Dive into the archives.
- Civic duty
Volunteer firefighters. Reserve soldiers, sailors and airmen. Auxiliary police officers. Volunteer search and rescue, and paramedics. Our communities are full of people willing to trade their precious time for the welfare of others. Training evenings and weekends, these people provide many vital government services that would otherwise barely exist do to lack of infrastructure and/or [...]
- The Pipeline Game and Ceyhan
Can Turkey help stem Europe’s dependence on Russian energy supply? No link for this WSJ article from earlier this month, but worth reading:
The Pipeline Game
Ceyhan, Turkey—The jetty that juts into the shimmering Gulf of Iskenderun here is the end of the line for crude oil pumped 1,100 miles from the Caspian Sea. This oil [...]
- Sea of Japan to remain Sea of Japan
An international body that decides the universal names for geographic places has decided to keep the name of the Sea of Japan, despite the lobbying efforts of both Koreas:
Despite Korean efforts, geographic conference backs Sea of Japan name
The Sea of Japan will remain the term of reference for the body of water between the Korean [...]
- Malacca Strait pwn3d
An editorial in the Jakarta Post lambasts the Indonesian government over its obstinate policies for protecting the Malacca Strait.
While we fully support the sovereignty of the three countries [Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore], we also want to remind them that all stakeholders in the strait have the right to play a role in ensuring the safety [...]
- Kaplan on Iraq and Vietnam
UPDATE: Thanks also to Michael Lotus and the Chief for sending the story also—we always appreciate reader tips and stories.
ORIGINAL POST: Thanks to Eddie for the heads up: right after Hitchen weighed in from the previous post, Kaplan has a piece in the Atlantic Online, weighing in with half a dozen books written by Vietnam [...]
- Baker’s Dozen
Chris Hitchens, fresh from perhaps his first blockbuster book success, is taking a break from his book tour to write on his second-favorite topic after religion, the war in Iraq. A relentless supporter of the war, Hitchen’s latest piece in the Guardian shows how he is well and truly pissed that President Bush invoked [...]
- A ticking Bachelor Bomb…
No, this isn’t about a frat party, but China’s ever-growing gender gap, a topic previously discussed here.
China gets tough to balance sex ratio
Fearing the approach of a ticking “bachelor bomb,” China is planning tougher laws against sex-selective abortions that have boosted the number of boys in recent years, state media said yesterday.
The State Council, or [...]
- The Human Footprint on Earth
Science Magazine has a great article titled Domesticated Nature. To summarize the article, humans have exercised their impulse to perpetuate and propagate themselves, and in doing so, we have domesticated landscapes and ecosystems in ways that enhance our food supplies, reduce exposure to predators and natural dangers, and promote commerce. The article contains [...]
- In Defense of Afro-Pessimism
This article from the World Policy Journal, published almost ten years ago by David Rieff, reads somewhat like Kaplan’s writings on Africa from Coming Anarchy, and was unfortunately eerily correct about the following decade in Africa.
In Defense of Afro-Pessimism
David RieffIt has been almost 40 years since the decolonization of sub Saharan Africa began in earnest, [...]
- Spirit 374
172 foot wingspan of the B-2
Robert Kaplan writes about the B-2 on the new website of the The Atlantic Monthly in an article entitled The Plane That Would Bomb Iran (sub req’d). This is from a section of his upcoming book Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and [...]
