Last week, it was revealed that the supposed informant in the bribery case against the Ecuadorean officials deciding the $27 billion pollution case is a convicted felon. (Conspiring to traffic 275,000 pounds of marijuana, sic-ing his pit bull on a woman.) It doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s lying about the bribery charge — just that […]
Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech to the Atlantic Council to mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The speech focused on the administration’s new agenda for freedom and democracy promotion, seeking a renewed US-European partnership to combat global terrorism, human rights violations, climate change and the spread […]
In the 16th century, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote: You must understand, therefore, that there are two ways of fighting: by law or by force. The first way is natural to men, and the second to beasts. But as the first way often proves inadequate one must needs have recourse to the second. So a prince must […]
Tomorrow marks the 20thanniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is typically seen as the end of the Cold War. I expect that the blogospherewill be filled with far more in-depth commentary on the subject tomorrow, but for today I would just like to point out one of the articles that is already […]
For at least three decades now, personal wealth has been a political asset. In both the industrialized and developing worlds, in the words of Deng Xiaoping of China, “to get rich is glorious.” Money was access to political power, political power (especially in the developing world) access to money. I remember about four years ago, […]
Radovan Karadzic stopped boycotting his prosecution for war crimes at The Hague this week adding legitimacy to the trial seen as “seen as key to … closure” for the survivors and victims’ families of the Balkans genocide of the 1990s. Karadzic also asked this week for time to prepare his defense. The U.K.’s Channel 4 […]
The FPA Migration Blog is proud to post a film review by Sean Patrick Murphy of the FPA Global Film Review Blog. Sean’s review involves issues regarding migrants from Central America coming to the US, namely Honduras to Texas, and the increasing numbers coming from the region and the dangers they face in the process. Sin […]
Representatives from governments, civil society, and the diamond industry met this past week in Namibia for the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme’s seventh plenary meeting. The Kimberley Process was established in 2003 as a way to regulate the trade of so-called conflict diamonds that came to prominence during the wars in Angola, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. […]
Vice President Al Gore, Nobel Peace Laureate, venture capitalist, author, lecturer, Academy Award winner, activist, the man Denialists love to hate, and the man some others canonize as the path-breaking visionary on the threat of global climate change, has a new book out: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. It has a […]
This movie is a snooze fest. Which is unfortunate because the subject, Amma, is fascinating. What director Jan Kounen appears to have tried is to provide a documentary about the life of Amma, a mahatma in India. However, it falls short somehow. There are long periods of film showing the thousands of people who line […]
Impoverished Ethiopians search a city trash dump site for food and items that they can sell or barter in the capital city of Addis Ababa. (photo by Zoriah, www.zoriah.com) Zoriah Miller, who publishes photographs of the name Zoriah, is an award-winning independent journalist who travels the globe, photographing and telling stories about the people and […]
As a side project to my day job, I’ve been exploring the world of Canadian public policy. Given the opportunity to participate in a very smart program for non-profits called the Max Bell Public Policy Institute – I’ve been opening my eyes ( & brain) to the world of social enterprise and public policy. In […]
I have written before about the out-of-balance role of contractors in development and in US foreign policy in general – with the hope that the ongoing QDDR will take a hard look at how much is contracted out, to what sorts of entities and with what kind of alignment with development goals and foreign policy interests. Yesterday, […]
Saeb Erekat, the longtime chief Palestinian negotiator, has cast doubts on the two-state solution. Erekat is, in my memory, the most senior Palestinian official to publicly argue that two states between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River are not plausible. Coming on the heels of the embarrassing failure (as of now) of the Obama administration […]
Somalia does not often benefit from positive stories in the press. At present it is probably best known for its ongoing civil war – which has lasted for nearly two decades – pirates operating along its coasts, and recently, reporting on the return of young Somalis from Minnesota to fight for the Shabaab, a group […]