Central Asia's water issues - excellent article!

In a piece from Radio Free Europe, Professor Brahama Cellaney discusses water, the emerging nexus of conflict in Central Asia. Lots of great quotes, but I like this one since it sums up the dilemma faced by weak states such as Kyrgyzstan:

And I think given the fact that Uzbekistan is located downstream, but able to assert its political and military supremacy in the region, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan find themselves hamstrung. They're not able to embark on projects because the downstream power is unwilling to provide consent, and they're too afraid to embark on projects on their own.

Thomas Friedman: "Oh, you were taking me literally?"

Thomas Friedman wrote a rather self-serving piece today at Foreign Policy on the flaws in his "petropolitics" thesis. He kinda, sorta acknowledges the lack of empirical support for his argument, but then says of his chief critic, "I would simply note that [he] focuses on the effects of oil prices, which is a literal reading of the "first law.""

Oh. A "literal" reading. Should we have assumed you were being figurative when you stated that your "law" was a causal relationship between oil prices and authoritarianism? 

Remember, we said that Friedman's article was an interesting thought piece but shouldn't be taken too seriously. Nice to know that he kinda, sorta agrees.

2012: The Year in Unfreedom

As Foreign Policy author Christian Cayle reminds us in this trenchant post-mortem on the world's fledgling democratic states, "Voting does not a democracy make."