A soccer game was held yesterday in the West Bank. That may not be quite out of the ordinary in this soccer-mad part of the world, but the teams competing were: on one side, you had Thailand, and the other, Palestine. A qualifying tournament for the 2012 Olympics, this was the first ever internationally-sanctioned game in the Occupied …
Democracy
As the Dalai Lama Exits the Political Stage, What’s Next for the Tibetan Movement?
Just how quickly can a politician be reincarnated? Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans—both within the troubled mountainous territory and in exile all around the world—must be pondering this metaphysical conundrum as their beloved spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, asked the Tibetan exile community today to allow him to retire from …
Harvard-Educated Facebook Activist Detained in Azerbaijan
The ripples of the Arab revolutions have reached the Caspian Sea. Inspired by youth-led uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, activists in the oil-rich, former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan used Facebook to announce Azerbaijan’s own “day of rage” on March 11. It’s unclear how many people will heed the call, but, as in other authoritarian …
New French Poll, Same Result: Marine Le Pen Leads All Presidential Rivals
After the controversy of the first poll comes confirmation in the second. Just 48 hours after a Harris Interactive survey simulating voter intention for the first round of France’s 2012 presidential election found extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen finishing first, a second wave of polling not only reaffirms Le Pen’s domination of …
And The Winner Is…Marine Le Pen
French politicians and pundits were in an tizzy Monday following the publication Sunday of a new poll showing extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen winning the first round of presidential voting were it held now. In it, Le Pen—who took over the presidency of the National Front (FN) party in January from her father, Jean-Marie Le …
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 …
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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Ripples of a Revolution: A Jasmine Crackdown in Vietnam
Nguyen Dan Que heard the call for revolution. But so did the government. On Feb. 28, the 68-year-old doctor and dissident was detained by Vietnamese authorities for posting internet messages that threatened the “stability and strength” of the country’s ruling party. He has since been released, but must attend daily “interrogation …
An ‘Interim’ Peace Deal? Israel’s Netanyahu Tries to Reheat a Souffle
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be forgiven for feeling just a wee bit lonely, right now. Events in the Middle East are increasingly passing him by, leaving him on the sidelines as the region’s history is being remade. And on Wednesday, one of Israel’s most senior veteran diplomats, Ilan Baruch, resigned from the …
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 …
South Africa’s Rainbow Nation: Still Stuck on Color
Two race scandals dominate the headlines in South Africa today, both of them concerning slurs against the colored community of the Western Cape, where I live. On Sunday, socialite Nomakula “Kuli” Roberts wrote a poorly conceived and dreadfully executed column about the characteristics supposedly shared by all colored women in her Bitch’s …
The Raymond Davis Affair: Are CIA and ISI Ties Doomed?
On Swampland, TIME contributor Mark Benjamin blogs about the breakdown between Washington and Islamabad over the planned trial of Raymond Davis, a U.S. CIA agent responsible for the deaths of three Pakistanis in the city of Lahore. U.S. officials are frantically trying to broker a deal that will avoid a public trial in Pakistan. Benjamin …
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 …