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Riot Girls
Pussy Riot band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (left), Maria Alyokhina (right) and Yekaterina Samutsevich (center), during their trial July 23. Photo Credit: Andrey Smirnov/AFP/Getty Images via Foreign...
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How to understand “Swiftboating”
The Raid, May 2, 2011 (White House Photo by Pete Souza) A new thread coursing through the U.S. presidential campaign has been an attack on President Obama’s alleged disclosures regarding the raid last...
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Islam and the Political Aesthetic
An illuminated page from Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an, written entirely in gold. (British Library) NOTE Sept. 22: With today’s events in Pakistan (and attending, preventable deaths and violence), my...
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IKEA Pussies Out in Russia
The Moscow Times recently reported that IKEA, the world’s most recognizable home furnishings brand, recently pulled this image (left) from an online competition to produce the cover image for their...
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The Nobel Prize for Politics
Alfred Nobel (Wikimedia Commons) The controversy and dismissive snark over the awarding of the European Union the Nobel Prize for Peace has sparked some discussion about the nature of the award. I...
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The Problem of Propaganda
Hoang Nhat Thong (left) and Viet Khang (via http://www.nguoi-viet.com) Last week, the Vietnamese government sentenced two musicians on the charge of “anti-state propaganda,” apparently the first case...
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The Subjective Political
Republican supporters console one another on election night in Las Vegas. (David Becker/Getty Images via The Guardian) While virtually everything to be said about the recent presidential election has...
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Richard Ben Cramer and “What It Takes”
There was no shortage of praise for Richard Ben Cramer upon his death earlier this month. The author of What It Takes was widely lauded for writing probably the definitive campaign narrative, a hefty...
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“A Theory of Deeds” Threatens the Russian State
The web site of Togeza (Together), a Russian civil society organization. Could helping your neighbor deem you an enemy of the state? The Duma, Russia’s legislature, is leaning that way by trying to...
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The Ecstasy of Politics
Monument to the Velvet Revolution, made out of 86,000 keys donated by the citizens of Prague. (sycamore stirrings) It’s hard to imagine in the deflated reality of the federal sequester, and as the...
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An Intellectual Assault on Joseph Nye: Part One
Joseph Nye’s theory and advocacy of “soft power,” articulated in the early 1990s and developed during the last 15 years, have been a touchstone for virtually anyone studying or writing about...
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An Assault on Joseph Nye, Part Two: “Power and Violence are Opposites”
“Down with Milosevic!”, Belgrade, 1999 (via BBC) In a previous discussion, I attacked Joseph Nye’s “soft power/hard power” theory at the level of language, effectively calling his terms unclear and...
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An Assault on Joseph Nye, Part Three: Keeping It Real
U.S. Air Force C-130 drops relief supplies over Kenya, June 2010 (U.S. Department of Defense) In my previous two posts, I’ve argued how the hard power/soft power Hobson’s Dichotomy of Joseph Nye fails...
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American Republic, Now Available from Amazon
I’m pleased to announced that my book, American Republic: Essays on the Nature of Politics, is now available in Kindle and paperback from Amazon.com. American Republic includes the original book, plus...
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Plenums and Power (Power v. Force III)
A plenum convened in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on February 9, 2014 (via Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso) The past two weeks have been astounding to witness in Ukraine and Bosnia- Herzegovina. While...
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