News Abroad

Beyond the Global Cabbage Patch

by Karen Dubinsky

Last year, immediately after the earthquake, the world’s media, relief and aid organizations, and not a few would-be adoptive parents, collectively tu

Americans Wake Up to Islamism

by Daniel Pipes

The furor over the Islamic center, variously called the Ground Zero Mosque, Cordoba House, and Park51, has large implications for the future of Islam in the United States and perhaps beyond.An artist's rendering of the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. The debate is as unexpected as it is extraordinary. One would have thought that the event to touch

Extradition as Foreign Policy

by Daniel S. Margolies

A couple of prominent extradition cases have been sprawled across the headlines this summer, the famous and now resolved case involving film director Roman Polanski, and the ongoing and highly charged case involving accused Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is about to be surrendered to the United States by Thailand after bedeviling policymakers for twenty years.  A casual observer would be forgiven for having the impression that the international hullaballoo over the surrender

Obama is a Pragmatist, Not Anti-British

by Lee P. Ruddin

There has been much discussion about the president’s religion of late.  According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, a growing number of Americans mistakenly believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim.  The rise from 11 percent (March 2009) to approximately one in five (18 percent) is all the more amazing considering that polling was completed in early August, days before Mr. Obama defended the right of American Muslims to build an Islamic community center two blocks away fr

Give Peace (Negotiations) a Chance

by Nimrod Hurvitz

It is easy to dismiss the direct peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis as an act of hopeless diplomacy.  The false starts of the past and undisguised distrust of the present make Obama's peace initiative seem like an act of desperation.  Yet despite the stumbling blocks that judicious observers of the Middle East enumerate, there are also reasons to believe that this time around the negotiations will succeed.What do these negotiations have going for t

Wrestling with the Khmer Rouge Legacy

by Tom Fawthrop

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal delivered its first verdict in July against Kaing Guek Euv, alias “Duch,” the director of the notorious S-21 prison, a torture and extermination center under the rule of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.  After a 77-day trial, the five judges—two international and three Cambodian—unanimously convicted Duch of committing crimes against humanity.  He was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.This landmark decision came only da

General McChrystal, General Petraeus, and General Confusion

by Michael H. Hunt

Barack Obama’s Afghanistan commanders are something else.  First, they promoted a highly debatable counter-insurgency strategy.  Then, despite the num

Channelling George Washington: How Not to Fight a War

by Thomas Fleming

“I’ve hemmed and hawed over talking to you about this for a good—or bad—week.  I’ve always been reluctant to criticize a sitting president.  That’s especially true in the case of President Obama because of his symbolic imp

What Obama Should See on His State Visit to England

by Lee P. Ruddin

“The special relationship is back on,” says The Sun’s political editor. “A fine day’s work” was how Tom Newton Dunn summed up David Cameron’s visit to the Obama White House.Yet us Brits should not get too carried away.  Yes, the prime minister did a fine job walking a tightrope between protecting BP and appeasing his vengeful American hosts.  But the fact that President Obama swapped anecdotes and was on first-name terms with “David” at their fi

How Much Is Enough? America's Runaway Military Spending

by Lawrence S. Wittner

The August 9 announcement by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates of cost-containment measures at the Defense Department should not obscure two underly

The Srebrenica Massacre, After Fifteen Years

by David N. Gibbs

The massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, in July 1995, is now being remembered worldwide, as this grim event reaches its fifteenth anniversary.  This was the largest single mass killing of the entire Bosnian war, and indeed, it was the worst massacre that Europe has seen since the 1940s.The massacre also helped redefine the way that people of progressive political orientation have assessed the idea of U.S. intervention.  For many, th

The Significance of the Afghanistan War Diary

by Deepak Tripathi

The Afghanistan War Diary, released by Wikileaks, has exposed as never before a culture of lies, deceit, violence and manipulation of information in the current United States-led war in that country.  The vol

The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Congo: A Year for Lavish Celebrations or a Moment for Reflection?

by Charles Tshimanga

The year 2010 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Tens of millions of U.S. dollars have been spent by the government in order to lavishly fête the anniversary.  Albert II, King of Belgium, the former colonial power, along with several foreign heads of state, has been invited to attend.  Yet the fervor of the Congolese government sharply contrasts with the attitude of ordinary Congolese citizens who are wondering what the country has accomplished since Jun

Congo's Quest for Liberation Continues

by Bahati Ntama Jacques and Beth Tuckey

Congo has long been the focus of resource exploitation.  The first era of colonization in Africa, beginning in the mid-1880s, was most pronounced in this central African country.  Belgium's King Leopold brutalized the population in his quest for rubber and riches, leaving a legacy of natural resource exploitation by white Europeans in the heart of Africa.Today, at the fiftieth anniversary of Congo's independence, the country continues to be a source of wealth for the

Redress Crossroads in Japan

by William Underwood

On the eve of the sixty-fifth anniversary of the end of World War II, and the first anniversary of progressive political leadership by the Democratic Party of Japan, redress campaigns for wartime forced labor are bearing promising fruit and entering a decisive phase. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced on July 14 it would start talks on compensating the 300 Korean women who were deceived as teenagers into toiling without pay at a Nagoya aircraft factory.  The so-called “tei

Turkey in Cyprus vs. Israel in Gaza

by Daniel Pipes

In light of Ankara's recent criticism of what it calls Israel's "open-air jail" in Gaza, today's date, which marks the anniversary of Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, has special relevance.E

European Socialism Isn't as Socialist as You Might Think

by Philip Nord

In American political discourse, Europe is the land of socialism and the United States the land of the free market.  There are plenty of Europeans w

America Isn't the Only Country Celebrating Its Revolution

by William Beezley

Throughout 2010, Mexicans have been celebrating both the bicentennial of independence from Spain and the centennial of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, a popular insurrection that was the world’s first social rev

German National Identity and the World Cup

by Colin Walfield

The June 27 match between England and Germany (and last Saturday’s blowout between Germany and Argentina) revealed the passions and rivalries between teams at the World Cup.  Having faced on another in the World Cup before, this exuberance seems natural, but much to the Germans’ chagrin, a distinctly non-soccer related history adds a unique dynamic to this rivalry.  As John F. Burns described in his June 26 New York Times article “England v. Germa

Soccer — An American Sport?

by Diana Cwerenz

Although the United States lost to Ghana on June 26, the World Cup is still going strong, and Americans continue to pack into bars, pubs, taverns, and other establishments that purvey fine spirits to watch the most popular sporting event in the world.  Even though it is regularly maligned as “un-American,” soccer (or, if you must, football) has deep roots in American history. Soccer was not made into an official game until 1863, when the English Football Association was founde