Monday Reads
Posted: November 22, 2010 Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, Human Rights, just because, morning reads | Tags: DADT, GLBT rights, internet freedom of speech, monetary policy, quantitative easing, Web neutrality 88 Comments
Good Morning!
First up is something that is one huge step back for civil rights and humankind. I can’t believe this outrageous motion was adopted by the UN. The US and its allies need to object vigorously.
The UN has removed a reference to sexual orientation from a resolution condemning arbitrary and unjustified executions.
The UN General Assembly resolution, which is renewed every two years, contained a reference opposing the execution of LBGT people in its 2008 version. But this year’s version passed without any reference to gay rights after a group of mostly African and Asian countries, led by Mali and Morocco, voted to remove it.
Gay rights groups fear the move — which passed in a narrow 79 to 70 vote — will act as a signal that persecuting people for their sexual orientation is internationally acceptable.
“This vote is a dangerous and disturbing development,” Cary Alan Johnson, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, said in a statement. “It essentially removes the important recognition of the particular vulnerability faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — a recognition that is crucial at a time when 76 countries around the world criminalize homosexuality, five consider it a capital crime, and countries like Uganda are considering adding the death penalty to their laws criminalizing homosexuality.”
Johnson was referring to a bill introduced in Uganda’s legislature last year that would mandate the death penalty for multiple acts of gay sex or for any gay person carrying HIV. Though the bill appeared to be shelved after an international outcry, its principal supporter said last month the bill would be law “soon.”
Thankfully, we’re moving closer to repealing DADT. The Marines have stated that they stand ready to remove enforcement of the provision. Semper Fi!!!
The head of the U.S. Marine Corps will fully cooperate with a repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring openly gay and lesbian soldiers from the military, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said Sunday.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mullen said there was “no question” that Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos, an opponent of repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy at this time, would implement all necessary changes to allow openly gay Marines to serve if Congress passes a repeal measure.
“He basically said that if this law changes, we are going to implement it, and we are going to implement it better than anybody else,” Mullen said of comments Amos recently made at a townhall-style meeting with Marines.
The U.S. Senate is expected to vote on repealing the policy in coming weeks. The House already has passed a repeal measure, and President Barack Obama says he supports repeal under a process worked out with Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that includes a review of what the change would entail for the military.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on Fox News on Sunday . Clinton told Chris Wallace that she believed the 
‘vast majority’ of Gitmo detainees should be tried in civilian courts.
We do believe that what are called Article Three trials, in other words in our civilian courts, are appropriate for the vast majority of detainees,” Clinton told Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
This week, a civilian trial convicted Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani on one count and acquitted him of more than 280 other counts.
“The question is do you have any choice now except to hold all of the terror detainees at Gitmo or either give them military trials or hold them indefinitely?” Wallace asked Clinton.
“The sentence for what he was convicted of is 20 years to life,” Clinton replied. “That is a significant sentence. Secondly, some of the challenges in the courtroom would be the very same challenges before a military commission about whether or not certain evidence could be used.”
Clinton also appeared on Meet the Press. She expressed reservations about the intrusive pat down procedures adopted by the TSA.
The Secretary of State also branded the procedure as ‘offensive’ and called for officials to make the new airport security measures less intrusive.
Speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation and NBC’s Meet the Press, Mrs Clinton said she recognised the need for tighter security but said there was a need to ‘strike the right balance’ and ‘get it better and less intrusive and more precise.’
When asked if she would submit to a pat-down, she replied ‘Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?’
Mrs Clinton added she understood ‘how offensive it must be’ for passengers forced to endure the measures.
Another economist–Professor James Hamilton–is incensed about that stupid bunny cartoon with it’s outrageous lies on QE. There’s some more take down of the stupid thing on Econbrowser. Hamilton explains why ‘the Goldman Sachs’ is one of the agents used by the Fed when it does Open Market Operations. Basically, it’s the law and this is true if it’s in the name of QE or just regular monetary policy. He also takes down some of the other ones so that I don’t have to do it. He tackles the inflation fallacy as well as the stupid comment about QE being the equivalent of printing money.
Goldman Sachs is one of 16 different dealers from which the Federal Reserve Bank of New York solicits competitive bids. That’s the way it’s been done for a century, and it would be illegal for the Fed to do as the bunnies propose. From U.S. Monetary Policy and Financial Markets, 1998, Chapter 7:
The Federal Reserve makes all additions to its portfolio through purchases of securities that are already outstanding. The Federal Reserve Act [of 1913] does not give the [Federal Reserve] System the authority to purchase new Treasury issues for cash. Over the years, a variety of provisions had permitted the Treasury to borrow limited amounts directly from the Federal Reserve. Options for such loans existed until 1935. Temporary provisions for direct loans were reintroduced in 1942 and renewed with varying restrictions a number of times thereafter. Authority for any kind of direct loans to the Treasury lapsed in 1981 and has not been renewed.
The reason that the Fed has always been required to buy bonds from private dealers rather than the U.S. Treasury is that the process of money creation needs to be institutionally separated from the process of financing the public debt. In fact, the potential blurring of those boundaries is one of the most important legitimate criticisms of quantitative easing.
Another topic that confuses a lot of people is the Social Security Trust Fund. Does it exist or not? John Holbo at Crooked Timber takes on Matt Yglesias and a Planet Money podcast. He explains it in terms of a parent (the government) borrowing a future allowance from a child (Social Security).
If the US government completely and unrecoverably collapses, as a going economic concern, then the Social Security Trust Fund will be bust – and there will be no United States, too! (The latter is the more consequential concern, I should think.)
If the US government falls on seriously hard times, economically, there may need to be belt-tightening. Maybe the US government will have to break the deal it made, not making good on the IOU’s in the Social Security Trust Fund. Likewise, if our family falls on hard times, I may be driven to spend my daughter’s back allowance money on food for our table, in the sense that I may never pay her that money. (Hope not!) But if that happens I won’t describe the logic of the situation in terms of my daughter’s back allowance having turned out not to have been ‘real’, all along. If I don’t pay her, it won’t be because I don’t owe her – nor because that specific money ‘doesn’t exist’, whereas the money to put food on the table ‘does exist’. Talking that way just takes the minor accounting fiction that starts us out, and inflates it into a major fiction.
If the US government doesn’t fall on seriously hard times, but just finds financial life a bit tight – as it often is – the same point applies, only more so.
Scientific American has an important piece up on the Web with an important call for continued Open Standards and Net Neutrality. They also have taken a strong stand against snooping and protecting free speech on the web. You can see in this article just how far ahead our European cousins are in protecting individual rights over corporate rights on the Web and the internet. They even quote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s firm stand on internet freedom.
Free speech should be protected, too. The Web should be like a white sheet of paper: ready to be written on, with no control over what is written. Earlier this year Google accused the Chinese government of hacking into its databases to retrieve the e-mails of dissidents. The alleged break-ins occurred after Google resisted the government’s demand that the company censor certain documents on its Chinese-language search engine.
Totalitarian governments aren’t the only ones violating the network rights of their citizens. In France a law created in 2009, named Hadopi, allowed a new agency by the same name to disconnect a household from the Internet for a year if someone in the household was alleged by a media company to have ripped off music or video. After much opposition, in October the Constitutional Council of France required a judge to review a case before access was revoked, but if approved, the household could be disconnected without due process. In the U.K., the Digital Economy Act, hastily passed in April, allows the government to order an ISP to terminate the Internet connection of anyone who appears on a list of individuals suspected of copyright infringement. In September the U.S. Senate introduced the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which would allow the government to create a blacklist of Web sites—hosted on or off U.S. soil—that are accused of infringement and to pressure or require all ISPs to block access to those sites.
In these cases, no due process of law protects people before they are disconnected or their sites are blocked. Given the many ways the Web is crucial to our lives and our work, disconnection is a form of deprivation of liberty. Looking back to the Magna Carta, we should perhaps now affirm: “No person or organization shall be deprived of the ability to connect to others without due process of law and the presumption of innocence.”
When your network rights are violated, public outcry is crucial. Citizens worldwide objected to China’s demands on Google, so much so that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. government supported Google’s defiance and that Internet freedom—and with it, Web freedom—should become a formal plank in American foreign policy. In October, Finland made broadband access, at 1 Mbps, a legal right for all its citizens.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Saturday Reads
Posted: November 20, 2010 Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, morning reads, The Great Recession | Tags: Alexander Cockburn, Barack Obama, David Sirota, missile shield, NATO, Poverty, Russia, unemployment 52 Comments
Good Morning!!
President Obama has left the country again. He was in Lisbon today for a NATO meeting, at which the organization agreed to build a missile shield, and they hope that Russia will go along with it too.
In general, senior NATO officials note a welcoming Russian tone under President Dmitri A. Medvedev to the idea of cooperation with NATO on missile defense and European security, and they also note the general silence of Mr. Putin, now prime minister.
On Saturday, Russia will be formally invited to take part in the missile defense system, especially with intelligence and radar sharing. Moscow has indicated that it is interested but has questions, and wants to ensure that the system is not aimed at countering Russian missiles.
The missile defense system approved Friday is different from the fixed-missile defense that President George W. Bush initiated and that proved controversial. The idea is to have a phased system of radars and antimissile missiles that would be less expensive than the Bush system. The NATO spokesman, James Appathurai, said the nearly $1.5 billion cost could be managed over 10 years.
Plenty of money for missile defense that probably won’t work, but nothing for the desperate long-term unemployed.
In one of his many bad decisions, President Obama invited Skeltor Alan Simpson back out of obscurity, and we may never get rid of him. With his latest pronouncement, he has moved way beyond inappropriate to sociopathic.
He predicted a government that approaches shutdown in April of next year.
“This is going to be beautiful politics – The brutal kind,” he told reporters in Washington at a forum put on by the Christian Science Monitor. “I love those,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye and a jokester tinge to his voice.
“The debt limit, when it comes in April or May, will prove who’s a hero and who’s a jerk and who’s a charlatan and who’s a faqir,” said Simpson. “And there it will be right there. Because they’re going to say, these new guys, some of them, and I’ve met a good deal of them and boy they’re sharp cookies,” he said, adding a message to new Congressmen.
“Compromise is not a filthy word,” said Simpson. “It doesn’t mean you’re a wimp when you learn to compromise. You either learn to compromise and legislate or go home – my personal view – anyway there they are and they’re going to say I will not vote for the debt limit extension until you cut this. Say, you can’t do that. you can’t possibly do that. well, then I’m not voting for it. and they’ll say well the government will close. Which they’ll say that’s what I came here for. Oh, I can’t wait. It’ll be something and I’ll be watching.”
You can watch it at the Christian Science Monitor site.
If only there really were a hell so Alan Simpson could spend eternity there.
Ezra Klein is thinking along the same lines as Simpson, but makes more of an effort to sound reasonable. He says Democrats should trade an extension of the Bush tax cuts to the rich for Republican votes to extend unemployment benefits and increase the debt ceiling when the time comes.
Ezra must have learned bargaining strategy from that great bipartisan choker compromiser Barack Obama.
Elsewhere in The Washington Post is the story of “one family’s plunge from the middle class into poverty.”
Walker used to make $100,000 a year as a nursing home executive until she lost her job a year and a half ago. Unable to find a new one, she shed her business suits and high heels and put on an apron and soft-soled shoes. This year, she and her daughter are living on $11,000: her unemployment benefits plus whatever she can earn selling home-cooked dinners for $10 apiece….
The Census Bureau recently reported that the poverty rate in the United States rose to 14.3 percent last year, the highest level in more than 50 years.
Texas and Florida saw the most people fall below the line. In Florida alone, 323,000 people became newly poor last year, bringing the state’s poverty total to 2.7 million.
The numbers tell another tale as well: Nationwide, in black households such as Walker’s, income plunged an average of 4.4 percent in 2009, almost three times the drop among whites. The number of blacks living below the official poverty line – $21,756 for a family of four – increased by 7 percent in just one year.
Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the Catfood Commission, should be forced to read this article, memorize it, and then write on a blackboard 1,000 times, “I am a damn fool who knows nothing about economics.”
At Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn thinks “it’s time for a real mutiny.”
So much for 2010 as the year of mutiny, when the American people rose up and said, “Enough! Throw the bums out!” As the dust finally clears after the midterm elections, and the bodies are hauled from the field of battle, guess what? It was all so predictable. The safest thing to be in 2010 was an incumbent.
Out of 435 seats, 351 incumbents will be returning to the House in January. In the Senate, out of 100 seats, 77 incumbents will return in January. As the libertarian Joel Hirschorn puts it, “Welcome back to the reality of America’s delusional democracy where career politicians will continue to foster a corrupt, inefficient and dysfunctional government because that is what the two-party plutocracy and its supporters want for their own selfish reasons.”
What will Dear Leader do next?
Already there are the omens of a steady stream of concessions by Obama to the right.
There’s hardly any countervailing pressure for him to do otherwise. The president has no fixed principles of political economy, and who is at his elbow in the White House? Not the Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis. Not that splendid radical Elizabeth Warren, whose Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the Republicans are already scheduling for destruction. Next to Obama is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the bankers’ lapdog, whom the president holds in high esteem….
Two more years, of the same downward slide, courtesy of bipartisanship and “working together”? No way. Enough of dreary predictability. Let’s have a real mutiny against Obamian rightward drift. The time is not six months or a year down the road. The time is now.
But who will lead the charge?
Dakinikat turned me on to this article about Obama’s Asian trip: Asia After Obama, by Brahma Chellaney
Significantly, Obama restricted his tour to Asia’s leading democracies – India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea – which surround China and are central to managing its rise. Yet he spent all of last year assiduously courting the government in Beijing in the hope that he could make China a global partner on issues ranging from climate change to trade and financial regulation. The catchphrase coined by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg in relation to China, “strategic reassurance,” actually signaled America’s intent to be more accommodating toward China’s ambitions.
Now, with his China strategy falling apart, Obama is seeking to do exactly what his predecessor attempted – to line up partners as an insurance policy in case China’s rising power slides into arrogance. Other players on the grand chessboard of Asian geopolitics also are seeking to formulate new equations, as they concurrently pursue strategies of hedging, balancing, and bandwagoning.
Once again, Obama plays the role of Bush III.
At Truthdig, I learned that David Sirota has found a new hero to replace his now tarnished idol Barack Obama. These days Sirota is bragging about hanging with cut rate Rolling Stone gonzo writer Matt Taibbi.
Sirota reminds me of that little dog Chester in the Looney Tunes cartoons–the one that idolizes the big bulldog Spike. Chester jumps around Butch, trying to get his attention, praising him, agreeing with him; and when Spike brushes him aside, he just keeps coming back for more. Sirota:
Over drinks in my living room, Taibbi and I pondered the financial Masters of the Universe and their maddening infallibility. I asked him why they never fear facing legal consequences. Do they believe they’re untouchable? Or do they know law enforcement won’t pursue them?
“They’re not afraid because other than Bernie Madoff, when was the last time someone on Wall Street faced any real punishment?” he responded. “Sure, a few go to jail once in a while, but they’re usually out in a few months and then on the speaking circuit. That’s not exactly a deterrent against bad behavior that’s making you millions.”
Deterrence—it’s the vaunted idea behind “tough on crime” sentences for violent offenses. Lock the door, throw away the key, and the theory says that heinous acts will be prevented.
Duh! I think Sirota wrote this piece just so everyone would know he’s pals with Taibbi.
Since it’s Saturday Morning….
What’s on your reading menu this morning?
Some Things are too Important to be left to the Market
Posted: September 2, 2009 Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, Surreality | Tags: Afghanistan, ArmorGroup, Blackwater Security Firm, Mercenaries, Pentagon jobbers Comments Off on Some Things are too Important to be left to the Market
Guys GONE WILD!!!! http://www.mahalo.com/armorgroup-hazing (Your tax dollars at work).
I always have to give this lecture near the beginning of my class when we talk about why some markets work well without government interference, and others, well, they require government interference. How would you feel, as an example, about letting our uranium supplies go to the highest bidder in a completely unregulated market? Does that strike you as a good idea? I can’t imagine any responsible American citizen arguing for that position. That’s a pretty unsubtle example but there are more. I’ve found any story that talks about farming out other stuff related to national security (rampant in the Rumsfeld Doctrine) usually puts me in a no-way frame of mine. Really, some things are just too important to be left to the profit motive.
So, here’s the three headlines and they all belong to stories concerning the State Department and the Pentagon. ABC news reports in a exclusive story that the Controversial Blackwater Security Firm Gets Iraq Contract Extended by State Dept;Company Banned From Operating by Iraqi Government Earlier This Year. I read that story right after I read this one in Politico entitled ‘Lord of the Flies’ in Kabul. I then went to the LA Times to skim U.S. to boost combat force in Afghanistan where I found the following lead paragraph.
Support units will be replaced by up to 14,000 ‘trigger-pullers,’ and noncombat posts will be contracted out, Defense officials say. The swap will allow the U.S. to keep its troop level unchanged.
Didn’t we replace Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush or did I miss something? What is going to get contracted out to the lowest
bidder looking for high profits? What costs are they going to cut to provide something resembling “service”? What service will that be?
Let me just backtrack to that Lord of the Files article a moment.
About 10 percent of the 150 English-speaking guards employed at the embassy by ArmorGroup, a private security company headquartered in Britain and Florida, approached the Project on Government Oversight and described “a pervasive breakdown in the chain of command and guard force discipline and morale,” according a letter sent to Clinton by executive director Danielle Brian.
An e-mail from one of the guards described parties on days off, during which guards and their supervisors urinated on themselves and others and ate potato chips and drank vodka from the cracks of buttocks.
“You will see that they have a group of sexual predators, deviants, running rampant over there,” one guard, whose name was withheld, said in an e-mail to POGO, adding, “They are showing poor judgment.”
Pictures accompanying POGO’s letter corroborate at least some of the allegations. The e-mail and photographs were given to reporters by POGO.
Stealing Home
Posted: June 13, 2009 Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, Human Rights | Tags: Aung San Suu Kyi, Benazir Bhutto, Iranian Elections, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mynamar, Pakistan, Zhara Rahnavard Comments Off on Stealing Home
Any one of a certain age that attended university pre-Iranian revolution had many, many Iranian friends. I certainly did. After the revolution, many disappeared for reasons I never new. Since the hostage taking at the end of the Carter years, we now only hear disappointing things about life for the people of that country and it makes me sad. They may not have wanted to be party to the excesses of the peacock throne, but they did not deserve the poverty and intolerance that followed the overthrow. Today’s election steals more of their home.
Opposition leader Mir Houssain Musavi speaks in an open letter to the people of Iran(H/T to BB),
In the Name of God
Honorable people of Iran
The reported results of the 10th Iranians residential Election are appalling. The people who witnessed the mixture of votes in long lineups know who they have voted for and observe the wizardry of I.R.I.B (State run TV and Radio) and election officials. Now more than ever before they want to know how and by which officials this game plan has been designed. I object fully to the current procedures and obvious and abundant deviations from law on the day of election and alert people to not surrender to this dangerous plot. Dishonesty and corruption of officials as we have seen will only result in weakening the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran and empowers lies and dictatorships.
I am obliged, due to my religious and national duties, to expose this dangerous plot and to explain its devastating effects on the future of Iran. I am concerned that the continuation of the current situation will transform all key members of this regime into fabulists in confrontation with the nation and seriously jeopardize them in this world and the next.
I advise all officials to halt this agenda at once before it is too late, return to the rule of law and protect the nation’s vote and know that deviation from law renders them illegitimate. They are aware better than anyone else that this country has been through a grand Islamic revolution and the least message of this revolution is that our nation is alert and will oppose anyone who aims to seize the power against the law.
I use this chance to honor the emotions of the nation of Iran and remind them that Iran, this sacred being, belongs to them and not to the fraudulent. It is you who should stay alert. The traitors to the nation’s vote have no fear if this house of Persians burns in flames. We will continue with our green wave of rationality that is inspired by our religious leanings and our love for prophet Mohammad and will confront the rampage of lies that has appeared and marked the image of our nation. However we will not allow our movement to become blind one.
I thank every citizen who took part in spreading this green message by becoming a campaigner and all official and self organized campaigns, I insist that their presence is essential until we achieve results deserving of our country.
[ verse from in Quran: Why not trust in God, who has shown us our ways. We are patient in face of what disturbs us. Our resilience is in God. ]
Mir Hossein Mousavi
Shorting Bermuda
Posted: June 13, 2009 Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, Team Obama | Tags: Bermuda, Guantanamo deal, Uighers 1 Comment
I admit to being an over-the-top anglophile, so I’ll just announce that bias right now. From the moment I read my first Shakespeare play and met my grandfather’s British cousins, I swooned. I have two majors as an undergrad, one of them is history, and it was English History. I started hooking into rock and roll as a tot right at the time of the Beatles and the British invasion. My first big film crush was James Bond and Scotsman Sean Connery. I think I’ve mentioned here before, that as a kid, I wanted to be Emma Peel. My dad still tells me of his time in the US Army Air Force when he was located in Ipswich and he and his flight crew would hit London for a much needed break from bombing Germany and I still get goosebumps to this day.
Yanks and Brits have this special relationship that has been forged in blood, family feuds, language and law. We are kidding ourselves if we don’t think that a major portion of every thing we’ve ever done is a direct product of the English enlightenment and the Magna Carta. We are their hippy offspring and while we don’t have to agree with everything that say and do, we at least should show some respect. (Respect, to me, does not include leaving someone out of the loop to protect them. That is the very definition of arrogant patronization to me.)
In less than 4 months, we have not only snubbed the UK four times in some fashion, we have now left them completely out of a negotiation that directly impacts them can only be characterized as steps in a remake of our special relation. This is especially true in light of the recent protocol gaffes. I was really appalled by the shabby treatment by POTUS and the administration shown to PM Gordan Brown and his family on their visit to the White House. The gifts were tacky and the lack of a formal news conference was embarrassing. It got passed off as a young, inexperienced administration blunder and I tried to give every one the benefit of the doubt. Upon, a visit by POTUS to London for the G-20, we had a second round of tacky gifts and some complete disregard for protocol surrounding royalty. (At least the British royalty, the Saudi royalty got more than any one anticipated).Then, we had the misunderstanding surrounding the disenfranchisement of Her Royal Highness, the only surviving head of state to have been an active member of an Allied Service during World War 2 that was said to be a combined misunderstanding between Brown (who is a bit of a bumbler), Sarkozy (French, nothing else to add there), and Obama (wtf? Isn’t he briefed on these things?).
Now, the BBC reports that the US ‘kept Guantanamo deal from UK’. We have now gone from a series of protocol and diplomatic blunders and missteps to something that, I’m sure, will be seen by many in Parliament as a re-working of the Anglo-American Alliance.
A senior US official has told the BBC Washington decided not to tell London ahead of time about a deal to resettle four Guantanamo detainees in Bermuda.
A diplomatic row blew up over Bermuda’s decision to accept the four Chinese Muslim Uighurs on a US request.
Bermuda is a British overseas territory but the US official said Washington had acted secretly to ensure success.
Meanwhile the US said on Friday three Saudis at Guantanamo Bay had been transferred back to Saudi Arabia.
The transfers are part of US President Barack Obama’s strategy to close down the Guantanamo detention centre before next January.
Hostility
The unnamed senior official also told the BBC that Washington was attempting to shield the UK from Chinese anger.
Beijing has demanded the return to China of all 17 Uighurs held by US forces but Washington says they could face persecution in China.
Hiding things that could potentially create a rift between huge, powerful countries is just about as arrogant of a policy of anything I’ve heard coming down the pipe. Exactly what is every the UK, China, and the Bermuda parliament supposed to do now? I’m not saying placing the Uighurs in a less prison-like atmosphere and protecting them from prosecution in China isn’t a laudable idea. I’m saying doing a run around diplomacy is a chicken shit move I would expect from a Cheney administration. I thought per campaign pledges we were supposed to diplomacy differently now?
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