Israeli Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni and Israeli lawyer and chief negotiator in the Israeli negotiating team with the Palestinians on behalf of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Yitzhak Molcho met with United States Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday to discuss the details of the framework that the U.S. wants Israel and […]
Our favorite long reads and blog posts from the past week.
Xi Jinping at the Steamed Bun Shop by Tutou Jueren (“Stubborn Baldy”) The Chinese Communist Party has a long tradition of using its state media as a tool to maintain its legitimacy and control its masses through party propaganda. While ancient China also used propaganda, Chairman Mao Zedong was the first Chinese leader to successfully […]
Prominent Uighur economics professor and dissident Ilham Tohti (Uighur: ئىلھام توختى, Chinese: 伊力哈木土赫提) was detained by police in Beijing on January 15, according to multiple reports. Also detained were at least six of Tohti’s students. Tohti’s family has not been informed of his whereabouts or the nature of the charges against him. The U.S. State […]
Kamran Bokhari is Vice President of Middle Eastern and South Asian Affairs at Stratfor, a leading geopolitical and intelligence consulting firm based in Austin, Texas. Mr. Bokhari is a distinguished scholar and expert in Middle Eastern and South Asian affairs. He has given briefings to the U.S. and Canadian governments on important geopolitical issues in […]
Western “cultural threats” will be among several types of “unconventional security threats” targeted by China’s new National Security Committee, according to an article by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) senior colonel Gong Fangbin (公方彬). Additional “threats” the committee will target include extremist groups, cybersecurity threats, and online dissent. The article follows a familiar recent pattern of […]
In an interview with the Foreign Policy Association, Sderot Media Center CEO Noam Bedein expressed concern that the present situation in Gaza is not being taken under consideration in the context of the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority: “Right now, there is no mention of Gaza and its Hamas control. It is […]
Editor’s Note: The following piece was first published in Middle East Briefing (ISSUE 9 VOL 1 Jan 13th 2014), a weekly publication of Orient Advisory Group, a research and risk assessment firm based in both Washington DC and Dubai UAE. __________________________________________________________________ Quiet changes have already been made in the team of Iran’s negotiators with […]
Credit: Xandernieuws.punt.nl In July, I wrote a blog post that commented on a couple of polls that had recently been conducted which seemed to contradict themselves. One poll, commissioned by the Israel Peace Initiative and conducted by the Israeli company New Wave Research, had found that a majority of Israelis support the amended Arab Peace […]
2014 began in Hong Kong with a New Year’s Day march for democracy that drew thousands into the streets in protest against Beijing’s efforts to limit democratic rights in the former British colony. Unless demands are met for universal suffrage and open nomination rights in Hong Kong elections, July 2014 is likely to see the […]
Who owns the ocean? In reference to the water south of China, it depends on who you ask. Newer claims by China would extend its sovereignty well south to the island of Borneo, passing by Vietnam, Malaysia, and Philippines in the process. Let’s a take a look at what’s gone on and what it says […]
Israel’s Construction and Housing Ministry issued building tenders for 1,400 housing units to be built in East Jerusalem and the West Bank Friday. The announcement came four days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry left the region. Tenders were released for the construction of 600 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in […]
At first glance, Chinese tycoon Chen Guangbiao’s appearance in New York this week looked like little more than a Chinese soft-power effort gone terribly wrong. First came Chen’s ill-fated effort to buy the New York Times. Then came Chen’s bizarre press conference in New York featuring a patriotic singing performance by Chen, a brief foreign […]
Our favorite long reads and blog posts from the past week.
In earlier posts (here, here, and here), I argued that the Obama administration’s national security process is plagued by extreme insularity, centralization and politicization. This is a widely held criticism, regularly repeated not just by the president’s detractors but also former administration staffers and friendly commentators. And the new revelations by Robert M. Gates, the much-respected national security […]