[Cross-posted at Signal/Noise]The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the US Department of Energy is set to restate the data it collects on U.S. natural-gas production. The reason? The Department has learned that its methodology is seriously flawed:The monthly gas-production data, known as the 914 report, is used by the industry and analysts as guide for everything from making capital investments to predicting future natural-gas prices...
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Disorder
"Once the Afghan conflict could no longer be understood in terms of global imperatives, it became part of what the language of international relations refers to as an example of disorder. Thus the war in Afghanistan was described as a Hobbesian situation..." -Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution UnendingDorronsoro's quote about Afghanistan after 1992 reminds us of the way in which the gaze of International Relations as a discipline turns away from...
Smashing as Feminist Practice?
All of five minutes after I posted thoughts from a conference I am currently at , a "response" (in scare quotes because that's a charitable characterization) was posted on American Power called "13 year-old smashes post-colonial feminism". My response here comes little slower (because I value intellectual conversation, and am trying to participate in it both at the conference and in this discussion), but I thought it was important to talk about...
The Ethics of State Involvement in Women’s Health
I have been fortunate to be a part of a number of interesting conversations over the last few weeks, and am currently attending the conference linked above, hosted by the Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics, the University of Southern California Global Health Institute, and the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Conversations are centering around global norms and international agreements on women's...
The Flimsy Case for Drone Warfare
Amitai Etzioni, a law professor at George Washington University, has followed up the State Department's justification for drone attacks in Pakistan with an argument of his own, published in the new issue of Joint Force Quarterly. Here is the first paragraph, sentence by sentence with commentary:The substantial increase in the employment of unmanned aircraft systems in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other arenas has intensified debate about the moral...
After the Surge
Washington and its "partner" in Kabul are simultaneously pursuing different strategies to try to bring the war in Afghanistan to a conclusion. While the US has opted to pursue a "whack-a-mole" military strategy across Southern Afghanistan that drives the Taliban from one district only to have them pop up in the next one, the Karzai regime is moving forward with its reconciliation strategy. In essence, the Americans have foregrounded a military...
Nuclear Protected Terrorism
With apologies for the shameless self-promotion... My co-authored article on "Nuclear Protected Terrorism" is out in this month's Pragati: The Indian National Interest Review My co-author and I argue:"The prospects for an end to the protracted conflict between India and Pakistan appear as remote as ever. In fact, it is likely that there will more deadly provocations in the future by terrorist groups based on Pakistani soil. In a recent op-ed...
Debates in Canadian Foreign Pol… Wait! Don’t leave!
I’m in Edinburgh, Scotland this week for the Political Studies Association Conference so my attention to all things blogging and internet is a bit short. However, as the Duck’s official Canadian ex-pat guest-poster, I did want to post this video (transcript here) of Robert Fowler, a former senior Canadian diplomat who gave a rather scathing critique of Canadian foreign policy at a conference this past weekend in Montreal.No wait – don’t leave!...
Speaking of (half-hearted) apologies…
General John S. Sheehan (U.S. Marine Corps, retired) appears to have reconsidered his views on the role of gays in the Dutch military at Srebrenica. He issued a formal apology today -- but only for his inaccurate "recollection" of the views of General Henk van den Breemen, then chief of staff of the Dutch military. Apparently he still doesn't like gays....
What’s in an apology?
Serbia's parliament is debating a resolution expressing sympathy for Srebrenica's victims and apologizing for not doing enough to prevent the massacre. Bosnian Muslims are not likely to be happy because the resolution does not apologize explicitly for the crime of genocide -- it only reads that it condemns the massacre as "the crime as it is described" in the European Parliament's resolution passed last year. As expected, much of the human...
The Problem With Online Petitions
At LGM, I recently suggested that readers support a Department of Justice Rule-making process on prison reform. I probably should have added that it's not enough - not nearly enough - to simply log into the Change.org site and click "send" on the form letter they offer. That's because DoJ doesn't care how many individual constituents support or oppose prison reform per se. They couldn't care less, in fact. All they care about is how to create...
Epistemethodology (and Feeling?) in IR
I spent the last day and a half at a workshop on epistemology and method that we hosted at the University of Florida. A lot of interesting conversations took place during the workshop, which I felt fortunate to be able to be a part of and hear. Fellow Duck Patrick Jackson was also here. The one(s) that I have selected to talk about (this time) were not the central ones, but intersect themes with a couple of projects I have been working on this...