A recent wind storm in central China. See the Dust Storm Nugget below. From the Daily Mail. A Global-Peace-Building Strategy (Editorial) from Politico
"The National Security Strategy, released last week by the Obama administration, is a big step toward rethinking America’s strategic narrative. The impact of the plan should be amplified and integrated with lessons learned in conflict management to advance the whole-of-government approach. ... So what have we learned about how to manage today’s conflicts overseas?"
Obama's New National Security Vision (Michael Boyle) from the Guardian [of the UK]
"Barack Obama's national security strategy sees the world as it is – and recognises the limits of American influence."
A Surprising Consensus on Nuclear Nonproliferation from Time Magazine
"There are few more crucial linchpins to global security than the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. ... The last major review conference, in 2005, ended in acrimonious failure, and there were concerns that a similar fate this year would put the future of the treaty in doubt at a time when it is needed most. But then something unexpected happened: the global community came together."
Three Political Casualties of the Flotilla Raid (Marc Ambinder) from the Atlantic
"Israel would say that it was being held to different standards and that the existential threat is faces is real, no matter what others may think. This may be true. But when the entire world, save (quietly) Turkey, and (openly) the United States, held Israel to a different standard, then Israel was held to a different standard. ... But that top cover from America no longer exists in the Obama Administration."
Mideast Peace Push May Survive Raid on Gaza Activists from Bloomberg News Service
"Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority said hours after the May 31 incident that they want to return to negotiations, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dispatched George Mitchell, her special envoy on Middle East peace, to talk to both sides."
Very premature to make this conclusion -- the process may survive what happened to THIS flotilla. What about the next ... and the one after that? I think Hamas has stumbled into a strategy that will be continue and has a good chance of succeeding in breaking the Israeli blockade.
US Persuades Multinationals to Quite Iran from Newsweek
"In just the past two months, the U.S. government has persuaded multinationals such as Daimler, Caterpillar, and KPMG to pull out and banks from Europe to China to stop all transactions originating in Iran."
Diplomatic Pressure Narrows Iran's Nuclear Options from YaleGlobal Online
"Yet Iran’s isolation increased in that forum, adding to the nation’s diplomatic woes. In particular, Egypt, the head of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of more than 100 countries including Iran that remain neutral to the major powers, has repeatedly rejected Iranian proposals that would support its confrontation with the West."
BP Oil Spill NOT the Biggest Ever -- Not Even the Biggest in the Gulf from Discovery News
"The 1979 Ixtoc I well blowout spewed oil into Mexico's Bay of Campeche for 290 days, dumping around 3.3 million barrels of oil into the warm Gulf waters, as gas belching from below fed a continuous fire on the ocean's surface."
Y'know, as a historian I find this information to be good news. One can only hope that BP and ocean biologists, etc., are looking back at that episode and taking notes. The experience then (even in this brief article) is quite instructive.
Indeed, it sounds like the coast of Nigeria has been catching it for years!
A Deepwater Horizon Spill, Every Year from Discovery News
"The Gulf spill pales in comparison to epic scale of pollution in Nigeria's Niger Delta."
Oil Spill Politics from the Financial Times [of London]
"President Barack Obama and his team are coming under increasing criticism. In trying to contain the political damage, the White House must avoid submitting to this pressure and making a bad situation worse. Much of the criticism is both incoherent and unfair. Even erstwhile allies are attacking Mr Obama for calmness in a crisis. Many demand more fury – often while admitting that the government is doing all it usefully can."
Race to the Top: A Sprint When We Need a Marathon (Matt Miller) from the Washington Post
"Any honest assessment of the bigger picture is more depressing. That's because the real race we're in is not a "race to the top" within the United States but a race to maintain middle-class living standards in a world where rising, hungry powers such as China and India now threaten them. It's a race against other advanced nations whose school systems routinely outperform ours."
Miller is on the mark here. He's our pundit-of-the-day!
Can Obama Consign the 'War on Drugs' to History? (Sasha Abramsky) from the Guardian [of the UK]
"Obama's drug control policy leaves the noisy rhetoric of the past behind. It could become one of his top domestic achievements."
Waiting For A Wave That May Never Come (Michael Hais) from ndn.org
"What happened last week in Pennsylvania 12 might not be the upset that many in Washington believe it to be. That's because, as we have been saying in this space for the past year, 2010 is not 1994 and the chances of a Republican wave building off shore are far lower now than they were then."
Harry Reid's Getting an Angle on His Survival Chances (Marc Ambinder) from the Atlantic
"If Republicans nominate Sharron Angle as their Senate nominee next week, could majority leader Harry Reid, beleaguered, fatigued, unpopular, pull off an upset win? You betcha. "
HOUSING NUGGET!!
Walk Away From Your Mortgage! (Roger Lowenstein) from the Sunday New York Times Magazine
"Time was, Americans would do anything to pay their mortgage — forgo a new car or a vacation, even put a younger family member to work. But the housing collapse left 10.7 million families owing more than their homes are worth. So some of them are making a calculated decision to hang onto their money and let their homes go."
SQUIRREL NUGGET!!
Squirrels Show Altruistic Side from Discovery News
"Dogs will nurse orphaned cats and even tigers. Dolphins will go above and beyond to care for an injured pod member, sometimes swimming underneath another dolphin and pushing it to the surface so it can breath. This kind of behavior isn't surprising for social animals that tend to stay in packs, scientists say. What is surprising is the new finding that solitary animals do it too."
The original article is HERE at Nature Communications.
MIDEAST CULTURE NUGGET!!
Islamismism: Hirsi Ali, Berman and Ramadan on Islam from the New Yorker
"Ayaan Hirsi Ali says that [migrating] Muslims must choose between Islam and the secular West; Tariq Ramadan speaks of integration."
Hirsi Ali, the author of Infidel and Nomad, has sparked a lot of controversy about her scathing statements about Islam and the west's lame (in her view) efforts to integrate muslims into western culture.
DUST STORM NUGGET!!
Desert Storm: Huge Cloud of Sand Descends on Chinese Village from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"Like a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie, a towering cloud of sand dwarfs the rows of uniform houses as it descends on a small village in central China. Residents hid inside their homes with their windows and doors locked shut as the dust storm swept through the region advancing 70ft a minute."
Looks like something straight out of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s!
No comments:
Post a Comment