.

The author, an architectural critic, correctly dates the beginning of the present concern with physical security to 1995 and the Oklahoma City federal office bombing, and not to 9/11, as is commonly assumed. He also correctly identifies the State Department as the leading contributor to new federal facility security guidelines that were published by Executive Order within weeks of the OK City attack.

A few quotes:

It used to be that D.C. architecture consisted of graceful Georgetown mansions, neoclassical federal buildings -- and, of course, the monuments. When the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts was founded in 1910 to guide Washington's architectural development, it reviewed designs such as those of the Lincoln Memorial and the Federal Triangle. Over the seven years I've served on the commission, however, an increasing amount of time is spent discussing security-improvement projects: screening facilities, hardened gatehouses, Delta barriers, perimeter fences, and seemingly endless rows of bollards. We used to mock an earlier generation that peppered the U.S. capital with Civil War generals on horseback; now I wonder what future generations will make of our architectural legacy of crash-resistant walls and blast-proof glass.

How did we become so insecure about our buildings? Although the 9/11 attacks loom large in the public's imagination, the event that changed the way federal buildings in the United States are designed and used -- perhaps forever -- was a presidential directive issued six years prior to the attacks ... President Bill Clinton, whose most prominent addition to the White House was a hot tub, is not known as an architecture buff. But by issuing Executive Order 12977 in October 1995, he set in motion a process that thrust politics squarely in the center of the design process.

The executive order was the result of the Oklahoma City bombing. The day after the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building, which claimed 168 lives and injured more than 680 people, Clinton directed the Justice Department to assess the vulnerability of all federal facilities to acts of violence.

The resulting report, prepared by a large team headed by the U.S. Marshals Service, is generally known as "The Marshals Report." To implement the report's recommendations, Executive Order 12977 established an interagency security committee charged with developing standards for all federal facilities as well as "long-term construction standards for those locations with threat levels or missions that require blast resistant structures."

-- snip --

The Marshals Report proposed no fewer than 52 specific criteria, which resulted in the deployment of a host of building security devices. Some, such as reinforced structure, blast-resistant glass, and hardened curtain walls, have a small impact on a building's appearance. That is not the case with perimeter security.

"Depending on the facility type," the report cautions, "the perimeter may include sidewalks, parking lots, the outside walls of the building, a hallway, or simply an office door." Because truck bombs are the simplest and cheapest way of creating large detonations and given what happened in Oklahoma City, the focus has been on keeping vehicles far away from their target by creating a so-called "standoff" distance. The optimal standoff is large -- at least 100 feet -- and new buildings, such as the ATF headquarters in Washington, achieve this standoff by creating a sort of landscaped demilitarized zone between the building and the street. (Note that the Marshals Report came out at a time when the federal agency with the greatest experience of terrorism was the State Department, which had developed expertise in hardening diplomatic buildings abroad in the wake of several embassy bombings. This may explain why federal buildings are protected as if they were divorced from their surroundings and why so many federal buildings today, surrounded by barricades and layers of security, resemble foreign outposts: They're actually modeled after embassies.)

-- snip --

But existing urban buildings are generally too near the street. The only alternative to closing a street completely -- as with Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House -- is to keep the potential truck bomber from driving right up to the building. This is achieved by a device that could serve as a symbol for our insecurity: the bollard.

-- snip --

Some agencies don't seem to mind this intrusion, as it's an external marker of their building's strategic importance. In Washington, we've come to see the bizarre phenomenon that one federal official characterized to me as "bollard envy," where the degree of protection becomes a symbol of bureaucratic status, like a choice parking spot or a corner office. Perhaps the most egregious example is the screening center for visitors that Congress built for itself; by the time the underground facility was finished it covered half a million square feet and cost $620 million.

Government officials regularly speak of integrating perimeter security "unobtrusively" into a building's design. A rare case where this has been achieved is the landscape improvement to the Washington Monument. Designed by the OLIN landscape architecture firm, the perimeter security is disguised as a set of curving stone retaining walls that are invisible from the monument and are designed for visitors to sit on. A similar retaining wall provides security for the Lincoln Memorial, but here the topography requires additional intrusive bollards as well.

The security plan being designed for the Jefferson Memorial will depend on walls as well as scores of bollards. Where to put the perimeter security is a Hobson's choice: put it farther away and you need more bollards; nearer and you need fewer, but they are more visually intrusive. In either case, the experience of John Russell Pope's handsome building will hardly be enhanced. The directive to secure the Jefferson Memorial is intended to protect a precious national icon. It may end up having the opposite effect.

Since the author blames the State Department for exciting bollard envy among its domestic counterparts, he really ought to have mentioned that it was also the State Department that took the lead in introducing the National Park Service to those unobtrusive anti-ram retaining walls that are currently in place around the Washington Monument. Give credit where credit is due.

Actually, I think he gives the State Department far too much of the blame - and I agree that some blame is deserved - for adverse architectural impacts of the 1995 Marshals Report (see Vulnerability Assessment Of Federal Facilities). The Marshal's Report was the work of all federal agencies, and they were trying to come to terms with the threat of large vehicle-borne bombs. Domestic federal buildings are really not modeled on Fortress Embassies, and to the extent that they now have similar perimeter security measures, that simply reflects the reality that they now face the same type of explosive threat we once faced only overseas. The State Department was there first, and other agencies saw no reason to reinvent the wheel, or the bollard, as the case may be.

Banned In Bahrain!

2011-09-07T13:52:00.001-07:00

Well, that's a relief.

On TDY this week, I was unable to connect to a particular FS blog, one whose author recently had a session with official critics of her employment of social media. I was afraid that meant she had decided to take her blog down.

But it turns out she is merely Banned In Bahrain. The reason for that ban is unknown to me. Quite possibly, there is no reason. But it's no big deal, and much better than what I feared had happened.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:

Looks like I posted too soon. While it appeared to me that the blog was merely being blocked, I'm informed it has indeed been taken down.

Where Were You On 9/11/01?

2011-09-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

I've added a new Blog Roll entry for The OpSec Blog, which is written by a DOS Security Engineering Officer. This week, OSB is asking where were you on 9/11/01?

Many of us can relate how we learned of the attack while at work, and how it almost instantly changed the nature of that work. However, since many current members of the Foreign Service blogosphere were, I believe, not yet employed by the State Department on 9/11, I'd be interested to learn whether the attack was a personal turning point for them, leading them into a career that otherwise they might not have entered.

Briefly Noted

2011-09-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

If many USG employees are perceiving a recent increase in the level of security-related concerns about blogging, today's news reports about the 2009 espionage case of Shamai K. Leibowitz might go some way toward explaining that uptick.

From the New York Times, Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel:

Mr. Silverstein, 59, [who received classified information from Leibowitz] writes a blog called Tikun Olam, named after a Hebrew phrase that he said means “repairing the world.” The blog gives a liberal perspective on Israel and Israeli-American relations. He said he had decided to speak out to make clear that Mr. Leibowitz, though charged under the Espionage Act, was acting out of noble motives. The Espionage Act has been used by the Justice Department in nearly all prosecutions of government employees for disclosing classified information to the news media, including the record-setting five such cases under President Obama.

Mr. Silverstein said he got to know Mr. Leibowitz, a lawyer with a history of political activism, after noticing that he, too, had a liberal-minded blog, called Pursuing Justice. The men shared a concern about repercussions from a possible Israeli airstrike on nuclear facilities in Iran. From his F.B.I. work from January to August of 2009, Mr. Leibowitz also believed that Israeli diplomats’ efforts to influence Congress and shape American public opinion were excessive and improper, Mr. Silverstein said.

After Leibowitz shared his concerns with Silverstein, he then went too far and began to share classified information as well. Leibowitz was subsequently convicted of espionage, and he now resides in a Federal Bureau of Prisons halfway house.

The fact that an espionage case began with a connection made in the blogosphere, while it is not directly pertinent to the administration of routine restrictions on social networking, is just the sort of thing that can work its way down the counterintelligence food chain until it morphs into a knee jerk reaction against employee blogging in general.

Labor Day - Bing Versus Google

2011-09-05T16:11:00.001-07:00

For my money, Bing wins.

Dear Colonel Qaddafi ... Your Friends, Gordon and Tony

2011-09-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

Well, this is embarrassing for someone. The UK Daily Mail has the story, with photos, of a "devastating stash of documents" that was left behind when the British Ambassador's residence in Tripoli was evacuated four months ago.

The revelations come in documents – some marked ‘UK secret: UK/Libya Eyes Only’ – found strewn on the floor of the British Ambassador’s abandoned residence in Tripoli.

Many of the papers demonstrate the warmth of the relationship between Britain and Libya and, in particular, the extraordinarily close links between the Blair Government and the Gaddafi regime.

The notes show how:

• Tony Blair helped Colonel Gaddafi’s playboy son Saif with his ‘dodgy’ PhD thesis while he was Prime Minister.

• British Special Forces were offered to train the Khamis Brigade, Gaddafi’s most vicious military unit.

• MI6 was apparently willing to trace phone numbers for Libyan intelligence.

• Gordon Brown wrote warmly to Gaddafi in 2007 expressing the hope that the dictator would be able to meet Prince Andrew when he visited Tripoli.

• MI6’s budget (£150 million in 2002) was readily disclosed to Libyan officials, along with details of how Britain’s Downing Street emergency committee Cobra operates.

• Britain’s intelligence services forged close links with Gaddafi’s brutal security units.

Those sensitive documents had been lying there in the vacated Ambassador's residence all this time. Evidently, no one tidied them up when the UK reopened its Tripoli embassy a week or so ago, and visiting journalists were allowed to make off with them.

The incriminating documents were found in the wreckage of the British ambassador’s home in Tripoli, a three-storey house vandalised in April by Gaddafi loyalists.

There were several booklets filled with the faces of suspected terrorists, scores of personally signed letters sent from Downing Street and detailed intelligence data on the Gaddafi regime.

Incredibly, all this had lain amid the debris for four months, with no attempt made to secure the papers even in the week after the rebels ousted the dictator from the city.

Mountains of shredded paper showed British diplomats tried to destroy many documents before fleeing.

The U.S. counterparts of those British diplomats can surely empathize, because they've been there before. Like in Tehran, 1979. It's not so easy to ensure you've destroyed everything that needs to be destroyed when you're under attack and have only a skeleton staff to bag n' drag all those files to the shredder. And then you never know when the paper shredder will jam.

Here's a tip for the UK Foreign Ministry, from the bottom of my governmental heart. Next time, spend the money to get really fast, durable, crosscut paper shredders. Here's a list. When you need to evacuate in a hurry, accept no substitutes.

U.S. Embassy Tripoli, The Sequel

2011-09-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

ABC News knows a guy who knows a guy who told them that we are beginning to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Tripoli:

US officials tell ABC News the United States plans to begin re-establishing its diplomatic presence in Tripoli over the coming weeks now that rebel forces have taken control of much of the Libyan capital.

The first step comes this weekend when the State Department will send a small team of technical staff to Tripoli to assess the security situation on the ground and to assess the condition of the US embassy, which sustained significant damage since being shuttered in February.

Depending on the team’s findings, American diplomats could return to Tripoli as early as next week, officials said, though they suggested that perhaps that timeline was too optimistic given security concerns and what is believed to be extensive damage to the embassy compound. The United States is under diplomatic pressure to show support for the rebel leadership by re-establishing its embassy in Tripoli, especially since several European countries already have, or are preparing to do so.

[TSB note: Those countries include France and Britain.]

It’s unclear whether the Obama administration would send its ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, with the first group to re-open the embassy, though the State Department has said Cretz will eventually return to Tripoli. One official suggested that Chris Stevens, who has been the U.S. liaison to the Transitional National Council in Benghazi for the past several months, could go first with a small team of diplomats.

The State Department is also weighing whether to send Jeffrey Feltman, it’s top diplomat for the region, to Tripoli. He would be the highest-ranking American official to visit the capital since the uprising began earlier this year. Officials considered sending him there on Friday, after a big international conference on Libya in Paris, but decided to postpone the visit, in part for security reasons.

A video posted on YouTube in early June, which officials say appears to have been shot inside the American embassy, shows evidence of significant damage and looting.

ABC News’ Jeffrey Kofman in Tripoli tried to visit the embassy Thursday, but was turned away by rebels who were guarding the compound. He saw evidence of damage, including windows blackened by fire. Kofman also obtained exclusive cell phone footage shot from a nearby rooftop on May 1 showing huge plumes of black smoke rising from the embassy after it was ransacked and looted. Neighbors told him Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s soldiers were the ones who stormed the embassy grounds, not a spontaneous mob like the regime claimed at the time.

According to the Washington Post [here], which also interviewed Libyans who live near the embassy, it appears the regime encouraged busloads of people to storm the empty embassy on May 1 after reports that one of Gadhafi’s sons had been killed in a NATO strike. Witnesses told the newspaper they saw massive looting and that parts of the building were eventually set on fire.

The Obama administration pulled all of its diplomats out of Tripoli in late February just hours before the Gadhafi regime was hit with strong sanctions that froze billions of dollars of the longtime dictator’s assets.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Paris for the Friends of Libya conference, where she announced that the U.S. has already released about $700 million of Gadhafi’s frozen assets for the rebels to pay fuel bills, operational costs, and salaries. That is part of roughly $1.5 billion the UN authorized the US to release last week to pay for fuel, UN humanitarian relief efforts, and other emergency needs.

The U.S. government hopes to hear from the rebel leadership about their plans for a post-Gadhafi Libya and to see what their needs are. The Obama administration has expressed its hope the United Nations will play a large role in the rebuilding effort.

Our vacated embassy compound was described by the former DCM as having "not the best security." And that was before it was looted and burned. Let's hope we don't stay there any longer than it takes to find a more secure place for our diplomats to live and work.

CNN Traces A "Complicated And Fascinating Family Tree"

2011-09-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

Kudos to CNN for presenting this handy guide to the POTUS's family tree - not the entire tree, which would take more time than is available in a segment of The Situation Room, but just the central portion of the paternal side - and sorting out the connection between him and the Uncle Omar who is now locked up in Massachusetts on a federal immigration warrant.

We also learn that Onyango "Uncle Omar" Obama obtained a Social Security number and a Mass drivers license at least nineteen years ago. That was presumably illegal, but who knows?

CNN legal analyst Jeffery Tobin seemed pretty sure that a drunk driving conviction would be enough to get Uncle Omar deported if he is here illegally, but "usually" not if he is here legally. And Tobin was unwilling to speculate about Omar's immigration status.

I'm not a lawyer like Tobin, but ... if Uncle Omar is here legally, wouldn't he be able to produce some documentation, like a Green Card, to prove that status? And if he is here legally, wouldn't the immigration authorities already know that? Evidently, these immigration matters are trickier than they appear.

The disposition of Uncle Omar's case promises to be entertaining on so many levels.

¿El Spanglish Del Alcalde Bloomberg Es Muy Cómico, No?

2011-08-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

Yeah, that's pretty bad. The first New York politician I can remember speaking Spanish was Nelson Rockefeller, who used to shout out greetings "to all my Puertoricanous amigos." Transparently ridiculous pandering, but, at least Rocky really did speak Spanish.

The inevitable parody Twitter account is @ElBloombito, where the not-so-fluent Alcalde puts out public service announcements like this one:

Alerto: If usted see el somethingador por favor to say somethingador. Los terroristeros estan mucho malo! Que vigilance!

Funny thing is, when I lived in Puerto Rico I often overheard people speaking almost exactly like that. This was how a Puerto Rican U.S. Army sergeant informed another Puerto Rican that the rear gate of Fort Buchanan is closed on weekends: "el rear gate esta cerrado por los weekends."

El Bloombito might not be so much of a parody after all.

Obama's Uncle Omar Arrested; Next Step, Amnesty Or Asylum?

2011-08-29T16:12:00.000-07:00

Another of President Obama's Kenyan relatives has been arrested in Massachusetts after living there illegally for decades. First it was Obama's Aunt Zeituni, who defied multiple deportation orders for several years until Immigration Judge Leonard I. Shapiro granted her asylum and legal residency in May 2010. Now, it's Obama's Uncle Omar, who got busted for drunk driving in Framingham last week and is being held without bail on an old federal immigration warrant.

An illegal immigrant from Kenya busted for drunken driving after nearly striking a cop car in Framingham is the uncle of President Obama, the Herald has learned.

Obama Onyango told cops he wanted to “call the White House” after he was nabbed for OUI Aug. 24 after nearly plowing his SUV into a police cruiser. He was arraigned Thursday and was ordered held without bail because he was wanted on a federal immigration warrant, officials said.

Mike Rogers, a spokesman for Cleveland immigration attorney Margaret Wong, who is representing Onyango, confirmed that the 67-year-old is the president’s uncle. Wong is the same lawyer who represented the president’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, in her fight to win asylum last year.

Reached at her apartment in a South Boston public housing complex today, Zeituni Onyango said of her brother’s arrest: “Why don’t you go to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washingon, D.C. and ask your president? Not me.” She then hung up on a reporter.

[TSB note: That is an excellent idea. I will wait for the White House press corps to ask the President's spokesman about Uncle Omar.]

The White House also did not respond to a request for comment.

Zeituni and Obama Onyango are brother and sister, Rogers told the Herald today.

The two are the children of the president’s grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, and his third wife, Sarah, according to the London Times.

The Times also reported that Obama Onyango is the man referred to as “Uncle Omar” in the president’s 1995 book, “Dreams from My Father.” In the book, President Obama writes about his Uncle Omar as “the uncle who had left for America 25 years ago and had never come back.”

Sarah Obama is called “granny” by the president because she raised his father, Barack Obama Sr., whose mother was Hussein Obama’s second wife, Akumu, the Times reported.

Somehow, I don't feel up to doing the mental math involved in understanding that family tree. First, second, and third wives ... aunts and uncles however many times removed ... half (quarter?) brothers and sisters ... who knows about the cousins? It's more than a simple monogamist like me can comprehend.

But one thing I do understand. There is no chance, no chance at all, that Uncle Omar will ever come back from America.

Libya: "What If It Turned Out Good?"

2011-08-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

I second The War Nerd in his summing up of the Libyan revolt:

Well, that was a quick takedown. One of the strange things about Libya was the pacing. It needed a good editor, because it started fast, then bogged down, and then just when everybody’d given up and gone to get some caramel corn, the credits started rolling.

--snip --

So I’m gonna say here: Just maybe, the whole thing ended pretty well. Not that expensive, money or lives; gotta be better for the Libyans if anybody actually cares about them; can’t see any risk for the big picture—only 6 million Libyans to start with, for God’s sake, and I don’t see the Berber going on a global jihad any time soon. Jeez, what a thought: What if it turned out good?

Your Tax Dollars At Work In Waziristan

2011-08-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

Al-Qaeda's new Number 2 leader, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been struck off the AQ organization chart as the result of a drone strike in Northwest Pakistan, the WaPo reports.

Rahman was seen as a high-priority target in the CIA drone campaign at a time when U.S. officials have described al-Qaeda as near collapse and have said that a small set of successive blows could all but extinguish the organization behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Last month, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said a strategic defeat of al-Qaeda was “within reach” and called for continued efforts to hammer the group’s weakened leadership with a series of attacks.

So, we've now killed AQ's Number 1, and its Number 2, and - of course - a great many of its Number 3s. When does the organization collapse?

Maybe it doesn't collapse. Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, thinks AQ has already been institutionalized to such a degree that it will survive leadership changes. See his essay on just that question, which was published in The National Interest three days ago:

Being a highly talented combination of seventh-century believer and twenty-first-century CEO, bin Laden built, in al-Qaeda, an absolutely unique Muslim organization: multiethnic, multilingual, organizationally sound and resilient, religiously tolerant and militarily effective. We will see in the next few years if bin Laden was the indispensable glue that kept al-Qaeda together or if his skill, his leadership and its nearly twenty-five years of being institutionalized as an organization created a survivable entity ... My own bet is that al-Qaeda will survive, as it did after near economic ruin in Sudan (1994–96); after the pounding it took from the U.S.-NATO-Pakistan coalition (2001–02); and after the U.S. military helpfully killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s chief in Iraq (2006), whose indiscriminate targeting of Muslims almost pushed al-Qaeda to the brink of defeat.

There are plenty more AQ leaders where al-Rahman came from. And, really, what are a few drone strikes compared to all that AQ has already survived?

Turning Full Circle

2011-08-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

The rebel leader has just issued an inspiring Communique Number One over Libyan radio:

"People of Libya! In response to your own will, fulfilling your most heartfelt wishes, answering your incessant demands for change and regeneration and your longing to strive towards these ends; listening to your incitement to rebel, your armed forces have undertaken the overthrow of the reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all." -- 1 September 1969.

H/T to Opinio Juris, where you can find the full text of Qaddafi's first communique.

Years from now, someone will probably be ransacking National Transitional Council Chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil's compound and taking his gold-plated AKs as souvenirs.

Qaddafi's Misty Watercolor Memories Of The Way They Were

2011-08-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

I knew that Qaddafi was hopelessly smitten with ex-SecState Condoleezza Rice. See this post from 2009. He gave her presents, and gushed to Al Jazeera about his infatuation with her:

"I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza ... I love her very much. I admire her, and I'm proud of her, because she's a black woman of African origin."

Okay, we all loved Leezza. But that wasn't going to happen for him, so you would think that Qaddafi would forget her and move on. But, no.

Now that rebels have sacked Qaddafi's home and pawed through his photo albums, it turns out the poor fool has been carrying a torch for his Leezza, Leezza, Leezza all this time. Talk about misguided affection.

The thought of a lovestruck dictator mooning over photos of an old would-be girlfriend is simply embarassing.

As the Godfather would advise Qaddafi, "you can act like a man! (Slap!) Whatsa matter with you?"

Best Campaign Attack Ad Of 2012, Available Now

2011-08-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

“The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents -- number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back -- $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.” -- July 3, 2008, at a campaign event in Fargo, N.D.

President #44 has added a further $4 trillion in debt so far during his 2+ years in office.

Qaddafi's #1 Son Drops By Rixos Hotel, Talks To CNN

2011-08-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

Saif Qaddafi was looking pretty good for someone who was reported by the Chairman of the Transitional National Council to have been captured by the rebels a day ago.

Posted one hour ago (around 8:30 tonight EDT, 11:30 PM Tripoli time) by a CNN correspondent:

Libyan TNC: No Islamic Extremists Here

2011-08-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

The Chairman of the Transitional National Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, held a press conference this morning. Here are some of the highlights, via Al Jazeera Libya Live Blog:

"I can't say that the revolutionaries have complete control over Tripoli. Bab al-Azizyah and the surrounding areas are still outside our control, so we have no knowledge of whether he is there.

"As for cities currently under siege such as Sirte and Sabha, they will rise up from within as the stranglehold that Gaddafi's forces have them under eases."

Jalil repeatedly stated that a strict Islamist regime is not on the rebel's agenda:

"We are on the threshold of a new era ... of a new stage that we will work to establish the principles that this revolution was based on. Which are: freedom, democracy, justice, equality and transparency. Within a moderate Islamic framework.

Jalil has called on the rebels to show that Libya is a country of "religiously moderate" people, and has called upon "everyone to take care and guard properties both public and private."

Jalil has congratulated the rebels on taking Tripoli, and says that Gaddafi tried to "scare" the international community by saying that Islamic extremists were part of the rebels' movement.

How silly of Qaddafi to say that Islamic extremists were part of the rebels' movement!

But, maybe Qaddafi was referring to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Islamic extremist organization that was named as an affiliate of al-Qaeda by the UN 1267 Committee, and which is part of the Libyan rebel movement.

Last March, the leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group gave an interview about their relations with the Council of which Jalil is Chairman:

“We told [the Libyan National Council] that we are happy to work under you to help you. We are happy to put all our knowledge and experience under your control and we don’t have any separate strategy for our group. We are happy to fight under the [rebel] army’s command and we don’t ask to have a place in the leadership,” says Mansour.

The two men also disclosed that the LIFG had changed its name to Al Harakat al-Islamiya al Libeeya (Libyan Islamic Movement). Some 500-600 of its members have been released from jail in recent years. About 30 remain in Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison. Mansour says there is full agreement within the group regarding its position on the LNC.

The Libyan National Council responded positively to the LIFG’s approach, Mansour says. “They said the first thing they wanted to be sure of is that we are not linked with any other group so we confirmed this point. They also wanted to make sure that there were not any other people coming from outside Libya to help – they said this is a red line. In the end, they said if you try to help our people, to help the army, and co-operate and work together, we will be happy.”

In other words, 'you domestic extremists are okay but the foreign types will cause NATO heartburn, so keep them at arms length, please.' Message understood.

Or, it could be that Qaddafi read the interview in Le Figaro on June 24 in which the head of media relations for the National Transitional Council estimated that about 15 percent of the rebels are what he would call Islamic extremists:

Q: Some in the West are concerned about infiltration of the rebellion by al-Qaida. Is there reason to fear extremism?

A: [T]hey represent only a small portion, no more than 15% of the rebels, and are not, in our view, a threat.

Maybe the head of TNC media relations didn't get the press guidance before he gave that interview. Or else, Chairman Jalil just forgot that there are some Islamic extremists among the rebels, after all.

But then, what's extreme or moderate is all a matter of definition anyway. The TNC's draft constitution establishes in Article 1 that Islam will be the religion of the post-Qaddafi state and Sharia law will be the principal source of legislation, just as it was under Qaddafi's regime. That is as per usual in the constitutions of all Muslim states, e.g., Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and so on, and nothing extreme happens in those places, does it?

Now, once the mopping up of Qaddafi strongholds is done, Libya will move on to it's moderately Islamic future and "freedom, democracy, justice, equality and transparency" will rain down from the sky. In so far as they are not incompatible with Sharia law, of course.

Has The Qäddaferdämmerung Begun At Last?

2011-08-21T06:42:00.000-07:00

Libyan news presenter Hala Masrati had a meltdown on the al-Libiyah television channel early this morning, Sunday August 21.

Source: Al Zajeera Live Blog.

"With this weapon, I either kill or die today, you will not take al-Libiyah channel. You won't take Jamahiriyah channel, Shababiyah channel, Tripoli or all of Libya, and even those without a weapon are willing to be a shield in order to protect their colleagues at this channel. We are willing to become martyrs."

The video is being run by various news outlets this morning, however, they report that it was originally posted by an unidentified social media source, so take that into account.

The news presenter, Hala Masrati, is a well-known Qaddafi loyalist of the over-the-top sort (google her), so I think the video is genuine.

[ Download ]

Unconfirmed Report Qaddafi Has Fled Libya

2011-08-20T16:12:00.000-07:00

Tweeted by NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel around 4 PM this afternoon, EDT.

There is much more rumor and speculation here.