This post shall break an unspoken rule that has guided my hand for a good year now. I am about to write about domestic politics. Long term readers of the Stage know that American political issues do not get much coverage here. Save in the rare cases where they intersect with the broader realms of […]
Should bookmark Southern Pulse. I have been reading this website for a week or so and have been consistently delighted with the reports it provides. I cannot think of any site that serves as its equal – all the big media outlets and think tanks have dozens of analysts monitoring the Middle East and North […]
Some of you may be wondering where the post “Haiti and the Washington Consensus” dissapeared to. Truth was, it was unifinished – I accidently pressed “publish” when I meant to press “save as draft. The post will be restored soon as it is finished.
“Who does not know that wars, the mighty tempests, the pestilence, all the ills, indeed which afflict the human race, do so through the agency of demons?” (Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, p. 83) So wrote the Saxon priest Helmold of Bosau nine centuries ago in his history of Eastern Europe, the Chronica Slavorum. I […]
A Collection of essays, reports, and blog posts of merit. Due to the particularities of my schedule, I will be unable to post much this next week. Perhaps the week after that as well. We shall see. To make up for this lack of material, I offer you a few interesting readings loosely connected in […]
…copying all the notes I have taken over the last few months in a dinky little green spiral notebook and placing them into an electronic format. Consequently, I ask the readership not to expect too much from me over the next few days. I imagine patience here might have its rewards – these notes have […]
Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a Haitian acquaintance of mine. The topic of our conversation had turned towards the corruption endemic to many underdeveloped countries, upon which point he said: “When I came to America, I did not know what the word ‘bribe’ meant. We don’t have these things in Haiti. In Haiti, […]
The majority of Chinese seem to think so. Or perhaps more accurately, a statistically questionable majority of the Chinese who happened to be polled by the Sunday Times think so. Not that this is anything new. The world has been worrying about a new Cold War between China and the United States for quite a […]
I often find myself frustrated with the lack of historical perspective present in contemporary political discourse. History is something pundits have little use for– why bother when one can blame society’s problems on the politicians one wishes driven out of office? This proclivity to see evil only in the machinations of one’s political opponents is […]
The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review has been released to the public. I have yet to decide if I shall actually read it. I did have plans for the weekend.