Dive into the archives.
- “Best regards, Ahmadinejad”
Iranian President Ahmadinejad just issued an open letter to the American people. You can read the entire text here, but I’ve included a few portions below.
- * *
While Divine providence has placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart, we should be cognizant that human values and our common human spirit, which proclaim [...]
- Pope Benedict blesses Turkey’s EU Bid
In a follow-up to yesterday’s post on interfaith dialogue, I’m very glad to report that Pope Benedict XVI blessed Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, reversing his position of two years ago.
The Pope visits Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara.
In truth, some say the Pope was ambushed—Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met him at the [...]
- Muslims in the Vatican: A Grass-roots Experiment
As the Pope is greeted with protests in Turkey, there are signs of hope for interfaith understanding in this article on Muslims students at the Vatican’s Gregorian Pontifical University
Ozbek, 25, is now one of several Muslim students ensconced in the Vatican’s system of higher learning in and around the Italian capital. They attend pontifical universities, [...]
- 100 Dollar Laptop and 200 Dollar Computer
The continual development of cheaper and cheaper computers will radically change the world we live in and the more connectivity we give indivduals, the more unstable societies unready for it will become.
Chinese firm develops under 200 dollars computer
A Chinese technology company has developed a low cost computer that will be priced under 200 dollars [...]
- The War vs the Peace
While scanning rss feeds, I noticed this headline today which is indicitive of the misunderstanding of the general public with regard to our mission in Iraq.
US launches diplomatic flurry on Iraq as mission surpasses WWII
Washington ramped up diplomatic efforts to quell sectarian violence and chart the way forward in war-torn Iraq, as the US [...]
- Indian giving
NATO will be meeting this week in Riga to discuss, among other things, the ISAF mission. Canada and the Netherlands will be putting pressure on NATO member nations to step up their activities. The Dutch and the Canadians, along with the Brits and the Americans have been taking most of the punishment in southern Afghanistan. [...]
- LIC and COIN resources
USMC Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, author of The Sling and the Stone (which I reviewed previously) gives an overview of some must-read resources on insurgency/counter-insurgency. You’ll notice that though the classics (Mao, Galula) are there, there are also a number of newer resources listed. COIN is definitely one of the “sexy” topics in military academia [...]
- Trotsky’s Shadow
Is Russia’s government simply unable to handle critics? In the Western tradition, freedom of speech has been widely advocated since Voltaire, and forbidding government from outlawing speech critical of the government has been a founding concept of modern states for centuries.
As Alexander Litvinenko lay dying from an apparent poisoning of Thalium days ago, he [...]
- And you thought the PS3 release was crowded!
Gotta love this photo. FP links to a story about a Chinese job fair that got out of control when 30,000 overeager students showed up looking for employment, smashing glass and destroying an escalator. Hopefully there will be no escalator-destruction when I start job-hunting next year.
- A True Entertainer
What can I say about Belarussian president Lukashenka? He’s frozen apparantly non-existant bank accounts of George Bush and Condoleezza Rice. He’s threatened the west by saying he’ll let Russians station nuclear weapons in Belarus (naturally without consulting the Russians about this first). And this morning, he announced that Belarus had indeed falsified its latest election [...]
