Posts tagged politics

Wait, Tolerate or Terminate? The Atlantic with an important explainer to kick off the new year: Over the past two years, the Obama administration has begun to formalize a so-called “disposition matrix” for suspected terrorists abroad: a continuously evolving database that spells out the intelligence on targets and various strategies, including contingencies, for handling them. Although the government has not spelled out the steps involved in deciding how to treat various terrorists, a look at U.S. actions in the past makes evident a rough decision tree. Understanding these procedures is particularly important for one of the most vexing, and potentially most dangerous, categories of terrorists: U.S. citizens. Over the years, U.S. authorities have responded with astonishing variety to American nationals suspected of terrorism, from ignoring their activities to conducting lethal drone strikes. All U.S. terrorists are not created equal. And the U.S. response depends heavily on the role of allies, the degree of threat the suspect poses, and the imminence of that threat — along with other factors. What follows is a flow chart… that takes us through the criteria and decision points that can lead to a suspect terrorist’s being ignored as a minor nuisance, being prosecuted in federal court, being held in a Pakistani prison, or being met with the business end of a Hellfire missile. Image: Screenshot, How Obama Decides Your Fate If He Thinks You’re a Terrorist via The Atlantic. Select to embiggen… But visit to explore.

Wait, Tolerate or Terminate?

The Atlantic with an important explainer to kick off the new year:

Over the past two years, the Obama administration has begun to formalize a so-called “disposition matrix” for suspected terrorists abroad: a continuously evolving database that spells out the intelligence on targets and various strategies, including contingencies, for handling them. Although the government has not spelled out the steps involved in deciding how to treat various terrorists, a look at U.S. actions in the past makes evident a rough decision tree.

Understanding these procedures is particularly important for one of the most vexing, and potentially most dangerous, categories of terrorists: U.S. citizens. Over the years, U.S. authorities have responded with astonishing variety to American nationals suspected of terrorism, from ignoring their activities to conducting lethal drone strikes. All U.S. terrorists are not created equal. And the U.S. response depends heavily on the role of allies, the degree of threat the suspect poses, and the imminence of that threat — along with other factors.

What follows is a flow chart… that takes us through the criteria and decision points that can lead to a suspect terrorist’s being ignored as a minor nuisance, being prosecuted in federal court, being held in a Pakistani prison, or being met with the business end of a Hellfire missile.

Image: Screenshot, How Obama Decides Your Fate If He Thinks You’re a Terrorist via The Atlantic. Select to embiggen… But visit to explore.

President Obama “maintained the top spot” among world leaders on Twitter per number of followers, having added 15 million followers during an election year. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in second place, added two million followers. Turkish President Abdullah Gül also added two millon followers and sits at third.

Alex Fitzpatrick, Mashable. You Can Tweet at 75% of the World’s Leaders.

See the above link for a detailed account of world leaders on Twitter. Obama, whose post-election victory photo became the most retweeted post in history, leads by number of followers.

But that isn’t necessarily surprising. What is surprising is the number of non-democratic, “instable” nations that have a leader online. While they appear near the bottom by popularity, there are many Central Asian and African governments that, until recently, have largely viewed social media as a threat.

Also interesting: who isn’t on Twitter. For one, there’s China’s Xi Jinping, who doesn’t want his citizens on the site, or Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And, sorry to say, the Dragon King of Bhutan is nowhere to be found.

As I indicated at the outset, this is the beginning of a serious conversation. We won’t be taking questions today.
David Keene, President, National Rifle Association. Remarks from the NRA press conference on Sandy Hook school shooting, delivered on Dec. 21, 2012.

Ranking Congress

The National Rifle Association rates members of congress on their gun-related voting record.

The New York Times gathers it all together in a handy interactive which shows not just how senators and representatives scored, but what campaign contributions they may have received from the NRA as well.

Images: How the National Rifle Association Rates Lawmakers, House (top), Senate (bottom), by the New York Times. Click to embiggen.

2012: What Brought Us Together

News, politics, sports, science and culture from around the world. By Jean-Louis Nguyen.

Stunning.

Guns in America

Two of the more interesting articles we saw while researching the above include:

The Atlantic, The Secret History of Guns: The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement.

New Yorker, Battleground America: One Nation, Under the Gun: For centuries before the first English colonists travelled to the New World, Parliament had been regulating the private ownership of firearms. (Generally, ownership was restricted to the wealthy; the principle was that anyone below the rank of gentleman found with a gun was a poacher.) England’s 1689 Declaration of Rights made a provision that “subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their condition and as allowed by law”; the Declaration was an attempt to resolve a struggle between Parliament and the Crown, in which Parliament wrested control of the militia from the Crown.

And for something more sobering, see Mother Jones’ timeline of 62 mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years.

Images: Guns in America: Facts and Figures. Select to embiggen.

Yes, There is a Fiscal Cliff Coloring Book I have three nephews and a niece. Somehow I can already sense the disappointment if this is what I get them for Christmas. Via The New Republic: When national affairs gets this confusing, the Really Big Coloring Book company is there to help folks draw their own conclusions. “We’ve heard from a lot of people from around the United States about this particular subject and how they want to explain it to their children,” says founder Wayne Bell. The St. Louis-based company made headlines two years ago when it published a Tea Party-themed coloring book. At the time, Mr. Bell told me that he and the company had gotten numerous threats. Never mind that the company also has flattering coloring books about the two main political parties, “The True Faces of Evil - Terror,” an Obama-themed spread, a “Hip Hop Gangsta Rap Coloring Book” and much, much more. You can download the six-page coloring book here (PDF), and view TNR’s coloring book savvy here. — Michael Image: Page 4, Fiscal Cliff Coloring Book, as colored by The New Republic.

Yes, There is a Fiscal Cliff Coloring Book

I have three nephews and a niece. Somehow I can already sense the disappointment if this is what I get them for Christmas.

Via The New Republic:

When national affairs gets this confusing, the Really Big Coloring Book company is there to help folks draw their own conclusions. “We’ve heard from a lot of people from around the United States about this particular subject and how they want to explain it to their children,” says founder Wayne Bell. The St. Louis-based company made headlines two years ago when it published a Tea Party-themed coloring book. At the time, Mr. Bell told me that he and the company had gotten numerous threats. Never mind that the company also has flattering coloring books about the two main political parties, “The True Faces of Evil - Terror,” an Obama-themed spread, a “Hip Hop Gangsta Rap Coloring Book” and much, much more.

You can download the six-page coloring book here (PDF), and view TNR’s coloring book savvy here. — Michael

Image: Page 4, Fiscal Cliff Coloring Book, as colored by The New Republic.

Occupy Crowdsourcing Debt Forgiveness Strike Debt, an Occupy Wall Street offshoot, launched Rolling Jubilee late last week to buy back and forgive debt. To do so, it’s collecting funds and then purchasing debt in arrears: Banks sell debt for pennies on the dollar on a shadowy speculative market of debt buyers who then turn around and try to collect the full amount from debtors. The Rolling Jubilee intervenes by buying debt, keeping it out of the hands of collectors, and then abolishing it. We’re going into this market not to make a profit but to help each other out and highlight how the predatory debt system affects our families and communities. Think of it as a bailout of the 99% by the 99%. As of this morning, Rolling Jubilee has raised over $350,000 with which it has purchased (and forgiven) over $7.1 million in debt. Small change when compared to the $1 trillion in student loan debt Americans owe but important to consider. As Rolling Jubilee notes, part of the effort is to “highlight how the predatory debt system affects our families and communities.”

Occupy Crowdsourcing Debt Forgiveness

Strike Debt, an Occupy Wall Street offshoot, launched Rolling Jubilee late last week to buy back and forgive debt. To do so, it’s collecting funds and then purchasing debt in arrears:

Banks sell debt for pennies on the dollar on a shadowy speculative market of debt buyers who then turn around and try to collect the full amount from debtors. The Rolling Jubilee intervenes by buying debt, keeping it out of the hands of collectors, and then abolishing it. We’re going into this market not to make a profit but to help each other out and highlight how the predatory debt system affects our families and communities. Think of it as a bailout of the 99% by the 99%.

As of this morning, Rolling Jubilee has raised over $350,000 with which it has purchased (and forgiven) over $7.1 million in debt.

Small change when compared to the $1 trillion in student loan debt Americans owe but important to consider. As Rolling Jubilee notes, part of the effort is to “highlight how the predatory debt system affects our families and communities.”

Much of the criticism of the American media during the height of the Iraq War focused on its role repeating White House talking points and propaganda. But using the tools of social media, as Israel is doing, reveals there’s no longer a need to rely a media middleman, or to filter the raw feed of war through an “embedded” — and, military officials hope, captured — journalist’s mouth or keyboard. The military can broadcast exactly what it wants to, directly to its citizens, allies, and enemies. The IDF even appropriates the language of news, prefacing several tweets with “BREAKING” — and native social media, at one point saying “in case you missed it” before pointing to a YouTube video of it killing Ahmed Jabari in a missile strike. And unlike any propaganda machine before it, it’s inherently viral. It’s designed to spread. So the IDF spokesperson provides posters and YouTube videos and a constantly updated Flickr account; they’re more shareable than plain text. Its tweets are a mixture of documentation, saber rattling, sober reminders of the reality of war, and upbeat updates on the advanced state of its technology. All delivered direct to you. Please RT…

…Most importantly, though, consider this: A country can declare that it is at war with Twitter. If that doesn’t make the internet real, I don’t know what does.
Matt Buchanan, Buzzfeed. How to Wage War on the Internet.

Currently on the Israeli Defense Forces Twitter Feed

Live blogging its attack on Hamas.

Images: Screenshots from @IDFSpokesperson. Select to embiggen.

Red v Blue, Not So True

Via Chris Howard:

America really looks like this - I was looking at the amazing 2012 election maps created by Mark Newman (Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan), and although there is a very interesting blended voting map (Most of the country is some shade of purple, a varied blend of Democrat blue and Republican red) what I really wanted was this blended map with a population density overlay. Because what really stands out is how red the nation seems to be when you do not take the voting population into account; when you do so many of those vast red mid-west blocks fade into pale pink and lavender (very low population).

So I created a new map using Mark’s blended voting map based on the actual numbers of votes for each party overlaid with population maps from Texas Tech University and other sources.

Here’s the result — what the American political voting distribution really looks like.

Images: Chris Howard’s “blended” voting map, via Facebook (top); Mark Newman’s 2012 voting maps by state, county and percentage vote by county (bottom). Select to embiggen.

Big Data, Demographics and the Undiscovered Voter The New York Times has a great piece on the final six weeks of the presidential campaign. There’s a lot in there in terms of strategies, momentum and setbacks but the use of data and demographics is eye opening: In Chicago, the [Obama] campaign recruited a team of behavioral scientists to build an extraordinarily sophisticated database packed with names of millions of undecided voters and potential supporters. The ever-expanding list let the campaign find and register new voters who fit the demographic pattern of Obama backers and methodically track their views through thousands of telephone calls every night. That allowed the Obama campaign not only to alter the very nature of the electorate, making it younger and less white, but also to create a portrait of shifting voter allegiances. The power of this operation stunned Mr. Romney’s aides on election night, as they saw voters they never even knew existed turn out in places like Osceola County, Fla. “It’s one thing to say you are going to do it; it’s another thing to actually get out there and do it,” said Brian Jones, a senior adviser. New York Times, How a Race in the Balance Went to Obama. Image: An Obama victory party in Manchester, NH, via the New York Times.

Big Data, Demographics and the Undiscovered Voter

The New York Times has a great piece on the final six weeks of the presidential campaign.

There’s a lot in there in terms of strategies, momentum and setbacks but the use of data and demographics is eye opening:

In Chicago, the [Obama] campaign recruited a team of behavioral scientists to build an extraordinarily sophisticated database packed with names of millions of undecided voters and potential supporters. The ever-expanding list let the campaign find and register new voters who fit the demographic pattern of Obama backers and methodically track their views through thousands of telephone calls every night.

That allowed the Obama campaign not only to alter the very nature of the electorate, making it younger and less white, but also to create a portrait of shifting voter allegiances. The power of this operation stunned Mr. Romney’s aides on election night, as they saw voters they never even knew existed turn out in places like Osceola County, Fla. “It’s one thing to say you are going to do it; it’s another thing to actually get out there and do it,” said Brian Jones, a senior adviser.

New York Times, How a Race in the Balance Went to Obama.

Image: An Obama victory party in Manchester, NH, via the New York Times.

See? Someone Won! FJP friend Jonathan Roy (he designed our logo) has started an editorial cartoon Tumblr. Welcome him aboard by giving him a follow.

See? Someone Won!

FJP friend Jonathan Roy (he designed our logo) has started an editorial cartoon Tumblr.

Welcome him aboard by giving him a follow.

The [New York] Times does not release traffic figures, but a spokesperson said yesterday that [Nate] Silver’s blog provided a significant—and significantly growing, over the past year—percentage of Times pageviews. This fall, visits to the Times’ political coverage (including FiveThirtyEight) have increased, both absolutely and as a percentage of site visits. But FiveThirtyEight’s growth is staggering: where earlier this year, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of politics visits included a stop at FiveThirtyEight, last week that figure was 71 percent.

But Silver’s blog has buoyed more than just the politics coverage, becoming a signifiant traffic-driver for the site as a whole. Earlier this year, approximately 1 percent of visits to the New York Times included FiveThirtyEight. Last week, that number was 13 percent. Yesterday, it was 20 percent. That is, one in five visitors to the sixth-most-trafficked U.S. news site took a look at Silver’s blog.

Marc Tracy, The New Republic. Nate Silver Is a One-Man Traffic Machine for the Times.

Takeaway: Stat nerds have clout.