Quotulatiousness

August 11, 2013

The Fort Hood court-martial

Filed under: Law, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Mark Steyn on the trial of Major Hasan for “workplace violence”:

On December 7, 1941, the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor was attacked. Three years, eight months, and eight days later, the Japanese surrendered. These days, America’s military moves at a more leisurely pace. On November 5, 2009, another U.S. base, Fort Hood, was attacked — by one man standing on a table, screaming “Allahu akbar!” and opening fire. Three years, nine months, and one day later, his court-martial finally got under way.

[…]

He’s admirably upfront about who and what he is — a “Soldier of Allah,” as he put on his business card. On Tuesday, he admitted he was a traitor who had crossed over from “the bad side” (America’s) to “the good side” (Islam’s). He has renounced his U.S. citizenship and its effete protections such as workplace-violence disability leave. He professes loyalty to America’s enemies. He says, “I am the shooter.” He helpfully informs us that that’s his gun. In this week’s one-minute statement, he spoke more honestly and made more sense than Obama, Gates, Casey, the Armed Forces Court of Appeals, two judges, the prosecution and defense lawyers, and mountains of bureaucratic reports and media coverage put together.

But poor old Hasan can say “Yup, I did it” all he wants; what does he know?

Unlike the Zimmerman trial, Major Hasan’s has not excited the attention of the media. Yet it is far more symbolic of the state of America than the Trayvon Martin case, in which superannuated race hucksters attempted to impose a half-century-old moth-eaten Klan hood on a guy who’s a virtual one-man melting pot. The response to Nidal Hasan helps explain why, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, this war is being lost — because it cannot be won because, increasingly, it cannot even be acknowledged. Which helps explain why it now takes the U.S. military longer to prosecute a case of “workplace violence” than it did to win World War Two.

Speculations on why Lavabit went dark

Filed under: Business, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:40

In The New Yorker, Michael Phillips tries to outline the legal picture around the Lavabit shutdown:

In mid-July, Tanya Lokshina, the deputy director for Human Rights Watch’s Moscow office, wrote on her Facebook wall that she had received an e-mail from edsnowden@lavabit.com. It requested that she attend a press conference at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport to discuss the N.S.A. leaker’s “situation.” This was the wider public’s introduction to Lavabit, an e-mail service prized for its security. Lavabit promised, for instance, that messages stored on the service using asymmetric encryption, which encrypts incoming e-mails before they’re saved on Lavabit’s servers, could not even be read by Lavabit itself.

Yesterday, Lavabit went dark. In a cryptic statement posted on the Web site, the service’s owner and operator, Ladar Levison, wrote, “I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.” Those experiences led him to shut down the service rather than, as he put it, “become complicit in crimes against the American people.” Lavabit users reacted with consumer vitriol on the company’s Facebook page (“What about our emails?”), but the tide quickly turned toward government critique. By the end of the night, a similar service, Silent Circle, also shut down its encrypted e-mail product, calling the Lavabit affair the “writing [on] the wall.”

Which secret surveillance scheme is involved in the Lavabit case? The company may have received a national-security letter, which is a demand issued by a federal agency (typically the F.B.I.) that the recipient turn over data about other individuals. These letters often forbid recipients from discussing it with anyone. Another possibility is that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court may have issued a warrant ordering Lavabit to participate in ongoing e-mail surveillance. We can’t be completely sure: as Judge Reggie Walton, the presiding judge of the FISA court, explained to Senator Patrick Leahy in a letter dated July 29th, FISA proceedings, decisions, and legal rationales are typically secret. America’s surveillance programs are secret, as are the court proceedings that enable them and the legal rationales that justify them; informed dissents, like those by Levison or Senator Ron Wyden, must be kept secret. The reasons for all this secrecy are also secret. That some of the secrets are out has not deterred the Obama Administration from prosecuting leakers under the Espionage Act for disclosure of classified information. Call it meta-secrecy.

NSA wiretapping PSA

Filed under: Humour, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

Trevor Moore (Whitest Kids U’ Know) tells us what we can do about the NSA wiretapping our phones.

Debunking the “Cameron’s gunboat diplomacy” meme

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Sir Humphrey points out that the British media’s collective gasp about Royal Navy ships being sent to Gibraltar merely highlights what a slow news month it is:

It’s an amusing irony that the recent row in Gibraltar has suddenly given the Royal Navy more publicity about its forthcoming COUGAR deployment in one evening, than it may have got in several months of deployment. The news that the Response Force Task Group (RFTG) is deploying to the Med has been seen as a clear example of gunboat diplomacy by Fleet Street’s finest, many of whom seem terribly keen on starting a war in order to fill column inches during a slow news month…

Its perhaps worth noting that this deployment is extremely long standing — the sort of planning which goes into deploying a major Task Force will usually commence at around 12 months prior to the event, when the rough outline of a plan is put together on the objectives of the deployment, likely ports, aims and intended outcomes and so on. While maritime power is about flexibility, it’s often forgotten that most RN deployments these days are the end product of months of well co-ordinated planning and staffing to ensure that the UK gets the best possible value from its naval assets.

[…]

What we can perhaps draw from this is that firstly the RN has enjoyed an unexpected boon of coverage, tapping into the nation’s subliminal psyche which holds that sending a grey hull is a key means of solving a crisis, no matter what or where the crisis is. There is perhaps work for some analysts to understand why, almost alone among all major powers, the cries of ‘send a gunboat’ seem to resonate most strongly in the UK (albeit to a lesser extent the same applies with the ‘send a carrier’ debate in the US). While deployments of warships can be seen as a useful indicator of interest in situations, it appears to be held most strongly in the UK — there is, at times, a fervent belief that deploying vessels is akin to the legend of waving the ancient banner three times in order for Arthur and his knights to appear — it makes little practical sense, but is somehow strangely comforting to the people.

Christian Ponder’s light workload in preseason opener

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

For the record, I actually like Judd Zulgad’s view of the Minnesota Vikings (although I’m already missing the wonderful point/counterpoint fencing of Tom Pelissero and Zulgad in their traditional post-game videos). That being said, Judd Zulgad would have to be counted as one of Christian Ponder’s chorus of detractors:

Christian Ponder will have at least one thing going for him as he prepares for the Minnesota Vikings’ second preseason game on Friday night at Buffalo. The third-year quarterback will be extremely well rested.

Ponder played only two snaps in the Vikings’ 27-13 exhibition loss on Friday to Houston at the Metrodome, completing his first pass for 15 yards to Jerome Simpson and then having his second pass intercepted after it was tipped by Simpson.

A check of the NFL game books from the 15 other preseason games that had been played through Friday showed no other quarterback took as few snaps as Ponder.

In fact, the Texans’ Matt Schaub was next on the list, having been under center for six snaps in one series. In games not involving the Vikings, the lightest workload went to the Broncos’ Peyton Manning, who handled seven snaps in a series before being pulled.

There were seven quarterbacks, including Ponder, Schaub and Manning, who were pulled after only one drive. That list included Dallas’ Kyle Orton, who started the Hall of Fame game in place of Tony Romo; San Francisco’s Colin Kaepernick; Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers; and Kansas City’s Alex Smith.

Despite Zulgad’s clear anti-Ponder bias, he’s quite right that Ponder should have been granted at least another series in the first preseason game. I’m not completely convinced that Ponder is the answer to the Vikings’ needs, but he deserved better than being pulled after an incredibly short series. Whether the blame for the interception belongs to Ponder or to Jerome Simpson, I think the coaching staff short-changed Ponder by sticking to the “one series then out” philosophy. There’s the risk of injury in a meaningless game, but there’s also the psychological need to establish whether Ponder has the chops to be the starting quarterback for this team (I have nothing against Matt Cassel, and I’m glad he’s our backup QB, but I want Ponder to be given the opportunity to prove that he’s learned from both the positive and negative aspects of the 2012 season.)

Ponder and the rest of the Vikings first team should see at least a full quarter of action against the Buffalo Bills — which should be available in the Toronto TV-viewing area — in next week’s match-up.

Powered by WordPress