How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb

A recent article I stumbled upon while at the Economist.com, entitled "Spinning dark new tales," discusses a possible scenerio where Iran and North Korea, among other states with nuclear capabilities (namely Pakistan and Syria) are currently collaberating to provide North Korea with a working centrifuge machine (which would ultimately provide Kim Jong Il's regime with operational nuclear weapon capabilities). Yet all the international media hype caused by this interesting cadre, has led me to another point - do we (as members of the academia, as well as ordinary citizens) necessarily even have to worry about these potential rogue states causing nuclear war? With the recent onset of information and communication technologies (ICTs), media across the globe has already zeroed in on the nuclear activities of states such as North Korea and Iran. In an unlikely event where one of these countries would actually launch a nuclear missile at a strategic target (for example, the U.S.), the consequences of such an attack, namely the responses of other G20 nations, total amount of media coverage (domestic and international), along with second strike capabilites, would be so great that it would completely make void any benefits which the attacking nation would gain (unless the only reasoning behind the attack was to cause terror). Now this is all just hypothetical speak, but in the words of Dr. Strangelove, "Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack - and I believe that ICTs have the potential to do exactly that.

Washington, Washington...

As you all (should) know, George Washington, one of America's great founders, was our first president under the newly formed U.S. Constitution. Yet, there might be a few things you didn't know about him - in which case you should probably watch this video in order to properly educate yourself on this great American political figure.

d20 System - RL version

Dungeons & Dragons fans enjoi

China's External Investments

The above graph, which can be found at the Council on Foreign Relations' site, displays the individual sectors of China's economy to which foreign investors have taken a particular interest in. Kudos to the Center for Geoeconomic Studies for creating a graphic representation of such findings.

To all those Call of Duty fanboys out there...

Props to my friend Andre for finding this >

Greeks in American Politics

Sorry for the momentary hold on my posts of lately; this past week being formal RUSH week for UL's fraternities, coupled with an already intense semester, has been keeping me rather busy. So with fraternal organizations on my mind - greeks in particular - I stumbled across a piece on Google books (click the title of this blog to redirect to the corresponding article) which mentions the percent of Democrats/ Republicans/ Independents, who in addition to holding high political offices, are also greek. While the article pertains to the 70's and 80's, such information is still useful in raising a few questions - do greek organizations inspire potential leaders (early while in undergrad or graduate studies) to pursue a more professional career, namely one which involves high office? Also, additional information as it pertains to the percent of U.S. Presidents who were also greek would be similarly interesting.

The New Face of Espionage

While browsing the net earlier, I came across two articles that caught my attention. The first hailing from The Council on Foreign Relations, addresses the current legal debacle facing the CIA; namely a demand for greater transparency in the American Intelligence Community. Sanford V. Levinson's article notes that upon entering office, President Obama promised to investigate the intelligence gathering technics utilized by the Bush Administration (i.e. torturing), yet has seemed reluctant to follow through. And then I realized, why reform the intelligence community when conventional espionage has become a thing of the past? The recent global recession has highlighted better than ever the new playing field for government hosted black ops - national economies. As with the situation facing Prague (Czech public), this article by the International Relations and Securities Network notes intrusions into Czech's economic sector by Russian government officials ("economic hitmen") in a maneuver to takeover state owned holdings of resources. Parallel this with US holdings of oil in Iraq, and we can see the overall picture - why bother with the inconveniences of geopolitics such as traditional borders? Or even in the case of the CIA, why risk being accused of torturing when a state government can just as easily cripple a country's economic sector from the inside - only to simultaneously profit from such actions?