HOT5 Daily 7/23/2009

1. "15 Mideast problems that won't go away after Israel and the Palestinians cut a deal" And he probably left out a few.

Representative Sample: 11.  Anti-U.S. and anti-Western terrorism not associated with Israel but with the promotion and expansion of Western cultural values and perceived global inequalities

2. "Data on 250,000 Medieval Soldiers" Some pretty amazing historical work.

Representative Sample: A team led by Dr. Adrian Bell and Prof. Anne Curry, with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, have put up a stunning new database of military service records of medieval soldiers serving from 1369 and 1453

3. "Juan Cole represents all that is wrong with policy debate in our country" And some things wrong with academia. Good rant.

Representative Sample: So what is a Leftist to do in this situation? Blame Israel and the Jewish control of America? Check. Blame Bush and Cheney? Call it a GOP conspiracy? Check and Check. Dr. Cole is mad, you see. Really mad. So he is forced to bring out the big guns.

4. "World Politics Review: Mercenary Air Forces Underpin Afghanistan, Africa Operations" Eastern Europe: prime supplier of aerial mercenaries.

Representative Sample: The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s left thousands of former military helicopters scattered across the former Soviet republics. With the steady expansion of military and humanitarian operations in the Balkans, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa over the past two decades, these abandoned helicopters found a new role.

5. "One Iraq, at least for now, Joe Biden notwithstanding" Good post about Iraq.

Representative Sample: Pretty much every American who has ever declaimed on Iraq -- including, by the way, me -- has been substantially and profoundly wrong at some crucial juncture, but we need to remember the extent and recent proximity of Joe Biden's own wrong call because he actually appears to have some influence in the current administration. Hard as that may be to believe.

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