My small town of Seto in the suburbs of Okayama held a cherry blossom viewing festival today. In Japan’s collective society, even viewing the ethereal cherry blossoms is a community activity. For one week in the early spring, the scraggly trees littering the hillsides burst to life in bright tints before their blossoms fall away […]
Dr. Md. Yunus has friends in high places. Everyone knows that. Under scrutiny following a Norwegian documentary that alleged financial malfeasance, Dr. Yunus was cleared of any accusations but remains squarely a target for the Awami League’s recrimination. Under the aegis of an ad hoc rule that Grameen Bank needed the central bank’s permission to […]
The Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce stood out against the Islami Oikya Jote’s calls for a nationwide protest and strike. A hard rightist party associated with the opposition BNP, the IOJ had called for a widespread “hartal” to protest a national women’s development policy it claimed countervailed accepted dogma in teh Koran. The policy […]
The violence that began in Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan has spread to southern Afghanistan in Kandahar, the Taliban’s home base. The New York Times reports that 81 people have been injured while 9 more people have died of gunshot wounds, bringing the number of dead up to 21 people since Friday afternoon prayers when imams […]
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. Maher Hassan is not the only victim of the Saleh regime, but his tragedy and the message it carries, is rippling throughout the entire nation like a sandstorm. If Tunisia had […]
Goodluck Jonathan is likely to win this month’s elections in Nigeria. And that outcome is almost certain to be controversial. Already one can anticipate that the opposition will decry the results of the elections as illegitimate. The four main opposition candidates pulled out of last week’s televised presidential debate a week after Jonathan had failed […]
Last Sunday voters in the Central African Republic went to the polls and overwhelmingly gave President Francois Bozize’s party a large majority. Well, some voters did. The problem is that the opposition called for a boycott of the polling to protest the first round of voting in January. According to reports: “The opposition has condemned […]
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and his country’s largely powerless prime Minister, has appealed to South African President Jacob Zuma in hopes that South Africa will finally intervene to prevent Robert Mugabe from stepping up violence and other dirty tricks prior to Zim’s upcoming but as-yet unscheduled elections. […]
Kazakhstan is gearing up for the snap presidential election that will take place on Sunday, April 3, 2011. No one doubts that the incumbent president Nursultan Nazarbayev will win, which will extend his presidency for another five years and give him a chance to consolidate his rule by grooming a successor (or so he hopes). Earlier […]
Many are familiar with the origin of Somalia’s protracted conflict in the fall of Said Barre’s regime in 1991 and the resulting competition for political control among warring clans. Yet the conditions of warfare in Somalia have evolved dramatically since that time as the impact of the conflict upon the local geography, the role of […]
The writing that Ivory Coast is headed for catastrophe is clearly on the wall! According to the International Red Cross, approximately 800″ people were massacred in one city alone in earlier this week. The West African regional block Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) has made u-turn with regard to their bluff to use […]
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. After weeks of protests and many false starts, Yemen is no closer to a political solution. As Ali Abdullah Saleh continues to hold on to its presidential seat, the nation has […]
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