Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.
Defense
- There goes Bob Gates, recklessly fear-mongering and not supporting the troops again.
- An example of the general malaise facing the military: the San Antonio-class amphibious ship, $840 million over budget and two years behind schedule, is still not completed… but the Navy wants nine of them anyway.
- An example of the bureaucratic inefficiencies that are slowly losing us two wars, true to form.
- David Axe gets angry when the Dutch accuse him of needlessly hyping one of their soldiers’ death. I side with Axe on this—they had sloppy tactics, especially knowing the standard operating procedures of the Taliban.
Around the World
- An excellent essay on the curious disease of orientalism/occidentalism and self-hatred in the Western Intelligentsia. I think part of the reason I don’t notice this stuff as much as others do is I automatically discount it out of hand of silly and rambling… while truly unfortunate people it at face value. No, I didn’t mean to say I’m better than everyone else but… ya know.
- An intense, and slightly mind-bending (at least to me; maybe I’m just overworked) look at how critical treaty design is in negotiating complex transnational issues, like global warming.
- Speaking of pollution: China has grown in influence so much that it can successfully engineer (i.e. censor) embarrassing or damaging reports from IFIs—in this case, the World Bank. Then again, if 750,000 of my citizens were dying each year from my refusal to institute pollution controls, I’d want to cover it up. Oh wait, no, I’d rather the people not die.
- Economics 101: as demand falls, so does price.
- It’s no longer a surprise that Old Europe is growing… well, old. But New Europe is getting old, too—really old and really fast. And they don’t have the income or health infrastructure to handle it nearly as capably as Old Europe.
- The National Press Club hates your freedoms.
- Awesome news for counter-proliferation fans: AQ Khan, the infamous Pakistani who sold nukes to Libya, Iran, North Korea, and God knows who else from a suite in Dubai, has been released from house arrest. Maybe Musharraf is nervous. Meanwhile, there was a violent clash at a mosque in Islamabad, supposedly over its love of Al Qaeda.
- Sadly missing from this account of another 33 civilians being killed in Afghanistan is the realization that in 2007 more civilians have died at the hands of NATO (most in air strikes) than at the hands of the Taliban. That is the kind of calculus that will lose us the war.
Back at Home
- When MTV doesn’t like your documentary on socialized medicine, maybe you have overstepped your popular welcome. Yes, I speak of he-who-must-not-be-named, natch.
- For real, I want more pictures of Bush riding a Segway and wearing crocs ‘n’ socks, with Putin following closely behind…