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(05/01/15 1:52am)
Michael M. Crow, the president of our beloved university, has birthed an empire. His empire is not one of territory or political ambition or economic coercion, but one of education and of the mind. It is an empire of innovation, free thinking and broad demographic appeal, which is reflected in the ASU Charter: We are measured “not by whom we exclude, but rather by whom we include and how they succeed.”
(04/24/15 2:20am)
Being the President of the United States means that you have responsibilities no one will ever understand. Responsibilities like deciding whether you should drop a newly created atomic weapon on two very populated cities because you want to avoid having the blood of your own troops spilled unnecessarily.
(04/20/15 1:11am)
The earth is cracked and baking, entirely devoid of water as it steams it away. It is so dry that it crumbles at the slightest touch. The earth rises up jaggedly, carelessly protruding as it stretches out across the horizon. It looks eerily like my skin when I don’t use lotion in the morning. Nearby, a lake recedes into the depths from which came, the sun beaming unbearably over it.
(04/17/15 3:09am)
Ever since the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was blown to pieces by a Hellfire missile fired from a drone while riding in a convoy in Yemen in September 2011, pundits, academics, lawyers and politicians have been debating the legality of targeted killings of American citizens. The issue has come to the fore in recent years as the Obama administration has steadily and methodically increased the number and lethality of drone strikes against targets in Yemen and Pakistan, with very vague requirements as to how people are selected for targeting.
(04/15/15 3:37am)
Barring any tragic incidents for the Clinton campaign or America and the world, Hillary Clinton will win the 2016 presidential election when Americans go to the polls on Nov. 8 of next year. The Republic front-runners at the moment are former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. While Bush is more pragmatic and open than his brother, he is not an inspiring or likable character. As for Cruz? Well, I’ve already made my views clear on him. He should probably stick to reading "Green Eggs and Ham."
(04/12/15 11:22pm)
The slight chill in Panama stemming from the light rain that fell from the sky could not be more symbolic of the historic moment when President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro shook hands during an aside at the Summit of the Americas on Saturday. After over 50 years of an extremely cold and frosty relationship between the two countries — ever since former President Fidel Castro took over Cuba in a revolutionary coup — the sun is finally starting to come out from behind the clouds and turn the frost into a steadily warmer atmosphere as angry rhetoric and actions subside.
(04/10/15 4:42am)
Iran, and more especially Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, has been busy lately. Besides trying to conclude a controversial (and arguably unstable) deal with the U.S. over its nuclear program, Iran as represented by Zarif, has also been lobbying Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to stay out of the conflict in Yemen after Saudi Arabia asked it to send group troops to assist its coalition against Houthi rebels.
(04/09/15 2:51am)
It’s a routine traffic stop — a Mercedes-Benz with a broken taillight. It quickly turns deadly: There is a scuffle between the officer and the driver of the car. “Something” is dropped on ground. The man starts to run. The officer draws his gun and fires eight times into the man’s back. After the eighth shot, the man falls to the ground, dead.
(04/03/15 4:02am)
ISIS is being pushed back, demoralized and pummeled into a painstakingly slow submission, placed in a stranglehold and forced into a few key areas of Iraq and Syria. As Doug Ollivant, a senior National Security fellow at the New America Foundation, said, “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant — known by most people in the Middle East as Daesh — will lose its battle to hold territory in Iraq.”
(03/26/15 2:52am)
Israel and the U.S. are back in the news, and it’s negative again. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal released findings that Israel has been spying on the proceedings of diplomatic talks between the P5+1 (the U.S., the U.K., Russia, China and France, plus Germany) and Iran with regards to the latter’s nuclear program.
(03/27/15 3:55am)
The Middle East is on fire. I’m not referring to the scorching weather or the drought that has been sucking the region dry for years now. I mean the Middle East is literally on fire. Rockets are firing from fighter jets, tanks and drones; from RPGs and land-based devices, all over the region. Fires rage everywhere.
(03/19/15 1:03am)
The election results are in, and they don’t look good. By a narrow margin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be keeping his seat at the head of the government. Netanyahu’s Likud party won a total of 30 seats out of 120 in the Knesset — Israel’s parliament — while the rival Zionist Union party won 24. What is interesting is that just a few days before the elections, Likud was trailing Zionist Union in the polls by four seats. The brilliant last-minute politicking on the part of Netanyahu is probably responsible for this radical change.
But if Netanyahu’s politicking was brilliant, it was also frightening, and I am deeply concerned about the future not only of Israel, but of the Middle East. In the first place, Netanyahu’s focus on the safety and security of Israel, while important, is both misplaced and overblown. Isaac Herzog, the leader of the Zionist Union party, would be just as committed to Israel's security, and therefore I don’t see how Netanyahu has a monopoly on facilitating that security. Not only that, Netanyahu has contributed more to instability than security with his recent actions.
Let us go down the list. First, he alienated the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S., the man who would be charged with assisting Israel in the event of an emergency, through his recent speech to Congress. During that speech, he not only criticized the President and made it harder for him to reach a deal with the Iranians by demonizing any talks, but he also blew the threat from Iran way out of proportion, as even many security officials attested to before that speech.
Perhaps the way in which Netanyahu jeopardized the security of the state of Israel the most was through some comments he made immediately before the election (this is the brilliant politicking part). When asked whether a Palestinian state would not be formed while he was prime minister, he said, “Indeed.” But then he went further: “Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving base for attacks to the radical Islam against Israel.”
These Islamophobic, deeply divisive and bombastic comments by Bibi equate all Palestinian organizations (and indeed the entire Palestinian people) with terrorist organizations like Hamas. Most Palestinians don’t agree with the radical Islam of Hamas and those like them and are simply frustrated with what they see as the occupation of their lands. Implying that all Palestinians are terrorists, and by extension justifying not allowing a two-state solution, is simply ignorant.
There are some like Gidi Grinstein, founder of the Reut Institute, who say we shouldn’t worry about Netanyahu’s comments; they say he has traditionally been able to differentiate between the campaign trail and governing the country, that he is pragmatic. But if this is Bibi’s idea of pragmatism, then I call it selfish pragmatism. This wasn’t about the people of Israel and their security: This was about Netanyahu winning back power for another few years.
What is perhaps the most stunning part of this entire process is the lack of a response on the part of the Palestinians. Now that they have no recourse under Netanyahu, they really only have three options. One, they could target the Knesset; but this probably would not be a good idea, since it would be extremely hard to get accommodations from the fractured body that the Knesset now is. Two, they can continue to lodge complaints and petitions with the U.N., the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Finally, they can return to armed expression to get their point across. In the end, Netanyahu’s stance doesn’t look good for Israel.
As I said, these election results don’t look good. It perpetuates the picture of the Middle East as a place of conflict, stalemate and tension that has kept everyone on their toes for decades. Really, Netanyahu should be concentrating on how to make the economy and quality of living in Israel better, rather than endangering the state’s existence by blowing things out of proportion and using racist rhetoric. Reach the columnist at jbrunne2@asu.edu or follow @MrAmbassador4 on Twitter.Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(03/18/15 12:38am)
It started with gunfire erupting in a boarding school in the rural town of Chibok in Borno State, in the northeast of Nigeria. Over 200 young school girls were abducted, most of whom have not been seen since. With this one act, Boko Haram secured its place under the international spotlight, cementing its already infamous reputation as a brutal and ruthless terrorist organization willing to go to any lengths to enforce its extremist brand of Islam.
(03/05/15 12:54am)
In all of the chaos, miscalculation and death that happens on a daily basis, it is often hard to find times when things are going well. Listening to the news, you often get the sense that the world is going to end any minute. With Iran trying to create nuclear weapons even as the U.S. intervenes, Russian separatists escalating the on-going conflict in Ukraine, and, of course, ISIS — to name just a few big problems — it seems as though nothing is going right.
(03/04/15 12:40am)
A standing ovation greets the silver-haired Israeli prime minister as he ascends to the podium, pausing momentarily to exchange a few words with House Speaker Boehner. He received a similar welcome at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday, but something was missing. In fact, a lot of somethings. Around 60 U.S. Congressman and women from the Democratic Party, to be exact, along with the Vice President of the United States. This symbolic boycott of the Prime Minister’s speech is not surprising, given that the invitation was given by Speaker of the House John Boehner behind the President’s back, and that it comes a few weeks before Israeli elections.
(02/19/15 8:12pm)
Money spills out of the ATM, right into the bag of the waiting customer. But this customer is no ordinary customer. He doesn’t have an account with the bank that owns this ATM, and he's not riding away with his money.
This mule service is part of one of the most sophisticated and damaging of cyber thefts in history, one which has reportedly stolen around $1 billion from more than 100 banks in 30 countries across Europe. In fact, the attack by the group dubbed "Carbanak" was so sophisticated that the banks who were victimized are still trying to figure out what happened and how to respond.
Thankfully for those of us in the U.S., the majority of the banks hit were based in Europe. However, with the increasing interconnectedness of markets and global financial transactions, this theft could have had devastating consequences for us. Indeed, the same individuals that hacked all of those accounts in European banks could probably have done the same thing to U.S. institutions had they chosen to do so.
That’s why Executive Order 13636 is so important. Entitled “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity,” this new Presidential Policy Directive signed at Stanford University by President Barack Obama seeks to draw attention to the security of critical infrastructure within the U.S., which includes “systems and assets” dealing with “security, national economic security, national public health and safety, or any combination of those matters.”
Now I know what you are thinking: this is just another example of presidential overreach on the part of the Obama administration, and into the private sector at that. However, this is somewhat different. In the first place, Obama has already sent a legislative package to Congress dealing with this issue, which has been highlighted by a number of members of Congress as important.
In fact, a bill has been placed on the floor of the Senate for discussion regarding the sharing of information between the public and private sectors and cooperation towards greater security of the information that we have. This bill is a successor to other bills that have died due to a lack of support or attention to the issue.
Really, this shouldn’t be a big issue at all. The countries that are the most secure on the issue of cybersecurity learned to share information across the public and private sectors a long time ago. The poignant example of this approach is Israel. The “startup nation” long ago started to create partnerships between the public and private sector in an effort to provide comprehensive security to its cyber assets.
The most poignant worry of most Americans in the wake of this new directive is the role of the National Security Agency. Recent revelations about the NSA and its offensive cyber efforts through the use of malware and spyware has raised questions about whether these new efforts to create “information sharing and analysis organizations,” or ISAOs, are really just another tactic of the government to increase its domestic surveillance, creating a sequel to the PRISM program.
Even if the NSA does gain more information through such information security, I think that’s a small price to pay for national, public health and energy security. Besides, all the NSA has as of now is metadata (basically phone numbers and who called whom at what time, not the content of conversations). This has been proven to combat terrorism by making financial and personal links between people that are trying to attack the U.S. and our allies.
But the majority of Americans would disagree with me about that. That’s why the biggest worry from the companies is the liability that comes from sharing information with the government and with each other. What’s the lesson here? Congress needs to act on cybersecurity so that President Obama doesn’t have to do so unilaterally.
Not only this, but the American people need to make up their minds when it comes to protection and who sees their information. When the intelligence agencies don’t detect a cyber-attack for lack of information sharing, there is a public outcry. When they try to collaborate by monitoring information, there is a public outcry. Let the intelligence agencies do their job to stop those who would steal our information, our money and even our very lives from us. Reach the columnist at jbrunne2@asu.edu or follow @MrAmbassador4 on Twitter.Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(02/15/15 10:17pm)
Dear Mr. President,
I am sorry to break it to you, but your newly proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force is inadequate. I know that you have been getting criticism from all sides as of late (even from your own party) on this issue, but I just can’t look at this proposal without seeing some problems that could immediately crop up.
In the first place, this three-year plan just doesn’t cut it. Leon Panetta, who was once at the highest levels of your administration, has said it will take close to 30 years to defeat ISIS, and he is seconded by Michael Hayden. Another inadequacy is the quest to appease both sides. Why are you allowing yourself to be hamstrung in proposing this in such a way? After all, you have the 2001 AUMF that became active under the Bush Administration which you have been able to use to act very broadly in this instance against the threat of ISIS. Why make a middle of the road plan when you have Congress and the American people (as well as the rest of the world) behind you on killing this threat? It just doesn’t make much sense to me Mr. President. Repeal the first AUMF and expand this one, please.
The one place where you do take a substantial turn from your past stance on the issue is in relation to ground attacks. You have a justified aversion to using conventional combat forces in this fight, which I think is smart. After all, we don’t want to have to re-occupy Iraq once again with hundreds of thousands of troops. Even so, you have proposed to Congress that they authorize the use of limited ground combat operations, most likely with the use of special operations forces for a variety of missions (rescue operations and intelligence sharing and gathering among them). Therefore, even though you have been criticized for this rather broad and open-ended language of this proposal, I believe that you are taking steps in the right direction on this, and I am joined by the majority of Americans on this, and by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey.
Something drastic needs to be done about ISIS, something to obliterate them completely with whatever elements of power we have at our disposal — diplomatic, military, economic, etc. Otherwise we will continue to have this problem for years to come, and the limited but flexible AUMF that you are asking for from Congress will only prolong the agony. Ground troops, even in a limited capacity, are the first step in the right direction.
Many Democrats have expressed doubts and reservations over the content of the AUMF or its parameters. To those like Senator Joe Manchin III who say that “If money or military might would change that part of the world, we’d be done a long time ago,” you should respond that the reason those resources didn’t work is that we applied them in the wrong way to the wrong conflict. We should never have invaded Iraq, but now we must in order to fix what we started in the first place.
To those who remind you that you won on promises to end never-ending wars in faraway places, you should respond that this was the case, but the situation has changed, and we need to do all we can to stop this threat, especially since the war is already upon us. Finally, to those who say that we shouldn’t use ground troops at all because it will draw us into another long war that will leave those troops there indefinitely, you should respond that enemy that we face and our stated objective (to degrade and destroy ISIS) necessitates the use of ground troops, at least in a limited capacity.
Lyndon Johnson is your example here, Mr. President. Sir, you need to get down on the floors of the House and the Senate and twist some arms, take command of this situation. You are the Great Communicator; use your gift for oratory and excellent communication skills to get this thing moving forward. Convince them that you are committed to this fight and allay their fears.
I know that your style is “no-drama Obama.” But Mr. President, this is your moment. This is the part where you galvanize the American people and the Congress behind you as Commander-in-Chief and do what needs to be done, especially in asking for the right kind of authorization. For all our sakes, take your moment and make the most of it.Reach the columnist at jbrunne2@asu.edu or follow @MrAmbassador4 on Twitter.Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(02/15/15 8:09pm)
Virginia Tech with Seung-Hui Cho. Norway with Anders Behring Breivik. Sandy Hook Elementary with Adam Lanza. Paris with Saïd and Chérif Kouachi. And now Chapel Hill with Craig Stephen Hicks. Another senseless attack. Another series of lives snuffed out for no good reason. No matter the killer’s motive, three bright young students who had their entire lives ahead of them are dead. It gets to be that when I hear about events like this, I don’t even pay much attention anymore. It’s not that I’m desensitized or cold or that I don’t care. It’s that I just have heard it too many times.
But even as I wrestle with cynicism, with hopelessness, with discouragement, with anger, with sadness — whatever this is that I feel when I keep hearing about these senseless attacks — I am relieved just a bit when I see the efforts of ASU students from six different organizations coming together in solidarity for a beautiful vigil for Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha. It's a relief to see Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Christians come together on Hayden Lawn not as enemies on a battlefield but as humans mourning the loss of wonderful additions to the world.
It is relieving when I hear Zana Alattar, the president of Students Organized for Syria at ASU, talking about how those three "were an inspiration, they were leaders.” Alattar couldn’t stress enough that we need to look at the lives that these young people lived, not the deaths that the experienced. We should focus on the causes that they fought for and the example that they demonstrated on a daily basis as volunteers and exemplary students, rather than on the tragic and violent end that they met on Tuesday.
When I talked to Alattar after the vigil, she was quick to advocate for unity from diversity. She talked about how the vigil was put together by diverse on-campus groups, and how this was an example of what ASU has done and can continue to do to promote understanding of the issues and education about other cultures and religions.
I want to go beyond people coming together just to talk and educate about these issues. I also heard from Anusha Abbas, a member of Sun Devils Are Better Together, another organization on campus. She spoke to me about how extremism is a festering problem, especially among the youth. She highlighted how young people are being attracted by the extremism of other groups, like ISIS and al-Qaeda, and how these groups are radicalizing them due to the media’s attention on the successes of attacks. She spoke on the need for this to be counteracted by the youth of American and of ASU by coming together against extremism and violence and actually having it highlighted.
She pointed out that only death, destruction, violence, and negativity is highlighted in the media of late, rather than the efforts of peaceful and positive influences, an example being what happened last night at the vigil. What I began to realize is that this is a societal problem, one that encourages violence and conflict — a society that is more fascinated by Call of Duty than Tetris, and more with paintball than volunteer work.
Perhaps what I am trying to express was said best by one of the posters at the vigil: “All Lives Matter.” That is something that we all need to understand. Once we begin to focus on people as humans, rather than as adherents to a religion, members of racial group or activists in an organization, we will be able to reach out more effectively to each other as humans and stop these kinds of attacks, or at least extremely limit the kinds of ideas and doctrines that make them possible. Reach the columnist at jbrunne2@asu.edu or follow @MrAmbassador4 on Twitter.Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(02/13/15 1:08am)
Putin annexed Crimea back in 2014 after a small-scale engagement. Following this, he set his eyes on Ukraine. Suffice to say, the West wasn’t too happy with Putin’s actions in Ukraine in arming and supporting the separatists there, and slapped a large amount of sanctions on him and those around him.What effect has all of this had on the situation? It has caused a massive blow to the Russian economy. The sanctions by the West — compounded with the falling price of oil — have sent the Russian national currency, the ruble, into a spiral which threatens to render it worthless. Surprisingly, Putin has actually attempted to let the ruble value fall on purpose, a strategy that has become “one of the few consistent Kremlin policies,” according to the New York Times. “In the face of falling oil prices and Western sanctions over its Ukraine policy, it is a painful, but necessary, step to wean Russians from imports.”
The effects to be felt are more than just economic. According to Alexander J. Motyl of Foreign Affairs, Putin’s actions have placed him very close to the brink of losing control of the government. Motyl states that Putin has three groups he must support with the state’s resources: the military (which he cannot stop supporting for obvious reasons), the people (who are his biggest means of support) and “power-hungry loyalists.” Stop the flow of resources, and this could result in a coup, a revolution or an implosion of the regime. With the economy in shambles and the state starting to lose money, Putin will have to start cutting back somewhere, leaving one group very unhappy.
It seems that Motyl isn't far off, explaining why Putin has tried to find a way around the stranglehold of Western sanctions: China. The consequences of the Ukrainian conflict have increasingly pushed Russia into the Chinese sphere of influence, especially with the recent $400 billion gas deal Putin just signed with his Chinese counterpart. This is something that the U.S. can ill afford. While some have talked of “defensively arming” the Ukrainian government, this to me makes no sense. It will lead to an escalation, which is something that nobody wants. Diplomacy, Angela Merkel has pointed out, is key to ending the conflict in Ukraine, which is why world leaders are now in Minsk.
That’s why we need to utilize diplomacy to get Putin get out of this mess. The idea should not come as a surprise. In fact, it seems NATO and the EU started the conflict in the first place by trying to pull Ukraine into its sphere of influence (something they promised not to do after the Cold War), which is something that Putin will not tolerate.
Why can’t we just escalate militarily until Putin backs down? Putin won’t back down, no matter how many weapons we pour into Ukraine. Stephen Walt of Foreign Policy explains that Putin is motivated not by power and greed, but by a desire to secure his influence in a region that has historically been Russian. Quoting Robert Jervis, Walt shows that the conflict here needs to be seen through the lens of a “spiral model” (in which a state’s actions are primarily motivated by fear or insecurity) rather than a “deterrence model” (which is used in the face of a relentless aggressor). If Putin had the assurance that Ukraine will not be threatened or incorporated into NATO, he would most likely back down according to Walt.
John Mearsheimer suggests that this should be accomplished by making Ukraine a buffer zone between NATO/EU influence and Russian influence. However, this helps neither the Ukrainians nor the two sides of the conflict. A partition plan may be more in line with what is needed, since it would deal with the problem of the separatists while also providing an avenue to send aid to Ukraine.
Dealing with Russia may seem like dealing with the devil, but NATO and the EU started the conflict in the first place by trying to pull Ukraine into their sphere of influence (something they promised not to do after the Cold War), which is something Putin will not tolerate. Reach the columnist at jbrunne2@asu.edu or follow @MrAmbassador4 on Twitter.Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.Want to join the conversation? Send an email to opiniondesk.statepress@gmail.com. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted.Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
(02/05/15 12:30am)
A man screams as he hurtles down from the building, thrown by masked men. He hits the ground, but miraculously he survives the brutal fall from the high-rise building. So the spectators finish him off with a few angry tosses of the rocks on the ground. This man’s crime? He is accused of being a homosexual in ISIS-controlled Syria.