The view that democracy is good for some but unsuitable for others has a strong lineage, not least in Germany.
...
"The coming to power of Hamas is a very good example of excessive pressure for democratization," Brzezinski, a Democrat who served as President Jimmy Carter's top security official, declared.

His argument has been deployed a lot of late. It runs something like this: promote democracy in places not ready for it, like a putative Palestinian state or Iraq, and you end up with a terrorist organization in power intent on the destruction of Israel or with the power vacuum of Baghdad.

In other words, Bush the ideologue of democracy is dangerous and his simplistic focus on freedom inimical to American interests. Realpolitik may be less romantic but it delivers America from adventures costly in blood and treasure.

interesting

Globalist: Freedom may rock boat but it can't be selective - Europe - International Herald Tribune

US scientists have successfully implanted bladders grown in the lab from patients' own cells into people with bladder disease.

wow

BBC NEWS | Health | Lab-grown bladders 'a milestone'

Mukhtar, who also goes by the name Mukhtaran Bibi, is the young peasant woman — she doesn't know exactly how old she is — who three years ago was gang-raped on order of a local tribal council. Instead of killing herself, as was expected of any self-respecting woman, she prosecuted her attackers, used compensation money to start schools, and started a nationwide revolution to empower women.

Mother of a Nation - New York Times

Physicists have confirmed that neutrinos, which are thought to have played a key role during the creation of the Universe, have mass.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Light shed on mysterious particle

finethen wrote:

I think it is important to take (buzzword alert) "the decline of the nation-state" into account as well when looking at the rise of democracy abroad.

but is the nation-state in decline?
European integration has at best stalled and the US has completed moved away from a multilateral approach to global problems under this administration. These may be blips in the overall trend but I wonder if the "decline of the nation-state" is a 90s buzz meme.
The European experiment will I think recover but is arguably the construction of a new super-state not evidence that the nation-state is in decline.
I live in a country which is a rather old political union, the UK, and has thriving political parties in Scotland and Wales which actively campaign for political independance, indeed Scotland only very recently gained its own parliament. The pooling of sovereignty in Europe has too often been a top down exercise and has often been scuppered by grassroots campaigns. The Danes are the best example of a small state with a strong national and cultural identity that rejected proposed integration legislation when given a referendum. It was a grassroots campaign which opposed the political class/establishment and started a political shock wave which certain elements within the European political class have yet to accomodate. There is certainly no evidence that the UK is about to join the Single Currency or the Schengen agreement (the treaty which allows for freedom of movement between European countries without passport controls which in the present security climate won't be joined by the UK for the forseeable future).
Plus also yes I agree a lot of EU integration was driven by a free trade capitalist idealogy which isn't universally accepted. Some people (hello) believe that the state can and should ameliorate some of the excesses and inequalities of capitalism and defend individuals and groups against multinational corporations. Believe me the European left is alive and well. It is learning to accomodate the realities of the global economy (despite the recent counter example of the excesses the French left in resisting change violently). From a UK point of view the left needed to modernize or be permanently in opposition. Labour modernized and won power. It hasn't always steered a path of immaculate socialist virtue but despite my occasional problems with the current administration by and large I still hear the sound of old time religion, voices singing songs that have adapted to current realities.
The right may reject the state and believe in an unfettered market but the center left still believes in the nation-state and is pleased to see the EU take Microsoft to court with the threat of significant fines under European anti-Trust legislation.

RE: After Neoconservatism - New York Times

Here Fukuyama commits apostasy of a different kind: against the thesis that made him famous. His new rendering of "the end of history" -- of liberal democracy as the culmination of humankind's ideological development -- verges on economic determinism; it is, as he recently put it, "a kind of Marxist argument." Just as he finds the roots of jihadism in the confounding material bounty of the West, so too does he define modernization itself as little more than the longing for "technology, high standards of living, health standards, and access to the wider world." Politics is an afterthought, the icing on the economic cake.

The War Among the Conservatives

As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.
...
"The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism
...
By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.

aha incrementalism
the United States and the West as a midwife to the increasing hegemony of liberal democracy rather than imperialist powers trying to impose a way of life
"we hold these truths to be self evident" and inevitable because they have Satyagraha or truth force

After Neoconservatism - New York Times

Interview With Cryptographer Elonka Dunin

from the old-school-geeks dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Whitedust is running a very interesting article with the DEF CON speaker and cryptographer Elonka Dunin. The article covers her career and specifically her involvement with the CIA and other US Military agencies."

Top link on slashdot for the nanosecond...

Slashdot | Interview With Cryptographer Elonka Dunin

When the jihadists struck in London last July, the death toll meant far more than statistics for Julie Nicholson: her 24- year-old daughter, Jenny, was one of the 52 victims to perish along with four attackers.

an article dealing with forgiveness and healing and redemption
those extraordinary normal people who can shake hands with the killer of a loved one and the loved ones of the victims of suicide bombers for whom this is not an option

Letter from Britain: Finding reconciliation after terrorist killings - Europe - International Herald Tribune

For the past two decades, Annette Lareau has embedded herself in American families. She and her researchers have sat on living room floors as families went about their business, ridden in back seats as families drove hither and yon.

an intesting lool at a parenting divide between the middle and working class

David Brooks: Both sides of inequality - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune