Just as the blogosphere was starting to become familiar with the likely frontrunners in Egypt’s upcoming presidential race, the election commission disqualified three of the most most visible candidates, upholding this decision on Tuesday. The commission deemed candidates ineligible for various reasons: Salafist preacher Hazem Abu Ismail’s …
While democracy struggles to take hold in Myanmar and the Maldives, last weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Colombia raised some interesting questions about development and democracy in the Western Hemisphere. Events at the conference itself have been addressed …
If history is any guide, Obama is bluffing on Iran
With President Obama describing them as Tehran’s “last chance” for a peaceful resolution, international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program started up again this past weekend. Washington has been talking tough with
In a second post on global health news for this week, U.S. President Barack Obama’s budget request for next year has reduced funding for neglected tropical diseases. This decrease may have wide-reaching effects on one-sixth of the world’s population. Additionally, a writer tells his story of life in …
United States President Barack Obama announced today that he was nominating Dr. Jim Yong Kim for president of the World Bank. This was a surprise to almost everyone, as Dr. Kim is not a traditional pick by any means: a medical anthropologist and physician, current president of Dartmouth College, …
This article, appeared on the Political Reflections Magazine, vol.3, n.2, is the second part of my review of FPA’s Great Decisions episode on the Arab Spring: The first part, providing a general overview of the debate can be found here.
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As the uncertainty of the Arab Spring …
The year was filled with missed opportunities but also promising developments in U.S.-India relations. 2012 is shaping up to be the same.
President Obama’s state visit to India in early November 2010 appeared to impart new dynamism to a bilateral relationship that had been listless …
The year is certainly not over yet – the annual international UN climate conference is ongoing in South Africa for the next ten days. Nevertheless, here’s a quick look at what we’ve seen – and what we might expect in 2012.
Casting back to my …
As I noted recently, the pressure is building on the Keystone XL pipeline. 350.org and the many brothers and sisters who have been affiliating themselves with their actions to stop the pipeline – and indeed the tar sands development in Alberta – were in Washington …
It’s called a ‘murder-for-hire’ sting, a standard law enforcement ploy designed to help the criminal find the very worst in his nature and act on it. But sting operations come with their own risks as well as rewards—and attorneys know that ‘entrapment’ can be a strong defense. . .
Informants are like sharks, scouring the underworld for opportunities and targets the feds can use as springboards to career-making cases. It’s the informant’s job to find two sticks (agent and opportunity), to rub them together vigorously, and to blow gently on the sparks of criminal enterprise.
Think about this as well….the ‘downpayment’ for the ‘hit,’ the100k wired to the US undercover bank account is enough to trigger a case for conspiracy, but it still doesn’t prove that the Iranian government was driving the bus. To do that, US authorities must establish a link between the owner of the account in the UAE — or the owner/s of an account held by an international financial institution with correspondent branches/banks around the world — and the government of Iran.
This is a critical point–one that could defuse the Obama Administration’s claim that ‘senior officials at the highest levels of the Iranian government’ were tied to the assassination plot and challenge the call of senior US officials for alterations to current foreign policy, in the US and abroad, toward Iran. If US authorities cannot prove that this was something more than a plot formulated by a small group of non-state actors, the President, the Secretary of State, DEA and the FBI have some explaining to do. . .
Has America exhibited moral courage by addressing change, or the lack there of, in the world? Or has it squandered our hope for a principled effort to rid American foreign policy of its realist inclinations and desire to cling to paradigms?
Many of us have placed our …
Ok. Now we’re into it. Administration top dogs have thrown ATF Director Ken Melson and US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke under the truck.In firefighting, they call it a ‘controlled burn,’ torching a perimeter of just enough man-made flame to meet and beat the advance of a wildfire impervious to less-drastic solutions.
Good luck, gentlemen.
The House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the DOJ/ATF gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious is roaring through the halls of Congress, and despite DOJ’s efforts to spin the story every which way but up, Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) are on a trail insiders whisper may lead investigators all the way to the top.
The House Oversight Committee calls ATF’s Fast and Furious a ‘failed and reckless operation,’ but was it? If you look at it from Calderon’s perspective, or from the perspective of administration officials–including Obama, Holder, and senior ATF executives–who favor stronger gun legislation, Fast and Furious was a huge success….
President Obama’s announcement of far larger and more accelerated withdrawals of U.S. forces from Afghanistan than many had expected affects Indian security interests and the U.S.-India relationship in significant ways.
…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.
