Friday’s Reading List
By Taylor Marvin

Cariani, “A Concert”, 1520. Via the National Gallery of Art.
What I read this week:
Tom Nichols reminds us about the truth of BMD: “This system, even if were 80 or 90 percent effective, will have no impact on decision-making during a crisis, because the President and his advisors will have to assume that any failure rate means, in effect, that the system does not, for any practical purpose exist.”
I missed this at the time, but a fun rundown of the winners and losers in a nuclear-free world.
A brand-new U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan. How the US built an unused $34 million dollar state-of-the-art headquarters that will “will probably be demolished.”
Sudden improvements in Egypt’s electricity availability and policing suggest a concerted campaign (and, importantly, a successful one) to undermine the Morsi government.
Why isn’t separatism or regionalism more dominant in the politics of Bretagne?
Iran’s president-elect signals he’s on young people’s side.
How the bin Laden case shows that Pakistan’s ISI is either duplicitous or shockingly inept. Most money’s on the former.
Earlier this week I rounded up links of conflict at Political Violence @ a Glance.