In a recent speech Sheikh Nasrallah dedicated the swap with Israel to Lebanon. Many things can be said about Hizballah, but they surely know how to spin almost everything in their favor. Hizballah claims that Israel is frail. Perhaps. However, in spite of its more recent victories, real or imaginated Hizballah is not the way […]
At the end of the day, travel is, for me, about people. Whether I am returning to Africa or to the UK, places I visit regularly, where I have lived and worked, or whether visiting someplace for the first time, such as when I went to China a couple of years back, the most important component to […]
It's amazing how two newspapers have taken the same remarks from the Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari, and spun them into totally different articles. The articles are mainly focused on Zebari's remarks made at a press conference in Baghdad earlier today. New York Times’ article is titled “Iraq Hints at Delay in US Security Deal” and […]
Hizballah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Wednesday his group had brokered a prisoner swap with the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The deal involves the remains of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Hizballah fighters abducted the Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid in July 2006, an event that led to the July War between […]
Ahmed Rashid a Pakistani journalist/author has a new book called ‘Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.’ I have not read the book yet, but here is a review by Philip Bowring and an interview with the Rashid by Radio Free Europe correspondent Abubakar […]
In today's International Herald Tribune, Henry Kissinger delivers a very optimistic assessment of US-Russian relations in the post-Putin era. The king of realpolitik describes the Medvedev period as “a transition from a phase of consolidation to a period of modernization”, one which “may, in retrospect, appear as the beginning of an evolution toward a form […]
On June 30th, President Bush signed into law the Merida Initiative. The initiative is part of the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008, and provides $465 million dollars for the war against drugs in Mexico and Central America. Mexico will receive $400 million dollars. The Senate passed the controversial bill on June 27th. The original bill […]
Welcome, Mr. President, to one of the toughest jobs in global politics. You had a killer agenda planned, including the conclusion of an European pact on immigration and asylum, the creation of a functional Mediterranean Union (with the EU-Med Summit in two weeks’ time) and robust responses to the looming natural resource shortage. Already, you […]
The region of Central Asia is home to several functioning and capable radical terrorist groups. Just last May, Interpol rounded up 176 terrorist suspects in Europe from 19 countries, and unfortunately all 5 major CA states were represented. French authorities also announced the arrest of 10 other suspects for financing Islamic terrorist groups, including the […]
Greetings from Stellenbosch, the historical intellectual center of Afrikanerdom. I am here for a conference on sport history at the University of Stellenbosch, and as I did with Melville, I have seen changes in this picturesque little university town. Clearly the city parents here are no fools. No longer can Stellenbosch be merely the epicenter of Afrikaans intellectual […]
SecState Condi Rice's visit to Beijing carried a number of items on Washington's agenda. She and China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi came to the table on a number of current events. ZIM. With the recent swearing-in of Mugabe for his sixth term as President of Zimbabwe, Bush has called the UN to action against “Zimbabwe's illegitimate government,” […]
In a follow up to my fellow blogger Jennifer's piece on the lucrative oil wars in Iraq, the BBC has a piece entitled “Iraq seeking help to develop oil“. This discusses the official beginning of the opening up of the oil industry to foreign investment. The six main oil fields that are being opened up […]
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