A poster for candidates from Iceland's Citizen's Party in Reykjavik, or so says Reuters:
Richard Gowan
Richard Gowan coordinates the International Security Institutions program at the Center on International Cooperation, New York University. He is also the UN Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and an associate of the Foreign Policy Center (London).
Waterboarding: the mildly amusing song
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJSXbA9j0Js[/youtube]
Obama: from grand tour to grand strategy?
President Obama's grand tour of Europe may rank as one of the most remarkable diplomatic forays since Nixon's trip to China, but David Sanger of the New York...
How to bugger up a mildly diverting publicity stunt (yes, it’s the UN!)
So, Battlestar Galactica is over, at least on American screens. It was rather good. The UN came up with a sort-of-fun tribute: To mark the show's finale,...
Damn it, I really miss Dick Cheney
Tid-bits for nostalgists from an excellent new piece by Seymour Hersh (still the greatest journalist ever) in the New Yorker on Israeli-Syrian relations: As...
Czech PM not trying to channel Chris Rea
The Lede gives us the lowdown on how they do political rhetoric in Prague: To anyone who heard echoes of AC/DC when the Czech prime minister assailed...
Sanctions-busting
An enjoyable new policy proposal from the Christian Science Monitor: At a time when the United States is faced with its largest economic crisis since the...
Academics in agony (but still going to the Big Easy)
Exactly how hard can you wring your hands? This question arises from a pained debate afoot within the International Studies Association. Once a year, ISA...
“Britain is planning to blow up the world.”
Now that President Bashir of Sudan has been indicted by the ICC, we can safely assume that a whole lot of speculative punditry is coming our way. But few...
The price of democracy: weaponry
A recurrent game in Washington DC is trying to fix the fact that DC itself has no Congressman (it sends a non-voting delegate). Initiatives to give the...
Nepal: running out of rebels?
While the rest of the world faces job losses, Nepal's Maoists are hiring: A former Maoist rebel commander said on Tuesday the group plans to recruit thousands...
The peacekeeping crisis in numbers
What happens when you authorise peacekeeping missions – but don’t have the troops to deliver.
Congo: the irony of peacemaking
At last, some good news from the Congo: Negotiators for the Congolese government and a rebel group in the country's east have reached a preliminary agreement,...
When the going gets tough… the tough create a new think-tank?
From the Financial Times: One of Germany’s most influential engineers has made an urgent plea to bring leading global industrialists, scientists and...
European surge (of policy papers) for Iraq
Long-standing readers may recall that, about a year ago, I wrote a couple of posts about the need for the EU to get involved in stabilizing Iraq in the window...
Papacy churning out any old rubbish for fun
From the people who brought you the Inquistion and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, it's trivia time! Women are prouder than men, but men are more lustful,...
Now that’s what I call community resilience
From Bangadi, eastern Congo: Rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army sent torture victims — including a man whose back was sliced with a machete — to warn the...
U.S.: the economy is a security issue, stupid!
Major league economic crisis trumps minor league terrorists: Sounding more like an economist than the war-fighting Navy commander he once was, National...
Man wastes dog
Somewhat incredibly, this is the lead story on cnn.com this Thursday afternoon: The shotgun blast rips into the stray dog's midsection, sending it tumbling...
New coalition on international justice: Britain + Sudan [NB: THIS IS ERRONEOUS RUBBISH.]
Having heard from people who were at this conference, I'm now convinced that the UK speaker's remarks are misrepresented (or taken completely out of context)...
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