Will they swap stories of life in detention? Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who languished for five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, is to meet on June 2 with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy activist who before being released from house arrest last November spent the better part of two decades in confinement. The …
Democracy
Despite Corruption Outcry, FIFA Reelects Blatter to Run World Soccer
FIFA president Sepp Blatter may have survived the storm ravaging soccer’s global governing body, but don’t expect his reelection to quiet the growing challenges to the organization’s status quo. Nor will critics be placated by the procedural changes Blatter has outlined for the way FIFA will choose which countries host the 2026 …
Burma’s Suu Kyi Announces High Stakes Political Tour
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Pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi confirmed Monday that she’s planning a visit to Burma’s provinces this summer. “I hope to be able to travel out of Rangoon in the month of June, as soon as I have got rid of all the work that has piled up,” she said in a video …
Can Zuma Pull Off a Surprise in Libya?
South African President Jacob Zuma flies into Tripoli Monday to try to forge peace between Libyan leader Mouamar Gaddafi and the country’s rebels. Top of the agenda, according to Agence France-Presse: persuading Gaddafi to go. Zuma’s initiative, conducted on behalf of the African Union (AU), has met widespread skepticism, particularly …
Why the G-8 Should Never Meet Again
The G-8 wraps up its 37th conclave May 27 at the French seaside resort of Deauville. By now, you may have seen some of the gathering’s glitzy snaps. Two seem to define the occasion: one of President Obama and Europe’s top potentates taking a chummy stroll along the Normandy coast, the other of pregnant French first lady Carla …
Bahrain’s Voiceless: How al-Jazeera’s Coverage of the Arab Spring Is Uneven
A couple of weeks ago, the Qatari English language daily the Peninsula ran the provocative headline, “Why Are We So Timid?” in its Saturday special issue. “Freedom eludes the Qatari media even as the country’s top leadership is keen to promote free expression and has lifted all kinds of restrictions on the local press,” opined …
Damn Statistics: Top Five False Figures That Mean We Get The World Wrong
News that last week’s shocking claim that 48 women are raped every hour in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is actually a shocking piece of statistical methodology makes me wonder what other parts of our world view are based on erroneous stats. Over the years, I’ve collected a few choice examples of my own but I’d be delighted to …
Conflict over Abyei: Why Sudan Stands “Close to the Precipice of War”
In the last year, to visit Sudan has been to undertake an exercise in schizophrenia. In the run-up to a referendum in January on whether to split Africa’s largest country in two, the mostly Christian south was – against all odds – about to pull off a peaceful and credible referendum on independence, despite medieval poverty and barely …
Paris Reacts To Strauss-Kahn: Do French Elites Deserve Different Laws?
There wasn’t anything particularly French about the enormous attention focused on the New York courtroom hearing Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s successful request for release on bail from Rikers Island imprisonment awaiting trial on charges of attempted rape. But given Strauss-Kahn’s origins and enormous (and now apparently finished) …
Bin Laden’s Posthumous Tape: The Sad Nothings of a Dead Man
Through an Islamist website, al-Qaeda apparently released a 12-minute audio tape recorded by Osama bin Laden shortly before his May 2 death at the hands of Navy SEALs. In it, the deceased terrorist mastermind lavishes praise upon the protest movements of the Arab Spring, insisting that “the winds of change will envelope the entire Muslim …
Why Obama’s Mideast Speech is For Domestic, Not Arab Consumption
The question among Middle East watchers over Thursday’s planned speech on the Arab Spring by President Obama has been this: Why would he address the Arab world at a moment when his policies have little hope of reversing diminished U.S. standing? After all, the Arab consensus views Obama has having failed miserably to deliver on the …
Mandela: Is This Any Way To Treat an Icon?
South Africa’s local elections has given the world its first glimpse of Nelson Mandela since he was hospitalized in January. It is not a pretty picture. In this short video released by the South African government, a mass of election officials and other staff crowd an all but inert Mandela at his home in Johannesburg and explain – …
Poor Panama. China’s Just Not That Into You.
The list of countries that have chosen diplomatic relations with Taiwan over mainland China reads like an exercise in national obscurity. The 23-nation compendium includes Burkina Faso, Tuvalu and Saint Kitts and Nevis, along with Palau, Swaziland and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Nevertheless, the People’s Republic has assiduously …