Today marks one year that The Association of Sick and Fired Workers of General Motors Colombia (ASOTRECOL) members have been camped outside the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia in an act of protest. ASOTRECOL is an association of Colmotores, or General Motors Colombia, employees who assert they were injured while performing their duties at the company’s […]
I step through the doors of the packed out Pyongyang restaurant on Monivong Boulevard in Phnom Penh and catch the eye of a very beautiful young Korean waitress. She traverses the crowded dining room and comes over to me with a bright smile on her face. “Table for two?” she asks, seeing my friend behind […]
While Turkey argues that it has the capacity to address the increasing flow of Syrian refugees, several refugee advocacy groups have criticized Turkey’s policies and have called on Ankara to adhere to its obligations under international law. As the international community is struggling to find a solution to end the violence in Syria, the humanitarian […]
As a rite of summer in U.S. presidential campaigns, the nominee of the challenging party takes a trip out of the country to buff up his foreign policy credentials. Republican Mitt Romney is no exception, and his trip, not surprisingly, included a stop in Israel. Romney has a long friendship with Israeli Prime Minister […]
The results of the March 2012 presidential election in Russia were no surprise for Central European observers. Vladimir Putin, the new-old President, has returned to power and the political, social and economic atmosphere has again become tense and unpredictable. Yet the change might not be as radical as many fear. In the last few years shifts in Russian foreign policy have not been strategic, but merely tactical. During Dmitry Medvedev’s Presidency, Moscow attempted to create an atmosphere conducive to cooperation with Europe and was eager to pursue broader modernization. However, the ongoing economic crisis has revealed that Russia lacks the potential to implement any ambitious programs on the international stage. And now, Vladimir Putin will have to decide how to forge policy statements from his election campaign into real and concrete political actions. From a Central European perspective, three crucial questions have emerged following the election. First, how will Putin’s return influence Russia’s relationship with the EU? Second, what impact will that have on the potential future political and security scenarios in Europe’s Eastern neighborhood? And finally, what would a more assertive Russia mean both for the broader Central European security landscape at a time of relative U.S. retrenchment from the region, and for the prospects for sustainability and longevity of the rapprochement efforts between Moscow and several regional capitals, notably Warsaw?
Just what is Bill Browder really playing at? After the high-flying American investment banker was ousted from Russia in 2005, his lawyer Sergey Magnitsky was killed in police custody four years later. It is said that Magnitsky earned his Steve Biko-like death after the lawyer, investigating the authorities’ dismantling of Browder’s Hermitage hedge fund in […]
While not a movie that makes you say “Wow!” Charlie Wilson’s War is a solid film. Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman are excellent in their roles. The story revolves around Hanks as Wilson, a United States congressman who likes to party. Wilson appears to be the most unlikely candidate to help people in the developing world which is why this movie is so surprising. Roberts […]
“Haiti walks a fine line between a failed state and fascistic state.” More than two months before its forthcoming August 2012 released, Jeb Sprague’s book, “Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti,” stormed academia, political and diplomatic communities, delivering what some reviewers perceived as a brilliant diagnosis of the history of political violence […]
Asieh Namdar is a Senior Writer at CNN’s sister network HLN. She also served as an anchor for CNN International. She joined CNN in 1989 as a video journalist and continued her career to hold many positions, including producing her own segments. As one of the most experienced writers at the network, Asieh has reported […]
“You will soon witness how attacks will resound in the heart of your land, because our war with you has now started…“ – Abu Bakr Baghdadi Presaging the latest wave of violence in Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) released a recorded message, heralding the start of Ramadan. The speaker, believed to be Abu Bakr […]
In the U.S., the only Arctic country without a national policy for the region, there are stirrings in the Senate about drafting one. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) co-wrote a letter (PDF) to President Barack Obama, citing the “less than organized fashion” in which Arctic policy-making has proceeded since the signing of […]
Acting on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s directives for the production of long-range missile with 2500km (1553 miles) range, Turkey’s Defense Industry Executive Committee has formally announced its decision to commence design and production work for an ICBM. According to Turkish NTV and Zaman news agencies, sources in the Ministry of Defense have indicated that industry agencies had […]
Isn’t it ironic? On the same day that Putin signed Russia’s official accession into the world economy, he also signed a law essentially labelling NGO workers foreign agents. As the country edges another step closer to western economics, it slips further from western ideals of human rights. Was this just another example of Russia’s characteristic […]
“Haitians Continue to drown at sea, fleeing, against all odds, the land their forebears fought for so heroically and valiantly on a quest for a better life.” Hardly a new phenomenon, Haitian migration took center stage as the United Nations in mid-July after a woman drowned when a boat carrying more than 100 Haitian migrants, […]
A little less than two weeks ago, a committee headed up by former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Edmund Levy and appointed by Prime Minister Netanyahu released the Levy Report. The Levy Report attempted to define, once and for all, the legal standing of settlement activity in the West Bank. It found that settlement expansion […]