In the June 15 dead-tree version of The Nation (online since May 27), Jonathan Schell writes that the Iraq war was produced by torture. Everyone knows that the "war on terror" and the Iraq war produced torture, but few have focused on the reversed causal arrow. And we...
The Gazprom Song:
In case you haven't seen it yet....
I happened to be consulting the triangle on page 83 of Skocpol's Social Revolutions in the Modern World for an article I'm drafting, and came across her chapter "Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the...
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that Barack Obama is behaving just like George W. Bush. Reuters, June 25: Obama said on Tuesday he was "appalled and outraged" by a post-election crackdown and Washington withdrew invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend Independence Day celebrations on July 4 -- stalling efforts to improve ties with Tehran."Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things ... our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously (former president George W.) Bush used to say," the semi-official Fars News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying."Do you...
I don't usually post on domestic policy issues. I'm even less likely to waste bandwidth explicitly seconding sentiments found on a big-time website. But, I'm afraid, that's what I'm going to do here.Theda Skocpol, author of, among other things, a bookthat insiders assure me gets a great deal right about why the Clinton health-care plan failed, gets it right.Key leaps forward for U.S. public social provision -- Social Security, Medicare, etc. -- have NEVER happened through "bipartisan" compromises and they always happen in close votes. They have always sqweaked through after gargantuan...
So starting this week I'm going on a six-week blogging hiatus to make an epic road trip west with my kids, visiting friends and family. Prepping for this trip while getting my book to the publisher and doing committee work hasn't left me much time lately to weigh in on Iran, but by way of a temporary farewell, I decided to leave you with this final thought for the summer:Is it not high time that the international community established an international regime for governing and adjudicating democratic elections in all countries? Various international organizations already monitor elections in...
US and Kyrgyz negotiators reach a deal on Manas:Kyrgyzstan said on Tuesday it would temporarily allow the US to continue using a military air base on its territory that is critical to coalition forces fighting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.Kadyrbek Sarbayev, the Kyrgyz foreign minister, said Washington had agreed to more than triple the rent for use of the Manas base, a transit hub used for refuelling aircraft carrying troops to Afghanistan.Kyrgyzstan gave the US six months to vacate Manas last February after accepting a promise of $2bn of financial assistance from Russia which...
Three important steps in Iran over the past few days. Much of this is distilling the obvious, I think. Nevertheless...1. The State has decided to confront the People directly, with violent force. In 1979, the Shah fled rather than order the security forces of the state to turn on the people as they revolted. Revolutions can fail and repressive often states survive uprisings through the use of repressive force. This raises the stakes considerably, as people will and have died to advance the cause of revolution.It is at this point where the numbers really matter. Armed thugs can turn back a...
The most recent Utne Reader includes a short piece from Katie Krueger about the practice of "joking cousins" in Senegal:This means that whenever we meet, as a sign of friendliness, we insult each other without hesitation. Every ethnic group in Senegal has at least one or two joking cousin groups, so meeting one is rare enough to be a delight but common enough that it is protocol.Professor Brett O'Bannon of DePauw University (a former graduate student of mine) has written an academic paper arguing that such "joking relationships" are threatened by the forces of globalization. Yet, he notes,...
The burning question of the day: is Paul Wolfowitz and idiot or does he just think the rest of us are dumber than dirt? In his latest missive, "'No Comment' is Not an Option," Wolfowitz takes a little stroll down memory lane. He first reminisces about how Ronald Reagan dropped the ball and failed to call Philippine autocrat Ferdinand Marcos out for manipulating the results of the 1986 election. But, thanks to George Schultz's efforts, the US got on the 'right side of history':On Feb. 15, the White House issued a new statement: "The elections were marred by widespread fraud and violence...
I suppose that in an era of Credit Default Swaps, massively over-leveraged firms, and other assorted lunacies in the financial industry, we shouldn't be surprised by much of anything. Still, I have to wonder which members of the "best and the brightest" thought insuring North Korean interests was a great business move?