by Peter | 29 Feb 2008 |
From Rob at LGM, via Kevin, via Winds of Change:The latest ROUMINT suggests that Secretary of Defense Gates, now visiting India, might give them the USS Kitty Hawk, CVN-63. The carrier is scheduled to be decommissioned soon, so rather than steaming back to the US, it could steam to India. Potential benefits to the US might include: parts and maintenance contracts, sales of planes to India from Boeing or Lockheed (F-18 and/or F-16), a strategic...
by Dan Nexon | 28 Feb 2008 |
The seed vault opens. World dignitaries, oblivious to the danger, hailed the Doomsday Vault:"This is a frozen Garden of Eden," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said, standing in one of the frosty vaults against a backdrop of large discs made of ice.Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg called the vault an "insurance policy" and added his own biblical comparison: "It is the Noah's Ark for securing biological diversity for...
by Charli Carpenter | 22 Feb 2008 |
Steven Ratner has written a "Think Again" piece on the Geneva Conventions in the new issue of Foreign Policy. (This explains why FP rejected my proposal for a Think Again piece on the same topic about three months ago.)Ratner's list of assumptions that should be rethought include: "The Geneva Conventions are Obsolete""The Geneva Conventions Don't Apply to Al-Qaeda""The Geneva Conventions Turn Soldiers Into War Criminals""The Geneva Conventions...
by Charli Carpenter | 21 Feb 2008 |
Went on BBC World for the first time yesterday to talk about protecting children born as a result of sexual violence in conflict zones like Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, East Timor, you name the conflict zone where rape has been endemic, you'll find a host of children growing up in the aftermath. The segment just before my interview focuses on children conceived during the Rwandan genocide. As I describe in my interview and as the volume of essays I...
by Rodger Payne | 20 Feb 2008 |
Let me followup Peter's post on Cuba. Legendary and colorful retired pitcher Luis Tiant had this to say about the Cuban embargo: "I think it's crazy," Tiant said. "Everybody does business with Cuba - Latin America, China, everybody - and what is the difference? We are 90 miles from Cuba. We don't have a relationship with them. That's crazy. It makes no sense to me."The people have suffered enough. They've gone through a hard life. Forty-six...
by Dan Nexon | 20 Feb 2008 |
The fallout continues:"If things are not going in the direction of actually halting settlement activities, if things are not going in the direction of continuous and serious negotiations, then we should take the step and announce our independence unilaterally," Mr Abed Rabbo told Reuters.Palestinian leader Abbas and Israeli PM Olmert in Jerusalem 19 FebruaryAbbas and Olmert met but there is no news of progress"Kosovo is not better than us. We...
by Peter | 20 Feb 2008 |
If there is one domestic lobby that has captured US policy toward another country, it is the Cuba lobby that pushes for ever stricter sanctions on the Castro regime. The power of this lobby in Presidential politics can’t be overstated—it is a very large, issue specific, and highly organized voting bloc in Miami Dade county in Florida. Win Florida, win the White House, we all know that story well. Thus, we regularly see leading national...
by Peter | 18 Feb 2008 |
Reading between the lines of a front page story in this mornings Washington Post:Hillary Supporters: Oh My Heavens! We just read the rules for the Texas primary and discovered that even if we win we might not win! Why didn't you tell us this earlier? How unfair is that?!?! Our big Texas strategy could fall apart because of these rules where our voters don't count as much as we need them too. Is there any way we could question the established...
by Dan Nexon | 17 Feb 2008 |
The BBC: Kosovo's parliament has unanimously endorsed a declaration of independence from Serbia, in an historic session.The declaration, read by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, said Kosovo would be a democratic country that respected the rights of all ethnic communities.The US and a number of EU countries are expected to recognise Kosovo on Monday.Serbia's PM denounced the US for helping create a "false state". Serbia's ally, Russia, called for an...
by Dan Nexon | 17 Feb 2008 |
'Nuff said
by Peter | 16 Feb 2008 |
Apparently so.The NYT has a book review that treads the familiar ground of why Americans are so dumb when it comes to supposedly vital information about the world. The old X% of Americans support a war in Iraq, but only Y% can actually find Iraq on a map... This is especially upsetting to the classic, old-school curmudgeons who think that a classic education involves knowing a lot of key names, dates, and classical cultural references. This...
by Dan Nexon | 15 Feb 2008 |
Another major development on the national-security front today: the US plan to shoot down one of its own spy satellites.President Bush, acting on the advice of his national security advisers, has decided to attempt to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite that is expected to crash to Earth early next month, a spokesman for the National Security Council said today.NSC spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the president made the decision within the...