by Rodger Payne | 8 Jan 2009 |
Back in September, I blogged about the new Northern Command, which oversees deployment of an Army Brigade Combat Team inside the US -- putting active American troops on the homeland for the first time since 1878 (other than during national emergency). The recent post was a somewhat paranoid followup to one I wrote on July 4, 2007, about NSPD 51. That White House security directive asserts presidential leadership of government during...
by Charli Carpenter | 7 Jan 2009 |
So this is a spoof of facebook news feed created for the Battlestar Galactica Miniseries. Hat tip to Robert Farley. Also, Season 4.0 was released today, so any of us who didn't follow the series in real-time from the start now have ten days to quickly catch up on all our episodes before the final season begins on January 16th... Yikes, too bad I'm in New York doing interviews and can't start until this Friday... Gods help me...
by Peter | 6 Jan 2009 |
Leon Panetta was named to head the CIA today.Its a surprise move, as no one had Panetta on any lists for a major appointment, and many were looking for someone with "intelligence experience" to head the CIA. While Panetta has never worked in the IC, he was a Congressman, head of OMB, and Chief of Staff to the president. The top thing Panetta seemingly had going for him? His strong stance against torture and the distance he provides from Bush...
by Dan Nexon | 5 Jan 2009 |
I haven't found a great many voices claiming that the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute is some sort of Russian power play. Which is a good thing, because, as a friend recently explained to me, it isn't. While some of its dynamics are fairly complicated, there's also a very simple process at work here.Gazprom is badly over-leveraged from its many acquisitions--some driven by its apparent goal of becoming a Russian zaibatsu.Gazprom itself is mired in...
by Rodger Payne | 3 Jan 2009 |
Many Duck readers probably already noticed the announcement, but perhaps not everyone given the holiday period: two prominent international relations scholar-bloggers are teaming with various scholars, journalists, and former policymakers at Foreign Policy magazine to create a new venture in journalism, blogging and policy analysis. Effective Monday, neither Marc Lynch, aka Abu Aardvark, nor Dan Drezner will be blogging at their former...
by Rodger Payne | 29 Dec 2008 |
Today, I took the family to the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma. If you've never heard of Rogers, then you might want to learn. He was quite a man.Rogers was an entertainer, a writer, a public speaker, amateur philosopher, etc. In 1931, he went on the radio with President Herbert Hoover to talk about the Depression. He seemed truly troubled by what was happening: So here we are in a country with more wheat and more corn and...
by Charli Carpenter | 28 Dec 2008 |
Not to remind everyone enjoying their holidays that Spring Semester is right around the corner, but I need to ask for help with my World Politics 101 syllabus. I'll be traveling on research early in the semester and need a film I can show one day while I'm away. At that point in the term, the only thing really appropriate will be a short film intended to excite students about global affairs, sort of a recruitment-into-the-major film on careers...
by Charli Carpenter | 26 Dec 2008 |
Yeh, I just can't stop celebrating all the awesome holidays at this time of year. Boxing Day, celebrated throughout the Commonwealth, has in many places become a version of Black Friday, but the true point of the holiday, of course, is to reverse roles with those higher or lower on the power chain than oneself. (Though, in our house we've never quite figured out how to let the kids take over our roles and still maintain a semblance of...
by Peter | 26 Dec 2008 |
It seems the CIA has a new wrinkle to its counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan--bribing warlords for support with little blue pills. Viagra has become the latest weapon in the war on terror. (I'm struggling mightily to avoid the obvious low-brow humor here, but I'll probably succumb somewhere below the fold... Seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up.)From today's Washington Post:The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years,...
by Charli Carpenter | 25 Dec 2008 |
From the text of Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to The Sun and the editor's response, printed September 21, 1897:"We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:"Dear Editor--I am 8 years old."Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus."Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it's so.'"Please tell...
by Peter | 25 Dec 2008 |
One of the benefits of a high-powered player appointed to lead State is that you can get someone willing and able to be assertive about the place of diplomacy in the conduct of US Foreign Policy. This, I think, is on balance a good thing, as the NYT reports:Even before taking office, Hillary Rodham Clinton is seeking to build a more powerful State Department, with a bigger budget, high-profile special envoys to trouble spots and an expanded...
by Charli Carpenter | 22 Dec 2008 |