US Congress snoozes as fiscal cliff nears; America's first big digital defeat; The killing schoolyards

1 Congress snoozes as fiscal cliff nears (Heidi Moore in The Guardian) In just a few weeks the US will hit its borrowing limit again, and be unable to pay its bills unless extraordinary measures are taken by the treasury. The treasury can buy about two or three months' more time, but after that, the country will default on its debts. Under such pressure, you would expect Congress to be rushing to come up with a solution. But in fact it's quite the opposite: there has not been one bit of progress.

The scrooges of Congress hear the rattling chains of economic disaster and turn over in a fitful sleep, repeatedly slapping the "snooze" button to keep dreaming of a world in which they never have to compromise. No alarm is loud enough, it seems, to wake this Congress from its dogmatic slumber. Both sides agree that the government must cut the budget and raise taxes; yet they have made only the feeblest attempts to actually get there.

The negotiating positions are clear. President Obama wants to avoid the fiscal cliff's automatic tax hikes on middle-class Americans. He wants tax increases on citizens who earn more than $250,000 a year, reasoning that they can afford it.  Republicans, however, find this definition of "wealth" unpalatable. They are only willing to raise taxes on those making more than $1m a year, and they want to slash government spending on social safety-net programmes like social security and Medicare. The result? Snooze, snooze, and snooze again.

The US is already Greece: we are in a vicious cycle in which kicking the can down the road seems like perfectly plausible politics. The rattling of the chains is only getting louder.

2 America’s first big digital defeat (L Gordon Crovitz in The Wall Street Journal) The open Internet, available to people around the world without the permission of any government, was a great liberation. It was also too good to last. Authoritarian governments this month won the first battle to close off parts of the Internet. At the just-concluded conference of the International Telecommunications Union in Dubai, the US and its allies got outmaneuvered. 

The ITU conference was highly technical, which may be why the media outside of tech blogs paid little attention, but the result is noteworthy: A majority of the 193 United Nations member countries approved a treaty giving governments new powers to close off access to the Internet in their countries. 

US diplomats were shocked by the result, but they shouldn't have been surprised. Authoritarian regimes, led by Russia and China, have long schemed to use the UN to claim control over today's borderless Internet, whose open, decentralized architecture makes it hard for these countries to close their people off entirely. In the run-up to the conference, dozens of secret proposals by authoritarian governments were leaked online.

A vote was called late one night last week in Dubai—at first described as a nonbinding "feel of the room on who will accept"—on a draft giving countries new power over the Internet. The result was 89 countries in favor, with 55 against. The authoritarian majority included Russia, China, Arab countries, Iran and much of Africa. Under the rules of the ITU, the treaty takes effect in 2015 for these countries. Countries that opposed it are not bound by it, but Internet users in free countries will also suffer as global networks split into two camps—one open, one closed.

Just as during the last Cold War, the clash over the future of the Internet will have many battles across many fronts. Authoritarian governments are highly motivated to close the Internet off. But just as in the Cold War, these regimes are doomed to lose if free countries resolve to fight. Whatever governments want, people prefer freedom and eventually will get it, including on the Internet.

3 Killing schoolyards (Mahir Ali in Khaleej Times) Last Friday, a visibly moved Barack Obama spoke of “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like the one at the Newtown, Connecticut school, regardless of the politics”. If only. He chose his words carefully, notwithstanding the emotional circumstances. He could have said that the right to own assault weapons ought to be rescinded, or at least is not sacrosanct. But he didn’t. Perhaps that’s something hard to do for a US president who routinely ticks off targets in Pakistan or Yemen, and then doesn’t particularly care if the missiles unleashed by drones wipe out schools or children at home. They are not targets but collateral damage. The lives of children have more value when they are American kids.

Can the US put into place measures that can reduce the likelihood of American children being massacred without reconsidering its assumed right to murder children in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere? Yes, it probably can. But the fact that it is reluctant even to prevent the most appalling bloodshed even on its own territory truly boggles the imagination. Be it in Beslan, Newport, Kandahar or Peshawar, the mass murder of children ought to be an absolute outrage under any circumstances. It is considered more appalling if it happens in the US. That is a travesty.

The US has effectively been a security state since the end of World War II. It needn’t follow that schools for infants ought to be protected by armed guards. The US is not Afghanistan or Iraq. It ought to remain that way. But whether it can do so without abandoning its overseas ambitions remains an open question. The children of the US — as of Yemen, Pakistan and all other countries — deserve a lot better. But chances are that the security state and the would-be global hegemony will trump the likelihood of a weapons-free US society.

Many massacres and smaller-scale preceded the Newtown outrage. The same pattern, one fears, will follow it.