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Secretary of State Clinton addressed the Seventh Annual U.S. Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, yesterday. This report in the Washington Post notes that it was seen as a follow-up to President Obama’s Cairo speech and promised renewed efforts to maintain the momentum generated by that speech: In what aides billed as a sequel to […]

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was created two years ago as a repository of the Earth’s seed supply, to “safeguard against wars or natural disasters wiping out food crops around the globe.” On Thursday, the vault crossed a major threshold with the addition of the 500,000th seed, coming close to ensuring that the planet’s existing […]

I spent an afternoon discussing with Fatos Lubonja last week in Tirana, Albania. He was sitting at a cafe, outside on a terrace. Here in front of me, was a man who spent 17 years in the Albanian gulag. He was initially sentenced 7 years for criticizing Enver Hoxha, a brutal dictator who ruled the […]

The Rising Powers blog has devoted some time in recent days to the diplomatic flap over Israel’s embarrassment of US Veep Joe Biden with the announcement of East Jerusalem settlements.  See recent posts here and here.  To update you, President Lula of Brazil, the one-time labor union firebrand who has united his country of extreme riches and […]

Anti-trafficking campaigns like this, are working to increase awareness. Local soccer stars are also to be used in a massive safe sex campaign launched by the Gauteng Department of Health and Social Development (All Africa). As the count down to FIFA’s 2010 World Cup in South Africa begins to draw nearer and nearer, increased preparations […]

With the voluble Veep safely stateside, Hillary took off the gloves and expressed just how pissed off she and the Commander-in-Chief are with ally Israel, the behavior of which she found an “insult” to the United States.  I wrote a piece on the Veep’s visit, found at this link and below.  President Obama voiced his […]

The point that Jerusalem should not be divided, should remain under Israeli sovereignty with strong guarantees for Muslim control over Islamic holy sites, should not be dismissed out of hand.

I wrote about The Brouhaha Over the Science a month ago, saying, among other things, that the premise, as posited in a particular “NY Times” article, that there are “two sides in the climate-change debate” is way off the mark.  There is deep, broad and unequivocal science that has long since ended any reasoned contention […]

Readers of this space know there’s been a recent flurry of public activity by those who set the course of U.S. communications efforts with foreign publics.  This week’s unusual Congressional hearing on the State Department’s public diplomacy programs featured not only the current ranking official for public diplomacy, Under Secretary Judith McHale, talking about her […]

Last Sunday, the New York Times reported on the wind energy industry in Wyoming (the eighth windiest state) and how the governor is pushing for a tax on wind energy. The wind power lobby has, of course, expressed its horror that the state would consider such a thing, practically comparing it to killing a newborn. […]

Nuclear war is unthinkable, so conventional wisdom holds, but nuclear terror and blackmail are all too easy to imagine.  As we drift farther into the nuclear age, it is increasingly clear that the proliferation of the capacity to cause mass destruction is but one part of the danger the world faces.  The other is the […]

World War II was an epic conflict that touched the lives of nearly every citizen in every country involved. In the U.S., the war meant sacrifice and hardship for those on the homefront, as entire sectors of industry and commerce were transformed to aid the war effort. Women were “drafted” into the economy as never […]