We pick a lot on authoritarians around here – try it, it’s fun! *poke poke* *GROWL* *ARGH MY ARM IS GONE!!!!* However, there’s a lot of unexpected players acting like bad guys in terms of internet censorship these days. Australia has draconian filtering laws. South Korea does everything possible to suppress anonymity online. (Care to […]
I had dinner last night with a friend who works for a large international development organization (which will go unnamed) here in D.C. This is her first job out of undergrad, and she was giving me a description of her first week, most of which involved sorting through resumes for several positions in the organization’s […]
Commentary about President Obama’s Global Health Initiative has been coming fast and furiously this month, not least from the White House. The initiative is caught between a rock and a hard place, with the steady goodwill of AIDS-affected country built up over the last decade and a Congress which is hard-pressed to increase development aid in […]
*Russian spy Anna Chapman gets her own action figure in the United States. Gets serenaded by Russian President Vladimir Putin? *Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck says that you should vote for him in the Republican primary because, unlike his opponent, he does “not wear high heels.” Maybe we should start a “Ken Buck Should Campaign […]
Earlier this month, the United Nations General Assembly made a unanimous and historic vote to establish the first United Nations (UN) entity which will be exclusively dedicated to women’s empowerment and gender equality. UN Women is the result of years of hard work and negotiations between UN member states, international NGOs, policymakers and tireless advocates around […]
I might more accurately call this post The Catastrophe of the Senate, but that won’t get us anywhere – for the moment. In any event, as you know by now, the concatenation of Republican anti-environmentalism and fear (and no doubt loathing), plus intransigence from Democratic Senators from states where coal and oil are king, has […]
This movie doesn’t live up to its promises. It is about a U.S. army officer in 2003 who is frustrated with bad intelligence regarding locations of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It tries to be a topical thriller but never delivers. It is slow, disjointed, and somewhat tedious. Director Paul Greengrass hits the audience […]
Patrick Frost of the FPA Afghanistan blog took a strong stand against the WikiLeaks revelations yesterday, condemning The New York Times, Guardian, and Der Speigel. I debate him in the comments section. Stop by and join in if you feel inclined. The revelations in the leaked documents were not revelations. As Robert Gibbs noted yesterday: […]
Last week I had the opportunity to participate in three separate Bloggers roundtables on Afghanistan sponsored by the Department of Defense (DoD). The roundtables were a forum designed to provide access to key officials involved in NATO’s training of Afghan Police and Army forces. Participating via a teleconferences from Afghanistan were Dr. Jack Kem, deputy […]
The NY Times editorial page has, for years and years, been pro-nuclear power. With all the usual blinders on. Whatever. But columnist Bob Herbert had a pretty hard-hitting take last week: “We’re Not Ready.” He likens the blithe indifference on safety at offshore oil rigs to that on nuclear power. There is no way to […]
When was the last time you heard someone thank the U.S. for our role in the world? This report in The New York Times highlights how American funding for AIDS treatment has changed lives – and saved lives – in Africa: The last decade has been what some doctors call a “golden window” for treatment. […]
What will Jerusalem be like in twenty years? Today, the city is divided into predominately Jewish west Jerusalem and predominately Palestinian east Jerusalem. East Jerusalem itself is striped with both Palestinian and Jewish neighborhoods. Quality of life in different neighborhoods varies dramatically, but it is safe to say that Jerusalem’s Jews enjoy a far greater […]
Speaking of roofs – as we were in the last post below – here’s an item from CleanTechnica on the passage of draft legislation in the Senate Energy Committee to help drive a push toward ten million solar roofs in the US by 2020. This is an analogue to the successful California program this now […]
It’s been a tough few days for the U.S. Intelligence community. Last week the Washington Post ran a series called “Top Secret America” and this week the media is filled with stories of 92,000 classified documents released by some web site. The documents cover events in Afghanistan from 2004 – 2009. I’ve blogged before about […]
In the UK a recently released study showed that 55% of children in the United Kingdom, who have been identified as persons victimized by human trafficking and subsequently rescued will eventually become missing persons. The main reason for the high percentage rate of missing child survivors is due in direct relation to a lack of […]