Regions

Brussels never received so much attention from the previous US administration, so last week‘s visit of  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and today’s of Vice-President Joe Biden are most welcome. Most of the Vice-President’s engagements were at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, however he did have meetings with the EU Policy chief Javier Solana. A European […]

Nathan Field (of FPA’s Egypt blog) and Ahmed Hamem have a piece in this month’s Arab Reform Bulletin arguing that while there is no guarantee that inviting Islamist parties into politics will make them moderate, the inverse appears to be true. That is, excluding Islamist parties from politics, at least in Egypt, seems to have […]

At The New York Times Lydia Polgreen presents an article about recent events in Guinea-Bissau, positing that the political murders of the democratically elected president, Joao Bernardo Vieira, and the chief of the armed forces, General Batista Tagme Na Waie may actually prove good for the country going forward. She may be right, but these […]

I just received the following email today that the Congressional Subcommittee on National Security will be examining the US role is fueling organized crime in Mexico.  This long overdue, as I wrote about the seriousness of the issue back in May.  Our previous Mexico blogger, Rohini Gupta, first wrote about the issue in July 2007.  […]

Madagascar’s Defense Minister, Mamy Ranaivoniarivo, has resigned under duress after a group of the country’s soldiers confronted him in his office. President Marc Ravalomanana has made a plea for the end of the chaos that has beset his country. But large swaths of the country, including the military, supports opposition leader Andry Rajoelina, indicating that […]

Kenya’s capital has been paralyzed after protests on the part of students at the University of Nairobi in the wake of a police shooting of one of their colleagues, Godwin Otago, last Thursday. It is easy to associate any kind of upheaval in Kenya with the violence that followed the elections at the end of […]

New polling data indicates that large numbers of South Africans have a generally pessimistic view of the country right now. Of more immediate political concern, however, is that a huge percentage simply does not trust Jacob Zuma and believes that the prosecution of him should continue. With an election just around the corner, this level […]

Over at the Afghanistan blog, I wrote a piece about the Sister City program between San Diego, California and Jalalabad, Afghanistan. This group does a lot of amazing work that should be recognized. Maybe we should have a ‘surge’ of Sister Cities!

The city of San Diego has many sister cities and one of them is Jalalabad, Afghanistan. As a new San Diegan, this was brought to my attention by San Diego-Jalalabad activist David Edick Jr. It appears that through this organization much good has come about with active citizens participating from both cities. Here is the […]

This Mail & Guardian feature on education in Tanzania looks at the realities behind the government’s rosy assertions. The article concludes that education in the east African country represents “a series of near-misses.”

Declining consumer prices cause fear of deflation A 1.6 percent drop in consumer prices in February from a year earlier sparked fears of increasing deflationary problems in China. The price drop in February ends more than six years of price increases, with February 2008 seeing a record consumer price index (CPI) rise of 8.7 percent […]

The new Carnegie report describes European initiatives and priorities towards the Middle East, placing an emphasis on the need to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict first. The report emphasizes the need to pursue the process and ideas from the Annapolis summit, improve conditions in the territories, enhance the security situation, and bolster democratic efforts.