Saturated as we are with news, it is easy to forget that Lebanon is still without a President, suffering under internal strife and external meddling over what the makeup of the next government should look like. When this started in November it was scary. It became frustrating as time went on, and now just seems […]
Cutting red tape is just one of the avowed goals of the Barroso Commission. A high-level expert group including the former Bavarian state governor, Edmund Stoiber, and international management consulting guru Roland Berger has been given the mandate to examine how to most effectively reduce bureaucratic hurdles and enhance the functioning of the internal market. […]
Update (March 4, 2008) Der Spiegel is reporting that the “cold snap” between the Franco-German partners is thawing, following a “constructive” meeting in which President Sarkozy agreed to a compromise to extend negotiations on a future Mediterranean Union to all 27 EU Member States, not just bordering countries. Quoting the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the Spiegel […]
Robert Mugabe turned 84 on Saturday, and the wily old tyrant was in a typically feisty mood, announcing in the face of his increasingly emboldened opposition that “There will never be regime change here … Never.” Simba Makoni, Mugabe's challenger in the March 31 election, is unbowed by Mugabe's intransigence and continues to forge ahead […]
The Mail & Guardian has a feature on Kader Asmal, who is leaving politics to take on a post at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville. Asmal's peripatetic career in opposition to the Apartheid state and in support of democracy took him to Bellville in 1994, where he lectured at UWC after he […]
Not everyone shares the general belief that president Bush deserves some credit for his Africa policies. Josh Kurlantznick is decidedly unimpressed with the President's approach toward Africa, as he shows in this piece at The New Republic. Here is a sample: Rather than supporting democratic institutions and criticizing a new generation of African authoritarians, the […]
A New York Times article yesterday takes a look at the Kazakh bid for an Oscar last night for “Mongol,” one of a number of films being produced in the country following the flow of funds from oil and natural gas windfalls. While “Mongol” lost out to the Austrian produced film “The Counterfeiters,” the nationalistic […]
A Wall Street Journal op-ed takes a look at some of the problems facing those responsible for managing Mexico's nasty drug war, and the new “realist” attitude adopted by the country's new Attorney General, Eduardo Medina Mora. Mary Anastasia O’Grady explains a new approach that Mora says seeks to curb the “enormous economic and fire […]
The Yuan is still up while the USD continues to lower in value. What does this mean for China? According to this article, huge losses (Billions) for the People's Bank of China. China's surplus situation is forcing the country to sell its RMB to buy dollar assets, and then turn around to buy back its […]
My apologies for the light posting this week. I’ve been down and out with a nasty case of the flu for the last few days. Things will pick back up as I recover from my current zombie status. In the meantime, you should read this piece on President Bush's trip to Africa by the Foreign […]
Iraqi security officials have been ordered to round up homeless people, beggars, and vagrants in effort at preventive counter terrorism. This is a result of the suicide bombings several weeks ago which were supposedly carried out by two women with Down's Syndrome, but recent statements made by US and Iraqi forces indicate that this was […]
So there is going to be a total eclipse of the moon tonight, which is pretty cool, even if you are not into astronomy. Light bending around the earth coats the moon in an dark red glow; we bathe it with our shadow- just one of the bizarre tricks the universe can play on us. […]
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