Indian state takes action on child marriage
Police in the Indian state of Rajasthan have taken the rare step of arresting 16 local caste leaders for issuing a decree calling for village community members to ostracize a man who refused to allow his …
…evidence that the US did in fact sign such an agreement with Mexico, authorizing ATF, in cooperation with Mexican authorities, to implement the gun-walking ‘sting’ that provided Mexican gunman with killing tools used to fire on and murder US agents would corroborate the intent and involvement, at the highest levels, of ATF officials, of the Attorney General (either Holder or his representatives would have had to sign off on the operation), and of the President of the United States—who, as Holder’s supervisor, must be held accountable for the decisions and actions of his subordinates.
It would be difficult, as well, to believe that Eric Holder would have undertaken such a risky endeavor, such a politically sensitive gamble, without a discussion having occurred between Holder and Obama before the implementation of the ATF operation. The stakes, in terms of US-Mexico relations, would have just been too high.
One can find Khartoum morally abhorrent. One can find Sudan’s regime to be a travesty on human rights. I do on both counts.
But you’ve got to hand it to them — from a pure realpolitik/power politics vantage point, Omar al-Bashir and company sure know how the game is played. On …
Christine Lagarde visited Brazil on Sunday to buoy her candidacy for the IMF’s top post. At a press conference Lagarde stated: “I will ensure that the Fund represents the diversity of all its members.’’ She went on to indicate that a European should not automatically head the IMF. …
I thought you would be interested in this interview that I did last week for Dawn.com Pakistan’s respected news source.
Dr. Stephen Philip Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, Washington DC, is a respected authority on the Pakistani army and the country’s politics. His book The Pakistan …
Christine Lagarde visited Brazil on Sunday to buoy her candidacy for the IMF’s top post. At a press conference Lagarde stated: “I will ensure that the Fund represents the diversity of all its members.’’ She went on to indicate that a European should not automatically head the IMF. Perhaps …
The PBS program, Need to Know, had an important segment recently on the implications for human health from climate change. These are, unfortunately, many and various, and include disease vectors exacerbated by warming, allergies, health impacts from too much or too little water, and heat. The show looked …
Japan’s opposition parties, the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito party, have arranged to submit a no-confidence motion against Democratic Party of Japan Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his cabinet, possibly as early as Thursday.
By presenting the motion, the two parties are protesting Kan’s handling of the aftermath of …
The most difficult thing to countenance when one is an analyst-watcher-critic of Afghan politics and society is the nearly weekly news that some child or innocent woman has been killed in NATO airstrikes or nightly door to door counter-terrorist operations. This, any time of the year, any year at all.
But …
I recently had the pleasure of attending an excellent talk at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. on the way religious education structures pluralism in Pakistan. Matthew Nelson, a Lecturer at SOAS, University of London and a Fellow at the Wilson Center, offered a deeply interesting discussion on ways …
If, as the report prepared for the U.S. Agency for International Development estimated, the death toll resulted from Haiti’s January 10 earthquake was between 46,000 and 85,000, many people wonder where Haitian leaders found the additional 231,000 bodies in their revised figures of 316,000 published earlier this year on the …
Several days ago, my co-blogger, Finn Maigaard, and I were chatting via skype with Ms. Giji Gya of ISIS Europe and her team on their latest project: CSDP Maps. This excellent think-tank, well known for its European Security Review series, has been …
Imagine if tens of thousands of young Americans marched on The Mall to protest the Electoral College, the appointment of Supreme Court justices and the two-party system because they suddenly decided these institutions were not democratic enough.
Something roughly equivalent to that is now taking place in Spain. While the country’s …
Today many people find themselves saying; “Happy Memorial Day” as they visit with family and friends in the newly found summer sun, for the first BBQ’s and pool parties of the year, yet Memorial Day is not a day of celebration, but that of a day of …
This is the first of several review pieces on books about Brazil that I’ll be writing in the coming months on the blog. Please participate in the discussion by sharing your views on these books in the comments section.
Brazil is at a crucial juncture in its history. Already the …
