Day: July 9, 2013
Process matters
Egypt’s latest constitutional declaration, which is intended to lay out a roadmap for elections within six months, is a mistake. Admittedly it is just the most recent in a long series, but that doesn’t make it any less serious.
First the bare facts: just before midnight Monday, the interim president, Adly Mansour, issed a constitutional declaration Read more
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Afghanistan: why negotiate?
As global attention focuses on the uncertainty in Egypt, the seemingly-ceaseless conflict in Syria, and Edward Snowden’s world tour to seek asylum, another development has gone largely unnoticed – US efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. As predicted, it appears that these talks will proceed, despite the recent attempts by the Karzai government to derail them over a dispute about a Taliban office and flag in Qatar.
US and allied forces are set to withdraw from Afghanistan sometime in 2014. As relations with the Afghan government deteriorate, the withdrawal may come sooner than many expected. As a result, US policy makers have deemed it imperative for there to be some sort of a political process that will ensure the security and stability of both Afghanistan and the broader region. They have increasingly made overtures to Taliban leaders. On Monday, the New America Foundation hosted a panel on what can be expected from these developments and examined the broader context of trying to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban in a study titled, “Talking to the Taliban: Hope over History?” (the complete text of their study can be found here). Read more
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Peace Picks July 8-12
A computer crash delayed this week’s abundant edition, but here it is:
1. The Failed States Index 2013 Launch Event, The Fund for Peace, Tuesday, July 9 / 9:00am – 11:30am
Venue: University Club of Washington DC
1135 Sixteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
Speakers: John Agoglia, David Bosco, Edward T. Cope, Kate Thompson
The Failed States Index (FSI) is a leading index that annually highlights current trends in social, economic and political pressures that affect all states, but can strain some beyond their capacity to cope. Apart from the impact on their people, fragile and failed states present the international community with a variety of challenges. In today’s world, with its globalized economy, information systems and security challenges, pressures on one fragile state can have serious repercussions not only for that state and its people, but also for its neighbors and other states halfway across the globe.
Linking robust social science with modern technology, the FSI is unique in its integration of quantitative data with data produced using content-analysis software to process information from millions of publicly available documents. The result is an empirically-based, comprehensive ranking of the pressures experienced by 178 nations. The FSI is used by policy makers, civil society, academics, journalists and businesses around the world.
Register for the event here:
http://fsi2013.eventbrite.com/
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Snowden right and wrong
Let me first concede on the main factual point: the National Security Agency (NSA) has been doing what Edward Snowden alleges, and then some. I have long assumed that NSA collects all electronic communications in the US, as well as any they can manage to intercept abroad. I doubt this is limited to “meta” data. We’d all do best to assume that it includes everything you or I transmit by electronic means.
Of course the companies that transmit this data for us–your phone company or Google, for example–already have it all. But there is a big difference between government collection of this data and the companies’ presumably indifferent transmission, even if Google uses it to send me bespoke ads. Neither Google nor Verizon has any real incentive to use the stuff in order to limit my civil liberties, only my advertising. Nor do they have the means. Read more
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