Edge, an online salon of public intellectuals with a scientific bent, posed a question to its contributors: “What are you optimistic about? Why?” They received 160 short essays in response. Open Source Radio hosted a few of the contributors for an on-air discussion. I was hoping for something about life on Mars but what I got was probably better:...
Two days before Saddam was executed, Iraq's deputy justice minister, Bosho Ibrahim, told the Associated Press that executing Saddam within 30 days of the Cassation Panel’s decision to uphold his death sentence would violate Iraqi law. “The law does not say within 30 days,” he said, “it says after the lapse of 30 days.” The Cassation Panel rejected Ibrahim’s...
John Negroponte, the National Intelligence Director, will become the new Deputy Secretary of State, the Department’s number 2 position. CNN has the story here. No word yet on who will take his place overseeing intelligence. ...
The American Society of International Law has started a new fellowship program in international and/or comparative law. While it may be of particular interest to academics on sabbatical, a university position is not a requirement. Actually, I would especially encourage lawyers planning to enter the academic job market to look at this fellowship as a way to focus on...
New UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has started making new appointments and agenda setting at the United Nations. The NY Times reports thatVijay Nambiar of India, a special adviser to Mr. Ban’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, will be his chief of staff, and Michèle Montas, an award-winning Haitian broadcaster, will head the spokesman’s division, replacing Stéphane Dujarric of France, a...
Whenever I discuss Saddam here in New Zealand, people always want to know to what extent the U.S. supported his regime. Fortunately, I can now refer them to Juan Cole's recent post "For Whom the Bell Tolls: Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein." Summarizing, the ten ways are as follows: The CIA was...
The stroke of midnight not only heralded the New Year, but also the entrance of Romania and Bulgaria into the EU. The BBC story is here. The EU has now grown to 27 countries with a population of half a billion people. See a time-lapse map of EU expansion here. As the borders of “Europe” move eastward, the question...
Juan Cole has an excellent article on Saddam's execution at Salon.com. Particularly interesting is what he has to say about the decision to execute Saddam today, which appears to be designed to further alienate Iraq's Sunnis:The tribunal also had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam's hanging. It was a slap in the face to...
Let us hope that his death doesn't breathe even more life into the insurgency. I fear that it will. ...
According to reports, Saddam will be executed before the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha, which begins this Sunday. Saddam will hanged, although he has expressed a preference for a firing squad. The Iraqi government's decision echoes the Nuremberg trial, where the IMT deliberately denied the condemned defendants a firing squad, the preferred method of execution for soldiers. Indeed,...
I tend to agree with Roger's sober assessment of the value of blogging — if we can till a small patch of otherwise unplowed soil, that's something accomplished, but we shouldn't assume much more value than that. One sign that the blogging phenomenon may have peaked is the number of abandoned blogs one comes across these days — blogs...
Whatever one may think about the presidency of Gerald Ford, he lived up to his self-description as a committed internationalist. And if one were to name his most significant international achievement, the Helsinki Accords would be high on the list. Indeed, Daniel Thomas in his book The Helsinki Effect argues that the Helsinki Accords contributed directly to the...
