Lee on Nov 15 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, History
The subject of the bloody 1965 Indonesian mass murder of suspected communists is not often openly discussed history even in today’s Indonesia. Given the pervasive silence, estimates vary on the actual number of people killed, but it’s generally accepted as being somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000. Yet so infected with fear is the subject of [...]
Lee on Aug 31 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs
I’d heard that Hitch addressed the situation in Zimbabwe in his introductory remarks at the Freedom Fest 2008 debate with Dinesh D’Souza, but I hadn’t seen the video of it until today. It’s worth a watch.
The subject of the debate itself wasn’t Zimbabwe, but the general subject of conflict and religion. If you’ve seen one [...]
Lee on Aug 12 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page
Last night Joshua argued that Saakashvili, having quite obviously failed to recapture his renegade territories, is certain to be finished one way or the other. Either overthrown by the Russian army, or by the Georgian people at the ballot box. This is a bit of an analyst consensus as you look around the web. Not [...]
Lee on Aug 09 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page
At least 160,000 deaths in the suppression of Chechen independence by Russia. Just a reminder for when someone tries to set Russia up as the great defender of South Ossetia’s right of national self-determination. There’s a diplomatic argument for that, but it isn’t one that can be made by Russia and especially not by a [...]
Lee on Aug 03 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page
Francis Fukuyama chats with Robert Kagan on a number of interesting things: Flash | WMV | MP3 (via: The American Interest).
Of immediate interest is Kagan’s notion that the the emergence of global multipolarity induces an imperfect, baseline bipolarity of ideological division in diplomacy, between the West and the surging authoritarians of the “New East.”
In [...]
Lee on Jul 30 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page, Uncategorized
(photo: Charles Roffey - Charles & Fred)
Someone once said that in Damascus you truly can get a little bit pregnant. It’s a good aphorism, because if you asked the foreign minister of almost any state in the Middle East or the Mediterranean what his government’s policy relationship was with Syria, he would automatically furrow his [...]
Lee on Feb 16 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
There’s editorial sensationalism, and then there’s Keith Olbermann. Consider Mr. Olbermann on Bush recently: “If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business, come out and say it! There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend. You’re a fascist! Get them to print you a T-shirt with fascist [...]
Lee on Jan 13 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
You just have to love the title of Geoff Mulherin’s piece on the Monument Mandala in the Province of Papua: Suharto’s Last Erection. It also happens to head a fascinating exploration of the Indonesian effort to unify their disparate archipelago through nationalist narratives in monumental architecture.
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