Those interested in East Asian economic and political issues have just lost one of their greatest resources: The Feer Eastern Economic Review (FEER). December brought the terminal edition of FEER, a once flagship journal on East Asian economics and politics that, according to its 1946 mission statement, sought to “analyze and interpret financial, commercial and […]
Philippines: Due to political pressure, the Arroyo administration has been forced to take serious action over November 2009’s Election Massacre. A suspect from the Ampatuan political clan was charged: “Andal Ampatuan Jr., the prime suspect in the massacre of 57 people in Maguindanao, southern Philippines on Nov. 23…” The government has also set up a […]
The fallacy of composition is the proposition that the causal relations that hold at the individual level also hold at a collective or aggregate social level. Allow me to play with this fallacy, for nothing helps one to comprehend the problems of the many than to see the problems of the few. Credit card bills […]
The small border between Norway and Russia all the way up in the high north has been Russia’s most stable border for the past 1,000 years. Now, that border may disappear, in a sense, as Norway and Russia consider doing away with visas for residents. Right before the annual meeting of the Confederation of Norwegian […]
Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua continues to be nowhere to be found. Yar’Adua, who has continued to suffer health problems and whose absence has caused rumors to swirl, has been missing for six weeks, since November 23. Nigerian opposition parties are beginning to ask questions, and understandably so. A serious political crisis in Nigeria could be […]
I was all set to explain why the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) knee-jerk response to recent (and undoubtedly serious) terrorist activity is incredibly dumb. Texas in Africa beat me to it. I will just add that this silly (and almost sure not actually to make us any safer) policy will also assuredly damage relations with […]
Alright. I know that’s a cheap Star Trek reference. That said, I did get the Star Trek movie for Christmas, err, Hanukkah. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel allegedly told an Israeli diplomat the administration would reduce its involvement in the peace process unless serious progress is made in the coming months. Emmanuel allegedly blamed […]
In the latest issue of Foreign Policy Barbara Crossette writes about how India is the real “headache” in Asia. She refers to India as the “elephant in the room” that no one seems to be talking about. The piece is extremely critical of how India handles its international relations, and calls it “an international adolescent, […]
Gaza smuggling tunnels are usually stigmatized as aiding the transfer of weapons from Egypt into Gaza for use in terror attacks. On a near-weekly basis, reports emerge of Israeli air strikes on these tunnels to prevent the additional weapons entering the Strip. However, some of the tunnels in and out of the Gaza Strip are used […]
I’d like to alert you to a short piece written recently on Bangladesh. The piece was published in the Japan Times a little more than a month ago. The author Gwynn Dyer expertly runs through the last three decades in the running gag of an internecine conflict in Bangladesh between two powerful families: As Dyer […]
The recently failed airline Christmas terror attack led to significant revisions in Transportation Security Administration travel guidelines and turned all eyes toward Israel as a model for security. Due to the multi-pronged threats facing Israel, security officials in the country use strict personal and baggage screening systems that led Ben Gurion Airport outside of Tel […]
The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) was established in December 1949 to aid the people who had been displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. UNRWA was supposed to be a temporary fix to deal with the newly minted “Palestinian Refugees”, a term which the world became quite familiar in the following sixty years. Camps […]
The recent visit to Japan by Saeed Jalili, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, has some analysts now considering the prospect of a Japanese-led effort to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. By all accounts the visit was a success. The Iranian envoy was receptive to Japan’s case for a civilian nuclear energy program and expressed interest in further […]
In a recent article on Project Syndicate, Jorge Castañeda equates President Calderón’s war on drugs to President Bush’s invasion of Iraq. He argues: “Just like Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Mexico’s drug war was a war of choice. It was a war that Calderón should not have declared, that cannot be won, and that is doing […]
It’s been a chaotic couple of weeks for me and so as a consequence it has been a quiet couple of weeks at the Africa Blog. But I assure you that things are going to pick up soon. I’ll have my annual Year in Review piece posted and will return to regular posting by tomorrow. May […]