For some leisurely reading today, let Slate tell you why we’re in Guam.
After Lula, it looks like it’s the battle between Dull and Duller. Brazil’s presidential election in October is an important one, as the country’s success and new-found leadership role within the BRICs and G-20 make Latin America’s largest economy critical on the world stage. Lula has charisma, but his anointed successor from the PT party, Dilma […]
Last week Patrick Vilbert of the FPA Lebanon blog wrote a great post outlining the history and possible future of the UN Security Council-established investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri. If any of the likely suspects are implicated, there could be seriously negative effects for the region. Vilbert writes: In 2009, an article in […]
I don’t agree at all with the Economist’s leader this week, which suggests that Barack Obama’s presidency was headed for failure until his health care victory last week. The health care victory was the icing on the cake, coming fourteen months into Obama’s first term, after he rescued the planet from an economic meltdown in a cooperative […]
One curious headline in yesterday’s New York Times was this: “Treaty Advances Obama’s Nuclear Vision”. The article was about START II, which Obama and Russian President Medvedev agreed to sign this week. Under START II, the number of legal strategically deployed nuclear warheads will be capped at 1,550 for each signatory. The “nuclear vision” to […]
Sunday afternoon, I got a phone call from my good friend Philippe who lives in California. “Gail just saw a great movie, Green Zone! It’s right up your alley. It’s about the Iraqi WMD thing. You have to go see it. It’s great! It’s particularly timely since Karl Rove just came out with a book […]
The Democrats’ drive to pass health care reform has resurrected ancient legal demons. As The New York Times reported last week, nullification, typically considered a pretty-much dead 19th century notion of the relationship between states and the federal government, is experiencing a resurgence. The early American debates about the relationship between state and federal power […]
Joel Davis of FPA’s U.S. Role in the World blog accuses the U.S. of not being an honest and impartial broker in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. He notes that the U.S. threw a “temper tantrum” after Israel’s housing development announcement last week and asks why the U.S. did not throw a similar tantrum after a […]
This week, a series of maps caused the blog-o-sphere to erupt in lively debate over the origins and future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The maps in question… …were posted by Juan Cole last week, picked up by Andrew Sullivan the next day, and subsequently criticized by Jeffrey Goldberg. It turned into Cole and Sullivan vs. […]
Late getting the blog out this week; traveled most of last week and over the weekend and am just now getting over jet lag. As I rouse from my travel induced stupor, I find I have Iran on the brain. The latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine has an excellent article called “After Iran Gets […]
Bibi was defiant in the Knesset, refusing to halt Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. The Obama administration has turned up the heat, higher than at any time since 1991 when H.W. Bush/Baker withheld loan guarantees because of settlements. This worries Israeli diplomats. Hillary is set to give a speech at the AIPAC conference beginning in six days. High […]
The Texas Board of Education voted on Friday to make many substantial changes in the Texas school system’s social studies curriculum. I support many of these changes. Students will be taught that the U.S. is a “constitutional republic” rather than “democratic.” This is correct. Students should learn about the ways in which the Founding Fathers […]
The Rising Powers blog has devoted some time in recent days to the diplomatic flap over Israel’s embarrassment of US Veep Joe Biden with the announcement of East Jerusalem settlements. See recent posts here and here. To update you, President Lula of Brazil, the one-time labor union firebrand who has united his country of extreme riches and […]
With the voluble Veep safely stateside, Hillary took off the gloves and expressed just how pissed off she and the Commander-in-Chief are with ally Israel, the behavior of which she found an “insult” to the United States. I wrote a piece on the Veep’s visit, found at this link and below. President Obama voiced his […]