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Am I lucky or what? Made it through Heathrow, UK airport security, and onto the plane headed back for the US a measly 48 hours before a British-born Islamic extremist of Nigerian extraction drove his car over a British soldier outside the Woolwich Artillery Barracks and then tried to hack the victim’s head off with a rusty meat cleaver. Across the pond, before the UK went into shock, and Cameron’s government into an emergency meeting designed to address what common-sense suggests might be the response of the British people: rage and retaliation. . .

The U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) recently highlighted some appalling figures pertaining to issues of food waste in a somewhat unexpected and innovative manner. The UNEP’s 2013 theme for World Environment Day on June 5, “Think.East.Save,” reports the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) data concluding 1.3 billion tons of food, or the equivalent of all […]

  In a 2010 study, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff identified a 90 percent debt/GDP threshold as a “red line” national economies crossed only at the cost of impeding their growth. That study garnered a great deal of attention among debt hawks. More has been written about the impact of recent academic work discrediting Reinhart/Rogoff’s core conclusion […]

Photo: Getty Images On 23 May, President Obama gave a long awaited and much overdue talk on his strategy for conducting the war on terrorism.  I thought it was one of the best speeches he’s given.  He did a great job laying out his view points, justification for his terrorism strategy and what he sees […]

A colorful mosaic of flower petals brightens an otherwise grim corner in the Woolwich section of London.  Its mirror image rests outside a quiet home in Middleton, Greater Manchester.  Each bouquet serves as a worthy tribute to both the beautifully adorned uniform of an Army Drummer and the character of a young man who filled […]

A post last month argued that President Obama was fast approaching a defining moment for his foreign policy in view of the mounting evidence that the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria used sarin, a lethal nerve gas, in violation of Mr. Obama’s numerous warnings not to do so.  The day of reckoning has now arrived […]

I like to write my own blogs, and too often have too much to say to readers who want it short and sweet. But the push to attribute past and future attacks on U.S. citizens on U.S. to “self-radicalization” is the kind of linguistic legerdemain too sweet not to invite more than one response. The […]

Ghana has been forced to cope with increased energy shortages as a result of damages to the West African Gas Pipeline, dating back to Aug. 28, 2012. The $1 billion, 650 kilometer long pipeline, built to carry gas from Nigeria to Benin, Togo and Ghana, was severely damaged during an incident between a Togolese Navy […]

When asked what items they never leave the house without, many people (in the West at least) would likely answer, “my mobile (cell) phone.” It would be pretty difficult for people in the U.K., for example, to adjust to a world where their handset didn’t accompany them everywhere; where they were unable to receive SMSs […]

  Last April I wrote about the tiny island nation of Maldvies, and its embattled former President Mohamed Nasheed. After a brief foray into democracy, it seems that Maldives has slid back to the political bullying of its past. Nasheed claims to have been deposed by force in February 2012; the current government — which […]

Last Wednesday was a day of extremes for the former Secretary of State, who was in Beverly Hills to pick up a public service award from a private foreign policy organization.  There her tenure at the State Department was lauded as activists from a group called “Ready for Hillary 2016” gathered nearby to round out the […]

The internet went dark in Syria last week. Although media reports blamed the outage on a fault in optical fiber cables many in the tech community were skeptical. After all, it’s not the first time Syria shut down the internet in an attempt to prevent protestors from using social media to coordinate and share with […]

For much of the world’s employed, maintaining communication with those closest to them while completing their employment requirements is not a contemplated issue. Many workers can use their own personal or workplace phones, computers, and other devices to contact their friends and family if need be. Outside the workplace, most working people return home to […]

What does a country in the middle of collapse look like? This was the question filmmaker Lorie Conway attempted to answer in her new film on Zimbabwe, “Beatrice Mtetwa and the Rule of Law.” A recent showing by the United States Institute of Peace gave a venue for both the filmmaker and the film’s primary […]

With nearly 70,000 dead Syrians since the beginning of the unrest, the Syrian conflict certainly join a select group of international massacres. At this path Samathan Power will have enough facts and material in order to write volume two of “A problem from Hell” looking at the ghosts of Syria. What are the options for the West […]