Less than a week after a controversial, anti-Islamic film incited violence throughout the Middle East, riots and protests gained momentum from a French satirical magazine’s publication of crude representations of the Prophet Muhammad. Meant to mock violence sparked by the American-made film Innocence of Muslims, the French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, included pornographic and demeaning illustrations […]
In today’s Guest Post, Jean AbiNader shares his interesting perspective on a recent article on Egypt by former Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S., Nabil Fahmy which appeared in the summer 2012 issue of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. Jean, a long-time Middle East specialist, is President of IdeaCom, Inc. (www.goideacom.com) and directs its services […]
Which group of countries can be set as an example in the security and defense field for the Central European states? It is my contention that the Nordic collaboration, based on the 2009 “Stoltenberg report,” should be and could be repeated on a V4 level. How V4 cooperation might become as effective and attractive to the U.S. as the one between the Nordic states? One should offer a set of four rules which will be called V4 four commandments: visibility, flexible leadership, active engagement and daring thinking.
The following was taken from Jspace.com. The article was written by Jspace Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Rob Lattin, who also blogs about Israeli and Middle Eastern foreign policy for Foreign Policy Blogs. The Jerusalem District court last Thursday rejected MK Taleb al-Sanaa, of the United Arab List party, and others’ petition calling for a temporary injunction […]
Mexico has come in for positive news of late, thanks in part to a forecast published by Nomura Securities that showed Mexico surpassing Brazil as Latin America’s largest economy by 2022. While that’s certainly possible, a more realistic scenario would involve Mexico growing at the upper end of the growth range the IMF has set […]
A week ago, in various necks of the Muslim world, protests broke out to show the disapproval with the video that was made showing Prophet Muhammad as an adulterer, child molester and murderer. I’m sure there was more to the movie, but I, like many others, have not seen it. As much as I have […]
President Obama over the last four years has had as successful a record on Latin America as the last two presidents before him. It can be argued he has had some added success in the region considering luck and policy with Colombia gaining a handle on its own internal conflict and Cuba slowly reforming to […]
Bite me. You might as well go outside and shout it loud, because there isn’t enough DEET in your medicine chest to fend off the bloodlust of Culex pipiens, Anopheles, Aedes vexans, and dozens of other species of infected mosquitoes blanketing the United States. And West Nile virus season has just begun—consider August 2012 a preview.
Don’t get me wrong. Health organizations, federal, state and local, have spent buckets of money on nice-looking, easy-to-understand websites that calmly advise citizens to douse ourselves with bug spray, wear light, long-sleeved clothing (think Out of Africa), eliminate standing pools of water, and, of course, just stay inside the damn house until the Center for Disease Control (CDC) sounds the all-clear.
All good. But hardly sufficient.
West Nile virus—how it got here, how it travels, how it kills, and how health officials could, but often fail to mount the most effective responses—is a complicated story, a cautionary tale, some would say, about power, ego, bureaucracy, preparedness, ignorance, incompetence, and disparate champions whose voices routinely go unheard and whose counsel is too often ignored.
Right now, the highbeams are on Dallas, Texas, ‘Ground Zero’ for West Nile—and Mayor Mike Rawlings has indeed declared a state of emergency in the municipality. As the number of victims escalates, however, so does the anxiety of state and local officials, as well as the complaints of constituents, who’ve begun to question and criticize the city’s response to the health crisis….
Editor’s Note: The following piece is a guest appearance by Ms. Sara Akrami and Mr. Saeed Ghasseminejad. Sara Akrami is an Iranian-Canadian student activist, currently in her 4th year of studies in political science at York University in Toronto. Ms. Akrami is also founder and president of the Human Rights Activists Association at York University. Saeed […]
A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to get a phone call inviting me to the Democratic Convention to hear President Obama give his acceptance speech. I’m a registered independent voter and over the course of my life have voted for candidates of both parties. Attending the convention was one of the best experiences […]
To provide context to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and the death of J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Foreign Affairs has put together a collection of the 33 best pieces on the country. Spanning nearly 20 years, “Libya in Crisis” includes articles by Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh […]
When commenting on an article about corruption in Liberia, a poster on my Facebook buddy’s wall alluded that the state is not always a friend as generally viewed, especially in the Western context. Certainly, as reported by the Liberian Daily Observer, recent corruption index research reveals that that the entire state of this West African […]
With Venezuela’s presidential election coming up on October 7, one question looms large – can Hugo Chávez possibly lose? Perhaps the question should actually be, can his challenger win? From what I have read, the opposition is unified, pragmatic, and proactive in a manner different from prior campaigns. Checking my past posts, I haven’t written […]
The production values are terrible. The acting is bad. But this is a movie worth watching. Set in the early 1980s, Latino follows a Chicano soldier recruited to train Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries along the Honduras side of the border. They were called “contras.” Whether the contras were a home grown group or one created and funded […]
Since the announcement of the decision by Canada to sever ties with Iran and expel Iranian diplomats from the country, many Iranian-Canadians have found themselves immersed in heated debates over the issue. While these debates seem nearly fixated on the merits and faults of the decision and the potential it holds for the Iranian diaspora, […]