Ferguson: An empire at risk

Harvard’s Niall Ferguson wrote an interesting piece for Newsweek titled an empire at risk. His article touches down on several scenarios that may come out of America’s massive deficit spending ($176 billion in October alone). According to Ferguson, as the federal budget is more and more encumbered by debt repayments, the first thing to go will inevitably be defense spending. Makes sense to me.

The people over at the RealClearWorld Blog, however, point out that a reduction in American defense spending from the present 4 percent of GDP to a projected 2.6 percent by 2028 would be enough to maintain America’s hegemonic status. Perhaps this is true, but if we assume that China continues its breakneck growth, by the 2030s the international system should be shifting into bipolarity with several other powers (India, Brazil, Russia) in the wings.

Posted: December 1st, 2009 under commentary, foreign policy analysis - No Comments.

How we made it suck: Vampires

In the past few years, no other cultural staple has been more pummeled into retardation than vampires. Back in the day, they had the romantic depth to please the ladies while still maintaining enough killer integrity to get a nod from the men. Bram Stoker’s vampire turned the boon of immortality on its head – so much so that the upside of being able to watch the rise and fall of human empires didn’t compensate for the inability to enjoy human pleasures: sex, sleeping, eating, etc. Of course, real human contact is also off the table because of a vampire’s thirst for blood. The thirst frames the real symbolic potency of being a vampire- they end up destroying whatever they love. Pretty deep stuff, might even have one thinking about the nature of humanity, mortality, and other such lofty questions.

Too bad we made them suck.
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Posted: November 27th, 2009 under how we made it suck, satire writing - humor - No Comments.

Medvedev dreams of economic reform

Here’s this week’s situation report on the Russian economy. President Medvedev is setting about the Herculean task of luring educated Russians back to a place where dead lawyers and journalists are increasingly common. Due to space constraints, I couldn’t even touch down on Russia’s absolutely insane demographic crisis. According to conservative estimates, Russia will lose 11 million people over the next 19 years. Full text after the jump.
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Posted: November 26th, 2009 under foreign policy analysis - No Comments.

What would an early exit from Afghanistan look like?

This week’s GPM forecaster is about what a post-NATO Afghanistan would look like. I personally think it’s an interesting topic, because the debate over whether or not we should pull out is more determined by emotional factors- not wanting to ‘lose’ and have made such sacrifices in vain- rather than practical ones such as whether the whole thing is actually ‘winnable.’ It’s starting to seem a lot like that Vietnam thing I’ve heard so much about!

Full text after the jump…
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Posted: November 25th, 2009 under commentary, foreign policy analysis - No Comments.

Karzai to world: don’t fret, I’ll make it all better!

That war in Afghanistan was looking pretty bad for a while there! What with Transparency International dubbing Kabul as the world’s second-most corrupt government, and the fact that Afghanistan has pretty much become a narco-state, one could get the impression that Afghanistan has become somewhat of a lost cause.

But wait! President Hamid Karzai is back to take one more kick at the can.
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Posted: November 19th, 2009 under commentary, foreign policy analysis - No Comments.

Back and a few GPM articles

Back from Florida, will have some nice new content in a few days after my mind recovers from being beaten down with alcohol for twelve nights running. Until then, here are some nice articles from the GPM:

India, China & the IPI Pipeline
Arctic ownership update
The India lobby in the United States

Posted: November 17th, 2009 under commentary, foreign policy analysis - No Comments.

Sunny Miami, etc

Gone for a week! If I had some kind of roaming plan, I could blog from the road. But I don’t, because I’m a miser like that. Be back next Monday – The GPM will still be updated with my articles this week.

Posted: November 7th, 2009 under internetery - No Comments.

Interesting tweets from Xinjiang riots

Here is a list of tweets from Urumqi that made it through the Great Firewall of China. They provide a glimpse of not only the stark ethnic divide that exists in Xinjiang, but also the fear and uncertainty of mass civil unrest.

Here are a few:
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Posted: November 3rd, 2009 under internetery - No Comments.

Top 10 reasons why North Americans suck

During my money-seeking travels I came across Constant Content, a site that allows writers to submit articles to be auctioned off to purchasers in need of content. I half-assedly clicked around and discovered that they have a humor section, of which the most recent submission is ‘top ten reasons you know you’re a dog lover.’ I was at once hit by two conflicting urges to scoff at yet another ‘top 10 list’ on the internet and click through to find out what could possibly be so funny about being a dog owner. Perhaps #1 is “I jerked off a Miniature Schnauzer”
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Posted: October 29th, 2009 under internetery, satire writing - humor - No Comments.

Book Review: Pillars of the Earth

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book gets two stars instead of zero because it looped around the fail bend with such velocity that it actually became laughably good.  The characters only exist to have things happen to them, and by things I mean rapes.
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Posted: October 23rd, 2009 under book reviews, satire writing - humor - No Comments.