Blogs to Watch

[Cavguy]

Originally Posted by Schmedlap

This probably sounds like I'm being a wiseguy - I'm not. What "thought provoking insights" have you ever gotten from Tom Ricks? Just recently, I'm thinking of his flimsy criticisms of 2-503 at Wanat and his recommendation to shut down West Point. I'm sure he has a lot of insights derived from hanging around with influential folks, but I have never seen any conveyed on his blog. Again - not being a wiseguy - I'm just curious.

I like Tom's blog for a number of reasons.

1) He often raises issues we all know but don't/can't talk about in the "family" i.e relief of officers, counterproductive policies.

2) About once a month he breaks something truly interesting I haven't seen before. Like the draft CSI report on Wanat.

3) He's a good barometer of the civilian military pundit community.

Ref Wanat: I actually thought he did a service by airing his AAR, errors and all, because the Army sure hadn't done it in a year and a half since the incident. His posts drive discussion and action at several levels. Love or hate him, agree or disagree, if you don't follow him you'll miss some interesting stuff.

[Red Rat]

Not mentioned so far but ones I keep a watching brief on are:

Afghan NGO Security Organisation - the situation according to the non-military actors.

UN Assistance Mission Afghanistan - blindingly obvious, but a good source of reports.

International Council on Security and Development - on the ground reporting and looks specifically at the intersections of security, development, counter-narcotics and public health issues.


RR

[Tukhachevskii]

Blog sites I regularly frequent and can highly recommend (for what its worth);

www.dprkstudies.org

blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/ (Middle East Strategy at Harvard)

www.islam-watch.org

www.informationdissemination.net/

www.longwarjournal.org/

http://violenceprehistory.blogspot.com/

counterterrorismblog.org/

www.cominganarchy.com

and last but not least, the excellent

defenceoftherealm.blogspot.com/

[Valin]

A very good blog following international criminal organizations
Friends Of Ours

[Greyhawk]

http://www.quattozone.com/
Blog by

Tadd Sholtis
An Air Force public affairs officer for 15 years, the views expressed here are my own and (sometimes sadly, sometimes mercifully) not those of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense or Air Force.

Currently in Afghanistan, and much more interesting than a public affairs release.

[Sigaba]

Mark Grimsley, an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University, has a nice blog at Blog Them Out of the Stone Age. This blog may be particularly useful to those interested in the historiography of war and the teaching of military history in the Ivory Tower.

Journalists for The Economist have blogs here.

[davidbfpo]

Formed in Berlin in May 2009 and just id'd (hat tip to 'Red Rat'), The Afghanistan Analysts Network: http://www.aan-afghanistan.org/index.asp?id=1

davidbfpo

[jenniferro10]

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ArmedwithScience.rss

[Schmedlap]

For me, the trick is figuring out not just what to read, but how, and when. Getting the division right between RSS reader, podcasts, radio, blog-browsing, twitter, and email is a work-in-progress.

My breakdown...

Audio Podcasts (at the gym, as well as going to and from, and running)
- The Ethicist
- Harvard Business Review
- CSIS
- Economist
- Martin Wolf
- Mars Hill Church
- Walk in the Word
- Insight for Living
- InTouch Broadcast

Video Podcasts (in the kitchen)
- Mosaic: News from the Mideast
- BusinessWeek - Mandel on Economics
- Reason.tv
- al-Jazeera (Fault Lines, Riz Khan)
- Fareed Zakaria (not a fan of his, but he has great guests)

Stitcher (iPhone/Blackberry app that plays audio podcasts; usually listen to during commute)
- Economist "The World Next Week"
- Wall Street Journal "What's News"
- Cato Daily Podcast (more political, but not left v right)
- Stratfor Daily Podcast

RSS Reader (whenever - laptop or iPhone)
- The Daily Star (Lebanon)
- The Jerusalem Post
- al-Arabiya (Pan-Arab)
- New York Times
- Washington Post
- Sabah (Turkey)
- Moscow Times
- The Australian
- Financial Times
- UK Telegraph
- Wall Street Journal

Email lists (usually read on iPhone while in the slower-than-death elevator in my apartment building and other random moments of waiting for stuff)
- Af-Pak channel
- FP Morning Brief
- Stratfor
- Gulf in the Media

Random browsing
- Stuff in my blogroll (already listed elsewhere in this thread)

- Twitter - I've found that twitter is ideal for following blogs that I read and of very little value for following major news outlets; it's handy to see when a blog or other site is updated (SWJ, Registan, Michael Yon, etc), but I don't need 20 random alerts every day from XYZ newspaper. I also don't understand how anyone can really "follow" hundreds of people on twitter. I follow 24 people on twitter and I still miss stuff.

- Facebook - I'm a newcomer to Facebook; is this purely a social medium or do people use it for news-related stuff?

[Schmedlap]

This one just started this month...

http://www.raceforiran.com/

[Schmedlap]

Also may be of interest to some, Twitter just implemented its lists (Beta) function. Here is one that I'm working on...
http://twitter.com/SchmedlapDotCom/thelongwar

[Jedburgh]

Waq al-Waq

This blog was started for a few reasons. We both have been studying Yemen for years, and as the country has risen in importance, the quality of discussion has declined. We wanted to contradict some other individuals, blogs and commentators who have no experience in Yemen or with Arabic, and who turn the facts to fit their opinions. We feel that presenting a thoughtful and nuanced discussion of Yemeni affairs, based in knowledge of its history and culture is in the best interest of all. That said, this is not an academic blog, and provides a lighter tone than our other publications, and also allows us to indulge our unhealthy interests in medieval swords and mysterious islands that color Yemeni history.
Enjoy.

Copied here from a Yemen thread.

[davidbfpo]

A new blogsite:http://www.pakistanconflictmonitor.org/ and introduction says:

an initiative of the Human Security Report Project at the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University.

Recommended by Steve Coll: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/#Replay

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

Thanks to Professor Borum. He has id'd a website monitoring events in Sudan (not just the South): http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/files...dan/sudan.html and there is a list of other websites.