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Russia Rises Amid Geopolitical Events - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...rises-amid-geopolitical-events
shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 11 - Cached
  • In fact, Russia may be the one country that stands to gain from the various calamities in 2011.
  • First, the general unrest in the Middle East has increased the price of oil by 18.5 percent.
  • Second, the Libyan unrest has cut off the 11 billion cubic-meter natural gas (bcm) Greenstream pipeline to Italy, causing Europe’s third largest consumer of natural gas to turn to Russia to make up the difference.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But the most beneficial of all events for Russia may be the psychological effect that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant crisis is having on Western Europe.
  • One of the reasons Russia grew so strong over the past decade is that its rival, the United States, was focused elsewhere. Moscow has been growing nervous in the past year knowing that Washington is starting to wrap up its commitments in the Middle East and South Asia. There is a discussion now rumbling through the Kremlin whether the events in the Middle East may keep the United States focused there a while longer, giving Russia even more time to cement its nearly dominant position in Eurasia. Thus far, the Kremlin must be satisfied with what the first three months of 2011 have brought in terms of its own strategic interests.
  • anonymous on 24 Mar 11
     
    "The first three months of 2011 have had a steady flow of geopolitically relevant events. A youth named Mohamed Bouazizi, protesting corruption and government harassment in Tunisia, set more than himself alight on Dec. 17: He set an entire region on fire. Soon after, Tunisia and Egypt saw their long-time rulers fall. Libya essentially descended into civil war, and exit is uncertain. On Monday, almost exactly three months after Bouazizi's self-immolation, the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council's forces entered the tiny island nation of Bahrain to prevent Iran from exploiting the anti-government protests there. The region's unrest continues with almost daily action in North Africa and the Middle East. Around the globe, the March 11 Japan Tohoku earthquake rocked the world's third largest economy and has caused the most serious nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster."
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Agenda: With George Friedman on Libya and Israel - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...orge-friedman-libya-and-israel geopolitics libya
shared by anonymous on 25 Mar 11 - Cached
  • anonymous on 25 Mar 11
     
    "As NATO is taking control of Libya's no-fly zone, STRATFOR CEO George Friedman discusses a potential stalemate on the battlefield, and he explains why the new attacks by Hamas on soft targets near Tel Aviv enticing Israeli retaliation are a serious concern."
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5 Things They Never Told Us - 0 views

www.cracked.com/...5-things-they-never-told-us
shared by anonymous on 25 Mar 11 - Cached
  • #5.You Don't Become An Adult, You Just Suddenly Are One
  • There's no class or test or paperwork to sign. One day you just realize you're a person who pays bills. You're a person who signs up for a club card at your local grocery store because, "Oh, I might as well, I'm there so often." You're a person who gradually is getting less and less familiar with whatever's going on in pop music. You can vote and rent a car and get married and have kids, and it's not weird, it's normal.You're an adult, and no one told you.
  • Remember when you were a kid and you saw adults as all-knowing authority figures who had shit figured out? As the people who were allowed to tell you what to do and make rules, because they were the ones who were running the world? That's what kids think when they see you, even though you're an idiot.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • #4.Almost Everything You're Doing is Absolutely Meaningless
  • The only skills you really need to learn in high school and college are how to socialize and be a functioning human in society, because that's the only thing you'll be consistently doing for the rest of your life.
  • College is important, but what you study? Not so much. Focus on learning how to be a human, and focus on networking and meeting the right people, because they are much better at hiring you than your GPA is. Professors and Deans and your parents will stress that your grades are important, but I guarantee you that, as long as they were good at their job, no one in the history of time has ever been fired because of their GPA.
  • You'll Never Have as Much Time, Energy, Or Excuses For Doing Dumb Shit Than When You're 14
  • At 14, you're not legally allowed to work in most states, school is a pointless breeze and you have nothing to be stressed about because you're not paying bills or fighting in a war and no one depends on you for anything. You just have boundless energy, and a stupid amount of free time and no accountability whatsoever.
  • anonymous on 25 Mar 11
     
    "Given the opportunity, there are probably a lot of tiny, superficial things you say to your fourteen-year-old self, (Get a haircut; Stop being a smartass; Maybe try not masturbating for, like, a night, and see what that does to the amount of free time you have). Small things you wish you'd known, because they would've made middle school, high school and whatever comes after slightly easier. There are also much bigger things, things about life and growing up that someone damn sure should've told you about."
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What Happened to the American Declaration of War? - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...pened-american-declaration-war
shared by anonymous on 29 Mar 11 - Cached
  • World War II was the last war the United States fought with a formal declaration of war.
  • the Constitution is explicit in requiring a formal declaration. It does so for two reasons, I think.
  • The first is to prevent the president from taking the country to war without the consent of the governed, as represented by Congress.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • Second, by providing for a specific path to war, it provides the president power and legitimacy he would not have without that declaration; it both restrains the president and empowers him.
  • But that’s what the founders intended: Going to war should be difficult; once at war, the commander in chief’s authority should be unquestionable.
  • In understanding how war and constitutional norms became separated, we must begin with the first major undeclared war in American history (the Civil War was not a foreign war), Korea.
  • Truman’s view was that U.N. sanction for the war superseded the requirement for a declaration of war in two ways.
  • First, it was not a war in the strict sense, he argued, but a “police action” under the U.N. Charter.
  • Second, the U.N. Charter constituted a treaty, therefore implicitly binding the United States to go to war if the United Nations so ordered.
  • It was understood that if nuclear war occurred, either through an attack by the Soviets or a first strike by the United States, time and secrecy made a prior declaration of war by Congress impossible. In the expected scenario of a Soviet first strike, there would be only minutes for the president to authorize counterstrikes and no time for constitutional niceties.
  • Nuclear war was seen as the most realistic war-fighting scenario, with all other forms of war trivial in comparison. Just as nuclear weapons came to be called “strategic weapons” with other weapons of war occupying a lesser space, nuclear war became identical with war in general.
  • In Vietnam, the issue was not some legal or practical justification for not asking for a declaration. Rather, it was a political consideration.
  • Johnson did not know that he could get a declaration; the public might not be prepared to go to war. For this reason, rather than ask for a declaration, he used all the prior precedents to simply go to war without a declaration. In my view, that was the moment the declaration of war as a constitutional imperative collapsed. And in my view, so did the Johnson presidency. In hindsight, he needed a declaration badly, and if he could not get it, Vietnam would have been lost, and so may have been his presidency. Since Vietnam was lost anyway from lack of public consensus, his decision was a mistake. But it set the stage for everything that came after — war by resolution rather than by formal constitutional process.
  • All of this came just before the United States emerged as the world’s single global power — a global empire — that by definition would be waging war at an increased tempo, from Kuwait, to Haiti, to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, and so on in an ever-increasing number of operations. And now in Libya, we have reached the point that even resolutions are no longer needed.
  • The goal in war is to prevent the other side from acting, not to punish the actors.
  • One of the dilemmas that could have been avoided was the massive confusion of whether the United States was engaged in hunting down a criminal conspiracy or waging war on a foreign enemy. If the former, then the goal is to punish the guilty. If the latter, then the goal is to destroy the enemy. Imagine that after Pearl Harbor, FDR had promised to hunt down every pilot who attacked Pearl Harbor and bring them to justice, rather than calling for a declaration of war against a hostile nation and all who bore arms on its behalf regardless of what they had done
  • A declaration of war, I am arguing, is an essential aspect of war fighting particularly for the republic when engaged in frequent wars. It achieves a number of things.
  • First, it holds both Congress and the president equally responsible for the decision, and does so unambiguously.
  • Second, it affirms to the people that their lives have now changed and that they will be bearing burdens.
  • Third, it gives the president the political and moral authority he needs to wage war on their behalf and forces everyone to share in the moral responsibility of war.
  • And finally, by submitting it to a political process, many wars might be avoided.
  • The declaration of war is precisely the point at which imperial interests can overwhelm republican prerogatives.
  • I am not making the argument that constant accommodation to reality does not have to be made. I am making the argument that the suspension of Section 8 of Article I as if it is possible to amend the Constitution with a wink and nod represents a mortal threat to the republic. If this can be done, what can’t be done?
  • As our international power and interests surge, it would seem reasonable that our commitment to republican principles would surge. These commitments appear inconvenient. They are meant to be. War is a serious matter, and presidents and particularly Congresses should be inconvenienced on the road to war. Members of Congress should not be able to hide behind ambiguous resolutions only to turn on the president during difficult times, claiming that they did not mean what they voted for. A vote on a declaration of war ends that.
  • anonymous on 29 Mar 11
     
    "In my book "The Next Decade," I spend a good deal of time considering the relation of the American Empire to the American Republic and the threat the empire poses to the republic. If there is a single point where these matters converge, it is in the constitutional requirement that Congress approve wars through a declaration of war and in the abandonment of this requirement since World War II. This is the point where the burdens and interests of the United States as a global empire collide with the principles and rights of the United States as a republic."
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The Digital Generation Rediscovers the Magic of Manual Typewriters - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...31Typewriter.html forposting
shared by anonymous on 31 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Another virtue is simplicity. Typewriters are good at only one thing: putting words on paper. “If I’m on a computer, there’s no way I can concentrate on just writing, said Jon Roth, 23, a journalist who is writing a book on typewriters. “I’ll be checking my e-mail, my Twitter.” When he uses a typewriter, Mr. Roth said: “I can sit down and I know I’m writing. It sounds like I’m writing.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 31 Mar 11
       
      I can actually appreciate the aesthetic conveyed here. However, the limitations of the technology aren't anything I'd like to relive. Jams, white out, jams, jams. Also, word processing has allowed writers to evolve ideas at a dizzying rate. True, we all miss typewriters, but going back to one? Where are the NYT articles talking about the quill and parchment rennaisance?
  • anonymous on 31 Mar 11
     
    "EVEN by Brooklyn standards, it was a curious spectacle: a dozen mechanical contraptions sat on a white tablecloth, emitting occasional clacks and dings. Shoppers peered at the display, excited but hesitant, as if they'd stumbled upon a trove of strange inventions from a Jules Verne fantasy. Some snapped pictures with their iPhones. "
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Immaculate Intervention: The Wars of Humanitarianism - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ervention-wars-humanitarianism
shared by anonymous on 05 Apr 11 - Cached
  • Since World War II, a new class of war has emerged that we might call humanitarian wars — wars in which the combatants claim to be fighting neither for their national interest nor to impose any ideology, but rather to prevent inordinate human suffering.
  • In humanitarian wars, the intervention is designed both to be neutral and to protect potential victims on one side.
  • That no one intervened to prevent or stop these atrocities was seen as a moral failure. According to this ideology, the international community has an obligation to prevent such slaughter.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • In international wars, where the aggressor is trying to both kill large numbers of civilians and destroy the enemy’s right to national self-determination, this does not pose a significant intellectual problem.
  • In internal unrest and civil war, however, the challenge of the intervention is to protect human rights without undermining national sovereignty or the right of national self-determination.
  • I call humanitarian wars immaculate intervention, because most advocates want to see the outcome limited to preventing war crimes, not extended to include regime change or the imposition of alien values.
  • They want a war of immaculate intentions surgically limited to a singular end without other consequences. And this is where the doctrine of humanitarian war unravels.
  • What we are seeing in Libya is a classic slow escalation motivated by two factors.
  • The first is the hope that the leader of the country responsible for the bloodshed will capitulate.
  • The second is a genuine reluctance of intervening nations to spend excessive wealth or blood on a project they view in effect as charitable.
  • The expectation of capitulation in the case of Libya is made unlikely by another aspect of humanitarian war fighting, namely the International Criminal Court (ICC).
  • While a logical extension of humanitarian warfare — having intervened against atrocities, the perpetrators ought to be brought to justice — the effect is a prolongation of the war. The example of Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, who ended the Kosovo War with what he thought was a promise that he would not be prosecuted, undoubtedly is on Gadhafi’s mind.
  • But the war is also prolonged by the unwillingness of the intervening forces to inflict civilian casualties.
  • The application of minimal and insufficient force, combined with the unwillingness of people like Gadhafi and his equally guilty supporters to face The Hague, creates the framework for a long and inconclusive war in which the intervention in favor of humanitarian considerations turns into an intervention in a civil war on the side that opposes the regime.
  • It should be remembered that many of Libya’s opposition leaders are former senior officials of the Gadhafi government. They did not survive as long as they did in that regime without having themselves committed crimes, and without being prepared to commit more.
  • At some point, the interveners have the choice of walking away and leaving chaos, as the United States did in Somalia, or staying for a long time and fighting, as they did in Iraq.
  • Regardless of the United States’ other motivations in both conflicts, it would seem that those who favor humanitarian intervention would have favored the Iraq war. That they generally opposed the Iraq war from the beginning requires a return to the concept of immaculate intervention.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 05 Apr 11
       
      For those generally anti-war, this is a less-than-delightful realization, but (I think) jibes with reality more. However, former President Bush and his advisers established justification (WMD's) that affected both intentions and expectations from people on all sides of the debate. Notwithstanding the good intentions of those who advocate humanitarian wars, the effect can never be what is desired.
  • Hussein was a war criminal and a danger to his people. However, the American justification for intervention was not immaculate.
  • That it also had a humanitarian outcome — the destruction of the Hussein regime — made the American intervention inappropriate in the view of those who favor immaculate interventions for two reasons.
  • First, the humanitarian outcome was intended as part of a broader war.
  • Second, regardless of the fact that humanitarian interventions almost always result in regime change, the explicit intention to usurp Iraq’s national self-determination openly undermined in principle what the humanitarian interveners wanted to undermine only in practice.
  • for the humanitarian warrior, there are other political considerations.
  • In the case of the French, the contrast between their absolute opposition to Iraq and their aggressive desire to intervene in Libya needs to be explained. I suspect it will not be.
  • Perhaps it was about oil in this case, but Gadhafi was happily shipping oil to Europe, so intervening to ensure that it continues makes no sense.
  • Sometimes the lack of a persuasive reason for a war generates theories to fill the vacuum. In all humanitarian wars, there is a belief that the war could not be about humanitarian matters.
  • Therein lays the dilemma of humanitarian wars. They have a tendency to go far beyond the original intent behind them, as the interveners, trapped in the logic of humanitarian war, are drawn further in. Over time, the ideological zeal frays and the lack of national interest saps the intervener’s will.
  • My unease with humanitarian intervention is not that I don’t think the intent is good and the end moral. It is that the intent frequently gets lost and the moral end is not achieved. Ideology, like passion, fades. But interest has a certain enduring quality.
  • A doctrine of humanitarian warfare that demands an immaculate intervention will fail because the desire to do good is an insufficient basis for war.
  • In the end, the ultimate dishonesties of humanitarian war are the claims that “this won’t hurt much” and “it will be over fast.”
  • If you must go in, go in heavy, go in hard and get out fast. Humanitarian warfare says that you go in light, you go in soft and you stay there long.
  • anonymous on 05 Apr 11
     
    "There are wars in pursuit of interest. In these wars, nations pursue economic or strategic ends to protect the nation or expand its power. There are also wars of ideology, designed to spread some idea of "the good," whether this good is religious or secular. The two obviously can be intertwined, such that a war designed to spread an ideology also strengthens the interests of the nation spreading the ideology."
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How Slavery Really Ended in America - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mag-03CivilWar-t.html
shared by anonymous on 05 Apr 11 - Cached
  • anonymous on 05 Apr 11
     
    "On May 23, 1861, little more than a month into the Civil War, three young black men rowed across the James River in Virginia and claimed asylum in a Union-held citadel. Fort Monroe, Va., a fishhook-shaped spit of land near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, had been a military post since the time of the first Jamestown settlers. This spot where the slaves took refuge was also, by remarkable coincidence, the spot where slavery first took root, one summer day in 1619, when a Dutch ship landed with some 20 African captives for the fledgling Virginia Colony. Two and half centuries later, in the first spring of the Civil War, Fort Monroe was a lonely Union redoubt in the heart of newly Confederate territory. Its defenders stood on constant guard. Frigates and armed steamers crowded the nearby waters known as Hampton Roads, one of the world's great natural harbors. Perspiring squads of soldiers hauled giant columbiad cannons from the fort's wharf up to its stone parapets. Yet history would come to Fort Monroe not amid the thunder of guns and the clash of fleets, but stealthily, under cover of darkness, in a stolen boat."
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Looking Closer » Blog Archive » Give us somebody we can blast into pieces! - 0 views

lookingcloser.org/...ebody-we-can-blast-into-pieces generations
shared by anonymous on 05 Apr 11 - Cached
  • We’re seeing more and more movies that suggest that the world is in crisis, and that our methods for saving it are failing. We’re looking for hope in all the old familiar places, and those stories are starting to seem unsatisfying.
  • anonymous on 05 Apr 11
     
    "We're seeing more and more movies that suggest that the world is in crisis, and that our methods for saving it are failing. We're looking for hope in all the old familiar places, and those stories are starting to seem unsatisfying. It used to be that we could find catharsis by demonizing another culture and making them the enemy. But globalization, technology, and an increasingly multicultural America have brought us into closer relationship with people who are different from us. It's harder for American storytellers to make scapegoats out of people who are different than us. We used to cast Russians and Japanese and Iraqis as "the Enemy." Now, we're more careful. We've learned that it's dangerous and foolish to portray another culture as thoroughly corrupt. And we're coming to see that Americans can be as corrupt as the worst of them."
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Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% - 0 views

www.vanityfair.com/...top-one-percent-201105 society generations
shared by anonymous on 06 Apr 11 - Cached
  • While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall.
  • Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 06 Apr 11
       
      This is, in fact, where libertarian economic policies fall down for me. Even if I were to consider them abstractly appealing, the reality is that the winner is the person who exploits, bends, and mutilates the rules, not merely to those who are most productive or creative.
  • An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity.
  • Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy.
  • Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology.
  • None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided.
  • The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.
  • But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way.
  • The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride.
  • During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied.
  • When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
  • America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way.
  • lifestyle effect
  • distorts our foreign policy
  • The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich
  • they encourage competition among countries for business
  • if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers.
  • the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important.
  • anonymous on 06 Apr 11
     
    "Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income-an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."
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The Absolute Moron's Guide to Paul Ryan's Budget Plan - 0 views

nymag.com/..._ryans_medicare_plan_in_a.html
shared by anonymous on 06 Apr 11 - Cached
  • personally saving money will not help reduce the debt. And while you're right that scaling back government spending should require everyone to sacrifice, this plan isn't asking for everyone to sacrifice. For example, changes in Medicare will only affect people currently 55 years old or younger. Everyone older than that — people who vote a lot, coincidentally — doesn't have to worry about affording health insurance.
  • Ryan's plan is apparently supposed to herald in an unheard-of unemployment rate of 2.8 percent, which the country hasn't seen since the early fifties. As Paul Krugman writes, "If Obama tried to claim that his policies would achieve anything like this, he’d be laughed out of office."
  • anonymous on 06 Apr 11
     
    "There's going to be a lot of talk now and in the future about exactly what Republican congressman Paul Ryan's plan to reduce the national debt would entail and the consequences of such policies. Since it's no fun listening to conversations you don't understand, we've put together an FAQ for those of you who are not just kind of confused, but utterly, hopelessly clueless about what Ryan's proposals are about."
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Second Quarter Forecast 2011 - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...7-second-quarter-forecast-2011
shared by anonymous on 11 Apr 11 - Cached
  • When the Tunisian leadership began to fall, we were surprised at the speed with which similar unrest spread to Egypt. Once in Egypt, however, it quickly became apparent that what we were seeing was not simply a spontaneous uprising of democracy-minded youth (though there was certainly an element of that), but rather a move by the military to exploit the protests to remove Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose succession plans were causing rifts within the establishment and opening up opportunities for groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • We are entering a very dynamic quarter. The Persian Gulf region is the center of gravity, and the center of a rising regional power competition. A war in or with Israel is a major wild card that could destabilize the area further. Amid this, the United States continues to seek ways to disengage while not leaving the region significantly unbalanced. Off to the side is China, more intensely focused on domestic instability and facing rising economic pressures from high oil prices and inflation. Russia, perhaps, is in the best position this quarter, as Europe and Japan look for additional sources of energy, and Moscow can pack away some cash for later days.
  • Libya probably will remain in a protracted crisis through the next quarter.
  • anonymous on 11 Apr 11
     
    "In our 2011 annual forecast, we highlighted three predominant issues for the year: complications with Iran surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the struggle of the Chinese leadership to maintain stability amid economic troubles, and a shift in Russian behavior to appear more conciliatory, or to match assertiveness with conciliation. While we see these trends remaining significant and in play, we did not anticipate the unrest that spread across North Africa to the Persian Gulf region. "
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P.J. O'Rourke: Atlas Shrugged. And So Did I. - Ideas Market - WSJ - 0 views

blogs.wsj.com/...atlas-shrugged-and-so-did-i
shared by anonymous on 11 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • It’s the plain folks, not a Taggart/Rearden elite, whose prospects and opportunities are stolen by corrupt school systems, health-care rationing, public employee union extortions, carbon-emissions payola and deficit-debt burden graft.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 11 Apr 11
       
      Ha ha ha. PJ is a hoot. Sure, he dabbles in ignoramosity (is that a word), but he's still a goddamn hoot.
  • anonymous on 11 Apr 11
     
    "Atlas shrugged. And so did I. The movie version of Ayn Rand's novel treats its source material with such formal, reverent ceremoniousness that the uninitiated will feel they've wandered without a guide into the midst of the elaborate and interminable rituals of some obscure exotic tribe."
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Pakistan's Uneasy Relationship with the United States - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...asy-relationship-united-states geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 12 Apr 11 - Cached
  • Pasha’s central demand in the meeting with his American counterpart was reportedly that the United States hand over more responsibility for operations currently carried out by the CIA over Pakistani soil.
  • this point is rendered moot by the fact that Washington would almost certainly never allow the ISI – seen as a hostile intelligence agency – to have access to some of America’s most secret technology.
  • These demands reflect the general Pakistani complaint that it is not seen as an equal by the U.S. government.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The United States knows that Pakistan is a critical ally in the Afghan War due to the intelligence it can provide on the various strands of Taliban operating in the country, but it simply does not trust the Pakistanis enough to hand over UAV technology or control over UAV strikes to Islamabad.
  • The Pakistanis see an opportunity in the current geopolitical environment to garner concessions from Washington that it would otherwise not be able to demand. Washington is distracted by myriad crises in the Arab world at the moment and AfPak is no longer the main course on its plate, as was the case for some time in the earlier days of the Obama presidency.
  • anonymous on 12 Apr 11
     
    "Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha visited Washington on Monday and met with CIA Director Leon Panetta. The trip gave Islamabad a chance to express its anger over the Raymond Davis affair. The CIA contractor's shooting on the streets of Lahore of two Pakistani citizens - followed by his lengthy detention and subsequent release - has generated waves of criticism amid the Pakistani populace, and has plunged the ISI-CIA relationship into a state of tension that surpasses the normal uneasiness that has always plagued the alliance between Washington and Islamabad."
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Rand and Aesthetics 6 - 0 views

aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/...rand-and-aesthetics-6.html objectivism criticalthinking
shared by anonymous on 20 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • In Rand's aesthetics, there is a strong tendency to over-interpret artistic works, reading into them all kinds of intentions and "metaphysical" value judgments that exist only in Rand's imagination.
  • Rand's "psychological causes" are mere rationalizations. Rand was far too ignorant about human nature, psychology and art to present any plausible insights on why other people might enjoy a work of art she deplored.
  • Per usual with Rand, she merely rationalizes her own private tastes and preferences, which she regarded, with her typical hyper-narcisism, as the infallible criterion of the good, the beautiful, and the true.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Given that Rand's own view of man was, in many respects, false (a product, not of careful, scientific fact finding and experiment, but of her own wishful thinking), her attempts to use her own aesthetic judgments as a means of judging the psychology of (1) the artist, (2) other people's aesthetic reactions, should be taken with the utmost suspicion.
  • While there is nothing wrong in disliking such art, Rand does go beyond the pale of common decency and good manners when she begins judging (and, in this instance, morally judging) those who favor such art.
  • anonymous on 20 Apr 11
     
    " In Rand's aesthetics, there is a strong tendency to over-interpret artistic works, reading into them all kinds of intentions and "metaphysical" value judgments that exist only in Rand's imagination. We see this quite distinctly in Rand's ascription of a "malevolent" sense of life to many works of art she did not care for. If an artistic production was either too dark or conflicted, Rand assumed it expressed the artist's fatalistic sense of life. For Rand, art is a "selective re-creation" in which the artist chooses to portray what he regards as most "fundamental" and important: "
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The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science - 0 views

motherjones.com/106166 criticalthinking
shared by anonymous on 20 Apr 11 - Cached
  • In the annals of denial, it doesn't get much more extreme than the Seekers. They lost their jobs, the press mocked them, and there were efforts to keep them away from impressionable young minds. But while Martin's space cult might lie at on the far end of the spectrum of human self-delusion, there's plenty to go around. And since Festinger's day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning [3]" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, "death panels," the birthplace and religion of the president [4] (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.
  • The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience [5] (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia [6] of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.
  • But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum.
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  • a subconscious negative response to the new information—and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. "They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs," says Taber, "and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they're hearing."
  • In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing.
  • That's not to suggest that we aren't also motivated to perceive the world accurately—we are. Or that we never change our minds—we do. It's just that we have other important goals besides accuracy—including identity affirmation and protecting one's sense of self—and often those make us highly resistant to changing our beliefs when the facts say we should.
  • Ironically, in part because researchers employ so much nuance and strive to disclose all remaining sources of uncertainty, scientific evidence is highly susceptible to selective reading and misinterpretation.
  • people's deep-seated views about morality, and about the way society should be ordered, strongly predict whom they consider to be a legitimate scientific expert in the first place—and thus where they consider "scientific consensus" to lie on contested issues.
  • In Kahan's research [13] (PDF), individuals are classified, based on their cultural values, as either "individualists" or "communitarians," and as either "hierarchical" or "egalitarian" in outlook.
  • The results were stark: When the scientist's position stated that global warming is real and human-caused, for instance, only 23 percent of hierarchical individualists agreed the person was a "trustworthy and knowledgeable expert." Yet 88 percent of egalitarian communitarians accepted the same scientist's expertise.
  • people rejected the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views—and thus the relative risks inherent in each scenario.
  • head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts—they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever.
  • A key question—and one that's difficult to answer—is how "irrational" all this is. On the one hand, it doesn't make sense to discard an entire belief system, built up over a lifetime, because of some new snippet of information. "It is quite possible to say, 'I reached this pro-capital-punishment decision based on real information that I arrived at over my life,'" explains Stanford social psychologist Jon Krosnick [21]. Indeed, there's a sense in which science denial could be considered keenly "rational." In certain conservative communities, explains Yale's Kahan, "People who say, 'I think there's something to climate change,' that's going to mark them out as a certain kind of person, and their life is going to go less well."
  • people gravitate toward information that confirms what they believe, and they select sources that deliver it. Same as it ever was, right? Maybe, but the problem is arguably growing more acute, given the way we now consume information
  • a higher education correlated with an increased likelihood of denying the science on the issue.
  • one insidious aspect of motivated reasoning is that political sophisticates are prone to be more biased than those who know less about the issues.
  • It all raises the question: Do left and right differ in any meaningful way when it comes to biases in processing information, or are we all equally susceptible?
  • Some researchers have suggested that there are psychological differences between the left and the right that might impact responses to new information—that conservatives are more rigid and authoritarian, and liberals more tolerant of ambiguity. Psychologist John Jost of New York University has further argued that conservatives are "system justifiers": They engage in motivated reasoning to defend the status quo.
  • What can be done to counteract human nature itself?
  • Given the power of our prior beliefs to skew how we respond to new information, one thing is becoming clear: If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn't trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.
  • Kahan infers that the effect occurred because the science had been written into an alternative narrative that appealed to their pro-industry worldview.
  • You can follow the logic to its conclusion: Conservatives are more likely to embrace climate science if it comes to them via a business or religious leader, who can set the issue in the context of different values than those from which environmentalists or scientists often argue. Doing so is, effectively, to signal a détente in what Kahan has called a "culture war of fact." In other words, paradoxically, you don't lead with the facts in order to convince. You lead with the values—so as to give the facts a fighting chance.
  • anonymous on 20 Apr 11
     
    In the annals of denial, it doesn't get much more extreme than the Seekers. They lost their jobs, the press mocked them, and there were efforts to keep them away from impressionable young minds. But while Martin's space cult might lie at on the far end of the spectrum of human self-delusion, there's plenty to go around. And since Festinger's day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning [3]" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, "death panels," the birthplace and religion of the president [4] (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.
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Europe's Libyan Dilemma Deepens - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...europes-libyan-dilemma-deepens geopolitics libya
shared by anonymous on 21 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 authorizing military intervention specifically prohibits ground-troop involvement for occupation, but by definition leaves open the possibility of ground forces being used for some undefined purpose.
  • the situation on the ground has continuously overtaken official statements and apparently firm policy stances.
  • First, the Libyan intervention has no clear leader.
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  • Second, the intervening countries clearly have regime change in mind as the ultimate goal, but have thus far limited their operations purely to the enforcement of the no-fly zone and the targeting of Gadhafi loyalist forces from the air.
  • The failure to evict Gadhafi from power and standing by while Misrata gets pounded presents a political problem, especially after so much political capital was spent in Paris and London on getting the intervention approved in the first place, specifically for the purpose of preventing civilian casualties. Yet again Europeans will look impotent and incompetent in foreign affairs, just as the Yugoslav imbroglio illustrated in the 1990s.
  • anonymous on 21 Apr 11
     
    "Italian Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa said on Wednesday that Western forces might need to increase their involvement in Libya. La Russa added that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi would only leave power if forcibly removed, and that Rome would consider sending 10 military instructors to help train rebels. The pledge from La Russa comes after the United Kingdom announced it was sending 20 military advisers and France stated that it would also send military liaison officers."
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The Continuing Challenge of Mideast Peace | STRATFOR - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...inuing-challenge-mideast-peace
shared by anonymous on 22 Apr 11 - Cached
  • Given the circumstances, the early collapse of Obama’s peace initiative was not surprising. It has now been nearly eight months since Obama painted himself into a corner with a September deadline, but the prospects for peace are not looking any brighter and the stakes in the dispute are rising.
  • Israel cannot be sure that domestic pressures within Egypt, particularly in an Egypt attempting to move the country toward popular elections, will not produce a shift in Egyptian policy toward Israel.
  • Israel is now in a bind: If it refuses negotiations and Abbas moves forward with his plans, it will risk having to deal with a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. Israel will then have to invest a great deal of energy in lobbying countries around the world to refrain from recognition, in return for whatever concessions they try to demand.
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  • The Obama administration has maintained that the path to Palestinian statehood must come through negotiations, and not a unilateral declaration. Such a declaration would place Washington in an uncomfortable position of having to refuse recognition while trying to restart the negotiation process after a red line has already been crossed. Obama can align his presidency with another peace initiative and try to use it to offset criticism in the Islamic world over Washington’s disjointed policies in dealing with the current Mideast unrest. On the other hand, if this initiative collapses as quickly as the last, Obama will have another Mideast foreign policy failure on his hands while also struggling to both keep in check a military campaign in Libya and shape exit strategies for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • No matter who ends up announcing their terms for peace first, there is one player that could derail this latest Mideast peace effort in one fell swoop: Hamas. Not a participant to the negotiations in the first place, Hamas wants to deny Fatah a political opportunity and sustain tension between Israel and Egypt. As Israel knows well, past attempts at the peace process have generated an increase in militant acts and that in turn lead to Israel not making meaningful concessions. A hastily organized negotiation operating under a deadline five months from expiration is unlikely to lead to progress in peace, but does provide Hamas with golden militant opportunity.
  • anonymous on 22 Apr 11
     
    "Another attempt at Israeli-Palestinian peace talks may be on the horizon. But this time, the United States appears reluctant to play host. This is a marked contrast from September 2010, when U.S. President Barack Obama's administration optimistically relaunched Israeli-Palestinian talks and declared that the negotiations should be concluded by September 2011. Obama reiterated his proposed deadline in his September 2010 speech to the U.N. General Assembly in which he stated, "When we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations - an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel.""
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The Fault Line Within Iran's Political System - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...-within-irans-political-system iran geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 01 May 11 - Cached
  • It is essentially about the balance of power within the Iranian political system: Ahmadinejad is the first president of the Islamic republic to assert himself to the point where he has emerged as the main center of power in the complex Iranian political structure — a hybridization of the Shia notion of Velayet-e-Faqih, a state ruled by a jurist, and parliamentary democracy.
  • Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, is playing a shrewd game.
  • First, he is exploiting the supreme leader’s weakness and dependency on the president. Second, he is pushing the limits of his constitutional status, which gives the presidency much power and control over day-to-day governance.
  • anonymous on 01 May 11
     
    "The row between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the country's intelligence czar has evolved into a serious standoff. Both sides have much at stake in attempting to preserve their share of the country's future balance of power. A compromise of sorts will likely defuse the current situation but will not represent the end of struggle that at its core has the potential to redefine the political system in which clerics have held sway for more than three decades."
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Egypt's Changing Foreign Policy Attitudes - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...nging-foreign-policy-attitudes egypt policy geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 01 May 11 - Cached
  • the question is why is Egypt making such a radical change in policy?
  • The common element in these developments is that they are against what Israel has to come to expect of Egypt.
  • On the domestic front, SCAF is well aware of the popular sentiment toward the Palestinians and Israel and is therefore adjusting its behavior accordingly.
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  • The new military rulers also wish to see their country regain its status as the pre-eminent player in the Arab world. From their perspective, this can be achieved by engaging in radical moves vis-a-vis the Palestinians, Israel and Iran.
  • It is unlikely, however, that Egypt is about to truly reverse its position toward Israel. The Egyptians do not wish to create problems with the Israelis.
  • anonymous on 01 May 11
     
    "Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Thursday that Cairo was working to permanently open the Rafah border crossing with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Al-Arabi told the Qatari-owned channel that within seven to 10 days, measures would be adopted to assuage the "blockade and suffering of the Palestinian nation." The Egyptian foreign minister added, "It is the responsibility of each country in the world not to take part in what is called the humiliating siege. In my view, this (siege) was a disgraceful thing to happen.""
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A Palestinian Reconciliation - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...427-palestinian-reconciliation geopolitics
shared by anonymous on 01 May 11 - Cached
  • The rivalry between secularist Fatah and Islamist Hamas runs deep and reached a breaking point in the aftermath of the January 2006 elections that gave Hamas a landslide victory. The fight that followed that election led to a Hamas coup against Fatah in Gaza in June 2007, which effectively split the Palestinian territories between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Fatah-controlled West Bank.
  • anonymous on 01 May 11
     
    "Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas announced in a press conference in Cairo on Wednesday night that they have decided to put aside their differences and form an interim government, with plans to hold elections "in about eight months." By the end of next week, the two organizations are expected to sign an official reconciliation agreement."
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