LONDON: Turbulent Pakistan has replaced Iraq as the place to go for militants bent on striking the West, but the threat of US attacks means al Qaeda recruits may spend more time out of sight in a classroom than on an assault course. Long a favoured destination of British militants of Pakistani descent, Pakistan’s […]
Many young men and soldiers hailing from diverse societies identify with the concept of dying for honour, the latter term referring to a willingness to die in battle. One of the ways of building up such an idea is through the process of indoctrination — as in the case of those who are recruited for […]
Yesterday, in a video podcast, the European Commissioner for Information Society, Commissioner Reding called for ICANN to be restructured. ICANN is the entity that basically governs the internet, it decides the endings of web-addresses (eg. .com, .be) and it under the notional auspices of the US governmnet. European anxiety about this arose when teh proposed .xxx […]
Middle East Progress interviewed Israeli President Shimon Peres on his latest trip to the United States to meet President Barack Obama and speak at the AIPAC conference. Peres expressed the need for hope in the peace process, a strategy mirroring, although likely unrelated, the Obama ’08 campaign. Notably, Peres stated: “The Israeli public has already […]
Hamas continued reaching out to the Obama Administration, this time in an exclusive interview of the group’s leader Khalid Meshal with the New York Times. He stated that the group intends to pursue a working relationship with the West, and urged observers to understand that the organization can adapt and negotiate depending on the circumstance. […]
Greetings from the University of Keele in the North Midlands of England. I will be spending the next month here as a visiting fellow at the David Bruce Cetre for American Studies. I am still very much settling in. It is, however, always nice to be back in the UK. I find that the UK […]
China’s updated renewable energy plan China is expected to announce a new blueprint for renewable energy development. The new industry plan will update a long-term industry plan released in 2007. Initial targets for wind, hydro-, solar, and biomass power as specified in the older plan will be raised significantly. The youngest renewable energy blueprint, for […]
Sufi Mohammad, the man on whom the government pinned its hopes after entering into a peace deal with the extremists, has declared that democracy amounts to kufr. Concurrently, referring to the ‘security forces and the rulers of Pakistan’ as the militants’ target, a TTP spokesman has said that the ANP that heads the NWFP government […]
On Monday, April 4, veteran journalist Ahmed Rashid addressed a select crowd at Karachi’s Mohatta Palace Museum. Not surprisingly, the subject of his talk was ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan: Quest for Peace or Recipe for War?’ He argued that Pakistan was facing a major existential crisis: ‘I no longer say that there’s a creeping Talibanisation in […]
WWII Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, a PBS-BBC co-production that premieres in the US on May 6, engages, shocks – and misleads. When someone at PBS sent the FPA Russia Blog an advance DVD of the series, I was both excited and puzzled by its audacious plunge into the well-trodden turf […]
I don’t normally use this blog to discuss specific violent attacks in Afghanistan, but these incidents are becoming appalling to read about, I can’t imagine living them. In a series of attacks yesterday, over 25 Afghan civilians, security officials, and government figures were killed. The provincial mayor of the eastern province of Laghman was killed […]
Russia plans to build floating nuclear power stations in the Arctic in order to exploit its oil and gas reserves. The power stations, which will consist of two nuclear reactors atop a steel platform, will allow Gazprom to power its drills in the Arctic’s notoriously difficult waters. The floats would also maintain their own waste and […]
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates arrived in Egypt today in the first stop on a week-long tour of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. I suspect that Gates will make some unannounced stops in the region (to Iraq, perhaps), but I can’t verify that. Gates set out three goals for his meetings in Egypt: (1) encourage […]
It’s no surprise that the residents of Egypt’s Manshiyat Nasser (also known as “Garbage City), the vast majority of whom are poor Copts who make a living in part by raising swine (as well as sorting and selling garbage), did not take well to the Egyptian government’s recent decision to slaughter the country’s 300,000 pigs […]
Due to anti-Arab cheers emanating from the stands of right-wing affiliated soccer team Beitar Jerusalem, the team must play a home game against rival Maccabi Tel Aviv sans fans as punishment. The recent infraction occured last month when multiple fans initiated chants insulting Muhammed. In the past, fans booed during a moment of silence for assassinated […]