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Ed Webb

Iran: remind me now, which are the terrorists? | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...-me-now-which-are-terrorists-0

opinion Iran terrorism USA US foreignpolicy foreign_policy analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 05 Jul 10
     
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Ed Webb

America's got to end its deadly devotion to democracy - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/...ydegroot

democracy democratization analysis middleeaast Africa ♦

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • "Be nice to the Americans or they'll punish you with democracy."
  • Evidence shows that attempts to democratize the developed world have made internal tensions much worse.
  • why has a much more impatient, poorly planned approach been taken to the infinitely more complex problems of Africa and the Middle East?
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The voter with a stable job and a secure place to live is a signatory to the social contract understood by Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose political philosophy underlay the French Revolution.
  • Development, or teaching people democracy, can look suspiciously like neo-colonialism. There's a fine line between husbandry and hegemony – those at the sharp end cannot always tell the difference. What is clear, however, is that ballots by themselves are not a panacea. Unless the job is done well, it should not be done at all.
Ed Webb

Venezuela's foreign policy: Friends in low places | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...displaystory.cfm

chavez venezuela IR analysis foreignpolicy

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • The trip did much to bolster Mr Chávez’s well-earned reputation for outrageous statements. But there is method to his madness. The foreign-policy section of Venezuela’s “First Socialist Plan—2007-2013” (dubbed the “Simón Bolívar National Project”) assigns an “integral political alliance” with Iran, Syria, Belarus and Russia the highest priority outside the Latin American and Caribbean region. The rationale for this curious hotchpotch of alliances is the “common anti-imperialist interests” of those five countries—the imperialist in question being America.
  • Mr Chávez is determined to play in the big leagues. His avowed calculation is that by helping to stir up trouble for America in many places simultaneously, he can bring about the collapse of “the empire”. The regimes he is so assiduously cultivating are, by this account, the nucleus of a new world order. Although this seems far-fetched perhaps the world should start to take him a little more seriously.
Ed Webb

Afghanistan's election: a first verdict | open Democracy News Analysis - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...tan-s-election-a-first-verdict

Afghanistan elections fraud corruption international

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Aug 09 - Cached
  • In terms of Kandaharis' experience, the saddest thing about all that I have described above was watching the faces of my friends - particularly Kandahar's young people - as they found out what was going on. A great sense of disappointment darkened most of my conversations during the last few hours of polling and during the evening and next day. People focused on some of the details, especially the non-indelible ink that had been promoted with such fanfare by the United Nations earlier that year.  People frequently blamed "the foreigners" for mismanaging things and allowing so much fraud and deception to take place.  Admittedly these days conspiracy theories about the invisible hand of "the foreigners" are omnipresent in southern Afghanistan, but "the farce of this year's election" (as one friend put it) struck a nerve among those people who did want to vote, who did want a change, who didn't have a direct stake in anyone's campaign.
  • it is a pity that the wishes of ordinary Afghans for a free and fair election were not heard.
  • In the coming days a highly dubious turnout will be announced by Hamid Karzai and the IEC. The final results will award Karzai victory with over 50% of the votes.  Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah will go into overdrive for a while, but slowly deals will start to be made behind the scenes
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  • Even if the internationals were to have a change of heart and get serious, they're already being blamed for the failure of this election.  But there won't be any serious outcry by the major voices of the international effort because too much is riding on this election passing, and passing without incident.
Ed Webb

Editorial - British Nukes vs. British Troops - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...03sun2.html

nukes deterrence opinion analysis military spending UK Britain NATO

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Put simply, the most important choice is between nuclear weapons and troops — specifically, whether to build four new nuclear missile-launching submarines or to preserve an army large enough to contribute to allied missions overseas. Even with painful cuts in other areas, there will not be money enough for both.
  • It is also hard to see why — in today’s world — Britain needs four new subs, each of which can carry up to 160 nuclear warheads. Only a fraction of that capacity is currently used, roughly 48 warheads per submarine, for a total of 192. There are, of course, still nuclear dangers out there, most notably North Korea and Iran. But the United States nuclear umbrella plus a smaller Trident force should provide Britain with full deterrence.
  • Britain has been America’s most reliable military ally and a backbone of NATO. That is good for Britons — for their security and for their continuing influence. Britain will not be able to deliver if this government decides to sacrifice troop numbers for nuclear symbolism.
Ed Webb

David Ignatius - Afghans want their country back - and Americans should listen - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2010111904376.html

Afghanistan polls analysis comment washpo

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • In the region that was Osama bin Laden's stronghold, 81 percent say that al-Qaeda will come back if the Taliban returns to power, and 72 percent say that al-Qaeda will then use Afghanistan as a base for attacks against the West.
Ed Webb

WikiLeaks reveals more than just government secrets - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...index.html

wikileaks diplomacy journalism opinion bbc greenwald analysis US USA politics NYT

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Those who demand that the U.S. Government take people's lives with no oversight or due process as though they're advocating changes in tax policy or mid-level personnel moves -- eradicate him!, they bellow from their seats in the Colosseum -- are just morally deranged barbarians.  There's just no other accurate way to put it.  These are usually the same people, of course, who brand themselves "pro-life" and Crusaders for the Sanctity of Human Life and/or who deride Islamic extremists for their disregard for human life.  And the fact that this mindset is so widespread and mainstream is quite a reflection of how degraded America's political culture is.
  • Most political journalists rely on their relationships with government officials and come to like them and both identify and empathize with them.  By contrast, WikiLeaks is truly adversarial to those powerful factions in exactly the way that these media figures are not:  hence, the widespread media hatred and contempt for what WikiLeaks does.  Just look at how important it was for Bill Keller to emphasize that the Government is criticizing WikiLeaks but not The New York Times; having the Government pleased with his behavior is his metric for assessing how good his "journalism" is.  If the Government is patting him on the head, then it's proof that he acted "responsibly."  That servile-to-power mentality is what gets exposed by the contrast Wikileaks provides.
  • our government and political culture is so far toward the extreme pole of excessive, improper secrecy that that is clearly the far more significant threat.  And few organizations besides WikiLeaks are doing anything to subvert that regime of secrecy, and none is close to its efficacy.  It's staggering to watch anyone walk around acting as though the real threat is from excessive disclosures when the impenetrable, always-growing Wall of Secrecy is what has enabled virtually every abuse and transgression of the U.S. government over the last two decades at least. 
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Digby's superb commentary on this point yesterday: My personal feeling is that any allegedly democratic government that is so hubristic that it will lie blatantly to the entire world in order to invade a country it has long wanted to invade probably needs a self-correcting mechanism. There are times when it's necessary that the powerful be shown that there are checks on its behavior, particularly when the systems normally designed to do that are breaking down. Now is one of those times. . . . .As for the substance of the revelations, I don't know what the results will be. But in the world of diplomacy, embarrassment is meaningful and I'm not sure that it's a bad thing for all these people to be embarrassed right now.  Puncturing a certain kind of self-importance --- especially national self-importance --- may be the most worthwhile thing they do. A little humility is long overdue.
  • The actually-existing structure and strategy of the American empire remains a near-total mystery to those who foot the bill and whose children fight its wars. And that is the way the elite of America's unelected permanent state, perhaps the most powerful class of people on Earth, like it. As Scott Shane, the New York Times' national security reporter, puts it: "American taxpayers, American citizens pay for all these diplomatic operations overseas and you know, it is not a bad thing when Americans actually have a better understanding of those negotiations".  Mr Shane goes on to suggest that "Perhaps if we had had more information on these secret internal deliberations of governments prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we would have had a better understanding of the quality of the evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."
  • I'm glad to see that the quality of discussion over possible US efforts to stymie Iran's nuclear ambitions has already become more sophisticated and, well, better-informed due to the information provided by WikiLeaks.
  • If secrecy is necessary for national security and effective diplomacy, it is also inevitable that the prerogative of secrecy will be used to hide the misdeeds of the permanent state and its privileged agents. I suspect that there is no scheme of government oversight that will not eventually come under the indirect control of the generals, spies, and foreign-service officers it is meant to oversee. Organisations such as WikiLeaks, which are philosophically opposed to state secrecy and which operate as much as is possible outside the global nation-state system, may be the best we can hope for in the way of promoting the climate of transparency and accountability necessary for authentically liberal democracy.
  • FAIR documents how severely and blatantly the New York Times reporting distorted some of these documents in order (as always) to demonize Iran and the "threat" it poses.
  • Ed Webb on 01 Dec 10
     
    Interesting to see Carne (whom I used to work with) making a robust case for greater transparency.
Ed Webb

The Somali Pirates' Business Model | UN Dispatch - 0 views

www.undispatch.com/somali-pirates-buisiness-model

Somalia piracy pirates business UN analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Last week, a group of investigators dispatched by the Security Council to Somalia released an exhaustive, 100 plus page report on arms trafficking, aid diversion, and other criminal activities in Somalia.
  • short explanation of the pirates' business model, tucked away in the report's annex
Ed Webb

Gordon Brown: Reviving the West - 1 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...post_1452_b_798276.html

opinion analysis economy global globalization future economics

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • : a world undergoing a far-reaching, irreversible, and, indeed, unprecedented restructuring of economic power.
  • Western economic dominance -- 10 percent of the world's population producing a majority of the world's exports and investment -- is finished, never to return. After two centuries in which Europe and America monopolized global economic activity, the West is now being out-produced, out-manufactured, out-traded, and out-invested by the rest of the world.
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