New research by the invaluable South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) indicates that murder rates in South Africa are actually down 30% since 1994-1995. This news flies counter to the stubborn narrative of South African crime escalating out of control. It also should provide something of a palliative for those wringing their hands over […]
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has introduced a bill into the Senate Armed Forces Committee proposing to study the feasibility of creating a deep water sea port in the Arctic. The port, which as a deep water port would be able to receive Panamax ships, would “protect and advance strategic United States interests within the evolving […]
In April Sudan will hold elections, which will provide something of an interregnum between the the twin poles of state-sanctioned chaos in Darfur and the seemingly ceaseless conflict between Sudan’s north and south. Human rights groups still want to hold Sudan to account for its past perfidy, with an organization called the Enough Project calling […]
This morning Iraq’s presidency council voted to delay parliamentary elections until March 7th of 2010. The decision came after a meeting at President Jalal Talabani’s residency late Tuesday which included Talabani and two vice presidents, Adel Abdul Mahdi and Tariq al-Hashimi, along with Faraj al-Haidari, head of the IHEC. Although the elections were previously slated […]
Cement, mortar and stone are being pulled out and slowly erected to separate Israel, except instead of the Jewish state building a structure for alleged security purposes, the European Union is separating itself from the Middle East’s only democracy by propagating a policy while being ignorant of the facts. EU foreign ministers accepted a proposal today that calls for […]
Barely a month since the Kaiga Atomic Power Station accident that exposed 55 workers to excessive radiation, India had another nuclear related incident today. In Mumbai three people were arrested on charges of illegal possession of five kilograms of depleted uranium. Though it is unknown how they obtained the uranium, the Bhabha Atomic Research Center […]
The United States is not taking the support offered by the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the Iranian nuclear program lightly (Here is a previous blog I wrote on this topic). This week as the Turkish prime minister met with President Obama in Washington D.C., Iran’s nuclear program was very much a topic of […]
At the FPA’s Global Film Review Blog my colleague Sean Patrick Murphy takes a look at God Grew Tired of Us, a 2007 documentary tracing three of Sudan’s “lost boys” from a refugee camp to the United States, where they have to adjust to an entirely different life while reconciling with their pasts. I concur […]
Times are hard in Mexico. Even, it seems, for drug traffickers. Thanks to stepped-up law enforcement on both sides of the border, drug gangs are increasingly looking beyond their traditional revenue streams of trafficking and extortion. The Dallas Morning News reports that Los Zetas, one of Mexico’s largest drug syndicates, are expanding their presence along […]
Prepare for a serious crackdown in Guinea. On Monday a member of one of the disaffected factions of the country’s military shot President Moussa Dadis Camara, the leader of the junta that took power by coup eleven months ago, in a failed coup. The alleged assassin did not succeed in killing or seriously incapacitating the […]
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), currrently boycotting its minority seats in parliament, elected Tarique Rahman, the son of the current leader of the party and former Prime Minister as the de facto second in command in party leadership. This move makes leadership in the party founded by Tarique’s late father– and the assassinated husband of […]
Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story that showed just how desperate the Iranian government is getting. If harassing Iranian protesters living in Iran was not enough, the Iranian authorities are now threatening Iranians living abroad. As the article states: In recent months, Iran has been conducting a campaign of harassing and intimidating […]
President Barack Obama’s appointee to lead administration efforts to combat anti-Semitism is still unsure of how her new role with involve responding to anti-Israel comments. Hannah Rosenthal, the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, began federal service today and purports views in-line with J Street, the pro-peace pro-Israel lobby (she sits on the […]
I always wonder why despots and tyrants and authoritarians don’t realize that holding farce elections in which they win more than 90% of the popular vote actually serves to undermine their legitimacy. Granted, they don’t care — not caring what others think is sort of their thing, which explains why they are authoritarians to begin […]
US authorities today filed charges against David Headley for his involvement in the planning and execution of the November 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai. According to a US Department of Justice press release, he “was charged in a 12-count criminal information with six counts of conspiracy to bomb public places in India, to murder and […]