During a speech last night at a celebration in Gaza City last night, Ismael Haniyeh, the Prime Minister of the defunct Hamas-led Palestinian government, made his position clear on the proposed idea of an Arab peacekeeping force being sent to the Gaza Strip. In a display of sarcasm, Haniyeh stated that there's no need for […]
Now that the two major national political parties have completed their conventions, we know beyond a doubt that John McCain or Barack Obama will be the next president. And since our focus is on foreign policy, it's time to speculate about the challenges facing the next president. Richard Holbrooke helps us narrow our focus […]
Residing in a oil-rich province, my morning reading consists of the daily banter between business tycoons and the environmental conservationists. Last month, a group of Canadian Sierra Club members bicycled to the tar sands (approximately 1,000 km) to gather water from the oil sands to bring to oil executives in Calgary. In July, Greenpeace recently staged a protest […]
It appears as if American frustration over the growing threat of al-Qaeda in Pakistan has forced the US military to act alone. After years of courting the Musharraf regime, and now in the face of increasing instability, ground forces have entered Pakistan to combat high-level al-Qaeda and Taliban targets. The incident occurred in South Waziristan […]
Google and EGS , This press release from Google, Google.org invests more than $10 million in breakthrough geothermal energy technology, describes their participation in fostering a new approach: Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). Working with two companies and SMU's Geothermal Lab, they hope to bring EGS into full flower soon. As I have pointed out before, […]
Last week Cologne's city council voted in favor of a new and controversial mosque. It will be the largest in Germany when it is complete. According to an article in Spiegel Online, it will cost between 15 and 20 billion dollars, and it will be completed by 2010. The opposition to the new construction has […]
(Jim Wilson/The New York Times) This week two public radio shows delivered interesting segments on global views of the Republican ticket. On NPR this morning, Michael Sullivan reported on how McCain has found support from an unexpected foreign source: “Republican presidential hopeful John McCain spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. You might […]
Russia is gloating after the weekend EU summit failed to impose sanctions for the invasion of Georgia. The EU decided to do what it could to help Georgia rebuild and may consider further actions in the future, depending on whether Russia honors the ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney is in the region to offer U.S. […]
“The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.” – George Bernard Shaw GLOBAL: Food wasted is water lost To meet growing food demand, in another 40 years the world would need enough water to fill at least three lakes the size of Victoria, Africa's largest body of water, according to a projection […]
Al Jazeera.net reported today that members of the Muslim Brotherhood have erected an online encyclopedia to help inform the public about the organization's history, ideology, and political aims. Dubbed Ikhwan Wiki, the site is done in the style of the ever popular Wikipedia. Thus, those who want to either edit or contribute content have to […]
The U.S. and the UK have collaborated in Iraq and countless other endeavors over many generations. In this piece in the Financial Times, Martin Wolf argue that the ongoing presidential election may well determine the character of the next, and possibly final, era of Anglo-American hegemony. Wolf says it's all about the choice between conflict […]
U.S. military officials denied claims by the United Nations and the government of Afghanistan that an airstrike in Herat province killed over 90 Afghan civilians. A U.S. investigation into video archives and eyewitness accounts of the Aug. 22 raid found only five Afghan civilians were killed in the strike on the Taliban stronghold in western […]
Continuing on Moises Naim's theme of fixing double standards in American foreign policy (mentioned in my last post), Brookings Institution press recently published a book called Alliance Curse: How America Lost the Third World. Authored by Hilton L. Root, a professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy, the book argues that US policy […]
Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has released part 4 of the series “Knights of Martyrdom”. I previously wrote a post providing an analysis of part 3, which appeared back in July, highlighting indications that the group's al-Furqan Media Group was on the decline. Part 4 comes as Iraqi officials claim that the country is now free […]
The Hague released the Serbian Navy admiral who commanded the shelling of Dubrovnik in 1991 today, announcing that his 7-year sentence had been cut short due to good behavior. Miodrag Jokic was commander of the local Serbian navy and was convicted in 2003 of commanding a portion of the bombardment during which two civilians were […]