Steve probably did not intend for his guest bloggers to transform TWN to a sports weblog. So, I apologize in advance for the following entry related to the Soccer World Cup which started in my home country of Germany yesterday. Please, bear with me if I direct your attention to an important game.
Interesting week so far. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, “the Sheikh of the Slaughterers,” has been slain. Everybody wants a piece of this. The Jordanians are claiming a role. The Americans of course, Iraq’s security forces.
Dr. Mendelson Forman is speaking today at the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area meeting. Here’s an advance look at her speech. The drumbeat of reform at the UN has grown louder each day as the Bush administration continues it ongoing saga of having it both ways.
I first met Steve Clemons in Japan in the early 1990s when industrial policy was the subject du jour for up-and-coming policy wonks like him and sympathetic journalists like myself. How to resuscitate America’s manufacturing base to compete against the Japanese threat, we wondered. Times change.
My essay on privacy: The most common retort against privacy advocates — by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures — is this line: “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?” Some clever answers: “If I’m not doing anything wrong, then you…
I agree with Andy that the EU, despite the constitutional crisis, has scored several successes of late. To his list, I would add the EU’s ability to hang together on Iran and take the lead in searching for a diplomatic solution.
The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Air Force has increased bombings of Taliban and insurgent targets in Afghanistan, surpassing air operations in Iraq. According to Air Force officials, U.S. aircraft conducted 750 air strikes in Afghanstan during May, an average of 24 a day.
Incoherence at the UN. Stephen Schlesinger (my brother, who has written a book on the founding of the UN) has a good take on the Mark Balloch Brown/John Bolton kafuffle over at HuffPo. China has cracked the Da Vinci Code. Or more precisely cracked down on it.
It’s been exactly a year since cranky French and Dutch voters rejected the European Union’s draft constitution, and pundits can’t resist hyping an EU “crisis.” A steady stream of copy is provided by die-hard federalists in Brussels, ever disappointed by slow movement toward a “United States of Europe.
Is what happened in Mogadishu during the past week a microcosm of how badly the Bush administration has fundamentally mishandled its “global war on terror?” Superficially, at least, it would seem so.
