The 2010 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty goes to………Akbar Ganji! (Photo taken from Cato Institute) Ganji is a well- known Iranian writer and journalist. He spent 6 years in an Iranian prison for being a vocal supporter of secular democracy in Iran and exposing government involvement in the assassination of individuals opposed to Iran’s theocratic […]
Sean Murphy of FPA’s Global Film Review blog has posted a review of an intriguing documentary called The Glass House. This documentary follows lives of four young Iranian women over an 18 month period at a center in Tehran called Omid e Mehr, where women living on the margins of Iranian society can come for […]
The Nuclear Security Summit has opened on a positive note. Ukraine has volunteered to get rid of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. The bold and applaudable decision by Ukraine is sure to help global non-proliferation efforts and bring optimism into the Summit. However, it is sad that Pakistan was given the opportunity to be the lead speaker and demand a nuclear deal from the […]
As news headlines on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict center on civilian casualties and the Obama administration’s efforts to reboot negotiations, some tragic stories are lost in the shuffle, even though they highlight some interesting nuances on regional politics. Over the last two weeks, a saga has unfolded to save the lives of the first conjoined twins […]
When it comes to Russia, Anne Applebaum suspects the worst at the best of times. She saw the nefarious hand of the Kremlin even behind her recent car breakdown. So if Applebaum, whose Polish foreign minister husband could easily have also been on that doomed plane, is lauding the way Russia has handled the aftermath […]
Sudan’s elections have apparently not gotten off to a good start. I’m just returning from a week in Washington, DC where I had remarkably scarce internet access. I’ll be back to full posting soon.
Two ministers from the rival groups of Hamas and Fatah met today in Gaza. Some of the points discussed included the persecution of Fatah and Hamas leader in the opposite group’s territories, as well as creating a supervisory police force for the upcoming elections. It is likely that the two opposing parties have moved because […]
The recent events in Kyrgyzstan have not only raised the question of what actually happened there, but how we can understand it? The NYTimes and CNN have mostly been awful, with some exceptions: This opinion piece being the major one. On the other hand, Registan.net has been extraordinary. This article on how to understand media […]
A small bomb thrown over the wall of the United States Consulate in Nuevo Laredo on Friday night is recurring fears that Mexico’s drug gangs have their eyes on the US. No one was injured in the attack, but several windows were shattered. US consular offices in Nuevo Laredo and nearby Piedras Negras will be […]
Poland and Poles worldwide of all political stripes are grieving the death of President Lech Kaczynski and his entourage and fellow passengers following the plane crash near Smolinsk, Russia that has claimed over 97 victims of Poland’s elite. Some of Poland’s most important leaders and political figures were on their way to a memorial for the […]
Lawson Brigham, professor of geography and Arctic policy at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, visited UCLA on Friday to speak as part of the Tod Spieker Colloquium Series. Brigham brings an interesting perspective to any discussion on the Arctic thanks to his academic credentials and maritime experience. He received a PhD from Cambridge in polar […]
This morning’s horrific plane crash that killed Polish president Kaczynski his wife and many senior staff en route to Katyn forest contained some tragic irony. Not least that, curiously for a president famous for his anti-Russian sentiments, Kaczynski insisted on continuing to use a safe but ageing Soviet jet for his official travels, long after […]
The High Court declared in a ruling on Thursday that “if any person tries to compel a woman to wear a veil against her consent … that would amount to a violation of her fundamental rights as enshrined in the Constitution,” The Times published a Reuters piece that reports: “The verdict came in response to […]
On April 6, in the Mukrana forests of Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district in India, 72 members of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and one member of the District police force were killed in a gruesome attack by the Naxalites. In addition to the number of causalities, the planning and precision of the Naxal operation stunned the […]
Unbelievable displays of ignorance like this make me wonder if those who accuse the US media’s post-Soviet reporting of bias are just giving it way too much credit. Here is Kyra Phillips, anchor of CNN’s afternoon newscast, on Kyrgyzstan, via Gawker: Kyra Phillips: Kyrgyzstan, impossible to spell, hard to say, good luck finding it on […]