Morning Linkage
Greetings all. PM and I are switching linkage duty.
- Omar Ali looks at the 2013 Pakistani election at 3QD.
- Tom Nichols argues against US ambiguity on Iran and North Korea.
- Via Alana Tiemessen: international justice infographics from the Leitner Center (pdf).
- North Korean piracy and maritime disputes in Northeast Asia.
- Juan Cole on mounting sectarian violence in Iraq.
- The nexus between authoritarian rule, collective action, and disaster response in China. For more on strategies of divide-and-rule in modern
empiresterritorially expansive composite states, see King et al. - Tom Pepinsky's "Notes on Long Form Research Blogging." I was a little surprised to see Tom's characterization of political-science scholar-blogs as "dissemination mechanism[s] for existing work." I think a lot of us, as well as the bloggers that he links to as examples, use the medium to work out ideas via short-form pieces. My World Politics review essay came into existence at the Duck, as well as some book chapters I've done on empires and liberalism. Kindred makes the same point in comments at Tom's place. Nonetheless, long-form research blogging is a different animal, and Tom has interesting things to say about his experience doing it.
- Speaking of Kindred, here's his take on Corey Robin's attempt to connect Austrian economic thought to Nietzsche.
And also:
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Good mornin'. Here's your linkage...
- Paolo Sorbello critiques the elegantly fixed steps and rhythms of the last Waltz.
- Roger Mac Ginty at Plato's Cave discusses the construction of "greatness" in IR and the cult of followership.
- Thomas Meaney tries to explain why a passionate history of global alternatives to liberal capitalism becomes an exercise in nostalgia.
- Jason Ralph wonders if Headley Bull's Revolt Against the West thesis is appropriate for understanding contemporary international society.
- Oliver Steunkel asks: "Could the BRICS provide loans without conditionalities?"
- Syttende mai!
- Remembering Kenneth Waltz
- Erica Chenoweth and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham put together a special issue of the Journal of Peace Research on nonviolence. (Free access through July 31).
- A New Deal for Fragile States: spoiler alert -- national leadership and ownership of agendas are key.
- In other IRS news -- don't F@#$ with adjuncts...
- 3-d printable drones in our future?
- Meanwhile, back in Syria: Could things get any worse?
- Michael Walzer sees dithering in Syria as an entirely rational response.
- Is the town of Qusayr next?
- Jon Lee Anderson on videos of atrocities in war.
and....
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I've been deficient in serving your delicious, piping-hot links. I apologize. And to make matters worse, I have a very small selection of links today. But you can take solace in knowing that these are hand-crafted, artisanal links--the type of linkage that would make Henry Kissinger envious.
- The worst restaurant in America. Yes, this is a link to an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, but you'll find it gripping.
- Much like the owners of Amy's Baking Company in the Kitchen Nightmares episode above, is upset with its rankings. The PRC is trying to get the World Bank to cease ranking countries by business-friendliness.
- In The Chronicle: How do we tell students to drop our courses? And: how do you handle advisees who can't hack it?
- I'm a huge fan of The Mischiefs of Faction and of Seth Masket generally, but this post about Commodore Pike's dissertation was unfortunate on a day when we were all thinking about Man, the State, and War.
- The most heartening article I have ever read: Gans and Shepard (1994): "How Are the Mighty Fallen: Rejected Classic Articles by Leading Economists."
- I really, really like Perspectives on Politics, but I just want to say that I really, really wish that political science had journals like Journal of Economic Perspectives and Journal of Economic Literature. What do I mean? Accessible, high-quality, review and summation articles that communicate effectively to both experts and general audiences (including laymen).
- Via The Monkey Cage, what happens when political scientists stop being nice ... and start being political?
Here's you linkage (...in case you're still trying to avoid grading...)
- Manan Ahmed of Chapati Mystery fame has an op-ed in the New York Times on Pakistan's Tyrannical Majority.
- Praveen Swami asks whether it really matters to India who is the Prime Minister of Pakistan?
- Fahad Deshmukh did a wonderful little piece on Pakistan's election symbols. (Vote Bucket!)
- Shaik Ubaid argues that Bangladesh is heading for a religious civil war ever since a war crimes trial was politicized.
- Olga Khazan examines the collective action problem and charging a quarter per garment to improve worker safety in Bangladesh. (Assuming of course that the extra cost is actually spent on safety and not profits for the local manufacturer or bribes to the new building inspector...)
- Pankaj Mishra reminds Niall Ferguson and his ilk that the sun is at last setting on Britain's Imperial Myth.
- The Indian Navy has commissioned its first squadron of MiG-29K naval fighters. (Now if that aircraft carrier would just be delivered...)
- John Knefel asserts that everything you've been told about radicalization is wrong.
- More on the question of Red Lines. I asked so what? John Mueller wants them erased. Malfrid Braut-Hegghammar wants them enforced.
- Must read from Dexter Filkins on Obama administration's thinking on Syria .
- Tom Ricks sees some wisdom in the lessons from Iraq on Syria.
- Steve Walt applauds the administration's buck passing.
- Zbigniew Brzezinski argues intervention will make things worse.
- Daniel Serwer on how Syria is affecting Iraq.
- Colin Kahl and Marc Lynch look toward "progressive engagement" after the Arab uprisings.
- Seeing the glass half-full in Pakistan.
and....
I don't know whether to feel horribly manipulated, simply appreciate the nerd-fest humor, or both.
- Andrew Philips on the new Australian Defense White Paper.
- Dan Trombly on the efficacy of US intervention in Syria.
- Jay Ulfelder wants to restrict our use of the term "state" to, as best as I can tell, sovereign-territorial entities. His intentions are good--break unilinear understandings of state (trans)formation--but his methods are wrong: they simply re-inscribe an association between "state" and the Weberian ideal type of the "modern state."
- Marc Lynch on anti-Americanism in the Arab world.
- I've been generally appalled by the lack of a paperback release for Stacie Goddard's excellent Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy: Jerusalem and Northern Ireland. Amazon is currently selling the harback version for under $20, so I strongly suggest buying a copy.
- Speaking of deals, Nick Kiersey and Iver B. Neumann (eds) Battlestar Galactica and International Relations has been discounted to $14.95 on Kindle. The occasion? Edward James Olmos discovering the book and tweeting Nick about it. The volume includes chapters by many Ducks, including PTJ, Charli Carpenter, and, well, me.
- Crooked Timber's symposium on The Half-Made World and The Rise of Ransom City is starting to appear. I wanted to provide a piece, but overcommitments prevented me from doing so. Go read.
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Good morning ducks! Here's your update from District 12...
- Kalpona Aktar just wants you to know who is making your clothes.
- Myra MacDonald argues that the TTP has a plan to influence the elections and the people do not. The "bewildering bloodbath" will go on and the only way to keep track is to count the dead children.
- These photos make the exercise of biopower seem so clean and clinical.
- Jean Valjean is living below the poverty line again ... for a week.
- Is this classified as democracy promotion in the budget?
- Niraja Jayal unpacks concepts of citizenship.
- A new translation of Manik Bandopadhyay's Namuna.
- Red lines or red lights on Syria? It's not just about Syria.
- What if the Tsarnaevs had been shooters instead of bombers?
- Playing out academic feuds in the press...Reinhart and Rogoff respond.
- Fodder for PTJ: What do scientifc studies tell us?
- Very persuasive: I spent three hours yesterday on the tarmac at O'Hare delayed by an FAA furlough hold as a result of sequestration -- passed the time reading Mark Blyth's Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea -- scathing rebuke of neoliberalism.
- If you are keeping score, Spain's unemployment just topped 27% -- 6 million -- with more budget cuts pending.
- Tarak Barkawi warns of the neoliberal assault on academia.
- While we're at it -- here's one reason REF is so popular among academics. ht: Sherrill Stroschein
- Who knew? Apparently it's more lucrative to be a member of the Chinese National Peoples Congress than to be a member of the US Congress.
- The best we can advise on whether or not to go to grad school: "good luck?"
- I'm confused -- we spend $750bn+/yr on national security and we're in danger of falling into isolation?
- The difference between pets in Diablo III and Torchlight II.
- Blah blah blah Game of Thrones blah blah credible commitments blah blah blah prisoners' dilemma.
- Taylor Fravel says that China hasn't abandoned no-first use.
- Pavel Podvig demolishes "SDI ended the Cold War" claptrap. Key graf: "The evolution of the Soviet attitudes toward SDI suggests that the main factor that contributed to the ending the confrontation of the Cold War was the willingness of the United States and the Soviet Union to engage in a dialogue on reduction of their nuclear forces. The only result that the SDI program was able to achieve in the context of confrontation was to embolden those in the Soviet Union who defined security in confrontational terms and benefited from this kind of understanding."
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Good morning... These aren't the linkages you're looking for...
- Owen Jones reviews the hierarchy of death in the wake of the Boston bombing or what Judith Butler, in Frames of War, might call (un)grievable lives.
- Deepak Sarma at Racialicious writes about "Being Brown After the Boston Bomb Blast." (Hey the dudes who did it turned out to be white. Brown and black people can chill now right? right?? Those false early reports about "dark skinned" suspects were just an honest mistake... Yeah, let's move on...)
- Tom Scocca at the Gawker asks, "Is the New York Post Edited by a Bigoted Drunk who Fucks Pigs?" (I dunno... but while we're talking about racism in America...)
- Why does the one with the most melanin always seem to die first in American horror flicks? And if that's the case, why are these movies apparently popular with minority audiences? Joshua Alston at the Feminist Wire explains why the American horror genre typified by Evil Dead is a race-reversed minstrel show.
- Speaking of minstrel shows, has the desi coolie evolved into the nebbish and accentless "American" who fills the minority quota on 'Merican tee-vee? Is "the most successful minority in US history" the beneficiary of pervasive anti-black racism? Have DuBois' fears of Indians' allegiances come true? And is this new found "acceptance" being translated into refashioning US foreign policy? In other words is IACPA becoming the new AIPAC? (Not quite...)
- Spencer Kornhaber trashes Tom Cruise's latest sci-fi flick, Oblivion, for failing to ask any serious moral or ethical questions, particularly about weaponized drone warfare. (By the way, when did the Pakistani tribal belt become our vision of the future?)
- Nobel Prize winner, Muhammed Yunnus, asks why there isn't social fiction to imagine a ways to end poverty. (Isn't that what micro-credit was?)
- Anil Kapoor will be the new Jack Bauer in the Indian version of 24. (Maybe instead of chasing terrorists they could chase a more immediate threat to human security in India: gang and child rapists?)
Our readers may have noticed the lack of Saturday linkage. I was at the MD/PA/WV/VA combined state Tumbling and Trampoline state championships, in a facility with Faraday-cage properties. I am pleased to say that my daughter qualified for National Junior Olympics in her two main events -- trampoline and double-mini trampoline. Along the way she took first place and fourth place, for Maryland, in her age-group and level. Below is video for her Level 6 tramp routine.
Although most Americans' attention was focused on the dramatic apprehension of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, quite a lot of significant events happened around the world. For example:
- China appeared to abandon its no-first use pledge for nuclear weapons.
- China's had trouble getting aid to a remote part of Sichuan provence hit by a major earthquake.
- The EU brokered a game-changing deal between Serbia and Kosovo.
- The US is paying more for its overseas basing network (via LFC).
- And just today, shots have been fired at a marijuana-legalization rally in Denver.
There's also been a lot of interesting commentary and stuff, including:
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- Via Marginal Revolution, the always-interesting Xavier Marquez writes about Randall Collins' sociology. [Abandoned Footnotes]
- Obama staffers find jobs in white-shoe Washington. It turns out that the new boss is much the same as the old boss [The New Republic]
- Phil Schrodt talks about GDELT: Global Data on Events, Location, and Tone, a global events database that Jay Ulfelder has called the future of political science. Rolf Friedheim gives a detailed case-study of using the data in R to map some Russian protests.
- Good news for (consumers of) higher education: Marginal Revolution argues that the cost and time savings of online education trump Baumol's cost disease. As one commenter asks: "As the saying goes 'science progresses one funeral at a time' – today less so. But what if one day science progress were slowed by zombie lectures on the ‘net?" [Marginal Revolution]
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Good morning ducks! Here are your links...
- Even more well off people will be able to exempt themselves from TSA's airport security theater thanks to Visa credit cards. Well, it's not like potential hijackers could afford the annual fee or first-class tickets anyway. Oh wait...
- Do you enjoy being frisked, finger printed, and rapiscanned at airports? Then you'll be delighted to know that Homeland Security will be expanding its use of biometrics to US immigration offices. Already a citizen? Great! Because the FBI is planning to amass data on US citizens gathered by law enforcement authorities. The NYPD has already been collecting biometric data since 2010. No, there's nothing to worry about, because everyone knows how professional and totally unracist the NYPD is about conducting surveillance.
- America's stalwart ally, Israel, would like to retain its right to discriminate against certain categories of Americans entering the holy land in exchange for the US granting Israelis visa-free access to the US. Israel regularly discriminates against Americans who happen to be Muslim or Arab, as well as Americans who happen to be critical of Israel or supportive of Palestinian rights. Who will be the first American politician to sell out their fellow American citizens? (Right answer... It's a tie!: Barbara Boxer and Roy Blunt)
- Ahh, the Muslim Question in America. So vexing... So not about Muslims at all.
- Arrianna Marie Conerly Coleman asks: "Is the settler colony a space of exception?"
- The hunger strike at Guantanamo continues. Guards are now placing strikers in solitary confinement and force feeding - echoes of Maze Prison and other hell holes. Force feeding is, of course, a form of torture. And self-inflicted hunger is the weapon of the weakest of the weak.
- Finally, as long as we are talking security and biopolitics... No, your cellphone is not likely to interfere with a plane's navigation system; the rule is just another disciplinary exercise. Unless of course, your intention is to use this Android app to interfere with the airplane's navigation system...
- The above video includes Sean Kay speaking about US-European relations and international security.
- Kelsey Davenport: "How to Read the North Korean Nuclear Missile Threat."
- Scott Harold and Lowell Schwartz: "A Russia-China Alliance Brewing?" More Sino-Russian cooperation on alcohol production would be awesome!
- The National Security Archive has a nice roundup of their materials concerning discussions between Thatcher and Gorbachev. Spoiler: the 'no German unification' agreement seems to have failed.
And I bet that you all thought that I'd completely forgotten....
- Robert Farley on the lessons of the Falklands War... for the PLA-N.
- Adam Elkus ruminates on the relationship between theory and math.
- Robert Murray: IR Theory and North Korea.
- Patrick M. Morgan's award-winning article: "The State of Deterrence in International Politics Today" (PDF).
- The (Proposed) US Global HIV/AIDS budget.
- Can Islam Karimov's daughter succeed him?
Good Mornin' Ducks! Here are some links on the crise du jour...
- Tim Shorrock discusses what what the US media is missing in its coverage of North Korea on FAIR's CounterSpin. (MP3 Podcast at 9.30 - 18:25)
- Kongdan Oh discusses how to understand North Korea and the "Republic of Pyongyang" on Brookings FPRI E-notes.
- UCSD's Stephan Haggard argues that Kim Jong-Un is not crazy.
- Professor Yoon Young-kwan at Seoul National asks us what would have happened if the Realism of Metternich guided our approach to North Korea.
- The CFR's Scott Snyder and the Duck's very own Robert Kelly discussed the rising tensions in North Korea a few days ago.
- ISA News: Congratulations to Dan and Patrick! They will be involved with ISQ -- ISA's flagship publication for the next five years. Dan has been selected as the lead editor, Patrick as the web editor. Congrats!
- I'm not a fan of the new grading software technologies, but maybe I can be persuaded -- grading while at ISA does suck.
- Already? Minerva (note: not Duck of) a threat to MOOCs.
- We have an answer to the universe? It's all code? Cool.
- The decline in critical thinking in the US is becoming a national security concern. Can we securitize the liberal arts?
- Barbara Walter, Daniel Maliniak, and Ryan Powers find that articles written by women in IR are cited significantly less than articles written by men.
Plus:
- Why leaving Afghanistan isn't so easy -- retrograde logistics.
- Kony
20122013, it's now a $5m bounty.
and...
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Good Morning Duckies... Happy April Fool's Day. Here are some stories which we didn't make up just for this day...:
- Nicholas Sarkozy will soon be an employee of Qatar.
- The four year long battle for the Euro is not over.
- The top US adviser in Afghanistan is a former kebab restaurant owner from Nebraska.
- The $37 billion Little Crappy Ship (a.k.a. "The Klingon Bird of Prey") is not survivable in combat.
- The Indian Air Force loses one fighter squadron every two years due to crashes. (Umm... maybe try better flying lessons?)
- If newspapers still exist in a few years, they might be delivered by drones.
- Pakistan is making its own version of Glee. Will they make it to nationals?
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