Regions

Reflecting on 2011: where to start? 2011 has been another busy year for writers, analysts and students of foreign policy: from the Arab revolutions, to the nuclear disaster of Fukushima, to the war in Libya, to the Euro crisis, to the domestic turmoil in the US, so on and so forth. Instead of examining certain […]

Today, the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence held a REALLY interesting hearing on Boko Haram, the Nigeria-based militant group—which they deem an “emerging threat to the U.S. homeland.” (Color me surprised… it is a rare occasion when US policymakers on the Hill focus on “emerging” threats instead of waiting until it’s […]

Iceland’s Minister of the Interior, Ögmundur Jónasson, rejected Chinese businessman Huang Nubo’s bid to purchase a large tract of territory in the northeastern region of the country. Huang had sought an exemption from an Icelandic law which prohibits nationals from outside the European Economic Association from purchasing large amounts of land. Huang wanted to purchase […]

The son of the Iranian ayatollah who issued the 2006 fatwah calling for the assassination of Azeri author Rafiq Tagi has issued a statement on his web site praising Tagi’s murderers. Sheikh Mohammed Fazel Lankarani, a prominent ayatollah like his late father, has written on his site that “Without a doubt, the man who performed […]

Japan has voiced concern over the second trial of China’s first aircraft carrier, which started Tuesday. Even though the refitted Soviet carrier is technologically pretty much what you’d expect from a third-world country, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said, “I am concerned about their reinforcement of national defense power, which lacks transparency, and their acceleration […]

“Haiti is a country that supported the fight for freedom in Latin America, a country that terrified slave owners across America and is now subjugated to foreign occupation that has nothing to do with humanitarian purposes, as proposed,” said Julio Turra, president of Unified Confederation of Workers (CUT French acronym). “It’s embarrassing,” added Turra during […]

There’s a LOT going on in the Middle East/North Africa this week—elections in Morocco and Egypt, unrest in Syria, crackdown on protesters in Bahrain…the list goes on.  Don’t have time to sift through all the commentaries and coverage?  No problem.  Let me break it down for you and give some highlights about what’s being said […]

According to a recent poll by Latinobarómetro, a public opinion survey conducted in 18 countries in the Latin American region, 45% of Brazilians agree that “democracy is preferable to any other type of government.”[1] Alarmingly, the figure is down from 54% last year. The Economist proposes an explanation: “Dilma Rousseff, the new President, has taken […]

Yesterday, Moroccans went to the polls for the first parliamentary elections after the Constitutional referendum earlier this summer. As I mentioned last week, there would be three questions to answer after the elections, so let’s see 1) What was the turnout? The official figure is 45%, which is definitely decent. (). The big fear was […]

Conventional wisdom holds that Mexico’s economy marches in lockstep with America’s. Mexico sends most of its exports to the US, after all, and Mexico is a middle class nation thanks in large part to the country’s integration into the North American economy. But on 22 November Mexico reported growth of 4.5 percent over the same […]

For fifty years, the U.S. has debated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton declared 8.9 million acres in northeast Alaska to be a federally protected area, called the Alaska National Wildlife Range. In 1980, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands […]

Wednesday, November 23, 2011, Germany sold 10-year Bunds at its debt auction worth 3.64 billion euro with an average yield of 1.98%, and the bid-to-cover ratio was 1.1 , while the Bundesbank retained the remainder of the 6 billion euro offering. To most people, that’s just Wall Street gobbledegook, but in fact, it is a […]