Much baking to be had this time of year, so it only makes sense that we play the Hungry Games again:
Friday Nerd Blogging: The Tasty Sequel
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Much baking to be had this time of year, so it only makes sense that we play the Hungry Games again:
Hollywood’s solution to intractable interstate conflicts This is what happens when you write in the area of Japanese-Korean relations. Pretty much everybody hates you, because you don’t tell them...
This week Dan Drezner hosted a guest post on the politics of Miss Universe and I responded by pointing out the lack of/and the need for a gender analysis in his post. In his response, Drezner asks...
The diplomatic dustup over Syria brought Russia in from the cold but simultaneously froze any notion that western allies were getting their strategic act together. Nonetheless, although the mistakes...
Secretary of State John Kerry signed the Arms Trade Treaty last week, which can be read here in its entirety. Humanitarian disarmament groups hail this as a victory. Guns rights groups call it a travesty. Signing the treaty probably won't matter much in legal terms for the United States. NYT editorial opinion aside, ratification is highly unlikely. The US is known for signing and not ratifying humanitarian treaties: international agreements to which it is (or was once) party in the dreams of the Executive Branch alone include the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, the Rome...
*via George Takei see also his new book.
Registration is now open for the two ISA Working Groups scheduled for ISA Toronto. I am coordinating one of them with my colleague Kavita Khory on Global Trends in War, Conflict and Political Violence. The Working Group is sponsored by the International Security Studies Section. Here's a brief description: The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. Over the past century, we have witnessed episodes of extreme interstate and intrastate violence as well as a more recent period of relative stability. This working group will bring together a group of scholars from...
As I’m sure all astute Duck readers are aware, today marks a critical day in the US House and Senate – if no deal is struck today on a spending bill, the US government will shut down at one minute after midnight on Tuesday morning. The issue at the heart of the controversy: a series of amendments to the spending bill that concern the Affordable Care Act (so-called “Obamacare”). In general, House Republicans are in favor of the amendments; Senate Democrats are against the amendments. So, both sides are holding firm to their stance on the amendments in hopes that the other side caves in...
Gunmen killed scores of students in their sleep at Yobe State College of Agriculture in Nigeria early Sunday morning. via Adam Jones on FB, it is interesting to note this massacre was reportedly sex-selective, with only young males targeted - what Jones has referred to elsewhere as 'gendercidal'. The NYTimes' Sunday expose on accidental guns deaths and children is a sickening, horrifying read sure to galvanize attention but is almost too sweeping to grasp. Two key points almost hidden among the anecdotes of gross parental neglect in leaving guns lying around for children to shoot each other...
A story in the New York Times this morning suggests that the National Security Agency has been analyzing our social networks through email and phone call records, apparently accomplishing “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata” of American citizens and foreign citizens alike. This network analysis uses not only contact data but GPS tracking to understand not only how we relate but how we move in relationship to each other. From the description in the article, the methods that the NSA uses seem to be very similar to those that political science is using, in...
Former Duck guest blogger Betcy Jose has published an excellent Foreign Affairs Snapshot pointing out the irony of a robust norm enforcement operation in Syria to protect the chemical weapons taboo, while perversely ignoring, even permitting, the violation of a far more foundational norm: the norm of civilian immunity. The whole piece is great but I especially liked the "puzzle" paragraph: Today, civilian immunity arguably ranks among the most important norms that the global community wants to protect. And that is what makes discussions about Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons so...
A little late Friday morning reading: Moving toward a Syrian Tribunal? Several former tribunal prosecutors will introduce their draft resolution on October 3 calling for one. Leslie Vinjamuri explains why she thinks the UNSC is wise not to refer Syria to the ICC. Research from our friends at Political Violence at a Glance making more news. Speaking of PV@ataGlance, Joe Young has a good piece on al-Shabab. More baby steps in the effort to get control of the global small arms trade. Things are not going well in Iraq -- street battles between current and former terrorist militias. And,...