Regions

Tonight PBS’ acclaimed “Point of View” documentary series is showing Mugabe and the White African. Here is a description: “Mugabe and the White African, much of which was filmed clandestinely, tells an alarming story from one of the world’s most troubled nations. In Zimbabwe, de facto dictator Robert Mugabe has unleashed a “land reform” program […]

Last year, Russian people stuck it to the Man by painting a giant penis on a St Petersburg drawbridge. The Kremlin’s revenge sends that message right back. It’s much less funny, much more obscene, but also involves a bridge: a $1.3 billion bridge to a remote island as part of an overall $24 billion bill […]

As news broke yesterday that a Cambodian solider was killed on the border with Thailand, the site of a border dispute that was just recently adjudicated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a brief but critical analysis is required in order to ascertain the significance of such a development. The Phnom Penh Post reported […]

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of seeing author Joseph Braude speak in New York City. He was interesting and his perspective on the Middle East was unique, and I felt compelled to do an interview with him for my readers. Just to provide some background, Joseph comes from an Iraqi-Jewish family and […]

During the 4th meeting of SAARC Home/Interior Ministers recently in Thimpu, Bhutan, India has proposed regular direct contact among police chiefs of SAARC nations to fight terrorism and other trans-national crime, and formation of a regional organization on the lines of Interpol, called SAARCPOL. Underlying that fighting terror and other trans-national crimes in a unified […]

When a hundred people are suddenly killed in Norway, it’s an unprecedented national catastrophe. But in Russia, it’s more like an average summer. Today, the final victims of the sunken Bulgaria were freed from the ship’s wreckage, bringing the toll to 122. Earlier, a helicopter crash, a bus collision, and a spike in various fatal […]

NPR has sent some of its journalists to the Arctic to study the consequences of melting sea ice on the surrounding states. They are documenting their experiences in a series of blog posts. So far, correspondents have visited Iceland, Russia, and Greenland. Posts range from an illustration of the boredom huskies experience in the summer to […]

I can’t let go of an article from the July 2 edition of the Economist. “Who’s Overheating” proposes an “emerging-markets overheating index” that crunched six factors: 1) Inflation 2) GDP growth since 2007, compared to the past decade 3) Unemployment 4) Credit growth 5) Real interest rates, and 6) Change in current-account balance. Twenty-seven countries […]

Courtesy: Dawn.com A veteran diplomat, Ms Wendy Chamberlin was serving as the US ambassador to Pakistan when terrorist struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. A former High Commissioner of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Chamberlin is currently the president of Middle East Institute, a prestigious think-tank […]

For those interested in the current state of military affairs on and around the Korean peninsula, a recent report out of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, The Korean Military Balance, is worth a look. Spearheaded by CSIS’s indefatigable Anthony Cordesman, the report provides a fine-grained analysis of the strategic balance of forces on the […]

Quoted directly from John Campbell at his Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa in Transition blog: The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has released ten case studies on “Assessing Risks to Stability in Sub-Saharan Africa.” The reports cover Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia,  Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan and Uganda. The papers, commissioned by the U.S. […]

For many in India, Secretary Clinton’s visit this week was reassuring; reassuring that India was still United State’s most favored partner in the region. Secretary Clinton’s visit was part of the second annual India-U.S. Strategic Dialogue initiated last year. Strategic dimension of the interactions received maximum attention in the media and among analysts. The insistence […]