by Peter | 25 Jun 2009 |
I happened to be consulting the triangle on page 83 of Skocpol's Social Revolutions in the Modern World for an article I'm drafting, and came across her chapter "Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolution." I decided to take a closer look to see if there were any insights that might help put recent events into a broader context. Indeed there were.Now, Skocpol, a leading scholar of social revolutions before she was a scholar of...
by Rodger Payne | 25 Jun 2009 |
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that Barack Obama is behaving just like George W. Bush. Reuters, June 25: Obama said on Tuesday he was "appalled and outraged" by a post-election crackdown and Washington withdrew invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend Independence Day celebrations on July 4 -- stalling efforts to improve ties with Tehran."Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things ... our question is why he fell into this trap...
by Dan Nexon | 24 Jun 2009 |
I don't usually post on domestic policy issues. I'm even less likely to waste bandwidth explicitly seconding sentiments found on a big-time website. But, I'm afraid, that's what I'm going to do here.Theda Skocpol, author of, among other things, a bookthat insiders assure me gets a great deal right about why the Clinton health-care plan failed, gets it right.Key leaps forward for U.S. public social provision -- Social Security, Medicare, etc. --...
by Charli Carpenter | 24 Jun 2009 |
So starting this week I'm going on a six-week blogging hiatus to make an epic road trip west with my kids, visiting friends and family. Prepping for this trip while getting my book to the publisher and doing committee work hasn't left me much time lately to weigh in on Iran, but by way of a temporary farewell, I decided to leave you with this final thought for the summer:Is it not high time that the international community established an...
by Dan Nexon | 23 Jun 2009 |
US and Kyrgyz negotiators reach a deal on Manas:Kyrgyzstan said on Tuesday it would temporarily allow the US to continue using a military air base on its territory that is critical to coalition forces fighting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.Kadyrbek Sarbayev, the Kyrgyz foreign minister, said Washington had agreed to more than triple the rent for use of the Manas base, a transit hub used for refuelling aircraft carrying troops to...
by Peter | 22 Jun 2009 |
Three important steps in Iran over the past few days. Much of this is distilling the obvious, I think. Nevertheless...1. The State has decided to confront the People directly, with violent force. In 1979, the Shah fled rather than order the security forces of the state to turn on the people as they revolted. Revolutions can fail and repressive often states survive uprisings through the use of repressive force. This raises the stakes...
by Rodger Payne | 19 Jun 2009 |
The most recent Utne Reader includes a short piece from Katie Krueger about the practice of "joking cousins" in Senegal:This means that whenever we meet, as a sign of friendliness, we insult each other without hesitation. Every ethnic group in Senegal has at least one or two joking cousin groups, so meeting one is rare enough to be a delight but common enough that it is protocol.Professor Brett O'Bannon of DePauw University (a former graduate...
by Dan Nexon | 19 Jun 2009 |
The burning question of the day: is Paul Wolfowitz and idiot or does he just think the rest of us are dumber than dirt? In his latest missive, "'No Comment' is Not an Option," Wolfowitz takes a little stroll down memory lane. He first reminisces about how Ronald Reagan dropped the ball and failed to call Philippine autocrat Ferdinand Marcos out for manipulating the results of the 1986 election. But, thanks to George Schultz's efforts, the US...
by Dan Nexon | 18 Jun 2009 |
I suppose that in an era of Credit Default Swaps, massively over-leveraged firms, and other assorted lunacies in the financial industry, we shouldn't be surprised by much of anything. Still, I have to wonder which members of the "best and the brightest" thought insuring North Korean interests was a great business move?
by Dan Nexon | 17 Jun 2009 |
Now this is pretty damn interesting:Researchers were scratching their heads earlier today at a meeting convened by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) over puzzling results from last month's nuclear test by North Korea. While the test produced a clearly recognizable seismic signal that was picked up by CTBTO's worldwide network of sensors, the organization's atmospheric detectors failed to pick up a whiff of the...
by Peter | 17 Jun 2009 |
As the incredible events in Iran unfold--in the streets of Tehran and on Twitter--the obvious question is: is this the 'Green Revolution' or something else for which we don't have a pre-fab category.I would call your attention to two outstanding posts that give a very good insight into what to watch for. The unifying theme was perhaps best articulated by an anonymous Iranian commentator at Salon: "Legitimacy, much debated by social scientists,...
by Dan Nexon | 16 Jun 2009 |
Some comments from a friend of Iranian extraction, who kindly agreed to allow me to repost them here.As someone who has family members primarily outside Tehran and who has been following the revolt via them, I can say that what drives everything, that intensifies protest, that prevents a calming down of anger is the very clamping down on all press that the conservatives immediately mobilised and which they thought would be effective in...