- Former Obama Administration East Asia adviser Jeffrey Bader critiques media for its 'lazy' US vs China framing.
- Europe's martial traditions are dying, and it cannot fight a war beyond its borders. So what?
- Japan wants its cuisine recognised with UNESCO cultural heritage status.
- A remarkable achievement: the US-led aid program in Afghanistan has increased life expectancy from 42 years in 2004 to 62 years in 2010.
- 'The available body of evidence reveals that the DPRK produces and possesses the capability to effectively employ throughout the Korean peninsula, significant quantities and varieties of chemical weapons.'
- A 1983 NATO exercise called Able Archer almost brought the US and Soviet Union to nuclear war. Paul Dibb on the contemporary lessons.
- Meet Joshua Foust, dubbed the 'anti-Glenn Greenwald'. That's probably too simplistic, if you look at Foust's output. I liked his take on Chelsea (Bradley) Manning. While condemning Manning's treatment in custody, Foust also says:
Manning’s decision to leak is, ultimately, lazy. He never put in the hard work others do when they see something wrong and decide to work hard to change it. He never put in the time to study warfare, to learn about the history of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to see what it would take to alter the course of the war or better inform the public. Manning did none of that; instead, he defaulted to sneaking classified databases out of his intelligence facility in Iraq while cloaking himself in the rhetoric of a whistleblower.