Both houses of Nigeria’s parliament have confirmed newly sworn President Goodluck Jonathan’s choice of Kaduna state governor Namadi Sambo as the country’s new vice-president. Observers believe that by choosing the relatively unknown Sambo Jonathan, a northerner (Jonathan comes from the south), has revealed his intention to run for a full term in the country’s 2011 […]
The opposition BNP might have learned the wrong lesson from recent news of political unrest in Thailand. Perhaps that is why senior members of the party have urged Khaleda Zia to endorse a spate of popular unrest modeled on Thailand’s Red-shirts movement. Happily, saner minds have argued against that position claiming that the party isn’t […]
The announcement this morning that Iran will give up the bulk of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey has been met with quite a bit of fanfare. However, the deal is virtually irrelevant. This deal was put in place in an effort to curb sanctions and provide the impression that Iran wants to negotiate and make […]
A leaked foreign policy document proclaims detente, Lada eyes a return to British roads, corruption soars, Sakharov is back in vogue and Russian hockey back on a winning streak: is Russia channeling the 1970s? Yes, but with a decidedly 21st century twist, according to the BBC’s Russia Business Report released this weekend. In the USSR, […]
One needn’t be reminded that India and Bangladesh share a border and that there are often skirmishes along that winding strip of land. So, as if to unnecessarily remind, the government of Bangladesh charged India with constructing a fence in violation of international law. Perhaps if there weren’t quite as much credibility and mutually advantage […]
The BBC reports that Friday May 14th, there were clashes in the southern city of Jalalabad between supporters of ousted president Bakiyev and supporters of the interim government. 2 people were killed and 60 injured as nearly 2,000 of Bakiyev’s supporters attempted to re-gain control of government buildings. The interim government now says the situation […]
Two activists of the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS) were gunned down in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The victims were young Chakma men, the indigenous people of the area who have long sought an independent state. Though the two men are thought to be members of the PCJSS, there remains some dispute about their […]
Sean Patrick Murphy of FPA’s Global Film Review blog has done a review of National Geographic’s ‘Inside Guantanamo‘ documentary. Check out Sean’s review in its entirety at this blog and here’s the intro: The fact that people of all political stripes take issue with this movie goes a long way to revealing its even handedness. […]
Raúl Isaías Baduel, who once served as Venezuela’s defense minister, now faces an 8-year prison sentence after being found guilty on corruption charges. He has already been in prison for more than a year, pending the trial’s outcome. Baduel had resigned his position in the government three years ago over concerns about the regime’s direction, […]
Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) released their 2010 “Predators of Press Freedom” list on May 3. The list consists of the top forty “politicians, government officials, religious leaders, militias and criminal organisations that cannot stand the press, treat it as an enemy and directly attack journalists,” says the RSF web site. Many of the usual suspects […]
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is scheduled to meet with President Obama in Washington on May 24th, and the two will have much to discuss. Hariri and Obama Lebanon’s and the United States have a long relationship loosely based on their common democracy and Christian influence. But the relationship between America and Lebanon is not […]
By Sean Goforth (from a piece originally published by World Politics Review) Last week, Lula was informally tapped to mediate negotiations between Iran and the West over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly told his “brother,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, that Iran was prepared to accept Brazilian mediation “in principle.” […]
There is this variant of political programs that exist only in so far one can bandy it about, raging, fulminating as if the program itself were sufficient to move hearts and mind. So it is, that the BNP has long launched the anti-government program that never seems to come about. The date of the […]
Over the last couple of days things have escalated again in Bangkok. It is unclear what ignited the latest round of violence, but it appears that Wednesday’s rejection of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s proposed compromise, after its initial tentative acceptance by the Red Shirts, caused the government to run out of patience. What is clear […]
Recent news from Harare pretty much defies parody: Robert Mugabe has invited North Korea’s football team to train in Zimbabwe for the World Cup. Lack of self awareness thy name is Mugabe. Sometimes you just have to laugh to keep from crying.