Odds & Ends

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Four Reasons God's a Liberal

The act of creation is a progressive act. A conservative God would have left things the way they were.

With over 600 laws and commandments, the Bible is a litany of regulation. A conservative God would have let people decide for themselves.

From the flood to the parting of the Red Sea, God has demonstrated an interventionist streak. A conservative God would have let the market and/or natural law decide.

The ancient Israelites were essentially a nation of illegal immigrants. A conservative God would have sided with the Canaanites.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (1) | Permalink

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Back in the Saddle

I just got back from vacation where for two weeks I was offline and, outside of a brief scan of the newstand headlines every few days, happily oblivious to domestic and world affairs. I found out about the Veep nominations two days after the fact in both cases, for instance, and that of Governor Palin only because a French aquaintance happened to ask me what I thought of her. Which reminded me of a visit back to NY in 1998 when, walking down the street in Little Italy, I noticed a small piece of cardboard carton propped into a street level apartment window that read:

Today in Yankee Stadium, David Wells threw a perfect game. 

At the time, I didn't yet get my news from the internet, but the idea that in the age of instant information, news might still travel via handwritten signs posted in apartment windows struck me as fanciful and satisfying. That and the fact that someone not only found the news of a perfect game in Yankee Stadium (the first since Larsen's in the 1956 World Series) momentous enough to broadcast, but also felt a civic duty to do so.

But I suppose that's what makes news news: the fact that it travels, whether via internet or word of mouth. All of which is to say that I'm back from vacation and will be posting throughout the week.

In the meantime, I've got a couple of pieces that just went up over at Small Wars Journal, a book review (.pdf) and interview (.pdf) with Gen. Vincent Desportes, the commander of the French Army's Force Employment Doctrine Center and author of The Likely War. They're worth a glance if you're interested in a proposed strategic context for the kinds of COIN-centric wars most military analysts are anticipating in the near future.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, August 15, 2008

Fermeture Annuelle

Like most of the world, I've heard about how France shuts down in August. But because the first six years I lived here were spent in a tiny village in Provence that was actually a summer vacation destination, I never really experienced the phenomenon until this summer. To put it simply, for the past two weeks Paris has been a ghost town. It was actually enjoyable the first few days to just stroll up to outdoor cafes where there's usually a ten-minute wait for a table and sit down immediately. But after a while, I understood why everyone had encouraged me to get out of town.

So now I'm going native, which is to say that I, too, am heading off for a two-week vacation with the Lil' Feller to catch up on some father-son time, and also to relax and replenish a bit. It's been an eventful and rewarding year, full of accomplishments but also very draining. I'll be completely offline and might even hold out against the temptation to buy the IHT print edition. So when I get back, I'll be well-rested and very possibly clueless about the state of world affairs. 

See you all in two weeks.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Orwell Revisited

The screens aren't fixed into the wall, they're mobile.

The controlling authority isn't a political entity, it's a normative consumerism.

Information isn't destroyed, it's buried under more information.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (4) | Permalink

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Grow the Army?

Call me a crank, but when everyone starts agreeing on something, I start looking for flaws in the argument. I get the feeling that Steven Metz is the same way, which is probably why I get such a kick out of reading his work. In this case it's a short op-ed (.pdf) from the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute questioning the gathering consensus that the U.S. Army needs to be expanded. Metz points out that the troops needed to ease the strain caused by Iraq and Afghanistan will take five years to generate, especially the officer corps. If we still need them at that point, it's worth questioning whether we ought to be in Iraq and Afghanistan to begin with. Beyond that, the larger force structure is mainly applicable to the kinds of boot-heavy, longterm counterinsurgency campaigns justified by what Metz argues is a flawed causal link between unstable conflict zones and the global terror threat. Worth a read, as always.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (1) | Permalink

Friday, July 4, 2008

Happy Fourth of July

"Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships -- the freshness and candor of their physiognomy -- the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless attachment to freedom -- their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean -- the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states -- the fierceness of their roused resentment -- their curiosity and welcome of novelty -- their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy -- their susceptibility to a slight -- the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors -- the fluency of their speech -- their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul . . . their good temper and openhandedness -- the terrible significance of their elections -- the President's taking off his hat to them not they to him -- these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it."

-- Walt Whitman, introduction to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, July 4, 2008

No Place Like Home

Me and the Not-So-Lil' Feller ran around most of the afternoon getting him ready for his summer vacation. At the shopping center where we found his sandals, swimming gear and sunglasses, he managed to convince me to let him spend his allowance in the video game arcade. There, to my surprise, we found a full-fledged bowling alley and pool hall. He's played billiards before, but it was his first time bowling, and watching him roll the ball two-handed down the lane brought back memories of what seems like a rite of passage. Not quite a barbecue, but it struck me as about American an afternoon as you can spend in Paris. Happy Fourth, everyone!

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (1) | Permalink

Monday, June 9, 2008

Dept. of Proud Plugs

Here's the introduction to a weeklong series of articles going up over at World Politics Review titled, "France's Strategic Posture Review." It's the product of a month's worth of interviews with some of France's leading foreign and defense policy community, and will conclude with the text of an interview of former Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine:

Next week, a commission appointed by President Nicolas Sarkozy will unveil France's eagerly awaited White Book on Defense and National Security. The product of months of reviews and fierce debate among France's national security community, the Livre Blanc (as it is known) will largely determine France's strategic posture and military procurement priorities for the coming 15 years. The direct impact of the commission's findings will be felt principally within the French military. But in articulating France's strategic orientation and tactical capabilities, their indirect effect will ripple outward, most immediately within Europe and the NATO alliance, but also beyond.

The commission's work must also be understood in the context of a year which saw President Sarkozy announce his willingness to rejoin the NATO integrated command structure and his desire to renegotiate France's bilateral military treaties on the African continent; the opening of a permanent French military base in the United Arab Emirates; as well as a re-articulation of France's nuclear deterrent policy. Taken as a whole, the developments reinforce the image of a nation engaged in a thorough re-examination of its national security posture. So as much as the commission's final conclusions, which have not yet been officially released even if the broad lines have filtered out, the debates that went into reaching them are in themselves revealing.

I hope you enjoy it, and be sure to pass on the link to anyone you know who might find it interesting.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, June 2, 2008

The Big Four Oh

They call it the new thirty, but the last thing on Earth I'd want to do is double back and do thirty again. Seriously, everyone said it would hit me when it happened. But today it happened and, so far, I ain't been hit. The only bummer is that five years ago I decided that once I turned forty, I could start smoking a pipe (flat-stem, Georges Simenon-style) without looking ridiculous. But it's been four years since I definitively quit smoking, so that's out. Any ideas for something you can start doing at forty that would be ridiculous anytime before? A friend suggested prostate exams, but there must be something better.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (2) | Permalink

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Online Event Alerts

Steve Clemons from The Washington Note passed on a couple items of interest via a mass mailer. He's hosting UK Foreign Minister David Milibrand for a presentation at the New America Foundation, and the live stream (10:30-11:30 am EST) can be found here.

Then from noon to 1 pm EST, Steve's live streaming a George Soros presentation to the London School of Economics here. Should be good stuff.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Technical Difficulties

I suppose one of the downsides of being an amateur programmer is that you do things that get you into trouble with your root server, like inefficient php scripts and the like. I still remember when I decided to start this blog, looking around at the available templates and not finding any I liked. At the time it seemed like a great idea to design my own. A few months later, after ruining my eyes on html, css, php and mysql online tutorials, I actually had something I liked that worked. But apparently it uses too many congruent processes, so bear with me if you get an internal server error message instead of the site. I'm trying to work it out with tech support.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (1) | Permalink

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Dept. of Shameless Plugs

I've got a rundown of Nicolas Sarkozy's one-year anniversary as president of France up on the front page over at World Politics Review. Here's the lede:

One year to the day after his election as president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy strikes an increasingly lonely figure on the French political scene. Having referred to himself as the "buying power president" to emphasize his goal of increasing disposable income, he has instead become the object of a nationwide case of buyer's remorse. His popularity has plummeted in opinion polls, and in the absence of any true political opposition (outside of an increasingly hostile press), he faces growing disenchantment within his own UMP majority. In a country where politics is a blood sport, and where the only thing worse than success is failure, his precarious position has already led some to wonder whether his presidency is past saving...

Feel free to leave comments here. 

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The Not-So-Ugly American

Two very interesting posts over at the Lowy Interpreter on how Americans present themselves to and are perceived by non-Americans (in this case, Aussies). The first discusses Americans' tendency towards self-deprecation and auto-criticism (particularly, but not exclusively, in terms of foreign policy); the second suggests that this is both a cover for "an unwavering belief in [our] pre-eminence" and a poker-playing culture's technique for eliciting information based on the listener's reaction. Significantly, the first is based on American officials encountered in Australia, whereas the second is based on American private citizens encountered in America, which might explain for the different readings.

To this American who has spent time both travelling and living abroad, both posts seem to hit close to the mark. I'm pretty critical of American foreign policy, but I tend to get a bit tight-lipped if I sense that I'm feeding someone's accumulated hostility towards the United States. That meant a few years here in France of agreeing with thoughtful criticism of American policy (often accompanied by an affectionate regard towards America itself), while rattling off the list of France's post-colonial record (torture in Algeria, the Rainbow Warrior, nuclear tests in the Pacific) in response to virulent anti-Americanism. France being France, those discussions were sometimes initiated before I'd put out the initial feelers mentioned at the Interpreter, but I did sometimes use them, if not consciously, both to signal my own position and to determine who I had in front of me.

On the other hand, to see how much America really is loved, sometimes in spite of ourselves, has been one of the recurring rewards of living abroad. The mere thought of the Star Spangled Banner being played at Elysée Palace following Sept. 11 is enough to get me choked up, and I'll never forget my surprise, on interviewing a noted French foreign policy figure, to see black and white photos of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin strolling the Vegas Strip on the wall behind his desk.

We often lose sight of how much goodwill capital we have accumulated around the world. It takes an effort on our part to undo it, but I'm convinced that even when we do manage to, it's only a temporary setback. People really do want to root for America, as long as they feel like we're on their side.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (1) | Permalink

Friday, May 2, 2008

Cuba Libre

Last Friday the not-so-Lil' Feller had his seventh birthday. Which meant that, as promised many months ago, today was his first weekly allowance. Five euros a week, with a savings plan that we'd already agreed on: two in his pocket for comics and candy, and three in the kit for a larger purchase in a few months time.

Trouble was, we didn't have the "kit" to put his savings in, so we headed around the corner to the "Tabac", a combination newstand-cigar shop. The two white-haired, very Parisian ladies who run the place already know us, since we stop in regularly and pass by on the way to school every day, and because I tend to strike up conversations with shopkeepers whose stores I frequent. (You can take the kid out of Brooklyn, but you can't take the Brooklyn out of the kid.) They also love my son, because he's really well-behaved, very polite, and a natural-born charmer.

When I asked them if they had a spare cigar box lying around, they looked apologetic and explained that they either sell the boxes with the cigars, or throw the empty ones away. So I asked them if they could hold on to one for us, and with a very serious tone of voice and a wink of my eye (hidden from my son), explained what we needed it for. At which the whiter-haired of the two rummaged through the shelf under the counter, and finally came up with a tallish cigar box, white with yellow trim, that made my son's eyes go as round as saucers. I can't be certain his smile made their day, but I'd lay pretty long odds it did.

It was only after we left and were headed back home that I noticed that my son's allowance, his very first exposure to the bourgeois virtues of thrift and economy, would be gathered and collected in an empty Cuban cigar box. Hasta la victoria siempre.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (1) | Permalink

Friday, April 11, 2008

WPR Blogging

What went up today at World Politics Review:

• The Limits of the Surge: An interview with Surge and COIN critic Gian Gentile.
  
• Bush and Petraeus: Imposing one's preferences on reality and calling it strategic thinking.
• U.S. and Iran Lower the Heat: A series of restrained reactions might signal the possibility of a thawing in U.S.-Iranian relations.

That's it for tonight.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Zen Junky

This is partly based on a true story (the guilty party will remain nameless), but it occurred to me that a pretty awesome niche blog would be one devoted to periodically explaining why you haven't done any blogging. In an age of content inflation, the counterintuitive appeal of a site where content is sporadic would almost guarantee high traffic. Of course, there couldn't be an RSS feed, and while you're at it, blocking Google's bots from crawling the site would add to the unpredictable "experience." Come to think of it, I just thought of a brilliant domain name. I think I'm on to something.

Update: Oh well. The domain name, or at least an alternate spelling, seems to be taken.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, April 10, 2008

WPR Blogging

Today's posts over at the World Politics Review blog: 

• The Surge Outside the Spotlight: The real action yesterday wasn't theHouse version of the Petraeus-Crocker show, but the testimony over at the Senate Armed Services Committee.
• No Trade-offs with Russia: The Bush administration forgets that interests often determine values.
• Political Liberalization and China: Is China an exception to the rule of prosperity leading to political liberalization?
• Sarkozy and France's Stature: Nicolas Sarkozy has repositioned France as the fulcrum of EU-American relations.

Keep in mind that I'm not always able to do these blurbs (the last few days, for instance), so clicking through is a good idea.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, April 3, 2008

WPR Blogging

Here's some posting from the World Politics Review blog:

• The Obama Doctrine: Is framing core liberal foreign policy values in a national security context really a "sweeping liberal critique"?
• The Shinseki Army: Five years later, we're still fighting in Iraq with Rumsfeld's Army.
  

I should have some time next week to get some posting up here. In the meantime, WPR Editor Hampton Stephens has been posting on the blog as well, and there's some real good content in the WPR front pages. So click through.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

WPR Blogging

What went up over at the World Politics Review blog:

• India, China and the U.S.: In the multi-polar world, some multi-cultural societies have an edge over others.
  
• Iran and Basra: Anyone can trigger violence in Iraq, but for now, only the Iranians can shut it down.
• Bush, Putin and NATO: Whose alliance is it, anyway?
• Iran and the Grand Bargain: How to get there from here.
• India, NGO's and Smart Power: The bottom-up model and stability operations.

Or click through.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

WPR Blogging

Here's what's up over at the World Politics Review blog:

• The Basra Paradox: We know who won, we know who lost, but we don't know what happened. That's Iraq.
• High Stakes NATO Summit: What's ailing the alliance isn't the war in Afghanistan, but the march of history.

Enjoy.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, March 31, 2008

WPR Blogging

Due to time constraints, I'm pretty much doing all my posting over at World Politics Review for the time being. Here's what went up today:

• More McCain: Getting a handle on the McCain Doctrine.
  
• Anatomy of a Sell: Was the Surge designed to push tough Iraq decisions down the road?
• Ireland and the Lisbon Treaty: Domestic politics might torpedo another EU milestone.
• The Battle of Basra: For once Bush is right, this was a turning point.
• China's Nuclear Exports: Another nuclear domino in the Middle East.

There's also some reader mail and other posting, so feel free to click through, too.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, March 28, 2008

WPR Blogging

Here's the posting I did over at the World Politics Review blog:

• McCain's Foreign Policy Address: When multi-lateralism becomes an optical illusion.
• Unilateral Strikes in Pakistan: American missile strikes leave little doubt as to which of the two pillars of President Bush's Pakistan policy takes precedence.
• Basra and Iraqi Political Reconciliation: As usual, things in Iraq are either very bad, or potentially encouraging. The trouble is figuring out which.
• The Forgotten Democracy: Oh, Canada!

Or just click through.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Dept. of Shameless Plugs

I've got a new piece up over at World Politics Review on the EUFOR Chad mission and what it represents for European defense:

U.N. refugee camps in Chad's eastern province now provide shelter to more than 200,000 Darfur refugees and close to the same number of Chadians displaced by their country's civil war. But in the absence of any governmental control over the area, both the refugees and relief workers have been increasingly targeted by border-crossing insurgents, militias, and organized bandits that use the region as safe harbor, exacerbating an already desperate humanitarian crisis. The European Union peacekeeping force currently deploying just inside Chad's border with Darfur was mandated last September by the United Nations to fill the security vacuum that has allowed the armed groups to operate with impunity in the region.

The force, known by its acronym EUFOR Chad, has the delicate task of protecting the efforts of the NGO and U.N. relief agencies without compromising their impartiality. Its principle function, therefore, is to maintain a dissuasive presence. But outside of policing the border, which it is forbidden to do, the mission's rules of engagement place no limitations on its use of force. Given the proliferation of armed groups in the area and the complexity of the hostilities among them, the possibility of engagement is a very real one. But if the situation on the ground in Chad promises to be challenging, the biggest hurdle the mission has faced so far has been getting there. . .

Give it a look if you're interested in one possible future of EU global influence.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

WPR Blogging

Got some good posting done over at the World Politics Review blog, including:

• Pakistan's Aid Waiver: How the Democratic Congress put some teeth in the aid bill.
• Globalization and the Midwest: The people most effected by globalization are often the least informed.
• Egypt, Russia and the Nuclear Middle East: The dangers of a chain reaction are real.

Or else just click through.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

WPR Blogging

Posting has been light due to some heavy deadlines on a freelance contract, as well as a much needed long weekend with my son at the Normandy coast, blessedly removed from internet connectivity. I've posted this morning at World Politics Review blog, though, so click through and take a look. The theme of the day is Strategy vs. Tactics.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

WPR Blogging

Here's a roundup of the posts I did over at the World Politics Review blog:

• U.S.-Russia Talks: What's riding on the missile defense standoff.
• UN Security Council Reform: Another proposal bites the dust, and why that matters.
• Reading Khamenei: Thirty years of the Supreme Leader's speeches.
• Iraq Oil Funds Insurgents: Instead of targeting oil infrastructure, Iraq's militias are taxing it.
• Hamas Backchannels: Egypt steps in to mediate a cease-fire, with Washington's approval.

There's also a bunch of posts from yesterday that I didn't get a chance to link to, so click through.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, March 17, 2008

WPR Blogging

Here are links to this morning's posts over at the World Politics Review blog:

• Iran's Nuclear Program: There's no smoking gun, but the barrel just got warmer.
• Mohammed Rahim: Does the latest high-value detainee explain President Bush's CIA waterboard veto?
• Globalization's Unintended Consequences: Sweet Home Alabama sung by the Red Army Choir. Really.
• The EU and the Mediterranean: Merkel makes sure the Union comes first.

Or click through for later updates.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, March 14, 2008

Growing the Army on the Sly

Lorelei Kelly has a post over at Democracy Arsenal taking aim at the sacred cows of the American defense budget that's worth a read. I admit to being a missile defense skeptic myself, more for strategic reasons than for technological ones. Maybe I'm just a prisoner of a Cold War childhood, but the ABM Treaty always struck me as an island of reason in a MAD world.

In passing, Kelly also takes a shot at growing the military by 90,000 troops, which seems to have passed from proposal to foregone conclusion. She wonders what we're going to do with them. I wonder how we're going to get them, given the anemic enlistment rates the army's been posting. What doesn't seem to get much attention, though, is the way in which the transformation of the Army Reserves from a strategic to an operational reserve has already in essence grown the military. There are currently roughly 24,000 Reserve and National Guard personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Anyway, consider this an open thread on ways we can get more security from our defense spending. If you've got any defense spending pet peeves, drop them in the Comments.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, March 14, 2008

When Military Commanders Attack

By an odd coincidence, yesterday when I was clearing out some bookmarks, I ran across this Army War College monograph on the ethics of military dissent that caught my eye back in February. The author, Don Snider, was writing in response to the Revolt of the Generals in 2006, when six retired generals publicly voiced their criticisms of the conduct of the Iraq War. But his argument seems applicable to Admiral William Fallon's resignation as well (on which Thomas Barnett, the author of the Esquire profile, offers some final thoughts).

Snider argues that the military's strategic leaders must balance their executive function, which demands obedience to civilian control, with their advisory function, which demands freedom of expression. At stake are the three primary trust relationships upon which their moral authority depend: ". . .those with the American people, those with civilian and military leaders at the highest levels of decisionmaking, and those with the junior corps of officers and noncommissioned officers of our armed forces."

Snider argues for erring on the side of self-restraint, but concludes that dissent is warranted if:

. . .the leader believes that an act of dissent best balances the immediate felt obligation to bring his/her professional military expertise to bear in a public forum with the longer-term obligation to lead and represent the profession as a social trustee, as a faithful servant of the American people, and as expressly subordinate to civilian control. . . On rare occasions, true professionals must retain the moral space to “profess.” (pp. 30-31)

Fallon's case seem to hang on Barnett's heroic portrayal of a Wyatt Earp-type hero taking on the bad guys in the Bush administration single-handedly. I admit to having fallen for it to a certain extent, but there's a wrinkle that doesn't quite fit the narrative. Namely that he's distanced himself from the aspects of the portrayal that would qualify him as a noble dissenter. There's also the question of timing, which Snider addresses:

Here common sense must also apply. If something is worthy of an act of dissent, then it is worthy. Thus, as soon as that is discerned and decided by the strategic leader, the act should follow immediately. Any separation of months or years between the cause and the act is grounds, again, for suspicion of lack of moral agency and for a search for ulterior motives. (pp. 27-28)

Fallon seems to have waged a bureaucratic war of attrition against policies concerning both Iraq and Iran, accompanied by periodic remarks that bordered on insubordination. And when he stepped over the line and got called on it, he fell on his sword and retracted his dissent. Not exactly what I'd call staking a principled position and holding it.

It's not realistic, perhaps, to expect him to have publicly aired his grievances once he was asked to resign. But if he were really the one man standing between an ill-advised war with Iran, as the article made him out to be, silence would have been a more effective dissent than retraction.

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, March 13, 2008

WPR Blogging

Here are links to the posting I did this morning over at WPR:

• Intelligence Wars.
• France, Russia and the EU.
  
• Learning From Turkey.

Or else just click through.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, March 10, 2008

WPR Blogging

My arrangement with the World Politics Review blog has now been made permanent, so I'll be doing most of my foreign policy, foreign affairs, and national security posting over there. If you haven't already, now would be a good time to bookmark the WPR blog or add it to your RSS feed reader. I'll still be cross-posting, and I'll add links to exclusive WPR posts in the sidebar, but I'll no longer be doing a daily reminder.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

WPR Blogging, Nation Building Edition

We've got a pretty interesting discussion thread on nation-building over at the World Politics Review blog (see here, here and here). If you've got any thoughts, let me know and I can pop them into a post there tomorrow.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

WPR Blogging

I did lots of posting yesterday and this morning to the World Politics Review blog, covering China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, South America and Europe. There's also other content from the WPR team. So click on through and take a look.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, February 29, 2008

WPR Blogging

I posted lots of good stuff over at the World Politics Review blog this morning, so click through and take a look.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, February 28, 2008

WPR Blogging

Just a reminder that, as usual, I did some posting exclusively to the World Politics Review blog. This post on the broader impact of the Turkish incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan is worth a glance, if I do say so myself. Speaking of which, when does an incursion become an invasion?

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

WPR Blogging

Just a reminder to click through to the World Politics Review blog for some stuff that I only posted over there today. Also, consider this post each day as an open link for comments to stuff I've posted over there.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, February 25, 2008

Building An Army That Can Build Nations

In today's WPR top story, Richard Weitz points out that while the military's doctrinal embrace of stability and reconstruction operations in counterinsurgency warfare is a welcome development, there's no certainty that it will survive the Pentagon-Capitol Hill funding corridor. As Weitz points out, the Army that does the fighting is not the same Army that does the shopping, and Congress, for all its rhetoric about transformation, still has a penchant for funding the big ticket items that have little application to post-conflict reconstruction operations.

There's also the little problem of branch rivalry: speak the words "stability operations" to the Navy and Air Force brass and they're liable to hear "no new toys". (This Armed Forces Journal piece gives you a sense of just how little has changed in Air Force thinking in the past twenty years.) And though Weitz doesn't mention it, there's also been some internal resistance to the doctrinal shift from within the military establishment. (Ralph Peters, though retired, is a charming example.)

I think there's a case to be made for the argument that America should be very selective about which post-conflict nation-building operations we engage in. (A good place to start would be the invasions that make them necessary.) They're long, arduous, and resource-consuming enterprises. But anyone who makes the case that America should avoid them altogether must in turn explain just how we ought to handle the problem of weak and failed states, because it's not going away, and it can't be ignored.*

They also have to justify America's astronomical defense spending in a global environment where the U.S. military would more often than not be ill-suited to the crises at hand. As it is, the funding imbalance between military and civilian departments weakens our ability to project our combined hard and soft power, since stability and reconstruction operations require integrated interagency efforts. Here's Weitz:

Despite its massive capabilities and earnest desires, the Army by itself cannot establish functioning governments and prosperous economies in the countries its defeats and occupies. The assistance of these civilian agencies, as well as their foreign counterparts, is essential for converting the Army's battlefield victories into a war-winning strategy.

That's a subject that Australian Army Lt. Col. Mick Ryan treats at length in this Parameters monograph titled "The Military and Reconstruction Operations". Interestingly, he adds that humanitarian organizations and NGO's will also have to adapt to the military's new doctrinal emphasis on nation-building operations (should it stick).

By necessity, military-led reconstruction operations have spilled over into what was traditionally the domain of nongovernmental organizations. . . Some NGOs accept the security umbrella provided by the military, while others refuse to cooperate based on their organizational culture or fear of reprisal. While this reticence to working with the military is based on a range of factors, nongovernmental organizations will need to reexamine their cultures and relationships with the military if they are to be effective in rebuilding societies impacted by insurgencies. (p. 11)

It's likely that the new Army doctrine will be the beginning of a dynamic process to develop effective operational approaches, both inter-agency and inter-organizational, to the problems posed by weak and failing states. Hopefully it will get a chance to mature.

*This sentence was updated for clarity. It originally began: "But anyone who makes that case..."

Cross-posted to World Politics Review.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, February 25, 2008

WPR Blogging

Just a reminder that I'll be posting primarily to the World Politics Review blog all week. Click through and take a look if you haven't bookmarked the site already.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, February 22, 2008

Added Value

So far the best rundown of the Turkish incursion into northern Iraq that I've seen today is the post I put up over at World Politics Review this morning. No one else has said anything about the standoff between Turkish special ops forces and Kurdish Peshmergas. Click through and take a look.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, February 21, 2008

World Politics Review

Just a quick reminder to click through to the World Politics Review blog. I've cross-posted a post or two, but a lot of foreign policy stuff is going over there exclusively for the time being.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, February 11, 2008

Bandar's Bundle

It's a drop in the bucket, I'm sure, but it looks like a civil lawsuit over that enormous BAE palm-greasing operation has kept Prince Bandar from re-patriating the proceeds from some US real estate sales back to Saudi Arabia. To give you an idea of the sums involved, BAE was accused of paying Bandar $2 billion in kickbacks to secure an $86 billion arms deal with the kingdom. Nice work if you can get it.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, February 4, 2008

Blogger's Remorse

Between two articles I'm finishing off, a new job, and the last remnants of the flu, I've got a pretty full plate at the moment. So please bear with me with regard to the light blog activity.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, January 28, 2008

Monday Flu Blogging

You may have noticed that I've instituted what seems like a radical measure among bloggers and begun taking the weekend off. Independently of that, though, I'm sick as a dog, so I don't think I'll be up for the Louvre today. I will get some thoughts on Obama's South Carolina victory and the Democratic campaign in general up, though. Meanwhile, I know it's the Super Bowl bye week and all, but I'm still a bit surprised that this hasn't gotten more press attention.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, January 25, 2008

More Progress

I can't resist flagging this article about the first women's soccer match ever held in Saudi Arabia. The match, in which The Prince Mohammad bin Fahd University team defeated visitors Al Yamamah College on a penalty shoot out, was played in front of a capacity crowd of 35,000... women. The referee and line officials? Women. Why? you might ask. Because no men were allowed into the stadium.

Hey, at least the ladies'll be able to drive themselves home after games sometime soon.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Happy Belated Birthday

I guess I'm supposed to remember these sorts of things, but Sunday, January 20 marked the one-year anniversary of Headline Junky. In that time, I wrote 1089 posts and linked to 2578 news and blog articles in the sidebar. (That's not counting some articles that were only linked to in posts and others that I read without linking to.) The benefit to me in terms of my awareness and understanding of global developments has been clear. I hope it's been of some use to you all, too.

Thanks for supporting the site. Hopefully there will be even more of you this time next year.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Dept. Of Shameless Plugs

I've got a very brief English-language theatre review of a production of Racine's "Berenice", directed by Lambert Wilson, up on a Paris website. It should be an ongoing gig, so if you know anyone in Paris, send them over.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, January 18, 2008

Ain't Going Nowhere

If you've had trouble accessing the site, it's because despite having paid to re-register the domain name two weeks ago, despite having confirmed a week ago that the payment had been recorded and there would be no disruption of service, the domain name was not correctly re-registered. Leading to a moment of cold panic that I'd lost a trademark I've spent a year developing.

But miracle of miracles, Skype actually held for the entire time it took to straighten things out. The domain has been correctly re-registered, and now it's just a matter of time before it re-propagates. Of course, that means that you'll probably be reading this a few days from now. But the worst has been avoided.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (1) | Permalink

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Post-Conflict, Pre-Problem

Putting aside the regulatory nightmares presented by private military contractors for a moment, there's really something disconcerting about the way they use the world's post-conflict areas as recruitment pools. The Christian Science Monitor has a piece worth reading on how Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group (an outfit that's been contracted by the DoD to work in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also by Microsoft, Norwegian Cruise Lines, and Pacific Gas & Electric) has set up shop in Namibia. And over the summer I flagged an article about how Blackwater was using subcontractors to recruit in Chile.

Of course, one of the ancillary consequences of resolving civil wars or replacing repressive police states with democratically elected governments is a large body of unemployed, highly trained paramilitary and military personnel. That they also happen to come from countries where, due to economic conditions and exchange rates, the best they can hope for is pennies on the dollar compared to what outfits like Blackwater and SOC-SMG pay only makes it easier to seal the deal.

The moral contradictions involved in using these personnel pools in a "democracy building" exercise such as Iraq or Afghanistan are obvious. But there are also more practical concerns. There remain very concrete distinctions between the functions these contractors fill and that of mercenaries. But the African continent's experience with mercenary groups -- who have been involved in "coup for hire" operations, arms trafficking and organized crime -- demonstrates some of the dangers that come along with a culture of private paramilitary organizations. It's a culture we're now nurturing. And it's the kind of chicken that eventually comes home to roost.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, January 3, 2008

The Network Next Time

It's a military truism that an army often prepares to fight the last war. According to this theory, a large part of what went wrong in post-invasion Iraq and Afghanistan was that the American military applied the lessons it learned from Vietnam and El Salvador in an environment where they did not especially apply. Now, although the end of hostilities can't be easily foreseen in either Afghanistan or Iraq, the operational lessons the American military will take out of those conflicts are becoming codified. For better or worse, these are the counterinsurgency tactics that will be applied in the next war.

One theme that seems to be emerging is that of networks, and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- described in this Parameters/Army War College monograph -- are illustrative. Whether it's interdisciplinary (anthropologists working as part of military units engaged in humanitarian projects) or inter-agency (State Dept and Pentagon interface), the teams embody a networked, as opposed to parallel/vertical, approach.

It seems intuitively obvious that this is in some way a reflection of the medium with which the Iraq War will almost certainly be identified. In the same way that Vietnam was inseparable from the medium of television, down to the reflective black "screen" of its memorial, so the Iraq War will almost certainly be known as the "internet war".

And unlike the Vietnam War, where the flat dividor of the screen separated what was shown from those watching it, polarizing the choice between supporting or opposing the war, the Iraq War has instead spawned more nuanced networks. Sites like Small Wars Journal bridge the gap between military professionals and engaged civilians. The countless political blogs, while perhaps polarized along the faultlines of American political culture, nonetheless consist of participants, both analysts and commenters, tracing a tangled web of hyperlinks across the internet.

Significantly there is symmetry on both sides of the conflict. Both terrorists and insurgents have become skilled in the use of this medium that not long ago they condemned or outlawed. They now use the same networks for communication links and propaganda purposes that we use for political debate and dialogue. As if to remind us that the lessons we learn today will have to be adapted in turn to the circumstances of tomorrow.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year

I'm about to head off and celebrate New Year's Eve. Best wishes for a joyful, healthy and prosperous 2008. See you all next year!

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Looking Back

The end of 2007 coincides roughly with Headline Junky's first anniversary, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to give you all a little rundown on just how the site's doing. Readership, while still modest and decidedly quiet in terms of comments, has nonetheless grown steadily throughout the year. It's a real source of satisfaction to know that those of you who check in regularly appreciate the work I put into the site enough to have made it a part of your day. So first and foremost, I'd like to thank you.

Of course, much of the site's growth in readership is due to the exposure it has enjoyed on various high-traffic blogs. Since its launch last January, Headline Junky has been cited or linked to by Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Drum, Wonkette, Crooks and Liars, Noah Shachtman at Danger Room, Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Jeff Sharlet at The Revealer, and Barry Ritholz, as well as by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune (where I'm considered a "conservative blogger" -- go figure). It has also been permanently blogrolled by Andrew Sullivan, Laura Rozen, Small Wars Journal, Jason Sigger at Armchair Generalist, Melissa Rogers, Voices of Reason and Bastard Logic. So a big thanks to all of you, as well.

A final word about just what it is I do here, which has become clearer to me after a year of doing it. On its most basic level, it amounts to reading a wide variety of news sources and commentary from around the world, and distilling what I consider the most essential items into a combination blog/news wire. But the simple act of keeping abreast of what's going on in the world over the course of a year has in turn evolved into something else. Part of it involves identifying global crises and hotspots before they've shown up on the mainstream radar. Part of it involves spotting patterns in seemingly unrelated news events that when taken as a whole represent something more noteworthy. And part of it involves combining the two to arrive at some sort of analysis about America's role in the world. Just what I think that role should be has evolved considerably as a result of my work on the site, and that, for me, has been its most rewarding aspect.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (2) | Permalink

Friday, December 28, 2007

Paper Papers

Just a quick note to let you know that posting has been light due to a combination of no internet access, tired eyes, a 24-hour flu bug, and a desire to check out for a bit. I just took the TGV (high-speed train) back to Paris and enjoyed that almost obsolete pleasure of reading three honest-to-goodness newpapers. The ones made out of paper. Of course, I marked up the articles that caught my eye, so I'll get some of them linked to and opinionated on tonight. I'll also be doing some posting this weekend, with the goal of getting things back to normal next week.

Hope everyone had a great holiday.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Sunday, December 23, 2007

The Big Tent

I'll be travelling tomorrow, heading off for the holidays. So I'd like to wish everyone who celebrates it a very Merry Christmas. And to everyone who doesn't, have a Happy Holiday Season. (Note to Mike Huckabee: See how easy that was?)

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Circling The Water

I flagged these two articles last night but was a bit too bleary-eyed to comment on them. The first, from The Times of India, discusses France's interest in forging civil nuclear energy ties with India. The second, from The People's Daily Online, discusses the status of the stalled deal between Russia and India by which Russia would construct four civil nuclear reactors, in addition to the two already under way, at India's Koodankulam site.

Both arrangements, like the US-India deal, depend on India arriving at an agreement with the IAEA that would create an "India-specific" inspection regime, including an intrusive Additional Protocol. But as the IPS News wire reported, those discussions have hit a snag over India's insistence on an "uninterrupted supply" clause which would allow it to create a stockpile of nuclear fuel for use in the event of a disruption of imported supplies. The concern is that the stockpile would immunize India against sanctions in the event of, among other things, a nuclear weapons test, thereby undermining the IAEA's leverage that is about the only incentive, from the point of view of non-proliferation, for creating the India-specific status in the first place.

The entire situation reveals not only how fierce the competition over India's civilian nuclear energy market is, but also the tension that the lucrative market worldwide is placing on the increasingly fragile non-proliferation regime. For the time being, everyone has agreed to pay lip service to the IAEA's regulatory role under the NPT. But the IAEA has already reported Iran to the UN Security Council for non-compliance with its intrusive inspection obligations, which didn't keep Russia from delivering the first batch of nuclear fuel to the Bushehr reactor this week. Under such circumstances, France's rapid acceleration of its "nuclear checkbook diplomacy" is cause for concern. (It has already announced plans to supply Morocco and Libya with nuclear reactors, and its flagship nuclear power group, Areva, recently declared its goal of supplying a third of the reactors set to go online worldwide between now and 2030).

India obviously represents a major challenge to the non-proliferation regime, and as such, efforts to bring it into semi-compliance should not be rejected out of hand. With so many sharks circling the water, sometimes a less good solution is preferable to a very bad one. But semi-compliance is not the same as a legal fiction. And the worst possible outcome would be for an India-specific deal to serve as a disincentive for other countries to take the NPT seriously.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Uh-Oh Spaghetti-o (Franco-American)

Any American who has had a profound contact with French culture knows that beneath the appearance of similarity that comes from belonging to the same Western intellectual tradition lie some very fundamental cultural differences. In fact, those differences are sometimes magnified by the very assumption of similarity that we begin with. If America and England are two countries separated by a common language, America and France are two countries separated by a mutual misunderstanding.

Take for instance the question of keeping religion out of the public schools. When France outlawed Islamic veils -- along with yarmulkes and ostentatious crosses -- from its public schools, what was intended in France as a defense of the state's role to guarantee a secular education to all students was perceived Stateside as an interference by the state in an individual's expression of faith. The protection from religion on one hand versus the protection of religion on the other.

So how does France reconcile its stance on secular education with the fact that all of its public school vacations are named after the Catholic holidays that accompany them? All Saint's in November, Christmas in December, Easter in April, etc. How, too, to explain the Christmas tree I found in my 6 year-old son's first grade class today when I arrived for the end of semester parents visit? Well, as many in the States on both sides of the issue might be surprised to learn, Christmas apparently isn't a religious holiday. It's a national one. A cultural one. Much as it might disappoint Mike Huckabee to find out, the Christmas tree is not even a Christian symbol.

Some other things that jumped out at this American father in Paris? When the teacher at first proposed to distribute the chocolate cakes and sugary goodies we'd been asked to bring to the skinny kids first and then the fat ones who needed the food less, but then changed his mind and suggested the pretty kids should go first. Then there was the kid who got up in front of the class to do a little comic presentation with a classmate but instead shoved his partner twice in the head, the second time with some mustard. He was told simply to sit back down. Case closed.

The approach is different, but is it wrong? Kids will be kids, and here in France the tendency is to leave them to their own devices to determine the pecking order. Strength and beauty, as well as intelligence and talent all play a role in society and one's place in it. Rather than deny that obvious fact or try to handicap the field, in France the approach seems to be to accept it and learn how to use it to one's advantage.

As a parent, of course, I have very little to worry about either way, because the Lil' Feller happens to be a good looking kid, no slouch when it comes to the grey matter, and a natural born charmer to boot. But as a cultural observer it gave me some pause.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Happy Hanukkah

Just lit the candles a few hours ago with the Lil' Feller.

And in a sign that I'm clogging my brain with too many thoughts about global developments and geopolitics, yesterday as I waited in line for the cash register with the other parents and grand-parents in the already mobbed toystore, the thought occured to me that we were all pressing our way toward the counter to drop our money before the mouth of an enormous vacuum tube that spirited it away to a Chinese bank account on the other side of the world, collectively driven by a marketing-fueled bulimic hunger to exchange cold cash for disposable plastic chachkes. History will certainly look back at this voluntary wealth transfer with curiosity.

On the brighter side, the candles sure were beautiful tonight. Happy Hannukah.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, December 3, 2007

The Joyful Elite

That's what a New York Magazine article in the eighties called the students of my high school alma mater, Hunter College High School. So of course some enterprising smart-ass went and had "Joyful Elite" buttons made up and sold them for two bucks a piece. They sold out in an afternoon or two.

Anyway, according to an Alumnae/i Association e-mail, Hunter (or the Brick Prison, as we called it) was just ranked the top public high school nationwide by the Wall Street Journal, and 14th overall. (The private schools that beat it out charge up to $32,000 for tuition.)

One thing I don't quite get. The way they judged the schools was by who got the most students into certain colleges, which is already a pretty one-dimensional way of judging a high school. But the colleges they chose were Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Swarthmore, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins and Pomona.

Now, I can understand Harvard being in there. After all, it is the Stanford of the East, as we used to say in Palo Alto. But why not just put Stanford on the list? As it stands, Pomona is the only representative of a quality West Coast undergraduate education, which obviously weights the results towards East coast prep schools.

Meanwhile, in trying to find that Joyful Elite article, I stumbled across (what else?) the Wikipedia page for HCHS and discovered all the distinguished alums: Audre Lord, Cynthia Ozick, Angela Bofill, Manohla Dargis, Cynthia Nixon, Eli Attie (who in addition to playing bass in my high school band also happened to write Al Gore's final concession speech in 2000). Pretty impressive. I'm kind of surprised I went six years to the place and never knew Audre Lord was an alum, though.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (1) | Permalink

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A Piece Of The Nuclear Pie

Add India to the list of countries angling for a share of the Middle East's growing market for civil nuclear programs. Of course, rogue nuclear programs are the flip side of the coin of the enormous contracts and fierce competition involved in the nuclear industry, and the problem's only going to get worse as the demand for nuclear energy continues to spread. The challenge facing the nuclear non-proliferation regime is not only how to contain the clandestine transfer of technology, but also how to legitimately determine which countries can be trusted with nuclear dual-use technologies, and which can't. As of now, it's a political process played out at the Security Council. The current impasse with regards to sanctions for Iran show the difficulty of achieving consensus, while the Iraq War demonstrates the dangers of acting unilaterally in the face of lack of consensus.

It's also important to remember that there's absolutely nothing that requires a country to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group in order to engage in nuclear technology transfers. India, for instance, is not a NSG member but has voluntarily agreed to abide by the NSG's guidelines. Iran is not a member, and there's no telling what their export standards would be should anyone take them up on their standing offer of nuclear assistance. What's more, there's nothing illegal about a country exporting nuclear technology, so long as their own laws permit it. If such transfers take place clandestinely, it's because the receiving country might be a signatory to the NPT. But even there, being in non-compliance with a voluntary treaty is something of a legal fiction, especially if alternative sources of nuclear technology transfer make the NPT penalties less constrictive.

Ultimately, the normalization of nuclear technology transfers outside the NPT regime will render the regime itself irrelevant. So far the only response we've come up with to such a possibility is a rule of exception (India can operate outside the NPT with impunity; Iran can't), with the United States serving as final arbiter and guarantor. I'd prefer to see an institutional facelift providing for a central enrichment program integrated into the NPT that would alleviate the need for individual countries to develop their own. But given the enormous contracts of the nuclear industry, I won't hold my breath.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, November 26, 2007

Hell: The Business Model

Posting has been light for a number of reasons, most prominent among them a nightmarish passage through the seventh ring of Hell, otherwise known as French internet service providers. Actually, anytime you've got the words "French" and "service" in the same sentence, you know you're in for major headaches, but this is the second time I've added an internet account to an existing line in this country, and it's the second time that I've come dangerously close to stalking a call center with murderous thoughts in my heart. The last time it happened, I began referring to Wanadoo, my service provider, as Botswanadoo.

This time I was led back and forth, from France Telecom/Orange's customer service to tech support and back again, at least five or six times over the course of two weeks, with a good part of each call spent on endless hold. (Keep in mind that in France, you get charged by the minute for a service call.) It's pretty much incontrovertible at this point that at least two "customer service reps" basically told me whatever it took to get me off the line without actually doing a thing to resolve the problem, and another told me he'd done what actually needed to be done but didn't actually do it. All of them told me they had no way of communicating between the two services, which turned out to be patently untrue. So now, almost three weeks after requesting the account, two weeks after my wifi line was installed and configured, and two sets of access codes later, my account still has not been activated to allow me to connect to the server.

It was supposed to have been taken care of by the end of the afternoon today, but here we are, going on 7:30 pm Paris time and I'm still working off a spotty public access wifi connection that comes and goes and bumps me every time someone else logs on, meaning that only one out of every five clicks actually goes anywhere. If this is what the internet is going to be like once bandwidth dries up, I can only say that I hope there are still working printing presses around when it happens. Because I, for one, will be going back to the old paper and ink edition.

To be continued...

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Cartoon Reality

Last March, a news item about "bandwidth hogs" having their internet service cut off got me speculating about what internet usage would like once user demand outstrips available bandwidth. If a report just released by Nemertes Research is any indication, the answer is rolling brown-outs in about 3-5 years, unless ISP's invest $40-55 billion in infrastructure buildouts. That's 60-70% more than current outlay projections.

As I said then, on a lifestyle level we'll certainly look back on the days when we fired off a viral video to a friend just for laughs the way a man dying of thirst in the desert thinks back to his last water balloon fight. On a more serious note, net neutrality and the politics of bandwidth access will take on added significance, magnifying the importance of the outcome of today's policy battles.

On an even broader societal level, internet usage isn't the only activity we'll look back on with a sense of innocent wonder at the luxury we took so much for granted. Yesterday an acquaintance who works as a hedgefund analyst told me about a conference she'd attended recently. The featured speaker, Mikhael Gorbachev, spoke very matter-of-factly about oil at $300 per barrel in the near- to mid-term future. The potential impact on car and air travel is obvious; my acquaintance predicted a time not far off where only the global management elites (CEO's and heads of state) will enjoy the privilege of air travel. Globalization will increasingly refer exclusively to an exchange of capital and commodities, with little of the personal and virtual mobility we currently associate with it surviving.

I keep thinking that the sub-prime crisis is the defining metaphor for our historical moment: a last-gasp, credit-based mirage to fuel the tail end of a speculative bubble. So much of our current way of life is financed by virtual credit instruments whose solidity is based exclusively on the strength of our resolve to ignore their lack of foundation. Like Wily Coyote running past the cliff's edge, everything functions so long as no one looks down. The problem, of course, in reality as in the cartoons, arises when Roadrunner inevitably ambles over and nonchalantly chirps, "Mee-meep."

Posted by Judah in:  Markets & Finance   Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, November 23, 2007

Itchy Trigger Finger

This MoJo profile of Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, made me wonder. Is it a coincidence that of all the branches of the military, Christian evangelicals have overwhelmingly chosen to infiltrate the Air Force? That is, after all, where most of the nukes are and these are, after all, people who are itching for the rapture. Good thing Weinstein's on the case. People who believe they're going to survive armageddon should definitely not be in charge of its delivery system.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (1) | Permalink

Thursday, November 22, 2007

You Talkin' To Me?

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Enjoy yourselves. No holiday here, so I'll be posting. Feel free to check in from time to time.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Clueless

One of the stranger aspects of being an ex-pat New Yorker in Paris is that it's possible to wake up on Wednesday morning, November 21, and still not realize that tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Wow. To say that it kind of snuck up on me would be an understatement.

Last year, my sister flew in, the Lil' Feller and I met her in Paris, and we all celebrated Thanksgiving with a delicious catered meal at a friend's house. This year I'll be at a parent's association meeting at his new school. The irony is that I've offered to give a presentation on American culture for the kids at some point. What's the old saw? Those that can't do, teach?

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, November 19, 2007

Reach Out And Touch Someone

It came as something as a shock to me when I learned a few months back that the US and China had never established a "hotline" to prevent the kinds of misunderstandings that lead to accidental nuclear armageddons. Fortunately, the news came in the context of an article reporting that the Chinese and American militaries were making progress on putting one in place. That agreement was finally sealed two weeks ago, and here's what the People's Daily Online has to say about it:

In a nutshell, it can be said that the China-US military hotline is sure to add more mutual military trust to the security cooperation of the two nations and in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, and it will play a still more positive role in enhancing the high-level military exchanges and cooperation, further increasing their mutual trust, and dispelling any of their doubts or suspicions.

China is one area where the Bush administration doesn't get some credit it deserves. The amount of trust-building measures and joint exercises that have taken place is actually pretty surprising, if you think about where things started (the Hainan airmen) as well as some of the provocation China has engaged in since (the anti-satellite test).

Meanwhile, in case you thought that hotlines were all about nail-biting crisis management, think again. Take the Cold War-era hotline to the Kremlin, for instance, which continues to function to this day:

...It is tested hourly, with the Pentagon sending a message every even hour, and Moscow sending one back every odd hour. Both sides transmit in an agreed-upon code and avoid any political or controversial test messages.

Mostly, operators on either side of the hot line try to test each other's translation skills with selections from obscure texts. For example, the U.S. operators will send their Russian counterparts recipes for chili, or articles on the psychology of pets. The Russians might then respond with excerpts from their great novelists, or a treatise on the history of invention in the ancient world. But the battle of wits is cordial, and some hot line operators have even met face-to-face at government functions.

This is the sort of thing that's important to remember when considering the longterm evolution of all our strategic rivalries. Namely that a cordial battle of wits is as realistic an endgame scenario as a mushroom cloud.

Posted by Judah in:  China   Odds & Ends   Russia   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Saturday, November 10, 2007

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Crawford Edition

The post on Angela Merkel got me wondering just who among the world's luminaries had received the ultimate honor of an invitation to Crawford. Here's the VIP guest list according to Wikipedia, although there's more fun facts and photographs over at Crawford, Texas' homepage:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin, November 2001
• British Prime Minister Tony Blair, April 2002
• Saudi King Abdullah, April 2002, April 2005
• Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, August 2002
• Chinese President Jiang Zemin, October 2002
• Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, February 2003
• Australian Prime Minister John Howard, May 2003
• Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, May 2003
• Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, July 2003
• Mexican President Vicente Fox, March 2004, March 2005
• Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, April 2004
• Spanish King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, November 2004
• Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, March 2005
• Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, April 2005
• Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, August 2005
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel, November 2007

As they say, you can tell a lot about a man from the company he keeps: Crooks (Bandar and Berlusconi), liars (Aznar and Blair) and all-around bad apples (Mubarak and Uribe).

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Friday, November 9, 2007

The Big Picture

Posting has been a bit lighter than normal for a number of reasons. First off, an op ed on Sarkozy's visit to Washington which I'll post to the site if I don't get it placed somewhere else. Second, I just moved. And while waiting for internet service, I'm using a spotty public access wifi connection that goes in and out. To give you an idea, about one out of every three clicks works.

Andrew Sullivan just mentioned that the nature of this medium has effected his politics and worldview. For me, I'd say the nature of how we connect to the medium is significant as well. I'd compare what I'm trying to do here on the site to reading a newspaper (or thirty, more like it) while taking part in a conversation in a crowded cafe. It really depends on being able to shift fluidly back and forth between the two. And the disruption hasn't only effected the way in which I can access the information. It's also effected how I'm processing it.

Anyway, things should be back to normal shortly, but until they are, posts might be a little less topical and more broadly focused than usual.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, November 8, 2007

More Socialized Medicine Nightmares

Last night I woke up at 3 am, with one of my eyes swollen halfway shut. Since I just recently moved to Paris, I don't yet have a general practitioner. So I called SOS Medecins, who sent a doctor to my apartment. He diagnosed an eye infection, and prescribed some drops. At the pharmacy afterwards, as I was leaving, it suddenly occurred to me that I had forgotten to pay. The pharmacist laughed and explained that the cost of the drops, ten euros, was covered by Social Security.

Total time between my first call to SOS Medecins and filling the prescription? One hour and fifteen minutes. Total cost? Forty euros to the doctor, with some of that reimbursable by Social Security if I manage to send the paperwork in (big if given my administrative disarray at the moment).

Socialized medicine really sucks when you're trying to get a small business off the ground and you see the enormous amount of your gross revenue that goes towards financing it. But it's pretty damn cool when you need medical care.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (2) | Permalink

Friday, November 2, 2007

Dept. Of Bitter Ironies

Today the Washington Post reported that the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, as well as her predecessor, took "...dozens of trips at the expense of the toy, appliance and children's furniture industries and others they regulate..."

Also today, President Bush nominated Carl T. Johnson, most recently the head of a lobbying outfit for the compressed gas industry, to be the Dept. of Transportation's Administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back?

I ran across this, from the Times of India, late last night and didn't quite have the energy to do anything with it. But it seemed significant enough to go back to:

The Pakistani Army is "bleeding", and quite profusely at that, in its ongoing bloody skirmishes with extremists in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, with a "high" casualty rate as well as "unprecedented" levels of desertions, suicides and discharge applications.

This is the "assessment" of the Indian security establishment closely tracking developments in Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas (FATA), especially the Waziristan region, as also the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan.

Take it with a grain of salt, given the nature of the relationship between India and Pakistan. But it corroborates other reports I've read of high desertions, and surprisingly large amounts of Pakistani prisoners being taken by tribal militants.

There's also a rumor floating around Islamabad that Musharraf will declare martial law if the Supreme Court rules his presidential election invalid. The Pakistani government denies it, but it was enough to make Benazir Bhutto cancel a planned trip abroad. The Court is expected to hand down a ruling Friday.

So much for the good news out of Pakistan.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Three No's Policy

Continuing the theme of nuclear non-proliferation, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian is the latest head of state forced to deny recent reports that his country is seeking to develop nuclear weapons:

Some legislators tend to exaggerate and tell untruths. It is deeply regrettable. So I think it is necessary again on behalf of the government of Taiwan and the people of Taiwan that I have to reassure you all and also pledge that Taiwan will definitely not develop nuclear weapons, we will definitely not bring in nuclear weapons, and we will definitely not use nuclear weapons. In other words, we have a three no’s policy when it comes to nuclear weapons. We will stand by this policy.

This reminds me of the old adage about some accusations doing their damage regardless of whether they are true or not. ("Do you still beat your wife?" was the example I grew up with, although it seems a bit out of date nowadays.) I get the feeling we're entering an era when states will be forced to take active measures to demonstrate their nuclear good behaviour, as opposed to enjoying the benefit of the doubt.

Even more in the case of Taiwan, which harbored nuclear ambitions until they were brought to light and abandoned in the 1980's. According to the article, they still hope to develop a stockpile of cruise missiles capable of striking Shanghai, although the budget for the program has been frozen until 2009 in the face of opposition from Peking and Washington.

Question. Is the idea that certain Bush administration hawks would welcome a nuclear Taiwan evidence of Bush Derangement Syndrome?

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, October 29, 2007

The Spyglass Ceiling

From Laura Rozen's MoJo piece on sexual discrimination and the lack of transparency at the CIA, a female operative who -- like many male spooks -- had an "unauthorized relationship" with a foreign national but who -- unlike said male spooks -- lost her job because of it:

"There is an idea that men can do this hard job, but women get too emotional," Brookner says. "As soon as a woman sleeps with a man, she tells every secret she ever knew. The mentality is that a man is in control..."

The idea that women aren't adept at getting men to reveal information they'd rather keep to themselves -- as the "old boy network" at the CIA seems to believe -- is absurd. Apparently no one at Langley has ever heard of Mata Hari. Or been married, for that matter.

Rozen also points out the broader implications of the culture of secrecy at the CIA:

Plame Wilson's, Brookner's, and Mahle's cases are all unique, but their accounts reveal a bitterness that I have often noticed with other officers, and that threads through the debate about the intelligence community's failures before 9/11 and the Iraq War. The list of complaints is long—politicization, subordination of field operations to headquarters bureaucracy, and outdated security procedures—but all have festered in a culture whose leadership faces only pro forma oversight... 

There are obvious tensions between the need for secrecy and the need for oversight. But the intelligence community (including the relevant Congressional committees) seem to be doing an exceptionally lousy job of finding the right balance lately.

Posted by Judah in:  Odds & Ends   

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Housekeeping

I finally got around to adding an in-site search field on the main page, link pages, and archive pages. Sorry it took so long. I think that just about does it, though. Since the site is 100% homema