Good morning ducks... Here's your linkage... The Jerusalem Post reviews World War Z. Is this the most pro-Israeli film ever made? ... Probably not - even the trailer shows the wall being breached. A Majinot mentality can't work in a film whose motto is: "movement is life." The terrorist attack on Sunday in Bodh Gaya is a big deal, even if the Western press is slow on the uptake. This isn't just the holiest Buddhist site in India; it is the...
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The “Israel Lobby” and the Nixon Administration
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Eric Grynaviski, who is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. When Mearsheimer and Walt wrote the Israel Lobby, I was skeptical. I bought the argument that supporters of Israel influenced US policy, but because I am not a realist, I did not buy the argument that this necessarily deflected the US from pursuing specific policies during the cold war or afterwards. The...
Friday Nerd Linkage
Daniel Bier counters fear-mongering about the world's first genetically engineered babies, another fascinating case study of global normative ferment. But in truly weird science, humans can now transplant whole heads (or rather, bodies). Too bad this important advance comes too late for Ned Stark. -> William Beaty writes about the physics of traffic jams, proposing a simple solution ordinary citizens can use to escape to de-clutter...
Should We Keep Hidden the Way People Behave When their Actions are Hidden?
In his most recent post, PTJ argues that "things like Freakonomics are basically corrosive and should be opposed whenever practicable". While he repeats in that post (and the comments section) a number of dubious claims about what sorts of behavior are possible within a decision-theoretic framework, I think we're past the point in the conversation where it is useful to argue about the possibility of writing down a decision-theoretic model...
Global Governance, Big Surveillance, and Intelligence Cooperation
My very quick search suggests that there's insufficient work on this subject. I know that Alexander Cooley has turned up some pretty amazing things on older intelligence cooperation, Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes have done some great work on policing and global governance, and there's a lot of cognate stuff under the rubric of bio-politics (e.g.) and permanent states of exception, but it seems to me that more direct analysis is called for. ...
Democracy: de facto vs. de jure
For the ultimate outcome of the Arab Spring and the prospects of moderate Islamic influence of politics.... ... is it more important that democracy not be thoroughly flouted as it just was in the removal of President Morsi in Egypt, or that a major lesson may have just been delivered to extreme Islamic parties/governments that had better govern inclusively or their people might prevent them from continuing to stay in office?
July 4 Linkage
In the spirit of the dramatic events of yesterday, we at the Duck want to bring your morning linkage with news of the Zimmerman trial. Err, scratch that, we'll leave that to CNN. Lots of attention being directed to the dramatic events in Egypt, plus some obligatory posts below about conservation, including reports that Joseph Kony has turned to poaching elephants (what unsavory s--t will that guy not do?). On Egypt, for me the requisite...
Wednesday Linkage
Welcome to Wednesday's linkage. We've delayed posting until the situation of one major world leader and head of state was resolved, and we can now definitely confirm: King Albert of the Belgians has abdicated. He joins Queen Beatrix and target="_blank">Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani in this year's parade of former crowned heads. Why? Did something else happen today? In more substantive news, Jay Ulfelder makes an obvious but important point:...
From Kingdonian to Weberian Activism: A Shifting Stance
One of the great things about being done with my book project is that I can begin blogging and writing a little more openly regarding the issues I've been tracking empirically over the past seven years, in the same way I have often weighed in publicly on political subjects I'm not studying directly. The latter type of activity is referred to by Patrick Jackson and Stuart Kaufman as "Weberian activism": informing policy debates by educating...
Common Errors in Essay Writing, as Demonstrated by Film Critics, Part 1
Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post settled on a theme for her extremely negative review of the new "The Lone Ranger" flick. Indeed, one might argue that developing a unifying thread is an important part of short-form writing. It holds everything together and provides the reader with a single, if stylized, takeaway. He basic theme? That The Lone Ranger tries to combine too many different themes, tones, and film elements. It suffers from such a...
Obama’s ‘Strategic Patience’ on North Korea is more Responsible than yet another Impossible ‘Vision’ to Solve NK
Newsweek Korea asked me to participate in a debate on Obama’s strategic patience. A friend of mine wrote against it; I wrote in defense. Here is the Korean language text at the NWK website. Below is my original English language version. In brief I argue that North Korea is so hard to pin down, that big strategies never work with it, provoke it into lashing out, and raise impossible expectations on democratic decision-makers. So Obama is acting...
Tiwesdæg: the Left-hand of Linkage
A new military study concludes that drone strikes are more deadly to civilians than those conducted by manned fighter craft. Keep in mind, however, that fighter pilots are the traditional elite in the USAF and the rise of drones and drone pilots has generated a lot of internal politics. More important: there's no indication that the study controlled for the kinds of missions being carried out by drones and by strike aircraft. Speaking of...