In last month’s installment of the hacking drama gripping the U.K., a 2007 letter from Clive Goodman, a former employee fired for hacking, emerged with accusations that practice was widespread. At the same time, a prominent London media law firm, Harbottle & Lewis, hired to handle Goodman’s firing dismissed James Murdoch’s …
Dagestan: As an Insurgency Rages, a Soccer Team Rises
The Washington Post ran a lengthy feature Tuesday on the violence in Dagestan, the restive Muslim-majority republic in Russia’s North Caucasus region whose troubles have long hovered under the radar as the world fretted over the Chechen insurgency and Moscow’s tensions with independent Georgia to the south. Yet, as this 2009 U.S. …
Many in the West Don’t Want a Post-American World
Most Europeans – 54% — want to see strong American leadership, according to a new Transatlantic Trends poll out Sept. 14. And a whopping 85% of Americans want their country to lead the world. Certainly, if you listen to the GOP field of U.S. presidential wannabes, American exceptionalism has been on the decline and should be a …
Turkey Crisis: Unconditional U.S. Backing Has Helped Israel to Isolate Itself
Israel’s fallout with long-time ally Turkey is no isolated spat that will be repaired any time soon; it’s a dramatic illustration that no amount of U.S. backing can prevent the growing international isolation resulting from Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue. Indeed, the unconditional nature of Washington’s backing may, in …
China Alleged to Have Offered Arms to Gaddafi
Allegations that state-controlled Chinese arms manufacturers offered weapons to the Gaddafi regime as recently as July will likely harm efforts by Beijing to develop ties with a new government in Libya. Documents describing the proposed sales were found by a Graeme Smith, a reporter with the Toronto-based Globe and Mail, in a trash pile …
The Paris Homecoming of Dominique “The Sphinx” Strauss-Kahn
Anyone who had been expecting any significant expression from former International Monetary chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn upon his return to Paris —whether contrite, embarrassed, indignant, or bristling with claims of innocence—wound up sadly disappointed Sunday. Just 11 days after all criminal charges against DSK for sexual …
Couch Potato Briefing: Solidarity Forever!
Global Spin’s weekly offering of rental movie recommendations to bring you up to speed on world events, this week, gets in the spirit of the Labor Day weekend with five movies devoted to those who show up for work in blue collars…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwEMIvDEFy4
Matewan
For Global Spin’s money there is no finer …
Environmental Groups Keep the Pressure on Apple in China
Even as Apple has made impressive gains in the China market—its stores here are often packed and occasionally even faked by retailers hoping to cash in on the company’s recognition—domestic environmental groups are questioning whether Apple is being a good corporate citizen in the country. A new report by a group of Chinese NGOs …
Looking to Invest? How About China’s New Frontier?
Looking for a place to invest in China? How about Xinjiang, or the “New Frontier,” as the northwestern autonomous region is known in Mandarin? Home to the Uighur people—a Turkic group that briefly helmed two self-proclaimed republics called East Turkestan in the 1930s and ‘40s—Xinjiang seethes with resentment toward the …
Reflecting on 9/11, Britain’s Former Spy Chief Criticizes Iraq War and Proposes Talks with Al Qaeda
“We are not women; we will keep fighting,” vowed Libya’s elusive despot Muammar Gaddafi in a message broadcast on Syrian TV on Sept. 1. A lecture delivered in London the same evening, for broadcast on Sept. 6 as part of the BBC’s 2011 Reith Lecture series Securing Freedom, illuminated the unintended kernel of truth to the Colonel’s …
Israel and Turkey revive hostilities over the UN flotilla report
Well that ended well, didn’t it?
Fifteen months after Israeli commandos clashed with Turkish activists on the high seas, leaving nine civilians dead and Israel’s public image in further tatters, the United Nations report on what was popularly known as the Flotilla Fiasco has emerged. The Palmer Report, named for the former New …
U.S. Drug Czar Responds to Global Spin: Legalization Is No “Silver Bullet”
In my Aug. 30 post, I posed two questions about the speech Mexican President Felipe Calderon gave on Aug. 26, a day after the massacre of 52 innocent people in a Monterrey casino set afire by drug-cartel gangsters. The first question: was Calderon, fed up with America’s “insatiable” demand for drugs, in effect telling the U.S. to …
What Does the Fall of Libya’s Gaddafi Portend for Syria’s Assad?
Et tu, Ayatullah? When even Iran publicly calls on President Bashar al-Assad to respond to the legitimate political grievances of his people, you know the Syrian regime is in a corner. Even Iran’s protege and Syrian client Hizballah, in neighboring Lebanon, appears to have recognized that the status quo in Damascus is untenable, and like …