Influence and networks

The LSE has just published a very worrying report about the potential for violence in South Sudan, which holds a referendum on secession from Khartoum next year. The list of bad guys and their inspirations includes some eye-openers:

Tht’s pretty much the gist of a US Supreme Court ruling last month, according to the 3D Security Initiative, who say the Court

upheld a contentious US counterterrorism law that calls “negotiation training” and “offering advice on peacebuilding” to be a crime when it is done with groups listed by the US as terrorist organizations.

Lest any GD readers are labouring under the misapprehension that Frank Luntz is actually a serious pollster (unlikely, I know), feast your eyes on this excerpt from a 2 page orgy of huff-and-puff in the last issue of GQ:

The public have now decided, wisely, that a bigger, more powerful government won’t solve the problems that government itself created. In fact, roughly 70 per cent of Americans agree with the following statement:

About a quarter of a billion people spend time every week inside some kind of virtual world (like World of Warcraft, or Second Life, or IMVU). That’s one of the arresting statistics in an extraordinary talk on virtual worlds given by Rohan Freeman last November, reproduced in full at the end of this post.

Poor old collapsitarians. It’s bad enough spending your days convinced that you’re one among a small band of Cassandras burdened with the foresight to see civilisation’s imminent collapse looming ever closer. (Like those cheerful fellow over at the Dark Mountain Project, whose manifesto proclaims such perky sentiments as:

With the Conservatives back in charge of foreign policy, there is as you might expect a lot of talk about ‘The National Interest’ resuming its proper place at the heart of foreign policy. As this trend has gathered pace, so people with a more, shall we say, cosmopolitan worldview have started countering that foreign policy should be about something bigger than that.  
But what, exactly?

Halfway between Copenhagen and Cancun, international climate policy seems to have reached an inflection point – on both policy approach, and narrative framing. Alas, as discussions I’ve taken part in over the last week at both Ditchley and IPPR seem to confirm, the political momentum is all the wrong way, on both counts.

North Korea’s team put up a creditable performance against Brazil in their World Cup game today.  I’ve been keeping an eye on the North Korean news agency to see how they cover the game, but there’s nothing there yet.  Still, the arts news is engaging:

Light Comedy on Road

American anti-Muslim wingnuts are, needless to say, having a field day over plans to build a mosque and community centre two block away from Ground Zero.
But at a recent protest organised by SIOA (‘Stop the Islamization of America’), there was an exquisite moment of irony. Two arabic-speaking men, who were set upon by the protestors and had to be rescued by the NYPD, turned out to be Egyptian Christians – who’d come to join the anti-Muslim protest.

One  of the many strands of discussion at a Ditchley Foundation conference on climate change last week was the vexed question of how public opinion shapes the political space open to leaders on climate. There were many furrowed brows on this, not least given that the polling numbers on climate change are all heading the wrong way, all over the world – perhaps unsurprisingly, given the combination of the recession and media coverage of ‘climategate’.