Dive into the archives.
- Tit for Tat
There has been noise in the US as to why the Kitty Hawk and perhaps other US naval ships were been denied permission to enter Hong Kong for what would have been a routine festival port visit. Beijing ultimately reversed the refusal after it was made public, but the carrier had already sailed for [...]
- Taliban Redux in Pakistan
Militants in Swat, in the northwestern frontier of Pakistan, have pulled a copy-cat of Taliban demolition of the Bamiyan Buddha in Afghanistan on the Swat Buddha:
From AsiaNews:
Despite the many requests for greater protection, the government has failed to intervene in any way to defend the 40 metre tall statue, the second only in importance to [...]
- 7 years in the making
A historical step in defense relations between China and Japan happened today with the arrival of the Shenzen — a Luhai-class warship — in Tokyo Bay. This is the first time a Chinese warship has made a port of call in Japan since the establishment of the People’s Liberation Army. The ship will be open [...]
- The three R’s
Read, wRite and Research. Six Techniques to Get More from the Web than Google Will Tell You matches my research style almost perfectly. Below are some of my comments:
1. Use Search Engines and Wikipedia to Find Quality Research Sources
Of course I would never cite Wikipedia or take what it says at face value, but if [...]
- The Demarcation of Australia
Via Wikipedia comes this fascinating visual timeline of the demarcation of the borders that make up Australia’s six states, two major mainland territories, and other minor territories that exist today.
- Fascists v.s. Fascists
A friend currently studying at Oxford University attended a recent controversial debate at the Oxford Union between Holocaust denier David Irving and British National Party leader Nick Griffin, who discussed free speech.
What a fiasco tonight was at the Oxford Union. In my four years as member of the Union, I have never experienced anything quite [...]
- Unheralded military successes
Kaplan alert! A typical piece by the man himself in the typical travel writing/war correspondent/archair historian format that makes him so great. From the LA Times, slightly abridged:
Unheralded military successes
Low-cost, low-risk operations such as those in Colombia and the Philippines show what the U.S. can achieve.November 25, 2007
When I visited Arauca province in [...]
- The effects of dropping the bomb
Chuck Spinney, one of the Boyd Acolytes, discusses the problems of a strategic bombing campaign on Iran.
Though he doesn’t say the words he is criticizing the EBO logic that dates back to Douhet. I think it is a solid point. To get the other side of the argument see John Robb’s year-and-a-half old post Collapsing [...]
- Cooking with what you have
Robert Kaplan follows up his pre-Patraeus report analysis by widening his bottom-up tribalism theory to include Pakistan, Baluchistan and Afghanistan in his latest article in The Atlantic It’s the Tribes, Stupid!:
Where democratic governance does not exist, we must work with the material at hand. ... Throughout the Arab world, old monarchial and authoritarian orders are [...]
- Uncanny!
*(Groans noted)*
The canning process is a product of the Napoleonic wars. Malnutrition was rampant among the 18th century French armed forces. As Napoleon prepared for his Russian campaign, he searched for a new and better means of preserving food for his troops and offered a prize of 12,000 francs to anyone who could find one. [...]
