The Following piece is written by a Yemeni-based journalist who writes for Foreign Policy Association (FPA) and, due to serious security concerns, remains anonymous. In recent weeks the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh has been accused of organizing mass kidnapping of protesters to destabilize the revolutionary movement and instill fear within the population. According to […]
Another friday of protests has come and gone: Assad is still in power, however, many protests continue. The past week has seen a raising of rhetorical stakes from the West, despite the fact that the West is pretty much powerless to do anything. US Secretary of State Clinton suggested that the US is closer to declaring […]
Has U.S. military aid to Pakistan over the past 50 years helped that country in any desirable way? Or is U.S. aid partly the cause of Pakistan’s dire security and development situation? Has aid to the military, and the ill-advised redistribution of that aid to other, less savory agents, fundamentally crippled governance and social and […]
Miyu Uehara, a Japanese celebrity known locally as a “tarento” (talent), hanged herself early Thursday morning. (Some news sources are mistakenly reporting her name as Miyui or Miyuki.) She had just turned 24 on May 2. Uehara was a model who had been “discovered” when she was 18 working at a hostess club (a pricey […]
“The First Grader,” a new movie that is making its way into select theaters (read: New York and Los Angeles) , tells the story of Kimani Ng’ang’a Maruge, an illiterate Kenyan who enrolled in primary school at the age of 84. I’m always wary of intentionally “uplifting” tales, and The New York Times’ review is […]
George Mitchell, the former Senate Majority Leader and Obama administration’s lead Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiator, resigned, effective next week, but his true impact on the peace process will only emerge when the memoirs are written years from now. On the face of it, though, Mitchell, who managed to secure a northern Ireland peace deal, was not […]
Washington is an interesting town. You never know who you may have lunch with on a day which seems quite ordinary. As part of my quest in following Turkish policy makers, today I found myself in a room with Ian O. Lesser from the German Marshall Fund and Semih Idiz who is a senior […]
Earlier this week President Calderón appeared on the Charlie Rose Show. In his usual technocratic fashion, Calderón ticked off the security challenges posed by drug violence in Mexico, then detailed the countermeasures: taking on the criminals, building better law enforcement institutions, and addressing the socioeconomic roots of crime in Mexico. Also of interest, the president […]
A recent Ipsos survey has indicated that Turkey is the most critical NATO member of the operations in Libya. According to the survey the most support for military intervention is in Belgium (78%) followed by strong support in France (72%) and Canada (70%), whereas the weakest support among NATO countries registers in Hungary (54%), Italy […]
The 7th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting took place yesterday and today in Nuuk, Greenland. At the meeting, the Arctic Council ministers signed the Search and Rescue Agreement (PDF), which is the first-ever legally binding agreement to be signed under the Arctic Council. The agreement mandates that the seven signatory countries cooperate in a 13-million square […]
The one issue that seems to be getting thrown under the bus, and what might just be most important in the Syrian context, is the issue of class.
The smoke has hardly cleared from the revolution in Egypt, and the Egyptian people already have a new adversary: Turkey. Recent reconciliation talks between Fatah and Hamas may have taken place in Egypt, but few have cheered more loudly for the results than Turkey. And while Egypt has the power, but not quite the will […]
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