tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93597472009-11-30T12:12:21.696-05:00<b>US foreign policy for the 21st Century</b>Punditanoreply@blogger.comBlogger1409125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-30081334117482227922009-11-28T12:40:00.010-05:002009-11-29T05:30:24.176-05:00

The American news media, which is over a barrel when it comes to reporting on the interactions between China, India, and Pakistan, have seized with almost hysterical relief on the gate-crashing of two wannabe Bravo TV stars. Of course it's a very serious matter if there was indeed a security breach at the White House dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. However, the media have

Punditanoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-39553115155579450422009-11-25T04:13:00.011-05:002009-11-25T11:59:03.767-05:00

In July 2008 Mark Mazzetti, one of the great American journalists to report on U.S. defense issues in the post-9/11 era, wrote for The New York Times about the complexities that American intelligence professionals faced when dealing with Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)agency. The CIA in Pakistan has been myopic about how ISI objectives, which conflict with America's in key areas,

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-16907963036904949932009-11-25T03:15:00.004-05:002009-11-25T03:37:06.784-05:00

Well, John Batchelor is finally back where he started in 2001 -- back on New York City's 77 WABC-AM weeknights from 9 PM to 1 AM. The weeknight show will join the weekend one in syndication. Check your local WABC-affiliated radio station for details. It's almost Thanksgiving so I'll refrain from making sarcastic, bitter, venomous, and all-around nasty comments about the radio biz. I will be

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-22861202966678290932009-11-21T08:53:00.014-05:002009-11-21T12:12:06.756-05:00

On or about August 30, 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates received a detailed assessment of the military situation in Afghanistan that included a request for additional U.S. troops. The report was from General Stanley A. McChrystal, Commander, Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan. But as noted on the first page the assessment was a

Punditanoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-47845495151466342182009-11-16T10:07:00.009-05:002009-11-16T14:21:09.300-05:00

A colleague sent me this November 15 news item from Britain's Daily Express headlined MILLION HIT BY "PLAGUE WORSE THAN SWINE FLU"; she commented, "Always watch the other hand." So naturally I opened the link and read with interest:A deadly plague could sweep across Europe, doctors fear, after an outbreak of a virus in Ukraine plunged the country and its neighbours into a state of panic. A

Punditanoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-22151128601451198182009-11-16T01:17:00.009-05:002009-11-16T09:03:54.985-05:00

On Friday Rush Limbaugh and some other denizens of the American Right expressed outrage that during his visit to Japan President Barack Obama ducked the question, when a Japanese reporter asked whether he thought the decision to use nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was correct. Newsbusters, a conservative website, lectured, "Defending the decision of the United States to drop nuclear

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-5435187526751652232009-11-12T04:25:00.006-05:002009-11-12T12:25:21.439-05:00

Last night I was badly shaken by breaking news at RBO that Lou Dobbs had announced his resignation from CNN. I leaped to the conclusion that CNN, under pressure from immigration groups, Mexico's government and ours, had asked him to resign because of the controversy over his reports on illegal immigration. But after reading the transcript of his announcement (see below), it looks to my eyes

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-68744904375978460812009-11-07T07:47:00.004-05:002009-11-07T09:00:34.346-05:00

Strategic defaulting or 'voluntary foreclosure' is where homeowners who can afford the mortgage walk away from it because they figure it doesn't pay to keep up the payments on a house that's fallen considerably in value. I've heard before about the phenomenon, which has mushroomed during the recession. But the reporter who wrote the following article for USA TODAY marshals facts about the trend

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-14781172790636220922009-11-05T10:14:00.007-05:002009-11-05T12:51:13.405-05:00

I think I told readers the story years ago -- how, as a small child accompanying my mother on her frequent visits to Mexico, I began to ask questions about the contrast I noted there between the most awful poverty and the great wealth in the country. Once, after seeing a church with a large amount of gold statuary, I asked why the church didn't give the gold to the poor. When I didn't receive a

Punditanoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-5589124740120194162009-11-03T06:17:00.006-05:002009-11-03T06:51:18.816-05:00

American parents saving for their children's college education will have blood shooting out of their eyes, to steal a phrase from Glenn Beck, by the time they finish reading the discussion from the October 31 airing of Paul Gigot's "Journal Editorial Report" on Fox News Cable. The panel, led by Paul Gigot, examines the reasons for the skyrocketing cost of a college education in the USA.At the end

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-92165266943988353052009-11-02T07:24:00.003-05:002009-11-02T07:50:32.304-05:00

David Knowlesat SphereSAN FRANCISCO (Oct. 29) -- Billions of dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are being spent on infrastructure projects across the country, but as this week's closing of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge shows, for every problem that gets addressed, it seems like 10 more are waiting.[...] For Wayne Klotz, president of the American Society of

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-14725707359109772062009-10-28T09:02:00.005-04:002009-10-28T13:17:44.919-04:00

February 4, 2009:TED, the annual gathering of the most pretentious people from the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, just got punk'd. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd. Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates's, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn't feel like TED

Punditanoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-58821694820283307292009-10-16T14:01:00.007-04:002009-10-17T04:07:47.653-04:00

"Ayers has been peddling a heavily racialized, even racist, view of American life since his days in the SDS and Weather Underground in the late 1960s. That historical background is actually far more important to understanding the relationship between Ayers and Barack Obama than is widely understood."Steve Diamond writes at his King Harvest blog: The “Renaissance” of Bill Ayersby Stephen Diamond,

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-20784468675308506552009-10-13T03:42:00.004-04:002009-10-13T04:00:03.353-04:00

Bad FOX! Bad! Bad!

Punditanoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-20009249823722135502009-10-11T04:59:00.008-04:002009-10-11T07:22:02.319-04:00

In his ongoing quest to figure out the Obama administration's foreign policy, Washington Post columnist and associate editor David Ignatius has analyzed several Obama speeches and found a recurring theme. In his October 8 editorial for The Washington Post he summarizes the theme, which is fast gaining coin in the Obama camp, and which the U.S. Department of State is pushing. So whether or not you

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-40614824463705218352009-10-11T02:43:00.003-04:002009-10-11T02:53:50.621-04:00

Thanks to RBO blogger Procrustes for fashioning the pictures and text I sent her into a right proper blog post; visit RBO at this link to see the fun I had tracking down some Norwegian advisors to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.Professor Stephen Diamond's latest post at his King Harvest blog, which he's given me permission to republish here, is his take on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-33184227084730987902009-10-07T08:27:00.006-04:002009-10-07T09:36:29.418-04:00

"[O]ld Bob has become something of a bellwether. At the time of the Gulf war he wrote incredibly despondent articles predicting the annihilation of the western powers. He found a group of British soldiers lost in the desert and extrapolated defeat for the whole of Desert Storm. At the time of the Kosovo crisis he reported that the bombing would only make things worse. Since September 11, he has

Punditanoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-78614337933183101332009-10-06T12:44:00.004-04:002009-10-06T14:51:09.584-04:00

Regarding the mention of David Hoffman's Dead Hand in John Batchelor's post today, which I publish below, I recommend that you first read an excellent New York Times review of the book. Hoffman's book is the first full account of how the Soviet-US arms race finally ended. That will set the stage for John's post about the intrigue surrounding the development of Iran's nuclear weapons.John recently

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-77056890767332704102009-10-06T11:15:00.005-04:002009-10-06T11:51:15.614-04:00

This is to introduce Steve Diamond's latest post at his King Harvest blog, which he's given me permission to republish here. For many years Steve has worked to support democracy in countries with authoritarian regimes. So he would have written exactly the same in this case no matter who sat in the White House, if the Dalai Lama had received the same treatment as he did from the Obama

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-58222471531249689022009-10-05T16:46:00.005-04:002009-10-05T17:07:24.382-04:00

Karzai FraudBy John Batchelor on October 5, 2009Washington Accepts the LieThe dogged, dangerous diplomat, Peter Galbraith, former deputy of the UN mission in Afghanistan, that was in charge of the recent presidential elections, has now launched a frontal assault on the UN, his former boss in Kabul, the Norwegian UN diplomat Kai Eide, and on the US envoy Richard Holbrooke as well, by declaring in

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-41521148943304763732009-10-05T03:14:00.008-04:002009-10-05T04:50:56.054-04:00

Up until reading Stephen Diamond's latest post at his King Harvest blog I've resisted putting stock in attempts to draw significant parallels between the present Afghan conflict and the U.S. one in Vietnam.One can always find similarities between wars in which guerrilla and conventional forces clash over prolonged periods. But to the best of my recollection there was no copper mining in Vietnam

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-79926249988281471302009-10-04T06:37:00.004-04:002009-10-04T07:16:13.679-04:00

Just as we curse lawyers until we need one, we tend to have nothing good to say about reporters until we realize how much we depend on them to be our eyes and ears on the ground. So while the news that two Associated Press reporters bring us is upsetting, I want to start on a positive note by thanking Eric Talmadge and Irwan Firdaus for doing a great job. Their on-the-ground reporting for AP in

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-76283617858103968612009-10-03T06:52:00.003-04:002009-10-03T07:06:23.104-04:00

Akhiruddin displayed the list of 15 contractors on his Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, showing a web of companies and subcontractors. Most appear to be controlled by a few individuals related to one another. “They were supposed to sink foundations up to 60cm,” he said. “But we found they’d just propped wooden stilts on stones and dug no foundations at all. The timber was substandard and already

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-55979256241006645262009-10-03T02:25:00.007-04:002009-10-03T02:52:48.997-04:00

2:45 AM EDT: Parma didn't entirely spare the Philippines. Whole lot of trouble over there in the Asian Pacific -- earthquake, typhoons, tsunami. AP report: 2nd typhoon lashes northern PhilippinesBy ROHAN SULLIVAN (AP) – 59 minutes agoMANILA, Philippines — Powerful winds toppled power poles and trees Saturday in the northern Philippines as the second typhoon in eight days bore down on the country

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9359747.post-90684259317766791032009-10-02T17:14:00.003-04:002009-10-02T20:28:12.736-04:00

UPDATE 8:30 PM EDT - Typhoon 'Pepeng' [international name, "Parma"]accelerates as it moves to Cagayan. The Philippines Star - Updated October 03, 2009 07:56 AM [Philippines time]MANILA, Philippines -- Typhoon "Pepeng" has accelerated as it continues to move towards Cagayan, the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said in its 5 a.m. bulletin."

Punditanoreply@blogger.com0