All governments deny their crimes, and most are understanding of each other's lies about them. Bush and Blair, with still more blood [than Putin] on their hands –– in all probability, that of over half a million Iraqis –– observe these precepts as automatically as Putin.
But there is a difference that sets Putin apart from his fellow rulers in the G8, indeed from virtually any government in the world.
On the evidence of comparative opinion polls, he is the most popular national leader alive today.
Since he came to power six years ago, he has enjoyed the continuous support of over 70 per cent of his people, a record no other contemporary politician begins to approach. For comparison, Chirac now has an approval rating of 38 per cent, Bush of 36 per cent, Blair of 30 per cent.
Critic of the KGB Is Shot Outside His Home -- In Maryland
Topic: Politics and Law
9:13 am EST, Mar 4, 2007
A few hours after meeting a former KGB general outside a spy museum here, an outspoken critic of the Kremlin became engulfed in the kind of intrigue he studies when he was shot Thursday outside his suburban Maryland home.
The shooting occurred four days after the critic, Paul M. Joyal, warned on “Dateline NBC,” the television news magazine, that a “message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: ‘If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you and we will silence you in the most horrible way possible.”
Mr. Kasparov had handed the bullhorn to Sergey V. Gulayev, a member of an opposition faction in the local legislature in St. Petersburg.
“The government is afraid of the slightest wind,” Mr. Gulayev he told the crowd. “The government is fragile, and afraid, and will collapse with one push.”
As he spoke, riot police shoved through the crowd and grabbed the bullhorn from his hands, smashing it against the wall of a building. A policeman put Mr. Gulayev, grimacing, in a headlock and dragged him into a police vehicle as members of the crowd yelled “Shame! Shame!”
"No one on earth knows what will happen next year," Erofeyev concludes, referring to the Russian presidential race. "Even Putin doesn't know. But there are possibilities for better, not only for worse."
... "It's like always in Russia," he says in halting English. "You are like a monarch. No changes."
... "Time will tell us what will happen," he advises. "My old mother used to say we need three generations, because we lost three generations."
Starting February 18, Fox News will offer what some are calling "The Daily Show for conservatives". The man behind the show is "24" creator Joel Surnow; he rejects the Daily Show comparison, instead calling it "more in the spirit of the old and rebellious 'Saturday Night Live'."
The Politics of the Man Behind '24' | The New Yorker
Topic: Politics and Law
12:30 am EST, Feb 14, 2007
What Would Jack Do?
“24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors —— cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”
Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, “Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted.” Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: “Whatever it takes.” His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”
Thus far, our biggest deficit in waging the War on Terror has been a lack of ideas—the kind of reshaping ideas that Viner, Brodie, Schelling, and others developed to cope with the emergence of the nuclear threat during the Cold War. We must reconceptualize terrorism, warfare, and the aim of the war that we seek in victory before the notion of "winning a war against terror” can make any sense. We must understand that the struggle against terror is really three wars: there is the war against twenty-first-century terrorism—global, networked, outsourcing of operations—there is the effort to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction for the purposes of compelling rather than deterring, and finally there is the struggle to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing. These separate wars exist in relation to one another in a very complex way. Progress in one dimension tends to exacerbate the difficulties in other dimensions. This imposes on the United States a kind of triage of terror: we must address the most acute problems first, knowing that doing so will make other problems worse off, and we must have the flexibility to attack those other problems when they themselves become acute, with the sure knowledge that doing so will make the initial problem addressed worse also.
As for the tax increases on those “gold plated” health policies, the White House is hoping to discourage people from using high-priced comprehensive health policies that cover everything from routine office visits to costly diagnostic procedures that are not always necessary.
The administration’s goal is to instead encourage people to take out policies that might reduce the use of medical services, like policies with high deductibles or co-payments, or managed care plans. But even “copper plated” policies can exceed $15,000 in cost if they are issued in areas where medical prices are high or to groups with high numbers of older or chronically ill workers.
A president once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” Now it seems like we’re supposed to be afraid It’s patriotic in fact and color coded And what are we supposed to be afraid of? Why, of being afraid That’s what terror means, doesn’t it? That’s what it used to mean
The end of an empire is messy at best And this empire is ending Like all the rest Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea We’re adrift in the land of the brave And the home of the free Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
