Map reflects a compilation of states allowing gay service via the Palm Center.

Last month chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen made headlines with this:

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,”

Shortly after, Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered a year long review of the possible outcome and effects of repealing former President Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” initiative. Since then, in reading about and discussing the proposition to over turn “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” I have yet to find an objective, convincing argument against it. The one objection I found salient was expressed by both the Army and Air Force Chiefs of Staff whose wariness appears to be less about the concept and more about the timing. Army joint chief of staff, General George Casey:

“I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of the law on a force that’s fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for eight-and-a-half years,”

That’s certainly a reasonable concern and even after the assessment ordered by SecDef Gates winds up and conclusions are presented, I suspect it will still be a matter of concern no matter how positive (or negative, depending on one’s outlook) it’s findings. Nevertheless this is a criticism or worry aimed at the timing and not the principle of repeal. So I’ll ask a rather simple and a bit broad question and ask you ignore the context of timing and instead consider the principle of the prospective repeal for the sake of discussion:

If 25 countries spanning five continents can manage to allow gay service in their military’s why can’t or shouldn’t the United States?

I won’t bore you by recounting the various, glaring missteps the climate change science community has made recently. I think those discrepancies have been broadly covered, dismissed by the believers and slavered over by the uber-skeptics. Indeed the pundit shit flinging merrily continues unabated months after the breaking of “Climategate,” especially excited by a series of winter storms that put snow on the grounds of 49 American states on the same day.

I will say that the clannish, arrogant nature of the scientists engaged in monitoring and explaining climatology to the world has been their undoing. Proclamations of fact in a science heavily reliant on hypothetical, seemingly malleable computer simulated projections along with a lack of transparency, a rather unscientific element of advocacy and the poisonous nature of their handling of skeptics have lent the concept of climate change an identity more closely related to religious orthodoxy than actual science. The message came to be more important than the method.

It was on the matter of method that the Institute of Physics in the UK addressed the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry. I believe this is the first time a scientific organization has weighed in in such a critical fashion. A snippet:

1. The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.

2. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change.

I’ve chosen the first two statements purposefully so as to avoid “cherry picking.” There are additional observations a bit more damning of the CRU’s methods and I’d encourage a full read of the statement. It’ll be interesting to watch where both the science (assuming it’s reformed accordingly) and the politics regarding climate change head in the near future. It’ll also be interesting to see, if transparency and independent review are allowed, how long the current consensus holds together.

Be a man! These issues are meant to be discussed in these venues. You’re brave speaking at a distance, but a coward when it comes to talking face to face

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to Venezuelan comedian President Hugo Chavez at Monday’s Latin American Unity Summit. The two apparently got into quite a verbal row which included the flinging about of obscenities and Chavez accusing Uribe of planning to assassinate him. Cuban President Raul Castro, noting the irony of two Latin American leaders shouting at each other at a Latin American Unity Summit, stepped in to calm things down a bit. Strange times indeed when a Cuban communist dictator is the voice of reason at a multi-national summit.

A brief clip from the film “The Four Lions,” which presents four bumbling would be home grown jihadists in the UK.

Via Political Warfare

Pardon my amateurish photoshopping.

It seems like every week brings a new report claiming the demise of Pakistan’s Taliban leader Hakeemullah Mehsud only to have him pop up in a video days later, celebrating his continued existence in a mocking fashion. The latest and most infamous being his chummy appearance with Jordanian double agent, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi who killed 7 CIA agents in Afghanistan in late December.

Since January of 2008 there have been three major announcements from Pakistan of Mehsud  heading off to wherever murderous bastards end up after their mortal blight here on earth comes to an end. The latest has him dying from injuries sustained from a US drone attack in late January while enroute to hospital on February 9th. While Pakistani news sources quote alleged Taliban sources affirming his death US intelligence officials remain skeptical. Additionally Taliban leaders have claimed Mehsud is still alive but that he’ll no longer be showing up on video and audio recordings, a measure they claim will aid him in avoiding US/Pakistani detection.

China’s decade long surge into becoming an economic power house and global heavy hitter has given rise to a myriad of theories and assertions regarding the role of Asia in this century. It has been widely touted that the 21st century will be “Asia’s Century” as the US fades from virtual hegemony and hyperpower and joins its European cousins in the ranks of imperial has beens. That the on going economic crisis embattling what I’ll term the “Old Order of Global Primacy” has left China’s 10% annual economic growth unscathed seems to be validating those theories and assertions.

Map via Wellesly College Chinese Politics

How else to express my reaction to the African Union’s selection of Zimbabwe for a seat on it’s Peace and Security Council?

The Peace and Security Council is concerned with resolving conflicts between member states and with helping sort out domestic political turmoil. Other states picked late on Saturday for three year terms on the body were Kenya, Burundi and Equatorial Guinea.

A bit like placing Haiti in charge of UN-Habitat.

While I’m a fan and admirer of the journalist responsible for the theme of this blog, I am not a practitioner of his self proclaimed ethos, “pessimistic realism.” When asked during an interview for our first ever pod cast to sum up what I thought the near future of global affairs entailed I answered “Unknown,” and asserted my sense of cautious optimism.

On any given day it’s easy to give over to the pessimistic vision of what’s going on around us. We are inundated by media reports rife with live reports depicting either the lowest points of humanity or the greatest suffering of humanity. In just the last few days news reports informed us of the fiery crash of an airliner out of Lebanon (breathlessly claiming that “sabotage,” despite the claims of the Lebanese government, was hardly off the table,) a synchronized series of explosions directed at hotels in Baghdad had killed at least twenty and of course the media’s darling of the year; Haiti’s being smashed from abjectly failed state to that of, well, no state.

Combine this with the likes of a decade long promise of apocalyptic climate change, the pervasive experts promising the next existential terrorist threat, the ever present promise of looming economic ruin and it’s no small reason that we look into our televisions, listen to our car radios and conclude that the near future of humanity is, as succinctly stated by my learned colleague; “fucked.”

So I read, with particular interest , this piece by Thomas Barnett titled “New Rules: The Fallacy of an Increasingly Dangerous World.”

The meat of the article expresses exactly what the title entails. As bad as things are we, as a planetary collective, are forging a legacy quite contrary to what pessimists might paint:

In 1950 the planet consisted of 2.5 billion souls, while today our global population approaches 7 billion. Likewise, the number of U.N. member states has roughly doubled to nearly 200, meaning a greater number of possible configurations for war. In short, despite far more bodies and far more states, wars have nonetheless become less frequent and less lethal, while we as a planet have grown stunningly more interconnected and thus interdependent. Even the three biggest conflicts of the last decade—Iraq, Sudan and Congo—involved, at most, 2 percent of the world’s population.

That amazing trajectory now places us far closer to Immanuel Kant’s vision of “perpetual peace” than to Thomas Hobbes’ “state of nature.”

As I stated above, I’m not a “pessimistic realist.” While I’m loath to accept being pigeon-holed into some neat category either politically or intellectually I could live with the label “pragmatic optimist.” I agree that we are “far closer” to Kant’s perpetual peace than Hobbes “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” but would argue that we’re only beginning to move away from Hobbes’ “war of all against all” in too many areas of the world. That’s a beginning that I’m much more willing to embrace than the pessimist’s embrace of the “beginning of the end.” We’re a fallible species and guilty of our own self induced eras of violence and ignorance but on the whole we’ve maintained a remarkable ability to advance. And I believe we’ll continue that advance.

I’d be curious to see what our own readers think in terms of just how dangerous our world is and just what their positions are regarding the overarching progress (or regress as it may be) of humanity.

I’ve recently enjoyed a debate presented by FORA between a scholar of Islamic and middle eastern studies, Daniel Pipes and Syrian born psychologist, Dr. Wafa Sultan. The essence of the debate is whether or not there exists what many deem a “moderate” or tolerant following of Islam.

Pipes’ perspective is that there is indeed a division between hardcore Islamist ideology and a collective moderate belief and that the trend of extremism can be staunched. Sultan, citing her experience as a woman in an Islamic country, begs to differ suggesting that Islam cannot be neatly divided into various gradients of piety, rather that the doctrine itself is immune to selective adaptation. In other words, Islamic doctrine cannot be or simply won’t be conveniently “fudged” into an ideology that’s willing to overlook the more primitive, violent aspects of Koranic doctrine.

Sultan’s hard edged belief that Islam is irreconcilable to modern civilization was famously captured on Al Jazeera when she pulled no punches during a debate with a Saudi cleric, insisting that what kept much of the Islamic world in a perpetual, primitive state of backwater existence was the religious adherence to Islam. Her debate with Pipes isn’t nearly as entertaining but is a more thoughtful and engaging discussion.

The video of the debate is about an hour long and follows:

Sultan is fiery and unrelenting (to the point of distraction, I’d say) in her disgust with the Islamic world . Obviously her heritage and experience go a long way toward pre-empting the politically correct epithet’s that would be hurled at, say, an anglo male holding and publishing the same scorching testament regarding Islam. I admire both her vehemence and her audacity.
However, I think David Pipes got the better of her in the long run. Much of what Sultan presents will grab both the feminist and xenophobic crowd in America and while one can sympathize with her, Pipes presents a more balanced, realistic vision. He recognizes the reality of militant Islam as the “now” in terms of threat and even suggests that security efforts should include the ultimately “politically incorrect” tactic of profiling. Yet at the same time he insists that not only are there a considerable number of Muslims practising a “moderate” form of Islam but that the religious concept as a whole can be shifted to marginalize the “jihadist” element. Give the vid a look and let me know what you think.

Ginger bastard Radek, if he had not pissed against the wind, if he had not been angry, he would still be alive.

This was scrawled by the Soviet tyrant on a sketching of a naked man, referring to Karl Radek. Apparently, late in his life, Stalin took to defacing drawings with his own commentary. A collection of classical nude sketches marred with various critiques of both the pieces themselves and some of the unfortunate to meet their demise at the hands of Stalin is on display in Moscow after five decades of being hidden away.

Would there be any doubt remaining in regards to Stalin’s psychotic nature (which remains celebrated by some in todays Russia) I’d say his apparently gleeful approach here lays them to rest.