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Comments by YACCS

 

Never again. Maybe.

Glenn Reynolds discusses the issue of genocide in the post World War Two world, noting that Cambodia, the Congo, and Rwanda have all experienced the phenomenon we supposedly abolished after the Holocaust, despite their signatures on international agreements. The so-called "international community" failed to intervene when the crimes were happening, and was ineffective in punishing those responsible after the fact.

Glenn suggests an alternate theory for preventing genocide: arm the public.

The result, conclude law professor Daniel Polsby and criminologist Don Kates, is that "a connection exists between the restrictiveness of a country's civilian weapons policy and its liability to commit genocide."

Armed citizens, they argue, are far less likely to be massacred than defenseless ones, and armed resistance to genocide is more likely to receive outside aid. It is probably no accident that the better-armed resistance to genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo drew international intervention, while the hapless Rwandans and Cambodians did not. When victims resist, what is merely cause for horror becomes cause for alarm, and those who are afraid of the conflict’s spread will support (as Europe did) intervention out of self-interest when they could not be bothered to intervene out of compassion.

It is no wonder that genocide is so often preceded by efforts to disarm the people.

But while Glenn cites Bosnia as a counterexample, what he fails to mention, which makes the argument even more horribly ironic, is that the international community's response to the Serbian assault on Bosnia was to impose an international arms embargo on the area. Not only did the United Nations fail to defend Bosnians against Serbian attacks; the UN tried to prevent Bosnians from defending themselves. The Serbs, of course, had no trouble getting weapons, since they were backed by the already-armed Yugoslavia.

This approach is nothing new; as Britain pulled out of Palestine and Israel prepared to declare independence, as Arab countries prepared to attack Israel, the United States and Britain responded by imposing an arms embargo on the region. The Arabs were backed by armed Arab states, while Jews had only what they could smuggle.

It should come as no surprise to anyone; the "international community" is made up of governments, not people. And governments protect other governments; they don't protect individuals. Individuals who defend themselves are just so... inconvenient.
posted by David Nieporent at 10/18/2002 09:00:00 AM |

 

Blackmail payments just don't go that far these days

Here's a shocker: authoritarian states can't be trusted. North Korea has acknowledged that it still has a nuclear program, in violation of a 1994 agreement it had reached with the United States.

North Korea's surprise revelation came 12 days ago in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, after a senior American diplomat confronted his North Korean counterparts with American intelligence data suggesting a secret project was under way. At first, the North Korean officials denied the allegation, according to an American official who was present.

The next day they acknowledged the nuclear program and according to one American official, said ``they have more powerful things as well.'' American officials have interpreted that cryptic comment as an acknowledgment that North Korea possesses other weapons of mass destruction.

Damn, what was Bush thinking, calling such an honest, peaceloving country part of an Axis of Evil?

American officials used the past dozen days to formulate a common response. At a press conference in South Korea on Thursday morning, local time, Lee Tae Sik, deputy minister for foreign affairs, urged North Korea to abide by a series of agreements it now clearly violates: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1994 agreement, and a ``joint declaration'' signed with South Korea to keep the Korean Peninsula nuclear-free.

Whoda thunk that a country -- other than the evil United States -- might violate a treaty or three? I bet we don't hear many accusations of North Korean "unilateralism" from our "sophisticated" European allies. And I doubt many multilateralists will get a clue that words on paper don't prevent criminals from committing crimes.

The United States confronted North Korea in the early 1990s, and some thought that we were close to war over the issue. Guess which recent Nobel Prize winner got credit for "solving" this problem? Hint: he grew peanuts. I wonder whether his bio will be revised to reflect these new developments.
posted by David Nieporent at 10/17/2002 12:26:00 AM |

 

If you say so

Can anybody explain to me why Maureen Dowd has a job? Has anybody ever used more words to say so little? If a picture is worth a thousand words, can't the Times just publish a picture of Dowd sneering? They can recycle it weekly.
posted by David Nieporent at 10/16/2002 05:20:00 AM |

 

Three's a crowd

The New York Times editorial board is annoyed because candidates George Pataki and Frank Lautenberg are insisting that debates for the upcoming election include all the candidates on the ballot.

Mr. Pataki and Mr. Lautenberg should get real, and do the voters the courtesy of allowing at least one meaningful face-off between the two major party candidates.

Now, there's some validity to the argument that a debate with six or seven candidates is unwieldy. In a one or two hour period, having that many people speak means that each one is allotted only a short amount of time.

But given the Times' holier-than-thou attitude towards "voter choice" and "democracy," for them to take the stance that the voters should be denied the opportunity to hear from the majority of the candidates on the ballot raises hypocrisy to unprecedented levels. Obviously it is unlikely that any of these candidates will win anything -- but such an upset victory becomes a lot more likely if the Times doesn't treat all the extra candidates like jokes who shouldn't be wasting everyone's time by running. Certainly at least one of the third party candidates in these races, Tom Golisano, has the resources needed to run a competitive election, so there's no excuse for keeping him out of the debate.

Besides, let's get real: these "debates," whether with two or six candidates, are not sacred rites. They're not even debates at all. They're joint press conferences. (And yes, I know they said this on The West Wing last week. But I've been saying it for years.) Each participant gets a minuscule amount of time to respond to a vague question from a media member, and gives a canned reply which doesn't actually address the issues raised. Then the other candidate gives an even shorter pre-crafted "rebuttal" which doesn't address the first candidate's statements. Rinse, lather, repeat. With scripted "spontaneous" jokes thrown in for good measure.

If the Times wants to be constructive, it ought to promote more debates, in a format which demands long, thoughtful answers, in a format in which the moderators can force the participants to actually answer the questions posed. Otherwise, what's the point?
posted by David Nieporent at 10/15/2002 07:32:00 AM |

 

If only we could trick Al Qaeda into unionizing

Phillip Howard explains why the civil service system is incompatible with homeland security.

For personnel decisions, the civil service rules operate as a kind of legal air bag, allowing a disgruntled worker to force the supervisor to prove the wisdom of an adverse decision, even a negative comment on an evaluation form. The process of dismissing a worker who is incompetent or worse can take years. (The minimum generally is 18 months.) Getting rid of someone who has bad judgment is basically impossible: How would a supervisor prove bad judgment? Last year, according to the Office of Personnel Management, out of an estimated 64,000 federal employees who were designated "poor performers," only 434 were dismissed through these legal hearings: That's seven out of 1,000.

Assigning the best person to a new job is impossible unless you're prepared to prove in a hearing that more-senior personnel aren't up to the task. After Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Customs Service immediately reassigned its best inspectors to better secure our northern border. The union filed a legal proceeding claiming that the reassignments required a nationwide survey of interested civil servants, from which choices should be made on the basis of seniority.

No decision, no matter how important or how trivial, is immune from a legal proceeding alleging that it violates the rights of federal workers. In August, following a directive outlining standard protective measures under each of the homeland security threat levels, the union filed a proceeding to overturn it because it was issued "without first notifying and affording [the union] the opportunity to negotiate." Several years ago a decision that U.S. Border Patrol officers should carry a side-handled club was rejected as not being within their job description.

Imagine being a supervisor in this environment. Do you go through the day thinking about how to stop terrorists, or are you preoccupied with how to negotiate the legal minefield of civil service?

The theory behind the civil service system was to eliminate the spoils system, where people got federal jobs based on political patronage. But that's a red herring; there's no need to eliminate the system for hiring purposes; we can still have (so-called) merit based hiring without having union-controlled day-to-day operations. President Bush may have been impolitic when he accused the Senate of caring more about special interests than about national security, but that doesn't make him wrong. Merely shuffling organizational flowcharts, as Senate Democrats propose, is not going to be sufficient to make a Homeland Security Department effective. The factor most missing from government -- accountability -- is needed.
posted by David Nieporent at 10/15/2002 06:05:00 AM |

 

But it's For The Children

Next time you read a proposal from the Socialist PartyMarcia Angell whining about the "crisis" of the uninsured and the efficiency of the government in solving these problems, be sure to remember this story.
posted by David Nieporent at 10/14/2002 04:50:00 AM |

 

Hey, Hey, CVS! How much floss did you sell today?

The New York Times has a revealing little anecdote about some professional protesters in New York:

WE shouldn't picket until 6 o'clock," Toby Heilbrunn said Thursday afternoon, cutting short the daily demonstration at the locally loathed CVS drugstore. "We should conserve our energy for tonight."

That night would bring a rally in nearby Kingston against an invasion of Iraq. The threat of war is creating cause congestion for the truly committed. "You don't know which way you're going," Ms. Heilbrunn said. "You run from picketing CVS to the antiwar rally."

Yes, it's such a difficult life. And you risk the ultimate protester faux pas: forgetting which rally you're at. I mean, what if you accidentally show up at the anti-war rally with your "No Justice, No Peace" sign?

Local activists' recent success at stopping a proposed town garage on park property pales against the antiwar task. And who has time to fight the proposed expansion of the local Tibetan monastery? "It's the bigness," one activist explained. Certainly not the Buddhismness.

Maybe they can ask the Taliban for some assistance; I hear they have experience dealing with big Buddhist shrines.

Opposition to CVS grew here, as elsewhere in the region, because the drugstore chain bought the lease of a Grand Union that closed when the chain went bankrupt. It was the only supermarket in a town that already had a chain drugstore. There have been daily protests since CVS opened its store two weeks ago.

OTHERS see a larger issue. A Bard College social studies professor, Joel Kovel, said the building looked much better than it did when Grand Union was there, but he called the CVS a local metastasis of the cancer of "relentless expansion of capitalism."

You mean he's not an economics professor? I'm shocked.

Looking at the CVS on Thursday, he said, derisively, "All this plastic." He hit on a connection between the Iraq invasion (driven by the thirst for oil, he said) and CVS. "If you did a survey of all the products in CVS," he said, "I bet 98 percent of them are petroleum derivatives." Yuck. Even the toothpaste?

And he's not a chemistry professor either? (Actually, in case you were wondering, he's the Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies at Bard. I'm not making it up. Really.)

John Wonderling, a music producer, headed home in frustration. The CVS was open, the war looking ever more certain. Not a winning season for activists. "The powers that be are the ones pulling all the strings," he said. "You've got to keep going, and eventually us gentler people maybe will be heard."

Hey, John -- we've heard you. We just think you're annoying and stupid. And as an official representative of The Powers That Be, let me tell you that your name is now on The List.

It's the Life Cereal school of modern politics: like Mikey, they hate everything. Hey -- maybe if we told these 60s era-wannabes that Wal-Mart was based in Baghdad, they'd eagerly embrace a bombing campaign.
posted by David Nieporent at 10/14/2002 04:42:00 AM |

 

Tell us what you really think

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that Tim Blair doesn't like Robert Fisk, the man who makes moral equivalence his middle name.
posted by David Nieporent at 10/13/2002 11:21:00 PM |

 

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Marcia Angell, the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine thinks that we're in a health care crisis. (Of course, Marcia Angell, the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, has been singing this song for a while, which begs the question of what a "crisis" is.) She thinks private competition is wasteful, that wealth should not determine treatment, that government should pay for everyone's health care. But this, to Angell, "is not socialized medicine."


Out of curiosity, I wonder what Angell plans to do with the millions of people currently employed in the insurance industry.
posted by David Nieporent at 10/13/2002 10:12:00 PM |

 

Putting two and two together

After two days of suspense, and announcements of a mysterious "visual aid" to help in the Maryland sniper investigation, the police have now confirmed that a white truck looks pretty much like a white truck.



I don't mean to criticize the investigation itself; I'm sure it must be unbelievably difficult and stressful, given the nature of these attacks. And since I have family in the area, I'm rooting for them to catch this scum as quickly as possible. But how desperate must the investigators be to make a big deal of the fact that they put effort into drawing pictures of trucks? What's next, putting up wanted posters of people with ski masks over their faces after bank robberies?

What's worse is that we also have heard rumors of a white Chevy Astro van with ladders on it, and police haven't ruled out the possibility that it is related to the killings in some way. This doesn't give me much confidence that they know what they're looking for.
posted by David Nieporent at 10/13/2002 06:55:00 AM |