China, an autocratic state that directly denies the freedoms of the press, speech, religion, and assembly to its citizens, and has shown oppressive measures in dealing with its minority factions, among them Muslim Uighurs and the people of Tibet, is about to host a world event like no other, the Olympics. Now the US has […]
Results from the first phase of unofficial referendums on oil privatization are in. More than 83% of citizens of Mexico City said no to the questions: “With the whole cycle of oil production under state auspices, do you agree that the private sector should play a role?” and “In general, are you in agreement with […]
Ever in search of free food, my friend and I decided to attend the Atlantic Council's talk entitled "Dealing with Russia to Rescue Abkhazia from the Brink". As most of these things serve delicious deserts and canapés, I should've recognised this event's paltry offering of nothing more than a bizarre choice of Snapple Iced Tea […]
Good news! Iraq will be going to China next month, and sending four athletes: a men's rowing double, a discus thrower and their sprinter, Dana Hussain (their archer may also have the chance to compete, as long as his spot is still available after entries are completed by other countries.) USA Today reports that the IOC […]
Two headlines about South African emigration from Independent On-Line appeared within the same week. The first: “Whites Leaving SA in Droves.” The second: “Whites Return to South Africa.” Is this schizophrenia at work? Shoddy journalism? Or, as I believe, an example of South Africans perceiving a problem and generally believing the worst even when there is contravailing […]
In the sort of sound economic reasoning that we have all come to expect from Harare, the Zimbabwean government plane to chop a bunch of zeroes off of the country's currency, thus re-denominating, though not re-valuating the plummeting Zimbabwean dollar. Beyond making math a little easier for people carrying around bricks of the country's virtually […]
Last week I went over two articles from journal International Security which both discussed the deteriorating security and governance situation along the Afghan/Pakistan border. Both articles emphasized Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, as being either too weak, lacking decent effort, or of actually being a partner in some of the Taliban's insurgent efforts against NATO […]
At the end of July 29, Lamy announced that ministers’ efforts of long hours and hard negotiations failed to produce result on the 9th day of WTO trade talks. Today, he has called a formal Trade Negotiations Committe meeting to provide a forum for comment from members, but he advises nations to allow the “dust […]
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and former American Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman said that he was “disturbed” to see “decent official figures” welcoming Kuntar and he criticized March 14 for not standing their ground against Hizballah. I agree with the former but not entirely with the latter. For some reason, […]
Today World Trade Organization (WTO) Director Pascal Lamy confirmed that the latest round of WTO talks collapsed after nine days because of a dispute between developed and developing countries over “safeguard clauses” to protect lesser-developed economies from a flood of imports. For Mexico, this means increased reliance on its existing plethora of free trade agreements. […]
BBC news is reporting that multilateral trade talks in Geneva have ended without consensus. The epicenter of the rift blocking resolution was that of market access. While the US and EU push for greater access to provide services to the fast emerging economies of India and China, the two developing countries are instead focused on fighting […]
Three stories caught my eye this morning, all of which fall into the category of disappointing, but not surprising. 1) The power-sharing talks over Zimbabwe have broken down over the question of what role Morgan Tsvangirai will play. The sides appear to have rather different conceptions of the role the Movement for Democratric Change leader will […]
In March of this year, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain made a major foreign policy speech at the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles. (Video and Text) In this speech, McCain proposes isolating Russia, specifically from the G-8: “We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again […]
This is a bit belated, but I wanted to share my Cape Argus Zim Op Ed from June 25 in which I lament Morgan Tsvangirai dropping out of the race and utilize an example from the American Civil Rights Movement as an example of what I worried that his departure from the race might mean.
Blaming developing countries for the failure of Doha Round trade negotiations is counter-productive to global trade relations and WTO efforts, China said July 28 via its official news outlet, Xinhua Press. China's ambassador to the WTO, Sun Zhenyu, represented the country's interests on Monday, saying: “They have to remember that this is a Development […]