Any signs of progress in Somalia are certainly welcome, and the upcoming parliamentary presidential elections provide at least a glint of hope, even if many of us reserve judgment until those elections come to pass and result in some sort of positive change for virtually …
As South Africa's political parties gear up for this year's likely epochal elections one of the key preparations is to begin to compile the lists of its parliamentary candidates and selection of those likely to serve in cabinet positions. The African National Congress (ANC) will warrant particular scrutiny as the …
The first witness in war crimes trial of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga reversed his testimony hours after relaying accounts of his conscription as a child soldier.
The young man told the court rebels from Lubanga's Union of Congolese Patriots nabbed …
Amid all the hullabaloo around Obama's decision to shut down Gitmo within one year, is Gitmo's brother, the Bagram Air Base prison in Afghanistan. The air base is home to an important prison system that holds some of ‘worst of the worst’. The …
Whatever one thinks of the recent coup in Guinea, it appears to be a fait accompli, and as a result, even those who loathe the method need to turn their focus toward making sure that its aftermath results in a better country. There will be lots of talk about how …
Zimbabweans have been ingenious in exercising the limited options available to facilitate survival. One of the main courses of action has been simply to escape from the country. Sometimes the emigrants have included children fleeing on their own, either as orphans or in hopes of supporting their families at home. …
Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 64th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the most notorious of the Nazi extermination camps. We hope you’ll join us in taking a moment to memorialize the more than 1 million people – mostly Jews, but also Gypsies and …
The 27-nation European Union has come up with its proposals for how to proceed after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. As you know, the world is going to sit down in Copenhagen in December and finalize an agreement. (See Further Thoughts on Poznan
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is far from being anything remotely close to new, and who's right and whose wrong remains muddled in the smoke and dust of war. However one thing is clear, and that is that the children on both sides of the war are caught in …
In his inaugural address President Obama offered a new engagement with the Muslim world, specifically addressing them by name and telling them, “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” That new way forward was on full display today as he …
You might think Barack Hussein Obama would choose a safer audience than the Arab world for his first TV interview as President. But he chose Dubai-based Al Arabiya, and he chose well.
With all the innumerable problems facing the United States, the most daunting long-term problem is America's relationship …
Edward Lucas, the Economist's man in Moscow, has a lot to answer for.
In 2008, he wrote a provocative book called “The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West” which paints a harrowing picture of …
President Obama is apparently working hard to keep his campaign pledges. He has now had his first interview with Al Arabiya, while repeating his promise to give a speech in a Muslim capital in the first 100 days of his administration. In some ways, President Obama's approach to the presidency …
… that is, the upcoming elections in Iraq, have been aggressively overshadowed by events in Gaza. FPA War Crimes blogger Daniel Graeber has a piece at IslamOnline discussing the current political climate leading up to the elections.
It was just last week that I put in a blog piece that the EU's chances of diversifying their gas supplies were extremely poor. Even though the Georgia-Russian war and even more recent Ukraine-EU gas pipeline was shut off by Moscow, seemingly bringing Europe to their energy knees …
