After several weeks going and coming, the pile of magazines I would like to review in this space is growing out of control. And, given that it is very probable that I will be leaving again soon, I think it is better just to give you the links - and open the space for your comments or invited posts:
+ The debate over human rights in the UN, the reappearance of US in the Council, and the implications of laws against the "defamation of religion", can be overviewed in this article
+ Somehow related with the previous, this place is getting concerned about the role that religions are to play on Human Security and, thus, articles like this on the postures of the major monotheistic religions on economy and ecology are worth reading.
+ Just until his dead, I became aware of the significance of Robert McNamara in understanding the paradigm of security during the Cold War. From Ford Motor Company, to the Pentagon during Vietnam War, and then the World Bank, the history of his rise and fall, in this short obituary, is enlightening. The last paragraph is very moving:
He was haunted by the thought that amid all the objective-setting and evaluating, the careful counting and the cost-benefit analysis, stood ordinary human beings. They behaved unpredictably. During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which he had lived through at cabinet level, “Kennedy was rational. Khrushchev was rational. Castro was rational.” Yet between them they had pushed the world to the brink. Rationality, he concluded, “will not save us.” Perhaps what would were the little quirks that had made him love John Kennedy: the president’s sudden capacity to be empathetic, surprised, intuitive, and ready to jettison his most confident calculations.
+ Finally, an update on the movement around the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and some menaces to its role inside the UN system (here)
See you around