The World’s leading banking and finance executives, industry regulators, and billionaire investors like Warren Buffet and George Soros – the Wall Street crowd writ large – will head to the annual World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland this week. On the agenda will be efforts to challenge US President Barack Obama’s efforts to reform the financial industry.
The Obama Administration is back to practicing public diplomacy — with the American public. Stung by the loss in last week’s election in Massachusetts, the White House is bringing back public outreach specialist David Plouffe, the mild-mannered star of the Obama election campaign. Plouffe had stepped back from politics after the election to write a […]
The former president of Guatemala, Alfonso Portillo, has been charged with money-laundering in the United States, whose banks he had been using to allegedly embezzle from the Guatemalan government. This is an admirable example of an international effort to fight otherwise domestic corruption.
What is the human instinct when tragedy strikes outside of your immediate circle? (I use the term ‘circle’ quite loosely and encourage self definition). For the past two weeks, I’ve been in keen observation mode. Watching Anderson Cooper on CNN, reading various and varied thoughts on Haiti in my Google Reader, and monitoring the various […]
I’ve wondered out loud here several times about convergence – getting our galloping consumption down in the developed world while simultaneously raising the standard of living for the citizens of developing nations. You can do this a thousand different ways, most of which can “cool” the planet. One critical approach is for developing economies to […]
I spent a night last week working with some friends and colleagues on crisis mapping the disaster in Haiti using a remarkable piece of software called Ushahidi – “testimony” in Swahili. Crisis mapping is taking in live information from a disaster or conflict zone via the Internet and mapping it to physical locations on the […]
Antwerp, Belgium is Europe’s second largest port. At this very moment it is, like so many other places, going through troubling times. Unemployment is high and now, last week, General Motors announced they will close the Opel plant which means thousands of lost jobs in this city. But this post is not about Opel, nor […]
Topic: Just a Typical Week in the World of Defense Issues Last week was interesting but pretty typical for those involved with monitoring national security issues. Osama Bin Laden crawled out from under whatever rock he’s been hiding under and claimed responsibility for the failed attack on Flight 253 on Christmas Day. While speaking […]
At the anniversary of Obama’s first year as president, the press is predictably constructing narratives of a president who is blazing trails and one who is barely hanging on. Chatting on GPS with Fareed Zakaria this Sunday, Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan says Obama’s first year went all wrong. Here’s part of it: “One of […]
“We face three major strategic challenges: the Iranian nuclear program, rockets aimed at our civilians and Goldstone,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said. Thus, the Israeli government is currently taking action against the third threat enumerated by Netanyahu, the Goldstone Report. The Goldstone Report is the result of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission […]
How do you cope when your main source of political good will depends on money and that money dries up? Demand for oil just ain’t what it used to be. The shrinking of state revenues (regardless of the price of oil) is putting a cramp in the political and social largess of two countries — […]
*Noam Scheiber, the senior editor of The New Republic, says that much of the Haiti coverage is “redundant” and worries that the massive media onslaught is further complicating the recovery efforts. He proposes a “disaster pool” to deal with the problem: “Just like they do for White House coverage, the major (and some not so […]
The children depicted in this movie are remarkable. They are internally displaced refugees in northern Uganda who have made their way to a national music festival in Kampala. As directors Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine follow the students of the Patongo Primary School, they spend time letting the audience get to know them. [kml_flashembed […]
The Underpants Bomber had quite an internet presence and even a Facebook profile, according to the Washington Post. Yet another reminder to get your Facebook privacy settings right. You don’t want to end up like these guys. Steve Coll justifiably asks why such clear evidence of increasing Islamic radicalization was not unearthed after Daddy called […]