Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
Via the AP: US: FARC and Taliban are among largest drug trafficking organizations in the world Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield said drug-trafficking organizations have aligned with political and ideological movements in recent decades. He cited the followers of Osama bin Laden and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia as examples. Brownfield said that [...]
Now, he wants Congress to condemn the actions of one idiot in Florida: The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, appears to have added fuel to the violent protests in Afghanistan after calling on the US Congress to condemn a Christian preacher’s burning of the Qur’an. Karzai’s demand came despite a statement from Barack Obama denouncing the [...]
The only people responsible for the murders in Afghanistan are the people who committed them, but the demagogues like Terry Jones deserve condemnation as well.
The spark that was lit when Terry Jones burned a Koran a few weeks ago has turned into a conflagration: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Violent protests over the burning of a Koran in Florida flared for a second straight day, with young men rampaging through the streets of this southern capital, flying Taliban flags and wielding [...]
The Japanese government has announced that the Fukushima Reactor suffered a partial meltdown.
The Japanese nuclear crisis is becoming an international issue: A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday. Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume [...]
Will one of the worst natural disasters to hit Japan in centuries change the relationship between the Japanese government and the people?
The latest casualty estimates out of Japan are quite disheartening: The terrible toll of Japan’s double disaster became clearer today as it emerged as many as 25,000 people could be dead. As rescue crews trawled through mile after mile of tsunami-stricken wasteland, officials from the coastal town of Ishinomaki confirmed that 10,000 of their citizens [...]
President Obama is once again catching flak for his leisure activities.
It seems that practically every story I hear about the very concerning situation in Japan regarding their damaged nuclear plants contains a requisite statement about how those events will affect moves to build new nuclear plants in the US. However, it strikes me that rather than being a blanket cautionary tale about nuclear power in [...]
A March 12 explosion at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Japan, appears to have caused a reactor meltdown.
The Dalai Lama will give up his political role in the Tibetan government-in-exile and shift that power to an elected representative.
An op-ed by a Hao Leifeng in China’s Global Times argues that “Actor Charlie Sheen is a classic example of the difference in Western and Eastern values and norms.”
A new Rasmussen polls shows, yet again, that public support for the war in Afghanistan has slip into Iraq War territory: A majority of voters, for the first time, support an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan or the creation of a timetable to bring them all home within a year. A new [...]
After spending much of 2010 on a confrontational posture, North Korea has gotten quiet lately and has started asking the world for food again: TOKYO – North Korea recently took the unusual step of begging for food handouts from the foreign governments it usually threatens. Plagued by floods, an outbreak of a livestock disease and [...]
Though he has submitted his resignation, Jon Huntsman is still the U.S. Ambassador to China, which is why his decision to appear at an anti-government rally in Beijing strikes me as a bit of a diplomatic faux pas: Jon Huntsman was caught on tape at an anti-government protest in China—and quickly left the scene after [...]
The wave of popular protests that has swept that Arab world seems to have made its way to the Middle Kingdom: BEIJING – Jittery Chinese authorities wary of any domestic dissent staged a concerted show of force Sunday to squelch a mysterious online call for a “Jasmine Revolution” apparently modeled after pro-democracy demonstrations sweeping the [...]
Via the BBC: Iran: Mehdi Karroubi ‘house arrest’ after protest call Mr Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, another opposition leader, had called for a rally on Monday to support the popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. The authorities refused permission, calling it a political move. Although Iran’s establishment supports the Egyptian popular protests, a spokesman for [...]
Like it or not, human rights is only at the top of the agenda for countries that otherwise don’t much matter.
@pcam: “The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner holds a State Dinner for a man who has the 2010 winner under House Arrest.” Ouch. Photo: Reuters
The latest online service to find itself banned in China is Skype, the service which allows users to make voice and video calls over the internet: In the latest move dashing Western internet company hopes of breaking into China, it was announced that all internet phone calls were to be banned apart from those made [...]
Via the BBC: Mumbai manhunt for ‘four Lashkar-e-Taiba militants’ Police are scouring Mumbai for four Pakistani alleged militants believed to have entered the city to carry out an attack, a top police official said. There was credible information that at least four members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group were in the city, said the [...]
On the same day that President Obama is set to release the latest review of Afghan War progress, a new ABC News poll shows that public support for the war has plummeted to Iraq War levels: A record 60 percent of Americans say the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting, a grim assessment [...]
A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows that the number of Americans who think we will eventually win the war in Afghanistan has hit a new low: Voter confidence in the outcome of the War in Afghanistan has fallen to a new low. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 34% of Likely [...]
In addition to refusing to allow top dissident Liu Xiabao to attend the ceremony to accept his Nobel Peace Prize this week, China is also urging other nations not to attend: The number of governments which have decided not to represented when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo [...]
A new poll of Afghan citizens shows that they don’t want us staying in their country much longer: Nationwide, more than half of Afghans interviewed said U.S. and NATO forces should begin to leave the country in mid-2011 or earlier. More Afghans than a year ago see the United States as playing a negative role [...]
The latest wrong of documents from Wikileaks show that American diplomats are as worried about Pakistan as the rest of us, and not quite sure how to deal with the situation.
The latest Wikileaks revelations suggest that China may not be willing to protect North Korea for much longer.
McCain brings up “regime change” in re: the DKRP and China apparently isn’t doing enough.
Via ABC News: Sarah Palin: ‘We Gotta Stand With Our North Korean Allies’ [In a TV interview with Glen Beck,] Palin continued: “Obviously, we gotta stand with our North Korean allies,” when Beck interrupted and corrected her to say “South Korea.” I am hardly a fan of Sarah Palin and I have a host of [...]
There is at least one simple reason why dealing with the North is so difficult.
Tensions are on the rise again on the Korean Peninsula after North Korea shelled a South Korean island.
North Korea has unveiled to the world a new nuclear processing facility that puts back on the table the question of just what we should, or can, do about the fact that a rogue state possesses nuclear weapons and wants to build more.
Afghans in two crucial southern provinces are almost completely unaware of the September 11 attacks on the United States and don’t know they precipitated the foreign intervention now in its 10th year, a new report showed on Friday.
General David Petraeus is clearly not pleased by the remarks made over the weekend by Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the American military presence in his country: KABUL – Gen. David H. Petraeus, the coalition military commander in Afghanistan, warned Afghan officials Sunday that President Hamid Karzai’s latest public criticism of U.S. strategy threatens to [...]
Hamid Karazi says that the United States needs to reduce it’s military presence in his country. Perhaps we should listen to him.
According to reports, the Obama Administration is set to abandon the July 2011 withdrawal deadline that was set earlier this year.
The military surge in Afghanistan appears to be having little impact on the Taliban.
We already knew that Hamid Karzai was corrupt, now we know he takes bribes from the Iranians.
Following a pattern that started with last year’s Presidential election, it now looks like the recent Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan were pretty much corrupt: Afghanistan has released full preliminary results from last month’s parliamentary election, throwing out more than 20 percent of ballots because of fraud. Election commission chairman Fazel Ahmad Manawi says about 1.3 [...]
A new CNN poll puts pubic support for the war in Afghanistan at it’s lowest level yet: American support for the war in Afghanistan has never been lower, according to the latest CNN polling. The low numbers just the latest figure in the complex math being calculated to determine how the US should proceed in [...]
Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo has dedicated his Nobel Peace Prize to the victims of the June 1989 massacre in Tianamen Square. Proving again that the events of that day still live on in the memory of many Chinese people.
