Sahwa comes to Sadr City

Will it take?

Once again, seems to be more about money then ideology.

The Chinese and (non)environmentalism

A few articles on the toll China's rise is taking on it's environment.

China consuming twice what it can support.

Yellow River pollution.

Struggling (that is an understatement) to tackle pollution.

Choking on pollution.

Pollution kills 10,000 a year in Southern China.

More from The NYT on the issue.

Someone needs to translate and widely distribute that Toho classic, Godzilla v. The Smog Monster. Giant radioactive hero dinosaur versus space alien pollution eating monster. How could it not change people's minds? I know Godzilla v. Megalon made me afraid of giant Cockroachs that can shoot lightning from it's horn and self-aware robots capable of changing sizes.

Interesting Thesis

Compare Indonesian counter-terror and police operations (which appear to be quite effective and well within the bounds of human decency) to Egyptian counter-terror and police operations (which are not as effective and frequently stray from acceptable practices).

A house of Tribes for Iraq?

It would be just another form of Consociationalism. While it might have short term benefits, there is no way to predict how Iraqi society will change and grow. Look at Lebanon, it's the definitive example of a consociationalist government. Which lead to civil war and ethnic strife. I am not saying that is it bound to happen, but demographic shifts are very tough to predict. It would be fixing Iraq in a moment in time that could stunt it's political growth.

How would the House of Tribes be set up though? That's where some flexibility might come in, if it is designed to mirror Iraqi society after, say, decennial censuses it could be very effective. But it would seem to be a stretch that all the Tribes (over 1000 according to the author) could all come together and agree.

Besides, if Tribal affiliations are so strong, they will come through in general elections. Much like religious sect came to the fore in the last election, Tribes are a natural outlet for the vote. Can you say that the Sahwa movements wont garner a lot of the vote in the upcoming elections? Of course they will. And they are largely based on Tribal affiliations.

However, one of the hopeful changes in Iraq is the weakening of Tribal affiliations and moving towards are more open and trusting society. When under a dictator people tend to consolidate into their 'least common denominator' which is family. A Tribe is a large extended family. Countries like Egypt, which have been under authoritarian rule for decades have developed concurrent support structures within the population. The State is the primary support structure, but it can never grow large enough to accommodate the entire population, it is by definition finite with an even greater demand. A Tribe on the other hand is by definition proportional to the demand placed upon it. It can support it's members that need it, while not perfectly it is a much better alternative to relying upon the state. However, as societies open and people begin to trust one another, the family and tribe become less important as support structures. There is a movement towards the 'most common denominator', i.e. some sort of national identity. Societal transaction costs are lessened, and more opportunities present themselves. Tribes still remain important on some level, but their impact is lessened. I am thinking of America and Europe as examples.

Of course there is no telling how deeply tribal societies will react to such an opening.

Medical pot push back?

I suppose properly regulated there would not be these kinds of problems.

I do not know for sure though. Pot is apparently easy to grow on your own, unlike tobacco and brewing beer. So it will spread fast wherever and whenever it is legalized in any.

But so much pot on the market would drive prices down, making pot a less lucrative source.

Maybe?

It would be funny if it were not so sad

Zimbabwe vote fair claims government.

What is Tim Donaghy overseeing the vote?

Also see South African government commentary on Zimbabwe.

"We can only say the mediation has failed if we reach a situation where Zimbabwe totally gets engulfed in a state of civil war."

Real nice.

Climate change and insurgency

Drought taking out farmers and may make them more likely to join the Iraqi insurgency.

Other areas where farming is important with weak states could fall prey to something similar.

There was more I wanted to say, but I forgot. I'll finish it later.

Those darn Wahhabi-Salifis and their internets

Hacking into nuke plant computers and making them explode?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the computers that monitor the reactor probably do not have internet access.

Now, the power grid? Sure, that's more believable.

Illinois, taking it to Countrywide

Looks like some kind of Fraud charges. As a 1L I really have no idea. But damages points us to Civil, probably no punative damages since it's the state suing and they are seeking recision or restructuring of about 4 years worth of loans.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

And I'm glad to see the States trying to take care of business.

Oh, the things those search algorithms will find!

Toss the data into a machine, let a computer mull it over then interpret the results.

From there I suppose you'd have do some more hypothesizing to confirm the results, but still the scientific method may be getting more boring.

But more informative?

US interests section in Tehran?

Bush is thinking about it.

Diplomacy? Iran? Bush?

The world is coming unhinged.

China is getting on board

Raising energy prices.

It's important, as China is the largest growing market both for oil consumption and green house gas emissions. Any attempt by the Chinese to 'unsubsidize' energy prices will drop their consumption rates in the county.

Which is a good thing. Frees up space in the market for prices to go down, and slows green house gasses, and allows the Chinese government to free up domestic cash to go other needed places. However, there could be some political backlash.

Good for Yucca, bad for GNEP

Glad there's movement on the waste disposal front.

GO Yucca! Now the bill has to make it past the fearsome Harry Reid. If he's got teeth on anything, it's Yucca.

I am sad to see that GNEP is getting the shaft. I wonder if the boneheads in Congress realize reprocessing is a form of waste disposal.

Side note: Turning all cars from gas to electric: 70% reduction in gas consumption and 17% increase in electricity.

A very interesting question indeed

What does constitute an act of Cyber War?

Proportionality would be key.

Obviously a attempted (or even a successful) hack into sensitive systems would not be grounds for a real world attack. However it would surely be enough to engage cyber world countermeasures. i.e. stopping the intrusion, or if it did gather information, tracking it back its source and destroying the info if possible.

I would say the only way for a real world strike to be ordered would be signs that the cyber level attack was targeting systems meant to defend against or detect an attack or an all out coordinated attack on vulnerable systems.

Definitely an interesting question.

Hydrogen car production line?

I had no idea any company was close to producing a whole production line of hydrogen cars.

Will it spark the Govenator to focus on hydrogen infrastructure?

How far is Sadr gone?

You go away for one day, and you get so far behind. Such is the life of a 1L I suppose.

Sadr is going to demobilize most of his militia to focus on social work, while creating a new cell to attack Coalition forces and boycotting election?

Alright, Maliki's government is getting more and more competent, and it is leading the way in opposing the 58 base (!) status of forces agreement with the US.

Is Sadr's base of support gone? He was predicated on being a 'nationalist' non-US stooge. It looks more like Maliki is breaking out of the stooge mode and into the nationalist mode. So Sadr's claim to fame if you will is slowly eroding. He will need to re-tool his group's focus. Especially after the military set-backs and lack of credibility issues that have developed over the last year that have been chronicled here and even better elsewhere.

So shifting to a more social focus could be successful. If he cannot fight to gain support, he might as well buy it with social programs. Shamelessly adopting the well known grassroots tactics of Hezbollah, Hamas and any other organization seeking to gain favor with a population base throughout history. However, all of these groups have one thing in common, they are focusing on social projects to gain political support.

With Sadr backing out of the political process he is leaving himself exposed. No cabinet ministers, no seats in the legislature and JAM will be at the mercy of the US and whatever forces are controlling the Iraqi government (which is the Sunni's participate in force will be even more hostile to a Shia militia developing capacity in parallel with the state).

Unless, as Dr. iRak at Abu Muqawama does a better job of explaining he aims to play some sort of in-out game with the government.

However,it does not look like JAM has been gaining much traction with the populace anymore. Now that JAM is threatening development and peace in areas the group is no longer in... it's not looking good. As The Long War Journal points out: "As Sadr calls for attacks against Coalition forces, his planned weekly protests against the current negotiations over the proposed status of forces have drawn fewer protesters each week, according to numbers compiled by the US military." If JAM cannot attract people to protests directly concerning issues of Iraqi national sovereignty, then what could he attract them for?

Granted, Sadr still has the support of Iran, to some degree in some places, so that will make him dangerous. JAM focusing attacks on Coalition forces will also reduce the groups negative footprints on the population and increase Iranian support for his group.

Is he finding a safe niche to run to until he can emerge?

Falling behind

While the US is 'exploring' ways to handle nuclear waste while the politicians bemoan the lack of a acceptable waste disposal system, other countries are headed along the path to providing themselves and anyone willing to pay with an acceptable option.

Serious about climate change? I guess we're not.

UPDATE:
Only 30 million? Come on. We really are not serious.

ExxonMobil not profitable?

Their gas station business is not. So they are selling it.

Are we headed to a place where the only gas stations will be those attached to business who make their money not on gas sales, i.e. Kroger, Wal Mart and the like.

Still interesting that company making more money then God is jettisoning it's 'unprofitable' aspects.

TV shaping the collective unconscious

From Brazil. Domestic soap operas changed the family structure?

Interesting.

I suppose all it takes is changing the collective view of what a family 'should' be.

There are no hard an set rules to social issues. They largely grow out of tradition and the 'collective un-conscious' of a society. Presenting a different take that is absorbed by people should be all you need to do to change it. Inundate popular culture with what you want people to become or strive towards and they will follow.

Nepal, India and Maoists

I was wondering how the Maoist victory in Nepal would affect the Naxalite Insurgency in India. Apparently, there are not operational links. When they say every country must decide for itself, and that the revolution is fixed within a border, it makes me believe it.

I do not know if these comments are consistent with the groups overall ideology and past rhetoric.

Assassinations, are they effective?

I'm using this as a blanket term to cover 'targeted killings' whether with a sniper rifle or a hellfire missile from a UAV. The targets, leaders or upper rank members of an organization.

Depends on how they are used. Intimidation does not work. Degrading organizational capacity does work.

Israel uses the latter in Gaza and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It looks like AQM is using the former more and more in Iraq. But I highly doubt it is going to have the intended effect. While surely the attacks are 'spectacular' and will instill some measure of generalized 'fear', it will not be enough to overcome the anger and grief that these attacks will cause. Early this year, the head of the al-Anbar province Sahwa movement was taken out, and the brother of the man killed stepped into the breach and has been running the organization. So not only did AQM not accomplish the intimidation goal, but there appears to have been the opposite response and the organizational efficiency of the Sahwa movement was lightly impacted.

AQM accomplishes more when they target the populace, preferably systematically, like they were before the Sahwa movements kicked into high gear. Random bombings of market places do not have the same impact as controlling an area and engage in actual selective targeting of the population. But that is what AQM is reduced to doing, random nearly unpreventable bombings and selective targeting of high profile individuals. Both impacts are negligible.

Who knew?

When will this be coming to Lansing to connect me with Chicago?

From here to Chicago it'll be about 80 bucks in gas round trip.

So anything under that, I would pay.

Nuke Competition

Is a good thing, lower costs and better end results. Although it looks like competition over existing assets and simpler contracts, but still, a start. More experienced companies is good too.

Dancing to a new tune

I was thinking about using 'Dancing Queen' as the title for this post, but decided against it.

Chavez is at it again!

Talk about a flip flop, 300 million one day, 40,000 AK-47 rounds the next... Hugo is sending mixed signals.

“You in the FARC should know something... [y]ou have become an excuse for the empire to threaten all of us.”

Ouch.

The G8 gets it, finally

All it took was the biggest price surge in history, mounting fuel price protests, prices topping 4 dollars a gallon in the us, expected prices of 150 dollars a barrel in the near future for the rich countries to stop kissing OEPC's butt pressuring OPEC and focus on the tougher, but infinitely more efficient and beneficial strategy of conservation and technology.

UPDATE:
Anyone who thinks this, this and this are not related needs to have their head examined.

The Saudi line on these events.

Weekend Links

True, once the oil is gone, there is not much to hold the relationship together. Now the US just needs to realize it too.

Hugo seems more and more like a on trick pony. Oil money for everyone! But if that does not work, he's out of luck. And you'd think as a military man, he'd know better then routing his support for FARC through his own military especially once evidence has come out that has been supplying FARC with money. It's one thing to supply Venezuelan weapons, but using his own troops to transport them? Not bright.

I think Mr. Friedman is correct in pointing out the qualitative difference between economies that simply pump something out of the ground and those that are knowledge based. Somewhat of a simple dichotomy, but he explains the impact well.

516 Miles!

Wow!

Imagine it with lithium-ion batteries!

I thought 300 miles on one tank was the bench mark? I only get about 300 miles to one tank.

Swimming, Law and IR?!

Okay, the IR bit might be stretching it.

But still, very interesting stuff.

Kids these days, they get all the fun toys. All I got was a paper suit...

Bonus points for creativity

How many you ask?

Well, that depends on the value of creating a maybe radioactive coffee shop out of a helicopter to be stolen from Chernobyl.

Talk about thinking out of the box.

China and that earthquake

Overall I would say the government response has been top notch. Much better the Burma's Junta and I'd say even better then the US after Katrina (although more info has not come out about the reconstruction efforts in Sichuan).

However, China is still faced with difficult prospects. First, as has been widely reported, why did the schools crumble? That's a blow to the legitimacy of the Communists.

Second, the loss of so many children has led the regime to make exceptions to the 'one-child' rule for those parents.While I like the symmetry of the move, it will still be seen in a negative for those people who have not had the 'one-child' policy lifted, granted this may be a small percentage because of the moral impact of a whole area losing a large percentage of their children. Still, it will have in impact on the legitimacy of the regime.

Third, the non-governmental response has been great. While from a disaster relief perspective this is not a bad thing at all, most countries get through disasters with self-help measures. But China is a authoritarian system. So anyone exercising power that is not the government or officially sanctioned/approved by the government negatively impacts what the government can do in the future. The next disaster the outpouring will be bigger, regardless of the governments response. And after that:

Fourth, the earthquake is leading groups in China to form strengthened ties outside the government. As mentioned above, disaster relief organizations have formed and essentially created a new facet within Chinese civil society that is unrelated to government power of any kind. While it's focus is narrow, it's still a start. Anything built not on government power is a threat to government power. More importantly are the political ramifications of these groups. Mass demonstrations? Demanding redress? Staring to sound an awful lot like a democracy now is it not?

In sum, China's government is losing legitimacy due to the quake, new civil society links are being formed independent of the government and those groups are beginning to get organized to get what they want.

If this situation begins proliferating across China -and I say it will if the Sichuan families make headway in getting redress- most likely centered around environmental impacts. There have been quite a few environmental near disasters across China that have drawn local protests, but those are easy enough to isolate and deny, but if they link together... Then China will have some trouble on it's hands. The Olympics could really be a perfect storm for China.

This is just the way...

...to distract the rest of the world from you being a terrible dictator who slaughter the political opposition and uses food aid to further suppress the population.

Here's a hint, expel the diplomats, do not threaten to light them on fire!

But hey, I could be wrong. I'm not an African dictator.

COIN in DC?

I've often thought that cities with high crime rates and gang problems are essentially confronting an insurgency. Philly was an example of using community volunteers to patrol the streets, although it looks like it has fizzled out.

And now it looks like DC is adopting actual COIN tactics from Iraq to make the city safer. And here.

Unfortunately it raises some hairy constitutional legal questions.

UPDATE:
From The Volokh Conspiracy. Unconstitutional.

Check Are -- When they do
Reasonable = targeting drivers to stop crimes
Unreasonable = gain information to charge someone in car or someone else with a crime

Iraqi Sunni's want the ballot box?

Apparently so.

Hopefully the insurgency does not go the route of Sadr, where they play the political process and use violence to try and force concessions from the government.

Better is that they claim to have realized that staying out of elections were a bad idea. It's not so much the 'cool thing to do', but participating in the elections are a way to consolidate and gain power in Iraq within the system. While the Sunni's are by no means well off, but they are more stable now that AQM has been displaced and the central government is at least appearing to be supportive. And this is all without significant Sunni representation. It looks like the insurgency did accomplish it's goal, signaling that the Sunnis are a vital part of the Iraqi picture.

This is progressing towards the end of the COIN process. Elections are not the end, but they are the beginning of the end. Given actual political representation the Sunnis should be able to get more Sahwa movement members into the ISF. They can also serve as a bulwark against Iranian influence in the government itself, limiting how far and how fast pro-Iranian elements can operate.

Once a government actually starts to mirror its population good things can begin to have a chance to happen. Much like America, as mentioned in my last post, is beginning to regain some positive clout around the world -and in the country too- because we have our first African-American major party candidate.

Soft Power at work

And all it's from is out normal political process. Here too.

Someone has something to hide

First, nary a peep out of Syria after Israel blew up the Box on the Euphrates.

Then the US releases intelligence, with pictures, that seem to confirm the structure was a smaller reproduction of the Yongbyon reactor.

And now Syria is limited the IAEA probe, and calling 3 suspect sites off limits.

And if the Iranian situation shows us anything, it's that this tactic works.

Take that Nevada!

Yucca Mountain is now 3 years from certification.

Although every spot in the storage facility is already full...

An outgrowth of the democratic process?

Reliance on contractors.

It's obviously an outgrowth of pressure to keep costs down.

More interestingly, I think it is also an outgrowth of the democratic process. Gil Merom points out that as society becomes more democratic what it will fight for and how if fights change significantly.

As time progresses a society needs to insulate it's military operations from democratic pressures to avoid a political backlash. This entails shifting from conscription and drafts to volunteer forces and reserves. From there it's a process of emphasizing active duty forces over reserve forces. Merom argues that democracies are bad at fighting wars against but existential threats. He cites France-Algeria, Israel-Lebanon I and US-Vietnam as examples of wars fought for unpopular reasons that ran out of political steam.

The shift to contractors is a logical outgrowth of this. It's an attempt to allow the government full range to engage in politically unpopular and protracted conflicts. It's another outgrowth of the 'robotic surge', as Matthew Yglesias points out, is just an attempt to shift everything to the 'treasure' portion of the blood-treasure dichotomy.

Outsourcing to contractors would be the ultimate disconnect from society. So would waves and waves of robots.

Different takes on sovereignty

From lawyers, philosophers, theologians and scholars.

I definitely would not go this far

Wow.

But there is an important omission in the sudden coverage of moderate Muslims: No one talks about the effect of the Iraq War. The MSM can dodge the issue all they like, but the fact remains that the Coalition’s toppling of Saddam facilitated the first organized rejection of fanatical Islam in the Middle East.

I think this blatantly overstates any evidence. From a purely cause and effect stand point, sure the argument can stand, but add more reasoning, and you've got a problem.

Gilles Kepel details the rise and fall of Islamic Extremism prior to the Iraq War in Jihad: Expansion et Declin de l'Islamisme. (I use the French title because the English title is la terrible.) Here he argues that Islamist movements burn themselves out because they are inherently violent, takfiri ideology lends itself to this, and no one really likes living under their repression. Kepel cites Algeria (later in the civil war) and Egypt as examples -Mr. Greenwald conveniently leaves these out of his analysis- of the how and why. He argued strenuously against the Iraq war in The War for Muslim Minds, saying that the US is just painting a big target on itself and Iraq by fighting a war there. It seems to be true. While the insurgency is home grown, AQM is largely foreign with some domestic parts. So, Mr. Greenwald wants the US to take credit for supplying Iraq as a place for AQ to de-legitimize itself by slaughtering thousands of innocent people?

Not exactly an argument that I would try and make, I would target it more from the 'bankrupt' ideology perspective not the 'we're so great we totally won' perspective.

Here are several factors I think are important as to why these Islamist groups are so popular:
1. Due to the particularities of Islam and the prominence of Authoritarian regimes, the Mosque is one of the only places in a country that remains able to offer alternatives and criticisms.
2. This leads the government to try and co-opt Mosques, which leads to their de-legitimation and a rise in other Mosques (which tend to be Salafi-Whabbi or Deobandi or at the very least anti-government, although as I've noted before there has been push back against these more radical groups from more moderate sources).
3. Depressed levels of economic development coupled with high levels of stifled, socially dislocated middle class youth leads these youth to flow to the Mosques.
4. The Islamist groups have an ideology that preaches if we are more Islamic everything will get better, this is rather appealing to dislocated individuals.
5. In most countries these groups are the ONLY source of potential change.
6. Given enough time they show their true colors (Kepel's thesis).
7. Then we see what has happened in Algeria, Egypt and Iraq.

I take no issue with Mr. Greenwald's pointing to other events, they are true, but the US has very little to do with any of those situations.