Update no.509

Update from the Heartland

No.509

12.9.11 – 18.9.11

Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

To all,
The follow-up news items:
-- To extend the public debate regarding the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) [126, 313, 388, et al], we add this article:
“Interview with Former FBI Agent Ali Soufan – ‘We Did Exactly What Al-Qaida Wanted Us to Do’”
Interview conducted by Britta Sandberg.
Der Spiegel
Published: 11.Sep.2011
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,785558,00.html#ref=nlint
Former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan [387, 403], a Lebanese-born, naturalized American citizen, has remained the principal voice against the use of EIT. I wonder how the debate internal to the Intelligence Community (IC) and the Government is progressing; and, as much as I would like to know the conclusions, I hope they remain secret as long as the War on Islamic Fascism continues.

On Thursday, on behalf of a grateful nation, President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Dakota L. Meyer, USMC, for extraordinary bravery on 8.September.2009, during the Battle of Ganjgal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan. Meyer was a member of Embedded Training Team 2-8 – a joint Afghan / American combat unit – on a mission for a scheduled meeting with an elder of Ganjgal village, only to find themselves in a classic U-ambush. They called for reinforcements, for close air support, and for artillery support – all denied. Meyer repeatedly defied orders from superior officers and non-commissioned officers, to rescue his living and dead comrades from the kill zone, despite being wounded. The battle lasted six long hours. He became the first living Marine in 41 years to receive the Medal of Honor. Two other Marines received the Navy Cross for conspicuous gallantry in combat that day. May God bless them all for their service to this Grand Republic.

The Census Bureau reported the number of Americans in poverty increased from 43.6 million (14.3% in 2009) to 46.2 million citizens (15.1% in 2010) – the highest level since 1993. The number of citizens lacking health insurance increased to 49.9 million, a new high, largely due to high unemployment and the loss of employer-provided insurance in the weak economy. The numbers reflect the struggle we are having with recovery from the Great Recession. The poverty threshold continues to be defined by income, which is more relevant to city-fied citizens who are more dependent on money for goods and services. If we expect to do anything with gross numbers like these, then we need a more differentiating criterion than income.

At 16:30 [U] PDT (23:30 [Z]), Friday, the clipped-wing, modified, P-51D Mustang “Galloping Ghost,” flown by Jimmy Leeward, 74, crashed into a box seat area in front of the main grandstand at the Reno Air Races, during a qualifying heat of the unlimited class airplanes. Early reports indicated 75 injured; by Sunday, the toll was 9 killed, scores injured. Initially, I thought pilot incapacitation. Then, a planform image taken as the aircraft rolled into its final dive showed the left, elevator, trim tab missing, which suggests mechanical failure. There was no post-crash fire, which will make the NTSB’s investigation a little easier.

One of the myriad news networks to which I subscribe posted this little snippet:
“Missing: Tons of US-Supplied Nuclear Weapons Material”
by Adam Weinstein
Mother Jones
Posted: Tue Sep. 13, 2011 6:53 AM PDT
http://motherjones.com/transition/inter.php?dest=http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/usa-lost-tons-nuclear-weapon-uranium
My curiosity peaked. The article grew from a General Accounting Office (GAO) press release for the agency’s report:
“Nuclear Nonproliferation: U.S. Agencies Have Limited Ability to Account for, Monitor, and Evaluate the Security of U.S. Nuclear Material Overseas,” report no. GAO-11-920; dated: September 8, 2011. One sentence of the announcement, extracted from the report, seems to have caught some attention. “U.S. agencies, in a 1993 report produced in response to the [congressional] mandate, were able to verify the location of 1,160 kilograms out of 17,500 kilograms of U.S. HEU [Highly Enriched Uranium] estimated to have been exported.” The mandate referred to in the previous sentence was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush (41) – Energy Policy Act of 1992 [PL 102-486; HR.776; 106 Stat. 2776; 42 USC §13201]; actually, Title IX, §903 [106 Stat. 2944] that amended Chapter 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (AEA) [PL 83-703; 68 Stat. 919], allowing the commission [NRC] to issue “license[s] for the export of highly enriched uranium to be used as a fuel or target in a nuclear research or test reactor only . . .” The government moved out smartly, allowing other countries to use U.S. nuclear material. The GAO also noted, “DOE and NRC do not have a comprehensive, detailed, current inventory of U.S. nuclear material overseas that would enable the United States to identify material subject to U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement terms.” And, “DOE, NRC, and State have not pursued annual inventory reconciliations of nuclear material subject to U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement terms with all partners that would provide the U.S. government with better information about where such material is held overseas.” I am not sure why the GAO report has not attracted more Press attention. Regardless, the report is more than a little disturbing. While I do not believe the unaccounted for material is just lying around the countryside or moving through the black market underworld, since this type of material cannot be handled like hardware on the street . . . well, it can be, but it is a one-way, very short street. But, still . . .

This coming fall, the Supremes will hear oral arguments in the case of United States v. Jones [no. 08-3034] – a critical 4th Amendment “search and seizure” challenge in this age of technology – and an appeal by the government of United States v. Maynard [CCA DC no. 1:05-cr-00386-ESH-10 (2010)]. The legal aspects are a bit convoluted, so I shall bypass the background despite the fact that it is essential to understanding the DC Circuit’s decisions. On 24.October.2005, Antoine Jones and Lawrence Maynard were arrested for and charged with “conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 50 grams or more of cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846.” Judge Douglas Howard Ginsburg of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote the opinion on behalf of the three-judge panel, as they affirmed Maynard’s and reversed Jones’s convictions in their joint trial. The issue in Jones’s portion of the case was the use of a warrantless, GPS tracker attached to his automobile for more than a month. As Judge Ginsburg observed, “[P]rolonged GPS monitoring reveals an intimate picture of the subject‘s life that he expects no one to have — short perhaps of his spouse.” The police in this instance were not in exigent circumstances and had ample time to request a proper, judicial warrant for employment of the GPS tracker. They chose not to do so. The Supreme Court justices that decided the thermal imaging case of Kyllo v. United States [533 U.S. 27 (2001); no. 99-8508] [313] are not the same. Predicting the outcome of the Jones appeal is far from certain. The best I can say is, I hope the Supremes add Jones to the list of 4th Amendment jurisprudence that applies constraints to the use of modern technology by all State policing functionaries for intrusive probing into our private lives and affairs.
As a relevant postscript: the Jones case is one more line on a long list of examples of how the insanity of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) [Title II, PL 91-513; 84 Stat. 1236, 1242] has so deeply compromised our Liberty, freedom of choice, and fundamental right to privacy. When will we regain our sanity?

News from the economic front:
-- Moody's downgraded the long-term debt rating of French banks Société Générale, SA, and Crédit Agricole, citing the former’s funding and liquidity problems, and the latter’s
exposure to Greek debt.
-- Interesting twist, French banking giant BNP Paribas launched a plan to refocus its business on “strategic activities,” which will enable the bank to reduce the dollar liquidity needs of its corporate and investment bank by US$22B in the first half of the year.
-- Metropolitan Police in London arrested Kweku Adoboli, 31, UBS director of exchange traded funds and Delta 1 trading products. Adoboli has been charged with fraud, after the Swiss bank uncovered up to US$2B in unauthorized trades. As a consequence, UBS warned it is likely to post a 3Q2011 net loss due to the unauthorized trading. The bank claimed no client positions were affected. The public evidence indicates Adoboli is quite likely to join Nick Leeson, who lost £827M in derivatives trading that led to the failure of Barings, PLC {26.2.1995}[353], and French short trader Jérôme Kerviel, who lost €4.9B that nearly collapsed Société Générale, SA {21.1.2008} [353, 460].
-- The European Central Bank, in conjunction with the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank, will conduct three U.S. dollar liquidity-providing operations with a maturity of approximately three months. Shares of French banks soared, with BNP Paribas rising 16%, Crédit Agricole 10%, and Société Générale 9.3%. U.S. stock futures also rose, and the euro rallied against major currencies.

Comments and contributions from Update no.508:
Comment to the Blog:
“I read your linked article by Jonathan Chait, ‘What the Left Doesn’t Understand About Obama.’ Nonsense. The article is really what Chait doesn’t understand about either the Left or about Obama. Let’s face it; Obama would rather not fight for anything. Obama did indeed get a larger stimulus than the Democrats had originally asked, but he gave far too much of it to Wall Street, creating bonuses for the people who crashed the economy, not jobs for their victims. Liberals did indeed call Pelosi timid; what you see is what you get, and you don’t see much. And I’ll support the statement that the Bush 2 administration got things done by bulldozing Congress. Obama could indeed have let the Bush tax cuts expire. Contrary to far-right dogma, taxation has not harmed the economy in the past. Check out the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations for details. Democrats are a majority in the Senate, and the Republican majority in the House depends on a number of Republicans who never wanted to go along with the Teabagger crazies. Obama has not made use of them. Now he comes up with a jobs bill that is still another tax cut deal. Too little, too late, and it still leaves government starving. Someone has made an entire cable TV series about the crumbling infrastructure of this country. How ‘bout we put some people to work fixing that stuff?
“I decided a long time ago that history going back 3500 years (since the Canaanites came back from Egypt) offers no hope of peace in the Middle East. On top of that, the typical American assumption that others want nothing more than democratic government is merely an assumption, persisting despite repeated failed US interventions around the world.
“Your Watergate piece was an interesting bit of legal history. I could have used a more familiar date format in the chart, though.”
My reply to the Blog:
As always, thank you so much for taking the time to contribute your opinions to this forum.
I appreciate that the Left wants President Obama to be their man in the White House just as the Right pushed Bush 43 to be their man. Bush 43 had a distinct advantage in that his political party (Republican) controlled both Houses of Congress – not one veto in six years with all those bloody earmark-laden spending bills. Obama has neither. The small Democratic majority in the Senate is insufficient to override a Republican filibuster – the threat of which they use with regularity. Thus, he has no choice but to seek compromise with Congress. Unfortunately, the Republicans have performed well with their intransigence. Let it suffice to say, I think congressional Republicans are far more interested in not agreeing with or being seen as supporting President Obama than they are in finding good, moderate, compromise solutions to the very real problems of this Grand Republic. So, I suppose we shall respectfully disagree regarding President Obama’s performance. He gets credit in my book for attempting civilized compromise with a recalcitrant opposition.
Re: democracy. You are not alone in that opinion. As the Founders so eloquently observed, “Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.” The balancing act in international relations is never easy, and We are certainly not without blame.
I am sure this is not the first you have noticed my usage of day-month-year notation, or my insistence on a 24-hour clock. The entire rest of the world marks time in logical order, so I subscribe. Hopefully, my peculiar idiosyncrasies do not adversely distract from the content utility.
. . . a follow-up comment:
“I guess we must disagree on Obama, but I will persist one sentence more. The threat of a filibuster is a bluff, which can be called repeatedly until the other side gives up.
“I somewhat agree with using the logical order in dates, but I would prefer one that's easier for me to process; for example 21 Nov 2012 would work much more easily for me than 21-11-2012. The clock time is a minor point; as a writer, I use whatever is easier for my audience.”
. . . my follow-up reply:
Threat or not, sufficient votes to end debate and call the vote on the measure becomes a de facto filibuster regardless of pronouncements or lack of same.
Thank you for voicing your preferences . . . always important.

Another contribution:
“Regarding your first item, it is NOT 'Big Brotherism' - this is France we are talking about!”
My response:
Indeed! Good point . . . but still . . .

My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)