From his love of Deep Purple to his penchant for Savile Row suits, Medvedev's a bit of a Brit at heart. And today, our Personable Putinist boldly followed his Cuddly Conservative soul-mate into the final frontier….the cyber-frontier! History was made as President Medvedev became the first head of state to have a Video Blog, […]
I meant to write about this right after the news came out but I got sidetracked with the election drama. In his newest book, “The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008,” Bob Woodward confirms the rumor that the US is spying on Nuri al-Maliki, Iraqi Prime Minister, as well as other top Iraqi […]
Forty years ago, the United States began to mount raids into Cambodia and to undermine the government of King Sihanouk in order to cut Vietcong supply lines. As a result, America's war with Vietnamese Communism spread into Cambodia, leading to the triumph of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide. But these horrors occurred after […]
Even as talk of forming a breakaway party from the remnants of the ANC that have fallen out of favor accelerates, Allan Boesak has begun talk of also forming a new United Democratic Front (UDF). The timing of Boesak's proposal is perhaps telling. While the UDF, which Boesak helped form, is often seen as having […]
If you want an indication of the widely diverging opinions that Thabo Mbeki inspires, take a look at Ronald Suresh Roberts’ (utterly unsurprising) apologia and John Pilger's (no less shocking) indictment of Mbeki in The Mail & Guardian. Neither the hero nor villain narrative is compelling, as Pilger acknowledges before then villainizing Mbeki, but these […]
Even as the hope for successful negotiations in Zimbabwe continue to fade away as the sides remain far apart, both Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change are increasingly fraught with dissent from within as to whether power sharing is even desirable. More ominously, there are signs that some of the opposition […]
President Mwai Kibaki is about to undertake the first reshuffling of the cabinet of the Grand Coalition Government as the result of by-elections that changed the composition of parliament. Prime Minister Raila Odinga appears to have agreed to the nature of such changes. This ordinarily mundane undertaking will nonetheless provide a test of the stability […]
An earlier post from this week's blog touched on the human rights debacle, known as the Tlatlelco Massacre, during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. This week the BBC interviewed a British journalist, Robert Trevor, that was on the scene as the events unfolded, in what he calls “the most terrifying night of my life”. He […]
Carola Richter takes a look at Germany's broadcasting efforts in the Middle East in the Arab Media and Society Journal, and offers her perspective on whether the channel effectively promotes intercultural dialogue. This is one of six possible functions she identifies (and attributes to scholar Groebel) for foreign broadcasting efforts like this one (and also […]
Pakistan ordered the deportation of about 50,000 Afghan refugees in an insurgency-wracked tribal region amid a major military offensive against al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. The government said it was expelling all Afghan refugees in the Bajur tribal region, alleging many of them have links to militant groups. Police in the town of Khar in Bajur […]
Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus received the Distinguished Service Award from the State Department today for their work in Iraq on counterinsurgency/diplomacy/reconstruction/everything. The Distinguished Service Award is the highest honor that State can give a person. The remarks speak to the partnership that Crocker and Petraeus managed to forge between State and Defense […]
A large earthquake struck Kyrgyzstan's Osh region today and the death toll is currently around 70 and may increase. The village of Nura, which was home to about 1,000 people, was said to be completely flattened. The 6.6 US registered quake hit an area near the border to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and China well-known as a […]
A seventeen-member delegation from Afghanistan met in Saudi Arabia last week to discuss a resolution to the Taliban/NATO-backed government conflict. According to CNN, this is the first such meeting.
Tomorrow will mark Desmond Tutu's 77th birthday and he continues to crusade for justice both in South Africa and globally. Tutu is no stranger to controversy, but when all is said and done he has been a vital figure in his time, the central moral voice within South Africa during the last years of Apartheid […]
The financial meltdown has its apparent epicenter in the United States, but both because of the ripple effects from the American economy and larger factors of a globalized economy, the crisis is best understood as a worldwide issue. And Africa is not exempt and may be more vulnerable than much of the rest of the world. South […]