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6+1 Questions about ANATOMY OF TORTURE
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Recent Posts
Do Populists Kill Democracy? A Sympathetic Extension of Levitsky and Ziblatt
This is a guest post by Lucas Dolan, a PhD Student at American University’s School of International Service. His research deals with the transnational coalition-building of right-wing populist...
International Women’s Day: political crisis as windows of opportunity
As we prepare to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th, Spanish women are getting their banners, pickets and hashtags - #yoparo (#Istop) - ready for a feminist general strike. The...
Heroes Aren’t Born, They’re Made.
This is a guest post by Ari Kohen, Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of Untangling Heroism. Follow him on Twitter here. As someone who...
More Recent Posts
The Wikileaks Rap
In keeping with the Duck tradition of reducing IR issues to rap videos...(It is worth sticking around until 4:55 for the cameo...)From The Juicemedia and Mother Jones
Why Wikileaks Matters
The initial release of a mere 291 out of 251,287 diplomatic cables has generated a predictable buzz on the blogosphere and established media outlets. Pundits have quickly maneuvered into standard structural roles in relation to the content of the leaked documents: the ho-hum...
Riverdance your way through through the Irish Bailout in two minutes: Taiwan animation style!
From NMA – those who brought you the Tiger Woods Video, and the USA-China Currency Crisis Rap Battle video comes the Ireland Bailout video (which I can't make fit in the frame! Edit: Fixed!)As an IR blogger with an interest in econ, you might be interested in this animated take on Ireland's...
Wikileaks and the global public interest
A couple of observations on the Wikileaks diplomatic info-dump as seen from London. First, European governments have been unanimous in their condemnation of Wikileaks, disgraceful undermining of diplomacy etc etc. But what do they really think? I’m sure they will be philosophical about the...
How George Mitchell relaxes on his days off
Will no one think of the bacon?Hat tip to Robert Farley
The Transition
In discussing the planned handover of security responsibilities to the Afghan National Army, Vice President Joe Biden stated:"Daddy is going to start to take the training wheels off in October -- I mean in next July -- so you'd better practice riding," he said of the plan that will be outlined at...
BBC spy miniseries upsets China, but how real is it? Let’s play Spooks bingo!
The BBC has offended the Chinese government because its primetime show Spooks (Mi5 in North America) has depicted Chinese intelligence agents in an unflattering light, reported here and here in the last few days. The plot saw MI5 trying to prevent an ‘ethnic weapon’ falling into Chinese hands,...
MarkZism Redux: “Tyranny or Transcendence?”
Some colleagues suggested my earlier blialogue with my husband about the socio-political implications of Facebook's ever-changing architecture would be more entertaining in video format. Also, I was further galvanized to speak out about the perils of MarkZism when I learned that someone I love has...
Priority check, eh?
First they came for the icebergs...So let me get this straight - Canada is going to close down 1/5 of its African embassies, but we're worried about terrorism in the Arctic where terrorists might attack our.... igloos? Frozen piles of rocks? Radicalize our polar bears? Really, I'm all for...
Guy Fawkes Night: Fireworks, but does torture?
England doesn’t really have a national holiday. Sure there is St. George’s Day – but I would have to actually check Wikipedia to know when it is. The only sign is usually some white flags with a red cross outside of various pubs. It’s a bit of a shame, really, but that’s a post for another time....
The Anglo-French Treaty and the BBC World Service: Hard Power irrelevance and a threat to the Soft Power of the UK and the West.
On Tuesday of this week, amid much pomp and fanfare (and a certain amount of suppressed hilarity) an Anglo-French Treaty was signed, providing for 50 years (no, really, 50 years) of defence co-operation. I’ve posted on this at the LSE blog here and haven’t much to add – basically there is less to...
After Wikileaks; or, the next phase of Diffused War
In Diffused War, Andrew Hoskins and I argued we’ve entered a new paradigm of warfare. The wikileaks stories seem to confirm much of this account. War is mediatized, we wrote, as the institutions of war and those affected by war take a form governed by continual media recording, display and...