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UPDATE: The background image is parsing happily, but if you have one of those old square monitors you might notice that the text in the right sidebar has wandered outside its box. I'm working on this, so bear with.
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UPDATE: The background image is parsing happily, but if you have one of those old square monitors you might notice that the text in the right sidebar has wandered outside its box. I'm working on this, so bear with.
Greetings one and all. This is officially the kick-off post of my upgraded blog. So for our first post, I thought it would be appropriate to talk a little shop to get you caught up on the whats, whys, and whos.
The skinny
This is a weblog about foreign policy, national security, and human rights primarily, as well as the occasional foray into politics with a bit of snark, events, humor, and the random.
The author - that would be moi - has a BA in international relations and is currently working on his MA in national security studies. He has studied abroad in Germany and undertook an internship in London with the Henry Jackson Society, a British think tank focused on primarily trans-Atlantic foreign policy and security issues, as well as human rights, as the name implies. In addition to my studies, I have just begun a new project called Samizdat International, which will focus on human rights issues from a Natural Law perspective - a bit refreshing for those who see the social justice (aka revenge) basis for human rights as being fundamentally flawed. SI thus covers many issues around the world ignored by others, such as the persecution by radical Islamists of other faiths or the genocide of the unborn. And we will soon have a website, so stay tuned for that shameless plug. In addition to SI, I also maintain a large presence on Facebook and Twitter for both SI (here and here) and Regime Change China (here and here), a human rights project which focuses entirely on China. And then there is my "day job": IT consultant. So there you have it in a giant, Alaska-grown nut shell. Oh, and almost forgot: be sure to like the Blogbat page on Facebook. Also, you can follow Blogbat on Twitter and YouTube.
The new Blogbat Weblog 3.0 is officially up and running and we welcome our new visitors. Over the course of the days and weeks ahead you'll see changes here and there as we improve the aesthetics and go beyond this generic template that you see now. But it was important to get things working again, so I wanted to get things operational as soon as possible.
I will also be adding important links on the sidebar to the archives on Blogbat 2.0. (You can go directly to 2.0 until then and scroll down to find the archives on its sidebar). 2.0 goes back to 2006 or so and follows Blogbat 1.0, hosted on Xanga, and was created in 2003.
Other stuff
I may also decide on a name change for this blog at some point in the near future. I'm currently entertaining several ideas. The down side of doing that is I can't as easily recycle the old graphics used in 2.0; the up side is that I could pick a catchy name that will earn me instant success and fame. Or maybe not so much.
Sum
So that's everything for now. A bit verbose, but I've been blogless for a bit. But the most important part of all of this is you. It is my hope that my thoughts and ideas will cause you to have thoughts and ideas that are in some instances better than the ones you came with. And I hope to hear what you have to say and learn from you, as well, so feel free to comment or send me an e-mail from the contact link on this page (that will appear at some point). Happy reading.
Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009. He hates the Turabian style format.
