Ask any question about geopolitics, broadly defined. We — and others reading the FM website — will attempt to answer it in the comments. All answers welcomed!
Contents
- Questions received so far
- To start the discussion: articles of interest this week
- Quote of the week
(1) Questions received so far
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- What is going on in Iran and what is the best response? What is really going on in Syria and what is the best response?
- Can military service actually prepare you for a successful career?
- What does the USA`s support of Israel mean to the people of Palestine?
- What is the role of the US in the planned destruction of the states of Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran?
- Can we develop a national economic strategy, such as the American System brilliantly articulated by Henry Clay?
- Has the volunteer military created a class distinct from the American people? If yes, to what or whom do they give allegance?
- What do you think of Celine’s laws?
- Can Iran successfully block the Straight of Hormuz and its oil traffic? Is this sabre rattling or are we on the brink of war with Iran?
- Are peripheral countries like the proverbial canaries in coal mines?
- What is the best (most interesting and useful) of the many year-end articles?
(2) To start the discussion: articles of interest this week
- Recommended: “The best graphs of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – Guideposts on the Road Back to Factville“, Jared Bernstein (economist, CBPP), 29 December 2011
- “Yes, Virginia, Afghanistan IS Strategically Irrelevant“, Bernard Finel, 12 December 2011
- Jonathan Ladd (Asst Prof Government, Georgetown U), Why everyone hates the media“, Salon, 23 December 2011 — “Mistrust of the press is at near-historic highs. A new book argues that has dangerous public-policy consequences”
- “The Worst NYT Story on Climate Ever?“, Roger Pielke Jr (Prof environmental studies at U CO – Bolder), 26 December 2011
- We’re weak because they’ve taken away our history and substituted lies: “Why we still can’t talk about slavery“, Peter Birkenhead, Salon, 27 December 2011 — “On a trip through the South, Civil War culture is presented as authentic. They just leave out the slavery part.”
- Plutocracy at work in 19th C America: “State of Nature“, James Kwak, Baseline Scenario, 27 December 2011
- Facts, the antidote to propaganda: “The Ocean Is Not Getting Acidified“, Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, 27 December 2011
- More good news about ocean acidification: “The fishes and the coral live happily in the CO2 bubble plume“, David Archibald, WUWT, 28 December 2011
- Important: “Keynes Was Right“, Paul Krugman, op-ed in the New York Times, 29 December 2011 — Perhaps the biggest story of 2011, OECD governments’ test of Keynes.
- “Vengeance in Libya“, Joshua Hammer, New York Review of Books, 12 January 2012 — Update on the results of our latest foreign intervention. It’s not pretty.
(3) Quote of the week
“There’s a reason we separate military and the police: one fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
— Commander William Adama on the Battlestar Galactica espisode “Water”, first broadcast on 14 January 2004 — See the Battlestar Wiki