I wrote before that – Future political integration is dependent on ASEAN resolving its many territorial disputes. There is still a high level of nationalism in the region; member-countries are suspicious of each other due to centuries of conflict, followed by colonial isolation. These disputes were recently surveyed on Capital Hill, by Richard P. Cronin, […]
The U.S. government delivered the first $200 million of an expected $900 million to the Palestinian Authority yesterday. The State Department pledged the donations in March at a conference in Cairo meant to raise funding for Gaza Strip reconstruction and Palestinian Authority initiatives. The State Department released the following data on U.S. investments in the […]
Foreign Policy published a piece by two academics – one Palestinian, Osama Abu-Irshaid, and one an American Jew with strong ties to Israel, Paul Scham – suggesting that in order to reach any kind of peace agreement with Hamas, negotiating partners (i.e. Israel and the United States) need to accept that they will never recognize […]
Another power struggle is going on in Iran and its not reformist politicians against the hard-line political establishment. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has maintained his choice of Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaii as first vice president over the objections of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Rahim-Mashaii upset hard-line clerics and politicians in 2008 by stating that Iranians were “friends […]
Five African nations can look forward to faster, more reliable internet service as the result of the work of a private consortium, Seacom, which installed the first undersea fiberoptic cable. The switch went on yesterday in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Uganda and South Africa. Rwanda should join that group in the next couple of weeks.
Beyond the grave human tragedies, one of the most vexing aspects of the AIDS denialism that was too prominent at high levels in South Africa in the decade after 1994 is that South Africa ought to have been the continent’s, indeed one of the globe’s, leaders in anti-AIDS science and technology. The country had the […]
The latest line in pro-Israel new media is a Facebook widget that changes an individuals Facebook status to read as a fun fact about the Jewish State. A group of students from Hebrew University in Jerusalem created the application and already 3,000 people use the widget on their Facebook accounts. Some fun facts include: the […]
Latest sources tell us that unmanned CIA predator aircraft are credited with killing Osama bin Laden’s son with strikes in Pakistan earlier this year. Although this has yet to be officially confirmed given the highly “sensitive nature of CIA operations along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier” according to the Washington Post, debate on the use of unmanned […]
Even as the governments of India and Pakistan struggle to re-establish regular dialogue between the two countries, the Pakistani Army and Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) are reported to want a seat at the table. The two agencies claim to be the real power centers in Pakistan who play a crucial role in Pakistan’s India policy. They […]
I just received the following press release. Rather than try to distill it, I will just share the whole text: NAIROBI – President Kibaki of the Republic of Kenya has announced the appointment of Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat as Chairman of Kenya’s newly-created Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC). The Commission was set up by legislation […]
Lately, the news coming out of Timor-Leste is quite reminiscent of the political reality drama, that was Ferdinand Marcos’ Philippines – corruption, assassination plots, and intrigue in abundance. On Monday July 13th, the 27 people accused of the February 2008 “assassination attempt” of East Timor’s President Jose Ramos-Horta, began trial. The case is a puzzling […]
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) recent resolution marking August 23rd as a day of remembrance for Nazism and Stalinism has sparked quite an uproar over the past couple weeks. Russia’s Federal Assembly (the 176 member Federation Council and 450 member State Duma, respectively) issued a statement that the decision to equate […]
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