Before departing on vacation, Stephen Walt posted about a rift between South Korea and the United States concerning spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. The U.S. is opposed, primarily because plutonium is a byproduct, while South Korea wants to reprocess waste so as to reduce the volume of nuclear refuse from its large-scale atomic energy program.To reduce proliferation fears inherently tied to plutonium production, South Korean policy in this area...
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International Justice Day
Today is International Justice Day – at least according to the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. (What?! Aren’t you celebrating?!)It comes at an interesting time. The ICC ruled this past week that the charge of Genocide may be included as part of the allegations against Sudanese President Bashir. Secondly, the ICJ will be ruling next week on Kosovo’s declaration of independence.While both of these may suggest that international...
The IDF’s blog campaign
During my recent trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to talk to a young IDF officer who was assigned as a spokeswoman/public relations specialist for one of the IDF's commands. I told her about Stephanie's recent post on the Gaza flotilla raid and how the Israeli Foreign Ministry quickly tweeted a response to Stephanie about the post. She told me that there is a new effort by both the Foreign Ministry and the IDF to respond rapidly to...
Congratulations Spain!
I've been traveling in the Middle East and Europe for the past month and watched all, or parts of, 15 World Cup games in ten or so cities -- including a kibbutz in northern Israel -- with commentary in at least seven languages. I watched the games --mostly in bars -- with Algerians, Mexicans, Germans, Italians, Palestinians, Israelis, French, Australians, etc.... I also watched kids playing and dreaming of their own World Cup on street corners,...
Fatwas and Football…erm… Soccer (or Bend It Like Osama)
I’ve noticed that there has been little ‘quacking’ (ugh, I finally went there) on the blog on the subject of the World Cup. This might be due to the fact that I think pretty much all of us, regardless of location, are North American where ‘soccer’ is a fabulous summer sport if you are a female university student or a 9 year old. (Actually, that’s not fair – I went to a DC United game last fall and had a blast. It's a well-kept secret that US...
The Oceanic Conference on International Studies (and Finally, Some Thoughts on Feminist Method)
I spent the last week at the Oceanic Conference for International Studies (OCIS) in Auckland, New Zealand, a conference that was something of a luxury for me in that I had no leadership responsibilities, and got to be in a beautiful city I'd never been to literally on the other side of the world. While zorbing and bungee jumping would normally be the highlight of such a trip, actually, the Conference was. I didn't know what to expect at first;...
It’s radical, man.
Through the very good King’s of War blog I was directed to a post on Jihadica on the recent emergence of an apparent Al-Qaida affiliated English-language publication called “Inspire”. While the author suggests that this has thrown Western media into a panic, there was very little to actually be worried about (other than the fact that it might contain a computer virus).The bottom line is that Inspire is a drop in an ocean of jihadi propaganda....
Turning up the heat on Iran
In case you're like most American academics and are on vacation, you may have missed the fact that America is seriously turning up the heat on Iran. The US has begun squeezing Iran's fuel imports and access to financial markets in response to Iran's refusal to halt its alleged nuclear enrichment activities. A controversial new US law has been signed by President Obama which will sanction any company (regardless of national origin) that exports...
Hybrid car bleg
I've been doing some car shopping this past week and it appears as if one of the best bargains around is the 2010 Nissan Altima Hybrid. The base car's invoice price is a bit less than $26,000. However, Nissan is offering $5000 (!!) cash back in some areas of the country -- $4000 that has been available for many months, $500 that is a generic Nissan incentive over the next month, and $500 more for the holiday weekend. That means that
The Poppy Cultivation Blame Game
At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting three weeks ago Hamid Karzai asserted that "foreign circles" were promoting the cultivation of poppy in Afghanistan. Last Saturday, on International Anti-Narcotics Day in Kabul, Karzai once again argued:"First of all, I would like to say that poppy was not cultivated in Afghanistan before the Soviet Union's invasion. We had very few poppy fields in some parts of our country. This means, we had...
Happy Canada Day!
For Canada Day I wanted to post my favourite Canadian short film ever - The Sweater by Sheldon Cohen. It's based on the story by Roch Carrier (who narrates with the most awesome Quebecois accent ever). It's so popular among both Anglo and Franco-Canadians that they printed an excerpt on our $5 Bill.I just feel that it really helps to understand what Canada "is" because we're so often defined by what we're not.Quite frankly, we make...
What I’ll Be Reading on the Plane to Thailand
I'll be mostly off the grid traveling for the next two and half weeks, and I want to thank readers for their many suggestions as to what I should take with me. I probably won't flesh out my entire reading list until I get to the airport Barnes and Noble, but I have decided on one book I'm definitely taking with - and it's not even a paperback: Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do by Albert Laszlo Barabasi.Barabasi first captured...