軍國之要，察眾心。 The essence of the army and the state: investigate the minds of the people. —The Three Strategies of Huang Shigong (2nd century BC) 士民不親附，則湯武不能以必勝也。故善附民者，是乃善用兵者也。故兵要在乎善附民而已。 If the people and the nobility are not devoted, then even a Sage King could not guarantee victory. The man who is skilled at obtaining the support of the people is […]
Image source. Now that the heat of the election season has passed, it is possible to examine the heat itself. The election’s aftermath was a grand spectacle. Some convulsed in desperation and despair. Others surrendered to frenzied, twitter-fueled fits of rapture. In the midst of all this noise, a pattern arose. In simplest terms: there is a […]
Graphic source: Kevin Urmarcher, Kevin Schaul, and Dan Keating, “These Former Obama Strongholds Sealed the Election for Trump,” Washington Post (9 November 2016). There has been a bit of push back to my last post. A lot of it revolves around this fact: Donald Trump did not win the popular vote. Others point out that […]
Go, Soul, the body’s guest, Upon a thankless errand; Fear not to touch the best; The truth shall be thy warrant: Go, since I needs must die, And give the world the lie. —Sir Walter Raleigh, “The Lie,” (c. 1592) A question many of us should be asking: do I […]
We rush towards disaster and greet it with a smirk.I sketched out what this disaster might look like when Bloomberg broke the story of Andrés Sepúlveda, a man who claims to have help hack elections in Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Venezuela, this spring: Andrés Sepúlveda is a challenge […]
A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit. This is the first “Notes From All Over” I have written this month, so this list is a long one. TOP BILLING When We Lose Antibiotics, Here’s Everything Else We’ll Lose TooMaryn McKenna. Wired. 20 November 2013. If we really lost antibiotics to advancing drug resistance […]
Image Source. On year ago President Obama declared “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” Chemical weapons have been used. Some suggest that America will […]
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” I ask my readers to pause for a moment and ponder this statement. It was penned by James Madison in […]
A few links: 1. The foreign affairs bloggers of the Takshashila Institution (formerly “the Indian National Interest”) decided “grade” President Obama’s recent trip to India. This was the result: 2. This seems to reflect the general opinion of the broader Indian public. I infer this from the shifting statements of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), […]
“Jai Hind!” So said the President of the United States this week in an address to a joint session of the Rajya Sahba and Lok Sahba. It is about time. I have criticized the Obama Administration in the past for episodes of diplomatic ineptitude and cultural insensitivity. President Obama’s stay in India does not qualify […]
