The list includes law, philosophy, management, psychology, political science and the two subjects that appear to cause the most concern among Iran’s conservative leadership — women’s studies and human rights.

No new programs in the listed areas will be accepted in Iranian universities, and current programs are to be severely revised by the government.

Go figure.  Ayatollah Khamenei and Ahmadinejad can’t like the fact that a cross-section of relatively well-educated young liberals drove the anti-government protests last year, and what better way to squelch dissent than to restrict access to scholastic disciplines the Supreme Leader and President view as threatening to their regime?

Say what you will about the United States (and trust me, I have a veritable slue of castigations for our own government), we will likely never see something like this happen in our country, Christine O’Donnell’s eventual rise to the presidency notwithstanding.  Then again, what a low bar to set for a nation.

China‘s best-known dissident, Liu Xiaobo, today won the Nobel peace prize from the prison cell where he is serving 11 years for incitement to subvert state power.

The announcement provoked a furious reaction from Chinese authorities, who warned that the decision would hurt relations with Norway.

This is one of those times where I think Chinese government’s reaction is totally idiotic.  By displaying outrage and saying that relations with Norway will be harmed (can anyone say “saber rattling”), China looks a child throwing a tantrum because of who was picked first to play a pick up game.

No matter how pissed off they were/are the best reaction would have been no reaction at all.

Granted, they do look somewhat alike, but other than this [literal] surface similarity I don’t see that comparison as being very apt.  But then again, what the fuck do I know?

What I find interesting about the comparison is that Boehner is being compared to Draper and not the other way around.

Nonetheless, I belive that this is another example of how Don Draper has become Zeitgeist.

(For the record: I don’t think that Boehner is Zeitgeist at all.  I see him as a sort of anti-Zeitgeist.  Seriously.)

I found some really great stuff that I thought I’d share with anyone who happens to read this blog.

1. A great text breakdown from the public domain.   (I know it can’t be read below.  Click on the image and you will see the full -readable- version.)

via: Chicago Indy Media

2. A very good at-a-glance chart

via: cyberlearning-world.com

Portrait of The Queen, taken in 2002 © John Swannell/Camera Press

That the Queen of England isn’t anything more than a figurehead by charitable estimations and by uncharitable ones a massive ongoing drain on the UK budget isn’t news.  We all know it.  The Brits know it, and apparently, even the staff writers for The Official Website of the British Monarchy know it.

I call specific attention to their webpage entitled “The Role of the Sovereign” in which a lengthy explanation almost entirely devoid of specifics succeeds in making no legitimate justification for the monarchy’s continued existence.  Please read it.  The vagaries and appeals to “national unity and pride” sound like they were lifted from an eighth grader’s Social Studies paper and not a very good one at that:

The Queen also has an essential role in providing a sense of stability and continuity in times of political and social change. The system of constitutional monarchy bridges the discontinuity of party politics.

How exactly does the constitutional monarchy bridge this gap?  By what real-world power or political relevance does the Queen wield this ability?

Here is another one:

These include: providing a focus for national identity, unity and pride; giving a sense of stability and continuity; recognising success, achievement and excellence; and supporting service to others, particularly through public service and the voluntary sector.

That’s also pretty flimsy if you ask me, and you could make a pretty effective drinking game out of counting the number of times “national unity”, “stability”, and “providing a focus” appear on the page.  This particular passage essentially states the Queen is in charge of intangibles and utilizes what I’m going to call the Smykowski Defense from Office Space.  To paraphrase, she deals with the goddamn customers.

I know the Queen is running out of money, but you would have thought she’d have enough in her coffers to hire a competent bullshit artist for the website.

Monarchy fail.

Not a pretty picture to contemplate, but a likely scenario. Despite the crowd of academics in the United States that says we can live with an Iranian bomb, Israel will not allow the Iranians to go nuclear — at least, not while a Holocaust denier who has made pointed threats against the Jewish state remains in power.

Now I’mjust thinking out loud here… Makes me wonder if someone is saying something along the lines of, “Listen, we can avoid dorpping bombs.  All we have to do is take out this Ahmadinejad nut job.  So lets get someone on making sure that he accidentally falls down the stairs on purpose.”

Michael Tomasky has a great article today in The Guardian about the withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq.

There’s a lot of big-think, big-picture stuff I could be saying about Iraq today, looking back over the whole arc of the thing, but I’ll leave that for another time, or leave it to you all to debate among yourselves.

What I wish to raise this morning is this question: what conditions would have to obtain for the US to have to resume combat operations there one day? Because this is the bottom-line question, right?

Mr. Tomasky goes on to state that he believes that as Iraq comes into its own politically it is very likely things will become violent.  (He uses points made by Tom Ricks of Foreign Policy to further to back his opinion).  Tomasky seems to be suggesting that the level of violence could, and and probably will, force the US military to become involved in combat.

However, Mr. Tomasky (rightly) suggests that Shi’a militias will be looking to set up a fundamentalist regime in Iraq.

I find this disturbing for two reasons…

1. If the Shi’a militias deliberately draw the US into combat that can help them politically.  i.e. it will give the Shi’a a chance to capitalize on anti-US feelings in Iraq and win political power.

2. If the Shi’a militias don’t draw the US back into combat, such an event can help them politically.  i.e. it will give the Shi’a a chance to use violence unchecked to win political power.

In short: I really hope that the US has gamed this sucker out ad nauseum and has some creative solutions in mind for the about 50,000 non-combat (but combat ready) troops that will still be hanging out in Iraq.  Because if there is not a damn good plan for how to proceed when shit gets nasty it is only a matter of time before people are saying things like, “If only we had just finished the job we started back in 2010, we would not be needing to deal with [insert catastrophe here] today.”

Unfortunately, this is an election year, and as Mr. Tomasky also points out:

Back in 2006-2007, as Congress debate the question of a “date certain” for withdrawal, Republicans said that if the baddies know the pull-out date, they’ll obviously start planning mischief for immediately thereafter, while Democrats said, well, you gotta pull out sometime (and our base wants us out, although that part they didn’t much say).

Our elected officials have a different set of priorities that focus on shot term electoral victories rather than long term geopolitical stability.

The inner circle includes but is not limited to the Hazara Vice President, Karim Khalili; Kabir Mohabat, an Afghan with American citizenship; “Marshal” and now Vice President Muhammad Qasim Fahim, a Tajik; and “Marshal” Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord who disdains any government post but is the President’s “right hand.” (Dostum deserves an Olympic gold medal for opportunism. A leader of the Uzbek people of the North, he fought the Russians, then joined them to fight the insurgents; then he joined the insurgency to fight the Russians; next he joined the Taliban; then he switched sides again to join the anti-Taliban “Northern Alliance” and is infamous for suffocating in steel lift vans in the sweltering summer captured Taliban soldiers. Now – for how long? – he is a supporter of President Karzai.) It also includes Zara Ahmad Mobil who ran what is regarded as the most corrupt organization in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Interior, and (as an editorial in The Guardian put it) “is now in charge of the opium industry;” and, of course, the Karzai family. [Source, first paragraph on the page.]

My reaction to this was to read the paragraph three times in a row.  Sit back and think about it for a a few seconds, then read it a forth time. 

I can’t make up someone that shady!  And yet… Un-fucking-believable. 

Time to get some lunch.

The surge — President George W. Bush’s decision to deploy an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq — is often credited for the turnaround there. But [Biddle says that was only one piece of the puzzle. He says it was the Sunni Awakening — when Sunni leaders stopped fighting the Americans and joined with them against al-Qaida — that ultimately tipped the scales in favor of the U.S. and its allies.

"The Awakening without the surge would have died under an al-Qaida counterattack," he said. "The surge without the Awakening wouldn't have been nearly large enough to suffocate an insurgency the size of Iraq's. It was the two coming together that made the difference."

Link: Text & audio of the story.

[Disclosure: I think it is important that Mr. Biddle is far more qualified to provide an analysis of the current effects of US foreign policy than I am.  However, being less than qualified has never stopped me from shooting off my mouth...]

I totally agree with Mr. Biddle that the Sunni Awakening played a major role in the initial success of the surge in Iraq.  However it remains to be seen if Sunni Awaking, which is also known as the Sons of Iraq, will have a positive effect on Iraq long term.

Consider the following two groups of information:

Group One: Minority status + privilege = Sunnis

1. The Sunni Muslims make up the minority of the Muslim population in Iraq.
2. The Sunnis live in the more oil rich section of Sothern Iraq.  Having access to oil allowed the Sunnis to enjoy a level of privilege.
3. In addition to this Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, and he provided the Sunnis with a level of privilege not enjoyed by the Shi’a majority.
4. The combination of oil privilege, Saddam privilege, and a minority status did not make the Sunnis any friends among the Shi’a majority who now-a-days controls the government of Iraq.

Group Two Armed Sunnis + Shi’a controlled government – US funding = Potential Problem:

1. During the Sunni Awakening a group of Sunni Sheikhs banded together because they realized that doing so was in their best interest.
2. After banding together under the name “the sons of Iraq,” and they worked with the US to reduce the threats caused by insurgents.
3. The US paid the sons of Iraq for their assistance.
4. The Shi’a majority has expressed concerns about an armed group of Sunnis.  The current Shi’a controled government has absorbed about 1/3rd of the Sons of Iraq into the regular Iraqi Army, leaving about 2/3rds of the group out in the wind.
5. The US army is departing from Iraq, and it would not be unreasonable to assume that the funding of Sunnis will be far less (perhaps non-existent?) in the future.

My point:

The Sunni Awakening was one of the things that undoubtedly lead to the success of the surge in Iraq.  However, even though I hope it is a long lasting success, it remains to be seen if this success will carry into the future.  i.e. it is very possible that hooking up the Sunnis was great short term, but could backfire long term.

So the fact that there is no equivalent of the Sunni Awakening in Afghanistan is going to mean that the US is going to have to employ the surge differently.  My guess is that the surge in Afghanistan will not enjoy the same level of initial (short term) success that it did in Iraq.  I won’t make any long term projections as to how the surge will work out over the aggregate (long term) in Afghanistan… that region is just so unstable, and I don’t have anywhere near enough information to feel comfortable saying what things will look like in a week, let alone what they will look like in six months or a year.

In reality, Israel offers limited value in the most important areas of the U.S. foreign policy agenda: stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan.  Additionally, given the ongoing expansion of Iran’s power in the Middle East, Turkey will likely become a more instrumental U.S. ally, as it is capable of balancing Iran’s inevitable influence among Iraq’s Shiite majority.

The full article is also very illuminating.

I agree that Turkey (and the Kurds) are becoming very important allies of the United States, however I don’t think that they have become more important than Israel.  As evidence I offer the following four things…

1. Israel’s military is the most mighty in the Middle East.
2. The Mossad is one of the most bad ass intelligence agencies in the world.
3. Isreal has nuclear weapons.
4. Every US President has a desire to make the “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians part of his legacy.

It will be interesting to see where things lie in ten years, but for the time being, I’d say Israel will remain the country to which the United States stays the closest.