What is Russia playing at by harboring America’s most wanted whistleblower Edward Snowden in a Moscow airport? A brief recap: Over the weekend, Snowden arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong en route to a third country, probably Ecuador (which is already housing Julian Assange in its London embassy). On Sunday, journalists received a number of […]
On the heels of the opening of the Arctic Council’s Permanent Secretariat in Tromsø, Norway, two new Arctic research centers in China and Russia have been announced while one in Canada has made progress towards becoming reality. China-Nordic Arctic Research Institute First, Chinese and Nordic representatives announced plans to establish the China-Nordic Arctic Research Institute. University […]
Amidst worldwide condemnation, Russia’s parliament passed a law outlawing “homosexual propaganda.” It was definitely a shameful milestone. As of today, The law will make it an offence…to communicate to Russian children and young people that love between two women or two men is “just as socially valuable” as that between a man and a woman. […]
Two decades of international community administered talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijani territory, have failed to reach a resolution. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s petro-dollar aided exponential increase in defence expenditure amid pitched rabble-rousing and frequent sniper skirmishes in the region has led many to fear that the disputed landlocked mountainous […]
DefenseNews has a thought-provoking analysis of NATO’s announcement earlier this month that it had no plans to establish a direct presence in the Arctic. On May 6 and 7, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and ambassadors from the North Atlantic Council visited Bodø, Norway, where the Norwegian Armed Forces’ operational command center is located. Rasmussen […]
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. . .
Is it in the interest of the European Union to arm Syrian rebels? Here is the real question. After almost two years of vicious civil war, over 80,000 deaths and 1,5 million refugees, the EU once again led by Paris and London has received flexibility for actions if needed through eventual shipment of weapons to […]
In January 1864, some strangely dressed men with odd accents arrived in the camp of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, whose troops had been reeling from shortages of arms and supplies. They demonstrate a new weapon – an amazingly high powered accurate “repeater” rifle – and offer it to Lee. He accepts. And the arming […]
This documentary is all over the place. It is in part a history of modern Afghanistan and also a film about independent journalists – some of whom were killed – trying to report on the situation on the ground. Afghanistan is called “The Graveyard of Empires” for good reason: Every country or empire that has […]
Speculation swirls around today’s sudden resignation of Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s chief ideologue who had thought up “sovereign democracy” and invented the Nashi youth groups. He name-dropped Lacan and Derrida and even allegedly wrote a novel called Almost Zero. And now he might have become just that. Did he jump, or was he pushed? What […]
Yesterday, I mentioned in a blog post that Eimskip, the Icelandic shipping company, recently moved its North American hub from Norfolk, Virginia to Portland, Maine. This will be the American port’s first direct connection to Europe in 33 years, according to an excellent, fact-filled article in the Press Herald, a local newspaper. Eimskip’s decision is in line […]
The conflict between Russia and the territory of Chechnya is the backdrop for this film. In it two Russian soldiers are taken away to a Chechen village after their group is ambushed. The reason they are captured is so that a villager can use them as a trade for his son, who is being held […]
As a Russian who first came to America as a small child and later spent his university years in Cambridge, Mass., I felt particularly gripped by the ongoing Boston bomber saga. There remain so many questions about why these two brothers, to whom the U.S. had given shelter, passports, schooling and acceptance, turned so violently […]
Even Violent Drug Cartels Fear God By Damien Cave The New York Times Magazine “If the economy worked for the common good, there would be no Zetas. There would be no cartels,” says Robert Coogan, the chaplain at Cereso. Here the Zetas, Mexico’s most feared crime syndicate, run operations from the inside. And they […]
U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers chairs the House of Representatives’ panel on intelligence, which this week overwhelmingly approved a new cyber security bill designed to enhance data sharing between the government and private industry to protect computer networks and intellectual property from cyber attacks. Yet the day before it passed, Rogers had a more novel idea […]