Loading ...WILMINGTON, Del. — A quick shot of the king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, and the queen of Sweden, Silvia, who ‘landed’ in Wilmington via a recreation of the Kalmar Nyckel on Saturday to commemorate the 375th anniversary of the formation of New Sweden, the colony that from 1638 to 1655 was the Swedish entry into [...]
Filed under: Sweden, United States | Tagged: carl XVI gustaf, delaware, just for fun, minuit, new sweden, sweden, United States | Leave a Comment »
Votes are still being counted across Pakistan two days after its nationwide general elections, and the big winner is former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whose center-right party defeated the unpopular incumbent party and held back a spirited challenge from the anti-corruption party led by charismatic cricket star Imran Khan. The election results were a wipeout [...]
Filed under: Pakistan | Tagged: afghanistan, benazir bhutto, imran khan, india, kayani, nawaz sharif, pakistan, PML-N, PPP, PTI, singh, United States, zardari | Leave a Comment »
It’s hard to know exactly what to think, but I certainly didn’t expect former Guatemalan president Efraín Ríos Montt to be treated so harshly by a tribunal in his own country. Tonight brings word that Ríos Montt, at age 86, has been convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, with a sentence of 80 years in total [...]
Filed under: Guatemala | Tagged: central america, cold war, crimes against humanity, genocide, guatemala, perez molina, reagan, reconciliation, rios montt, United States | Leave a Comment »
It’s not everyday that the gang of all of the living current and former (and possibly future) presidents of the United States gather in one place. But it happened today on the occasion of the opening of the presidential library of former president George W. Bush in Dallas, Texas — see above the ‘most exclusive club [...]
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UPDATE: Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s president, has come out with a statement disclaiming Chechen culpability, but in a way that blames American ‘attitudes and beliefs,’ and I doubt it will do much to lift American hearts and minds in favor of Chechnya: Tragic events have taken place in Boston. A terrorist attack killed people. We have [...]
Filed under: Russia, United States | Tagged: boston, chechnya, dagestan, obama, putin, terrorism, United States | 5 Comments »
CARACAS, Venezuela — For what it’s worth, here’s some more of the conversation from last Friday with Patrick Duddy, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela from 2007 until 2010 and who kindly gave me nearly a half-hour of time to discuss current U.S.-Venezuelan relations. The late president Hugo Chávez ejected Duddy from the [...]
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CARACAS, Venezuela — I reported earlier today in Deutsche Welle on the state of U.S.-Venezuelan bilateral relations, which aren’t exactly gangbusters, if you’ve been paying attention for the past 14 years. The bottom line is: don’t expect acting president Nicolás Maduro, if he wins, to transform the chilly relationship between the United States and Venezuela. [...]
Filed under: United States, Venezuela | Tagged: capriles, chavez, chavismo, export, import, maduro, oil, PDVSA, United States, venezuela | 1 Comment »
So this is pretty amazing. Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser who paved the way for U.S. president Richard M. Nixon’s historic visit in February 1972 and thereafter, the normalization of U.S.-Chinese relations, met with Li Keqiang (李克强), the new premier of the People’s Republic of China on Tuesday: [Li] said China [...]
Filed under: China | Tagged: CCP, china, communist party, hu jintao, kissinger, li keqiang, national people's congress, nixon, politburo, politburo standing committee, PRC, United States, xi jinping | Leave a Comment »
Retired U.S. colonel Ted Spain lists 10 mistakes that the United States made in its Iraq invasion in March 2003 in a succinct and insightful piece in Foreign Policy today. Virtually all of them — from the intelligence failures to the inability or incapacity to provide for post-invasion law and order to the flippant attitude of the [...]
Filed under: Iraq, United States | Tagged: afghanistan, ba'ath, ba'ath party, bashar al-assad, bush, civil war, george w. bush, iraq, iraq war, kurdish, maliki, rumsfeld, saddam, saddam hussein, sectarian violence, shia, shiite, sunni, syria, United States | Leave a Comment »
Four panelists discussed whether the United States military should leave Afghanistan at the end of 2014, as currently planned by the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama Thursday evening at a debate sponsored by the McCain Institute (founded in 2012 in cooperation with Arizona State University and, yes, U.S. senator John McCain was in attendance). [...]
Filed under: Afghanistan, United States | Tagged: abdullah abdullah, afghanistan, ashraf ghani, CENTCOM, india, iran, kabul, karzai, mccain institute, pakistan, taliban, United States | Leave a Comment »
Here in the United States, we’ve reached the final day before $85 billion in spending cuts take effect from sequestration (Ezra Klein really does provide ‘everything you need to know‘ in background, so I won’t waste your time with my own explanation). For non-U.S. readers (or lazy Americans), here’s the issue in a nutshell: Back in [...]
Filed under: United States | Tagged: budget, chicken, debt ceiling, democratic party, game theory, hold-up problem, obama, republican party, sequester, United States | Leave a Comment »
Of course, most Americans this weekend aren’t thinking about the Cypriot presidential election or even the relatively higher-impact Italian elections, but the results of yet another election this weekend in Hollywood — the winners of the 85th Academy Awards. It’s been a very foreign-policy heavy year for the Oscars. Zero Dark Thirty, a nominee for [...]
Filed under: Afghanistan, Somalia, United States | Tagged: academy awards, afghanistan, argo, asad, bushkazi boys, cinema, film, just for fun, oscars, somalia, United States, zero dark thirty | Leave a Comment »
So, it’s not everyday that The Smoking Gun obtains hacked e-mails from the former president of the United States that showcase his self-portraits. While I don’t necessarily condone hacking — some of the e-mails detail incredibly sensitive information about the medical condition of former U.S. president George H.W. Bush and other family details, and it seems especially [...]
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The last time the United States seriously contemplated immigration reform, it was also immediately after the inauguration of a new Mexican president — Vicente Fox, a business-friendly conservative whose Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) came to power for the first time in 69 years, ousting the long-governing Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). That was 12 years ago, and this time, the [...]
Filed under: Mexico, United States | Tagged: calderon, Congress, EPN, fox, immigration reform, mexico, obama, PAN, pena nieto, PRI, United States, vicente fox | 1 Comment »
In 2002 and 2003, assistant U.S. attorney general John Yoo, at the U.S. department of justice, authored now-infamous ‘torture memos’ providing legal justification for ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques, which the administration of U.S. president George W. Bush would proceed to employ against ‘unlawful combatants,’ and in violation of the Geneva Conventions, according to many legal scholars [...]
Filed under: Pakistan, Somalia, United States, Yemen | Tagged: abdi farah shirdon saaid, afghanistan, al qaeda, al shabaab, AQAP, arab spring, bhutto, bin laden, constitutional law, drone, FATA, hadi, hasan shiekh mahmoud, imran khan, international law, obama, pakistan, PML-N, PPP, saleh, sharif, somalia, taliban, targeted killings, torture memo, United States, waziristan, yemen, zardari | Leave a Comment »
