I participated in Hillary Clinton’s on-the-record conversation and press briefing at the Council on Foreign Relations today by conference call. It was fascinating even if much of what I heard was boilerplate. What was frustrating, however, was that Clinton virtually ignored Africa, mentioning President Obama’s Ghana speech in passing and then only to draw some […]
Speaking at the NAM Summit’s plenary session, Indian Prime Minister (PM) Manmohan Singh called upon member countries to fight terrorism and ensure their territories are not used as safe havens by terrorists. Singh is scheduled to meet his Pakistani counterpart on the sidelines of the Summit and push for greater Pakistani action against the perpetrators […]
A recent series of mysterious bombings in the Philippines have led some to wonder if it is just a more severe case of the usual-suspects, Muslims separatist groups based in Mindanao, or a possible conspiracy led by the Filipino army, the Arroyo opposition, or the Macapagal-Arroyo government itself. The Philippines has seen more than 60 […]
Two major media outlets in Israel and the West Bank face closure. The Palestinian Authority shuttered the offices of Al-Jazeera in the West Bank likely due to a controversial report on former P.A. President and Palestinian icon Yasser Arafat. The story cited a Fatah official accusing current P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas of conspiring to assassinate […]
It’s been pretty quiet on the Arctic front as of late. Tensions between Russia and Canada are lessening, while the Nordic countries are quietly preparing for Copenhagen in December. Sweden took over the presidency of the EU on July 1st and aims to shine the spotlight on the Arctic, even though it is not technically […]
History is important. It shows us what was tried in the past and how well it succeeded or failed. It is for this reason, I bring you Patrick Devenny’s (no relation) analysis of Captain Charles Trower’s, a British cavalry officer who attempted to corral Pashtuns for the British Empire, memoirs. Trower was in charge of […]
Due to inconsistencies importing and exporting goods from Palestinian controlled areas because of Israeli control of the border, a conglomeration of U.S. and Palestinian institutions established an insurance project for Palestinian companies to mitigate loss. The Palestinian Political Risk Insurance project provides certain companies with economic security programs in the event that border closures and violence […]
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman sharply condemned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for preconditioning peace talks by mandating a settlement freeze. Berman’s comments could mark a divergence between House Democrats and the official Obama Administration position that calls for an immediate halt to all settlement activity. Acknowledging recent discussion on settlements between Israeli and U.S. […]
Israeli authorities recently arrested former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney aboard an aid ship headed for the Gaza Strip (see previous blog entry here). After her capture, the former B-rate Congresswoman compared her imprisonment to that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I think not. Her career as a public servant in the United States gained little […]
When Putin imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky for wanting to sell parts of his oil business to the West, he was criticised abroad for political interference in the energy market. What to make then of the EU and US cheerleading for Nabucco, a pipeline with no economic rationale being built solely for the political reason of isolating […]
Is Aung San Suu Kyi’s star power waning after nearly two decades of political and social isolation under house arrest? What affect is this having on the countries democracy movement? These questions are explored in a recent New York Times article. There is no way to tell how representative this person is, but… “I […]
The good thing is that Prime Minster Gilani has called all the major political parties to share the outcome of this meeting with Indian Prime Minister. This is a wonderful development in a country where everything is slowly sliding back towards stone age. I am sure that my readers would be surprised to read that […]
When speaking of the Arab-Israeli conflict, we generally conjure images of Hamas in Gaza or a potential war with Syria. However, another group of Arabs constitutes a considerable issue for Israel- the Bedouins in the Negev. Prior to the creation of Israel in 1948, small Bedouin tribes (or clans called hamullahs) travelled throughout the Negev […]
Even as India struggles to defend itself from external terrorist organizations, the homegrown Naxalite movement continues to pose serious security concerns. On Sunday the Naxals killed 36 policemen in two separate incidents in Rajnandgaon and Sitagaon areas in the state of Chhattisgarh. Last month they seized around 2000 villages in the Lalgarh region in West […]