Today's New York Times leads with the story of Pentagon plans to form a new cybercommand: The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare. The military command would complement a civilian effort to be announced by President Obama on...
Most of us now know that it's important to recycle stuff. And there's a lot of stuff to recycle beyond the morning newspaper -- glass bottles, plastic containers, clothing, batteries, concrete blocks, timber, and, yes, even ships. But how we recycle may prove just as important as what we recycle. Or at least that's the premise of the recently concluded International Maritime...
Following on my previous post, this is a much longer and more complete clip of the waterboarding of talk-radio host Mancow Muller. (Thanks to Roger, who found it on YouTube.) This clip includes an explanation of how waterboarding is done and includes Muller's reactions. I thought the way he explained that it was much worse than he ever would have...
Disclosure: I am one of Dr. Karadzic's legal associates. This post is offered with his consent. The defense team has just filed its definitive motion arguing that the Karadzic-Holbrooke cooperation agreement -- in which Holbrooke promised Dr. Karadzic that he would not be prosecuted at the ICTY if he cooperated with the international community's efforts to bring peace to the Balkans...
A year ago, Alex Ross, the New Yorker's classical music critic and the author of the book The Rest is Noise, wote a post on the New Yorker Online about the use of music as a psychological weapon. Ross recently posted a short update on his own blog. The original essay began with a reference to the use of music in interrogations: In Errol...
In the category of happy news that is long overdue, it looks like Secretary Clinton is poised to expand the definition of State Department employee "family members" eligible for benefits to include same-sex domestic partners. For Foreign Service employees those benefits will include --perhaps most important -- the issuance of a diplomatic passport (the "black passport"), which carries with it...
Because I so rarely get to blog about uplifting things, I wanted to pass along the following story, concerning a group of aboriginals who, in 1938 -- when so much of the world was silent -- protested the Nazis' treatment of the Jews during Kristallnacht: William Cooper’s name does not appear on Yad Vashem’s list of the Righteous Among the Nations,...
Given all the recent talk about the future of Guantanamo, it may be of interest to readers that, Dr. Michael J. Strauss, a lecturer in international relations at the Centre d'Etudes Diplomatiques et Stratégiques in Paris, has a new book called The Leasing of Guantanamo Bay, published by Praeger Security International. Here’s the description from the press release: Post-9/11 events at the U.S. naval...
The Wall Street Journal had a news story yesterday, "Spain is Moving to Rein in Crusading Judges" (May 20, 2009), reporting on moves in the Spanish parliament to place stricter limits on the ability of investigating magistrates - most famously, Baltasar Garzon - to undertake sweeping investigations and indictments worldwide on the basis of universal jurisdiction: Under pressure from irate foreign...
Deniz Aydiner wins the honors for one of the dumbest murderers ever. He was indicted for aggravated murder in 2003 and while the investigation was pending he returned to Turkey. The state of Oregon subsequently indicted him and sought to impose the death penalty. But Aydiner missed his wife so much that he just had to return...
People magazine reports: Before heading to the glitz and glamour of the Cannes Film Festival in France, Angelina Jolie spent Tuesday in a courtside booth at The Hague in the Netherlands watching the prosecution of warlord Thomas Lubanga, calling it "a landmark trial for children." At one point, Jolie found herself under the watchful eye of Lubanga, the founder and former leader...
Jack Goldsmith has a new essay out in The New Republic, "The Cheney Fallacy," comparing the basic elements of the Obama and Bush national security and counterterrorism policies. It walks through eleven core features of the national security-counterterrorism apparatus, from Guantanamo to targeted killing to interrogation, etc., and compares the two administrations. Certainly I think this is the right basic...
