From the Chicago Sun-Tribune, via Crooked Timber: The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s No. 2 official apologized Friday for leading a staged news...
Alex Evans
Alex Evans is a Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, and the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren't Enough? (Penguin, 2017), a book about the power of deep stories to unlock transformational change. He lives in North Yorkshire and is currently working on political polarisation and learning dry stone walling. Full biog here.
Climate sensitivity – must-read paper in Science
Two scientists, Gerard Roe and Marcia Baker, have a paper in Science this week which is a must read for everyone in climate policy. Here's the abstract:...
California fires being fought by prison inmates on a dollar an hour
Reading through today's New York Times coverage of the fires in California that have caused half a million people (and counting) to flee, I came across this...
That Republican Facebook site in full
(Hat tip: techpresident.com)
Anatomy of a panic: Atlanta running out of water
Here's a story that seems to have gone virtually unremarked outside the US. Atlanta is running out of water: not in some long term "by 2050" kind of way, but...
Pakistan: what now?
Amid the blizzard of coverage following the bombing on Benazir Bhutto's convoy in Karachi last week, two pieces that are worth a look: First, for a big...
Limbaugh 10, Reid 1
Much sniggering on the US right as shock jock Rush Limbaugh executes an expert piece of political aikido on his political opponents. The story goes like this:...
Curious manoeuvrings on the UN Law of the Sea
Who'd have thought it? UNCLOS - the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, hardly the sexiest multilateral environmental agreement around - has...
Amount of CO2 soaked up by oceans halves
The BBC's Roger Harrabin has an alarming story this morning, picking up on a new 10 year long study from the University of East Anglia. The headline: the...
Europe’s posture on global climate policy
With Angela Merkel's advocacy of a per capita based approach to future global climate policy, and now (as David reported earlier this week), the prospect of...
Hillary’s foreign policy
Hillary Clinton and John McCain both have essays about their visions for foreign policy in the new edition of Foreign Affairs. We'll do a proper commentary...
Hu Jintao’s speech to the Communist Party Congress
Tomorrow's New York Times has a helpful and comprehensive summary of goings-on during day one of the 17th Communist Party Congress in Beijing. Among the...
Bush on PMCs: “help…”
Ah, how those YouTube vids can come back to haunt you. Here, courtesy of Gregory at Belgravia Dispatch via ForeignPolicy.com, is GW taking a question from a...
Al Gore’s content-free climate franchise
Steven Clemons at the Washington Note has an interesting observation about Al Gore this morning: I think that Al Gore has just become the [McDonald's founder]...
The bad boys of Blackwater
From Wired.com: former US infantry officer Robert Bateman has an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune today, which has some interesting insights into Blackwater's...
A pep talk to Bush on the Middle East
While we're on the subject of US policy on the Middle East, take a look at the letter to Bush and Condi in the new edition of the NYRB from Brent Scowcroft,...
Events, events
I'm wading through Bob Woodward's outstanding State of Denial. The first few chapters are almost entirely devoted to a detailed discussion of the early years...
A fond farewell to Nigel Sheinwald
The new edition of Prospect shows a soft spot for Sir Nigel Sheinwald, erstwhile foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair and now arriving in the US as our man in...
Of ant colonies and sleeper cells
John Robb has a hair raising post about a new generation of computer worm called the 'Storm Worm'. "What makes it special", he writes, is that "he Storm...
New GBN energy scenarios
Remember Global Business Network, the California-based outfit of former Shell scenario planners that produced the widely-discussed report about abrupt climate...
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Joburg’s Unfinished Journey
In Joburg’s old Prison Number 4 stands a flogging frame. Here political prisoners would be instructed to step on to it and be beaten with leather, wood, or metal. Colin, who is showing me around, steps on to it and assumes the position of the prisoner. “Take a photo,...
Is US-led campaign against IS making much progress?
The recent defeat of Islamic State (IS) forces in the Syrian border town of Kobane has been greeted by the US-led coalition fighting the group as a significant victory. But the killings of two Japanese civilians and a Jordanian pilot held prisoner by IS suggest it...
Who will defend tax dodging?
2015 has started off as a tough year for tax dodgers. In Zambia, the new President appears to have confirmed the fears that multinational mining corporations expressed during the election campaign, by saying he expects companies to pay their tax. At the African Union...