Last week I went over two articles from journal International Security which both discussed the deteriorating security and governance situation along the Afghan/Pakistan border. Both articles emphasized Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, as being either too weak, lacking decent effort, or of actually being a partner in some of the Taliban's insurgent efforts against NATO […]
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and former American Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman said that he was “disturbed” to see “decent official figures” welcoming Kuntar and he criticized March 14 for not standing their ground against Hizballah. I agree with the former but not entirely with the latter. For some reason, […]
Today World Trade Organization (WTO) Director Pascal Lamy confirmed that the latest round of WTO talks collapsed after nine days because of a dispute between developed and developing countries over “safeguard clauses” to protect lesser-developed economies from a flood of imports. For Mexico, this means increased reliance on its existing plethora of free trade agreements. […]
BBC news is reporting that multilateral trade talks in Geneva have ended without consensus. The epicenter of the rift blocking resolution was that of market access. While the US and EU push for greater access to provide services to the fast emerging economies of India and China, the two developing countries are instead focused on fighting […]
Three stories caught my eye this morning, all of which fall into the category of disappointing, but not surprising. 1) The power-sharing talks over Zimbabwe have broken down over the question of what role Morgan Tsvangirai will play. The sides appear to have rather different conceptions of the role the Movement for Democratric Change leader will […]
This is a bit belated, but I wanted to share my Cape Argus Zim Op Ed from June 25 in which I lament Morgan Tsvangirai dropping out of the race and utilize an example from the American Civil Rights Movement as an example of what I worried that his departure from the race might mean.
In March of this year, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain made a major foreign policy speech at the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles. (Video and Text) In this speech, McCain proposes isolating Russia, specifically from the G-8: “We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again […]
Blaming developing countries for the failure of Doha Round trade negotiations is counter-productive to global trade relations and WTO efforts, China said July 28 via its official news outlet, Xinhua Press. China's ambassador to the WTO, Sun Zhenyu, represented the country's interests on Monday, saying: “They have to remember that this is a Development […]
The International Olympic Committee has banned Iraq from competing in China next month. However, as usual, there are two completely different versions of the story and I still don't fully understand what happened. Adding to the confusion is the fact that many major media outlets are not reporting on these events. CNN (with the most […]
There is a reason why economics is known as the “dismal science.” For all of the accoutrements of precision and exactitude, the reality is that much of economics is at least as much alchemy as science, and the supposed “laws” of economics are more like guidelines than immutable realities. It is thus not surprising that […]
Karin Esposito, the FPA's blogger on Religion and Politics and Project Manager for the Tajikistan Dialogue Project in Dushanbe, recently wrote about a new draft law ‘Freedom of Religious Practices and Religious Organizations’ being debated by the Kyrg government. Karin, with the help of an article by Erica Marat, discusses the reasons and possible ramifications […]
While almost 2,200 families fled their homes in Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen because of the heavy fighting, Mika [the Lebanese born British singer] had a sold out concert in Martyr's Square on Sunday. Mika left and Tripoli is calm, so all's well when it ends well. Lebanon is a country of contradictions. No doubt […]
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