Obsidian Wings

Do Not Underestimate the Power of the Dark Side

by publius

While we're all waiting for the big spectrum auction decision to come down, a quick word on Google. As some of you may have noticed, I've been skeptical to say the least of Google's chances of success here (i.e., their ability to win spectrum and enter the wireless market). Well, this column pretty much explains it all. It's hard to believe I'm just now "discovering" this weekly column. But anyway, it's not too much to say that I agree with every word. Particularly these sets of words:

By this time it should be clear that I generally support what Google has proposed and think it is a very good idea for us all. So why, then, does the headline on this column suggest that Google is on crack to have even made such a proposal?

Because they don't know who they are messing with, that's why.

I am 100 percent behind Google's four conditions, but I see very little likelihood that they will be accepted by the full commission. I also see that they have slightly moved the wireless incumbents, who are mean and spiteful companies and WILL HAVE THEIR REVENGE.

. . .

Look who Google is up against -- all the largest Internet service providers in the U.S. Google will not win this even if they win the auction, because the telcos and cable companies are far more skilled and cunning when it comes to lobbying and controlling politicians than Google can ever hope to be. The telcos have spent more than a century at this game and Google hasn't even been in it for a decade. And Google's pockets are no deeper than those of the other potential bidders.

In this movie, Sauron lasers Sam and Frodo before they get to Mount Doom. Darth Vader doesn't help Luke out in the end. Megatron wins. Wile E. catches the Roadrunner. Elizabeth Bennet learns that Darcy is a loser. Etc. Etc.

Special Operations In Kurdistan

by hilzoy

Robert Novak in the Washington Post:

"The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. High-level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.

While detailed operational plans are necessarily concealed, the broad outlines have been presented to select members of Congress as required by law. U.S. Special Forces are to work with the Turkish army to suppress the Kurds' guerrilla campaign. The Bush administration is trying to prevent another front from opening in Iraq, which would have disastrous consequences. But this gamble risks major exposure and failure. (...)

The dormant Turkish Kurd guerrilla fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) came to life. By June, the Turkish government was demonstrating its concern by lobbing artillery shells across the border. Ankara began protesting, to both Washington and Baghdad, that the PKK was using northern Iraq as a base for guerrilla operations. On July 11, in Washington, Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy became the first Turkish official to assert publicly that Iraqi Kurds have claims on Turkish territory. On July 20, just two days before his successful reelection, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened a military incursion into Iraq against the Kurds. Last Wednesday, Murat Karayilan, head of the PKK political council, predicted that "the Turkish Army will attack southern Kurdistan."

Turkey has a well-trained, well-equipped army of 250,000 near the border, facing some 4,000 PKK fighters hiding in the mountains of northern Iraq. But significant cross-border operations surely would bring to the PKK's side the military forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the best U.S. ally in Iraq. What is Washington to do in the dilemma of two friends battling each other on an unwanted new front in Iraq?

The surprising answer was given in secret briefings on Capitol Hill last week by Eric S. Edelman, a former aide to Vice President Cheney who is now undersecretary of defense for policy. Edelman, a Foreign Service officer who once was U.S. ambassador to Turkey, revealed to lawmakers plans for a covert operation of U.S. Special Forces to help the Turks neutralize the PKK. They would behead the guerrilla organization by helping Turkey get rid of PKK leaders that they have targeted for years."

It is unclear exactly what this plan involves. Novak's article, if it can be believed, says that our Special Forces would work with "the Turkish Army", which suggests a Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan. But he also says that the goal would be "to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq", which suggests that we might be planning instead to work with Turkish special forces (or whatever the Turkish equivalent is.)

I will discuss this below the fold.

Spectrum Auction Decision -- The Trailer

by publius

It appears that the FCC’s spectrum auction decision is coming out tomorrow. Here’s a brief preview of some things to consider. I’ll obviously have more to say after the decision comes down.

First, some of the most important industry issues that the Commission will formally decide tomorrow aren’t getting much attention. Open access and Google are sexy beasts and all, but the real action is largely elsewhere. Issues like the public safety communications network, spectrum block size, scope of license, and small entity auction credits are arguably more important to the industry than a watered-down open access requirement.

The headlines, though, have focused on open access and (swoon) Google. We don’t know exactly what’s been decided, but you should be skeptical of the supposed “open access” requirements that Chairman Martin has apparently adopted. Most obviously, the two companies that theoretically have the most to lose from open access – Verizon and AT&T – have come out in tentative support of Martin’s proposal. That should send off big loud Drudge-like sirens in your head.

The devil here is in the details, but there are a few possible forms that a toothless open access requirement could take. First, the “open access” proposal will apply only to one piece of the spectrum and not to the entire spectrum holdings of a given company. Wireless companies use different spectrum frequencies to bring you service. For instance, when you use national carriers’ networks, you don’t notice it but your service can jump around from, say, 800 MHz to 1950 MHz. Thus, the open access spectrum is only one small part of the frequency national carriers’ customers use. So, keep an eye out for disclaimers in the FCC decision saying that open access doesn’t apply for carriers with additional spectrum holdings because it would screw up their network. (Or more generally, look for some provision that allows owning other spectrum to water down the open access requirement)

A second possibility is that the big boys realized that device open access in the wireless world doesn’t get you very far without some form of net neutrality. For instance, the Post reported:

In a last-minute policy shift, Verizon Wireless said yesterday that it would support a plan requiring a portion of airwaves to be available to any wireless device. But the company that builds the network on those airwaves, Verizon said, shouldn't have to guarantee that all applications, such as games and videos, will work properly.

The whole point of buying certain wireless devices, though, is that you want to use certain applications. Thus, if you can block applications (e.g., VoIP, p2p), the device itself doesn’t matter as much. For all practical purposes, the walled garden will live on.

That’s a key difference between the open access of today and the Carterfone open access of yesteryear (1950s and 60s). Decades ago, allowing devices to be attached to the network (which is what the Carterfone/Hush-a-Phone decisions required) just meant you could buy your own phone. It didn’t mean you could access services or applications that are potential rivals to the services your phone company (e.g., VoIP). Even after Carterfone, you still bought phone service from AT&T -- you just got to attach a groovin’ Elvis phone if you wanted to.

Bottom line -- keep an eye out for kabuki. The most likely scenario is that the open access requirement will, Warner-like, accomplish nothing but defusing political pressure.

[UPDATE: Via Communications Daily, I found this letter (pdf) from Verizon to the FCC stating that they oppose open access after all. Verizon apparently only meant to say that if the Commission adopts device open access, it should not necessarily net neutrality-style open access. Hard to know whether this was just a miscommunication or some backtracking. (It was originally reported in the WSJ as coming from the CEO, but sometimes CEOs don't dive into the details. So, who knows.

For what it's worth, I thought it was odd for Verizon to support open access publicly because it all but confirms that the requirement does nothing. Verizon is generally far better at these little PR games (e.g., strategically claiming to lose while winning), so someone screwed up here.]

I Don't Know Whether To Laugh Or Cry

by hilzoy

Robin Wright in the Washington Post:

"After three decades of festering tensions, the United States and Iran are now facing off in a full-fledged cold war.

When the first Cold War began, in 1946, Winston Churchill famously spoke of an Iron Curtain that had divided Europe. As Cold War II begins half a century later, the Bush administration is trying to drape a kind of Green Curtain dividing the Middle East between Iran's friends and foes. The new showdown may well prove to be the most enduring legacy of the Iraq conflict. The outcome will certainly shape the future of the Middle East -- not least because the administration's strategy seems so unlikely to work.

The new Cold War will take center stage this week, as President Bush dispatches Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to the Middle East for a last-ditch appeal to recalcitrant U.S. allies on Iraq. Their pitch to Sunni Arab regimes spooked by the bloc of countries and movements led by Shiite Persian Iran will be simple: Support Iraq as a buffer against Iran or face living under Tehran's growing shadow."

OMG: A Green Curtain!!1! And what is it exactly that has made Iran's shadow grow so large and menacing? Could it be ... SATAN??

No. It was us.

We had the clever idea of ending several decades of successful containment of Iran by cleverly transforming Iraq from Iran's biggest regional counterweight into a chaotic failed state "led", if that is the right word, by people with close ties to Iran. In the process, we even more cleverly pinned our troops down right where Iran could get at them, and gave them every incentive to do what they could to keep us tied down there by hinting that as soon as we were finished with Iraq, it would be time to take down Teheran. We can't get out unless the Maliki government succeeds, and so even though it is led by Shi'as and friendly to Iran, we are funding and supporting it, and trying to do so without empowering Iran, which is, um, impossible. At the same time, we are trying to contain Iranian influence in the region and mollify our increasingly nervous Sunni allies by by selling lots and lots of weapons -- $20 billion worth -- to the delightful government of Saudi Arabia. But guess what? Saudi Arabia is arming -- of course -- the insurgents who are fighting against the Maliki government -- the very same government that we are trying to prop up!

This is what comes of having idiots in charge of our foreign policy.

Personally, I fail to see why we should see our issues with Iran as worth mentioning in the same breath as the Cold War. I'm with Greg Djeredjian on this one:

"I don't know precisely when or how a middle-ranking power like Iran--rivaled in its immediate neighborhood alone by the likes of Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan--has somehow metamorphosed into America's mega-foe thereby presenting us with a full-blown "Cold War II""

And I'd add: it is a country that has the ability to threaten us at all only because we have plunked down large numbers of troops next door to us. Moreover, while it has supported any number of dreadful groups throughout the Middle East, it has never actually attacked another country, and I find the idea that it might attack Israel ludicrous, given Israel's nuclear arsenal.

But if we insist on viewing it as some sort of major threat, we ought to have thought of that before we invaded Iraq. Now we are stuck with an absolutely incoherent policy, in which our various goals are in massive and (as far as I can tell) irresoluble conflict. And besides, to quote IOZ (via American Footprints):

"Don't listen to what they say; look at what they do. In this case, category Say is "prevent a wider regional war" and category Do is "pour billions of dollars worth of arms into the fragile, quarrelsome, precarious neighbors of an escalating civil war ever percolating under an American occupation."

Printing Money

by hilzoy

When I was little, I used to sit with my parents every evening and watch the news (or 'Huntley-Brinkley', as we called the news back then.) One night, probably in 1968, someone said something about Lyndon Johnson trying to pay for the war in Vietnam not by raising taxes but by printing money. It had never occurred to me that the President had the power to print money at will (I was, after all, eight or nine, and had never given printing money any thought at all.) But I thought it sounded like a pretty good way of paying for something expensive, like a war, so I asked Dadzoy: what's wrong with paying for a war by printing money?

Dadzoy said: imagine that you and I are the only people in the world, and I have a candy bar, and you have a dime. Also imagine that there is nothing else in the world that you want to buy, and no other money. How much would you pay me for my candy bar? Cleverly, I said: The whole dime! Right, said Dadzoy. Now suppose that right before you were going to offer to buy my candy bar, you found another dime. Now how much would you pay me for my candy bar? I said: I'd only offer you one dime. Dadzoy said: but if I knew that you had two dimes, I might ask for both of them. I thought for a while, and finally allowed as how I would pay both dimes for the candy bar.

So, said Dadzoy, do you think that finding that second dime made you any better off? Yes, I said: I had more money! -- But, said Dadzoy, even though you had twice as much money, you could still only buy one candy bar. Having twice as much money just made the candy bar more expensive.

The light dawned. This was cool!

Dadzoy went on: Do you think it would make any difference if you made that second dime instead of finding it? -- Of course not, I said. -- Well, that's what Lyndon Johnson is doing, and all that will happen is that everything will become a little more expensive.

Now: we could quibble about the details that Dadzoy simplified away to make this comprehensible to a nine year old: for instance, the fact that the economy has more than two participants, and that printing money can affect the distribution of stuff among them. (One of the nice things about the way Dadzoy explained it was that I could think of some of these things for myself and go back and ask him. And I did. Again and again.) Still, I think it was a great way to learn about inflation.

And that's why I very much wish that Dadzoy had had an opportunity to tell this same story to the young Robert Mugabe:

"President Robert Mugabe has promised to print more money to fund municipal projects, a government newspaper reported Saturday. The pledge came despite hyperinflation that has created severe shortages of cornmeal, meat, milk and other staples.

Meanwhile, water shortages have worsened because of pump breakdowns, and a senior government official said kidney patients were dying for lack of dialysis machines. (...)

"Where money for projects has not been found, we will print it," Mugabe was quoted as saying.

The printing of money is generally regarded as a recipe for inflation -- which is officially at 4,500 percent in Zimbabwe, though private economists estimate it to be at least twice that high. The government last month ordered sweeping price cuts of about 50 percent, accusing store owners and businesses of fueling the inflation.

Zimbabwe is in the grips of its worst crisis since independence from Britain in 1980. Power, water, health and communications systems are collapsing, and there are acute shortages of staple foods and gasoline. Unemployment is around 80 percent, and political unrest is high."

He needs the lesson about the dime and the candy bar. Then he needs the followup lesson about how once you start making a lot of dimes, controlling the price of the candy bar really isn't the answer. More than that, however, Zimbabwe needs a President who knows more economics than a nine year old can understand.

Sunday Psychic Cat Blogging

by hilzoy

From the NEJM, the story of Oscar, a cat who lives in the dementia ward of a nursing home, and seems to be able to predict when its residents will die:

"Oscar takes no notice of the woman and leaps up onto the bed. He surveys Mrs. T. She is clearly in the terminal phase of illness, and her breathing is labored. Oscar's examination is interrupted by a nurse, who walks in to ask the daughter whether Mrs. T. is uncomfortable and needs more morphine. The daughter shakes her head, and the nurse retreats. Oscar returns to his work. He sniffs the air, gives Mrs. T. one final look, then jumps off the bed and quickly leaves the room. Not today.

Making his way back up the hallway, Oscar arrives at Room 313. The door is open, and he proceeds inside. Mrs. K. is resting peacefully in her bed, her breathing steady but shallow. She is surrounded by photographs of her grandchildren and one from her wedding day. Despite these keepsakes, she is alone. Oscar jumps onto her bed and again sniffs the air. He pauses to consider the situation, and then turns around twice before curling up beside Mrs. K.

One hour passes. Oscar waits. A nurse walks into the room to check on her patient. She pauses to note Oscar's presence. Concerned, she hurriedly leaves the room and returns to her desk. She grabs Mrs. K.'s chart off the medical-records rack and begins to make phone calls.

Within a half hour the family starts to arrive. Chairs are brought into the room, where the relatives begin their vigil. The priest is called to deliver last rites. And still, Oscar has not budged, instead purring and gently nuzzling Mrs. K. A young grandson asks his mother, "What is the cat doing here?" The mother, fighting back tears, tells him, "He is here to help Grandma get to heaven." Thirty minutes later, Mrs. K. takes her last earthly breath. With this, Oscar sits up, looks around, then departs the room so quietly that the grieving family barely notices.

On his way back to the charting area, Oscar passes a plaque mounted on the wall. On it is engraved a commendation from a local hospice agency: "For his compassionate hospice care, this plaque is awarded to Oscar the Cat." Oscar takes a quick drink of water and returns to his desk to curl up for a long rest. His day's work is done. There will be no more deaths today, not in Room 310 or in any other room for that matter. After all, no one dies on the third floor unless Oscar pays a visit and stays awhile.

Note: Since he was adopted by staff members as a kitten, Oscar the Cat has had an uncanny ability to predict when residents are about to die. Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families."

In a discussion of this at the Washington Post, Dr. David M. Dosa, the author, says that the 25 deaths at which Oscar has been present are all the deaths in that facility, and that he doesn't generally curl up next to people who are not about to die. He thinks that there's something Oscar smells, or somehow detects, that we can't. Some people asked whether Oscar might not be killing the patients, for instance by scaring them, since that would also explain the correlation; the author notes that these are patients with end-stage dementia who are pretty unlikely to be scared by much of anything. My favorite question:

"Washington, D.C.: Has anyone considered the possibility that the reason this cat is always there is because it's stealing the patients' souls?

Dr. David M. Dosa: Harkens back to the ancient Egyptians who I believe used to mention this (or so I am told). I really doubt it."

Me too.

Someone else quoted Jay Leno: "Anyway -- today, the cat curled up next to the John McCain campaign."

Heh. Indeed.

Noted Without Further Comment

by publius

From Deborah Howell, Ombudsman [!] for the Post:

I admit to both wincing at and being fascinated by the [infamous boobies] column. I had a lot of questions that the column didn't answer: Did Clinton have a bad-blouse day, or did she want to wear something a bit provocative? Was this a wardrobe malfunction, and, if so, did it merit this much coverage? Shouldn't her reaction have been sought? Perhaps the column could have talked about cleavage on older women. If Clinton can show it on the Senate floor, is it okay in The Post's newsroom? Out at a restaurant? (This older woman wants to know.) . . .

There's a bigger issue about her Clinton piece: Does this have anything to do with whether Clinton should be president? Not a thing. But do we want to read the column about her cleavage? Yes indeed. It was the most viewed story on the Web site all day. So was a recent story on John Edwards's hairdresser.

There has to be a balance in campaign coverage. Readers deserve substance, but they also want to know who these people are, about their families and their lives.

Ok hell, I'll further comment. Other than the obvious ridiculousness, the fact that voters generally want to know personal details about candidates has absolutely nothing to do with the appropriateness of this specific story, which was devoted wholly to Senator Clinton's cleavage. Second, the fact that the story was popular has absolutely nothing to do with its appropriateness. I mean, writing about whether the candidates had sex last night would probably be highly-viewed too, but that doesn't exactly make it ok. Ugh. This is the Ombudsman mind you.

In the Name of the Bipartisanship

by publius

I’ll second Jim Henley’s view of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s paean to bipartisanship. But snark aside, there are also serious issues here. Before getting to them though, it’s important to look beyond the DC Matrix and to remember the old adage – “Everything in Washington Happens for a Reason.” Slaughter’s op-ed probably isn’t intended to persuade anyone. It’s more likely an attempt to build bipartisan street cred for a high-level position in a future Democratic administration.

But even taking her argument at face value, it’s seriously flawed and symptomatic of far larger errors in thinking (errors the progressive blogosphere has been pointing out since its inception). Most obviously, bipartisanship is not an end unto itself. It’s a means to the end of better policy. “Better” doesn’t mean perfect -- it just means better than the status quo. The underlying assumption of pleas for bipartisanship is that excessive partisanship results either in flawed policies or (more often) an inability to pass better ones.

The “bipartisanship first” crowd is guilty of at least one of two errors, both of which I’ll describe after the jump.

The Clinton/Obama Fight

by hilzoy

Now that the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has entered its fifth day, I thought I'd say something about it. The video of the part of the YouTube Debate at issue -- about meeting with the heads of Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and Syria -- is here; a transcript of the debate is here. (The relevant bit is about 2/3 of the way down.) I've put a longer version of what I think actually happened at the end of this post; my brief summary is: Obama said he would be "willing to" meet with five unpleasant heads of state without preconditions; Hillary Clinton acted as though he had promised or committed himself to doing so, which he hadn't; the next day, she called that supposed commitment "irresponsible and frankly naive", which it wasn't.

As best I can tell, Clinton was trying to take what Obama had said and make it fit a storyline about his inexperience; Obama then proceeded to take what she had said and use it to reinforce his own storyline, about the importance of judgment and the need for change. Reporters and pundits on both sides seemed to think that Clinton was right, but the American people disagree.

Basically, I agree with Ezra:

"As far as I can tell, the actual dispute here stems from a central ambiguity, followed by some opportunism. I heard that question and assumed it was asking whether, in contrast to the Bush administration, you would open negotiations, and possibly have meetings, with the heads of countries like Iran. I'm pretty sure that's how Obama understood it. But Hillary heard that, saw an opening, and pounced. And Obama, being a smart politician, didn't back down, and has instead used the spat to tie her rhetoric to Bush's rhetoric, with which it shares some similarities."

However, I also think -- and as far as I can tell, he doesn't -- that there is a substantive difference between the two, concerning the question: do you see negotiations as something that should be used as necessary, and regarded as a useful but neutral instrument, or do you regard them as having to be justified in some way, and/or used only when certain conditions preconditions are met? On this one, I'm with Obama. I say why below the fold.

I Say Uncle

by publius

Sometimes you only need to read the first sentence of a Powerline post to know you've read enough. John Hinderaker begins his "Is This a Coup? If Not, What Is It?" post with:

The Democrats' unconstitutional usurpation of power continues:

Despite the tantalizing colon, there's no reason to go on. Only darkness and pain await you.