Dive into the archives.
- Lebanese Musings
As fighting between Israel and Hizballah continues I’d like to look back on my recent trip to Lebanon adding more relevant and current commentary steering clear of the armchair punditry so rife in the blogosphere and sticking to my own experience there.
After my trip to Lebanon, I have to admit I had more questions than [...]
- Hitch on Plamegate and yellowcake
Hitch gives it to the anti-war movement in Slate over Iraq’s trip to cradle of f*cking civilization to get hooked up with some yellowcake:
This means that both pillars of the biggest scandal-mongering effort yet mounted by the “anti-war” movement””?the twin allegations of a false story exposed by Wilson and then of a state-run vendetta undertaken [...]
- So Foul a Sky…
Timely wisdom from Robert Kaplan taken from page 287 of Balkan Ghosts:
I was reminded of a line from Shakespeare’s “Life and Death of King John”: “So foul a sky clears not without a storm.” Conflicting ethnic histories, inflamed by the living death of Communism, had made the Balkan sky so foul that now, sadly, a [...]
- Umm… that ain’t so peaceful
From down under:
[NOBEL peace laureate Betty] Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.
“I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence’, because I don’t believe that I am non-violent,” said Ms Williams, 64.
“Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.” [...]
- The Americanization of East Asian Legal Education
Since the 1950s, Japan’s bar association has operated a very simple procedure for becoming a lawyer: pass the bar exam. That’s it. No law schools. No pre-exam training. Applicants did not even have to graduate from a university.
While that might sound liberal, the results were not egalitarian. The pass rate [...]
- “Ahmad Chalabi 2.0″
via bardic on mefi
“God’s Army Has Plans to Run the Middle East” is an article that argues that Hezbollah is Iran’s “spearhead” towards controlling the entire region. The author? Amir Taheri. You might remember him as the guy who fabricated the story about Iran imposing "yellow star" regulations on religious minorities (previously [...]
- If war broke out…
Would you fight for your country?
That’s the question that’s been asked of 60 nations of the world by the Dentsu Souken Thinktank. The results might surprise you, or they might not. Japan and Germany are at the bottom of the list, the US and Russia are in the middle, nations facing imminent neighboring [...]
- Home & Away
After recently returning it seems the Japanese military may be off again, this time to the Philippines :
Japan is prepared to send peacekeeping troops to the Philippines after it agreed Sunday to join an international team overseeing a cease-fire between the Philippine government and a secessionist Muslim group in southern Philippines.
Hope it doesn’t turn out [...]
- Ahh, true love
So I’m walking uptown and I happen to see a pretty nutty billboard right in front of a friend’s apartment. I didn’t have my camera on me, but when I got home I did a google search for “Emily Steve” and found the full story and the picture that I wanted to take:
What’s more, [...]
- Chavez throws his hat into the ring
Venezuela seeks UN ‘balance’
Venezuela’s efforts to join the UN Security Council have been endorsed by Latin American countries in Mercosur. South America’s largest trade bloc said in a statement that Venezuela would “help bring necessary balance” to the council. Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has said that he wants his nation to join [...]
