The news of Richard Holbrooke’s sudden death engulfed diplomatic circles in Washington with an ineffable sorrow. His condition was reported critical but stabilizing a day earlier, as his doctors hoped for a slow recovery after a lengthy surgery to repair a tear in his aorta. But 69 year old Richard Holbrooke could not survive. Holbrooke, whose forceful style […]
I can’t help but think that this is fairly obvious news: The U.S. intervention in Afghanistan won’t work unless the Pakistani government and military rounds up its Taliban allies and, in a manner of speaking, breaks the back of the various groups that constitute the Taliban–both the Afghanistan and Pakistan contingents. Elisabeth Bumiller, writing for […]
It has to be, without a doubt, that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of communism constituted the single most transformative event of the past 40 years. Since man walked the surface of the Moon, the collapse of communism signified the predominance of ‘one’ over the ‘other.’ A New World Order […]
India has launched an ambitious military expansion, but some question whether the sum of its parts adds up to a strategic whole.
The leaked US embassy cables not only show that the US is concerned about the love affair between African governments and China, but also uncovered secret dealings in smoke-filled rooms between African governments and Beijing. Such back-door-dealings between Namibia and China is one of the latest diplomatic cables to be made public by Wikileaks. If […]
At least 22 people have died, with over a 100 injured in a garments factory gone ablaze. The Daily Star reports that many other factory workers remained trapped in the factory located in the outskirts of Dhaka. This news comes at the heels of new deadly protests and street fights over the implementation of the […]
The principles behind affirmative action are pretty basic: Certain people have been kept from enjoying the bounties of society and as a result we need to have policies to provide redress for those inequities. But of course in order to provide that redress certain people are going to feel as if they are going to […]
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke has passed on. He served in the Obama Adminstration in the capacity of United States Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He served in diplomatic leadership roles since the 1970’s and was most renowned for being the architect of the Dayton Peace Accords, the framework that ended the Bosnian War in 1995. […]
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have an oft-evolving view of democracy and how their societies will, if at all, embody values that promote open discourse and equal rights. Israel is often characterized as the Middle East’sd only democracy, a title it rightfully claims because, for the most part, non-Jewish Israeli citizens enjoy equal rights. […]
Noting the “ongoing deterioration of the situation on the ground” as Israel resumes settlement expansion, a group of former EU leaders last Friday called on the EU to take concrete action, with “consequences,” to force Israel back to the negotiating table. Among their demands: laying out a final plan, with a clear time frame, to […]
This piece was written by Liora Hendelman-Baavur (Ph.D), a research fellow of the Center for Iranian Studies (CIS), who also teaches at the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. On November 18, 2010 the Iranian news website Tabnak exposed a Persian pro-Nazi internet forum, operating under the virtual domain assigned to the […]
Funny how Russia’s esteemed riot police, whose noble truncheons are so effective at bashing the heads of liberal democracy activists, couldn’t quite summon the same spirit against a much larger and more dangerous group of ultra-nationalist hooligans. A hard core group of Spartak Moscow fans rampaged through the capital on Saturday, shouting xenophobic slogans and […]
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