The Big Mac: Revisiting MacArthur and his showdown with Truman.

An act of contempt against civilian authority.

This was how most observers described the scornful comments made by the commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, and members of his staff against high officials of the Obama administration. To give you an idea how scornful the remarks were, they described National Security Adviser Jim Jones as “a clown.”

And if you consider the fact that it was already Strike Three for McChrystal (Strike One was when he forced the hand of the president by leaking his recommendations of increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan to the press while Strike Two was when he criticized Vice President Biden’s opposition to the surge in a speech in London), you just have to wonder if General Douglas MacArthur has in fact returned.

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Pakistan gets an A.

Someone has told me before that during the Cold War, Pakistan leaked SEATO intelligence information to the Russians in exchange for nuclear know-how.

Now, there’s a report by the London School of Economics articulating the very obvious: That Pakistan is in fact supporting the Taliban. Read about it here.

Be an ally of a notorious insurgent group. Be an ally of the enemy of that insurgent group. Prop up that insurgent group. Offer help to the enemy of that insurgent group. Receive gazillions of dollars in aid. What a fantastic War On Terror Playbook!

Let’s give Pakistan an A in Geopolitics.

Leaders, 1990-present

Noodles by Gwen Muranaka.

The Philippines has had 15 presidents since 1898. Japan has had 15 prime ministers since 1988. Beat that.

Iran Green Movement: Fire beneath the ashes?

What a difference a year makes.

In June 2009, when millions of Iranians took to the streets in Tehran in protest of alleged fraud in the polls that re-elected hardliner Mamoud Ahmadinejad, opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi told the protesters not to back down. But on Friday, Mousavi announced that he is calling off all planned protest activities to mark the first anniversary of the bloody elections today after his group’s requests for rally permits received no reply from the government. 

And so, despite calls by US President Barack Obama for the world to support the reformist movement in Iran, today’s atmosphere in Tehran is a stark contrast to the atmosphere a year ago when the city looked poised to be an epicenter of another version of the fashionable ‘color revolutions‘ that have been unseating dictatorships since 1986.

Seen from outside Iran, it would seem that the brute force with which the regime dealt with the protests has effectively neutralized the so-called Green Movement (the official color of Mousavi’s campaign and that of the post-election protests). After the largely peaceful protests that followed the announcement of Ahmadinejad’s re-election last year were violently dispersed by the regime’s militias, the Islamic Republic has engaged in violent crackdowns that led to the arrests and executions of many of the leaders of and participants in the demonstrations and other reform-minded activists. No major demonstrations have occurred ever since, making some observers believe that the movement is effectively dead.

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If Facebook existed during the Revolution…

This image has been around on Facebook since two years ago. Couldn’t have found a better occasion to post it here.

For serious stuff on Philippine Independence Day, read a 2006 essay by Manolo Quezon here. 

Message from Hillary.

What the good Secretary of State didn’t mention is the fact that her country fucked up the First Republic of the Philippines, Asia’s first organized constitutional democracy, by annexing the country on the pretext of ‘benevelont assimilation.’ To give you an idea how benevolent that was, half the country’s population was wiped out during the Philippine-American War from 1898 to 1901.

But of course, the Filipinos have forgiven Uncle Sam. The Americans, afterall, taught them English and did an impressive job in establishing a viable public education and sanitation systems in the Philippines, along with engineering feats like that town called Baguio in the Cordilleras and many other Dewey-planned buildings in Manila and other cities. 

Kan kicks out Ozawa the Shadow Shogun.

A Kyodo News poll released Wednesday revealed a 63 percent approval rate for the cabinet of newly-elected Prime Minister Naoto Kan, an impressive increase from the dismal 19.1 percent rating that dogged the cabinet of his predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama. This is despite the fact that eleven of Hatoyama’s seventeen cabinet members- including the ministers of Justice, Defense and Foreign Affairs- were retained by the new prime minister.

Analysts say that the reason behind the favorable support rate for the new cabinet, despite the retention of key Hatoyama stalwarts, is the result of Kan’s trying to dilute the influence of Ichiro Ozawa, the powerful DPJ secretary-general who also resigned with Hatoyama last week. Shortly after Kan assumed the position of prime minister, he told Ozawa to lie low and keep his comments to himself, and appointed staunch Ozawa critics Yukio Edano and Yoshito Sengoku to the posts of DPJ secretary-general and chief cabinet secretary, respectively.

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Thoughts on Hatoyama’s resignation.

Bill Clinton once remarked: “Do you know how many Japanese prime ministers I dealt with when I was in office? Seven! Would you believe that?”

Indeed, Japan sees prime ministers come and go as often as Madonna has sex. Last Wednesday, after only eight months in office, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama announced his resignation, citing his failure to fulfill his campaign promise of moving the American military base in Futenma out of Okinawa. He’s the fifth prime minister to resign in four years.

So what do I make of this significant yet seemingly random event in Japanese politics?

I have always said that what’s going on in Japan right now is, to some extent, similar to the situation in Thailand: a battle between the Establishment and the forces of change. While in Thailand the battle between the Royalists and the Bangkok elite on one hand and the rural poor on the other is bloody and has far-reaching societal implications, in Japan the people aren’t even aware of the battle. To be sure, it has less dramatic implications; but nonetheless it is a battle that could, for the first time since the Meiji restoration, cause a tectonic shift in the nation’s political alignment.

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Oh, the youth of today.

I really don’t know what to make of this picture:

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, there’s this two-year old toddler who learned to smoke at age 18 (months) and is now addicted to nicotine. No shit. Check him out here.

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Thanks to the TNL Blog.

The M Theory: The new Copernican revolution?

Here’s the poster boy of Theoretical Physics, Dr. Michio Kaku, talking about the Multiverse concept and its profound philosophical implications: