by Charlie Edwards | Jun 26, 2009 | UK
Last year I highlighted a particularly depressing and lightweight evidence session held by the Defence Select Committee on national security and resilience. This session has been well and truly surpassed by the following evidence session. Sean O’Neill, Crime Editor at The Times describes the scene from the committee room:
So hard being an MP these days, so much to remember. Where did I put the receipt for those silk cushions? What’s the name of that moat-cleaning firm again? There’s hardly any time to get oneself ready for the dreary day-to-day stuff like, say, the appearance of SOCA’s big cheeses before the Home Affairs Select Committee. So we were treated this morning to the usual string of half-baked, ll-prepared questions without anyone landing a glove on Sir Stephen Lander and Bill Hughes. Best of all was – “These Afghan money-launderers, Sir Stephen, were they British?”.
In the midst of it all, your humble correspondent (who has written the odd story about SOCA) was referred to as Sam while SOCA’s chairman was variously called Mr Lander and even Saint Stephen. Meanwhile, the confused picture of organised crime in Britain emerged even more confused. SOCA, it seems, is happy with ACPO’s assessment of 2,800 criminal gangs active in the UK but it prefers to use its own figure of 4,000 individuals involved in organised crime. Even by our maths that’s fewer than two people in every gang.
by Alex Evans | Jun 26, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
Bismarck once noted that “laws are like sausages: it’s better not to see them being made”. Were he around today, he might add that both laws and sausages are, in the US at least, based mainly on corn.
As I’ve just mentioned in a separate post, today is crunch time for the Waxman-Markey climate bill in the House, and so everyone’s watching the few remaining undecided Democrats, many of whom have big coal interests in their states. One set of Democrats that’s firmly in the ‘decided’ column, though, is the farm-lobby – who will be busting out cold beers and chucking ribs on the grill this weekend if the Bill passes.
Not long ago, the farm lobby were adamantly opposed to the bill, which they feared could increase their input prices, especially fuel for on-farm energy use. Moreover, the mighty corn lobby was especially unhappy that it wasn’t invited to the cap and trade party, as National Corn Growers Association President Bob Dickey made very plain on May 18th:
“After reviewing the legislation, we can see the bill does not clearly provide for a mechanism by which corn growers can sell carbon credits on the market. We strongly believe the bill will increase input costs without specific opportunities to offset those additions. We cannot support the American Clean Energy and Security Act in absence of the provisions that we have explained in some length to the Committee.”
Well, that was then. The bill now includes an amendment submitted by House Agriculture Committee chairman Collin Peterson, which will:
- create a market for agricultural offsets that allows the sector to take part in cap-and-trade;
- have this market regulated by the US Department of Agriculture, not the Environmental Protection Agency; and
- explicitly exempt agriculture from having an emissions cap of its own.
Oh dear. (more…)
by Alex Evans | Jun 26, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
The Waxman-Markey Bill will go to the floor of the House today or tomorrow, so Obama and Pelosi are on a determined bid to round up the few remaining undecided Democrats (mainly from rust belt coal states). US environment NGOs have (apart from Greenpeace – quelle surprise) saddled up for a massive mobilisation, and staking every last cent of political capital on leveraging the outcome: the League of Conservation voters went so far as to write to House members saying,
“In light of the tremendous importance of this legislation, LCV has made the unprecedented decision that we will not endorse any member of the House of Representatives in 2010 election cycle who votes against final passage of this historic bill.”
If recent polling data is accurate, then the US public seems to be behind the case for tough action: a Washington Post-ABC poll conducted June 18-21, for instance, has nearly twice as many people approving of Obama’s handling of global warming as those disapproving at 54% vs 28% – a touch down on late April, when the ratio was 61% vs 23%, but still robust.
Better still, 75% of people thought the federal government should “regulate the release of greenhouse gases” vs 22% ‘should not’ – and wierdly, if the question is adapted to include “What if it raised the price of things you buy”, then the ratio widens to 80% vs 18%. That said, on cap-and-trade specifically, the numbers are far closer: 52% support vs 42% opposed, as compared to 59% vs 34% in late April.
But the really stand-out finding for me is about how American voters regard international cooperation on climate. The question put to them on this was as follows:
Do you think the United States should take action on global warming only if other major industrial countries such as China and India agree to do equally effective things, that the United States should take action even if these other countries do less, or that the United States should not take action on this at all?
Answer: 18% think the US “should not take action at all” [i.e. irrespective of what other countries may or may not do]; 20% think the US should “take action only if other countries do”; and 59% think the US should “take action even if other countries do less”. Last time that question was asked in this poll was July last year, when the same numbers were 13% / 18% / 68%. So there’s weakening, sure – but considering that last year was before the credit crunch really kicked in, what’s interesting here is how well the numbers have held up.
by David Steven | Jun 25, 2009 | Off topic
Update: I wondered last night where Breaking News had picked up its David Miliband quote. Turns out it was from the Foreign Secretary’s own Twitter feed. The Guardian and Telegraph have both now picked up on the story. Just one problem – @David_Miliband is not actually written by the man himself, but by some bloggers linked to the UK Independence Party. Oops. My bad. Expect an embarrassed retraction from the papers soon as well. This, by the way, is what verified accounts are for.
Michael Jackson’s death was confirmed within the past hour – but already the foreign policy community is digesting the news. According to Breaking News, [fake – see above] David Miliband has consoled the world. “Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low,” he commented, transcending at a stroke Tony Blair’s “people’s princess” tribute to Diana.
The Twitter user, badjournalism, meanwhile, brings a much-needed a military angle, “Rumours circulating that General Sir Mike Jackson to do the 02 gigs,” he says.
by David Steven | Jun 24, 2009 | Middle East and North Africa, North America
In Washington, Iran isn’t about Mousavi, Khamenei or Neda, it’s about Obama. It’s a pincer movement. The establishment media behaves as if there’s some Geneva Convention stating that all international crises must have the American president in the starring role.
The right, meanwhile, see a golden opportunity to prove that a cuckoo has inveigled its way into the White House – and a Muslim-loving cuckoo at that. Take Andy McCarthy, a commentator at the National Review, who believes that as “a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society.”
It would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama’s instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters. As this position became increasingly untenable politically, and as Democrats became nervous that his silence would become a winning political round for Republicans, he was moved grudgingly to burble a mild censure of the mullah’s “unjust” repression – on the order of describing a maiming as a regrettable “assault,” though enough for the Obamedia to give him cover.
Now, both sides have a smoking gun. Obama, the Washington Times tells us, has been writing love letters to the Supreme Leader himself, pleading for better relations, nuclear negotiations and an Iranian takeover of Kansas (I made the last bit up).
On Twitter, the paper’s national security reporter, Eli Lake, appears to have wet himself in excitement (as well as using the opportunity to suck up to his editor big time). She, Barbara Slavin, is putting “more Iran heat than Persian narcos” (eh?) with her bold exposé, he tweets.
Big news, eh? Except that we knew that a letter from Obama to Khamenei was being written in January. And that it was being sent in March. So why the surprise now? Because, whatever else is at stake, the most important thing we can do now is keep the spotlight on the demonstrators fuel another solipsistic partisan Washington squabble.
Update: Reagan managed this with more style, it must be said. His missive to the Iranians, at the outset of the Iran contra scandal, was a bible with a handwritten verse inside. Oliver North took a key shaped cake made by an Israeli baker.
Update the second: To be fair to Slavins, she has an email exchange with National Review’s K-Lo where she makes a great deal of sense.
Slavin: Apart from my paper, most journalists still write about Iran as though it is a theocracy. What we have been seeing is the raw exercise of force on the part of the government and people power in the streets. The clerics have had very little to do with it.
Lopez: What has been most surprising to you about the White House response to the election protests there?
Slavin: I haven’t been surprised by the White House response.
Lopez: Are there any lessons from history Obama ought to heed?
Slavin: I think Obama has learned from the mistakes of past U.S. administrations in dealing with Iran and has put the emphasis where it should be, on the legitimate aspirations of the Iranian people. The U.S. has no embassy in Iran and few levers it can pull to impact events there. Aggressive action through the military or more sanctions will probably wind up helping the government, unfortunately.
