In the print version of Time Magazine, the story linked in the title of this post is itself titled differently. Instead of "The Rise and Fall of a Female Captain Bligh," the story is called "The Sea Witch." Much of the story is the same, however: a female captain in the United States Navy was relieved of her command for "cruelty and maltreatment" of her crew aboard the U.S.S. Cowpens. Among the (ir)relevant tidbits about Captain Graf in the...
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Unlawful Combatants at the CIA
I've been thinking this weekend about Gary Solis' WAPO op-ed of Friday about CIA drone pilots being unlawful combatants - unlike drone pilots serving in the US armed forces who may arguably be violating the laws of war but at least have the right under international law to engage in combat:In terms of international armed conflict, those CIA agents are, unlike their military counterparts but like the fighters they target, unlawful combatants. No...
Rock ‘n Roll ‘n IPE
Just a shout-out to NPR Planet Money for sharing the rock 'n roll reference in the Dodd financial reform proposal, or at least, Dodd's summary of it. A "no escape" clause for companies seeking to evade supervision is called the Hotel California Provison. Yup, it's right there in the text. We assume it's referring to the line about how "you can check out any time you want...but you can never leave." (although "we are all just prisoners here...of...
Battling a Straw Man and Still Losing
[I don't mean to rail on the Washington Post's coverage of the war in Afghanistan two posts in a row, but the coverage is honestly a bit dismal this week. In my last post, I showed why Rajiv Chandrasekaran's article "At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against counterinsurgency?" completely misunderstood the strategic importance of the town of Delaram from which the report was written.]An Op-ed article in yesterday's WaPo...
What, me Worry? The Financial Crisis
Are we doing better or worse than in the Great Depression? Are we coming out of it, or still sinking... or, is there worse to come? Should I be frightened?? Recent reports of millions more foreclosures made me wonder what direction we are going in. A couple of things I've been reading recently:Over at Vox, Eichengreen and O'Rourke answer the question on a lot of minds: is this crisis as bad as the Crash and Great Depression of the 1930s? They...
Delaram
Rajiv Chandrasekaran's article in today's Washington Post, "At Afghan outpost, Marines gone rogue or leading the fight against counterinsurgency?" paints a picture of Marines grudgingly guarding a town in no man's land on the edge of the desert:"DELARAM, AFGHANISTAN -- Home to a dozen truck stops and a few hundred family farms bounded by miles of foreboding desert, this hamlet in southwestern Afghanistan is far from a strategic priority for...
Afghan Perceptions of Operation Moshtarak
Now that the fighting is over in the town of Marjah, how did the Afghan media perceive Operation Moshtarak? Here is a cursory round up of opinions from some of the newspapers in Afghanistan.(Unfortunately, I am dependent on reading translations of the local newspapers from thousands of miles away, but I still think it is fruitful to try to see events through the eyes of local elites rather than relying on military propaganda.)1. Weesa...
Current “Current Intelligence”
It's been a busy week for me adjusting to new blog formats in multiple spaces. So while LGM readers wait for their heads to stop spinning at this site's facelift, I encourage them to hop on over and check out the new Current Intelligence site, also just renovated this week. Current Intelligence, where I post from time to time about the laws of war, used to be an off-shoot of Complex Terrain Lab but is now an online journal with a blog, a set of...
Methodology411: science and truth
Fascinating little op-ed over at The Guardian Online today (h/t Jesse Crane-Seeber) called, provocatively, "Scientists should stop deceiving us." The punchline of the piece is that "in holding that the intellectual aim of science is truth alone, scientists seriously misrepresent its real, problematic aims, and thus prevent urgently needed critical assessment by scientists and non-scientists alike." Chief among these "problematic" aims, we...
Dissing Biden
OK, so not only did the Israeli Defense Ministry announce the permit for 112 new apartment units at Beiter Illit on the eve of Biden's visit (which the Americans were reluctantly willing to overlook), but then the government announced the approval of construction of 1,600 new Jewish homes in East Jerusalem. I'm not sure which is more surprising -- the stupidity or the brazenness of the Israeli actions. I realize there are bureaucratic...
My £0.02 on the “Keep America Safe” Crowd/”al-Qaida Seven”
I’m finding it difficult to usefully add to the debate over the “Guantanamo Lawyers”/"al-Qaida Seven" that has emerged over the last week or so. Basically, the fundamental issue is that people “we” dislike or who have (allegedly) done horrible things are actually entitled to certain fundamental rights under both American and international law – including international law signed and ratified by the US Senate. That this law applies to terrorists...
Foreign Funders Should Donate More Wisely
James Ron has a guest post at Steve Walt's blog about the problems of NGO dependence on Western funding. His argument is a logical extension of his earlier work with Alex Cooley on the negative externalities associated with the political economy of the NGO sector, and it also builds on newer scholarship critically assessing the relationship between domestic NGOs, targets of influence, third-party governments and private donors. Ron offers an...