The final presidential debate is now history and it proved to be remarkably free of foreign policy questions. Initial commentary seems to suggest that the overwhelming winner of the debate was Joe The Plumber. I’d like to repeat my practice of parsing the debate transcript, devoting comment sections for the candidates responses to the foreign […]
“Welcome to Sierra Leone, one of the world's worst places to live.” Not really the slogan you want to read on a travel brochure, but what happens when you have no choice and that place is your home? According to the 2008 Global Hunger Index (GHI), which was released on the 14th, showed Sierra Leone, […]
October 15th is the first annual UN Global Handwashing Day, set in conjunction with 2008 being the UN International Year of Sanitation, the day is set to both echo and reinforce the UN's call for improved hygiene practices across the globe. The goal of the week of activities is to encourage people, especially children, to […]
Electric Cars – There’s more good coverage on the promising trend to ZEV surface transportation. See Any colour as long as it is green* from the “FT” yesterday. Mitsubishi is getting out in front of GM and Renault-Nissan on electric cars. The car is small but it’s got range and it’s ten times cheaper to […]
It comes as no surprise that the United States is leaving Grosvenor Square, the historic park in the heart of London that was home to the U.S. embassy since 1938. This is part of a regrettable trend, in which the State Department builds drab, fortress embassies on the outskirts of foreign capitals, leaving American diplomats […]
The final Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and John McCain will air live tonight, Wednesday, October 15th at 9 pm ET, 6 pm PT, on every major broadcast network and cable news network. Hofstra University is the host for this debate, and Bob Schieffer of CBS News is the moderator. This is the official website […]
As time quickly passes by and our daily lives seem to be one endless “To Do List”, the worlds “To Do List”, the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) still has a lot of things to be checked off. Now that we are more than half way to “D-Day” what begun to weigh heavy on most […]
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, the UK's upper house of Parliament dismissed two key provisions from the government's new Counter-Terrorism Bill. WHY? Political EXPEDIENCY. Ministers base their opposition to the legislation on both human rights and constitutional grounds, but politics is surely the overarching principle of the day; a very dangerous game indeed. […]
In autumn, most children return to school. For those unfortunate to live in the countryside of Uzbekistan, most have debarked on an annual two-month field trip. To pick cotton. Some as young as seven are forced to work the fields, toiling in the heat and in the pesticide ridden crops. There is little to no […]
As you may already know (or have seen it), Bill Maher – with director Larry Charles (from ‘Borat’) – has made the new movie Religulous. It came out on October 3. In an interview, Maher described his approach to the movie as confronting people of faith. He said, “In America, every politician gets on the […]
This AP report gives the impression that Europe has taken the lead in meeting the global credit crisis and that the U.S. is merely reacting. And yet it was after this weekend's meeting of the G7 finance ministers in Washington that the major decisions being announced this week were taken. Here is the text of […]
We wrote recently about the difficulties facing the International Criminal Court's indictment of Sudanese ruler Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The Christian Science Monitor had a great article Saturday by Heba Aly, detailing continued janjaweed- and government-sponsored violence against civilians in Darfur. The Sudanese government – and many Western analysts – have asserted moving forward with the […]
The Washington-based non-profits Search for Common Ground and the Consensus Building Institute have produced a major new leadership group report on improving U.S. relations with the Muslim world. Titled “Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World,” the two groups released the report last month to a packed house at the […]
The Henry L. Stimson Center and the American Academy of Diplomacy have unveiled a new report on how the next President can strengthen American diplomacy. Titled “Foreign Affairs Budget for the Future,” the report finds that: “The State Department, USAID, and related organizations lack the tools to meet today's complex global challenges. It calls for […]
Bintjbeil.org, a Hezbollah-affiliated website, has announced the formation of its own facebook group. The website is named after a town in south Lebanon (nicknamed City of the Resistance and Lady of the Galilee), which has been the site of key engagements between Hezbollah and the IDF over the past 20 years. While in a physical […]