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Top Blling! Dr. Steven Metz at SWJ Blog – Trends, Threats, and Expectations

Big Steve sets off a robust discussion after his participation in a Pentagon conference on strategic futurism and a SWJ Blog post.

Chicago Boyz (David Foster) – Indoctrination at U-Delaware

The heavy, taxpayer-subsidized, propaganda hand of the multiculturalist-critical race theorist Left at the University of Delaware.

FT.com – China calls for new reserve currency

I see this more of serious signal to the American elite from their nervous Chinese counterparts that the moves by the Fed to counter a deflationary spiral by running the printing press are viewed in Beijing as a serious threat to Chinese national interests. In a world of fiat currencies, a “supra-fiat currency” backed by the IMF that depends heavily on the U.S. is a hollow threat to the dollar except as a technical toy for tweaking currency fluctuations. The IMF has no economy, no vital resources, no global stockpile of gold and no ability to project military power to back such a supra-currency and give the paper value. The dollar only matters because of global faith in the power and standing of the United States – a quality swiftly being discounted due to the policies of Bernancke and the Obama administration.

Other views on this or a related topic: John Robb , The Newshoggers.com  , naked capitalism  , The Moderate Voice ( Ironically, I checked out sites by actual economists tonight, including Brad DeLong and they didn’t have anything up on this yet. Weird. Kinda like me ignoring a new war)

Fabius Maximus – All you need to know about Ayn Rand, savior of modern conservatism

FM opens up a can of worms by posting on radical free marketerr philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand, who in point of fact bitterly repudiated conservativism  (William F. Buckley and Whittaker Chambers returned the compliment by savaging Rand in a hysterical review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review). Interestingly, some of FM’s anti-Rand commenters link Atlas Shrugged with The Lord of the Rings. Amusingly, they are correct in the sense that both J.R.R. Tolkien and Ayn Rand were believers in the rebirth of the romantic epic.

Soob – Mexico’s Middle Class Head North

A really bad sign. Which makes me wonder in another domain if capital flight from the U.S. has begun yet?

Red Team Journal (Elkus) – Military Futurism

Heavy on the Futurism aspect.

CTLab Review – CTlab Symposium on P.W. Singer’s Wired For War

This is great! I have a copy of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
but I doubt I will get it read in time. Here’s the details:

CTlab’s second symposium in its 2009 series starts next week, on Monday, 30 March, and will run for four days, until 2 April (or until participants run out of steam, which might take longer). The subject: Peter Singer’s new book, Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and  Conflict in the 21st Century (Penguin Press: 2009).

This is going to be an exciting booklab, on a work that’s been getting broad exposure, in an out of the blogosphere. Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy, and Director of its 21st Century Defense Initiative, will be participating on day 1. Proceedings will be compiled and indexed on a separate page for ease of reference, here.

Confirmed participants include:

• Kenneth Anderson (Law; American University)
• Matt Armstrong (Public Diplomacy; Armstrong Strategic Insights Group)
• John Matthew Barlow (History; John Abbott College)
• Rex Brynen (Political Science; McGill University)
• Antoine Bousquet (International Relations; Birkbeck College, London)
• Charli Carpenter (International Relations; UMass-Amherst)
• Andrew Conway (Political Science; NYU)
• Jan Federowicz (History; Carleton University)
• John T. Fishel (National Security Policy; University of Oklahoma)
• Michael A. Innes (Political Science; University College London)
• Martin Senn (Political Science; University of Innsbruck)
• Marc Tyrrell (Anthropology; Carleton University)

That’s it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under recommended reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.