Current Events and the Psychology of Politics
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Archive for December, 2010

Dec 11th, 2010

Summary: A car explosion and apparent suicide attack reportedly linked to Sweden’s presence in Afghanistan injured two people, killed the bomber, and caused panic among Christmas shoppers in Stockholm. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 11, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported the closure of what may be China’s first megachurch — the most visible sign that the communist government is determined to rein in the rapid spread of Christianity, including a September 2009 crackdown in which hundreds of police and hired thugs descended on the Golden Lamp Church in Linfen, Shanxi province, smashing doors and windows, seizing Bibles, and sending dozens of worshippers to hospitals with serious injuries.


Dec 10th, 2010

Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, compiled from U.S. Department of Defense news releases and iCasualties.org. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 10, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported what we know about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, based on information from U.S. intelligence sources, and featured personality profiles of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri developed at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics.


Dec 9th, 2010

Summary: By a vote of 216-198, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the so-called Dream Act — legislation that would give hundreds of thousands of foreign-born youth brought into the country illegally a path to legal status. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 9, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Dec 8th, 2010

Summary: Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
warned North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il — whom he labeled the “bad guy” — that the United States’ commitment to defend South Korea was “unquestioned” as the Communist state’s military fired shells across the disputed sea border. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 8, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that a suicide car bomb in Baghdad flattened a court building and an explosives-rigged ambulance blew down walls like dominos near the Finance Ministry in a wave of coordinated attacks that targeted high-profile symbols of Iraqi authority, killing at least 127 people and wounding more than 500.


Dec 7th, 2010

Summary: Scores from the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment show that American students continue to trail behind higher performing nations, with the U.S. ranking 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 7, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that for President Barack Obama, the economic cost of his Afghanistan surge plan proved troubling, after he received a private budget memo estimating that an expanded U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan would cost $1 trillion over 10 years, roughly the same as his health care reform plan.


Dec 6th, 2010

Summary: China is worried tensions in the Korean peninsula could spiral out of control if not dealt with properly, President Hu Jintao told U.S. President Barack Obama in their first discussion of the situation since North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong nearly two weeks earlier. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 6, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Defense Secretary Robert Gates told ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos on ABC News “This Week” that the U.S. has not had any good intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in “years.”


Dec 5th, 2010

Summary: Intelligence officials say foreign fighters have been slipping back into Iraq in larger numbers recently and may have been behind some of the most devastating attacks this year, reviving a threat the U.S. military believed had been almost entirely eradicated. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 5, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that similarities between George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq and Barack Obama’s surge plan for Afghanistan belie the fact that there are few commonalities between the two war theaters.


Dec 4th, 2010

Summary: More than seven years after the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division entered Baghdad in March 2003 as the first conventional U.S. forces in Iraq, its soldiers are coming home from a year-long deployment that saw the end of combat operations. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 4, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that the national edition of the Washington Times featured a shameful full-page ad by the anti-Obama website ProtectOurLiberty.org, claiming that President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. The ad copy claimed that under a 60-year-old British law, President Obama is a citizen of Britain and “is currently also a British protected person and/or a British citizen to this day.”


Dec 3rd, 2010

Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, compiled from U.S. Department of Defense news releases and iCasualties.org. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 3, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that adapting to rising seas and higher temperatures was expected to be a big topic at the U.N. climate-change talks in Copenhagen, along with the projected cost — hundreds of billions of dollars, much of it going to countries that cannot afford to do it themselves.


Dec 2nd, 2010

Summary: The New York Times reports that confidential diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks offers a fresh sense of the pervasive nature of predatory corruption in Afghanistan, the overwhelming scale of the corruption, and the serious challenge it poses to American officials who have made shoring up support for the Afghan government a cornerstone of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, where bribery, extortion, and embezzlement are the norm. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 2, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that President Barack Obama held an uncertain hand in his high-stakes gamble in the fight against Islamic extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with weak partners in both countries, doubts about the speed of building up Afghan security forces, and allies reluctant to commit themselves wholeheartedly to the fight.