Daily Archives: 12/02/2008

(Community Matters) From my perspective, the only fly in the ointment of Gates nomination to continue as Secr of Defense was that he’d retained so many of Rumsfeld’s top lieutenants. Thrilled to hear Obama will be changing out the undersecretaries and secretaries of the various services. here

(Community Matters) GW’s administration and Condolezza Rice shouldn’t get kudos for finally recognizing that we are most threatened by weak and failed states or that diplomacy promotes peace better than war. They should have known the value of stabilizing local governments and implementing development projects.

In David Brooks’ NYT column

On Jan 18, 2006, Condolezza Rice delivered a policy address at Georgetown University in which she argued that the fundamental threats now come from weak and failed states, not enemy powers.

In this new world, she continued, it is impossible to draw neat lines between security, democratization and development efforts. She called for a transformational diplomacy, in which State Department employees would do less negotiating and communique-writing. Instead, they’d be out in towns and villages doing broad campaign planning with military colleagues, strenghtening local governments and implementing development projects.

(Community Matters) How appropriate to stumble on this video on World AIDS Day. This song reminds me so much of the late 80s, the 90s, of coming out as a gay man, of the friends I lost to AIDS – especially Jeff and John from SAT who were two very dear gay friends. We use to dance to this song downstairs at the Bonham Exchange.

(Community Matters)