Category Archives: Security

Security

Amnesty International opposes Bush pot shots

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The Amnesty International site offers some background to their opposition and criticism of the Bush administration’s detainee program:

On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court issued a sweeping decision that found the commissions as currently constructed to be invalid. The Court held that the President did not have the authority to convene military commissions that deviated so far from established procedures without specific Congressional authorization. In addition, the Court ruled that the commissions must be in line with the due process protections found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits “the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.�

Recently, President Bush announced that 14 “high value detainees� who had been in secret CIA prisons, including the purported masterminds of the September 11 attacks, had been transferred to Guantanamo and were awaiting trial by military commission. President Bush has also sent Congress draft legislation to authorize military commissions very similar to those already struck down by the Supreme Court. In addition, he is asking that Congress to retroactively strip habeas corpus and to provide immunity from prosecution for civilians, CIA agents and administration officials who may have violated the War Crimes Act. Amnesty International will continue to insist that any legislation meets the basic fair trials protections and standards for treatment required by the Supreme Court and US and International law.

I am shocked (no pun intended) that anyone would really consider military tribunals without fair representation as a valid system. We have the means and the opportunity to try terrorists successfully in a court of law, with International backing. Instead, by attacking the system of justice and working in a partisan manner to undermine Constitutional and International human rights provisions, the American president has his aim pointed in the wrong direction. Like Cheney shooting his friends in the back in pursuit of some other objective, Bush will do more damage than good to the US and actually foment more opposition at home and abroad through his proposed detainee program.

Just as disturbing is the political foundation of the system implemented to try Saddam Hussein himself. Again, the Bush administration has shown that its aim is to toss aside concepts of justice in search of political expediency. The Case School of Law’s blog explains:

The US managers of Iraqi post-conflict justice who were at the NSC, Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Justice (DoJ) failed to see that “special� tribunals have the connotation of exceptional tribunals, which are in violation of international human rights law and thus smack of illegitimacy. Not only the name, but other aspects of the IST’s statute which remained unchanged in the modification brought about in the IHCC in 2005, are in violation of international principles of legality, which Iraqi law also embodies. This applies to the definition of the crimes within the jurisdiction of the tribunal and also to several other provisions of the statute. The statute that US drafters developed was so influenced by American thinking that it had the fingerprints of the foreign occupying power all over it. It also had glaring violations of Iraqi law. This was followed by a decision to establish the IST through the Governing Council, a politically-appointed body by the US – a foreign occupying power in Iraq. Moreover, the selection of judges, investigating judges, and prosecutors by the GC was in violation of Iraqi laws on judicial appointments. All of this cast a dark shadow on the tribunal’s legitimacy and legality, which continued even though a name change and minor modifications occurred in 2005.

Since Iraq was subject to the exclusive control of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) run by US Ambassador Paul Bremer, the [Iraq Special Tribunal] statute was promulgated by Bremer on December 10, 2003, by CPA Order No. 48, thus confirming the “made in America� label of the institution. Moreover, the IST judges, investigating judges and prosecutors were formally approved by Bremer. The US, acting through the Department of Justice and its Regime Crimes Liaison Office (RCLO), controlled the Tribunal, conducted and directed its investigative activities, collected and stored the evidence, directed its operations, funded it, and had the seat of the Tribunal within the “Green Zone.� In time, the judges, investigating judges, and prosecutors whose salaries were paid by the RCLO moved into the Green Zone where everything was concentrated under US protection. There was little doubt about who owned the IST. Some things changed after 2005, particularly, the Iraqis taking ownership of the process, but the rest remained as it was.

The choice of this post-conflict justice modality was dictated by US political considerations, supported by Iraqi expatriates. It is the right choice, though by no means should it have been limited to a tribunal, and certainly not to one whose statute had so many infirmities. The Administration and its Iraqi expatriate collaborators approached the tribunal’s drafting of the statute without enough knowledge or respect for the Iraqi legal system, and without much experience in international criminal justice precedents. More importantly, they ignored the first lesson of post-conflict justice, namely, to keep politics at a minimum and make sure the legalities are at a maximum. In the IST’s case, it was the reverse.

As we often say in security, it is very dangerous to adopt a “Fire. Ready, Aim.” approach to governance and management. This is even more the case when considering the effects of friendly fire (e.g. taking pot shots at an Internationally recognized system of rights and laws).

pot shot
noun

    a careless shot taken without regard for hunting law or rules, often at a close-range or defenseless object, in order to fill a prize or cooking pot
History, Security

Iran strengthens ties with the Comoros

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I recently mentioned the influence of China in developing parts of Africa and Asia. Now Iran is said to be providing humanitarian support to countries such as the Comoros. Here is an Iran News report from August:

four agreements were concluded this week as the islands’ new president, Iranian-trained Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, known as the “ayatollah” for his Iranian education, seeks to improve ties with Islamic nations, officials said.

In the first visit to the overwhelmingly Muslim Comoros by a high-level foreign delegation since Sambi’s election in May, a senior Iranian team inked pacts in the agriculture, education, health and defense, they said.

Meanwhile, the US again threatened to invade Pakistan. I remember a similar situation in 2004 when a US diplomat made the news, but now the warnings are from President Bush himself. The latest exchange of words could have something to do with news that Al Qaeda recently signed an actual agreement with Pakistan to operate out of their northern territory. Other reports suggest that senior US officials have been playing hardball with Pakistan since 2001:

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan says the United States threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age after the 9/11 attacks if he did not help America’s war on terror.

[…]

Musharraf told 60 Minutes that Armitage’s message was delivered with demands that he turn over Pakistan’s border posts and bases for the U.S. military to use in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Some were “ludicrous,” such as a demand he suppress domestic expression of support for terrorism against the United States.

“If somebody is expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views,” Musharraf said.

At first glance this suggests that Iran and China are getting news for humanitarian assistance and development of third world countries, while the US is demanding that foreign nations restrict freedoms or face military attack. At a time when the US needs the most diplomacy and support from allies to build support for its war on terror, it appears to be accomplishing the exact opposite. Colin Powell’s warning seems right on target, unfortunately.

In a letter released last week, he joined Senator John McCain and other prominent Republicans in opposing the White House demand that Congress redefine the convention. “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” he said.

Three fishing boats. That’s what Iran apparently gave the Comoros. It seems so incredibly minor, but the impact is undoubtedly huge compared to French or even US actions and words in the current theatre of international relations.

I will never forget how people literally honored Americans and talked about a great land of freedom and liberty in the 1980s and 1990s. In Eastern Europe I was always greeted with scowls and suspicion if I spoke German but as soon as I said I was American I was honored with open arms and warm smiles. One man, in a little town in rural Hungary, was so excited he started to cry as he told me he had waited forty years for me (the Americans) to arrive in his neighborhood.

All that global goodwill is now undoubtedly shifting, if not evaporating altogether, as the Bush administration appears to fail to understand how and why it existed in the first place.

Energy, Sailing, Security

Financial impact of ethanol for boaters

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The Press of Atlantic City has some good first-person accounts in their story on the ethanol problem for motorboats. The citations are a little suspicious because they say things like “Thomas estimates” without ever identifying who Thomas might be…. Anyway, they make a good attempt at trying to quantify the per-boat damage and costs from the sudden introduction of ethanol in New Jersey:

“It’s been a nightmare,â€? said Michael Advena, owner of Newport Marine Inc. in Ventnor. “During the first week this summer, we had 11 boats towed in. Out of those 11 boats, nine of them were fuel-related (problems).â€?

[…]

Thomas estimates that a carburetor ruined by fuel residue can cost about $700, plus a few hours of labor, to replace.

“You also get into towing fees,� Thomas said. “If it actually breaks down offshore.�

Fuel tanks can be even more costly. Boaters unwilling to wait for the ethanol to wash all the residue out of the tanks may choose to remove the fuel tank completely and have it power washed. Add on the expense of tearing up the boat deck to get to the fuel tank and the price tag can add up to several thousand dollars.

It is funny how biofuels are said to “clean out” the engines. Bio-diesel in an car or truck with high mileage often scrubs out all the old dirty petroleum waste, which obviously clogs filters. It is not unusual for a biofuel distributer to recommend that users change their filters more often. This seems like a minor inconvenience to me since a cleaner-running engine is a good thing both for health and maintenance. But the problem on boats is significantly greater.

My guess is that most pleasure boats do not have very clean filters to begin with (most people change their commuting/work vehicle oil regularly, but neglect motors for hobbies and toys) and their tanks are also not kept clean so the first blend of ethanol is more likely to cause problems than in automobiles. And that is not to mention that vehicles are far less susceptible to water than boats, as discussed earlier.

Energy, Security

The danger of a fuel cell infrastructure

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A cursory review of the “Comparison of hydrogen, methanol and gasoline fuels…” in the Journal of Power Sources 79 (1999) 143-168, brought up a curious argument. Joan Ogden, Margaret Steinbugler and Thomas Kreutz suggest the following, on page 166:

Defining ‘infrastructure’ to mean all the equipment (both on and off the vehicle) required to bring hydrogen to the fuel cell, we find that the cost is comparble for hydrogen, methanol and gasoline POX fuel cell vehicles. Hydrogen appears to entail the lowest capital costs.

By how much? And what does that cost look like relative to other more stable and safe sources of fuel that also do not require long-haul centralized distribution? They do not say. Instead, they back away from their own conclusions by offering optimism about hydrogen.

The cost and efficiency estimated for various types of fuel cell vehicles depend on our assumptions, which may change as technology progresses. For example, future improvements in onboard fuel processor technology or development of fuel cells with higher performance on reformates could increase the vehicle efficiency for methonal or gasoline vehicles; better methods of hydrogen storage might lead to lower cost for hydrogen vehicles.

The last sentence is especially important. The amount of security required to properly distribute and store hydrogen fuel is not actually difficult as much as it is incredibly expensive. And the expense is not because of the materials involved, but rather due to the need to retrofit or build out a new system with a constant state of surveillance to avoid loss or damage of this form of energy. Compared to energy sources like biodiesel, which are actually used to clean up petroleum spills and distributed as one of the most environmentally stable forms of fuel, a highly expensive and centralized system of hydrogen seems like exactly the wrong thing to build in a climate of fear from terrorist attack or sabotage.

Since the article is focused on which fuel cell technology is best, it lacks important perspective on whether a fuel cell is really the right choice among all alternative sources. While the US military is running all their engines now on diesel, and spending billions on improvements to supply-chain logistics, this article gives a prediction about fuel cells that is hardly based on real-world experience and thus rather uninspiring:

The capital cost of developing hydrogen refueling infrastructure is comperable to or less than the total cost (on and off the vehicle) for methanol or gasoline fuel cell vehicles. The lifecycle cost of transportation is slightly less for hydrogen than for gasoline or methanol fuel cell vehicles. Like compressed natural gas or methanol, hydrogen faces the issue of reaching beyond centrally refueled fleet markets.

Fuel cell vehicles, even hydrogen, will have to be more realistic before their claims can be validated. For example, today’s gasoline engines could be more efficient, but the car manufacturers and the petroleum companies do not seem inclined to make it happen. They blame the consumer, but no matter who is at fault the fact remains that there has been little/no progress made for over a decade even though the capability exists. And I think we all know that most Americans, especially those driving on the open road at high speed, prefer large, heavy and “safe” feeling vehicles. So economic and cultural factors are important. On the other hand, electric vehicles have long been known to be capable of long distance travel at high-speeds in spite of the efforts by the car manufacturers and petroleum companies to undermine their development. So, with this in mind I have to ask why this report did not point out the more obvious conclusion that hydrogen power-plants fueling electric vehicles would solve the problems of hydrogen distribution as well as power-plant and vehicle emissions. The hydrogen fuel dream could thus be realized, but only as a competitor to other plants but not on an individualized level. Then, after the means of securing the energy had been developed and tested extensively, it would be more reasonable to propose extending it to consumer fueling-stations. Although in the meantime, people might also realize that a diesel-hybrid is far more practical, inexpensive and safe.