“There is no such thing as bad publicity—except your own obituary,” joked the Irish writer Brendan Behan. Since I blogged on Friday about the controversy surrounding Prince Andrew aka the Duke of York and his role as trade envoy for Britain, initially sparked by his contacts with Saif Gaddafi but quickly shifting to his private …
Middle East
Global Briefing, Mar. 7, 2011: War Crimes, People Power and Governments Behaving Badly
Forgotten Genocide: In the New York Times, New Delhi correspondent Lydia Polgreen reports from Bangladesh about the country’s belated efforts to investigate the massacres that led up to its independence in 1971, when over a million people (up to three million, by some estimates) may have been killed by the Pakistani army and its Bengali …
Is the Obama Administration Losing its Fear of Islamists?
Has President Barack Obama, as the old saying goes, stopped worrying and learned to love the Muslim Brotherhood? Not exactly. But the Washington Post reports Friday on the first green shoots of what may turn out to be a maturing of the United States’ response to Islamist movements in the Middle East. In light of the possibility that …
Libya: Talk of Intervention Continues, While Others Look at What May Follow Gaddafi
Massimo Calabresi summarizes President Obama’s thinking on Libya:
Obama clarified the U.S. position today, saying that he wanted to make sure “the United States has full capacity to act — potentially rapidly — if the situation deteriorated in such a way that you had a humanitarian crisis on our hands or a situation in which
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Why Are Some U.S. Politicians Trying to Remove an Iranian ‘Cult’ From the Terror List?
The two leading figures of Iran’s opposition Green Movement – presidential candidates Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi are under arrest as the regime cracks down on any effort to emulate the Arab world’s democracy rebellions. But Iran’s opposition may be in store for another blow – this time, at the hands of those in Washington …
Prince Harming: Links with Gaddafi Spell Trouble for the Queen’s Son
There are, it seems, three ways to endanger your job if you’re a public figure: you can call into a radio show to denigrate your boss as a clown, you can claim an affection for Hitler, or you can be linked to the Gaddafis. Howard Davies, the head of Britain’s prestigious London School of Economics, has just tendered his resignation over …
EXCLUSIVE: Is Yemen’s Saleh Set to Step Down?
Update: TIME quoted a government source claiming President Saleh had agreed to a five-point proposal circulated by the opposition. That proposal included his stepping down within nine months. However, the source later said that the proposals that the regime looked favorably on were not the same as those circulated earlier in the …
To Intervene, Or Not To Intervene
To further Tony’s excellent post yesterday on obstacles that any eventual Western military action in or around Libya will face, it will be interesting to watch in the coming hours and days whether a more consistent view on outside intervention forms on the Libyan street. For the moment (as the NY Times piece Tony refers to notes) there …
Strong Obstacles Remain to Western Military Intervention in Libya
An international community that in 2005 at the United Nations adopted the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) protocol might seem obliged to intervene directly in Libya. R2P, after all, holds that if a state is unable to protect its citizens from genocide or other mass atrocities, the international community has a responsibility to …
After Egypt, A Palestinian Techie Takes to the Streets
Like most Palestinian children, Mohammad Khatib was raised to avoid politics, widely understood as a shortcut to an early grave or an Israeli prison. Khatib took the advice and bent to his studies. But on Feb. 2 he noticed that a friend had updated her Facebook status to say she was going to demonstrate in solidarity with Egyptians …
Zimbabwe: Virtually No Revolution
There’s been much speculation about whether Egyptian-style uprisings might spread south across the Sahara into Africa, particularly to the seat of the continent’s most notorious despot, Robert Mugabe. Mugabe’s regime has been particularly paranoid about the possibility, arresting 46 people for watching news reports of the rebellions in …
Obama’s Tall Order: A Democratic Mideast That Shares U.S. Priorities
President Obama has reportedly told White House aides that he wants a “new Middle East policy” — one that urges beleaguered allies threatened by popular rebellions to “enact reforms that would satisfy the popular craving for change while preserving valuable partnerships on crucial U.S. interests, from soil security to counter-terrorism …
Gaddafi’s Ministry of Silly Outfits: a TIME Gallery
We mentioned in an earlier post that, yes, it has become a little cliche to gawk at Muammar Gaddafi’s sartorial decision-making. Unlike other publications, we even deliberately refrained from publishing our amassed photos of the now-isolated Libyan dictator’s wardrobe while security forces in his employ gunned down ordinary Libyans. …