Archive for the ‘Geopolitics’ Category

A Perfect Storm

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

  “…our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  Now we are … testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” – Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address ******* The United States ...

Buying Boxes

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

In the post Show Me Your Budget, I addressed the U.S. federal budget via an illustration that used proportionally sized boxes to reflect spending priorities. What I didn’t cover was how we pay for those boxes, both the overall box of the entire budget, as well as its constituent departments ...

Intro to Geopolitics – Buffer States

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

For those who consider most of my posts relating to geopolitics too arcane, I offer the following: Source: comics.com Strip: Pearls Before Swine by by Stephan Pastis

They Still Can’t

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

This post is available as a PDF file here: http://www.hackneys.com/docs/theystillcant.pdf 30 December 2009 In August of 2002 I endured a personal challenge. At the time, I was sitting on a bar stool at a friend’s house in my Iowa home town listening to a classmate prattle on about 9/11 and all of ...

My World View

Monday, December 21st, 2009

This essay is available in PDF form here: http://www.hackneys.com/docs/myworldview.pdf   “Your world view is, well, wrong.” Those were the last words I ever heard from a guy I’d been friends with for more than 30 years. That was back in late 2004. At the time, I was sitting in Beijing, China, and had recently ...

Thoughts on Obama’s Peace Prize Speech

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

U.S. President Barack Obama presented his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway, earlier today. The headline you will read in the mass media regarding the speech will likely be some variation of “Obama defends US wars as he accepts peace prize.” The press will be doing its self-anointed job of ...

Sobering Facts

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

  Adult Americans Between 1989 and 2007 Americans knowledge of current events dropped by 8.3% 93% know Arnold Schwarzenegger while 36% know Vladimir Putin 32% know Sunni and Shia as two branches of Islam 41% know the name Muslims use to refer to God and the name of Islam's sacred text 33% believe that Iraq carried ...

It’s a Small World After All

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

  Americans don’t get out much. That should come as no surprise considering that, according to the U.S. State Department, only 27 percent of Americans hold a valid passport. That means that 73 percent of Americans couldn’t get out to see the rest of the world even if they wanted to; even ...

Outside the Fishbowl – 2009/10/06

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

When you're inside the United States, it is nearly impossible to realize how insular it is, especially related to information and perspective. Since we're going to be here for a while, I'm providing a semi-regular injection of outside perspectives and information gleaned from other cultures, counties and regions in an effort ...

The Blind Leading The Blind

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Steph and I completed our “Big Summer Drive Across America” trip yesterday with an eight hour run from Arkansas to Texas. Along the way we listened to C-SPAN, the BBC and XMPR. One show on XMPR, Let’s Consider The Source, really jumped out at us, unfortunately for all the wrong ...