Clay Matthews: 'I'm an awesome player, not a dirty player'

By Chuck Schilken

September 13, 2013, 10:10 a.m.

Clay Matthews doesn't care what Jim Harbaugh or anyone else thinks.
“I'm an awesome player, not a dirty player,” the Green Bay Packers linebacker told reporters with a smile on Thursday.
The former USC standout was asked specifically about being a dirty player after the fallout from his late hit on San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick last weekend, the ensuing scuffle with offensive lineman Joe Staley and criticism from 49ers Coach Jim Harbaugh.
That was the only response Matthews gave to questions on any of those topics, including whether or not he was fined by the NFL for his actions Sunday.
“Um, I'm not really going to discuss all that right now, but on to the next game,” Matthews said.
Matthews has made the Pro Bowl in each of his four NFL seasons, helping the Packers win a Super Bowl along the way. He's ranked in the league's top five in sacks twice and has 43.5 in his career.
So it would be hard to argue Matthews' assertion that he's an awesome player. Whether he's a dirty player ... well, you can decide for yourself.

Friday, September 13, 2013 - By Unknown 0

The 64 Bit Question: What Can You do With Apple’s New Processor?

From our sister title, All Things D

When AppleAAPL -1.20% unveiled the iPhone 5s on Tuesday, the company touted as one of its tentpole features the 64-bit desktop-class processing power of its new custom-made A7 chip. “The A7 is up to twice as fast as the previous-generation system at CPU tasks,” Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller said. “This is the first-ever 64-bit processor in a phone of any kind. I don’t think the other guys are even talking about it yet.”
According to Schiller, the A7 is “up to twice as fast” in raw processing power and graphics performance than its predecessor, the A6. And when paired with Apple’s forthcoming iOS 7 operating system — which has been designed with native 64-bit kernel, libraries and drivers — it provides unparalleled performance. “The benefits are huge,” Schiller said. “This is a huge leap forward.”
And there’s no question that the benefits of 64-bit are huge. What’s less clear is how ev

ident they’ll be in the iPhone 5s. Because, as innumerable observers have pointed out this week, in order to tap into the biggest performance gains offered by a 64-bit chip, you need a smartphone with more than four gigabytes of RAM. And, while Apple hasn’t said how much RAM it has built into the 5s, it’s highly unlikely that it’s enough to meet that requirement.

Friday, September 13, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Beer goggle' study wins Ig Nobel award

A team of researchers who found that people think they are more attractive when drinking alcohol, have scooped an Ig Nobel prize for their work.

The researchers from France and the US confirmed the "beer goggle effect" also works on oneself.
Ig Nobel awards are a humorous spoof-like version of their more sober cousins, the Nobel prizes.
Winners have 60 seconds to make a speech to avoid being booed off stage by an eight-year-old girl.
Titled "Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder", the team were awarded one of the 10 awards (listed below) at a packed gala ceremony at Harvard University, US.
Other winners included a patent for trapping and ejecting airplane hijackers and a UK team scooped an Ig for observing that a cow is more likely to stand up the longer it has been lying down.
Penile amputation The Peace Prize went to the president and state police of Belarus for making public applause illegal and having arrested a one-armed man for the offence, according to Annals of Improbable Research, who organise the ceremony.
Penile amputations were the focus of the Public Health Prize. In 1983 a team from Thailand recommended how to manage an epidemic of women amputating their husbands, which had occurred in the 1970s.
However, they said their technique was not advised in cases where the penis had been partially eaten by a duck (after amputation). It was common to keep ducks in a traditional Thai home.

The awards are presented by past Nobel laureates

Representing archaeology was a study that observed which bones dissolved when swallowing whole a dead shrew.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Although people may think they become more attractive when they become intoxicated, other [sober] people don't think that”

Prof Brad Bushman Ohio State University, US

Brad Bushman of Ohio State University, US, and one of the five co-authors of the alcohol attractiveness study, said he was honoured that his team's work had won an Ig.

In the study, people in a bar were asked how funny, original and attractive they found themselves. The higher their blood alcohol level the more attractive they thought they were.
Attractive drunks The same effect was also found for those who only thought they had been drinking alcohol when in fact it was a non-alcoholic placebo drink.
"People have long observed that drunk people think others are more attractive but ours is the first study to find that drinking makes people think they are more attractive themselves," Prof Bushman told the BBC.
"If you become drunk and think you are really attractive it might influence your thoughts and behaviour towards others. It illustrates that in human memory, the link between alcohol and attractiveness is pretty strong."
Judges were also asked to rate how attractive they thought the participants were. The individuals who thought they were more attractive were not necessarily rated thus by judges.
Snoozing cows "It was just an illusion in their mind. Although people may think they become more attractive when they become intoxicated, other [sober] people don't think that," added Prof Bushman.
Prize winners tend to see the Ig Nobels as a considerable honour and indeed seven of the 10 winners (one winner died in 2006) attended the ceremony in Cambridge, US, to accept the prizes at their own expense.

One study looked at the time between cows standing up and sitting down

Although a light-hearted event, the awards are handed out for work that is for the most part serious research. Prof Bushman said that his study significantly contributed to the existing literature.
And the study about cows standing up or lying down was important to be able to detect health problems early on, say its authors.
"We were surprised by the prize. We thought we did a decent piece of work and did not realise it made other people laugh," lead author Bert Tolkamp from Scotland's Rural College, UK, told BBC News. But he added that anything that promoted interest in science was very welcome.
The full list of 2013 Ig Nobel winners:
Medicine Prize: Masateru Uchiyama, Gi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Hashuda (Japan), Xiangyuan Jin (China/Japan) and Masanori Niimi (Japan/UK) for assessing the effect of listening to opera on mice heart transplant patients.
Psychology Prize: Laurent Bègue, Oulmann Zerhouni, Baptiste Subra, and Medhi Ourabah, (France), Brad Bushman (USA/UK/, the Netherlands/Poland) for confirming that people who think they are drunk also think they are more attractive.
Joint Prize in Biology and Astronomy: Marie Dacke (Sweden/Australia), Emily Baird, Eric Warrant (Sweden/Australia/Germany], Marcus Byrne (South Africa/UK) and Clarke Scholtz (South Africa), for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the milky way.
Safety Engineering Prize: The late Gustano Pizzo (US), for inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers. The system drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package, then drops the hijacker through the airplane's specially-installed bomb bay doors through which he is parachuted to the ground where police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival.
Physics Prize: Alberto Minetti (Italy/UK/Denmark/Switzerland), Yuri Ivanenko (Italy/Russia/France), Germana Cappellini, Francesco lacquaniti (Italy) and Nadia Dominici (Italy/Switzerland), for discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond - if those people and that pond were on the Moon.
Chemistry Prize: Shinsuke Imai, Nobuaki Tsuge, Muneaki Tomotake, Yoshiaki Nagatome, Hidehiko Kumgai (Japan) and Toshiyuki Nagata (Japan/Germany), for discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists previously realised.
Archaeology Prize: Brian Crandall (US) and Peter Stahl (Canada/US), for observing how the bones of a swallowed dead shrew dissolve inside the human digestive system.
Peace Prize: Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, and to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.
Probability Prize: Bert Tolkamp (UK/the Netherlands), Marie Haskell, Fritha Langford. David Roberts, and Colin Morgan (UK), for making two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again.
Public Health Prize: Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde (Thailand), for the medical techniques of penile re-attachment after amputations (often by jealous wives). Techniques which they recommend, except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck

Friday, September 13, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Colorado flooding: Thousands await help; town of Lyons evacuated

By Michael Muskal and Jenny Deam

September 13, 2013, 8:54 a.m.

BOULDER, Colo. -- As recordbreaking rainfall continued to pound parts of Colorado, officials stepped up evacuations for thousands living in areas endangered by flash flooding as emergency workers moved to aid residents trapped in isolated towns by raging waters.
The National Guard on Friday moved to evacuate people the entire town of Lyons, one of several cut off and without electrical power since flash floods ripped through the state Wednesday night. As much as 9 inches of rain fell within hours in parts of the state, flooding streams, causing mudslides and spilling over earthen dams.
Thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate in cities including Loveland and Longmont in Boulder County. The towns of Lyons, Jamestown and others in the Rocky Mountain foothills have been isolated by flooding and have been without power or telephone service since rain hanging over the region all week intensified late Wednesday and early Thursday.
Sirens blared in Boulder late Thursday and by 11 p.m. about 3,500 people were evacuated from along Boulder Creek where the normally tranquil waterway roared at more than three times its usual rates. The raging waters swirled out of its banks and tore across parks and roads near the heart of the city.
The waters posed two problems, threatening to trap motorists in vehicles while also shutting down roads desperately needed for emergency use. At a morning news conference, Gov. John Hickenlooper warned people not to step into what looked like shallow pools because they usually were deeper than they appeared, often filled with dangerous debris.
“Stay out of your vehicle,” said the governor, who has declared a state of emergency. “Stay home, if possible.”
President Obama signed an emergency declaration Thursday night, allowing federal aid and Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel to work on relief efforts. Hickenlooper, who is planning to tour some of the worst areas, said he was meeting with federal officials later on Friday.
There is no estimate of the damages, but recovery is expected to easily run into the tens of millions of dollars and rebuilding of some roads and bridges will take time, the governor said.
At least three deaths have been confirmed and one person is missing, officials said.
Seventeen people are considered unaccounted for across Boulder County, Liz Donaghey, a spokeswoman for the Boulder County Office of Emergency Management, told the Los Angeles Times. She added that does not necessarily mean they are missing but as of 7 a.m. they could not be reached by phone.
Getting to and from most anywhere in much of the state continued to be not only a headache but also a hazard. Officials estimate between 70 to 100 roadways and highways have been closed in Boulder County alone,  Donaghey said. U.S. 36, the major eastbound artery between Boulder and Denver, saw rising waters on the highway. Cars were pushed to the side where they stood precariously.
The northern section of U.S. 36 is also closed between Lyons and Estes Park, where the  town of Lyons remains mostly cut off. National Guard troops did reach the town with supplies on Thursday night.
As the National Guard continued its relief efforts on Friday in Lyons, the National Weather Service warned of more flash flooding there. Also, the Big Thompson River at Drake was more than 4 feet above its flood stage of 6 feet, according to the service.
Residents of Lyons had been evacuated earlier in the week to a center established in a school. Many of those people were being moved a second time on Thursday night and Friday by the Guard.
 “There's no way out of town. There's no way into town. So, basically, now we're just on an island,” said Jason Stillman, 37, who was forced with his fiancee to evacuate their home in Lyons after a nearby river began to overflow into the street, according to the Associated Press.
To the north, residents along the Big Thompson Canyon in Larimer County were also evacuated. The Big Thompson River flooded in 1976 after about a foot of rain fell in just four hours, killing 144 people.  The town of Jamestown also remains isolated.
Rain started to pick up again on Friday morning in Denver. A dam northwest of the city was among those breached on Thursday and the waters now threaten several neighborhoods in the suburb of Commerce City. The city of Aurora also reporting flooding.
Eldorado Springs, home to about 500 people, was urged to evacuate because of a flash flood and mudslide threat along South Boulder Creek. Northwest of Boulder, the overflowing Vrain Creek cut the town of Longmont in half. Evacuation requests were issued for some neighborhoods.
The University of Colorado has canceled classes at least through Friday after a quarter of its buildings were flooded. Hundreds of people in family housing near Boulder Creek were also forced to leave.

Friday, September 13, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Apple Inc's iPhone 5C, iPhone 5S: Will the Indians buy?

The Tim Cook-led Apple Inc. unveiled iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S after having hyped-up the gadgets massively. Now that they are in the market the conversation, amongst interested parties, has climaxed over its features, price and even availability.
But what of the iPhone lovers? Were they impressed? After all, they are used to nothing but the best, having been spoiled endlessly by the premium, mind-blowing products effortlessly conjured up by that tech wizard, Steve Jobs (RIP).
With the new iPhones yet to hit shops, 'The Financial Express' online conducted an online poll and it threw up a non-success with 52 per cent saying they were not at all impressed while 40 per cent felt otherwise and the rest could not decide one way or the other.
The reason? Pricing, to start with and a smaller display screen as compared to the recently launched Samsung Galaxy – Indians love their phones to be as big as they can be without hurting the comfort factor in the hand, but they should not breach the 'ugliness' quotient. However, Apple Inc remained true to Steve Jobs, who once said, "A phone, whether smart or unique, should fit in pocket and your thumb should do the dancing."
Samsung Electronics' smartphones have larger display screens and better music quality and they are not tied down by any restrictions which Apple Inc imposes on its buyers.
On the other hand, die-hard Apple fans believe iPhone is a special smartphone, with all you dream about - display doesn't matter as most special things almost always come in small packets.
It is also pertinent to mention here that iPhone 5C will not be available in US but in Asian countries viz China, and eventually, India too.... So, be ready for long queues!
Face-Off
Having said that, Apple Inc has shifted its stance somewhat, eyeing emerging markets. Jagdish Singh Chopra, Senior system administrator at IBM says, "There was a time when Apple Inc used to unveil only one quality product targeted for advanced users, but now they have shifted their focus to amateur users too. Idea is good but shifting gears so fast can never help you grow."

... contd.

Friday, September 13, 2013 - By Unknown 0

United mistakenly offers free fares

Passengers on United's site were able to book tickets for a time for only the cost of the airport and security fees. So travelers were able to get flights for $5 or $10.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

United Airlines briefly, and mistakenly, offered passengers the ultimate fare sale on Thursday -- $0 fares.

The passengers on United's web site were able to book tickets for a time for only the cost of the airport and security fees tacked onto tickets. So travelers were able to get flights for between $5 and $10.

One customer posting on the passenger Web site flyertalk.com bragged about bagging a $10 round trip between San Jose and Boston -- a ticket that might normally cost $600.
(Related: Bankrupt airline posts record profit)
United confirmed the mistake but declined to comment on the details of the outage or whether it intends to honor the tickets.
"One of our filings Thursday contained an error which resulted in certain fares being displayed as zero. We have corrected this error," the airline said in a statement. It added that the mistake was made by a person and was not the result of a technology glitch.
Rick Seaney, chief executive of Farecompare.com, said the problem lasted about two hours.
"People were buying tickets all over the place," said Seany. "Guys were buying 12 and 15 of these things from Washington DC and Honolulu. The question is will they honor them?"
-- CNNMoney's Aaron Smith contributed reporting.

Friday, September 13, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Top Lawmakers Pile On Putin Op-Ed: ‘Almost Wanted to Vomit’, ‘An Insult’

Top Democrats and Republicans in Congress scrambled to respond to Russian President’s Vladimir Putin’s Op-Ed in The New York Times on Thursday — and the reviews were less-than-glowing.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was first out of the gate: “I almost wanted to vomit,” Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on CNN Wednesday evening.
“I worry when someone who came up through the KGB tells us what is in our national interests, and what is not. It really raises the question of how serious the Russian proposal is.”
Putin’s Op-Ed Says Strike Would Unleash New Terrorism
Putin denied protecting the Syrian government, writing, “it is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States.”
During a news conference Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner said, “I was insulted,” when he read Putin’s editorial.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he didn’t think Putin was trying to undermine the president on Syria with his op-ed but was instead “looking for an excuse to show off his Super Bowl ring.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in a tweet, called Putin’s words “an insult”: “Putin’s NYT op-ed is an insult to the intelligence of every American.”
Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla.,  said in an interview with CNN on Thursday that he too was not a fan of Putin’s piece: “I could hear Reagan turning over in his grave.”
These critical comments by key lawmakers reflect the growing skepticism over the veracity of Russia’s diplomatic proposal, which is spreading on Capitol Hill.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, an opponent of the use of military force in Syria, said on the Senate floor Wednesday, “I would caution all of us – the American people and all of our colleagues – to be skeptical for good reason at this lifeline that Vladimir Putin has now thrown the administration.”
“We have very little reason to believe that Moscow is a reliable diplomatic partner. They are part of the problem in Syria, not part of the solution.”
Congress has decided to postpone voting on the use of force against Syria while President Obama works on a diplomatic solution with Russia. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned Syria and Russia that the U.S. Congress would keep a watchful eye on the negotiation process to see whether the countries are being truthful or not.
“Leaders in Damascus and Moscow should understand that Congress will be watching these negotiations very closely,” the Nevada Democrat said Wednesday. “If there is any indication these are not serious, that it’s a ploy to delay, to obstruct, to divert, then I think we have to again give the president the authority to hold the Assad regime accountable.”

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

How Will The A7 Chip (64-bit) Make The iPhone 5s Better?

It will make some apps a bit fast
Apple AAPL +1.26% uses lots of big words and hyperbole to make it sound like amazing things are occurring. In reality, though, what Apple did was move their custom ARM-based system-on-a-chip processors to 64-bits so that someday you could have iPads and iPhones with a lot more memory in them.
That day isn’t today. The iPhone 5S still has 1GB of memory (not storage, memory, the place where programs run) and you only need 64-bit chips when you want to go past 4GB of memory. And it’s important to note that most programs (almost 100% of them?!) will continue to be written in 32-bit code to support the 95+% of iPhones that won’t have the new A7 chip but will support the developer’s apps.
So that leaves Apple able to run mostly its own code faster and better on the new chip and some developers able to also take advantage. This is a good thing, but for Twitter and Facebook FB +0.02% and Gmail, you are not likely going to notice. In fact, those apps could all benefit more from code optimization than from trying to brute force better performance on the processor side. And by moving to more bits rather than just a faster clock speed, that brute forcing is unlikely to feel like a detectable improvement anyway.
For gaming, the situation might be different, because a lot of graphical functions call the processor directly and the graphics performance is said to be much improved. iPhone 5S will likely be a better gaming phone than all those that came before it (although quite arguably still the worst gaming smartphone by far due to its tiny screen).
By breaking out some functions related to sensing motion and such onto the M7 coprocessor, Apple gains the potential to allow those apps to function well while using minimal battery (they might allow the main processor to stay “asleep” while doing their work). But again, this is incremental and unlikely to benefit people who don’t use their phones for things like fitness apps.
If Dan is correct that the new chip is still a 32nm process one, then any meaningful uptick in battery life will have to come from the software side rather than hardware. My experience with iOS 7 indicates that it isn’t particularly thriftier than iOS 6, though perhaps final versions will do a bit better in that regard.
Over the next 2-3 years, the iPad and iPhone will find this new architecture moving down through the line (as will the AppleTV) and eventually developers can expect to find it there. That will make for more 64-bit optimized apps and improve performance that much more. But without a bigger transistor budget, more clock speed or more cores, the improvements will be more subtle or specialized. This time, you’ll probably see them in graphics. You might struggle to notice elsewhere.
This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Apple September 2013 iPhone Press Event:

• Why is Apple’s iPhone Touch ID Important?
• Why did Apple’s stock price fall by 3% after the 9/10/13 press event?
• What is Apple Inc.’s strategy behind 5C, when it’s not cheap?

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Prominent US jihadist ‘killed in Somalia’

September 12 2013 at 06:58pm

---

REUTERS

Omar Hammami addresses al-Shabaab fighters in a farm within Afgoye district near Somalia's capital Mogadishu in 2011.

Mogadishu - A prominent US-born Islamist militant was killed in Somalia on Thursday after he fell out with senior commanders of the al Shabaab rebel group, witnesses said.

Residents in al Baate village in southern Somalia said Alabama-born Omar Hammami, commonly known as Abu Mansoor al-Amriki or 'the American', and a British national known as Usama al-Britani were shot dead in a dawn raid on their hideout.

Hammami's killing exposed widening rifts in al Shabaab's top ranks as the group affiliated to al-Qaeda grapples with an African Union-led military offensive that has captured key cities from the militants, depriving them of revenues.

“This morning al-Amriki and his comrades were attacked by well armed fighters,” said village resident Hussein Nur. “After a brief fight al-Amriki and his two colleagues were killed. Several of their guards escaped.”

A second villager confirmed the gun battle and said he had heard al Shabaab fighters confirm the deaths, though he had not seen the bodies.

“No-one is allowed to go near the scene,” the shopkeeper told Reuters by telephone from the village that is under militant control.

Hammami is believed to have arrived in Somalia aged 22 in late 2006, shortly before a US-backed Ethiopian military incursion into the war-shattered Horn of Africa country to rout an Islamist administration that had dislodged the government.

Fluent in Somali, Hammami swiftly became an influential leader of al Shabaab's foreign jihadists fighting to topple a government seen as a Western puppet and impose a strict interpretation of sharia law on Somalia.

Al Shabaab announced a formal alliance with al-Qaeda in February 2012. Hammami was added to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted Terror list in November that year and a $5 million bounty was offered for information leading to his capture. - Reuters

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Syria Is a Legal Triumph

If a deal holds up, it will be a tremendous victory for international law, despite Obama’s bungling.

President Obama has bungled Syria. He said he’d enforce the accidental red line he drew on chemical weapons, then tacked to asking Congress for approval for military strikes, then swerved again to nudge the Russians to broker an unlikely deal with Assad. The zigzagging made his big speech Tuesday night confusing and unconvincing.

And yet, all of this looks pretty good at the moment if you’re tracking not Obama’s credibility or political skillsbut the rule of law. Of course it could all fall apart, but right now international and constitutional law are looking stronger than they did before the president got himself into his red-line mess.

There are two competing norms of international law at stake in the world’s response to the Syrian gassing: The ban on chemical weapons and the post-World War II system for maintaining relative peace around the globe—the 1945 U.N. Charter. The two norms are directly clashing at the moment. Syria never signed onto the Chemical Weapons Convention, in force since 1993. And the U.N. Charter requires the Security Council to approve the use of force Obama has planned—approval that Russia and China, which have veto power, won’t give. And so the big clash on the left is over which to value more: preventing the use of chemical weapons or maintaining the U.N. system that limits the legal use of force more broadly.

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The pro-intervention argument, made forcefully by Obama’s U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power, values enforcing the chemical weapons ban over respecting the procedures by which the U.N. operates. If the Russians are holding the Security Council “hostage,” as Power says, then the U.S. gets to opt out. The contrary, not-so-fast argument, captured by Yale law professors Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, is that all of our breaches of U.N. rules “add up — and each one makes it harder to hold others to the rules. If we follow Kosovo and Iraq with Syria, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to stop others from a similar use of force down the line.” Hathaway and Shapiro are reminding the country that opting out of the U.N. rules isn’t free, no matter how worthy the humanitarian rationale. They want Obama to think about whether punishing Assad’s use of chemical weapons “is worth endangering the fragile international order that is World War II’s most significant legacy.”

The president seemed inclined to brush by this question. But the country, plus our reluctant allies—thank you, Britain—wouldn’t let him. The continuing lack of support at home and abroad for striking Syria forced Obama to say he would go to Congress. And that’s a victory for another kind of rule of law: The Constitution’s war-making powers. Presidents have taken more and more of this authority, either because they’ve usurped it or because Congress has handed it over. Obama did his own grabbing when he intervened in Libya without going to Congress first. The War Powers Act—the congressional answer to Vietnam—should have stopped him. It didn’t.

But Obama declined to take presidential power that one more step. Without NATO, or decent poll numbers to back him up, Obama decided he had to have Congress behind him. This isn’t the most high-minded way to get there, but I’ll take it. Score one for limiting executive power as the Constitution calls for.

Skeptics, among them Slate columnist Eric Posner, point out that Obama keeps saying he retains the power to strike Syria even if Congress votes against him. And so he’s aggrandizing rather than humbling his office. Another problem is that the legal rationale the administration is floating—that the president can bomb another nation, on his own, based on his own decision that an "important national interest" is at risk—is crazy broad. It sounds like anything goes, who needs Congress, unless American troops are going in on the ground.

But as long as Obama doesn’t actually strike Syria if Congress won’t authorize it—and isn’t that becoming unimaginable?—these excesses are like the bad night of drinking that doesn’t end in actual injury.

I do see an obvious pitfall here: Future presidents could run away from Congress based on the Obama experience. Don't take anything to Congress because it's a huge mess! But hang on. What if this all ends better than it began—what if the Russians get more from Assad than bombs would have? Yes I know that securing Syria’s chemical weapons will be enormously difficult, practically speaking. But think about it: Syria just admitted for the first time that it has chemical weapons and announced that it wants to sign on to the treaty that bans them. Russia is pressuring Assad to do something good rather than standing by and letting him do evil. If any kind of deal can be cobbled together, it will be a net gain. Obama will be right that it would never have happened without the credible threat of the use of force. And at the same time, as long as the threat doesn’t materialize, it won’t erode the international system of law or the Constitution’s division of powers either. Given how very badly this could have gone for both—and could still go—that sounds like victory to me.

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

North Korea's Yongbyon reactor 'nearing operation'

Steam has been seen rising from North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility, suggesting that the reactor has been restarted, a US institute says.

The colour and volume of the steam indicated that the reactor was in or nearing operation, the institute said.
Pyongyang vowed to restart facilities at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex in April, amid high regional tensions.
The reactor can produce plutonium, which North Korea could use to make nuclear weapons.
Analysts believe North Korea already possesses between four and 10 nuclear weapons, based on plutonium produced at the Yongbyon reactor prior to mid-2007, when the facility was closed down.
Yongbyon nuclear facility 31 August 2013

The report, which was published on the 38 North website on Wednesday, was written by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The institute uses satellite imagery to monitor developments in North Korea.
The reactor uses steam turbines to generate electricity, and the steam seen in satellite imagery from 31 August indicated that the electrical system was about to come online, the report said.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

There remains time to negotiate a shutdown of the reactor”

Institution for Science and International Security

"The reactor looks like it either is or will within a matter of days be fully operational, and as soon as that happens, it will start producing plutonium," report author Jeffrey Lewis told the BBC.

"They really are putting themselves in a position to increase the amount of material they have for nuclear weapons, which I think gives them a little bit of leverage in negotiations, and adds a sense of urgency on our part," he added.
The five megawatt reactor can produce spent fuel rods that can be made into plutonium, which experts believe North Korea used for its nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. North Korea conducted its third and most recent test in February, but it is not clear whether plutonium or uranium was used.
In a November 2010 report following a visit to Yongbyon, US scientist Siegfried Hecker said that based on what he saw, he believed North Korea could "resume all plutonium operations within approximately six months" at Yongbyon, then shut down, if so inclined.

Continue reading the main story

Yongbyon nuclear complex

• North Korea's main nuclear facility; thought to have produced the material for 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests
• Reactor shut down in July 2007 as part of a disarmament-for-aid deal; Cooling tower dismantled in 2008
• IAEA inspectors banned in April 2009 when North Korea pulled out of disarmament talks
• North Korea said in April 2013 that it would restart the complex
• Experts believe that, if re-started, reactor could make one bomb's worth of plutonium per year
• A uranium enrichment facility was revealed in 2010. An American nuclear scientist said centrifuges appeared to be primarily for civilian nuclear power, but could be converted to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel
• Nuclear test based on uranium device would be harder to monitor than plutonium

• Q&A: North Korea nuclear programme
• Yongbyon restart: North Korea ramps up nuclear tension

Analysts at the Institution for Science and International Security, a think tank, said it would take a considerable amount of time before North Korea could use any new plutonium in nuclear weapons.

"Given that North Korea will likely need two-three years before it discharges irradiated fuel containing plutonium and another six to 12 months to separate the plutonium, there remains time to negotiate a shutdown of the reactor before North Korea can use any of this new plutonium in nuclear weapons," it said in a report.
Analysts say the reactor can produce 6kg (13 lbs) of plutonium a year - enough to make one to two nuclear bombs, the BBC's Lucy Williamson in Seoul reports.
Both the US State Department and South Korea's National Intelligence Service have declined to comment directly on the report, saying they do not comment on intelligence matters, AP news agency reported.
North Korea closed the Yongbyon reactor in July 2007 as part of a disarmament-for-aid deal.
The cooling tower at the facility was later destroyed, but then the disarmament deal stalled, partly because the US did not believe Pyongyang was fully disclosing all of its nuclear facilities.
In 2010, North Korea unveiled a uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon to Mr Hecker.
Mr Hecker said that while the facilities appeared to be for electricity generation purposes, it could be readily converted to produce highly-enriched uranium for bombs.

 

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Syria crisis: Assad sets out chemicals plan timeline

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen was in the town of Maaloula

Continue reading the main story

Syria conflict

• Daunting task
• Russian coup?
• Key questions
• What we know

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has given the first indication of a timeline for placing its chemical weapons under international control.

He told Russian TV that Syria would apply to join a UN chemicals convention "in the next few days" and submit arms data a month after signing.
US and Russian foreign ministers are preparing to meet in Geneva to discuss the plan, proposed by Moscow this week.
The US accuses the Syrian regime of killing hundreds in a chemical attack.
The government denies the allegation, blaming rebels for the attack in the Ghouta area of the capital, Damascus, on 21 August.
'Chance for peace' Russia announced its proposal for dealing with the escalating chemical weapons crisis on Monday, as the US Congress was preparing to vote on whether to back President Barack Obama's moves towards military action against Syria.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

Paul Adams BBC News, Geneva

The fact that the Russians and Americans are sending such large delegations to Geneva, including hordes of military and security officials, suggests a real desire on both sides to make use of this moment.
But the hurdles are immense. The Americans, along with the British and French, want to see some kind of enforcement mechanism to hold President Assad's feet to the fire. The Russians say this is simply not acceptable. President Putin, in a well-timed article in the New York Times, pours scorn on American threats of force.
But even if this fundamental stumbling block can be overcome (if the US Congress passes its own resolution, with deadlines and threats, then arguably the UN doesn't need to), there are a myriad other problems. Who would be willing to send personnel into a war zone to carry out such hazardous work? What weapons will the Syrians be expected, or willing, to hand over? How long, realistically, will this major undertaking last?

In his interview, which has not yet been broadcast in full, Mr Assad told state-run Rossiya 24: "Syria is placing its chemical weapons under international control because of Russia. The US threats did not influence the decision."

He confirmed that Syria would send relevant documents to the UN "in the next few days" as part of the process of signing the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Mr Assad said Syria would then submit information on its chemical weapons one month after signing.
He also said that Russia's proposal was "not unilateral", adding: "Syria will accept it if America stops military threats and if other countries supplying the rebels with chemical weapons also abide by the agreement."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Putin's opinion piece is a savage dissection of Mr Obama's argument for military action against Syria”

Mark Mardell North America editor

• Read more from Mark

He said only Russia could make the agreement happen as "Syria has neither contacts with, nor trust in, America".

Earlier on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov outlined three main phases of the proposal:

• Syria joins the Chemical Weapons Convention, which outlaws the production and use of the weapons
• Syria reveals where its chemical weapons are stored and gives details of its programme
• Experts decide on the specific measures to be taken

Mr Lavrov - who is to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry in Geneva soon - said during a visit to Kazakhstan: "I am sure that there is a chance for peace in Syria. We cannot let it slip away."
He did not mention the destruction of the weapons, which was part of Moscow's original proposal but is thought to be a sticking point in negotiations with Damascus.
Before meeting Mr Lavrov, Mr Kerry has been holding talks with UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi.
Diplomatic coup President Obama said on Thursday that he was "hopeful" of a positive outcome to the Kerry-Lavrov talks.
US officials had earlier described Russia's plan as "doable but difficult".
Officials travelling with Mr Kerry said they want a rapid agreement with the Russians on principles for the process, including a demand for Syria to give a quick, complete and public declaration of its stockpile.

BBC News asked people in the Middle East to share their views on a possible military strike against Syria

The US postponed plans to launch military strikes on Syria after Russia proposed the disarmament.
Russian media have hailed the move as a diplomatic coup.
President Vladimir Putin affirmed this view by writing an opinion piece in the New York Times lambasting US policy, saying strikes would lead to an upsurge in terrorism.

Continue reading the main story

Chemical weapons plan timeline

5-6 Sep: Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama discuss idea of placing Syria's chemical weapons under international control on sidelines of G20 summit
9 Sep: Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says he has urged Syria to hand in chemical weapons and have them destroyed; Syria welcomes plan
10 Sep: Syria's foreign minister makes first public admission of the regime's chemical weapons stockpile; Syria commits to Russian plan. Barack Obama postpones Congress vote on military action and says he will give Russian plan a chance
12 Sep: John Kerry due to meet Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva

• Chemical attacks: What we know
• Frank Gardner: Horror of gas attacks
• Syria's chemical stockpile

But state department officials have been stressing the exploratory nature of the talks.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said the Russian plan "must be treated with great caution", and experts have pointed out the difficulty of conducting such a process in a war zone.
The main Syrian armed rebel group has already refused to co-operate.
Gen Salim Idriss of the Free Syrian Army said he categorically rejected the plan, and insisted that the most important thing was to punish the perpetrators of chemical attacks.
If the talks in Geneva are successful, the US hopes the disarmament process will be agreed in a UN Security Council resolution.
However, Russia regards as unacceptable any resolution backed by military force, or a resolution that blames the Syrian government for chemical attacks.
Moscow has already objected to a draft resolution that would be enforced by Chapter VII of the UN charter, which would in effect sanction the use of force if Syria failed in its obligations.
Russia, supported by China, has blocked three previous draft resolutions condemning the Assad government.
More than 100,000 people have died since the uprising against President Assad began in 2011.

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Why chemical weapons provoke outrage

Even coming amid Syria's bloody conflict, the 21 August attack shocked many

Continue reading the main story

Syria conflict

• Daunting task
• Russian coup?
• Key questions
• What we know

It has been just over three weeks since the world woke up in horror to what appears to have been a mass chemical attack on residential areas in the suburbs of Damascus on 21 August.

Yet some are asking why, in a conflict that has already killed at least an estimated 100,000 people, many in the most barbaric way, should the use of chemical weapons be any more abhorrent?
After all, long before that dreadful early Wednesday morning in August, Syria's ever-growing list of atrocities already included reports of the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, suicide bombings, beheadings, fatal torture, even napalm dropped on a school playground. So why the crescendo over chemical weapons?
Legacy of WWI "Chemical weapons are unacceptable," says Thomas Nash, an arms monitor with Article 36, a UK-based body "working to prevent unacceptable harm caused by certain weapons".
"But it's equally unacceptable, I would say, to be shelling areas with explosive weapons where people are living.

The experience of poison gas use in WWI helped form the taboo on their use

"I think we should remember that all of these rules and regulations about which weapons are allowed are a means to an end. They are a means to alleviating and preventing humanitarian suffering that we've been seeing. And it applies to cluster munitions, incendiary weapons, explosive weapons in populated areas, as well as chemical weapons," Mr Nash adds.
But chemical weapons hold a special horror, partly because poison gas is often invisible, partly because of the indiscriminate way it can seek out every hiding place, and partly because of the agonising death it can cause.
The horrors of gas attacks in the trenches of World War I were supposed to teach the world: "Never again".
Yet before chemical weapons were outlawed by the Geneva Protocol of 1925, the British government approved the use of poison gas against rebel tribesmen in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Historians say mustard gas was used at that time in northern Iraq.
Winston Churchill was said to be an advocate and it was feared Hitler would use them against Britain. In the end, this country was spared but others were not.
The gas Zyklon B was used on a massive scale by the Nazis against Jews and other victims in extermination camps.

Japan used poison gas against the Chinese in the 1930s and is still paying for the clean-up, Mussolini used it in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) during WWII and the Egyptian air force used it in Yemen in 1967.
The US also drenched vast areas of south-east Asian jungle with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange, which reportedly killed thousands, during the Vietnam War.
Miracle escape But nothing compared with what happened at Halabja. In March 1988, Iraq's President Saddam Hussein ordered a Kurdish town in northern Iraq to be drenched with mustard gas and nerve gas, killing over 5,000 people almost immediately.

The Kurdish town of Halabja became a byword for the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime

Kamaran Haider was 11 at the time. When the bombardment began, he, his family and others rushed to their shelter.
Mr Haider told me that at first it was conventional bombs that fell. Then they smelt a strange odour of fruit and garlic and they knew at once what had happened.
"When we felt that smell, especially my mum and dad when they smelt it, we knew that's a chemical weapon.
"Then they started shouting and crying. It was very horrible because chemical weapon is very different from other bombs. Other bombs you can hide yourself in a shelter or mountain or somewhere but chemical is mixing with the air, you cannot hide.
"So when my mum knew that it was chemical weapon she ran up to the kitchen which was upstairs and she brought some towels... with a bucket of water. And she said: 'Put it on your face... to prevent from burning', because chemical burns the skin or makes you go blind."

Continue reading the main story

Syria's chemical weapons

• CIA believes Syria's chemical weapons can be "delivered by aircraft, ballistic missile, and artillery rockets"
• Syria believed to possess mustard gas and sarin, and also tried to develop more toxic nerve agents such as VX gas
• Syria has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) or ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)

Sources: CSIS, RUSI

• Chemical attacks: What we know
• Syria's stockpile

Mr Haider's mother rushed outside with his brother to try to find a boy who had run outside.

They found him lying already dead and seconds after she came back into the shelter she too succumbed to the effects of the poison gas. That day Haider lost his father, mother, only sister, both brothers and a cousin.
"It's a miracle I survived," he said, "because of the 35 people in that shelter only me and my friend Hoshyar survived.
"Because I stayed in the shelter among the bodies for 3 days without water, food, electricity, nothing in the shelter and I was severely poisoned by chemical weapons, I was completely blind, my skin burned, and I felt many times sick and lost consciousness," Mr Haider says.
So it's the prospect of another Halabja - or indeed another attack like the one in those Damascus suburbs - that is spurring so much of the international community to prevent it recurring.
Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former chemical weapons inspector, fears that what happened last month around Damascus could set a precedent for worse to come.
"I think the urgency is the future potential. In the attack of 21 August maybe 100, maybe 200 litres of sarin were used," Col de Bretton-Gordon says.
"We believe that he [President Bashar al-Assad] has anywhere between 400 to 1,000 tonnes of sarin remaining, which could kill many tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people if used. So it's the future potential that we must guard against".

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Super-shooter smartphone stand-off

 


12 September 2013 Last updated at 00:47 BST

Nokia's Lumia 1020 has gone on sale in the UK.
The Windows Phone handset is distinguished by its 41 megapixel camera, which the firm says captures more detail than any other handset has done before.
But the phone faces a challenge for super-shooter supremacy from Sony.
The Japanese firm's Android-powered Xperia Z1 comes out later this month. Its image sensor has about half the number of megapixels, but Sony claims it produces better photos.
BBC Click's Dan Simmons road tested both ahead of their release to see how they compared.
Click will have more from Berlin's Ifa tech show on this week's programme.

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

Understanding the Universe’s invisible elements

Our solar system extends a lot further than we first thought. Astrophysicist Charles Alcock says exploring its outer reaches may shed light on the Earth’s beginnings.

Most of the Universe is invisible. Understanding these unseeable elements can be an important step in working out how the entire Universe works.
Charles Alcock, the director of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, says the Solar System extends far further than first thought. If we define our Solar System as expanding as far as the gravitational field of the Sun dominates, that’s about a thousand times further than we have explored to date.
Alcock is currently exploring the outer limits of our Solar System, beyond the planets Neptune and Pluto. There are billions of small objects in this dark, empty zone – objects that could hold vital clues in understanding how our own planet came into being.
(All background footage courtesy of Nasa)
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Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

BBC Price of Football 2013: Average ticket prices fall

Average ticket prices across English football's top four divisions have fallen by up to 2.4%, the BBC Sport Price of Football study has found.

It showed prices in four main categories have reduced for 2013-14.
The annual study - the biggest in British football - includes the prices of 164 clubs in the top 10 divisions.
"It is good news for fans but it does come after a long period of incremental rises year on year," Sports Minister Hugh Robertson told the BBC.

How much do you spend?

How much do you spend following your team every year? Try our calculator to work out your costs, then share your results with your friends. This page also contains the full study findings.

• Price of Football calculator and full results

"The key thing is that it is replicated in years to come. I think clubs are beginning to understand what fans are going through and to adjust their prices accordingly."

Five leagues in England, four in Scotland and the Women's Super League were consulted.
Last year's study showed the average price of the cheapest ticket in English football had gone up by 11% - four times the rate of inflation.
But this year, average prices for the cheapest and most expensive match-day and season tickets were all down - as clubs in the Football League face up to an average 5% drop in attendances, from 9,949 in 2011-12 to 9,481 in 2012-13.
In the top four divisions of English football, the biggest fall was 2.4% for the cheapest adult season ticket category, down from £344.63 in 2012 to £336.23 in 2013.
The average for the most expensive adult season ticket fell 1.6% - from £546.30 in 2012 to £537.60 in 2013. The average for the cheapest adult match-day ticket is down 1.9% - from £21.24 to £20.85. The average for the most expensive adult match-day ticket dropped around 1% - from £34.11 to £33.81
In Scotland, the average price of the top flight's cheapest season tickets was 1% down. However, the average cost of the cheapest match-day tickets rose by more than 3%.
As well as the most expensive and cheapest season and adult match-day tickets, we recorded the cost of a cup of tea, a pie and a programme. Just two clubs, Lincoln and Rangers, failed to respond.

League by League

• Premier League
• Championship
• League One
• League Two
• Conference
• Scottish Premier
• Scottish Championship
• Scottish League One
• Scottish League Two
• Women's Super League

The study also found:

• The most expensive ticket in English football remains at Arsenal, where a category A adult match-day ticket can cost up to £126. Their cheapest ticket is £26.
• The cheapest adult season ticket in the Premier League is £299 at Manchester City. The most expensive is £1,955 at Arsenal, although this includes seven cup matches.
• The cheapest adult match-day ticket in men's football is £7 at Albion Rovers - the only men's club to charge less than £10.
• The average price for an adult match-day ticket in the Women's Super League is just £5.38.
• The most expensive pies in British football are at Crystal Palace and Kidderminster, with both charging £4.
• The most expensive cup of tea is £2.50 at Manchester United - the same as in 2012. Manchester City also charged £2.50 last year, but have dropped their price to £1.80.

Dave Whelan, chairman of FA Cup winners Wigan, said it was "difficult" for clubs to put prices up amid the current financial climate in Britain.
"Money is so tight and our area is running at 8-9% unemployed and it's impossible to ask anyone to pay any more to watch football," he said.
Football League chairman Greg Clarke said three-quarters of Football League clubs had either reduced their ticket prices or kept them at the same level as last season.
"I think this is a case of clubs responding sensibly to declining living standards in what has been a challenging economic period," he said.
While the overall picture across English football was lower ticket prices, the Premier League saw a 4.3% rise in the average price of the cheapest season tickets.

Cheapest tickets for days out

Alton Towers: £35.10
Blackpool Tower: £45
Edinburgh Castle: £16
Madame Tussauds, London: £22.50
One Direction, Etihad Stadium: £66

Malcolm Clarke, chair of the Football Supporters' Federation, said there was "no justification" for any increases in the top flight given a new television deal that is bringing in an extra £600m across the division.

He had called for the extra cash to be used to cut admission prices drastically, but during the transfer window clubs spent a record £630m on players.
Clarke said: "It is disappointing that the average price of the cheapest season ticket has still gone up despite the extra income and despite the very difficult economic circumstances many supporters are in.
"There is plenty of scope to do much more than they have already done. If all that happens is that most of that money is being used to go into players and agents, then there is a danger that there will be a real kickback from fans."
Despite the concerns, the average Premier League attendance in 2012-13 was 35,975 - up from 34,646 the season before. In addition, there were record season-ticket sales of 476,776.
Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said these figures were helped by the "fact that so many clubs are working so hard to ensure that Premier League football remains as accessible and affordable to as many people as possible.
"That sets a high bar - one that both we and the clubs are determined to maintain," he said. "That is why clubs are looking at a range of innovative and inclusive offers to encourage high-attendance, particularly for younger fans and away supporters.
"It is great to see the continued high levels of support for top-flight football in this country. The passion and commitment of the fans is an integral part of the Premier League's success and English football culture and we want to make sure that is intact this season, the next and for many to come."
Professor Tom Cannon, a football finance expert from Liverpool University, said top-flight clubs were under pressure to produce greater revenues.
"The truth is, we are in a situation where the cost of talent, at the top in particular, continues to soar, not just because of that pressure but because of regulatory pressure like Financial Fair Play, which means they have to generate more and more income," he said.

Play media

Top flight got pricing right - Robertson

"This means on the one hand you have a bonanza of TV income but you also have a bonanza in expenditure and potentially the gap has to be filled by gate income and that puts the pressure on the fans."
Last year, Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament calling for ticket prices to be cut as a result of the Price of Football 2012.
In response to this year's study, he said: "The cost of watching football is still huge. There are some signs that clubs are making serious efforts to try and make sure that not just season tickets but match-day tickets are very affordable.
"There have been early steps made in the right direction, but there are still many of the large clubs who are appearing to be totally and utterly inconsiderate towards the fact that many people are being priced out of being able to watch their team."

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0

The humiliation of Obama as Putin swaggers on his Moscow dunghill

The President  of the United States is facing a grave crisis of trust at home and abroad.
Whatever the fate of the draft resolution on chemical weapons that France has put before the UN Security Council, the Syrian crisis has damaged respect for Barack Obama, probably irretrievably. 
Less than a fortnight ago, David Cameron suffered humiliation when he lost his Commons vote after demanding support for military action.

This presidency has touched a low point. Over the past five years, Barack Obama's lassitude and political ineptitude have increasingly become apparent

Yet the spectacle of the leader of the U.S. being rudderless and outplayed at every turn by Vladimir Putin is a vastly more serious matter.

Russia’s brutish president has launched a diplomatic initiative which leaves the U.S. wrong-footed and potentially isolated.
Fareed Zakaria, one of the country’s most influential commentators, calls the Washington administration’s handling of Syria ‘a case study in how not to do foreign policy’.

Weakness

This presidency has touched a low point. Over the past five years, Obama’s lassitude and political ineptitude have increasingly become apparent.
His rhetoric remains as impressive as ever, but his conduct of office is hallmarked by weakness and indecision.
This matters to us all much more than Cameron’s bungling, because the U.S. is the most important nation on earth.
For all its shortcomings, it represents most of the values democracies cherish, just as Putin’s Russia embodies many of the evils from which they recoil.
So what has gone wrong?  

Russia's brutish president, Vladimir Putin, has launched a diplomatic initiative which leaves the U.S. wrong-footed and potentially isolated

From the start of the Syrian civil war, Obama has used words with a carelessness we expect from media commentators, but not from a president.
Just over two years ago, he declared that President Assad must leave office. He saw little risk in saying this, because back then, in 2011, the Syrian dictator’s regime indeed seemed to be crumbling fast. 

It was still tottering last year, when Obama made an even more unwise remark: he said that any use of illegal chemical weapons by Assad would represent the crossing of a red line, which would force the West to act.

More...

• Secretary of State Kerry's lacklustre performance won't help Obama over Syria

Worse — as a friend of mine in the U.S. State Department remarked this week — the White House failed to use the months that followed to row back, to make the threat of military action less explicit.
A spokesman could easily have told the press corps: ‘What the president really meant was . . .’. But no one did. And so the world was left with a clear promise that, if the Assad regime used chemical weapons, the U.S. would start shooting.
But in his heart, its president did not want to do so. While the British boy scouts in Downing Street urged on Washington with arguments about its moral responsibility to plunge into Syria, the White House was unresponsive.
Obama wanted to get his country out of wars, not into them.
Moreover, the U.S. military, like its British counterparts, are implacably hostile to intervention, because they cannot identify clear and attainable objectives. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said as much publicly.

Putin proposes that Assad's chemical weapons should be placed under international control

But last month came a new and shocking act by the Assad regime.
Some 1,400 people were killed in a Damascus suburb, and most of us accept a high probability that this was done with sarin gas.
Where, now, was the U.S. president’s commitment to act if Assad ‘crossed the red line’?
Obama allowed himself to be persuaded by his advisers that he must deliver at least a gesture strike in Syria, to preserve America’s reputation for meaning what it says.
In the weeks since, however, a black farce has unfolded.
Polls show most Americans as hostile to intervention as are the British people — and indeed the French.
Washington has no coherent strategy, beyond punishing Assad by lobbing cruise missiles at his presumed chemical warfare establishments.
While no one likes Assad, the opposition is a rabble of unstable factions dominated by Al Qaeda sympathisers.
The only question that should matter for the leaders of the West is whether they have a military option that offers the prospect of making things better for the Syrian people.
Most ordinary Americans have decided that they do not, and their view is widely shared in Congress.
This was how matters stood before last weekend, when the President attended the G20 Summit in St Petersburg.
He hoped to use the occasion to rally support for a punitive strike on Assad — but conspicuously failed.
Meanwhile, China, India, Brazil and other states made it plain that they reject the American case.
Even the Pope has sent a message, urging Obama not to act.
It has become painfully apparent that, while America claims action against Syria would be validated by international law, no major international body agrees.
For his part, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was running his own charm offensive — and faring even worse. His default position is to put his foot in his mouth.

Lacking

He is woefully inarticulate, and when he does hold forth, it is often from a different song-sheet to the president. His gangling figure is wholly lacking in international credibility.
Then Putin delivered his bombshell: a proposal that Assad’s chemical weapons should be placed under international control — to make Western air strikes redundant.
The U.S. leadership was thrown into new confusion. Kerry dismissed the notion as incredible.
Obama, however, saw no choice but to give the Russian initiative a chance — to dance to Putin’s tune.

   

More from Max Hastings...

•   A disaster? No, it's high time Britain stopped being Uncle Sam's poodle...And as for those taunts about their 'oldest allies' the French, who cares! 30/08/13
•   A savage defeat for Cameron... and he brought it on himself 29/08/13
•   Immature advisers, moral indignation and the folly of wading into this bloody morass 26/08/13
•   Mrs Hastings and I are 'make do and mend' addicts. But today's young think we're past our sell-by date 08/08/13
•   Why I believe it's wrong to pardon Bletchley Park code breaker Alan Turing for breaking the anti-gay laws of his time 26/07/13
•   The danger is we've become immune to Human Rights lunacy. It's vital we stay angry, says MAX HASTINGS 09/07/13
•   The day that confounded doomsayers like me: Like millions of British people, Max Hastings has found a spring in his step after Andy Murray's win 08/07/13
•   Yes, they both used lies to wage war. But Churchill did it to save Britain - Blair did it to save himself 01/07/13
•   VIEW FULL ARCHIVE

 

American cruise strikes, and a Congressional vote to authorise them (which everyone knows that Obama might lose), were suddenly put on hold.
The French proposed a UN Security Council resolution, designed to force the Russians to make their plan meaningful, which Britain and the U.S. are supporting, but which the Russian foreign minister has already denounced as ‘unacceptable’.  
For sure, there will now be protracted delay and haggling. Putin has bought time for his clients in Damascus.
But the longer the dithering goes on, the more limp and unconvincing any possible U.S. strike will seem.
It is unlikely Washington now has any realistic option that will bring down the Assad regime. The civil war will go on, probably ending in a messy partition of Syria.
But even if — as I believe — the West and Britain have no attainable objectives in Syria, assuredly we have a vital interest in the authority of the United States.
It is a sorry spectacle today to see the U.S. President reduced to confusion, while Putin crows on his Moscow dunghill.

Bloodshed

Like David Cameron, Obama has only himself to blame for the shocking mess he has drifted into, against all his own instincts.
After the bloodshed and failures of the past decade, most of his people have become far humbler and more cautious about throwing their weight across the world.
A Washington foreign policy guru whom I respect emailed me this week: ‘When I hear Obama or Kerry rage with indignation, I can’t help feeling that it sounds hollow.
‘Americans started a war in Iraq that killed tens of thousands of Iraqis. We tortured people.
‘And now we launch drones around the globe — weapons that give, to a very small number of people, the power of judge, jury and hangman all at once.
‘These acts have eroded our authority to pronounce on moral issues in foreign affairs.’
My friend is right, I fear.
Many of us will be much relieved if the Western powers do not intervene militarily in Syria.
But the decline in the moral stature of the United States, and in respect for its president among his own people and abroad, is just cause for regret to us all.

Thursday, September 12, 2013 - By Unknown 0