I last asked, “Will the West let Asia rise?” I was playing off a comment from Hans Rosling’s TED presentation – and was applying a similar notion to philanthropy and social innovation. Writing for Alliance, Olga Alexeeva turned my thesis around in her article “The Gucci bag of New Philanthropy” to ask: What if philanthropic […]
This documentary focuses on three young men – Daniel, John, and Panther – who escaped civil war in their native Sudan. In the late 1980s, as many as 27,000 young men – known as “The Lost Boys” – trekked across the desert into Ethiopia. When that government failed they were forced to walk again, this […]
Authorization Bill Kills Big US Defense Programs This year congress has vetoed a half dozen weapons programs and plans to specifically target missile defense, reports the Armed Forces Journal. General Dynamics Wins $16M US Defense Contract General Dynamics’ Information Technology arm has won a five-year $15.6m contract from the Department of Defense’s Defense Acquisition University […]
The timeline for withdrawal that President Obama mentioned in his West Point speech has emerged as one of the more controversial aspects of the troop surge. In his speech, the President said: But taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us […]
For all the consternation and moaning in much of the European press regarding the selection of Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, and British EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton, for respectively as the President of the European Council and High Representative of the Union for Common Foreign and Security policy, you would think the European […]
“I have seen the future and it works,” Lincoln Steffens famously said, albeit prematurely, in 1921 about Soviet Communism. (After ten years time, however, he realized it didn’t. In any event, it’s a great line.) Well, the Germans are showing us the future now: It’s renewable energy. For how, see the segment on “The German […]
1) Anders Aslund in FP writes that including Russia in BRIC isn’t accurate. I made a similar point here. 2) India is floating withdrawing a “significant” number of troops from Kashmir, a move which could only help the tattered Indo-Pakistani relationship. 3) The EU has been increasingly vocal lately on East Jerusalem, most ominously—in Israel’s […]
The following is a statement from Dr. Michael Gressman of the German Federal Ministry of Justice to War Crimes on the arrest of the two FDLR leaders in late November: German Federal Police arrested Dr Ignace M. and Straton M. upon orders of the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Germany on Wednesday, 17 November 2009, on […]
Can democracy survive 21st century capitalism? In October, the courts of France dismissed a suit by Transparency International (and other plaintiffs) that sought to investigate how three African dictators in Francophone Africa came to possess hundreds of millions of dollars even though the people of their countries were amongst the poorest in the world. The […]
Officials: In Ghana, cell phones reduce maternal mortality In Ghana’s Amensie village, where the Millennium Villages project made mobile phones near ubiquitous in 2006, deaths related to childbirth have fallen from 20 per year to zero in 2008, according to local health officials. Local health workers attribute the improvement in part to women’s new-found emergency […]
I was impressed with President Obama’s speech at West Point last night. He clearly explained why he was sending an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, he explained what they would do there, and he explained when they would come home. He also anticipated objections to the troop buildup and responded to them. From a […]
Yesterday, President Obama delivered his much-anticipated Afghan speech. In addition to building the Afghan state and strengthening relations with neighboring countries, the President reiterated that America’s primary goal is to defeat Al Qaeda. To do so, another 30,000 troops have been committed, with a 2011 exit date in place. My viewpoint on the war in […]
One cannot swing a virtual cat this morning without hitting an analysis of Obama’s Afghanistan speech. (I recommend reading Juan Cole, who has posts here, here, and here. Also, Patrick Frost of the Afghanistan Blog shares his thoughts.) In lieu of further commentary, I simply offer you Wednesday Morning Videos: 1) John Norton Moore on […]
The sum of the twelve largest population centers in Afghanistan is 5,649,162—and this is counting rural areas surrounding cities, not just the urban area itself. That total is 21% of the population of Afghanistan (28,150,000). Remind me again how ISAF and NATO forces are supposed to protect the population of Afghanistan by not protecting 80% […]
In 1988, the UN General Assembly expressed deep concern at the pandemic proportions of the AIDS virus, and noting that the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared 1 December 1988 World AIDS Day, the General Assembly thus drafted resolution 43/15. According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 33.4 million people living with HIV, including 2.1 […]