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Lynndie England became infamous around the world in 2004, when photos of her and other U.S. soldiers humiliating and torturing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison became public. In 2005, the then 22-year-old England received a three-year sentence for her role in the abuses. She was paroled after 521 days of serving her term and […]

The government of China has expressed indignation over the Obama administration’s decision to sell $6.4 billion in defensive weapons to Taiwan.  Taiwan is part of China, Beijing argues, and the U.S. is meddling in a domestic dispute.  See article on the arms deal. Obama — with no “reset” button on China — is acting in accordance […]

The latest from Davos: global bank regulators unite to urge large banks to embrace reform. Regulators also endorsed the more aggressive efforts by the U.S. (Obama) administration.

Welcome to the FPB music blog.  This week, we take a look at the efforts of musicians around the globe aimed at drawing attention to Haiti following the massive earthquake that hit the Caribbean nation two weeks ago.  Leading the charge is Haitian-born rapper Wyclef Jean, whose Yele charity has raised more than $2 million […]

Over in his blog on Public Diplomacy, fellow FPA minion Mark Dillen has an excellent piece on the Great Google-China Grudge Match. He remarks how similar the rhetoric is to the Bad Old Days: Among the fascinating and disturbing aspects to this commentary is the way it resembles the rhetoric of the Cold War era, […]

Google installed backdoors in Gmail to aid the Feds – and unwittingly enabled their recent hackers, according to Bruce Schneier, writing at CNN. Schneier is one of the best thinkers out there on security in all its forms; he got his start literally writing the book on computer cryptography. There’s an important lesson there. The most common threat in the […]

So said Lord Goldsmith, the UK’s former Attorney General, yesterday at the UK’s  Iraq inquiry.  In 2003, Goldsmith provided the legal okay for the UK to participate in the Iraq invasion.  You can find notes on Goldsmith’s testimony at TimesOnline here.  Before the invasion, Goldsmith originally believed UN resolution 1441 (downloadable here) did not provide […]

By now you have probably watched or read President Obama’s State of the Union address to Congress last night and you’ve read the reports and analysis (CNN, Washington Post, New York Times) of the speech. As expected, the speech was heavy on domestic issues and light on foreign policy. President Obama hit all the appropriate […]

By Aarti Tikoo Singh Twenty years ago, “freedom struggle” in Kashmir meant seeking the political rights and political justice that had been denied by India since Jammu & Kashmir’s accession to the Indian union in 1947. But before the idea could even evolve into a mass awakening movement, it burst into religious extremism and cross-border […]

The deeply insidious influences of French, American and other European allies long history of imposing trade embargoes, economic isolation and financial dependence on Haiti after its 1791 slave revolt lies at the very center of why the island nation continues in its economic dysfunction to this day.

In researching the current kerfluffle with the attacks on Google, I came across some interesting testimony from company reps before the House International Relations Committee in 2006 regarding their entry into the Middle Kingdom. There was copious amounts of angsty hand-wringing there and in other public fora before the “Don’t Be Evil” team opened a […]

Once attendees out at Davos for the World Economic Forum finish ooing over the gift bag they face the thorny problem of picking between sessions. Life on Other Planets vs. The Year of the Flood: Speculative Fiction or the Edge of Reality? Should one work on Rethinking the Economic and Social Impact of Fitness or attend the […]