Nothing like a fantastic hockey game to cap it all off, with a goal in overtime to secure home team gold. Up in Canada, this was a hugely important game. And if you were watching down south, you saw 2 teams playing exciting on-the-attack styles, which made for a good game. Team USA coach Ron Wilson:
"Canada and the United States play the game like it should be -- not sitting back and playing on your heels and waiting for something bad to happen and counter-punching, but actually going on the attack. I know Mike (Babcock)'s teams play that way and I try to play that way, not very successfully right now with my team in Toronto [Canada]."
US coach Ron Wilson may get even more grief back in Toronto for saying that "Sometimes, the best team in the tournament doesn't win a gold medal." In a 1-game format, however, he's right. And Team USA was more consistent throughout.
But it did come down to one game, aganist another great team. And a finish that set a record for home country gold medals. That was thanks, in part, to a program called "Own the Podium," which aimed to secure more advance support for Canadian olympians, and focus on winning instead of just competing. That's a big cultural change for Canada, and a welcome one. Mission Accomplished.
Despite its good intentions, San Francisco is not leading the country in gay marriage. Despite its good intentions, it is not stopping wars. Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city's. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit.
WSJ.com explains why Iran's current promises are still meaningless, and Ledeen hits it on the head again:
"Thirty years of negotiations and sanctions have failed to end the Iranian nuclear program and its war against the West. Why should anyone think they will work now? A change in Iran requires a change in government. Common sense and moral vision suggest we should support the courageous opposition movement, whose leaders have promised to end support for terrorism and provide total transparency regarding the nuclear program."
Anne Applebaum writes the same thing in Salon, saying that "Tehran's worst fear is a well-financed human rights campaign." In other words, talk less to Iran and more to Iranians.
Unfortunately, this also seems to be Obama's worst fear. Applebaum is also dead wrong to say that "he people who care about [the democracy movement] are rarely much interested in [Iran's nuclear program] - and vice versa." In fact, most of the people concerned with the nuclear program see the democracy movement as the best hope for progress, and have for some time. Obama, in contrast, has a consistent record of aversion to promoting or supporting human rights, rule of law, and other niceties abroad. Which is why the drift will continue, until Iran has the bomb.
The United States government, along with the rest of the Western Hemisphere's governments, is so worked up about returning ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to power that it hasn't thought through the long- or even medium-term consequences of its threats and demands.
Millions of dollars in aid to Honduras-one of the poorest countries in Latin America-was cut off after Zelaya was arrested by the military and sent into exile in June. The U.S. is not only threatening to cut off hundreds of millions more, it's threatening to impose sanctions and not recognize the results of the November election if he isn't first allowed back in office. These threats, if carried out, will put both Honduras and the U.S. in impossible positions.
Sanctions are supposed to be temporary. Targeted countries are always told what they can do to restore the status quo ante. Iran, for instance, can dismantle its nuclear-weapons program. Syria can cease and desist its support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Saddam Hussein, while he still ruled Iraq, had the option of admitting weapons inspectors.
Honduras, though, will have no way out if the interim government doesn't return Zelaya to power before his term ends in January. Because the Honduran constitution prohibits him and every other president from serving more than one term, it won't be legally possible for Honduras to do what's demanded of it after the end of this year. Unlike Iraq, Iran, and Syria, it will be isolated and trapped under sanctions indefinitely.
Sanctions and diplomatic isolation aren't the geopolitical equivalents of jail time and fines; they're used to coax rogue regimes into changing their behavior. They are tools of coercion, not punishment. By the time 2010 rolls around, it won't make any difference how badly the current interim government of Honduras is or is not behaving right now if the next one is elected in a free and fair election. The "coup regime" will have been replaced. The crisis will be over, the problem resolved. Punishing the next government-and by extension, the people of Honduras-for something a temporary former government did the previous year is gratuitous and, as far as I know, unprecedented. Even a country as roguish and oppressive as North Korea can come in from the cold if it holds a genuinely free and fair election.
While Honduras will be placed in an impossible position that it can't escape from, refusing to recognize the results of the November election will put the U.S. in an equally impossible position. Reality will force the U.S. to back down for one simple reason-it will be possible for the U.S. to back down, while Honduras could only surrender to our demands by using a time machine. We might as well play "chicken" with an inanimate object.
Read the rest in Commentary Magazine.
A Johns Hopkins University student armed with a samurai sword killed a man who broke into the garage of his off-campus residence early Tuesday, a Baltimore police spokesman said.-
According to preliminary reports, a resident of the 300 block of E. University Parkway called police about a suspicious person, department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. An off-duty officer responded about 1:20 a.m. to the area with university security, according to Guglielmi. They heard shouts and screams from a neighboring house and found the suspected burglar suffering from a nearly severed hand and laceration to his upper body, he said.
Well, this was interesting. Active, broadband, exterior cloaking devices... but not for light:
"University of Utah mathematicians developed a new cloaking method, and it's unlikely to lead to invisibility cloaks like those used by Harry Potter or Romulan spaceships in "Star Trek." Instead, the new method someday might shield submarines from sonar, planes from radar, buildings from earthquakes, and oil rigs and coastal structures from tsunamis.
"We have shown that it is numerically possible to cloak objects of any shape that lie outside the cloaking devices, not just from single-frequency waves, but from actual pulses generated by a multi-frequency source," says Graeme Milton, senior author of the research and a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Utah."
Read my 2002 post "Pipeline Politics: The Caspian Front" for an intro, and "NATO's German/Eastern Question" to understand the limits of American power and influence. Now, RIA Novosti RussiaProfile.org's July 24/09 "Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: A Battle of the Pipelines"...
"The last three weeks have been rich in developments in the unfolding "battle of the pipelines" to supply natural gas to Europe. Russia, the EU and the United States are locked in a tough struggle to secure domination over the natural gas supply lines to Europe from Russia and Central Asia. Why is there such heated competition for building alternative gas pipelines to Europe? What are Russia's objectives in the "battle of the pipelines"? What are the EU and American objectives? Why is the United States trying to play such an active role in decisions that will not in any way affect the energy supplies to the United States?"
In March 2008, DID's "Sharpen Yourself: LinkedIn & Social Networking Sites" discussed both the career benefits and the security risks associated with social networking sites. Sir John Sawers, the prospective head of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency is probably wishing he had read it. His wife recently leaked dangerously specific information about him on Facebook, and created a controversy about his fitness for the job. Sir John now faces a possible parliamentary probe.
Despite these setbacks, social networking is becoming a larger part of the military, and the industry. In July 2009, Lockheed Martin released its internal company social networking application's underlying code as open source software. Social networking efforts are being explicitly built into PR contracts, and it's becoming one of the information shifts that are changing the battlespace. The Pentagon recently launched an official blogging platform at DODLive.mil, and US Forces Afghanistan launched a social networking strategy that extends to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Followed by orders to bases to stop blocking key social networking sites.
These efforts can make a big contribution toward ensuring that the Pentagon is no longer, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates puts it, "being out-communicated by a guy in a cave." On the other hand, they are not risk-free.
Grant Martin of the Kansas City Star sums up the situation in a quick paragraph:
"Just in case you've turned your TV News off because you were tired of MJ stories- Honduras' president supposedly wanted to change the Constitution and serve for more years than allowed, the Supreme Court and Congress ruled that as illegal, he tried to hold a referendum, the Army refused, he fired the Army chief, the Supreme Court told him to reinstate the chief, he refused and had some group raid the warehouse that stored the referendum ballots, and so the Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest him and send him packing."
Zelaya did more than have "some group" raid the warehouse. On June 26, he issued a decree ordering all government employees to take part in the referendum. Except the referendum can't change the constitution. Octavio Sanchez explains why this stripped him of his office:
Marc wrote in the other day in "Presidential Decisionmaking and Error" that someone he trusted gave him information about the Somali hostage resolution, and that the information did not make Obama look good. Wonder if it was anything like this?
"Having spoken to some SEAL pals here in Virginia Beach yesterday and asking why this thing dragged out for 4 days, I got the following:
1. BHO wouldn't authorize the DEVGRU/NSWC SEAL teams to the scene for 36 hours going against OSC (on scene commander) recommendation.
2. Once they arrived, BHO imposed restrictions on their ROE that they couldn't do anything unless the hostage's life was in "imminent" danger
3. The first time the hostage jumped, the SEALS had the raggies all sighted in, but could not fire due to ROE restriction
4. When the navy RIB came under fire as it approached with supplies, no fire was returned due to ROE restrictions. As the raggies were shooting at the RIB, they were exposed and the SEALS had them all dialed in.
5. BHO specifically denied two rescue plans developed by the Bainbridge CPN and SEAL teams
6. Bainbridge CPN and SEAL team CDR finally decide they have the OpArea and OSC authority to solely determine risk to hostage. 4 hours later, 3 dead raggies
7. BHO immediately claims credit for his "daring and decisive" behaviour. As usual with him, it's BS."
That's rumor, but it definitely sounds like our boy... and it matches with the New York Times report:
