– Christopher Hitchens asks “WTF?” as the survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki dies.

– From Wired: how the risk-averse society stopped bombing in Afghanistan (except for close-air support, really).

– If you’re a fan of ComingAnarchy, you’ll be pleased to know that Curzon is planning on making a visit to London next week. Open offer to meet up; who’s with me?

– Kazys Varnelis offers predictions for the coming decade. A number of things here, of course, but I think he’s spot on with the dissolving middle class and possible polarization/further fragmentation of the U.S. on a state-by-state basis. However, I think his outlook for suburbia is perhaps a little rosy.

– Socio-economics in Russia may put a stop to change. But would that change be good?

The next couple weeks will see some longer link collections than usual (if I remember to do them, that is). So much happens these days…

A nifty little infographic from The Economist on the “global tinderbox” that is the world of 2010. Merry New Year, everyone!

– An amazing story in New York about the self-destruction of John Edwards and the sheer absurdity of the Rielle Hunter affair’s cover-up. The depths and the self-delusion… On a semi-related note, is it possible that the National Enquirer deserves a Pulitzer for first breaking the story?

– Yet another relevant TED talk: ‘how the net aids dictatorships’. Tech enables blowback. And where do you start, when it comes to the internet? With the very alphabet you use to type a URL with.

Continue reading →

A snowy, white day here in New England. Finally some real weather, the kind that makes you feel alive.

– Hugo Chavez’s bellicosity may finally come to a head, the BBC reports. Apparently it’s not just an anti-Bush thing with him; he’s accused Columbia and the United States of preparing to invade. The Venezuelan Army is already blowing up bridges, in all senses of the phrase.

– Everybody still hates everybody else in Iraq. They’re just not killing each other anymore, but turning to politics instead. Kurds will no longer accept “second-citizen status.”

More after the jump…

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– Christopher Hitchens examines the growing wave of subtle proselytizing in the military. I don’t (nor does he claim to) know just how widespread it is, but the signs are alarming on a number of levels. The most pressing is practicality. It really doesn’t make sense to alienate local allies in-theater nor to ostracize fellow servicemen for any reason at all. It undermines efficacy and damages our reputation. And that’s before starting in on the Constitutional issues it raises.

– Interesting bracket-style comparison of camouflage patterns at ITS Tactical.  Do yourself a favor; check them out and vote. My money’s on Mirage or desert MARPAT.

– British Home Secretary Alan Johnson is apparently creating an “army of private police.” From what I can tell, the ‘civilian’ police are actually government employees (the article lists dog wardens, park keepers, and security guards) who have been granted powers of arrest and so on. Definitely somewhat troubling, but it’s not the deputization of private citizens, as it would seem at first glance. Though that, of course, is the next step.

– John Robb has a new word for everyone’s lexicon. Behold the Darknet (not to be confused with the seamy underbelly of the internet, Freenet).

The newly-launched Iranian Sajjil-2 throws everyone into a tizzy.

– Quantifiable terror probabilities are what the University of Maryland’s Minorities at Risk project seeks to define. If history is anything like the stock market, though, past performance does not guarantee future results. History merely rhymes.

– I’m pretty sure at this point anyone who wants to get close to Berlusconi in any way must have mental problems. Well-wishers and assaulters alike.

– Seth Cropsey argues that a breakup of Pakistan may be imminent. The army is the glue that binds the country together, he writes, and thus the increasing religiosity put in place by Zia ul-Haq has led to a fracture of that one formerly unifying body. I do like the characterization of the Pakistani Army before Zia: “Officer clubs served liquor. Religion and ethnicity were not proper subjects of discussion. Muslim society was something that existed outside the military.” Between ethnicity and a Sunni-Shiite split in the Army, things don’t bode so well. The country is close to majority Punjabi, but in the long that may just mean everyone else feels oppressed.

– Even the Chinese understand the green benefits of going massively nuclear for power. The New York Times continues to believe that cheap plastic toys means a Chernobyl waiting to happen. Again, in a high-tech field the West is falling behind thanks to idiot environmental movements that can’t see the forest or the trees.

Fighting off the effects of jetlag and a bad cold/allergy at the same time, so this will be a short one.

– Look, I try to keep politics out of this as much as possible. But Jesus H. Christ. Joe Lieberman has GOT to go.

– For all those disaffected third party voters: the Modern Whig Party? According to Andrew Dubbins, a “Republican head with a Democratic heart.”

– Toby Young in The Telegraph: when we look back on this decade (unfortunately named by him as “the Noughties”), we will have seen a human desire for mass destruction and devastation. Apocalypse frenzy. This could either be a resurgent nihilism (not the ‘wannabe kind’), or simply humanity coming to terms with the next century. Is it really Roland Emmerich, and not Zach Braff, who is the voice of this generation? (Note: if those are the only two choices, then I hope the answer is yes).

– Flanders and Wallonia: the Velvet Divorce redux? The Weekly Standard thinks so. Wallonia as Britain sans Thatcher, Charleroi as “their Detroit.”

God, do I love maps. From Strange Maps: the new Turkish empire?

– A whole generation of French and Low Countries children are coming to terms with their fathers being Nazis. How widespread is this still? Aside from the rapes that occur in a lot of developing world conflicts, I think maybe the last time this happened on any kind of scale was Vietnam. But willingly?

– I think one of the most amazing things about the relative coherence of such a massive country as China is just how many ethnicities it manages to contain. China Hush has ‘family portraits’ of all 56 ethnic groups in the country. But why Russians?

– Russia and India are jointly developing a 5th generation fighter. This certainly took many by surprise, but this kind of thing always reminds me of Charlie Wilson’s take on India: “He considered them hypocrites, professing neutrality while firmly ensconced in the Soviet camp for decades.” Old habits die hard?

More after the jump… Continue reading →

I found this self-identified map of Major League Baseball loyalties at Common Census:

Bears more than a little resemblance to the “United Countries of Baseball,” doesn’t it? Aside from just being nice to look at, the self-identification going on right now is very interesting. Where do people’s loyalties lie? Savannah-ite, Georgian, Southerner, or American? Etcetera. The metro area loyalties map is here.

– More on Robert Kaplan and the PLAN at The Coming Anarchy. Mao Zedong, meet Alfred Thayer Mahan.

– Johann Hari on how “Our Leaders are Staging a Scam.” Specifically, in Copenhagen. Does this whole charade of doing as little as possible so we don’t have to change strike anyone else as a behavioral version of the ‘Red Queen‘ hypothesis? It takes all our effort to not do anything at all.

– “Backwards Southerners, Frigid Northerners“: the real divide in Germany is not east-west, after all.

– Not just war, but now intelligence too continues to be outsourced.  Is anyone still surprised by this?

– Patrick Porter’s Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes. Started it last night, and I’ll be sure to give a full review, but even after 20 pages… wow. He really knows his stuff. “Not whether culture matters, but how it matters.” We do risk over-relying on cultural expectations to give us one monolithic picture of ‘the East’; hopefully this will change that. And he specifically says he doesn’t mean Orientalism in a Saidian way, i.e. the West is not full of evil and horrible portents for everyone else in the world. Definitely worth a look.

– Obama’s making friends in unlikely places. The split in support between Democrats and Republicans alike is growing more and more pronounced as a split between foreign and domestic policy. The more we become afraid of muscular liberal interventionism, the more I drift away from the DNC.

– Hitchens doesn’t care much for the surge. “We’re being played for suckers by the Pakistani elite.” Alternative: end the ‘War on Drugs’. I like this man more and more every day.

– Libya: the emergence of the ‘state as protection racket‘.

– McChrystal-mania? Fred Kaplan reads too much into his admission of imperfection (“There is much in Afghanistan that I do not understand”).  A crazy, crazy man getting one meal and four hours of sleep a night. Oh, and he bridged the usual discord between QRF and the JSOC.

– The private sector officially surpasses NASA in relevance. Not that surprising, in the end. When will humanity make a concerted effort towards the stars? Even just the United States taking some initiative would be fine.

– Afghanistan and Al Anbar are not the same thing. Thank you, Carter and Jerry, for clearing that up.

– David Engerman calls for a modern ‘Sovietology’ in Foreign Affairs – “Jihadology.” Sounds pretty narrow at first, but gets more compelling. “Instead of lurching from one perceived threat to the next, U.S. policymakers should make a deep investment in knowing the whole world.” This is decidedly true, but then again, how relevant will Islamic fundamentalism be twenty years down the line? The Soviet system was an influence – at the least a factor in – a number of political systems throughout the world. This may be more locally confined. But, if Engerman really does mean to reassert the primacy of culture over politics, there’s definitely an argument to be made.