by Peter | 22 Jun 2008 |
Certainly not a winning week for the Air Force. Already reeling from the high-profile dismissal of both its uniformed and civilian leader, the USAF was slammed again in two major stories this week.First, the GAO slammed the Air Force's procurement procedures with a stinging rebuke of its decision to award its major tanker contract to the Northrup-Grumman. The USAF has been looking to upgrade its tanker fleet for years but the entire process has...
by Dan Nexon | 20 Jun 2008 |
Tom Toles pretty much sums up the issue in yesterday's Washington Post.Truly: 'nuff said.
by Charli Carpenter | 19 Jun 2008 |
Perspectives on Politics just published a depressing assessment of the prospects for women in the academy, placing much of the blame for the glass ceiling on the "intractable tension between professional success and family duties." The section of the article concludes: "Virtually every woman with children [interviewed] noted the difficulties in balancing career and family. Mary and Gale remind us that family versus career is a human problem,...
by Dan Nexon | 18 Jun 2008 |
If the late Roger Gould was right... then we're all completely screwed.Of course, it isn't hard to guess who would win in a non-virtual confrontation between a high-status World of Warcraft player and a high-status basketball player. Just sayin'.
by Dan Nexon | 17 Jun 2008 |
UN humanitarian co-ordinator Marc Bowden says that Somalia is in the grips of a worsening food crisis.Somalia faces a worse situation than Darfur, Mr Bowden says.Contributing to the crisis are fighting between rival militias, successive droughts, sharply rising food prices and a collapse of the Somali currency.Mr Bowden says that during the course of the next three months the number of people needing emergency food relief will climb by about...
by Dan Nexon | 13 Jun 2008 |
Did you know that Djibouti is in the midst of a border conflict with Eritrea? I didn't, and for that I blame American news outlets. According to the BBC, French troops are providing logistical and medical support to Djibouti's forces. The United States has condemned "Eritrean aggression.". Eritrea, for its part, has condemned "'US meddling' in the Horn of Africa.". Which presumably refers not just to the large US base in Djibouti (Camp...
by Peter | 12 Jun 2008 |
Madeline Albright's op-ed in the NYT yesterday bemoans the fact thatthe concept of national sovereignty as an inviolable and overriding principle of global law is once again gaining ground.I think she doth protest too much, as the claims of sovereignty's demise seem to have been slightly exaggerated.Albright, of course is thinking back to the heady days when she was Secretary of State, when the international community would recognize a...
by Charli Carpenter | 12 Jun 2008 |
I have just finished the final chapter of my new sole-authored book manuscript, tentatively entitled Constructing Rights and Wrongs: How the Human Rights Movement Forgot Bosnia's Children Born of War. This is the culmination of nine years of research, writing and frequent but generally ineffective interactions with global policymakers. DANG!Tomorrow, in between jetting to Boston to attend the Harvard Networks in Political Science Conference, I...
by Dan Nexon | 11 Jun 2008 |
My offhand comment about Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's warnings to Russia over its increased activity in Abkhazia has, thanks to Rob Farley, produced some interesting commentary.Matthew Yglesias fails to sugar coat his take:It would be appallingly stupid for the United States or our other key allies to put anything whatsoever on the line for the sake of Georgia's efforts to reassert control over its rebellious province. The question of maintaining a...
by Charli Carpenter | 9 Jun 2008 |
Anthony Clark Arend at Georgetown University is blogging about Israel's threat to bomb Iranian nuclear reactors if they do not desist. He worries that this latest brinkmanship is more evidence of a decline in the non-aggression norm, since the situation would not meet the criteria for preemptive self-defense against an imminent attack laid out in the UN Charter as an exception to the non-aggression rule:If imminence is not the standard for...
by Peter | 9 Jun 2008 |
A little water, and $1.4 billion goes up in flames...via Rob at LGM
by Charli Carpenter | 7 Jun 2008 |
My month-long course on human rights has wrapped up, which means I'll be able to get back to blogging about other things, like global norm development and enforcement, the laws of war, and the US election. OK, I'll be able to get back to blogging, period. A few concluding insights I developed from reading this set of books with some smart students are below the fold. 1) The cultural relativism argument really doesn't hold water. Sally Engle...