An Unimaginable Figure

The momentum being sucked away from the budget debate

The nation’s most unlikely, yet stalwart, fiscal hero

by Peter Coyne.

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

                                                 – Mark Twain

Enter last Friday’s Washington Post commentary:

“After two years of harrowing confrontations in Washington, the national debt is no longer growing out of control and policymakers from President Obama to House Speaker John A. Boehner have rushed to take credit…”

Did the debt shrink? Have changes been made to the structural deficit built into the nation’s fiscal plan?

Ha! Of course not.

One estimate from Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University, takes account of all the projected unfunded liabilities and interest payments and puts the U.S. debt at $222 trillion.

It’s a laughable figure. Unimaginable, even.

“The deficit is getting better,” explains I.O.U.S.A. protagonist Robert Bixby tried to explain to the Post on Friday [our cynical ears can hear him snickering over a can of Tab], “but it’s not a result of any hard choices Congress made. They all want to get on the aircraft carrier, like George Bush with his ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners.”

Secret Police State

What’s worse: the NSA or the East German Stasi?

BY CHRISTIAN CARYL

President Barack Obama is headed off to Germany next week, and while he's there he should expect to get an earful about the National Security Agency surveillance scandals that have been dominating the news in the United States over the past week.

The Germans are scandalized. "Germans so outraged at U.S. over spying that Merkel will raise the issue directly with Obama,  says the Washington Post. A leading German data protection official is telling German Internet users to avoid American companies like Facebook and Google, since, he says, all of the data in their networks is likely to be scooped up for use by U.S. intelligence. A German parliamentarian says that the revelations about the extent of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance remind him of the Stasi, the old East German secret police. (Let's leave aside, for the moment, the point that European governments still do plenty of spying of their own, and intrude in the lives of their citizens in ways that many Americans would find repugnant.)

German touchiness on the subject has a lot to do with history. There was that singular unpleasantness with the Gestapo a few years back, of course -- but for all its crimes the Nazi secret police was actually a fairly small organization that depended heavily on a wide net of enthusiastic informers within a broadly regime-loyal population. And then there's the horrifying tale of East Germany's Ministerium fuer Staatssicherheit, the Ministry for State Security, known more widely by the abbreviated version of its name -- the Stasi. It was this agency that was responsible for building up what was probably the most expansive surveillance state in history.

The Americanness of the American Revolution

Why the Founders succeeded

by Myron Magnet

Why was the American Revolution, of all great revolutions, the only successful one, resulting in two centuries and more of unexampled freedom and prosperity? The French Revolution, by contrast, illuminated by America’s example and Enlightenment thought, began in blissful optimism but collapsed into a blood-soaked tyranny much worse than the monarchy it deposed. It spawned a military dictatorship that convulsed Europe and roiled half the globe for over a decade with wars of grandiose imperial aggression that slew at least 3 million. And the result of 25 years of turmoil? The Bourbon monarchy, minus the Enlightenment of its earlier incarnation, settled comfortably back down on its throne.

The Russian Revolution switched one despotism for another; and a century later, after the millions of deaths from its purges, slave camps, and intentionally inflicted famines, Russia remains a despotism, without rights or justice. We all get only one life: imagine someone born under the billowing flags of the new Soviet Union in 1917, who had to live that whole single life without the freedom so much as to speak the truth of the squalid, oppressive reality he saw in front of his own eyes. One single life—and what you can make of the one you have depends so much on what others have done to mold the time and place in which you live.

The Founders knew that truth so well that they announced their nationhood by significantly changing John Locke’s catalog of natural rights. The shift began in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, where George Mason emended Locke’s right to “Lives, Liberties and Estates” to “Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing and obtaining Happiness and Safety.” Two months later, Thomas Jefferson penned the final pithy formulation of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. The pursuit of happiness! Who but the Americans made a revolution to vindicate the paramount right of each individual to try to make the most of his life by his own effort as he sees fit?

The view from Taksim Square

Turkey’s agony – how Erdogan turned a peaceful protest into a violent nightmare

by Claire Berlinski 

By now, everyone has heard of the brutal suppression of protests all over Turkey, which began with a peaceful sit-in in Istanbul to protect a hapless apology for a park from demolition. Right by the city’s unofficial centre, Taksim Square, Gezi Park had been slated to become yet another one of the ruling AKP’s signature Ottoman-cum-Disneyland construction projects. It was hardly much of a park, by London standards, but it was one of the last remaining places in the area with a few trees and a bit of room to stroll around. The protesters found the idea of losing that tiny refuge from Istanbul’s urban chaos unbearable.

The police removed the inoffensive tree-huggers in a surprise dawn raid, using violence so disproportionate and sadistic — and unfortunately for the police, so filmed — as to set off enraged demonstrations around the country. These, in turn, provoked even more psychotic retaliation from the police. Every story you’ve read of the brutality the cops inflicted on peaceful protesters is true, and more. I saw it. I’ve been seeing it with my own eyes for weeks, but by far the worst took place on Tuesday, when the police descended in the early morning to retake Taksim Square, directly after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had lulled the protesters with promises to meet them the next day to listen to their concerns.

The surprise attack began at 7.30 a.m. Black smoke quickly rose over the square, and tear gas enveloped the entire neighbourhood. Then the water cannon arrived, half a dozen, followed by another burst of gas. While at least six cameras from Taksim were feeding this scene live to the entire country, Istanbul Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu assured the public, on Twitter, that ‘some protestors used materials that release fog and smoke. We should all know that their purpose is making the impression that the police used excessive gas.’ It didn’t occur to him, I suppose, that it is not just fog and smoke that indicates the presence of a lachrymatory agent. He also promised the protesters that only Taksim itself would be ‘cleaned’. The protesters and the park, he swore, would ‘never’ be harmed.

Three hours later, protesters formed a human chain around the park to prevent the police from recapturing it, but the cops shot rubber bullets, beat up journalists, and detained not only countless protesters, but their lawyers — 79 lawyers, according to the Istanbul Bar Association. The government is now dropping hints about an ‘operation’ against ‘provocateurs’ on Twitter — not an idle threat, for many have already been detained for writing ‘misinformation’, which apparently encompasses, among other things, tweeting the phone numbers of physicians on duty. A Turkish journalist reports that prosecutors have obtained warrants to seize any mobile phone they require. I have not yet been able to confirm this, but it wouldn’t in the least surprise me.

Why Farm Subsidies Survive

Government is biased toward the past

By Robert Samuelson 

The farm bills now before Congress -- one from the Senate, the other from the House -- attest, if nothing else, to the inertia of politics. There is no "public interest" (a phrase often meaningless in Washington) in having government subsidize farmers. Food would be produced without subsidies. The uncertainties and insecurities faced by farmers from unpredictable weather and global markets, though often compelling, are paralleled by the uncertainties and insecurities faced by many industries from disruptive technologies, erratic business cycles and shifting public tastes. Yet, unlike most industries, agriculture is lavishly subsidized and protected by government.

The explanation is force of habit. Since the Great Depression of the 1930s, when there were plausible reasons to aid farmers, government has consistently accorded agriculture special treatment. The politics of doing so long ago became self-perpetuating. Without the massive subsidies, the Agriculture Department would be far less important. So would the congressional agriculture committees and the crowd of farm groups (sometimes, it seems, one for almost every crop) that lobby for benefits. And certainly the farmers who receive payments and protections feel entitled to them.

All this creates a powerful and shared vested interest in safeguarding the status quo, even as different interest groups and their congressional champions fight ferociously over the structure and distribution of benefits. The cost has been considerable. From 1995 to 2012, the various subsidies totaled $293 billion -- more than $16 billion annually -- according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a critic of present programs. This understates the true costs, because it includes only the on-budget costs of explicit subsidies. Excluded are higher consumer prices paid on some products (sugar, for instance) that are partially shielded from market competition.

The Character of Edward Snowden

It will take millions more like him to give freedom a fighting chance in an age of leviathan State control

by JEFFREY A. TUCKER

Edward Snowden, age 29 and now temporarily living in Hong Kong, is the overnight sensation who leaked details about the National Security Administration’s (NSA) practice of massive and sweeping surveillance of Americans’ browsing habits. He has also provided a model of what it means to live a principled life, even when it comes at personal expense. 

What his leak revealed is truly chilling and even infuriating. He demonstrated that websites and cell phone companies are sharing their databases with the U.S. government in real time—without so much as court orders—and thereby making every one of us a victim of snooping and possibly vulnerable to blackmail for so long as we shall live.

Much more important for any lover of freedom, however, is the manner in which he went about his defiance. He acted peacefully, openly, with total dedication to principle. He took responsibility for speaking the truth. He did it with a clean conscience. He has been willing to face the consequences for his actions. 

It will take millions more like him to give freedom a fighting chance in an age of leviathan State control.

1984 and the Surveillance State

The Eyes Watching You

by SARAH SKWIRE

In the kind of horrifying coincidence that surely would have prompted one of his more acerbic essays, the news that various U.S. government surveillance agencies have been gathering data from millions of citizens’ phones, email accounts, and web searches broke during the week of the 64th publication anniversary of George Orwell’s 1984. As the news reports poured in, and as sales of 1984 surged by an astonishing 6,884 percent, a friend asked me whether the PRISM story strikes me as more Orwellian or more Kafkaesque.

My response? We’d better hope it’s Kafkaesque.

No one wants to inhabit a Franz Kafka novel. But the surveillance states he describes do have one thing going for them—incompetence. In Kafka’s stories, important forms get lost, permits are unattainable, and bureaucrats fail to do their jobs. Like the main character in Kafka’s unfinished story, “The Castle,” if you were trapped in Kafka’s world you could live your whole life doing nothing but waiting for a permit. But at least you could live. Incompetence creates a little space.

This Is What Crisis Feels Like

Collapse happens very slow and then all at once

by Simon Black

On December 1, 2001, Argentina’s economy was in trouble. Unemployment was high, debt was high, and recession had taken hold. But life was somewhat ‘normal’.

Basic services still functioned. And no one had to really worry about... food. Or water. Then it all changed. Literally within a day.

On December 2nd, our bankrupt government imposed measures that essentially froze everyone’s bank accounts. You can just imagine– one day having access to your funds, and the next day being completely cut off.

Within a matter of days, people were out in the streets doing battle with the police. The government soon defaulted on its debt, and the currency went into freefall.

I was doing some post-graduate work in Boston at the time. As a foreigner in the US, I wasn’t really able to work… so I was living on a tight budget from my savings.

Yet, overnight, I went from being able to pay my rent and living expenses to being completely cut off from my funds. I had nothing.

But when I spoke to my family back in Argentina, I realized that they had it even worse.

Everything became scarce. The electricity went out all the time. Even food on the grocery store shelves ran low. You would eat what you had available at home.

And in a way, food became a medium of exchange. Within just a few days, people went from having confidence in their currency to not trusting it at all. No one wanted to accept paper money anymore, especially for something as valuable as food.

And if they did, it would be at 2-3 times the normal price. With all of this unfolding, I flew back down to see my family.

The euro is not much like the historical gold standard

Νo market signal operates directly on ECB's balance sheet the way that loss or gain of gold reserves did

by Kurt Schuler

From time to time I see comments in the press or on the Internet comparing the euro to the gold standard. In point of fact, they have little in common.

Most obviously, of course, the euro is a fiat currency having a floating exchange rate, while under different forms of the gold standard, national currencies were redeemable in, well, gold at a set rate.

The euro is in several ways more monolithic than the historical gold standard was. Under the gold standard, many countries went off the standard and later returned. The United States, for instance, went off the gold standard near the start of the Civil War and returned to it in 1879. Britain went off it during the Napoleonic Wars. No country has so far left the euro area, so of course no country has returned to the euro area.

The euro is a single currency. A euro note in Finland is accordingly interchangeable with a euro note in France in terms of the ability to spend it readily on local goods without any transaction fees. Under the gold standard there were multiple national currencies, which while exchangeable at set rates were not fully interchangeable. A century ago you would have had a hard time spending a Canadian $50 note in Atlanta even though the Canadian and U.S. dollars were worth the same amount of gold.

In the euro area there is a single central bank practicing a single monetary policy, reflected in a single main policy interest rate. Under the gold standard there were multiple central banks as well as other monetary authorities and free banking systems. The central banks had differing policy interest rates (for some examples see the spreadsheet for “policy interest rates” available in this data set I edit).

Education Vouchers

It is the poor who know that good schooling is the only way to a better life

By Pedro Schwartz

George Shultz used to say that people loved to argue with Milton Friedman, especially when he was not there. I am going to do exactly that, argue with Milton when he is not in our midst anymore. I would have loved to hear his views about the remarks I am going to make on his idea of education vouchers. My criticism does not take a whit from my admiration of him: he was my master at-a-distance through his books and articles on microeconomics, on consumption theory, on money, on inflation, on expectations—you name it. Indeed I am attracted to the idea of school vouchers and have been known to defend them, but I think they are only a "second best" remedy for the failings of school systems where the state plays a large role.

By "second best" I mean the kind of engineered solution that tries to take a way around some immoveable legal or institutional restriction that makes the best solution unattainable. In the case of education the first best is, surprising though it may sound, totally private education, supplied by for-profit schools and financed by families and charities. This would not only be better for individual liberty and public morality but also surprisingly feasible if we attend to educational history and present day experience, as we shall see. The example of developing nations, where private education has proved to be vastly superior to public education, especially for the poor, should make us think twice about any statist intervention education.

Liberty in Shambles

The slippery slope began

by Andrew P. Napolitano

When British soldiers were roaming the American countryside in the 1760s with lawful search warrants with which they had authorized themselves to enter the private homes of colonists in order to search for government-issued stamps, Thomas Paine wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls." The soul-searching became a revolution in thinking about the relationship of government to individuals. That thinking led to casting off a king and writing a Constitution.

What offended the colonists when the soldiers came legally knocking was the violation of their natural right to privacy, their right to be left alone. We all have the need and right to be left alone. We all know that we function more fully as human beings when no authority figure monitors us or compels us to ask for a permission slip. This right comes from within us, not from the government.

Thomas Jefferson made the case for natural rights in the Declaration of Independence ("endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"). The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to reduce to writing the guarantees of personal liberty. ("Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of ... religion ... speech ... press ... assembly..." "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.")

And, of course, to prevent the recurrence of soldier-written search warrants and the government dragnets and fishing expeditions they wrought, the Constitution mandates that only judges may issue search warrants, and they may do so only on the basis of probable cause of crime, and the warrants must "particularly describ(e) the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Last week, we discovered that the government has persuaded judges to issue search warrants not on the constitutionally mandated basis, but because it would be easier for the feds to catch terrorists if they had a record of our phone calls and our emails and texts. How did that happen?

France’s Cul-De-Sac

The public sector now accounts for almost two-thirds of all direct economic activity, and more if indirect activity is counted

by David Howden and Jacques Briam

Over a year ago, in the midst of an ongoing economic crisis, François Hollande celebrated his victory over Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s presidential elections. Hollande became the leader of a country in economic turmoil. In the past year, he has had relatively free rein to carry out his economic agenda, since the Socialist Party he leads has a majority in the French Parliament.

France has a history of grandiose government spending, even among European countries. Public spending accounts for 57 percent of national output, and public debt accounts for over 90 percent of GDP. While austerity has been the buzz word in the rest of Europe since 2009 resulting in a modest decline in government spending as a percentage of GDP, France is not part of that trend.

The public sector now accounts for almost two-thirds of all direct economic activity, and more if indirect activity is counted. This large and growing dependence on government is disastrous because it is funded by ever higher taxes. These high taxes drain the private sector (while simultaneously giving the public sector an aura of impotence) and deficit spending obliges future generations of French citizens to pay off the largesse of today’s government.

Deep within the French psyche is the idea that cuts to the gargantuan public sector would cause undue harm to everyone. This inability to envision a French economy where the private sector picks up the slack when fewer public services are provided has reinforced the reluctance of politicians, and in particular, François Hollande, to use austerity measures to overcome the crisis. Instead, the current solution is to increase government spending and create more jobs in the public sector. For this reason, Hollande’s administration has pledged to increase the minimum wage for all employees, public and private, and create 60,000 new public teaching jobs.

The absence of freedom is tyranny. The absence of freedom is also poverty.

Why Things Will Get Worse - Much Worse

By Monty Pelerin

It is easy to be upset about what is happening all around. The economy is being destroyed, deliberately, by insane economic policies. Incentives to work are being eliminated by punishing work. At the same time rewards are increasing for not working. Not surprisingly we get less of what we penalize (work) and more of what we subsidize (non-work).

As an economist I get sick over what I see happening to what was once a great engine of productivity, capital creation and improvements in standards of living.

After two centuries of progress that amazed the world, the conditions necessary for growth and productivity are steadily being removed. Their presence allowed the miracle of America. Their absence guarantees the decline. Carried to extreme, the US could become a second or third-world nation within a few decades. Virtually all changes in the last five to ten years point in this direction and these changes are accelerating.

As pained as the economic retrogression is, the loss of freedom is even more disturbing. It was free markets and free men that made America the dominant economic power and the beacon of freedom. Without freedom, no economic policy can succeed. Yet, just as economic policies seem designed to destroy rather than create, so too does the role of government as steadily destroys freedom with its expanded oppression and power. The absence of freedom is tyranny. The absence of freedom is also poverty.

Economic decline is difficult to convey, although data are useful.

Chinese Dissident Ai Weiwei: “The U.S. is Behaving Like China”

To limit power is to protect society

By Michael Krieger

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist and political dissident.  Although he collaborated on the construction of Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics, his criticism of the government later led to his arrest without charges and imprisonment for several months.  I believe there are two main takeaways from the following article he wrote for The Guardian. First, he knows what it is like to live in an authoritarian regime with very little freedom or civil liberties. Thus it would be wise to take his warning to heart. Second, he illustrates a key point I have been trying to make for years. All citizens of the world must refuse to allow their respective governments to drag us into a war started by various oligarchs located in distinct geographic locations.  99.9% of the population must come together and understand that oligarchs within the U.S. and oligarchs within China are united against us all.  We must never forget this.  These guys don’t fight wars.  Rather, they rape, steal and pillage and then send you to do their dirty work.  Don’t fall for it.  From The Guardian:

I lived in the United States for 12 years. This abuse of state power goes totally against my understanding of what it means to be a civilised society, and it will be shocking for me if American citizens allow this to continue. The US has a great tradition of individualism and privacy and has long been a centre for free thinking and creativity as a result.

The Economics of Bitcoin

We need to let the decentralized market test tell us what is the best money, or monies

by Robert P. Murphy

Bitcoin is an ingenious peer-to-peer "virtual" or "digital currency" that challenges the way economists have traditionally thought about money. Its inbuilt scarcity provides an assurance of purchasing power arguably safer than any other system yet conceived.

But to understand these claims, one must first understand the basics of Bitcoin. My conclusion is that, in principle, nothing stands in the way of the whole world embracing Bitcoin or some other digital currency. Yet I predict that, even with the alternative of Bitcoin, people would resort to gold if only governments got out of the way.

The Basic Structure of Bitcoin

According to its official website: "Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network."(1.)  Anyone who wants to participate can download the Bitcoin software to his or her own computer and become part of the network, engaging in "mining" operations and helping to verify the history of transactions.

Welcome to the future, where the NSA black hole lords over all as the ultimate Panopticon

Digital Blackwater rules

By Pepe Escobar 
The judgment of Daniel "Pentagon Papers" Ellsberg is definitive; "There has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material". And that includes the release of the Pentagon Papers themselves. Here is the 12-minute video by The Guardian where Snowden details his motives.

By now, everything swirling around the US National Security Agency (NSA) points to a black box in a black hole. The black box is the NSA headquarters itself in Fort Meade, Maryland. The black hole is an area that would include the suburbs of Virginia's Fairfax County near the CIA but mostly the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32. 

There one finds a business park a mile away from the NSA which Michael Hayden, a former NSA director (1999-2005) told Salon's Tim Shorrock is "the largest concentration of cyber power on the planet". [1] Hayden coined it "Digital Blackwater". 

Egypt’s Perils and Paradoxes

A proud civilization confronts the twin challenges of Gulf-state extremism and American pop culture

By ANDREW DORAN

“The country that was the beacon of tranquility, the society that was an example of peacefulness and tolerance — one that had never witnessed a civil war in over seven thousand years — has turned into … a breeding ground of aggression.” These words from the foreword of Tarek Osman’s 2010 book, Egypt on the Brink, which anticipated the Arab revolution in Egypt by mere months, capture a trend toward extremism in recent decades. This extremism adds a dimension to Egypt’s already numerous complexities and contradictions.

Egypt’s move toward radicalism may be principally attributed to two encounters.

Criminals in the White House - Victims in Jail

Only One Big Telecom CEO Refused To Cave To The NSA ... And He's Been In Jail For 4 Years

Joseph Nacchio, the CEO of Qwest Communications International Inc. from 1997 to 2002, arrives at the Denver Federal Courthouse with his wife, Anne, for sentencing on 19 counts of illegal stock sales in Denver, Colorado July 27, 2007.

By MICHAEL KELLEY

Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio is currently serving a six-year sentence after being convicted of insider trading in April 2007 for selling $52 million of stock in the spring of 2001 as the telecommunications carrier appeared to be deteriorating.

During the trial his defense team argued that Nacchio, 63, believed Qwest was about to win secret government contracts that would keep it in the black.

Nacchio alleged that the government stopped offering the company lucrative contracts after Qwest refused to cooperate with a National Security Agency surveillance program in February 2001.

That claim gains new relevance these days, amid leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden that allege widespread domestic surveillance by the NSA.

Back in 2006 Leslie Cauley of USA Today, citing multiple people with direct knowledge of the arrangement, reported that shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks America's three largest telecoms signed contracts to provide the NSA with detailed call records from hundreds of millions of people across the country.

Cauley noted that Qwest's refusal to participate "left the NSA with a hole in its database" since the company served local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states.

From USA Today (emphasis ours):

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard. ...

... the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government.

Nacchio's legal concerns about the NSA program at the time mirror those of civil liberty groups today.

Cauley, citing sources familiar with events, reported the NSA asserted that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (which oversees NSA snooping) — to provide the data.

"They told (Qwest) they didn't want to [run the proposal by the FISA court] because FISA might not agree with them," one NSA insider told USA Today.

There is a record of the NSA running afoul of FISA: In July the FISA court ruled that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment's restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures "on at least one occasion."

Furthermore, Nacchio felt that it was unclear who would have access to Qwest customers' information and how that information might be used. Sources told Cauley that the NSA said government agencies including the FBI, CIA, and DEA might have access to its massive database.

Nacchio entered prison on April 14, 2009 and is scheduled for release on September 21, 2013  (Federal inmates are typically required to serve at least 80 percent of a sentence, which would be 3.5 years in this case.) 

Dystopian secrecy fuels clueless wars

Knowledge is not evil

By Chase Madar 

The prosecution of Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks' source inside the US Army, will be pulling out all the stops when it calls to the stand a member of Navy SEAL Team 6, the unit that assassinated Osama bin Laden. The SEAL (in partial disguise, as his identity is secret) is expected to tell the military judge that classified documents leaked by Manning to WikiLeaks were found on bin Laden's laptop. That will, in turn, be offered as proof not that bin Laden had Internet access like two billion other earthlings, but that Manning has "aided the enemy", a capital offense. 

Think of it as courtroom cartoon theater: the heroic slayer of the jihadi super-villain testifying against the ultimate bad soldier, a five-foot-two-inch (1.57 meters) gay man facing 22 charges in military court and accused of the biggest security breach in US history. 

But let's be clear on one thing: Manning, the young Army intelligence analyst who leaked thousands of public documents and passed them on to WikiLeaks, has done far more for US national security than SEAL Team 6. 

The assassination of Osama bin Laden, the spiritual (but not operational) leader of al-Qaeda, was a fist-pumping moment of triumphalism for a lot of Americans, as the Saudi fanatic had come to incarnate not just al-Qaeda but all national security threats. This was true despite the fact that, since 9/11, al-Qaeda has been able to do remarkably little harm to the United States or to the West in general. (The deadliest attack in a Western nation since 9/11, the 2004 Atocha bombing in Madrid, was not committed by bin Laden's organization, though white-shoe foreign policy magazines and think tanks routinely get this wrong, "al-Qaeda" being such a handy/sloppy metonym for all terrorism.) 

Al-Qaeda remains a simmering menace, but as an organization hardly the greatest threat to the United States. In fact, if you measure national security in blood and money, as many of us still do, by far the greatest threat to the United States over the past dozen years has been our own clueless foreign policy. 

Putin's Self-Destruction

Russia's New Anti-Corruption Campaign Will Sink the Regime

A flyswatter with an image of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, part of an art installation by Russian artist Vasily Slonov, is on display at the Krasnoyarsk Museum Centre in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, 2012

By Ivan Krastev and Vladislav Inozemtsev

This spring has been almost eerily calm in Russia. The protest movement, which coalesced after the rigged parliamentary elections in the autumn of 2011, has all but disintegrated, and hopes for substantive political opening have faded. High-profile liberals are in retreat or retirement, a dozen opposition activists are in jail, and President Vladimir Putin’s will is unchallenged. Even the weather has been nice, perhaps lulling the Kremlin into believing that it has little to fear. In fact, it does: unwittingly, Putin’s recent anti-corruption campaign has set the stage for the system’s collapse.

The anti-corruption campaign was a choice. In April, the lower house of the Russian legislature passed a law that bans members of both houses from holding foreign bank accounts. The prohibition was extended to include all public servants, including central bank officials and functionaries of state-owned corporations. Three months after Putin signs the law, government officials will be barred from opening bank accounts abroad, even to pay for educational or medical expenses.

Putin has pledged that this is only the beginning. He and his advisers know well that attacks on corruption are popular with the public. They are counting on the campaign to shore up support after the protests and to mobilize Putin’s supporters. What the Kremlin is neglecting, however, is that the campaign could be a double-edged sword that ultimately delegitimizes the regime, as Putin’s own acolytes are swept out while the government’s house is cleaned.

Putin faces a critical moment and is at risk of losing his sway over the elites.

FROM GORBACHEV TO PUTIN

The fate of Mikhail Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign in the last years of the Soviet Union should have provided a warning. By the 1980s, alcohol had become a major cause of death, absenteeism, and low labor productivity in the country. Its cost to the Soviet economy totaled no less than 10 percent of national income. When Gorbachev launched a program to end alcoholism in 1985, he was celebrated across the country for his courage and strategic vision. The campaign did succeed in reducing alcohol consumption, but that didn't stop it from quickly becoming a political disaster. Ordinary Soviet citizens believed that drinking themselves to death was their right, and they actively resisted the state’s attempt to infringe upon it. They ridiculed the policy, disobeyed regulations, and made their own alcohol. These low-risk forms of everyday resistance were an enormous problem for Gorbachev, because they turned the people against the Communist Party. By the time the anti-alcohol campaign was abandoned at the end of 1987, it had severely damaged both the credibility of Gorbachev’s reforms and the Soviet leader’s popularity.

27 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send A Chill Up Your Spine

If you have a spine, that is ...

Would you be willing to give up what Edward Snowden has given up?  He has given up his high paying job, his home, his girlfriend, his family, his future and his freedom just to expose the monolithic spy machinery that the U.S. government has been secretly building to the world.  He says that he does not want to live in a world where there isn't any privacy.  He says that he does not want to live in a world where everything that he says and does is recorded.  Thanks to Snowden, we now know that the U.S. government has been spying on us to a degree that most people would have never even dared to imagine.

Up until now, the general public has known very little about the U.S. government spy grid that knows almost everything about us.  But making this information public is going to cost Edward Snowden everything.  Essentially, his previous life is now totally over.  And if the U.S. government gets their hands on him, he will be very fortunate if he only has to spend the next several decades rotting in some horrible prison somewhere.