Is it possible that Western officials were surprised by the welcome given by Libyan despot Mouammar Qadaffi to Lockerbie bombing convict Abdels al-Megrahi? Or could it be that their outrage stems from the embarrassment they feel over the way the story has been covered by the Western media? Reflecting a swath of Muslim reaction to the story, K. Selim of Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran suggests that...

Now that Swiss authorities have done the unthinkable: admitted to wrongdoing and handed U.S. authorities the data on over 4,000 of its American clients – how are the people of Switzerland reacting? If the comments of Nachrichten columnist Patrik Etschmayer are anything to go by, there’s going to be hell to pay in Geneva. For Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper, Patrik Etschmayer describes...

At least one California legislator has retaliated with a popgun attack against Nevada’s million dollar ad campaign to lure Golden State businesses to the Silver State. What started as a tongue-in-cheek snarky campaign by Nevada which has inundated the major California markets via cable television advertising the past two weeks is now being greeted by Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana) who told The...

The Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful women is out. The top honour goes to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the world’s fourth-largest economy. She has won this honour for the fourth consecutive year. “In assembling the list, Forbes looked for women who run countries, big companies or influential nonprofits. Their rankings are a combination of two scores: visibility...

Comments that follow an article in a newspaper/magazine/blog generally indicate the quality of its readership. The Economist magazine does get an impressive array of views. I offer below the views, tied in a string in a random fashion, of different readers under the article “Losing Afghanistan?” Reader No. 1: “The real purpose of the (American) occupation is to extend and entrench western...

I was just heading out to court when this broke, so excuse the shortness of the post. Scottish authorities have released Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of his role in the terror bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. The attack killed 270 people in the plane and on the ground. Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said that his terminal condition (he is dying of prostate cancer) and Scottish values bound...

Transplanted from Guinea-Bissau twenty years ago, a 37-year-old Afro-Russian watermelon salesman is making waves by running for a local parliamentary seat in Russia’s Volgograd Oblast (formerly Stalingrad). This news item by Natalia Rozhkova of Russia’s Vremya Novostei newspaper examines his candidacy and chances of winning, and compares how minority candidates in Russia fare compared to their...

Kevin Rudd’s government is in a celebration mode following Australia’s twin victory in finalizing 20-year-long liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply deals with India and China. A sales and purchase AUD 25 billion agreement between ExxonMobil and Petronet LNG of India signed last week is the “dawning of a new trading partnership.” Under the agreement, Exxon Mobil will supply about 1.5 million...

According to news reports the ‘missing ship’ wasn’t really missing as officials had good evidence of where it was the whole time. The secrecy was intended to protect the crew from a hijacking and the danger of being killed by those in control of the ship. I’m still not sure what is really going on here. I’m not saying the story doesn’t pass the smell test, it is possible that...

Is there some benefit for President Obama to inheriting from George W. Bush the governance of a weakened nation? According to the Thomas von der Dunk of Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, this has given Obama the opportunity to slaughter some sacred cows that had to go: “This is the interesting paradox: the fact that America is in visibly worse shape than before forces Obama to have the courage to take strong...

The title is actually a recent headline from the New York Times for an article discussing what some U.S. college graduates are doing faced with a dismal domestic jobs market. In fact, this might be a solution to America’s more-than-likely future jobless recovery and our growing inability to create worthwhile new jobs. The U.S. today has now fewer jobs than it did in 2001, and that doesn’t even include...

Sean Hannity, one of the conservative commentators on Fox News I usually find repugnant, deserves credit for calling national attention to a tragic scenario that is playing out in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley. The nation’s largest bread and fruit basket is experiencing a third year of drought made worse by severe cutbacks in imported water because of federal protection of an endangered...

I am a Catholic, and I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the Catholic Church bars the draping of coffins with the American flag during funeral ceremonies in the church—even if the coffin contains the remains of a fallen military hero. I imagine that this “policy” applies to all national flags, because in an article in the Times Union of Albany, N. Y., quoting Ken Goldfarb, spokesman...

In my earlier post I wrote about Pakistan’s Independence Day celebrated on August 14. This post is about India’s Independence Day (August 15). Two people who spelt out powerfully the aspirations/vision of free modern India were Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore, and India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Mahatma Gandhi motivated Indian masses during the freedom struggle. Tagore’s...

India and Pakistan won freedom from the British colonial rule in August 1947. Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day anniversary today (on August 14), while India marks it a day later. Let’s look at the media reports of celebrations in Pakistan. Pakistani leaders called for peaceful relations with India and announced new rights for tribesmen (in the militant-infested area) along the border with Afghanistan,...

A resolution passed by the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe equating Stalinism with Nazism has Russians fuming – and lashing out at the the U.S. and Britian for what the Kremlin implies were war crimes that the allies were never punished for. The director general of Russia’s Agency of Political and Economic Communications warns that reopening this ‘Pandora’s Box’...

Keeping in mind the horrors of the two world wars, a clutch of conventions were adopted six decades ago this month in Geneva, and these agreements still form a bedrock for the laws of war and the protection of non-combatants. The Economist raises important points about these in the present context. “Do the old rules really apply in such conflicts? And if they still do, how can they be enforced more effectively,...

While we might have grown somewhat used to stories of piracy on the open seas, those events usually take place in some isolated part of the Indian Ocean or off the coast of Africa. But a story is now emerging that we may be seeing the first example of piracy in European waters. According to the stories a Maltese flagged ship sailed through the English Channel but never made it to Gibraltar. The story also indicates...

Aung San Suu Kyi, 64, Burma’s popular leader under detention for years, once said that “it is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it…” Now, the Myanmar or Burmese military junta has further extended her house arrest by 18 months. Ms Suu Kyi’s 18-month sentence will prevent her from taking any direct part in the next year’s scheduled general...

In a ruling only slightly less surprising that a Daley win in Chicago the government of Myanmar has ‘convicted’ democracy advocate and opposition leader Suu Kyi of violating security laws. Needless to say this is not going to improve the junta and it’s standing in the world. Although it has been ruled (both as Burma and Myanmar) by a military junta since 1962 the regime has grown increasingly...

According to this op-ed from Mexico’s La Cronica de Hoy, the hosts of this year’s annual summit of North American leaders are not at all pleased with the summit’s agenda – or its likely outcome. For La Cronica de Hoy, Carlos Ferreyra laments having to host the two ‘imperial visitors’ – Barack Obama and Stephen Harper – and be forced to come under the U.S. nuclear...

A riot among predominately Latino and black inmates Saturday night at a medium security prison in Chino, Calif., injured 250 in which 17 remained in hospitals this morning. All were inmates in the 11-hour melee which razed one dormitory in flames and seriously damaged another six. The riot turns the spotlight on the California penal system which the Los Angeles Times contends is the most overcrowded in the nation....

President Clinton is receiving some extraordinary praise from Iraq – and that nation’s government an equal portion of criticism. After watching President Clinton’s mercy mission to North Korea, Iraqi columnist Mahdi Qasim laments his nation’s lack of leaders like Clinton, who ‘value the lives, the dignity and freedom of their citizens more than anything else, and exert all of...

Is it incumbent on the West to ‘help’ Russia overcome its past of self destructive behavior and global domination? According to André Fontaine of France’s Le Monde, if President Obama’s vision of a ’strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia,’ occupying ‘its rightful place as a great power’ were to come to pass without that – we’re all in trouble. In...

While the United States is having some success targeting militants in Pakistan with drone aircraft, winning over the local population on the ground is another story. According to this angry editorial from Pakistan’s Frontier Post – a newspaper located along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that often has a militant flavor to it – American disrespect for the locals and plans to expand the U.S....