Posted By The Editors 11 Oct 2007
A private security company, the SITE Intelligence group, had developed a method of monitoring al-Qaida communications on the Internet. When the group shared some its information, a Bin Laden video, with the Bush administration recently, a leak to the media compromised the group's source.
It's a stark illustration of one key reason our national intelligence system is in such bad shape: the government is terrible at keeping secrets. What's more, the manner in which intelligence officials played down the seriousness of the compromise demonstrates that they don't understand the value of non-governmental and open-source intelligence gathering in our modern world. Their attitude is: if a private company was able to get it, it wasn't worth anything. Only secrets the government can obtain are real secrets. It's an attitude that will have to change if we're going to reform our intelligence capability for the 21st century.
The Washington Post has the story:
"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.
The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government's ability to anticipate attacks.
While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. "We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The Post reported yesterday that the Bush administration will investigate the leak. We'd wager that the source is someone at the White House with a political job.
Posted By The Editors 10 Oct 2007
Condoleezza Rice spoke at the Organization of American States yesterday in a speech sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. She had much to say about an area of the world that the Bush administration has often been accused of neglecting: Latin America.
Here's the 25-minute speech on video, courtesy of the State Department:
The full
transcript is here.
More on the speech:
There was surprisingly little news coverage of the speech, but what reports there were focused on
Rice's remarks on trade, and on the related issue of
globalization.
Mike Boyer at Foreign Policy's Passport Blog notes that Rice yesterday followed what appears to be a new Bush administration policy of ignoring Hugo Chavez, calling the new tactic
effective, but not much fun.
Posted By John Rosenthal 10 Oct 2007
"I'm not interested in that pretentious little fool." The "pretentious little fool" [petit con prétentieux] in question: none other than French literary star Bernard-Henri Lévy. And the author of the phrase: none other than "Special Advisor" to French President Nicolas Sarkozy and presidential speechwriter Henri Guaino. Guaino made the remark yesterday to the French news site Rue89 and he took the trouble to specify: "you can print that." He was responding to remarks made earlier in the day by Lévy -- or "BHL," as he is commonly known in France -- on the radio station France Inter.
In his interview with France Inter, Lévy repeatedly referred to Guaino as a "racist" on account of a speech delivered by Nicolas Sarkozy in Dakar in July (and discussed in this earlier WPR report) and accused him of being a representative of the "extreme right" in France. "It's [Guaino] who prepared that horrid [ignoble] speech," Lévy charged:
where it's said that if Africa has not developed, it's because they [Africans] are not part of history and that they are victims of the lethargy of history. To say that is disgusting. To say that . . . while completely effacing colonialism -- the destruction of the country by that shameful epoch that was the epoch of colonialism -- that's the work of Guaino and that is racism.
What Nicolas Sarkozy said in his speech was more exactly this:
The drama of Africa is that the African has not sufficiently become part of history. The African peasant has lived for millennia according to the seasons and his ideal is to live in harmony with nature. He only knows the eternal renewal of time. . . .
Within this worldview [imaginaire], everything is always renewed. There is no place for the human adventure or for the idea of progress. . . .
The individual never throws himself into the future. He never has the idea of leaving behind this repetition and inventing a new destiny for himself.
The problem of Africa -- and allow me, as a friend of Africa, to say it -- is to be found here. The challenge for Africa is to enter more into history: it is to find within itself the energy, the force, the desire and the will to hear and to become one with its own history.
Racist? The reader can judge. But one can well wonder whether Bernard-Henri Lévy in fact read or listened to the speech, as opposed to just reading certain press reports about it. For far from "completely effacing colonialism," roughly a third of the speech is devoted to a detailed catalogue of the various "wrongs" [torts] of colonialism and its enduring effects. "The colonizer came, he took, he used, he exploited," Sarkozy said, "He plundered resources and riches that did not belong to him. He robbed the colonized of his personality, of his freedom, of his land, of the fruit of his labor." "No one," Sarkozy concluded, "can act as if this history did not happen."
"I take responsibility for the Dakar speech," Henri Guaino told Rue89, "line for line, word for word, and to the last comma. But the speech is that of the President of the Republic: if he did not want to deliver it, he would not have done so." "There have always been morons," he concluded, referring to the remarks of Lévy, "What do you want me to say in response to so much stupidity?"
On account of his vociferous "pro-Americanism," Lévy has become something of a darling of conservative circles in the United States in recent years. But it is not unlikely that they would want to agree with Guaino's assessment of "BHL" if they knew more about him. Take, for instance, an interview with Lévy that appeared in the Spanish daily El Mundo over the weekend (Oct. 6). Asked about the importance of the 2008 American elections, Lévy responded:
The United States is emerging from a critical period, because George Bush has been a disastrous president. One of the worst in history. In recent years, anti-Americanism has increased because he has encouraged it. It is crucial that Bush goes.
Said as if he might not. "It is vitally important that there be a democratic wave again," Lévy added.
Posted By Hampton Stephens 09 Oct 2007
This
Los Angeles Times op-ed on the Dutch government's decision to stop providing protection of Dutch citizen and former member of parliament Ayan Hirsi Ali is a convincing indictment of the Dutch government's behavior:
Hirsi Ali was persuaded to run for parliament and to become the world's most visible and imperiled spokeswoman for the rights of Muslim women, on the understanding that she would be provided security for as long as she needed it. Zalm, in his capacity as both the deputy prime minister and the minister of finance, promised her such security without qualification. Most shamefully, Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, has recommended that Hirsi Ali simply quit the Netherlands and has refused to grant her even a week's protection outside the country, during which she might raise funds to hire security of her own. Is this a craven attempt to placate local Muslim fanatics? A warning to other Dutch dissidents not to stir up trouble by speaking too frankly about Islam? Or just pure thoughtlessness?
Readers who are unfamiliar with Hirsi Ali's story before she teamed up with the late filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, whose murder, perversely, made Hirsi Ali famous beyond the Netherlands, will also find some interesting information about her earlier life in the piece.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this op-ed is the fact that Sam Harris, the author of "The End of Faith" and the recent bestseller "Letter to a Christian Nation" teamed up with novelist Salman Rushdie to write it.
Ever since he was the victim of a
fatwah calling for his death after the publication of "The Satanic Verses," Rushdie has been a critic of radical and fundamentalist Islam and a staunch defender of Western liberal values. However, Rushdie's critique of religious fanaticism has been mostly focused on Islamic world. If he has been as strong a critic of religion in general -- and even of the brand of moderate Western Christianity that, thanks to thinkers like Aquinas, has managed to accommodate faith and reason, theology and philosophy, to an extent not seen in the Islamic world -- then most of his readers in the West probably will have missed it.
However, Harris's atheism seems to draw no distinctions between the intellectual history of, for example, Islam and the Judeo-Christian tradition. This is how the Washington Post summarized the views of Harris critics in
an October 2006 profile:
The un-gospel according to Sam has found a huge audience, but every bit as striking is the counter-reaction to Harris among religious scholars. Mention his name to academics of just about every religious persuasion and you can almost see their eyes roll. Oh, that guy.
Harris has grossly oversimplified scripture, they say. He has drawn far-reaching conclusions based on the beliefs of radicals. As bad, his stand against organized religion is so unconditional that it's akin to the intolerance he claims he is fighting. If there is such a thing as a secular fundamentalist, they contend, Harris is it. Even some who agree with his conclusions about the dangers of fanaticism find his argument ham-handed.
"I think this country needs a sophisticated attack on religion," says Van Harvey, a retired professor of religious studies at Stanford University. "But pushing moderates into the same camp as fanatics, that seems like a very crude mistake."
According to Harvey, not only has Harris picked a fight with those who could be on his side, but his solution -- let's all ditch God -- is laughable given the role that religion plays in so many lives. Others say that he has taken these "Old Books" at their literal word, instead of studying the way that the faithful actually engage the scriptures. Put more simply, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
It would be interesting to know whether Rushdie holds similarly absolutist views about the incompatibility of faith with reason, of religion with liberal values. The Netherlands and other liberal democracies should vigorously reject violent attacks on free speech and thought by religious radicals, and should not be cowered in their defense of liberty by those who believe that multiculturalism is the paramount political value. However, it seems to me that such a blanket rejection of religion as Harris's has little hope of successfully fighting radicalism where it is most potent -- in the Islamic world, where a liberalism that totally excludes any recognition of faith has little hope of taking root.
Posted By Hampton Stephens 05 Oct 2007
According to the Associated Press, Kim Jong-il
believes himself to be an "Internet expert."Is he an expert in the technology that powers the Internet, or an accomplished programmer? Does he think deeply about the social and economic implications of information and communications technology?
No, somehow I suspect he means that he's accomplished in
using the Internet. In other words, he writes emails, knows how to use a Web browser and a search engine, etc. In achieving this kind of expertise, Kim is in the company of close to 1 billion people worldwide.
Leaving aside for a moment the obvious gall involved in gloating about using the Internet while denying it to his own people, what kind of person brags about being expert in such widely dispersed knowledge?
I can think of one kind of person: a child. Children will walk up to a perfect stranger, pull on a pants leg and declare that they can spell their name, or draw a horse, or dribble a basketball. No doubt somewhere right now there's an eight-year-old boasting about being an "Internet expert."
This kind of self-satisfaction is charming and even necessary in children. In a dictator who is personally responsible for the daily privation and suffering of millions, it's considerably less so.
Kim Jong-il's former Japanese chef, Kenji Fujimoto, wrote a book about his experiences with Kim. The book, which was
excerpted in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004, provides further evidence that Kim is a spoiled child who inherited a nation:
As I was riding a Jet Ski on a lake near the Chinese border, Kim Jong Il came up next to me and said, "Fujimoto, let's race. But I want you to take it seriously."
He gave the signal to start, and I rammed the accelerator as hard as I could. Halfway through I looked at him and realized that I was leading by about half a boat length. For a moment I thought I was making a mistake, but I remembered that he had said he wanted me to take the race seriously, so I crossed the finish line first.
Kim Jong Il said begrudgingly, "You win, Fujimoto."
. . . Until then nobody else had ever won a contest against Kim Jong Il.
A month later he once again challenged me to a race. However, this time at the starting line I was surprised to see that he had traded his old Jet Ski for a much larger one. With a different engine capacity there was no way I could win.
At this time several areas in North Korea were suffering from floods and food shortages. Whether he was aware of this or not, Kim Jong Il certainly seemed to be enjoying his Jet Ski races.
And another example:
One day during a meal Kim Jong Il suddenly said, "Fujimoto, I've heard that in Japan there is a rice cake filled with mugwort. I want you to go and buy it tomorrow!"
In addition he told me to buy every brand of Japanese cigarette and to spend no more than three days on the trip.
I departed promptly [for Japan] . . .
What goes through the mind of a world leader like South Korea's Roh when he suddenly realizes, in the midst of the elaborate summitry, the meticulous protocol, the weighty negotiations, what kind of stunted individual he is dealing with?
Posted By The Editors 28 Sep 2007
The Burmese regime has claimed that Japanese photojournalist Kenji Nagai was killed by "a stray bullet."
But amateur video obtained by a Japanese television station shows the bullet that killed Nagai was anything but a stray. Here's the video from a YouTube excerpt of a Japanese television report. Warning: it's rather graphic:
The Times of London has more.
This may prove to one of those seminal moments in the history of the impact of "information and communications technology" on world politics.