Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, father of slain Juan Francisco, will headline a massive protest against the government’s drug war strategy tomorrow. The first protest took place on May 5 in the city of Cuernavaca, not far from where Juan Francisco died. Protests are scheduled in 31 sites across Mexico, and all manner of civil society […]
A Japanese woman who was found guilty of smuggling methamphetamine into Malaysia is unlikely to escape the death penalty, her lawyer said Friday. Mariko Takeuchi, 36, was arrested Oct. 31, 2009, for attempting to smuggle 3.5 kilograms of methamphetamine into Malaysia through Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Under Malaysian law, anyone possessing a minimum of 50 […]
The narrative of the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan is still in flux, nearly seven days out. The nucleus of that narrative however remains static : what did the Pakistani military and intelligence services know about bin Laden’s whereabouts, when did it know it and what did it do about that knowledge or […]
For the third friday in a row, casualty numbers have declined in ongoing Syrian protests. It would appear that the large scale preemptive arrests carried out by the government over the previous days have been successful in keeping protest numbers down. Reports also indicate that the international Red Cross/Red Crescent has been given access to […]
With the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in what appears to be a covert American operation in the garrison town of Abbottabad, Pakistanis are in a state of deja vu. While the international community is caught in a state of disbelief that the world’s most wanted terrorist was hiding inside Pakistan, a country […]
Every so often I just like to remind my readers how vast Africa is (and thus how difficult, indeed absurd, it is to think about it as a single unit or phenomenon or place). The True Size of Africa:
“The EU will have its voice in the General Assembly,” said President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy. For this first time of its history, the EU will be able to address the UN General Assembly (UNGA). By passing on May 3, 2011, the Resolution 65/276 on “Strengthening of the United Nations System: Participation […]
I have recently written about TAPI, the 1,680 km (1,000 mile) $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India proposed pipeline scheduled for completion in 2016 with a capacity to transfer 90 million cubic meters of gas per day to energy starved South Asia. According to the TAPI agreement, Turkmenistan will supply 38 mmcmd each going to Pakistan and India, […]
As unrest continues to grip Syria, and opposing viewpoints continue to battle it out over the airwaves, in the pages of newspapers and magazines, and over the interwebs, let’s try to take a look at some of what is going on; both in Syria, and in the battle to frame what is happening there, shall […]
The U.S. operation that led to the killing of Al-Qadea leader Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad earlier this week has stirred a hornet’s nest. While details of the operation continue to pour in each day, the sentiment that “Pakistan has some explaining to do” is gaining force. Pakistan’s Ambassador to U.S. Husain Haqqani, has appeared […]
Mahmood Mamdani, the director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Uganda and a prominent voice in African studies, recently gave a talk in which he compared the recent uprisings across North Africa, the “Walk to Work” protests in Uganda, and the Soweto Uprisings. While the argument may not sustain scrutiny as a historical […]
The decision of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance (DA) leaders in Midvaal, an Afrikaner-heavy constituency south of Gauteng, to take down a statue of Apartheid-era driving force and Prime Minister Hendrick Verwoerd reveals the party’s biggest dilemma. The DA is best qualified as a center-right party that stands in clear opposition to the African National Congress […]
In what has to qualify as a career high-water mark, on yesterday’s Oprah honoring the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, yours truly got a bit of face time. They showed clips from the Freedom Riders documentary (out on The American Experience on PBS on May 16) and used one of the clips in which […]
Plagiarism is not something Russians worry about – hell, even Putin lifted his phD thesis, verbatim, out of a US textbook – while his country has occupied the US’s piracy list – home of the world’s largest copyright violators – for twice as many years as China. Not that there’s anything wrong with copying per se: it […]
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the United States warned then-Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in 2009 about Japan’s wavering bilateral ties. The quotes came from cables posted to WikiLeaks. Assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Kurt Campbell complained in October 2009 that Hatoyama told his Chinese and South Korean counterparts […]