Regions

SDS-Ugol, a major coal producer in Russia, has announced plans to build a new seaport outside of Murmansk that will accommodate up to 18 million tons of coal exports a year. Many of the company’s coal mines are located in the Kuzbass region in Siberia. From there, much of the coal is shipped by rail […]

So now we know for sure: Putin “enjoys events involving the participation of fauna” (his own words).  The whole world has seen the Russian president swanning around (he he, see what I did there?) on his ultralight, pursued by just two disorientated looking cranes. The spectacle was so bizarre that, beyond a few zany pictures and […]

What a bizarre turn of events! The Marikana miners’ case took yet another twist as media reports that all charges against the 270 South African miners arrested for murder following their clash with the South African police two weeks ago were dropped this week. Initially, after having 34 of their colleagues killed and many more […]

As Malaysia celebrated its 55th anniversary of independence on Friday, Muslim separatists in southern Thailand marked the occasion with a string of coordinated bomb attacks across the country’s three restive, Islamic-majority provinces. On Hari Merdeka, the day which Malaysia commemorates its freedom from British colonial rule, ethnic Malays hung Malaysian flags from light poles and […]

  It essentially was an accident. Saddam Hussein had been whipped in the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush called on Iraq’s Kurds and Shia to rise up. They did  —  but Bush was all talk; there was no U.S. military help and they were slaughtered. So as Kurdish refugees clung to the freezing […]

“Germany’s been going downhill for years. We’re the losers of globalization. The politicians want us to believe the only solution is to work harder. But the politicians are the puppets for big business. They say unemployment’s falling, and we’re still the world’s export champions. But in reality, the poor are getting poorer and the rich, […]

[Eugene Terre’Blanche against the backdrop of an AWB flag, From The Guardian via Google Images] I hope you will all forgive my recent break from blogging. But I am back and plan to resume regular posting starting now. Obviously a great deal has transpired across the continent in recent weeks. And nowhere has seen fissures […]

United4Iran’s Director of Programs and Advocacy, Dokhi Fassihian, published the following piece in the Huffington Post ahead of the UN Chief’s visit to Iran this week. Despite calls in some quarters for him to skip out, the UN Secretary General plans to travel to Iran next week, a country that has become a dungeon for its own […]

Canada may have the second largest oil reserves in the world, but the vast majority are locked up in Alberta’s oil sands, far from any ocean. That means that pipelines are needed to transport the oil west to ports on Canada’s Pacific Coast or south to markets in the United States. With President Barack Obama […]

It’s Time for a New Smart Power Approach To chart the deterioration of ties between Washington and Islamabad over the last two years, as well as the conundrums gnawing at Obama administration officials, consider the following: Despite Pakistan’s official designation as a “major non-NATO ally,” its egregious double game in Afghanistan is increasingly fueling talk […]

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.  On Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman re-emphasized his belief that the Palestinian Authority should hold general elections, and continued his criticism of Mahmoud […]

Council of Foreign Relations senior fellow Ambassador John Campbell recently released a policy innovation memorandum entitled, “Zimbabwe: An Opportunity for Closer U.S.-South Africa Relations.” It is heartening to see analysts writing on topics they perceive as beneficial to closer relations between the United States and South Africa. Campbell, a former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, makes […]