The New York Times reports today that several flights from Europe to the United States were cancelled today due to terrorist threats. An excerpt from the articles states that:
"American officials said they had alerted their foreign counterparts in Britain and France to their concerns about the Sunday and Monday flights and, under protocol that has been refined since the holiday groundings, urged the enforcement of extra security measures. Those measures included the requirement that British Airways and Air France post armed sky marshals on the flights, said a Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
American officials have warned that if foreign carriers do not comply with their demand that armed marshals be placed on flights of concern, the flights will run the risk of not being allowed into American airspace. The demand has produced resistance in some countries, including Britain, the United States' main ally in its campaign against terrorism.
The administration official said that the United States made it clear that it would require armed marshals on board. And British officials agreed that if the plane were to take off, marshals would be on board. The British elected to cancel the flights."
I am both unqualified and totally underinformed to make any judgments about the nature of the terrorist threat as it applies to these flights and others that have been affected before. What I would like to point out is that the US Homeland Security people seem to be suggesting that things would be much easier for the Europeans if they just accepted armed skymarshals aboard their aircraft. It seems to me that the US government is once again suggesting that the only right way to do it is the US way (i.e. with armed, as in gun carrying, marshals). What the US seems not to understand, is the European dislike for guns.
Bowling for Columbine was a huge hit here in Germany. People talked a great deal about Michael Moore and about the United States' fascination with the personal firearm as portrayed in that film. In contrast to the "lively" Second Ammendment discussions that go on in the US, there is a very strong consensus in Europe that guns are for hunting, not for self-protection.
I wonder why the US is so focused on armed marshals as the only solution. Would not better security at the airport be a more practical prophalactic solution than having the Lone Ranger sitting up in first class? Until the September terrorist attacks in the US, I remember being thoroughly unimpressed by airport security in the US when I compared it to the security at Frankfurt airport in Germany. US airport security is now much tighter and significantly more professional due to the wake up call that the US received in 2001. European airport security was also tightened up a bit after 9/11 although to a significantly smaller degree since the Europeans had much tighter security to begin with. It appears that the US Homeland Security people are presenting the Europeans with an ultimatum and that, at least for the moment, the Europeans are saying, no thank you.
Even if the Europeans did not have long-term experience with terrorism, which they do, it would be laughable arrogant for the Americans to just assume that their solution to a particular problem is the best one. Just because the US was asleep and is now relatively more awake, does not mean that it has a monopoly on how to best execute anti-terrorist security.
Robert X. Cringley has written two interesting articles in the last two weeks about outsourcing. The first one talks about why "brain drain" is not a good thing for the US, or any other country, to be experiencing and the second one debunks many of the traditional defenses offered by corporate apologists and libertarians.
If you don't think outsourcing is important, you should definitely read these two articles.
Billmon wrote a piece about the relationship between the volatility on Wall Street the other day, where $120 billion in value vanished, and the Federal Reserve Board. An absurd oversimplification of his analysis would read something like this:
The Federal Reserve Board's Federal Open Market Committee may be concerned about the Bush administration's attempts to let the US dollar exchange rate further drop. It is possible that the committee in suggesting that it, at some undetermined point in the future, would again raise interest rates (which are currently very, very low), was attempting to calm the Asian central banks at the expense of the domestic market. Why are the Asian central banks so deserving of, and hungry for, the Federal Reserve's whispered sweet nothings, because they hold more than $1 trillion in US dollar reserves (i.e. the US government's debt). And if that much money hit the open market, the US dollar would crash very hard. Why would that happen you may ask? You really should read the article but it essentially comes down to the fact that the very countries that the US is attempting to persuade to weaken their currencies are the same countries that hold most of the US debt. If their currencies were to rise, and the dollar were to fall against their currencies, they would have a strong motivation to get rid of their dollar denominated instruments relatively quickly. And there is not a surplus of other candidates who could buy up such a large quantity of debt instruments. This would make the value of those instruments fall still lower until they reached a price that the market felt was appropriate (read: low). Billmon points out that this is in no way a certainty that will happen, but even the possibility is frightening enough that one would want to keep it in mind so as to avoid it in actuality.
In an election year, one of the lower priorities for an incumbent President who is running for re-election is doing anything that weakens the domestic economy in order to benefit anything that is not directly related to his short-term goal of getting re-elected. The Bush administration is not yet particularly focused on the amount of American debt that the Asian countries, particularly China, are holding. Even if it were not an election year, this would not be easy for any administration to deal with. If what bilmon is talking about is really happening, things could get much more interesting.
My words do no justice to the much more nuanced explanation offered at billmon.
David Broder of the Washington Post wrote a column today that interested me very little except that it included the following statement. "But Bush alone decided the threat was so grave that it justified a preventive war -- one that already has cost more than 500 American lives and billions of dollars, with more to come." Thousands of people have died thus far, thousands more are horribly wounded, still more have been made homeless, the financial losses of the Iraqi people are staggering and Broder sums it up in American lives lost and money spent. With all due respect Mr. Broder, FUCK YOU!
Are the lives of people who are not Americans so low in worth that they may only be mentioned, when they are mentioned at all, after discussing the lives of Americans and the American money that has been spent on the war in Iraq? Is there any justification for this whatsoever aside from xenophobia?