Kissinger and Operation Condor

David Brooks’ piece on Barack Obama’s “Christian Realism” is pretty good, but it mostly reminded me that I think one of the worst habits of American journalism is to look at foreign policy through a lens of high-order abstractions. “Realism” has a really clear meaning in an academic context, and there are substantial bodies of non-realist academic thought it contends with. In the context of practical policymaking, however, it’s not totally clear what it means.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen has offered to pay tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who kills the U.S. ambassador in Sanaa or an American soldier in the country. An audio produced by the group's media arm, the al-Malahem Foundation, and posted on militant websites Saturday said it offered three kilograms of gold worth $160,000 for killing the ambassador, Gerald Feierstein.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department has closed its embassy in the Central African Republic and ordered the ambassador and his diplomatic team to leave the country as rebels there continue to advance and violence escalates, U.S. officials said Thursday.

From Sri Lanka, they travelled to Bangkok, some through Singapore and Malaysia, accompanied by agents who bribed border officials. They were kept at the Sky Place hotel until a double-decker bus brought them south to the MV Sun Sea for the long voyage to Canada. Once aboard, they quickly discovered the fee of up to $35,000 charged by the smuggling syndicate didn’t buy them much: A spot on a cramped deck and rations of food and water, distributed by an abusive crew that sometimes withheld provisions as punishment.

A Quebec man accused of supplying potent Canadian marijuana to much of the U.S. eastern seaboard set aside $2-million to finance the murder of anyone who rats on him, New York prosecutors allege. Further, Jimmy Cournoyer, 33, of Laval, built his $1-billion drug empire by “gaining control over ports and customs checkpoints through a combination of covert operations and outright political corruption” and abusing “sovereign tribal lands” on First Nations’ reserves “that are almost impossible to police,” prosecutors claim.

After Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment weeks before he was to go on trial on accusations that he stole millions of journal articles from an electronic archive, tributes to the young man began pouring out online. Friends, colleagues and acquaintances described Swartz as a brilliant and often heroic man, who, while plagued by inner demons and bullied by authorities, pushed for open and free access to libraries and databases.

Sen. John Kerry has held up Syria as a country that could bring peace and stability to the Mideast and predicted that the now-disgraced government of President Bashar Assad would pursue a legitimate relationship with the United States. Those assertions are certain to draw scrutiny at Kerry’s confirmation hearing to be secretary of state as Assad’s brutal crackdown has plunged his country into civil war.