A spokesman for the South African government has indicated that the antagonists in Zimbabwe are close to achieving a power-sharing agreement. If this is the case (and I, for one, am hopeful but am not holding my breath) it seems likely that the current cholera emergency coupled with the instability brought about as the result […]
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former South African president FW de Klerk have written to President Kgalema Motlanthe requesting that he set up an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the arms deal that has so shaped and warped the current South African political climate. It is hard to imagine what rationale Motlanthe or the ANC […]
Anna Husarska, senior policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee, looks at the Congo crisis in a column in The Guardian and wonders what it will take to broker peace in the most deadly conflict since World War II. Her suggestions, while incontestable, are also somewhat underwhelming: Keep international attention focused on the conflict in […]
I am not customarily in the business of giving advice to pirates. They have their interests, I have mine, and rarely the twain doth meet. Nonetheless, I would strongly discourage the Somali pirates from extending their trade to passenger liners. Low-intensity attacks on merchant ships are one thing. Menacing — or to use a variation […]
Well, well, well — just when I posit that we have seen relatively few differences between COPE and the ANC here comes a potential whopper. Philip Dexter, a “senior member” (whatever that can possibly mean for a party that has not fully launched yet) of COPE has put forward a position on Zimbabwe and Robert […]
So the questions remains, and likely will linger at least until South Africa's 2009 elections: just how potent a political force will the Congress of the People (COPE) prove to be? And how different from the ANC is the new party, really? After all, the transformations in South African politics boil down to personality clashes […]
Our soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the Iraqi PM to be replaced in 2007. We’ll see how she navigates a relationship with him, and his successor in 2009.
Raghida Dergham weighs in today on the question I posed yesterday: is it helpful to understand the political issues of the Middle East as interconnected? Here is her soundbite from the New York Times: Raghida Dergham, who writes a column in Al Hayat, the London-based pan-Arab daily, wrote that it was a matter of when, […]
For a week starting today General Michel Aoun meets with Syrian officials. This is one of the most controversial visits since President Suleiman took the Presidency. Worth keeping an eye on it. Three years after his return from a 15-year exile, Maronite opposition leader Michel Aoun shakes hands with the son of the man who […]
Even in my remote bit of paradise, news of distant disasters filters through: above the steady sound of waves breaking on the sandy beach in Sri Lanka, I was informed by several news channels about the sickening attacks on Mumbai. My Internet connection is erratic and slow, but nevertheless, I have been bombarded with emails, […]
PRICE manipulation through the creation of artificial shortages is all too common in Pakistan. Much to our detriment, we have grown used to unscrupulous millers and hoarders deliberately curtailing supplies of food items such as wheat flour and sugar in order to jack up prices at the retail level. Successive governments have failed to crack […]
THE Mumbai nightmare has plunged the media in India and Pakistan into the dangerous, old trap in which nationalism trumps responsible reporting. This is not a new phenomenon, nor is it restricted to India and Pakistan. American journalists fell into this trap after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on Sept 11, […]
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