Foreign Affairs – Page 3 – David Akin’s On The Hill

America's spies push for even more power

The New York Times reports on a jaw-dropping report produced by the U.S. National Security Agency — America’s spy agency — in which it pushes for even more powers:

…existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance in what it cited as “the golden age of Sigint,” or signals intelligence. “The interpretation and guidelines for applying our authorities, and in some cases the authorities themselves, have not kept pace with the complexity of the technology and target environments, or the operational expectations levied on N.S.A.’s mission,” the document concluded.Using sweeping language, the paper also outlined some of the agency’s other ambitions. They included defeating the cybersecurity practices of adversaries in order to acquire the data the agency needs from “anyone, anytime, anywhere.”

Read the story: N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power – NYTimes.com.

Readers write taking issue with my piece on Putin-Harper

Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok in the fall of 2012.

In our papers on Saturday and here on this blog, I wrote about Russian President Vladimir Putin, who I believe to be an anti-democratic despot with little concern for respecting the rule of law or upholding universal human rights. Many readers agreed but some did not. Here’s a lightly edited pair of responses which were typical of those who disagreed:

We’ll start with this rant from a computer sciences professor at London’s Western University: Continue reading Readers write taking issue with my piece on Putin-Harper

The frosty Harper-Putin relationship: Tales from Vladivostok

Putin waits for Harper — Waiting for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to show up, Russian President “was fidgeting, tapping his foot, and sent verbal daggers at his minions over the delay,” I write. See below (AFP PHOTO/RIA NOVOSTI/POOL/MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV)

OTTAWA – In less than a month, Russian bad boy Vladimir Putin will host Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other world leaders at the G20 summit in Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg.
It’s shaping up to be a heck of a summit, if only because every leader who steps off the plane at St. Petersburg’s drab grey airport will have a giant chip on their shoulder because of their host’s recent behaviour on the world stage.

With Syria and gay rights and fugitive Edward Snowden, Putin has been offside with most of the Western world.

U.S. President Barack Obama just cancelled a one-on-one summit with Putin out of pique over Snowden, a sign of rapidly cooling Russia-U.S. relations.

But Harper and Putin haven’t exactly been getting along either. Continue reading The frosty Harper-Putin relationship: Tales from Vladivostok

Nikiforuk calls Canada "a rogue petrostate"

The audience for the U.S. magazine Foreign Policy (published by the same people who publish The Washington Post) is mostly American and, today, Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk is telling them that Canada has not only lost its reputation as “global Boy Scout” but we are now evil “petroleum bullies”.

Over the last decade, Canada has not so quietly become an international mining center and a rogue petrostate. It’s no longer America’s better half, but a dystopian vision of the continent’s energy-soaked future.

via Oh, Canada – By Andrew Nikiforuk | Foreign Policy.

Why "Harper the Trotskyite" does not believe Putin will change on Syria

Harper meets Putin — VLADIVOSTOK, Russia: Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2012 APEC Summit in October, 2012. (DAVID AKIN/QMI Agency)

G8 Leaders convene in Northern Ireland Monday. France, the United Kingdom, and the United States will be leading the charge to take some action on Syria where, those three countries have concluded, dictator Bashar al-Assad has been using chemical weapons to gas his own people. Canada agrees with its allies on that issue though Canada does not believe it is time to arm Assad’s opponents. Continue reading Why "Harper the Trotskyite" does not believe Putin will change on Syria

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's speech to the UK Parliament

The text of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s speech to be delivered at 1200 GMT in the Robing Room at the Palace of Westminster to members of the UK Parliament (pardon the formatting hiccups. That’s my fault, not anyone else’s, as I rushed to get this online) . The speech is 3,320 words long:

Lord Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Monsieur le premier ministre, Prime Minister, Lords and Members of the House of Commons: For anyone who fully understands and truly cherishes the free and democratic nature of our institutions and the long history upon which they rest
there is no honour to compare with an invitation to stand here at the very cradle of our political system and to address the Members of the Parliament of Westminster. Continue reading Prime Minister Stephen Harper's speech to the UK Parliament

Baird pays off hockey bet with case of cool Ottawa microbrewery beer

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and U.S. Secretary State John Kerry bet a case of beer on the World Women’s Hockey Championship. Baird had a case of Molson Canadian on the line; Kerry had a case of Sam Adams. Well, the U.S. beat Canada earlier this week and while Baird is sending a case of Canadian to Kerry, he’s also sending a case of Beau’s beer to the U.S. embassy staff in Ottawa. Beau’s is a Continue reading Baird pays off hockey bet with case of cool Ottawa microbrewery beer

In the West, the decline of politics

Jonathan Hopkin writing at ForeignAffairs.com

It would be unwise to dismiss the election results as yet another Italian anomaly. All across Europe, membership of political parties is at its lowest level since the World War II. Voters are also less loyal than ever to traditional parties — they are more likely to switch votes to a rival party or an entirely new one. Only days after Grillos triumph, the UK Independence Party, which campaigns for British withdrawal from the EU, came to within 2,000 votes of winning a by-election held to replace a disgraced Liberal Democrat MP, pushing the ruling Conservatives into third place. And the success of the Pirate Party in Sweden, the anti-Islam party led by Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and more established populist parties such as the French Front National, confirm that Italy is far from being an outlier.

via Italy Did Not Just Send in The Clowns | Foreign Affairs.