Both pretty and pretty fascinating. See this post at Catholicgauze and this one at Gene Expression. Also, tdaxp relates this map to a deflation of Russian power....
Coming Anarchy has this post on the possibility of Greenland becoming an independent country, noting that Greenland this week voted with a supermajority of more than 75% to receive greater autonomy from Denmark. This may even lead to independence for this enormous island of just 56,000 people. For more on "arctic nationalism," including recent events in the Faroe Islands, check out the...
I just came across (a little late I'm afraid) this notice for a program that the Complex Terrain Lab had in London called "BattleSpaces: Feral Cities and the Scientific Way of Warfare." The speakers were Geoff Manaugh of the excellent BLDGBLOG (he has a post on the event here) and Antoine Bousquet, lecturer on international relations at Birkbek College. The...
Edward Lucas has an essay in The Economist on political philosophy and the (r)evolution of central and eastern European politics centered on 1989. His essay begins: They gripped the world, but left political philosophers yawning. According to Jürgen Habermas, a German philosopher, the revolutions that overturned decades of totalitarian rule in central and eastern Europe in 1989 were marked by a...
On behalf of all of us at Opinio Juris I would like to thank Mary Ellen O’Connell having joined us this week in our second Oxford University Press/ Opinio Juris book symposium for a discussion of her new book, The Power and Purpose of International Law. We would also like to thank Beth Simmons for joining us as a guest commentor. Thanks also to everyone who posted comments...
In working through an explanation for the source of international law’s authority in the international community, Mary Ellen O’Connell describes the important role of positive law but also shows its limits. For example, it is very hard to imagine a serious contention that it is somehow possible to legalize genocide or slavery through the mere fact of enacting positive law....
Even though my recent posts on the "frozen conflicts" have actually been on the not-so-frozen conflict in South Ossetia, we should not forget the ongoing situation in Moldova. In fact, the new issue of The Economist has a short piece reminding its readers of the ongoing Transnistrian separatist dispute. The quick update is this: while not as heated as the...
Although the Russian invasion of Georgia this summer has receded from the front pages, it is nonetheless the topic of vigorous debate. At stake is not only how we frame our response to the situation in Georgia, but also how we view our ongoing relationship with Russia. For example, Edward Lucas, the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist has posted...
On Monday through Wednesday next week, Mary Ellen O'Connell, the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School, will join us to discuss her new book, The Power and Purpose of International Law. We are also very pleased that Beth Simmons, the Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Clarence Dillon Professor...
Via Tom Barnett's blog, I came across this essay by Jim Hoagland that was published last month in the Washington Post. Hoagland set out observations about the politicking at the World Policy Conference that was sponsored by the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales, a French think tank. What he saw has some interesting implications about the importance of soft power. After setting the scene by describing Russian...
No, I'm not talking about how to do ubiquitous surveillance. Rather, I'm talking about how to take the product of massive video surveillance and turn it into, ahem, Art. (Well, maybe that's only a small-a "art.") Anyway, let's say you're an unsigned band from Manchester, England, and you want to make a video. You could hire some hip upstart video director, hire...
Adding to the fortune-telling articles concerning the policies of the incoming Obama Administration, the Wall Street Journal states that the current administration's policies will go through the transition "largely intact." However, I think it is just too early to tell. The WSJ article begins: President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that...
