Last Thursday, 23 South Korean aid workers, affiliated with an evangelical Christian mission, were abducted from a bus near Kandahar. Their mission was to develop hospital facilities. Fifteen of the 23 are women, and all are alive and said to be in good health. The Taliban is threatening to kill them today if some Taliban hostages are not […]
Last week, U.S. President Bush promulgated another Executive Order to contain terrorist funding for the Iraq insurgency, the “aid and support” of those who want to bring failure to the new government and reconstruction process. I have a more comprehensive, Iraq-focused post on this issue over at my other blog. Yet this Executive Order is equally relevant for […]
A triumph in the Rule of Law: Mr. Seidenfeld is acquitted on all charges!!! Over at the Save Mark Seidenfeld site, Derek Bloom has listed the findings of the court, which include: That in refutation of all allegations, Mr. Seidenfeld neither kept back money or equipment for his own personal gain. That he should be […]
Contributed by Rich Basas of FPA's Migration Blog: This past week the New York Times reporter Marc Lacey did a report on the ever-growing problem of HIV entering smaller communities in Mexico. He found that much of the problem comes from Migrant workers who earn much of their wages in the US and often come […]
There be dragons–or at least, living legends: swimming around in Scotland's Loch Ness and, as reported this week, in Lake Kanasi in Xinjiang Province. This definitely proves a theory that the initial uh, foundation for the species is somewhere in the vicinity of the, mmm, Barents Sea, but migrated south during the Ice Age–just ahead of those pesky […]
Drought has exacerbated a food shortage which in turn has been exacerbating an HIV/AIDS-fueled health crisis in the tiny Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. Maseru has declared a state of emergency. And things are probably going to get worse before they get better.
According to Business Report, South African consumer confidence, which has been ongoing for some time, either continues apace or it does not. What this somewhat frustrating contradiction tells us, I think, is that the dismal science is more dismal than science and that consumer confidence is probably a pretty vague matrix to gauge the health […]
For whatever reason, Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy's “Passport” decided that on Mandela's birthday he needed to write a blog post declaring that “Nelson Mandela is No Saint.” Let's leave aside the fact that no one has actually argued that Mandela is a saint, and so Hounshell is heroically creating a straw man to beat him […]
Over at Registan.net, Nathan is discussing a minor backlash in the blogosphere against Kazakhstan's potential investment in Westinghouse. Toshiba, which currently owns 77% of Westinghouse, will be selling this share for USD 486.3 million to Kazatomprom, the Kazakhstani nuclear agency. This is a good deal for the U.S.–protests notwithstanding–which is why the U.S. approved the sale. […]
Alisher Iminzhanov, a Kyrgyzstani leader of the outcast group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, was detained in Osh on July 17th. His arrest has been cast as a preventive measure for the festivities associated with the annual summer SCO summit, which starts on August 16th. Kyrgyzstan believes that at least 5,000 supporters of HuT within its borders. What is Hizb ut-Tahrir? Hizb-ut-Tahrir […]
Nelson Mandela turned 89 today, birthday gifts pile up, and South Africa celebrates. The still vibrant liberation hero and South Africa's first legitimate president still inspires hope, and continues to grow in popularity, whether dealing with his beloved South Africa, advising African leaders, or drawing the support of global football stars at a ceremony on […]
The hazards of expertise–and listening to experts Articles like this, that call into question what I am doing in my life and in this venue, make me want to turn off the news and go to the closest July barbecue: I can be a witty guest, so please send invite immediately. In a 2005 review of Expert Political Judgement: […]
As I said in my earlier post today, Afghanistan seems to be the afterthought in the U.S. news last week– but not by those Afghanistan-watchers in the blogging community and around the Internet. Here's a round-up: and thanks to all who labor to bring us up to speed. Afghanistan: –At Afghanistan Watch, Tom Perriello gives […]
Over at The New Republic James Kirchick (whose work, frankly, I have little use for most of the time) wonders, based on idle comments from Bulawayo's Archbishop Pius Ncube, whether Great Britain should invade Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe. While Kirchick makes some fundamentally (if somewhat obvious) decent points, I’m not certain that an invasion of […]
For those following the news lately in the U.S. at least, there has been a dearth of reporting on Afghanistan for months and maybe even years. This past week, with so much drama enacted in Washington DC over Iraq, even Iraq news from Iraq was sidelined in favor of who-voted-what and why in the air-conditioned halls of Congress. […]