This past Tuesday marked the annual release of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Transparency International’s opportunity to name and shame all over the world. This year, as in most years, there were few surprises: the index is actually designed to favor stability over dramatic changes in order not to unduly punish countries that experience an […]
Today, read this: a most fantastic discussion about the Kristof “Do-It-Yourself” Foreign aid op-ed that came out recently. Do you agree with the criticisms raised in this piece? Or are you solidly on Team Kristof?
For anyone wondering what exactly Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” is going to be about and why I’m going (and you should too), “The Daily Show” anchor cleared up at least what it is not going to be about, according to Bill Carter’s Media Decoder blog. “It is in fact not a political rally,” […]
There is a very nice essay on climate change in the NYT this morning in a somewhat unlikely spot: the “Our Towns” column about what’s going on in various locations around the region outside the big city. Peter Applebome’s excellent stories are usually focused on local political, social and cultural highlights. Ignoring the Planet Won’t […]
The weekend is quickly approaching and many parents are scared out of their wits as they rush about town trying to find their children a costume before the sun sets and the ghost and goblins begin their night of trickery and the wee ones venture out into the dark of night in search of treats. […]
As Tom Brokaw noted in a New York Times op-ed last week, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken a back seat in the mid-term elections. One might even say the wars have been relegated to the trunk, or the rack on top, or they’ve been left behind entirely. Brokaw speculates that this is […]
“Too many cameras and not enough food, this is what we’ve seen.” That line from the Police song “Driven to Tears” sums it up nicely. This film is about photojournalist James Nachtwey and his work in the world’s hotspots from Nicaragua in the 1980s to Rwanda and Kosovo in the 1990s to South Africa, Ramallah, […]
NATO isn’t working, warns Sarwar Kashmeri in the most recent edition of Europe’s Worldew16uk_kashmeri. Kashmeri instead advocates a U.S., Canadian and EU joint project that would “bridge” the Atlantic alliance with Europe’s fledgling defense and security framework. Kashmeri, who contributes to this blog, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s International Security Program, and a […]
The British National Security Council is slated to meet to discuss drastic cuts to military expenditure. Purportedly on the chopping table are several key defense projects including, among others, two aircraft carriers currently under construction as well as the replacement project for the Vanguard –class ballistic missile submarine. Some in Britain’s new coalition government are […]
So often we look at children and all we see is untouched innocence, and in reality that is what we should see. Sadly however as seen in my recent post on the report; Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths in the U.S. ,some 12,180 children died as a result of child abuse and, or, neglect from 2001-2008. Countless […]
There has been a lot of media coverage addressing fighting in Kandahar, possible peace talks with the Taliban but very little on the stabilty operation parts of the COIN strategy. As mentioned in my last Blog, I recently participated in several Afghanistan themed Department of Defense Bloggers roundtables. Topics covered during the roundtables were training […]
There is yet more headline news on the renewable energy front. On offshore wind, I’ve been noting some of the positive developments in several of the last posts. Go-ahead for wind to generate 70,000 jobs in Britain is the word from the FT. General Electric, Gamesa and Siemens all announced plans to build big new […]
Cartel-on-cartel violence may offer Felipe Calderon and Barack Obama the political solution they need in Mexico, and give international stakeholders in the Mexican drug industry the break they need to get back to ‘business as usual’–generating billions in drug dollars, cash that, as it ‘gets cleaner,’ is transformed into capital by ‘legitimate’ investors who create billions more.