Gary Rumor’s Anti-Entropic Continuum

We have been witnessing over the past couple of months a back and forth between Democrats and some Republicans in Congress who want to know what the CIA has been hiding from them on one side and the administration and most Republicans who want to keep the CIA’s activities secret on the other. The President seems to want to keep the prerogatives of the Executive without oversight as the Bush Administration preferred. They seem to have become enamoured with the “Dark Side” as Cheney put it in the days just after 9-11 when many in the country felt that the sky was literally falling on our heads. What is Obama’s excuse?

This is an excerpt of a longer article in the Times.
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 11, 2009 New York Times
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counter-terrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was water boarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.

The law requires the president to make sure the intelligence committees “are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.” But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”

In addition, for covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden, the law says that briefings can be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight, consisting of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees.

The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded hurt the effectiveness of the counter-terrorism surveillance effort.”

Obama in Ghana from the BBC today July 11th 2009

“US President Barack Obama, on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office, has said Africa must take charge of its own destiny in the world.
Mr Obama told parliament in Ghana during a one-day stay that good governance was vital for development.
Ghana was chosen as the destination for the president’s visit because of its strong democratic record.
After his speech, Mr Obama headed to Cape Coast Castle, a seaside fortress converted to the slave trade by the British in the 17th Century. He was accompanied by his wife, Michelle, a descendant of African slaves, and both of his young daughters.
Speaking after a tour of the fort, Mr Obama said the fort should be a source of hope as well as repository of painful memories.
“It reminds us that as bad as history can be, it’s always possible to overcome,” he said.
Delivering a message that “Africa’s future is up to Africans”, Mr Obama conceded that the legacy of colonialism had helped breed conflict on the continent.
“But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants,” he added.
“Development depends upon good governance,” Mr Obama told legislators. “That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long.
“Expanding on his message, Mr Obama said four key areas were critical to the future of Africa and of the entire developing world, citing democracy, opportunity, health and the peaceful resolution of conflict.
However, there were some blunt words directed at other countries, many of which have been undermined by despotic leaders and corrupt politicians.
“Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions,” Mr Obama told his audience.
“No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny.”
He pledged to continue strong US support for public health care initiatives in Africa, and called for sensible use of natural resources such as oil in the face of the threat of climate change.

Mr Obama arrived in the capital late on Friday, fresh from the G8 summit in Italy where heads of state agreed on a $20bn (£12.3bn) fund to bolster agriculture - the main source of income for many sub-Saharan Africans.”

Ultra Orthodox Jews Clash with Police in Israel. Again from today’s BBC

“Hundreds of ultra-orthodox Jews have clashed with police in Jerusalem for a third consecutive Saturday over a car park which opens on the Sabbath.
Police said the protesters, wearing traditional Hasidic clothing, threw stones and jumped in front of vehicles.
The Sabbath is observed by religious Jews as a day of rest, when working, driving and trading are forbidden.
The protesters say the municipal car park will attract tourists and encourage business on the holy day.
One man who had crawled underneath the wheels of a stationary bus was reported to have been taken away by police.
The row has highlighted tensions between Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox Jews, known as Haredim, and the majority secular population.”

Chinese Leadership in the Outer Provinces An excerpt of a NY Times article about Wang Lequan.
“A Strongman Is China’s Rock in Ethnic Strife
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: July 10, 2009
Mr. Wang, 64, the Communist Party secretary and absolute power in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, is largely unknown outside China, and until lately stayed in the shadows even at home. But China’s leadership elite, and perhaps especially his patron, President Hu Jintao, have put their faith in him: they have let him run Xinjiang for 15 years, well beyond the usually strict limit of a decade in one powerful post. They have elevated him to the Politburo, the ruling party’s inner sanctum.
They have made him their go-to expert on policies toward minorities, which account for the more than 100 million of China’s 1.3 billion citizens who are not ethnically classified as Han. Those in power are reputed to have given him leading roles on senior advisory groups that coordinate and oversee ethnic policies. They have placed his protégé, Xinjiang’s former deputy party boss, in charge of restive Tibet.
“No one is going to engage in any fundamental rethink of policies toward ethnic minorities unless those policies fail to produce stability,” said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing analyst who closely follows issues in China’s leadership elite. But in Politburo terms, stability has a special meaning.
“It’s not about stability in the streets,” he added. “It’s about legitimacy.”
Mr. Wang arrived in Xinjiang as the Soviet Union was dissolving, its central Asian pieces shedding their colonial chains. Millions of Han citizens transplanted by Mao after China’s army occupied the region in 1949 were leaving. Beijing feared that Xinjiang’s growing Muslim Uighur population would try to follow its Soviet neighbors into independence.
Mr. Wang’s antidote was a heavy dose of modernization for the ancient Uighur culture. He opened the region’s oil and gas fields to drilling, laid pipelines east to the Chinese heartland and west to Kazakhstan, and turned the Production and Construction Corps, a creaky make-work project for mustered-out Han soldiers, into a moneymaker listed on the Shanghai stock exchange.
Han workers began flowing back, lured by industry and government jobs that Uighurs say were disproportionately parceled out to Han migrants. During the 1990s, Mr. Bequelin of Human Rights Watch said, about two million Han relocated to Xinjiang.
At the same time, Mr. Wang tightly constrained Uighur culture and religion. He substituted Mandarin for Uighur in primary schools, saying minority languages were “out of step with the 21st century,” and banned or restricted Islamic practices among government workers, including the wearing of beards and head scarves and rituals like fasting and praying while on the job.
Yet Mr. Wang’s efforts intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Within months, he began a campaign against terrorism and separatism that he linked to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a little-known Uighur group. The Bush administration agreed, adding the group to its list of allies of Al Qaeda in 2002.
In later years, Xinjiang waged a series of “strike hard” campaigns, dragnets that swept up thousands of Uighurs accused of terrorism or religious extremism.
The same year that the campaign began, Mr. Hu rewarded Mr. Wang with a Politburo seat.
Now that Xinjiang has exploded in violence, Western critics may contend that Mr. Wang’s hard-nosed rule has failed, much as urban race riots in 1960s America were seen as a failure of social and legal policies then.
As yet, there is no sign such arguments will move Beijing’s leaders.
Mr. Wang’s deputy in Xinjiang, Zhang Qingli, became party secretary in Tibet in 2005 and quickly became known for the same unbending policies that are Mr. Wang’s hallmark. In 2008, Tibet suffered its worst unrest in decades. Today, Mr. Zhang sits on the party’s central committee.”