In light of President Obama’s recent call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, The Foreign Policy Initiative Executive Director Jamie M. Fly and 32 other signatories have signed a letter urging President Obama to take additional, common-sense steps to further pressure the Assad regime and thus make clear that the United States stands […]
Israel’s periphery has rarely had a large voice in Israeli politics. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv make the noise; those in the north and the south typically just keep their heads down and try and go about their business. But today, a hundred thousand people throughout Israel’s periphery marched in solidarity with the current protests that […]
Like most of the other uprisings going on in the Middle East and North Africa, Israel’s month long protests were started by the youth. One month ago, 26 year-old video-editor from Tel-Aviv, Daphni Leef, was informed that her rent was going to go up. Being a product of the 21st century, she did what any […]
Editor’s Note: The following piece was written by Omid Memarian for the IPS News Agency. Omid Memarian is an Iranian-American journalist and analyst based in San Francisco. Mr. Memarian is a regular contributor to the IPS News Agency (Inter Press Service), the Daily Beast, as well as Huffington Post. He is also recipient of Human […]
Are you reading the African Arguments network of blogs? You should be. African Arguments is a project of the Royal African Society in London, and the “intention of the site is to provide a forum for the serious analysis and discussion of contemporary African affairs with an emphasis on political life, and its impact on […]
At The New York Times Magazine, Nate Silver decided to try to apply his analytical chops to the question of “where to get the world’s best service.” He basically links standard tipping rates with survey responses about the customer service people received in 24 countries. The takeaway: All of this brings us to the Tipping […]
Over two dozen House Democrats are preparing a week-long trip to Israel and the West Bank only a month out from Palestinian attempts to unilaterally declare statehood and days after reports surfaced that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has reversed his opposition to using 1967 borders as the baseline for negotiations. The group of Democrats […]
Suzanne Trimel, Media Relations Director Amnesty International USA New York – Amnesty International today called the United Nations Security Council response to the bloodshed in Syria “completely inadequate” and “deeply disappointing” and pressed the Council for a “firm and legally binding” position imposing an arms embargo, freezing President Al-Assad’s assets and pursuing an international investigation […]
Both Israeli and U.S. politicians often discuss the shared values and interests of the two countries, but shared outcomes are also a big part of that package and emerge time and time again in the economic, foreign policy and security realms. As Washington struggled to cobble together a debt limit increase and deficit reduction […]
On Tuesday, leaders of Iraq’s major political parties signed an agreement allowing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to negotiate terms of a prolonged US troop presence in Iraq. Although months of debate, discussion and endless deliberation undoubtedly remain before a final pact is reached, “after weeks of wrangling and lots of US pressure [this deal] appears […]
I have recently been fortunate to conduct several interviews with some very influential and interesting figures, the latest being with the former U.S. Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman, David J. Dunford. Ambassador Dunford was appointed to Oman in 1992 and served until 1995. He has since retired to Tucson, Arizona, where he is an […]
Lots of stories have been cavorting around my head, with commentary as I see fit: The disaster in the Horn of Africa represents what the Mail & Guardian calls “a crisis in slow motion.” The perfect storm of famine and the political chaos in Somalia has led to a humanitarian nightmare. The west (ie the […]
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of seeing author Joseph Braude speak in New York City. He was interesting and his perspective on the Middle East was unique, and I felt compelled to do an interview with him for my readers. Just to provide some background, Joseph comes from an Iraqi-Jewish family and […]
Quoted directly from John Campbell at his Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa in Transition blog: The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has released ten case studies on “Assessing Risks to Stability in Sub-Saharan Africa.” The reports cover Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan and Uganda. The papers, commissioned by the U.S. […]
This week the Syrian Uprising has taken on a newly sectarian character, a disturbing development, and one that could spell a much more violent and unpredictable future for the unstable nation. On Sunday, Homs, Syria’s third largest city, saw the first openly sectarian violence of the now almost five month old unrest. It appears that […]