A discussion with Nina Kollars and Mark Raymond about the SolarWinds hack, recorded in March, 2021
Episode 7: Duckcalls Events Series 1, Solarwinds discussion with Nina Kollars and Mark Raymond
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Should You Stay or Should You Go?
As the summer is heating up, all the world’s eyes are on Britain. And that really is saying something for us Americans, what with the wild ride that Donald Trump is taking us all on. But even here,...
NATO Ministerial FAQ
This week is another NATO ministerial. What is that? Here's a handy guide to the basics and why NATO is run like an academic conference. What is the NAC? Nope, not these guys. The North Atlantic...
Drones, Mansour and Policy Problems
This is a guest post by Tobias T. Gibson, Associate Professor of Political Science and Security Studies at Westminster College, in Fulton, MO. Late last month, a U.S. military “drone” killed Mullah...
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Friday Nerd Blogging: When Life Imitates Art
Happy Day After Halloween, folks. Resist the urge to steal your kid's candy. Once again, the internet is a magical place:
Thursday Morning Linkage
Aside from major sporting events, there have been a few items of import in the news. Health A new polio outbreak in Syria is endangering the drive for global eradication Climate Change A 2012 story that I missed, a drive to replace dirty cook stoves in India using experimental methods failed India not keen on addressing hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) -- a short-lived greenhouse gas -- through the Montreal Protocol Washington, Oregon, California, and British Columbia join forces on regional greenhouse gas reduction scheme and coordinated carbon prices Africa A drone strike kills an al Shabaab...
Tuesday Linkage
Drones are on the international agenda this week, with Pakistan excoriating the US at the General Assembly and with human rights heavyweights Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch launching a new and scathing joint report. OpenGlobalRights, OpenDemocracy's global-south-oriented human rights wing, is having a number of interesting articles on the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine: here, here and views on the subject from India here. New York Times Magazine's online coverage of the South China Sea territorial dispute breaks ground in mainstream multi-media journalism. Seriously, check...
Why I Didn’t Quit Academia
There have been a spate of posts about why folks have quit academia.... so much so that Dan Drezner issued this challenge: Has anyone written a "Why I Haven't Quit the Academy" post yet? — Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) October 27, 2013 So, I decided to figure out why I did not quit. Sure, looking backwards from where things stand now, it would have been a mistake to quit. Things have worked out really well for me, but that was hardly foreseeable and there were a couple of points along the way where quitting might have made sense: It took me three years to land a tenure track position,...
Duck and Cover when Cyber Doomsday Comes
“The current blackout is a result of a cyber attack” “It will happen” Ominous words from the National Geographic channel and their premier movie this weekend. Not really sure how the news reporter can still report given the aforementioned blackout, and also not sure why toilets cease to work when you lose power, but the point is taken. We are all at the mercy of roving mobs of vigilantes because of the dangers of a cyber attack. I am counting the days until Western developed countries encourage people to duck and cover, like they did during the Cold War in the event of nuclear attacks, to...
Monday Linkage: Roma and race links
The recent 'Maria' case- involving a young blonde girl taken from a Roma family and found to be the daughter of a Bulgarian Roma couple- has inspired greater scrutiny of Roma communities. More specifically, there have been subsequent cases of children taken from their Roma families because they did not 'look' Roma; however subsequent DNA tests confirmed the children to be the 'legitimate' biological children of their parents. A recent Spectator post calls the cases: a clash of "two great hysterias...racism and child-snatching, the Guardian’s obsession versus the Sun’s." These cases have...
Halloween in Turkey
Halloween is not celebrated in Turkey. Yet if they were celebrating Halloween, Turks who support democracy, secularism, human rights, and the rule of law would not have a hard time finding a haunted house. The country seems like a haunted house. This group of Turks, “modern bandits” in the eyes of the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, have long been fearful of Turkey’s future. Now they are even more alarmed. And there is good reason for that. A glance at few of the scary things that have happened since spring/summer 2013 explains why. Gezi protests of last summer were not about a park. People...
The United Nations and American Public Opinion
The following is a guest-post from Martin Edwards, professor at Seton Hall’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Martin’s website is here. How do Americans think about the United Nations? The results of recent surveys by the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project and the Better World Campaign offer some insights on this question. These organizations have tracked opinions on the United Nations since 2004 and 2009, and the findings are based on random samples of adults and registered voters, respectively. One of the findings in both surveys is that there are partisan differences in...