By Otto Spijkers

Every spring, summer, and fall, around 200 students come to UN Headquarters to do an internship there. I guess that with each season, and each session, the same question comes up at some point: namely, whether the United Nations – or someone else – should pay for the expenses etc. of the interns that come to New York. At the moment, the United Nations does not pay for anything (the website refers to some opportunities for financial aid, but those are outside the UN family, and the UN does not assist in obtaining that financial aid). In fact, interns even have to find their own accomodation, which can be quite difficult if you know nobody in New York (some interns use craigslist, others end up, at least for the first few weeks, in a youth hostel or YMCA). It is obvious, when you look at the intern community, that the ‘unpaidness’ of the internship causes the European nations to be overrepresented (especially Germany, but that may be true for ‘my’ session (Spring 2008) only). There aren’t that many Americans, Australians, and Canadians here. Those interns that come from lesser developed nations (a terrible expression, but I do not know a better one), have all – as far as I am aware – studied, or are currently studying, in European or North-American universities. In this post, I would like to list a few arguments/points that were made when we discussed this issue of payment among the interns. I do not share all those; in fact, I may disagree with most of them. Continue reading →

 By Nick Li

The battle to be `leader of the free world’ continues this week with primaries in Hawaii, Washington and Wisconsin. The Republican race is all but sealed by John "transcendental threat of radical islam" McCain. If you haven’t seen the Barack Obama’s Yes We Can video by now then you should, and while you’re at it, why not check out Yes He Can, which is the McCain version of the same video. Continue reading →

Pundits began preparing Rudy Giuliani’s political obituary a few weeks ago as his primary losses piled up and his standing in Florida, his "firewall" state, began to slip. After coming a pathetic third in Florida on Tuesday night, he dropped out of the race the following day. His campaign for president must surely go down as one of the worst in history. Continue reading →

By Nick Li

My friend Randy McDonald has an excellent blog with an emphasis on all-things Toronto, Eastern-European, and demographic. One of the nice things about the web is it provides an opportunity for ongoing conversations (which can even be occasionally backed up by research thanks to the magic of google and wikipedia). Here is a recent discussion lifted from Randy’s blog – I am the antagonist. Continue reading →

By Nick Li

2008 will be a big year for political junkies in the United States (not to mention those around the world who think that the US empire might actually be run by democratic elections and not the same cabal of corporations, lobbyists and other special interests). It promises very competitive races in the Republican and Democratic Presidential primaries as well as a competitive general election. The Iowa caucus has already provided a few big surprises. National frontrunner Hillary Clinton finished third behind Barack Obama and the substantially less funded John Edwards for the Democrats, while Mike Huckabee finished ahead of the better funded favorite of the party establishment Mitt Romney and Rudy 9u11ani (sorry, stole that from www.dailykos.com). If you watch any American news channel, the airwaves have been oversaturated with the usual shallow media analysis – covering personality not policies or records, covering the process as a spectacle or sporting competition rather than a chance to educate the public about serious ideas and issues, he said/she said instead of evaluating the veracity of claims, and of course, rampant speculation masquerading as expert prognostication (such as: "Hillary will drop out if she does not win New Hampshire"). And the "hope" and "change" and "experience" messages are a little tiresome. So I will mention a few things that are new or interesting about this election year. Continue reading →

By Richard Norman

Among the many Chuck Norris facts out there, the one most suitable to Mike Huckabee’s candidacy for president is "Evolution doesn’t exist–there’s just a list of animals Chuck Norris has allowed to survive." Continue reading →

By Richard Norman

I recently returned from a trip to Istanbul where I participated in an eight-day post-conflict simulation meant to certify the NATO rapid deployment corp based there. The training audience was largely Turkish, and the cell I worked with was responsible for putting pressure on the corp’s communications office. Press conferences, scrums, and aggressive journalists were largely new ideas to them–there is almost no room for flexibility or spontaneity in the highly centralized Turkish military-media relations. I thought I’d sketch out in this post some of the differences between how the Turkish military (even under the auspices of NATO) deals with media compared to its more western partners. Continue reading →

By Richard Norman

A great article on what hopefully is the demise of the Lyndon LaRouche movement. For those unfamiliar with LaRouche, a couple of hours of research on him might be worthwhile: this is the story of how deep and encompassing conspiratorial delusion can be. The man will surely go down in the footnotes as one of America’s great political freaks with his work best categorized as "classic autodidact paranoid delirium." Continue reading →