This past week South Africa’s Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe attended the fifth South Africa-China bi-national commission (BNC) in Beijing. There is nothing particularly shocking about this. China has worked hard in the last decade or more to establish relationships with African countries. And while we can argue (as myriad academics and journalists have) about the […]
“Somalia is a country where the soft power really needs to kick in harder and come in faster” Last week I shared the highlights of my interview with Ambassador Augustine P. Mahiga, the former head of the United Nations Political Office for Somalia and special representative of the U.N. Secretary General for Somalia (Part I […]
Life has been good for Serbs living in northern Kosovo. For the past 14 years, since the NATO-led bombing campaign forced Serbia’s government out of power, some 50,000 residents in the four municipalities north of the Ibar River in Kosovo, which is mostly ethnic Albanian, have inhabited a sort of gray area in which both […]
That heavily weighted word, propaganda, has surfaced again in connection with Russia, this time in a law forbidding “propaganda on behalf of homosexuality.” A storm of international protest against the law caused Russian President Vladimir Putin this week to publicly reassure the rest of the world that “people of all sexual preferences” would be welcome […]
There is an infamous line from a speech made by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson at Johns Hopkins University in 1965 during which he was attempting to rationalize American involvement in Southeast Asia to the skeptical public. “We want nothing for ourselves,” he said “only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their […]
The European Union (EU) is approaching a major milestone in its relations with Ukraine. Next month, the most valuable state in eastern Europe that remains a non-member will have the opportunity to expand its relations with the West by signing an Association Agreement with the EU. Once signed, the agreement will provide a new framework […]
With each passing day it seemed another story crossed my desk that I wanted to write about. Now I have so many tabs open on my computer that it is slowing things down considerably. So without further ado, a roundup of stories that have caught my eye in recent days and weeks with brief commentary […]
I recently received an e-mail from a PR manager at Thomas Reuters about contractors in Fukushima exploiting workers involved in the decontamination of the areas around Tepco’s crippled nuclear reactor. Workers here are coerced into working for low wages for contractors six-times removed from Tepco, the utility responsible for the cleanup, some of which have […]
In a 15-14 vote, Greenland’s parliament voted to overturn the long-standing ban on uranium mining. The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed in a memo that it supported the decision given that Greenland has maintained control over its mineral resources since 2010. While the decision was close, the lifting of the ban should not come […]
If democracy is to be understood, as articulated by John Stuart Mill, as the embodiment of “government by discussion,” then there is no doubt that recent initiative taken by the current Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina to mitigate the prospects of one-sided election is a step in the right direction. The bitterness and the […]
On Tuesday, after 22 days at sea, the first-ever South Korean pilot service of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) reached its destination in Gwangyang, South Korea. Korean shipping line Hyundai Glovis chartered a Swedish oil tanker to carry 44,000 tons of naphtha, a light derivative of crude oil, from the Russian port of Ust-Luga, 110 kilometers […]
This is a drawing of a young opposition protester, badly beaten by the police in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. This is a drawing that pictures the days yet to come. This drawing is the first piece in a series that will picture and document the story of the upcoming general elections in Bangladesh […]
This day marks a decade in Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s imprisonment, a journey all too similar to the hopelessly frigid Siberian settings of Dostoevsky’s stories and Solzhenitsyn’s novels — except in one regard. In his younger years, Khodorkovsky was a corrupt oil tycoon and pragmatic oligarch successfully basking in the Russian government’s economic malaise. It was Khodorkovsky […]
In preparation to host the World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympic Games in 2016, Brazil has made enormous financial guarantees as it will be at the forefront of the global spotlight. Brazil, home to South America’s largest economy and population, has committed to spending at least $13 billion for the World Cup and […]
For all the talk of China and the Arctic, there’s one dark horse that definitely made itself known at the Arctic Circle: Singapore. With a speech that hit all the right notes, Sam Tan Chin Siong, Senior Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a Member of Parliament, described the contributions Singapore can […]