As expected, President Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) won nation-wide in Georgia’s recent municipal elections, with Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava winning re-election with a vote of over 55% in the Tbilisi race, competing against eight other candidates. UNM got a stunning 66% of the popular vote across the country, a convincing mandate, although a little […]
According to the official FIFA Countdown Clock there are 4 days, 18 hours, 56 minutes, and the seconds are counting until the World Cup kicks off. In the interim you might want to check out Global Post’s guide to the World Cup, Vanity Fair’s Fair Play, a photo-heavy football blog, and Pitch Invasion, which purports […]
Bangladeshis observed a day of national mourning on Saturday to remember the 117 people who died in Thursday’s blaze in Dhaka’s old town. With the national flag flying at half mast, Bangladeshis of all stripes and beliefs joined in prayer and commemoration, unified in quiet and mannered grief. Now is the time for searching and […]
Rob Grace, writer for FPA’s Law and Security Strategy blog (one of my favorites), has covered the recent Maqaleh v. Gates ruling regarding Afghan detainee rights. Grace provides a historical angle to the ruling and tackles further questions in the comments. Here is a piece: Last week the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in […]
With all of the attention being paid to the legitimately terrible British Petroleum travesty in the Gulf of Mexico it might be worth pointing out that oil spills in Nigeria surpass those off the Gulf Coast by a matter of magnitude and in the West we pay virtually no attention.
After all the pretty words, is the Obama Administration actually willing to walk the talk with some concrete policy choices when it comes to India?
Outraged at the water pollution caused by the BP oil spill, “Good Cop” Medvedev proposed today a global fund to ensure against and deal with such disasters in the future. But as any schoolboy knows, Russia has had very few qualms about destroying its own environment. Putin may talk a nice talk about how “Russia’s […]
According to the law of comparative advantage in economics, each country has production advantages in comparison to other states. Venezuela too, has its strengths. It produces more Major League baseball players per capita than most other countries. Along with Puerto Rico, it has won the most Miss Universe crowns over the past two decades. Venezuela […]
By Sean Goforth (co-author of the FPA Latin America blog) An editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post takes a swipe at American agricultural subsidies. The Obama administration recently agreed to pay Brazilian producers $147.3 million a year to resolve a trade dispute with the Brazilian government, after Brazil threatened WTO-authorized retaliatory tariffs because of unlawful cotton […]
Israel-Turkey ties had already been strained. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has attempted to garner the support of the Muslim world, condemning Israel for even the most minor of missteps. Tensions began to rise following Operation Cast Lead, where Israel killed some civilians in its attack on the Hamas terror infrastructure. Then, an Israeli ambassador […]
The Daily Star reports the following grim news: At least 87 people, mostly women and children, were burned alive and scores more wounded in a blaze in the densely-populated Old Dhaka last night. The death toll may rise sharply, as rescuers early today were pulling out bodies from eight houses and 20 shops that had […]
Lebanese leaders and citizens are expressing their outrage over last Sunday’s botched Israeli raid in international waters off the coast of Gaza that resulted in at least 9 deaths. Since the Hamas-led government took over control of Gaza in 2007, Israel has had the territory under siege. In 2009, Israel launched an assault on Gaza […]
One of the reasons that I do not worry about the ANC’s stranglehold on South African politics taking the country toward the sort of one-party state that bedevils much of the rest of the continent is that there is such a vibrant, lively, and dissent-laden tradition within the ANC coalition itself. The latest contretemps involves […]
The Mail & Guardian is not thrilled with what it sees as a lack of transparency on the part of the World Cup Local Organizing Committee and is taking steps to force information out into the open.
Suspending cynicism for just a minute I have to praise France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy for his recent unequivocal assertions that Africa must be given a greater global role. Now, his remarks took place at a France-Africa summit in Nice, so it was in Sarkozy’s interest to play nice in Nice (ok — consider it a […]