Defense Tech reports that German soldiers in Afghanistan are silently protesting against the perceived ambiguity of their mission’s purpose by snapping up patches that read “I fight for Merkel.” The patches, technically illegal, are a big seller among German soldiers at Mazār-e Sharīf. The country’s ISAF forces have been hit hard in recent weeks, losing […]
Robert Kaplan points out that China’s blessed geography is so obvious that it tends to get overlooked.
Simon Johnson, former chief economist with the International Monetary Fund and currently an MIT professor of entrepreneurship, has been arguing for the forced downsizing of Wall Street’s biggest banks for well over a year. In May 2009 he fiercely criticized what he described as the country’s “financial oligarchy” for creating the 2008 crisis and subsequently […]
The leaders of the three major British political parties debated foreign policy on Sky News tonight. Questions from the audience quickly steered the discussion in a more domestic direction but the politicians were able to present their views on the European Union, the special relationship with the United States, climate change and defense.
Since Senate Republicans announced their intention to filibuster a financial reform bill, their party has come under attack from the left for supposedly being in the pocket of big banks. Even the president suggested this weekend that the GOP is taking its cues from Wall Street. The Democrats may have difficulty understanding that some lawmakers […]
Given that our country is mired in a severe recession, the history of the Great Depression — especially the history of how we got out of it — is rightly regarded as relevant to fixing today’s problems. Some popular accounts would have us believe that the Great Depression ended via a) FDR’s New Deal and/or […]
In another show of Turkey emerging as a Middle East power broker, the country reiterated its offer on Tuesday to act as a diplomatic middleman toward Iran. “The solution for Iran’s nuclear program is through negotiations and the diplomatic process,” stressed Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey’s foreign minister, during a press conference in Tehran. Turkey, which has […]
Arianna Huffington complains about what she calls “the real Wall Street crime” at her online newspaper today in an entry entitled, “Shorting the Middle Class.” According to Huffington, big banks, for decades, have been “selling” the American people a promise of unending prosperity while in truth, they facilitated the transfer of wealth from America’s middle […]
Europe and Japan sit safely under America’s defense umbrella.
Bill O’Reilly makes Amsterdam out to be the worst place on Earth.
President Barack Obama was unusually defiant in his weekly televised address this Saturday, attacking special interests and “their allies in Washington” for resisting financial reform. The recession, according to the president, was caused by the financial industry. Indeed, it could have been avoided “if Wall Street firms were more accountable, if financial dealings were more […]
Note to the left: not everything is about race.
The Obama Administration’s Middle East policy appears to have swung from the slightly idealistic to the definitively realistic in recent weeks, with the opposition continuing to denounce the supposed naiveté of the president’s intentions. Barack Obama began his offensive in Cairo, Egypt last year where he called upon the Muslim world to end “the cycle […]
Tonight ITV hosted the first televised debate between the leaders of Britain’s three major parties in the run-up to next month’s parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his foremost contender, Conservative foreman David Cameron attacked each other repeatedly while Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg tried to present himself as a fresh alternative to the traditional […]
There was some troubling news coming out of Kabul last week. Afghan President Hamid Karzai not only invited his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to come visit; he supposedly told guests at the presidential palace recently that the Americans had invaded his country in order to dominate the region and that as such, they pose an […]
