No no no- not my solution, which I am keeping close to my vest until I get a lucrative government job (or until I get smart enough to come up with one- neither option seems close to the horizon). This solution comes from Thomas Pickering, William Leurs, and Jim Walsh, and it is published in The […]
The FPA recently spoke to Serbia's Ambassador to the United Nations, Pavle Jevremovic, on Kosovo's declaration of independence. Jevremovic discusses the impact the reaction by Serbia might have on negotiations for his country's EU membership bid, as well as the role of Russia and the U.S. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-7159138757623185243″ width=”400″ height=”326″ wmode=”transparent” /]
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made a trip to Iraq (finally!) this weekend, with Al Jazeera English calling it ‘a landmark visit’. The New York Times points out that his trip overlaps with Adm. Mike Mullen's trip to Baghdad, but makes sure to note that there were no plans for the two of them 'to […]
This is not the run-up to glory that Robert Mugabe anticipated when he surprised everyone by announcing that Zimbabwe would hold elections at the end of March. Mugabe expected a coronation. He expected that the short timetable for the polling and the fact that he had cowed or crushed most all viable opposition would surely […]
And so Israel looks like it is moving closer and closer to a full-scale retaliation in the Gaza Strip, in response to the escalating assault of Katyusha rockets launched by Hamas at souther Israeli towns. The IDF has already launched deadly raids into the Strip, killing close to twenty Palestinians. The Israeli reaction here is […]
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in South Africa today for a two-day visit, his first to a non-Francophone African nation. Energy will be high on the list of priorities when Thabo Mbeki and Sarkozy sit down to talk, but so too will be agreements in technology, tourism, African relations, and other areas. Mbeki's relationship with […]
The New York Times today has a harrowing and brutal portrait of Yemen's own version of the Untouchable class, the Akhdam– servants- a dark-skinned, shunned class who barely scrape by a slum-dwelling non-existence sweeping streets and begging. Quoting Robert Worth (who has done some interesting work of late on this vital but n neglected country): SANA, Yemen […]
Last night's Democratic debate between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton hit on issues related to Russia, particularly the future of democracy under Putin's likely successor, Dmitry Medvedev. While Clinton caught slack for mispronouncing “Medvedev,” Obama skirted the issue by discussing Russia without naming the likely future president, though both said he was “hand […]
Well, this cannot be good for Jacob Zuma. Schabir Shaik has admitted that he bribed the ANC president “with the intention to corrupt him.” Shaik, who has been convicted of corruption charges, is hardly an unimpeachable witness. And his testimony is not sufficient to put Zuma in a jackpot. But it hardly helps. And Zuma's […]
Malusi Gigaba, a member of the ANC's National Executive Council and the country's Deputy Minister of Home Affairs has an article in the Mail & Guardian calling for South Africans, and especially the ANC rank and file, to give Jacob Zuma a chance to be a successful party leader and presidential successor.: [Zuma's] election represents […]
Saturated as we are with news, it is easy to forget that Lebanon is still without a President, suffering under internal strife and external meddling over what the makeup of the next government should look like. When this started in November it was scary. It became frustrating as time went on, and now just seems […]
FPA sent me a link to an article opposing the theory that the trade imbalance between China and other major players can be resolved by a stronger Yuan. David D. Hale and Lyric Hughes Hale frame the problem as one larger than the imbalance between China's exports and the weakening US economy: "The greater and far […]
Cutting red tape is just one of the avowed goals of the Barroso Commission. A high-level expert group including the former Bavarian state governor, Edmund Stoiber, and international management consulting guru Roland Berger has been given the mandate to examine how to most effectively reduce bureaucratic hurdles and enhance the functioning of the internal market. […]
Update (March 4, 2008) Der Spiegel is reporting that the “cold snap” between the Franco-German partners is thawing, following a “constructive” meeting in which President Sarkozy agreed to a compromise to extend negotiations on a future Mediterranean Union to all 27 EU Member States, not just bordering countries. Quoting the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the Spiegel […]
Robert Mugabe turned 84 on Saturday, and the wily old tyrant was in a typically feisty mood, announcing in the face of his increasingly emboldened opposition that “There will never be regime change here … Never.” Simba Makoni, Mugabe's challenger in the March 31 election, is unbowed by Mugabe's intransigence and continues to forge ahead […]