Did California congressman Dana Rohrabacher come out in support of leveling rainforests to stop global warming, as the New York Times and Politico suggested? Of course not. Rohrabacher is far from a global warming alarmist, and certainly does not make a habit of proposing ways in which the government might act to reduce CO2 emissions. So it raised some eyebrows when this representative asked an Obama administration official if he was considering policies that used deforestation to eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere. At a May 25 th congressional hearing on UN climate change policy, hosted by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (of which Rohrabacher is the chair), he was questioning Todd Stern, Special Envoy for Climate Change of the US Department of State, and, according to Politico , made this inquiry: Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rain forests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?…Or would people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from
Thomas Mulcair, Deputy Leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), said in an interview yesterday that he doubted the existence of the bin Laden death photos. “I don’t think, from what I’ve heard, that those pictures exist and if they do I’ll leave that up to the American military,” said the number
I’ve been meaning to post this piece at Foreign Affairs , ” The Digital Disruption ,” by Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. What’s interesting is that the authors hit most of the key themes of the digital revolution in world politics, but with WikiLeaks topping the charts this last week, something was missing, and I held off on posting it. Now though we’ve got the clearest indication of how China views web technology in the New York Times ‘ report, ” Cables Discuss Vast Hacking by a China That Fears the Web .” (At Memeorandum and Techmeme .) The Times indicates the members of China’s Politiburo Standing Committee (almost as high as one goes in the Chinese party government) directed hacking operations against Google’s servers in the United States. This seems almost unreal from the perspective of power politics and traditional concerns over geographic spheres of influence and market shares in key industrial sectors. But this is the information age and Chinese officials don’t like what they’re finding. Schmidt and Cohen put some of this in perspective in their Foreign Affairs article: Realists describe international relations as anarchic and dominated by self-interested states. Although there is little doubt about the dominant role states will and should play in the world, there is a great deal of debate about exactly how dominant they will be going forward. In these pages in 2008, Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, described a “nonpolar world” that is “dominated not by one or two or even several states but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power.” In the interconnected estate, a virtual space that is constrained by different national laws but not national boundaries, there can be no equivalent to the Treaty of Westphalia — the 1648 agreement that ended the Thirty Years’ War and established the modern system of nation-states. Instead, governments, individuals, nongovernmental organizations, and private companies will balance one another’s interests. Not all governments will manage the turbulence left in the wake of declining state authority in the same way. Much remains uncertain, of course, but it seems clear that free-market and democratic governments will be the best suited to manage and cope with this maelstrom. The greatest danger to the Internet among these countries — perhaps best defined as the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — will be the overregulation of the technology sector, which has thus far thrived on entrepreneurial investment and open networks. Perhaps no country has more carefully considered the implications of allowing its citizens access to connection technologies than China. The regime’s goals are clear: to control access to content on the Internet and to use technology to build its political and economic power. Beijing has arrested online activists and used the country’s thriving online bulletin boards to spread its propaganda. All of this is part of a strategy to ensure that the technology revolution extends, rather than destroys, the one-party state and its value system. Around the world, the Chinese model of Internet control has been copied by nations such as Vietnam and actively promoted in Asian and African countries where China is investing heavily in natural resources. And Beijing has moved to co-opt international institutions, such as the International Telecommunications Union, in order to gain global credibility and rally allies behind its efforts to control its citizens’ communication. But thanks to the work of activists and nongovernmental organizations operating inside and outside China, Beijing has learned that its attempts to establish total control of the Internet will not always work. The regime has recently been caught off-guard by the use of cell phones, blogs, and uploaded videos to encourage labor protests and report on industrial accidents, environmental problems, and incidents of corruption. The July 2009 demonstrations by ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang drew international media attention even after Beijing completely shut down all Internet connections in the region; Uighur activists used social networks and so-called microblogs to spread news among targeted audiences abroad, including the Uighur diaspora. These kinds of cat-and-mouse games will no doubt continue, but in the short run there is doubt that Beijing’s attempts to control access to information will largely succeed. Visit link: WikiLeaks Reveals China’s Fear of the Web
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WikiLeaks Reveals China’s Fear of the Web
SUBJECT: SCENESETTER FOR YOUR [HRC] VISIT TO PARIS — NOVEMBER 8, 2009 —————————————– AN URGENT FOCUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE —————————————– ¶ 10.
It was heralded as a history-making and one hundred year old tradition-breaking event last week when Sir John Sawers, the current Chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), spoke publicly of the role his agency plays. From a theatrical standpoint, his performance was a “smash.” In practical terms, it was a good try at creating a pretense of a new and open MI6. As late as the 1990s official Britain still refused to admit SIS actually existed, whether under that name or its earlier designation as MI6. This was not so much a deception as it was a forelock-tugging recognition of the storied past of the secret institution that so steadfastly favored its anonymity. Tradition has always been important to the “friends,” as the rest of Britain’s foreign affairs establishment called their clandestine cousins. Giving up the long since out-dated thin veneer of purported non-existence was hardly an operational blow to Her Majesty’s pimpernels . Of equal lack of real importance — other than as a public relations device — was Sir John’s forswearing of the use of torture to gain information by his organization or acceptance of such intelligence from less ethical allies. With not a little cynicism he noted torture was also against the law. (Nice of you to mention that, Chief.) As the British are masters of the concept of thinly sliced definition of language, one wonders what aspect of behavior toward gaining deadly time-sensitive information will be put into effect. What “special instance” will come to exist to test this new politically correct civilian intelligence agency interpretation of “Queen’s Regulations.” It may salve the conscience of some in Parliament, press, and the public that their national security is protected by an intelligence service that doesn’t use violent methods of interrogation to gather critical information. Nonetheless, public statements to that effect by the head of their foreign intelligence adds little to the efficacy of the service itself. Sir John knows that well enough as a long-serving foreign affairs civil servant. Beyond the stated ethical base of this exercise is the fact that all of Britain’s security services have received budget increases in the midst of broad defense cutbacks. For political reasons it has become important to burnish MI6′s reputation, which had become the focal point for the post-Blair public dispute over the Secret Intelligence Service inadequate performance on the question of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The new Conservative-led government found a convenient whipping boy in the pejorative characterization of the Tony Blair days of “slavish” support of American assessments. WMD has become the convenient target, and MI6 the ineffectual purveyor of false intelligence. It seems that the Tory/Lib Dem spinmeisters decided SIS would have to lift its skirts to satisfy a never satisfied press and public, which have wearied of Britain’s military involvement in the Middle East. As has been the case so often in the past, the amateur sleuths in the press and politics have missed the important point. MI6 had informants within the Saddam hierarchy. The trouble was that Saddam suspected that fact even though he and his trusted lieutenants didn’t know the identity of the specific agents. Saddam simply used these unknown intelligence adversaries as a conduit in a highly successful campaign of disinformation. By the end of 2002 or early 2003, Baghdad had already shipped to Syria the left-over chemical stores from the first Gulf War that were suspected of existing but never found by the UN teams. This information was picked up by the SIS contacts, but it merely became proof that Iraq still had WMD capacity — which was exactly what Saddam wanted the world to think. It was his view that he would be safe from invasion if it was thought that he had nuclear and/or bio-chemical weapons. Unfortunately for Saddam, fear of his purported WMD did not engender the reaction he expected from London and Washington. The negotiations that the Iraqi leader had expected to be spurred by fear of his WMD worked the opposite way, and the U.S. and Britain attacked. So seven years later the SIS has to play the contrite incompetent to satisfy the new political reality at Downing Street. British intelligence, and to a certain extent its partner in pre-war Iraq, the CIA, have had to acknowledge they were snookered by Saddam with the unwitting assistance of ambitious Iraqi exile leaders, and thus went to war. Which is worse: an intelligence agency that thinks there are weapons of mass destruction when there aren’t any — or intelligence officers who can’t tell the difference between real and fabricated information? British officialdom apparently now believes it doesn’t really matter just so someone of importance promises such errors will never happen again. And that was what Sir John has done: that and present his boyish 55-year-old countenance to the press and public. This was supposed, as the Financial Times put it, to take “a big step towards greater transparency and improved public confidence.” But it doesn’t mean a damn as far as intelligence operations is concerned other than making a difficult job more so. And the best of British luck to you chaps!
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The Old Lady Shows Her Ankles
