ThinkProgress on Feb 8, 2012 at 9:00 am
* The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command have begun a preliminary reviewof U.S. military options in Syria but U.S. policy, for now, emphasizes the use of non-military options.
* Syria’s economic and diplomatic isolation deepened amid ongoing brutal assaults on anti-government strongholds, with the European Union debating new rounds of sanctions, including on the Syrian central bank, and Persian Gulf states breaking relations by recalling their ambassadors and expelling Syria’s from their countries.
* Turkey seeks to form a international pressure group on Syria as to coordinate policy between regional and world powers following the “fiasco,” as Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called it, at the U.N. after China and Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution on Syria.
* The architect of Egypt’s recent crackdown on U.S.-funded pro-democracy organizations, Faiza Abou el-Naga, is a holdover from the cabinet of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, evidence, her critics say, that elements of Egypt’s old guard are entrenched in the new government and blocking the rise of new political leadership.
* U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai has emerged as an obstacle to U.S. talks with the Taliban aimed at brokering a political resolution to the decade-old war there, objecting, for example, to a Taliban office in Qatar that will likely serve as a point of contact for the U.S.
* Despite the lack of concession from Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, the political crisis in Iraq showed signs of easing as ministers from a large Sunni bloc of Parliament retook their seats, agreeing that one minister charged with crimes should go through the courts.
* Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro said that ispectors searching for shoulder fired missiles that have gone missing after the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi cannot account for thousands of them. “The frank answer is we don’t know and probably never will,” Shapiro said.
* The CIA is expected to maintain a large clandestine presence in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the withdrawal of U.S. troops “as part of a plan by the Obama administration to rely on a combination of spies and Special Operations forces to protect U.S. interests in the two longtime war zones.”
Posted February 13, 2012
President Barack Obama announced several new initiatives to increase travel and tourism to the United States, including an initiative that will increase non-immigrant visa processing capacity in China by 40 percent this year.
Obama’s plan will also increase efforts to expand the United States’ Visa Waiver Program, according to a White House statement. The Secretary of State has formally requested that Taiwan be included in the Visa Waiver Program.
To simplify and speed visa processing in China and Brazil, the Departments of State and Homeland Security have a pilot program that will waive interviews with some very low-risk applicants, and in Brazil, younger or older first-time applicants, said the White House.
The U.S. tourism and travel industry represents 2.7 percent of GDP and 7.5 million jobs in 2010, according to the White House.
”The more folks who visit America, the more Americans we get back to work,” Obama said. “We need to help businesses all across the country grow and create jobs, compete and win.”
International travel, the nation’s largest service export industry, resulted in $134 billion in U.S. exports in 2010, said the White House. Every additional 65 international visitors to the United States can generate enough exports to support a travel and tourism-related job, the statement said.
Loren Thompson, Contributor| Posted January 16, 2012
Thus far, China’s cyber campaign consists mainly of espionage aimed at stealing military secrets and intellectual property. However, Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the Pentagon’s joint Cyber Command established to counter such campaigns, said in November that, “We see a disturbing track from exploitation to disruption to destruction.” Alexander wasn’t talking just about the Chinese, but there’s little doubt among intelligence analysts that Beijing is the biggest and most persistent perpetrator of cyber crimes.
The question is what to do about it. To date, U.S. cyber efforts have been focused mainly on defensive measures, seeking to repel network intruders in a fashion that Alexander likens to the famously failed Maginot Line. The National Security Agency and other U.S. security organizations are known to have developed their own network-attack capabilities, but former White House cyber-security advisor Richard Clarke has warned that it would be dangerous for the U.S. to step up its own campaign against Chinese networks while U.S. safeguards against retaliation are so weak.
Under the leadership of a few forward-thinking policymakers such as former Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn, the Department of Defense and intelligence community have greatly strengthened their information defenses and begun helping industry to protect critical infrastructure. But insiders say the asymmetries between U.S. and Chinese society make it hard to cope with China’s cyber onslaught. Not only is America a much more open and porous place, but U.S. agencies and private companies have a lot more information that’s worth
stealing.
The U.S. is also well ahead of most other countries in moving both its security apparatus and commercial economy onto the Internet, which was not designed with security in mind. Cyber experts say that Internet operations are intrinsically vulnerable to attacks by the kind of highly-skilled agents that China’s government employs, a problem that may be exacerbated as economic forces pressure federal agencies and corporations to outsource information resources to “the cloud.” Not only is it easy to conceal the source of cyber attacks, but
the Internet crisscrosses political boundaries in a manner that greatly diminished the effectiveness of traditional law-enforcement techniques. As one former intelligence official told me, “If I think China is attacking me but it’s using the server for the Chicago municipal hospital system, what am I supposed to do – take down the server?”
Beyond issues of attribution and extraterritoriality, there is the simple reality that digital technology permits the compression of vast amounts of information into brief bursts of computer code. U.S. officials speak of “terabytes” of information being stolen before intrusion was noticed, without any indication of where it went or how it might be exploited. And while there is seldom a “smoking gun” that points to a particular Chinese perpetrator, it’s hard not to draw the obvious conclusion from the way the volume of cyber attacks drops off during the Chinese New Year holiday.
By Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times
Published: Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2012 10:57 p.m. MST
LOS ANGELES — A major expansion of the Panama Canal is raising alarms on the West Coast, where business, labor and public officials are warning that the project threatens to dent the region’s role in international trade.
The $5.25 billion project will make the canal wider and deeper, allowing huge freighters from Asia to bypass West Coast ports and head straight to terminals on the Gulf Coast and East Coast.
The neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which together handle about 40 percent of the nation’s imported Asian goods, could lose as much as a quarter of their cargo business by some estimates after the Panama expansion is completed in 2014.
The ports, neighboring towns and railroads have launched improvement projects aimed at keeping them competitive. One proposed project, for instance, would speed the loading of cargo onto trains; others eliminate bottlenecks or increase capacity so that the ports remain alluring to importers.
But a coalition of business, labor and government contends that these efforts are jeopardized by opposition from some residents, environmental groups and others.
Two members of the Long Beach City Council, for example, sought to block the construction of a new railroad freight complex near the ports, saying it would increase pollution and force small businesses to relocate.
The coalition, which calls itself the Jobs 1st Alliance, says the rail and other projects are crucial if Southern California hopes to keep its place as a center for international trade. Directly and indirectly, economists say, cargo movement employs more than 500,000 people in the region
“To protect these jobs, we need to get these projects completed,” said Wally Baker, president of the alliance and a former executive with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., a jobs promotion group.
“But every time it looks as though progress is being made, someone tries to move the finish line.”
The coalition has launched a campaign called Beat the Canal, using Facebook and a website (BeatTheCanal.com), and plans to act as an advocate for specific projects, pushing for faster action and fighting against environmental and other reviews that become excessive, Baker said.
One of those on board is Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
“We’re trying to put the point across that business and government and labor need to be on the same page,” she said. “We need to work together and recognize the ports for their broader importance to the economy of Southern California.”
Few places host a system as complex as the Southern California seaports and the vast regional network of truck routes, rail lines, bridges, freeways and warehouses that serve it. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the biggest U.S. port complex and the world’s sixth-busiest harbor.
The Jobs 1st Alliance fears that the ports could lose as many as 100,000 jobs when the Panama Canal overhaul allows much larger ships to bypass California.
“Worst case, there could be a 25 percent diversion from Los Angeles-Long Beach,” said Paul Bingham, the group’s chief economist. “That’s upwards of 3 million cargo containers. That’s a lot of dockworkers who don’t get work, truckers with less to haul and trains that don’t run.” http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700212147/Changes-to-Panama-Canal-could-alter-trade.html
But even if the intent of the legislation would leave the civil liberties of an overwhelming majority of Americans untouched, the checks and balances are inadequate. Even if we accept McCarthy’s analysis of the McCain-Levin agreement in full, we have to assume a.) that the government will never make a mistake and b.) the government will never abuse its power. These are not very tenable assumptions, which is why the Founding Fathers were wise not to make them.
The law-enforcement paradigm may not always be ideal for dealing with terrorism. But conservatives need to grapple with the civil liberties implications of having a war with no battlefield and no identifiable end date. Their need to be safeguards to ensure that policies designed to detain or kill terrorists do not detain or kill innocent American citizens.
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/12/01/liberty-and-national-security