something new

The work has been piling up, sicknesses have come and gone... and what I feared when I started this blog is starting to happen... that I eventually stop posting.

I try to put as much effort as I can into each post, so it takes maybe 3 or 4 sessions to actually complete the post and publish it. I have about 3 posts in the works right now that I hope to finish sometime soon.

I don't want to leave this blog dry though. Sooo... here's something I'm going to do for the time being. I'm just going to leave you with a couple of articles that I find interesting, whether I agree them or not, that I may or may not comment on later, but at least you'll be learning something new everyday!

While you anxiously await the next post, check out these articles:

Moisés Naím, "Hungry For America"

Abstract: The world wants America back. For the next several years, world politics will be reshaped by a strong yearning for American leadership. This trend will be as unexpected as it is inevitable: unexpected given the powerful anti-American sentiments sweeping the world, and inevitable given the vacuums that only the US can fill and that others will increasingly demand that it fills. This renewed international appetite for US leadership will not merely result from the election of a new president in 2008, though having a new occupant in the White House will certainly help. Not that anti-Americanism will suddenly disappear; it never will. Nor will America's enemies go away. But strong anti-American currents will increasingly coexist with equally strong international demands for the US to play a larger role in world affairs. The demand abroad for change in the way America behaves is obvious. The US is once again ready to supply the leadership.

Graham E. Fuller, "A World Without Islam"

Imagine, if you will, a world without Islam -- admittedly an almost inconceivable state of affairs given its charged centrality in people's daily news headlines. Islam seems to lie behind a broad range of international disorders: suicide attacks, car bombings, military occupations, resistance struggles, riots, fatwas, jihads, guerrilla warfare, threatening videos, and September 11 itself. From the earliest days of a broader Middle East, Islam has seemingly shaped the cultural norms and even political preferences of its followers. Without Islam, the face of the region still remains complex and conflicted. A world without Islam would still see most of the enduring bloody rivalries whose wars and tribulations dominate the geopolitical landscape. If it were not religion, all of these groups would have found some other banner under which to express nationalism and a quest for independence.

Mukasey Refuses Probe of Bush, AP

Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to refer the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers committed no crime.

ok, that's what I have for now. enjoy the reading.