The MentalGator » Items by Joshua Keating

Items by Joshua Keating

BRICs lead the world in software piracy

Posted: May 16, 2012, 6:59 pm by Joshua Keating

The industry group Business Software Alliance is out with its annual report on global software piracy and it appears that the BRIC countries are still pretty dominant. Yes, Zimbabwe has the world's highest rate of software piracy at 92 percent, overtaking Georgia for the top spot this year. And the United States has the largest illegal software sector in terms of dollar value. But as the chart on the right shows, China, Russia, India, and Brazil combined for more than $17.9 billion worth of pirated software in 2011 -- 28 percent of the global total -- at an average piracy rate of 64 percent. On the other hand, rates are down this year in all four countries according to BSA's numbers.

Overall, BSA says the global rate of software piracy remained steady at 42 percent, though the value of the shadow market in pirated software increased from $58.8 billion to $63.4 billion.

The world's most honest software users? Americans! While the value of its shadow software industry may be the highest, BSA puts the U.S. piracy rate at only 19 percent, the lowest in the world.

Map of the day: 1,000 years of Europe

Posted: May 16, 2012, 5:40 pm by Joshua Keating

In case you need a little perspective on all the apocalyptic eurozone speculation, take the next 10 minutes to witness a millennium of war, conquest and genocide!

If you're impatient, here's the three-minute version.

Update: Looks like the videos have been taken down for copyright reasons. Sorry folks.

Hat tip: Kottke

Department of Omens

Posted: May 15, 2012, 12:24 am by Joshua Keating

This is probably not what Francois Hollande wanted on the first day of his presidency:

After a succession of rain-drenched and pomp-filled ceremonial inauguration events, Hollande took off in a Falcon 7X aircraft for Berlin. The plane was hit by lightning shortly afterward, and returned to the Villacoublay air base outside Paris as a precaution for inspection, Defense Ministry spokesman Gerard Gachet said.

Defense officials say the president and his entourage were transferred to another aircraft, a Falcon 900, and left shortly thereafter. That made Hollande about an hour and a half late for his first meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A new FP slideshow compares Hollande's inauguration with Vladimir Putin's somewhat grander affair.

Who is responsible for 'grexit'?

Posted: May 15, 2012, 11:44 pm by Joshua Keating

One of the most unfortunate neologisms of the European financial crisis has to be "Grexit," the now-ubiquitous term referring to a possible Greek exit from the eurozone. (I'm pretty fond of PIIGS, on other hand.) I was curious about who had first used the term. This FT Alphavillle post from Feb. 7 would seem to have the answer:

Grexit being, of course, a Greek exit from the eurozone. (Also, an app for archiving and sharing Gmail threads. Bummer for them.)

The term comes from Willem Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari at Citi, who are now leaning towards the “let them leave” argument:

First, we raise our estimate of the likelihood of Greek exit from the eurozone (or ‘Grexit’) to 50% over the next 18 months from earlier estimates of ours which put it at 25-30%. Second, we argue that the implications of Grexit for the rest of the EA and the world would be negative, but moderate, as exit fear contagion would likely be contained by policy action, notably from the ECB.

So it appears Citibank is to blame. On the other hand, maybe an unpleasant sounding word is appropriate for that scenario.

The war on pirates moves on land

Posted: May 15, 2012, 11:28 pm by Joshua Keating

For the first time, EU forces are attacking pirate bases within Somali territory:

European helicopter gunships attacked a pirate base on the Somali coast on Tuesday, destroying five speedboats, in the first such airborne strike on land by the anti-piracy force.

The Somali-based pirates responded by threatening to kill crew being held on more than a dozen hijacked vessels if they were attacked again.

The EU Naval Force (EU Navfor) said it had carried out the overnight raid on pirate targets using helicopters and surveillance aircraft with the agreement of the beleaguered, Western-backed Somali government.

There are concerns that this new tactic could put the more than 300 hostages being held in Somalia at risk, or drive the pirates to more desperate tactics. I also wonder, if this becomes a regular thing, whether it will have larger security implications. Frequent European bombing raids on Somali territory with the consent of the Western-backed government in Mogadishu, no matter the intended target, seem like something a group like Al Shabaab could easily exploit for propaganda value.

Morning Brief: Greek president pushes for technocratic government

Posted: May 15, 2012, 3:20 pm by Joshua Keating

Greek president pushes for technocratic government

Top news: Greek President Karolos Papoulias is meeting with party leaders to ask them to step aside in favor of a technocratic government that can keep the country from bankruptcy -- a last-ditch effort to salvage a political compromise out of the inconclusive May 6 election. However, while the leftist Syriza bloc is attending the meeting, it has already pledged to reject the plan. "We don't want to consent to any kind of bailout policies, even if they are implemented by non-political personalities," said a spokesman.

Failure to agree on a new government would force Papoulias to call for new elections in June, and would likely raise the chances of Greece defaulting on its debts and leaving the eurozone entirely.

While many eurozone leaders are now discussing the prospect of a Greek exit openly, Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the group of eurozone finance ministers, angrily dismissed such talk on Monday. “I don’t envisage, not even for one second, Greece leaving the euro area. This is nonsense. This is propaganda,” he said.

The Greek economy contracted by 6.2 percent in the first three months of the year.

Economy: Despite contractions in Southern Europe, the continent narrowly avoided returning to recession in the first three months of the year thanks to stronger than expected growth from Germany.

Middle East

Nearly 23 Syrian soldiers were reportedly killed in clashes with opposition fighters.
Saudi Arabia is seeking a closer union of the Gulf monarchies.
A group of Palestinian prisoners agreed to end a hunger strike in exchange for concessions from Israel.

Africa

EU forces conducted their first raid on a pirate base on the Somali mainland.
A suspected remote-controlled bomb went off at a Somali refugee center in Kenya.
West Africa regional bloc ECOWAS has threatened to reimpose sanctions on Mali's coup leaders.

Europe

Former Rupert Murdoch aide Rebekah Brooks will face prosecution in the NewsCorp phone hacking scandal.
Francois Hollande was sworn in as president of France.
The British government defended David Cameron's meeting with the Dalai Lama from Chinese criticism.

Asia

Nine civilians were killed in a bombing at a market in Northern Afghanistan.
Pakistan's foreign minister suggested it may reopen its Afghan border to NATO supplies.
China has detained four South Korean activists.

Americas

Haiti's parliament voted in a new government.
The U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement went into effect.
Argentina's vice president is being investigated for corruption.

ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP/GettyImages

Europe's gray future

Posted: May 14, 2012, 12:04 am by Joshua Keating

EU Observer looks at a new report, set to be endorsed by Europe's finance ministers tomorrow, that looks beyond the the ramifications of the "Grexit" to a longer-term threat to the continent's prosperity:

With an increase of some five percent, the total EU population is to reach 526 million in 2040. Not counted in the statistics are potential further enlargements to populous countries such as Turkey.

The largest chunk of the population will continue to be the age group 15-64, but it will decrease from 67 percent in 2010 to 56 percent in 2060. "Those aged 65 and over will become a much larger share (rising from 17% to 30% of the population), and those aged 80 and over (rising from 5% to 12%) will almost become as numerous as the young population in 2060," the report predicts.

The labour force is going to to up slightly until 2020 as more women are joining the workforce, but after that a decline of almost 12 percent will be recorded by 2060, or 27.7 million less.

Statistics vary widely across the bloc - from a 25 percent increase in Ireland to a 38.5 drop in Romania over the same period up to 2060.

As women across the bloc are having on average less than two children, which is the natural replacement rate for a society and as life expectancy is going up, the pensioner-to-worker ratio will rise from 39 percent in 2010 to 71 percent in 2060. The lowest rate - 55 percent - is projected in Denmark, the UK and Ireland, while the highest rates - over 90 percent are to be hit in Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Romania in 2060.

Meanwhile, economic growth is projected to remain low, around 1.5 percent up to 2020 and 1.6 percent in 2021-2030 followed by a slow-down to 1.3 percent by 2060, as labour productivity will increase in the poorer states.

The aging of the developed world is the subtext of a lot of the generous maternity benefits I wrote about in this mother's day list and the fertility promotion programs I discussed in the Sex Issue. Singapore's government matchmaking service and Russia "Give Birth to a Patriot on Russia Day" contest might seem goofy, but there demographic trends behind them are a quite real

The Dalai Lama and the case of the poison hair

Posted: May 14, 2012, 7:41 pm by Joshua Keating

The Dalai Lama made a pretty startling claim in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph yesterday:

"We received some sort of information from Tibet," he said. "Some Chinese agents training some Tibetans, especially women, you see, using poison – the hair poisoned, and the scarf poisoned – they were supposed to seek blessing from me, and my hand touch."

He said the reports were unconfirmed and he couldn't say whether they were "100 percent correct" but it was still enough to set off the Beijing rapid-response machine:

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the Dalai Lama was spreading rumours to attract public attention.

"His sensational allegations are not even worth refuting," he said, before calling them groundless. The spokesman added: "Wearing a religious cloak, the Dalai Lama has been engaged in international anti-China separatist activities."

The Chinese newspaper the Global Times went further, calling the allegations mind-boggling.

"The assassination plot told by the Dalai is more like something you would find in a martial arts novel. Revealing such unreliable information, the Dalai appears to have become mixed up in his old age," it wrote.

One would like to give the Dalai Lama the benefit of the doubt, and there have certainly been some strange but true assassination plots over the years, but this one seems a little dubious. For one thing, if the poison were strong enough to kill him from just touching it, wouldn't it kill the woman wearing it on her head first?

The Dalai Lama is currently in Britain to receive the Templeton Prize, a £1.1 million annual award for exceptional work in "affirming life's spiritual dimension".

Are East Germans the world's most godless people?

Posted: May 14, 2012, 6:33 pm by Joshua Keating

It was Leipzig-born Friedrich Nietzche who wrote that "God is dead" in the 1880s. As far as his fellow East Germans are concerned, he may have been on to something.

A recent study by University of Chicago sociologist Tom Smith looks at survey data on belief in God in 30 countries between 1991 and 2008. The citizens of the former German Democratic Republic have by far the highest rate of atheism at 52.1 percent. The Czech Republic is the most atheist currently existing country at 39.9 percent. They're followed by the French (23.3 percent), the Dutch (19.7 percent), and the Swedes (19.3 percent). Japan is the country with the lowest percentage of people who say they "know god really exists and have no doubts about it." (4.3 percent.)

The most religious country in the survey was the Philippines, where 83.6 percent of people are sure God exists and only 0.7 percent are atheists. The United States is pretty godly as well, with only a 3 percent rate of atheism and 60.6 percent sure that he exists.

East Germany has gotten less religious since the fall of communism -- and young people are less religious than their parents -- a trend that doesn't hold for other members of the Eastern Bloc. Russia, for instance, saw an 11.7 percent decline in atheism since 1991 and a 17.3 percent increase in belief in God. Israel saw the largest increase in belief in God (23 percent), possibly due to the influx of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The rate of atheism in the United States increased very slightly. Generally speaking, belief in God declined modestly in the 30 countries in the survey, nearly all of them in the developed world.

Die Welt digs in to the German findings:

Researchers found other reasons for atheism in the former East Germany, not least the deep mark left by the National Socialists and the Communists. But they also point to the fact that many Slavic and non-Orthodox communities present in the area since the Middle Ages were nonreligious; that the secularization movements during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) were particularly strong in the states of Thuringia and Saxony; that the resistance of most DDR dissidents to the church was not seen, unlike the way it was perceived in Catholic Poland, as specifically religiously motivated.

The present study shows that Germany as a whole occupies a middle position on the atheism scale, as the belief in God in West Germany is still very strong – much more so than in neighboring countries like the Czech Republic or France, for example.

East Germans' general indifference to religion doesn't seem to apply to Chancellor Angela Merkel, who told a meeting of her Christian Democratic Union party in 2010, "We don’t have too much Islam; we have too little Christianity."

It will also be interesting to see whether long-term economic distress will have any effect on religious belief in countires like Greece, Italy, and Spain.

The Election 2012 Weekly Report: The race evolves

Posted: May 11, 2012, 12:59 am by Joshua Keating

The gay marriage fallout

President Barack Obama made some history this week by becoming the first sitting president to support the legalization of same-sex marriage. Obama's announcement, made during an interview with ABC News, came a day after North Carolinians voted in favor of a constitutional amendment banning both gay marriage and civil unions. Mitt Romney reiterated his opposition, saying, "I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman."

Obama's statement has shifted the campaign rhetoric away from the economy and foreign policy to domestic social issues, but it may also have international ramifications. A number of world leaders responded to Obama's announcement. Germany's openly gay foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, said "I welcome this not just personally but also in the name of the German government." Following Obama's statement, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said for the first time that he was not opposed to gay marriage. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she remains opposed. Newly elected French President Francois Hollande plans to push for the legalization of gay marriage, to which his predecessor was opposed.

The Vatican has not yet responded to Obama's change of heart, but two months ago, Pope Benedict XVI warned U.S. bishops not to surrender to "powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage." Last December, the Obama administration announced that it would tie U.S. foreign aid and diplomacy to the promotion of gay rights around the world, a move that provoked anger from some foreign leaders.

Romney on the attack

Romney continued to dial up his criticism of the Obama administration for trying to "make friends with some of the world's worst actors" in an interview with Sean Hannity on Tuesday. Romney has been hesitant to call for U.S. military intervention in Syria, but in the interview described it as "one of the great opportunities for America, and for the world, right now" and said he believes the United States should take the lead in efforts to remove President Bashar al-Assad from power.

Obama courts the establishment

The president held an off-the-record meeting on foreign policy this week with nine prominent editors and columnists. Though mostly on the liberal side of the political spectrum, the group included Newsweek's Peter Beinart and The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who have staked out starkly differing positions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Following the meeting, attendee David Ignatius of the Washington Post wrote that the president is campaigning with "a sense of success and political advantage in the foreign-policy areas that have often spelled trouble for Democrats." He also suggested that climate change, nuclear weapons reduction, development assistance to Africa, and the Mideast peace process might be priorities for Obama's second term if he is reelected.

Summit week

It will be a big week of summitry for the Obama administration with the G-8 meeting at Camp David on May 18 and 19, than the NATO summit in Chicago beginning on May 20. The week has not gotten off to a particularly auspicious start, however, with newly elected Russian President Vladimir Putin announcing that he will not be attending, instead sending Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in his place. Many are reading Putin's decision as a slap-in-the-face to the Obama administration, particularly as the conference had been moved away from Chicago, where the NATO meeting is being held, partly in deference to Putin's opposition to NATO missile defense plans.

Plans for the transition out of Afghanistan will be on the agenda for NATO, but much of the coverage will likely focused by planned protests by the Occupy movement.

The latest from FP:

Jacob Heilbrunn on the decline and fall of departing Senator Richard Lugar.

Uri Friedman on the countries were gay marriage is already legal.

David Rothkopf on why the Chen Guangchen episode will ultimately be seen as a victory for U.S. foreign policy.

William Tobey on why Vice President Joe Biden is "isolated from reality" on Iran.

Joshua E. Keating on Michele Bachmann's short-lived Swiss citizenship.

Italian anarchists shoot nuclear executive

Posted: May 11, 2012, 12:53 am by Joshua Keating

This would certainly seem to be an escalation:

An anarchist group claimed responsibility on Friday for kneecapping an Italian nuclear engineering executive and warned it would strike another seven times at the firm's parent company, Finmeccanica.

In a four-page letter sent to an Italian newspaper, the group, calling itself the Olga Nucleus of the Informal Anarchist Federation-International Revolutionary Front, said two of its members had shot Roberto Adinolfi, the CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, in Genoa on Monday.[...]

The letter takes aim at Adinolfi, calling him a "sorcerer of the atomic industry" and criticising him for claiming in an interview that none of the deaths during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011 were due to nuclear incidents.

"Adinolfi knows well that it is only a matter of time before a European Fukushima kills on our continent," the letter stated.

The group, named after an imprisoned Greek anarchist, has a pretty substantial track record:

The same anarchist group claimed last year to have sent letter bombs targeting, among others, Deutsche Bank's boss Josef Ackermann. One of these blew off a finger of the director general of Italy's tax enforcement agency Equitalia in December.

On Friday, a suspect package containing powder but no detonator was sent to an Equitalia office in Rome while in Naples a citizen protest outside tax authority offices degenerated into clashes with the police.

As I noted after a similarly named Greek anarchist group sent off a series of mail bombs in 2010, thse groups seem to be fairly random in their choice of targets. Hopefully, the level of violence won't escalate further. (The U.S. recently witnessed its own brand of alleged anarchist violence when five men were arrested and charged with attempting to blow up a bridge in northeast Ohio.)

Last October, I spoke with Italian columnist and satirist Beppe about Italy's "Black Bloc" protesters.

Michele Bachmann is no longer Swiss

Posted: May 10, 2012, 11:36 pm by Joshua Keating

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's 53 days of Swiss citizenship have apparently come to an end:

"I sent a letter to the Swiss Consulate requesting withdrawal of my dual Swiss citizenship, which was conferred upon me by operation of Swiss law when I married my husband in 1978," she said. "I took this action because I want to make it perfectly clear: I was born in America and I am a proud American citizen. I am, and always have been, 100 percent committed to our United States Constitution and the United States of America. As the daughter of an Air Force veteran, stepdaughter of an Army veteran and sister of a Navy veteran, I am proud of my allegiance to the greatest nation the world has ever known."

The statement seems slightly misleading. According to the original Politico story, which included confirmation from Bachmann's office, she became Swiss not in 1978 but in March after her husband applied for citizenship. Marcus Bachmann had been eligible for citizenship since birth because of his parents' nationality, but hadn't claimed it until this year.

I'm not sure what the requirements are for renouncing Swiss citizenship and the migration office's website is not particularly helpful, but for U.S. citizenship it's kind of a hassle:

During a 10-minute renunciation ceremony in a booth with bullet-proof glass windows, embassy staff ask exiting Americans whether they are acting voluntarily and understand the implications of giving up their passports. They pay a fee of $450 to renounce and may incur an “exit tax” on unrealized capital gains if their assets exceed $2 million or their average annual U.S. tax bill is more than $151,000 during the past five years. They receive a certificate within three months, telling them they are no longer American citizens and entitled to the services and protection of the U.S. government.

It should be noted that for immigrants to Switzerland, and even children of immigrants born in Switzerland, getting Swiss citizenship is not nearly as easy as it apparently was for the Bachmanns.

Argentina passes landmark transgender rights law

Posted: May 10, 2012, 9:06 pm by Joshua Keating

The big political news in the U.S. today is that President Obama has finally "evolved" -- with a push from Joe Biden -- into supporting same-sex marriage. Obama is still sticking with a states-rights position on this issue and is unlikely to push for action at the federal level, but as Uri points out, if the United States were to legalize gay marriage, it would be the 11th country in the world to do so. It would be the third in the Western Hemisphere after Argentina and Canada. (It's also legal in Mexico City. Plus, Uruguay and Brazil both recognize civil unions.

Obama's change of heart probably wouldn't impress anyone in Argentina, where full marriage for same-sex couples has been legal since 2010. Today, the country went a step further:

Adults who want sex-change surgery or hormone therapy in Argentina will be able to get it as part of their public or private health care plans under a gender rights law approved Wednesday.

Senators approved the Gender Identity law by a vote of 55 to zero with one abstention and more than a dozen senators declaring themselves absent — the same margin that approved a "death with dignity" law earlier in the day.

It gives people the legal right to officially change their gender without having to go to court for a judge's approval, and obligates health care companies to provide them with surgery or hormone therapy on demand.

Other countries, including neighboring Uruguay, have passed gender rights laws, but Argentina's "is in the forefront of the world" because of these benefits it guarantees, said Cesar Cigliutti, president of the Homosexual Community of Argentina.

Treatments related to gender changes will be included in the "Obligatory Medical Plan," meaning that both private and public health care providers will not be able to charge extra for the services.

Sex reassignment surgery is covered by a growing number of health plans in the United States, but it's pretty remarkable that a bill like this didn't get a single no vote in a 92 percent Catholic country.

STASI records suggest IKEA used Cuban prison labor in the 1980s

Posted: May 10, 2012, 6:22 pm by Joshua Keating

This story involving labor abuse, Cold War intrigue, and everyone's favorite discount furniture empire has been brewing for about a week but has gotten surprisingly little attention in the U.S. The Miami Herald reported last Friday:

A report that Swedish furniture and housewares company IKEA employed Cuban prisoners to build tables and sofas in the 1980s has provoked a strong reaction among Miami exiles.

The German daily newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, of Frankfurt, recently reported that in September 1987 Cuban authorities negotiated for 35,000 dining tables, 10,000 children’s tables and an unspecified number of sofas to be built for IKEA.

The newspaper said German reporters found the information while reviewing archives of the Cold War era and that East German officials facilitated the deal with Cuba.…

According to information in the archives, East German officials met with Lieutenant Enrique Sánchez, identified as the person in charge of a Cuban agency known as EMIAT, which supplied patio furniture to diplomatic houses and high-ranking Cuban officials. They discussed furniture to be built “in prison facilities of the Ministry of Interior.”

IKEA has already launched an internal investigation into allegations that it contracted to use East German prison labor during the 1970s and 1980s and now says it will broaden the scope of the inquiry.

According to a follow-up story today, records kept by East Germany's infamous STASI show that "an IKEA subsidiary in Berlin and an East German company had contracted for Cuban prison labor to build 45,000 tables and 4,000 sofa groupings in 1987" as part of a larger deal between companies run by Cuba's Ministry of the Interior and the East German government. The deal also "involved Cuban antiques, cigars and guns, according to a researcher in Berlin."

The six Cuban-American members of the U.S. Congress have written a letter demanding a meeting with IKEA executives.

This report is just the latest in a slew of bad press for the Swedish furniture giant in recent years, including allegations of bribery in Russia and a recent book alleging that founder Ingvar Kamprad's past ties to Swedish Nazi groups may have gone on longer than he has admitted.

Morning Brief: Double bombing hits Damascus intelligence center

Posted: May 10, 2012, 3:25 pm by Joshua Keating

Double bombing hits Damascus intelligence center

Top news: Two bombings outside an intelligence complex in Damascus killed at least 40 people and injured 170, according to Syrian television. It was the largest and deadliest single attack since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011.

No one immediately took responsibility for the bombing, but state media in Syria has suggested it is the work of terrorists supported by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Opposition groups blamed Bashar al-Assad's regime, saying it was trying to frighten people out of joining the opposition.

On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said there was only a narrow window to avoid a full-scale civil war in Syria: "There is no escaping the reality that we see every day. Innocent civilians dying, government troops and heavy armor in city streets, growing numbers of arrests and allegations of brutal torture, an alarming upsurge in the use of IEDs and other explosive devices throughout the country."

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 849 people have been killed in a U.N. imposed truce in April, not including those killed in today's blast.

Ten rebels were also killed overnight when thanks shelled a village in the northwestern province of Idlib.

U.S. politics: In a major reversal, President Barack Obama said he believes gay marriage should be legal.

Middle East

Bahraini activists blocked roads with burning tires to demand the release of detained female activists.
Polls opened in Algeria's parliamentary elections.
Israel's parliament approved a coalition deal between the Likud and Kadima parties.

Europe

Greece's center-left PASOK party will make a final attempt to form a coalition government.
A British parliamentary panel will question former David Cameron aide Andy Coulson on his role in the News of the World phone hacking scandal.
Russia says it has foiled a terrorist plot to attack the Sochi Olympics.

Asia

The Japanese government agreed to spend $12.6 billion to bail out Fukushima nuclear plant operator TEPCO.
Chinese activist Chen Guangchen said local officials in his town were carrying out reprisal attacks on his family.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has suspended work in Peshawar and Karachi.

Americas

Eighteen mutilated bodies were found in the western Mexican state of Jalisco.
Another prominent journalists has been kidnapped in Honduras.
Argentina's senate approved a new "dignified death" law.

Africa

Burundi's corruption ombudsman says he has uncovered a plot to kill him.
South Sudan accused Khartoum of bombing its territory in violation of a U.N. resolution.
Thousands of Mauritanian opposition activists participated in anti-government protests.

LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/GettyImages

Students for a Free Tibet responds

Posted: May 9, 2012, 7:30 pm by Joshua Keating

On Monday, I posted some thoughts about the death of Adam "MCA" Yauch and the future of the global Tibetan independence movement. Tenzin Dorjee, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, sent in this response:

The Tibetan Freedom concerts educated countless young people about Tibet, thousands of whom went on to become leaders and organizers in Students for a Free Tibet, the group at the forefront of the protests against Chinese President-in-waiting Xi Jinping's visit to Washington, DC in January 2012.

The youth has always been a driving force behind nonviolent revolutions. We've witnessed this again in the uprisings that swept the Arab world. The youth movement for Tibet has not faded; it has deepened, taking root across Tibet where a new generation of young Tibetans are writing, blogging, protesting, agitating, and rising up against China's colonial occupation. They know that Tibetans, not the West, will free Tibet. But allies in Western democracies can help us along the way by facilitating and speeding up the process.

Adam Yauch played a landmark role in building grassroots global solidarity for Tibet. This global solidarity, in turn, largely inspired the rebirth of hope in Tibet. This hope has breathed new life into the Tibetan resistance, which manifested itself in the 2008 uprising and the growing resistance movement that continues today. Therefore, Adam will be remembered not only for his brilliance as a musician but also for his unparalleled contribution to the movement that will bring about a free Tibet, and forever enshrine nonviolence as the most effective weapon against oppression.

Tenzin Dorjee
Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet

Michele Bachmann is Swiss now

Posted: May 9, 2012, 6:21 pm by Joshua Keating

Sure, why not?

Arthur Honegger, a reporter for public broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen, told POLITICO the Swiss consulate in Chicago has confirmed that the former Republican presidential candidate became a citizen March 19. The Swiss consulate in Chicago covers the state of Minnesota, which Bachmann represents.

Marcus Bachmann, the congresswoman’s husband since 1978, reportedly was eligible for Swiss citizenship due to his parents’ nationality — but only registered it with the Swiss government Feb. 15. Once the process was finalized on March 19, Michele automatically became a citizen as well, according to Honegger.[...]

Bachmann's office confirmed that the congresswoman had received Swiss citizenship, and attributed the decision to her children.

"Congresswoman Bachmann's husband is of Swiss descent, so she has been eligible for dual-citizenship since they got married in 1978. However, recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family," said Bachmann spokesperson Becky Rogness.

The timing of this is pretty funny given all the fuss over Mitt Romney's Swiss bank account. Super PACs could presumably have had a pretty good time with the all-American congresswoman's dual citizenship. Marcus Bachmann seems to have waited until after his wife dropped out of the race to make his application.

There's nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prevents members of Congress -- or presidents for that matter -- from holding dual citizenship, so long as they don't renounce their U.S. nationality, though it's obviously pretty unusual. (In the video above, Bachmann rules">[www.youtube.com] out the possibility of running for office in Switzerland, where she would now be eligible.) When Rahm Emanuel -- who had served as a civilian volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces and whose father was Israeli -- ran for Congress in 2002 he faced untrue attacks alleging that he held dual citizenship.

Google searches for current dual citizens in Congress just turns up a lot of anti-Semitic garbage. Anyone know of any actual examples before Bachmann?

The fog of terror [Updated]

Posted: May 8, 2012, 1:04 am by Joshua Keating

On Monday, the AP broke the story that the CIA had disrupted a plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner with a similar explosive to the one used by the notorious "underwear bomber" in 2010. We know that like that failed bombing attempt, the plot was likely tied to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and that the bomb bore the signature of master bombmaker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri. But beyond that, the accounts seem to differ on what exactly happened. Here's the AP's version:

The CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, The Associated Press has learned.[...]

The would-be suicide bomber, based in Yemen, had not yet picked a target or bought his plane tickets when the CIA stepped in and seized the bomb, officials said. It's not immediately clear what happened to the alleged bomber.

But according to the L.A. Times, there was no evidence that U.S.-bound airliners had been targeted:

U.S. officials said Monday that no one was captured by U.S. agencies as part of the operation. The officials emphasized that they found no sign of an active plot to use the new bomb design against U.S. aviation or U.S.-bound jetliners.

The device was given to the CIA by a government outside Yemen, officials said. The White House said President Obama was informed of the discovery in April by John Brennan, his top counter-terrorism advisor, and was assured it "did not pose a threat to the public."

The New York Times version makes it sound as if the plot was much further along:

The intelligence services detected the scheme as it took shape in mid-April, officials said, and the explosive device was seized in the Middle East outside Yemen about a week ago before it could be deployed.

It appeared that Qaeda leaders had dispatched a suicide bomber from Yemen with instructions to board a flight to the United States with the device under his clothes, but that he had been stopped before reaching an airport. Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said counterterrorism officials had said of the bomber: “We don’t have to worry about him anymore.” He is alive, officials said, but they would not to say whether he was in foreign custody.

And according to an ABC news report today, the device was given to U.S. officials not by a foreign government but by an "inside source who secretly worked for the CIA and several other intelligence agencies" and brought the device to Saudi Arabia.

As all the accounts note, officials say the plot was not connected to the anniversary of the Osama Bin Laden's death and therefore does not contradict earlier statements made by officials that they were aware of no active plots connected to the anniversary. White House counterterrorism John Brennan went a step further on ABC News's "Good Morning America" today, saying that the plot was not itself an "active threat." The Department of Homeland Security was also quoted in the Times saying yesterday saying it was aware of “no specific, credible information regarding an active terrorist plot against the U.S. at this time."

From all indications, this isn't a case like the series of recent domestic "terror plots" in the United States that were encouraged and pushed along by FBI informants. There was a real bomb made by a real bombmaker and, according to the Times at least, instructions from al Qaeda leaders on using it. I think some clarity on what an "active" plot is would probably help, though.

Update: A new L.A. Times article provides some clarity:

Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, working closely with the CIA, used an informant to pose as a would-be suicide bomber. His job was to convince the Al Qaeda franchise in Yemen to give him a new kind of non-metallic bomb that the militants were designing to easily pass through airport security.

But the double agent instead arranged to deliver the explosive device to U.S. and other intelligence authorities waiting in another country, officials said Tuesday. The agent is now safely outside Yemen and is being debriefed.

According to the article, the same operation provided the intelligence that led to the drone strike that killed AQAP operative Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Quso on Sunday. This would definitely clear up the "active plot" question.

Swedish politicians don't believe in global warming either

Posted: May 8, 2012, 7:29 pm by Joshua Keating

The U.S. can often seem like something of an outlier when it comes to politicians and climate change. After all, it was major news in the campaign when Jon Huntsman tweeted that he trusts "scientists on global warming." It was such a controversial assertion that he later walked it back.

But U.S. political culture on this issue may not actually be all that unique:

Six of ten local politicians in Sweden doubt whether human activity is to blame for global warming, a new study has found.

In addition, one out of ten municipal politicians and local government managers totally deny that the phenomenon of global warming even exists, according to a survey carried out by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (Försvarets forskningsinstitutet – FOI).

"This is clearly not good. These people feel like they don't have to take responsibility for environmental work in their municipalities," FOI's head of climate and energy research, Annika Carlsson-Kanyama, told the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

The findings come from a survey carried out by FOI looking into how local decision-makers in Sweden view the issue of climate change.

Swedish politicians actually seem to be a bit more skeptical on this issue than voters. According to a 2009 Gallup Poll, 64 percent of Swedes believe climate change is caused by human activity.

Despite their green reputation, European countries don't actually rank that high in terms of the number of citizens who believe in anthropogenic global warming. According to Gallup's numbers, Greece and Spain are the only where over 70 percent believe it. (Maybe it's a coastal thing?) The most accepting of climate science seem to be East Asian and South American countries.

Belarus president takes bold anti-freedom stance

Posted: May 8, 2012, 7:03 pm by Joshua Keating

The concepts of popular sovereignty and democratic legitimacy are so pervasive in world politics that even the most authoritarian regimes usually give some deference to them. Even North Korea has the word "democratic" in its official name, for instance. So it's always a bit surprising when a leader just flat out says he doesn't believe in freedom. RFE/RL reports:

In his annual state of the nation address, Lukashenka said that Belarus has no use for revolutionary activities which "lead to chaos and bloodshed."

He added, "The great Dostoevsky wrote that there is nothing more unbearable for a person than freedom. And of course he was right."

The actual quote, said by the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, is "Didst thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering."

There's a lot to think about in that, but it's not exactly a strategy for governance.

In the March/April issue of FP, Thomas De Waal discussed what Gogol, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky can explain about the post-Soviet world.

Morning Brief: Greek leftists attempt to form government

Posted: May 8, 2012, 3:24 pm by Joshua Keating

Greek leftists attempt to form government

Top news: Greece's left-wing Syriza bloc will have a chance to form a coalition government after center-right, pro-austerity parties failed to do so following a drubbing in Sunday's Greek election. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras, whose anti-austerity, anti-bailout party finished a surprise second place in the vote, went into talks with President Karolos Papoulias on Tuesday and is expected to be given three days to form a government. The conservative New Democracy party failed after only one day.

"We want to create a government of leftist forces in order to escape the bailout leading us to bankruptcy," Tsipras said. However, his chances of being able to form a coalition are slim, raising the possibility of repeat elections, likely on June 17. "The country is heading at high speed towards catastrophe," an editorial in Kathimerini said of that possibility.

Despite the hopes of many voters that a left-wing coalition could reject the terms of the EU bailout or at least renegotiate them, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the country must stick to the plan. "The agreements must be adhered to. They are the best way forward for Greece," he said.

Meanwhile, the far right Golden Dawn party, known for its swastika-style logo and extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric, is planning its own agenda after winning 21 seats in Sunday's vote. In his victory speech Sunday, party leader Nikos Michaloliakos called for the "liberation" of part of neighboring Albania.

Good day for the Pirates

Posted: May 7, 2012, 10:12 pm by Joshua Keating

Understandably, the very scary success of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party in Greece's parliamentary eleciton has gotten more attention, but local elections in Germany also showed a growing presence for another once-fringe political movement:

The young Pirate party appeared to emerge as the biggest winners in Schleswig-Holstein with 8 percent of the vote, according to the exit poll. This would be more than enough votes to usher the young party into its third state regional legislature in as many elections, after wins of 8.9 percent in Berlin and of 7.4 percent in Saarland.

With their emphasis on transparency and Internet issues, the Pirates continued to draw disgruntled voters from all of the traditional parties, the exit polls showed, making Schleswig-Holstein, home to about 2.8 million people, the largest state where they are now represented at the regional level.

Nicolas Kulish looked at the German Pirates' emergence as a political force to be reckoned with in Sunday's New York Times:

A recent survey found that nearly one in three Germans would in principle be willing to vote for the Pirates; they even nosed ahead of the Green Party in several opinion surveys as Germany’s third most popular party. The Greens were once the insurgent activists on the political scene. Now founding members from the ’68 generation have started collecting their pensions. A Green campaign poster with a cursor arrow pointing at a Facebook thumbs-up icon carried a whiff of desperation to keep up with the Pirates.

Though they were once considered something of an eccentric oddity on the political scene, the anti-Pirate backlash in Germay seems to be growing in instensity. One member of parliament recently noted that “the rise of the Pirate Party is as fast as that of the N.S.D.A.P.” — the Nazi Party — “between 1928 and 1933.”

The Nazi comparison seems a bit extreme, though a few members have been revealed to have far-right sympathy. But a number of artists and leftists -- seemingly the party's core constituency -- may be turning on them as well, according to Der Spiegel.

Take the 82-year-old poet and former Marxist Magnus Enzensberger:

"Political? No, politically there's nothing there," Enzensberger growled over the telephone. "And certainly nothing revolutionary. It's actually surprisingly bourgeois. Like our grandparents, who were happy when they could get something for free."

The Pirates have proven they can make a showing in an election. The next test is if they can survive the scrutiny and criticism a semi-mainstream party inevitably receives.

Does the West still want to free Tibet?

Posted: May 7, 2012, 8:09 pm by Joshua Keating

Adam Yauch, who passed away last week at the age of 47, will of course be remembered primarily as MCA from the Beastie Boys. But his role as the music industry's primary advocate for Tibetan independence may be a close second:

In addition to his career with the Beastie Boys, Yauch was heavily involved in the movement to free Tibet. A founder of the Milarepa Fund, Yauch was instrumental in the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park 1996, which drew 100,000 people – the largest U.S. benefit concert since 1985's Live Aid.

As Slate's David Weigel recalls, the concerts "became punchlines, eventually, but they started as expressly political events intended to sign up new recruits to a human rights cause that the government (then the glorious Clinton-Gingrich cohabitation) didn't want to touch."

Yauch, a practicing Buddhist whose wife was Tibetan, was uniquely committed to that cause. But with his passing, it's hard not to be struck by the degree to which Tibet has faded in prominence among politically committed Americans. With over 30 self-immolations in Tibet over the past year, it's not as if the controversy has gone away.

Pro-Tibet activists are still there, witness the protests during Xi Jinping's recent visit to Washington, including four activists who were arrested after unfurling a banner on the Arlington Memorial Bridge. But since the last U.S. Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1999, the issue hasn't really commanded the Kony 2012-level interest it once garnered from young Americans.

There are probably several reasons for this. The Dalai Lama, the most visible living symbol of Tibet's national aspirations, has been gradually retreating from his political role. As Weigel notes, many of those involved in the Free Tibet movement, including the Beasties, turned their attention to issues closer to home during the Bush administration.

Then there's the increasing allure of China for the entertainment industry. The prize of China's $2-billion-a-year film market has made Hollywood studios a lot less likely to back projects like Kundun or Seven Years in Tibet. That's true of musicians as well: Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones have been on their best behavior during recent tours of China, possibily for fear of getting the Björk treatment.

I would imagine the MCA's of tomorrow might prefer to attach themselves to global movements that don't risk alienating a billion potential customers.

The Election 2012 Weekly Report: Dark Days

Posted: May 4, 2012, 10:03 pm by Joshua Keating

"Spiking the football"

As expected, President Barack Obama's campaign is fully capitalizing on the killing of Osama bin Laden in his reelection pitch. An ad released on the one-year anniversary of the Abbottabad raid features former President Bill Clinton praising Obama for having the courage to order the raid and suggesting that Mitt Romney would not have made the same call. Romney pushed back on Monday, saying "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order." The ad's release preceded a surprise trip to Afghanistan, during which the president signed a new strategic partnership agreement with the Afghan government and addressed the U.S. public from Bagram air base.

Others criticized the Obama campaign for politicizing the issue and "spiking the football" as he had promised not to do in the waking of the killing.. "Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad," said Sen. John McCain. The group Veterans for a Strong America released a response ad, "throwing the penalty flag up on President Obama for excessive celebration." The ad made the case that "Heroes Don't Politicize Their Acts of Valor."

Other commentators have pointed out that Obama is hardly the first president to politicize military success.

The battle over Chen

This week saw a high-stakes standoff in Beijing over the fate of human rights activist Chen Guangcheng on the eve of a major U.S.-China summit. In addition to his iconic status in China, Chen enjoys widespread support in the United States, including among prominent anti-abortion members of Congress. After Chen suggested to the media that he had been pressured to leave the U.S. Embassy and had been abandoned by U.S. officials, Romney was quick to respond. "If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom. And it's a day of shame for the Obama administration," Romney said during an event with Virginia where he was endorsed by former candidate Michele Bachmann.

Romney was criticized for his response by Weekly Standard editor and prominent neoconservative commentator Bill Kristol, who told Fox News, "To inject yourself into the middle of this way with a fast-moving target I think is foolish."

The United States and China reached a tentative deal on Friday that will allow Chen to leave China.

Romney spokesman steps down

The Romney campaign's newly appointed foreign policy and national security spokesman Richard Grenell stepped down this week. It wasn't Grenell's foreign-policy views that led to his downfall as much as the fact that he's openly gay and supports gay marriage. The appointment of Grenell, who had served as spokesman for former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, came under attack from religious conservatives from the beginning. He also faced criticism from liberals over tweets attacking major democratic political figures.

"While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama's foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign," Grenell said in a statement.

Newt's exit

Newt Gingrich officially suspended his campaign this week, but if the Romney camp was hoping for a strong endorsement, they came away disappointed. "As for the presidency, I'm asked sometimes, is Mitt Romney conservative?" Gingrich said in his concession speech at the Arlington Hilton. "And my answer is simple. Compared to Barack Obama? You know, this is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan. This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical leftist president in American history."

Though he acknowledged that his staunch support for establishing a colony on the moon may not have done wonders for his campaign, he promised to "cheerfully" recommit himself to the cause. Referring to his grandchildren, he said "I'm not totally certain I will get to the moon colony," he said. "I am certain Maggie and Robert will have that opportunity to go and take it. I think it's almost inevitable on just the sheer scale of technological change."

The latest from FP:

Michael Scheuer makes the case for why Ron Paul would be a great foreign-policy president.

Colum Lynch looks at the guilty schadenfreude at the U.N. over of Grenell's fate.

With Obama attacking Romney over his overseas wealth, Uri Friedman asks whether poor people can open Swiss bank accounts.

Stephen Walt wonders if the Kabul trip will be Obama's "mission accomplished" moment.

Scott Clement says voters are fine with presidential chest-thumping, as long as it's their candidate who's doing the thumping.

Michael Cohen argues that the Bin Laden killing is "the core of [Obama's] reelection prospects."

Kim Jong Un brings salt water to North Korea's dolphins

Posted: May 3, 2012, 12:46 am by Joshua Keating

North Korea's state-run Rodong news service reports on what is surely a wise and prudent use of state resources, bringing seawater to Pyongyang:

Leader Kim Jong Il unrolled a plan to bring seawater from Nampho to Pyongyang for solving the issue of drinking water for the citizens of the capital city and providing good conditions for their cultural and emotional life. When its first phase project was wound up, he showed deep loving care and trust in the model units, officials and other working people engaged in the project.

The dear respected Kim Jong Un acquainted himself with the second phase project of the Nampho-Pyongyang seawater pipeline in December last year and clearly indicated the orientation and ways for completing the project on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of President Kim Il Sung.

Officials and other working people, scientists and technicians carried out vast tasks for laying pipelines extending more than dozens of km and constructing seawater reservoir, pond and pumping stations in a matter of one year.

The completion of the project makes it possible to bring great benefit to the country by disinfecting water by seawater and satisfactorily supply seawater to the Pyongyang Dolphin Aquarium and the Aquarium in the Central Zoo and thus contribute to the cultural and emotional life of the people.

No word on whether the dolphins are connected in any way to the alleged manned torpedo program.

HT: @adamcathcart, @blakehounshell

Is there a reason world leaders shouldn't endorse each other?

Posted: May 3, 2012, 12:25 am by Joshua Keating

According to this Guardian story, the Romney campaign isn't happy about Prime Minister David Cameron bro-ing it up with President Obama last month:

Senior advisers to Mitt Romney have bitterly criticised David Cameron's recent White House "love-in" with Barack Obama before Romney's first visit to London for the opening of the Olympic Games.

Referring to Cameron's highly flattering toast to Obama during a banquet given in the prime minister's honour when he visited Washington in March, a senior aide said: "You don't take sides in an election year".

The aide, who requested anonymity, said Romney and his wife, Ann, would attend the "first day of activities" of the 2012 Games, which open in July. Romney would do "one or two other things" while in London. A meeting with Cameron was not ruled out, but that was "up in the air", the aide said.

Doubts about a possible Downing Street meeting appear to stem in part from surprise and dismay felt in the Romney camp about what it saw as Cameron's obsequious behaviour at the banquet on 14 March. Cameron's performance smacked of a "lack of experience" and was seen as "not very skilful", the aide said.

Romney advisers responsible for European policy were said to have been so alarmed that their initial reaction was to complain Cameron had "infringed" the special relationship between the US and Britain.

Cameron was also criticized in the British media as well for appearing to close to Obama and for a toast that seemed to border on an endorsement of the president's reelection.

It's debatable whether Cameron's actions really constituted taking sides, but there seems to be a lot of that going around this year. Cameron and Angela Merkel have both given the cold-shoulder to likely future French president Francois Hollande. Nicolas Sarkozy has essentially endorsed Obama. Obama seemed to return the favor by allowing a few minutes of banter with Sarkozy during a video conference to be broadcast on French television.

The taboo of commenting on a fellow world leader's election chances does seem a little silly at times. For instance, it's seems pretty obvious that Benjamin Netanyahu would prefer to see his old friend Mitt Romney in the White House next year and center-right European heads of state are obviously not thrilled at all about working with Hollande. Had Marine Le Pen made it to the second round, the rhetoric would have gotten a lot less subtle. It doesn't really any more unethical for a foreign leader to state a preference than a domestic politician or business leader.

But it's still a pretty bad idea. First, voters often don't respond well to foreign leaders telling them how to vote. (See, Greece.) Second, it doesn't seem like a good idea to alienate a leader you may very well have to work with if the election doesn't go your way. In the case of the unnamed Romney advisor, this second reason also applies to candidates whining about foreign leaders.

Adam Gadahn on the media and more highlights from the bin Laden docs

Posted: May 3, 2012, 5:36 pm by Joshua Keating

One of the most intriguing highlights of the 17 documents released by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center from the trove captured at Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound is a discussion from al Qaeda's American media advisor, Adam Gadahn, on plans for the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Gadahn gives his impression of the major U.S. networks and seems pretty up to date on recent media news. Let's just say ABC probably won't be too happy with its description, but Fox News is no doubt already working on a new ad campaign. (Highlights mine):

As far as the American channel that could be used to deliver our messages, whether on the tenth anniversary or before or after, in my personal opinion there are no distinct differences betweenthe channels from the standpoint of professionalism and neutrality. It is all as the Shaykh has stated (close to professionalism and neutrality) it has not and will not reach the perfect professionalism and neutrality, only if God wants that. From the professional point of view, they are all on one level except (Fox News) channel which falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks neutrality too.

As for the neutrality of CNN in English, it seems to be in cooperation with the government more than the others (except Fox News of course). Its Arabic version brings good and detailed reports about al-Sahab releases, with a lot of quotations from the original text. That means they copy directly from the releases or its gist. It is not like what other channels and sites do, copying from news agencies like Reuters, AP and others. I used to think that MSNBC channel may be good and neutral a bit, but is has lately fired two of the most famous journalists -Keith Olberman and Octavia Nasser the Lebanese - because they released some statements that were open for argument (The Lebanese had praised a Shia Imam Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah after his death and called him "One of the marvels of Hizballah" it seems she is a Shia.) (Page 3 of 21) CBS channel was mentioned by the Shaykh, I see that it is like the other channels, but it has a famous program (60 Minutes) that has some popularity and a good reputation for its long broadcasting time. Only God knows the reality, as I am not really in a position to do so. ABC channel is all right; actually it could be one of the best channels, as far as we are concerned. It is interested in alQa'ida issues, particularly the journalist Brian Ross, who is specialized in terrorism. The channel is still proud for its interview with the Shaykh. It also broadcasted excerpts from a speech of mine on the fourth anniversary, it also published most of that text on its site on the internet. In conclusion, we can say that there is no single channel that we could rely on for our messages. I may ignore them, and even the channel that broadcast them, probably it would distort them somehow. This is accomplished by bringing analysts and experts that would interpret its meaning in the way they want it to be. Or they may ignore the message and conduct a smearing of the individuals, to the end of the list of what you know about their cunning methods. But if the display -in the next anniversary for example- of a special type, like a special interview with Shaykh Usama or Shaykh Ayman, and with questions chosen by the channel, and with a good camera, we might find a channel that would accept its broadcasting. But they would accept this time, so as to get an exclusive press scoop: The first press interview of Shaykh Usama or Shaykh Ayman since 10 years ago! Particularly if the Shaykh is the one to be interviewed. This is because of the scarcity of his appearance during the last nine years. Because of the poor photographic quality of the last two releases -I do not know the photo quality this time- this led those believers in conspiracy theory to speculate if the person was the Shaykh, and you may have seen the program (Ben Ladin, alive or dead?) that was broadcast by Al Jazeera. Accordingly, a high quality speech (HD) may receive some interest by some channels in the tenth anniversary. If the quality of the new Shaykh's speech is high, relative to the two previous speeches, you may think to compress it or take some measures to decrease the quality, to be similar to the previous ones, and I am talking seriously. In general, and no matter what material we send, I suggest that we should distribute it to more than one channel, so that there will be healthy competition between the channels in broadcasting the material, so that no other channel takes the lead. It should be sent for example to ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN and maybe PBS and VOA. As for Fox News, let her die in her anger.

Gadahn had his facts mixed up a bit. It was CNN, not MSNBC, that fired Octavia Nasr.

Some other intriguing bits include bin Laden sounding like something of a corporate middle manager when discussing the recruitman of Anwar al-Awlaki:

How excellent would it be if you ask brother Basir to send us the resume, in detail and lengthy, of brother Anwar al-'Awlaqi, as well as the facts he relied on when recommending him, while informing him that his recommendation is considered.

There's also a bit of Decline Watch fodder in bin Laden's currency preferences:

Enclosed is the article attributed to our brother Sayf al-'Adl. -Regarding the money, I like for them to be in Euros.

Stay tuned for more.

Morning Brief: Chen Guangcheng now wants to leave China

Posted: May 3, 2012, 3:28 pm by Joshua Keating

Chen Guangcheng now wants to leave China

Top story: Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese human rights activist who left the U.S. embassy yesterday under a deal negotiated between China and the United States, now says he wants to leave China, further complicated a diplomatic standoff that appeared headed for a quick resolution on the eve of a major summit between the two countries.

Chen was taken from the embassy to a hospital yesterday under a deal that would allow him to study at a law school not far from Beijing, but two conflicting narratives have emerged in the saga. Chen now says that he was not fully aware of his situation while in the embassy, was strongly encouraged to leave, and then abandoned by U.S. officials once he reached the hospital. "The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me at the hospital," he said. "But this afternoon, as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone."

U.S. officials strongly deny this account, saying Chen was fully briefed on his options. “I was there. Chen made the decision to leave the Embassy after he knew his family was safe and at the hospital waiting for him, and after twice being asked by [U.S. Ambassador to China Gary] Locke if he was ready to go,” said Kurt Campbell, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. “He said, ‘zou,’ – let’s go. We were all there as witnesses to his decision, and he hugged and thanked us all.”

Chen's change of heart appears to have happened after he reached the hospital and was reunited with his wife, who told him she had been threatened by officials during his absence. He also spoke by phone with political supporters who urged him to seek asylum.

"I want them to protect human rights through concrete actions," he told CNN. "We are in danger. If you can talk to Hillary, I hope she can help my whole family leave China."

U.S. officials have not been able to speak with Chen in person since he left the embassy. Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has not addressed the case directly but said in a speech at the opening of the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue that “all governments have to answer our citizens’ aspirations for dignity and the rule of law.” China has strongly criticized U.S. handling of the case and demanded an apology for meddling in its internal affairs.

The dialogue: Aside from Chen, the U.S. aims to use the conference, which opens today, to secure Chinese cooperation on efforts to rein in the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is urging China to move away from an export-led growth strategy.

Europe

Britons are voting in local elections today.
French presidential candidates Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande squared off in a contentious debate.
Britain's cabinet office minister warned that this summer's London Olympics could face cyberattacks.

Middle East

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce early elections for September.
Four people were killed when Syrian security forces attacked a student protest at Aleppo University.
Libya's National Transitional Council lifted a ban on religious parties.

Asia

South Korea accused North Korea of trying to jam its air navigation system.
The U.S. will triple its military aid to the Philippines this year.
The U.N. imposed sanctions on three North Korean firms.

Americas

Brazil deployed more than 8,500 troops to the Amazon in an anti-crime operation.
Brazil's development bank urged the government to lower interest rates.
Twelve people were killed in a shootout between the Mexican army and suspected drug gang members in Sinaloa.

Africa

Dozens were killed in an attack on a cattle market in Northeastern Nigeria.
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution threatening to impose sanctions on Sudan and South Sudan.
Violence continued in Bamako as Mali's ruling junta hunted down troops involved in this week's attempted counter-coup.

Jordan Pouille/AFP/GettyImages

Al Qaeda magazine returns with two new issues

Posted: May 2, 2012, 10:17 pm by Joshua Keating

Today, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's media arm, al-Malahem Media, has recently released two new issues of the group's English-language magazine, Inspire. The release is significant since the magazine was thought to be defunct since the September 2011 drone attacks that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan in Yemen. The two U.S.-raised jihadists were Inspire's best-known contributor and editor, respectively. See terrorism analysts and FP contributors J.M. Berger and Evan Kohlman for the best takes put up so far on their contents.

After the deaths of Kahn and Awlaki last year, I looked back over the publication's full run from an editor's perspective. How do the new issues of the world's most notorious magazine stack up?

Issue 8 is a little odd in terms of timing. Though it's only coming to light today, it's billed as the fall 2011 issue. However, Issue 7 was also supposed to be the fall 2011 issue. Berger speculates on Twitter that this issue "looks like it might have been the last work of Samir Khan, as it does not mention either man's death."

There are some new features, including a quiz in the table of contents. A help-wanted notice suggests the magazine is looking for web help, researchers, translators, and "sisters who can write on women-related issues." There's also a long feature on the Pakistani army and its "role in the crusades." The regular humor feature, the Mad Magazine-esque "A Cold Diss," mocks the late Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and refers to the famous "Zenga Zenga" YouTube video. (They're presumably aware it was made by an Israeli.) The instructional "open-source jihad" feature gives some helpful hints on handgun training.

The most chilling feature is an article by Awlaki himself justifying the killing of civilians in jihadist attacks. "If combatants and non-combatants are mixed together and integrated, it is allowed for the Muslims to attack them even if women, children, the elderly, farmers, merchants and slaves get killed but this should only be done with the intention of fighting the combatants," he writes.

Issue 9 discusses Khan and Awlaki's deaths in detail, and the new editor, Yahya Ibrahim, begins with some words for all the doubters:

"To the disappointment of our enemies, issue 9 of inspire [sic] magazine is out against all odds al-Hamdolillah. The Zionists and the crusaders thought that the magazine was gone with the martyrdom of Shykh Anwar and brother Samir, may Allah have mercy upon their souls. Yet again, they have failed to come to terms with the fact that the Muslim ummah is the most fertile and most generous mother that gives birth to thousands and thousands of the likes of Shaykh Anwar and brother Samir. They will be displeased to know that we have been inundated with emails and requests by young inspired Muslims who are persistently offering their help, not just intellectually, but with whatever the mujahideen need in the West.

It has to be said that the quality of copyediting and translation has gone downhill since the deaths of the two American contributors. One article, teased on the cover, is bafflingly headlined, "It is of your freedom to ignite a firebomb." The layout is still pretty slick, though, and one writer claims in a eulogy for Khan that the late editor "taught me everything he knew about presentation of certain material."

With a stunning lack of self-awareness, the editors condemn the killing of Awlaki's son. "The only thing why Abdur-Rahmaan Bin Anwar Al Awlaki was 'guilty' was the fact that he was a son of Shaykh Anwar al Awlaki," they write. "But can we blame somebody because of being somebody's son?" (Perhaps they should refer to Awlaki's justification for the killing of innocent children in the previous issue.)

As usual, the issue is heavy on tactics and suggested operations, including attacks on "main political figures" in the West and "large strategic economic targets such as: The Stock Exchange, power and oil installations, airports, harbors, railroad systems," etc.

It is not only "your freedom to ignite a firebomb," as it turns out, but a great idea! Having seen the damage wrought by forest fires in the United States and Australia in recent years, Inspire suggests a number of ways an enterprising young jihadist could go about starting one.

The most intriguing piece may be an essay making the case for why Al Qaeda's violence is more justifiable than attacks by Christian extremists like Anders Behring Breivik. According to Inspire, "The right wing extremists apparently can kill their own people for as a ridiculous reason [sic] as ‘waking them up'. This is extremism at its peak." It really says something when al Qaeda thinks a group's methods are a bit severe.

In what may be his last written statement, an article by Awlaki titled "Spilling Out The Beans" discusses his radicalization in the United States and persecution by U.S. authorities. It includes this strange anecdote:

"In 1996 while waiting at a traffic light in my minivan a middle aged woman knocked on the window of the passenger seat. By the time I rolled down the window and before even myself or the woman uttering a word I was surrounded by police officers who had me come out of my vehicle only to be handcuffed. I was accused of soliciting a prostitute and then released. They made it a point to make me know in no uncertain terms that the woman was an undercover cop."

The story of Awlaki's two busts on prostitution charges has been told before and he denied them. It's a little odd that the current editors of Inspire would include a discussion of this incident in what may be Awlaki's final posthumous statement. In general, the editorial standards seem to have gone downhill since his death.

European leaders consider Euro Cup boycott over Tymoshenko

Posted: May 1, 2012, 9:21 pm by Joshua Keating

There seems to be a growing movement among European politicians to use the upcoming Euro cup -- co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland -- as an opportunity to take a stand on human rights conditions in Ukraine, particularly the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is now on a hunger strike and reportedly in poor health.

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Redding and EU commission President Jose Manuel Barroso both say they will boycott the event. Czech President Vaclav Klaus and German President Joachim Gauck have already canceled participation in summit planned in Ukraine for next week because of Tymoshenko's treatment. Chancellor Angela Merkel says she will not attend Euro 2012 unless Tymoshenko's conditions improve. The Dutch parliament has passed a resolution saying that no one representing the government should attend.

So far there's no talk of teams or players boycotting the games, though Bayern Munich president and German soccer icon Uli Hoeness did say that he "would have respect for every player who publicly took a stand on this issue."

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Ukrainian boxer and pro-democracy activist Vitali Klitschko said he did not support a boycott, but asked players to be aware of the conditions in Ukraine:

I am against the politicization of sports. But athletes also need to be clear about what is happening in a country in which they are competing. Think about the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. At the time, regime opponents were tortured and killed by the military junta, in some instances in the very stadiums where the World Cup matches were later played. Berti Vogts, the captain of the German national team at the time, said only that he hadn't seen a single political prisoner and that Argentina was a country where order was maintained.

Klitschko said he hoped the tournament would be "an excellent opportunity to draw the world's attention to the maladministration in our country."

After the Beijing Olympics, I'm a bit skeptical of the argument that events like these can effectively highlight human rights issues in a host country. The incentive of the organizers, sponsors, and players is to have a smooth-running competition, not provide opportunity for Jesse Owens moments. On the other hand, the recent Formula 1 Grand Prix in Bahrain did seem to draw some attention to a forgotten human rights crisis.

In any event, the Ukraine controversy may be just a prelude to Sochi 2014.

A little slice of Canada in Honduras?

Posted: May 1, 2012, 8:46 pm by Joshua Keating

Honduras is currently at work setting up a free-enterprise zone modeled on economist Paul Romer's "charter cities" concept. The controversial idea is basically that developing countries will set aside a parcel of land to be operated under its economic rules and judicial system with the assistance of a foreign government, essentially a Honduran Hong Kong.

Or perhaps a Honduran Vancouver. Romer was in Ottawa this week trying to win Canadian support for Honduras's Región Especial de Desarrollo. He has co-authored an op-ed in the Globe and Mail with President Porfirio Lobo's chief of staff, calling for Canada to play a role in the administration of the zone:

Many people from around the world would like access to the security and opportunity that Canadian governance makes possible. According to Gallup, the number of adults worldwide who would move permanently to Canada if given the chance is about 45 million. Although Canada can’t accommodate everyone who’d like to move here, it can help to bring stronger governance to many new places that could accept millions of new residents. The RED in Honduras is the place to start.[...]

By participating in RED governance, Canada can make the new city a more attractive place for would-be residents and investors. It can help immediately by appointing a representative to a commission that has the power to ensure that RED leadership remains transparent and accountable. It also can assist by training police officers.

The courts in the RED will be independent from those in the rest of Honduras. The Mauritian Supreme Court has agreed in principle to serve as a court of final appeal for the RED, but Canada can play a strong complementary role. Because the RED can appoint judges from foreign jurisdictions, Canadian justices could hear RED cases from Canada and help train local jurists.

Oversight, policing and jurisprudence are just a few of the ways in which Canada can help. Effective public involvement will also be required in education, health care, environmental management and tax administration. Such co-operation can be based on a fee-for-service arrangement in which the RED pays Canada using gains in the value of the land in the new reform zone.
The world does not need more aid. As the Gallup numbers show, it needs more Canada – more of the norms and know-how that lead to the rule of law, true inclusion and real opportunity for all.

The notion of Honduran citizens accepting the jurisdiction of a Canadian court, or a Mauritian one for that matter, still feels a bit far-fetched. But as Alex Tabarrok points out, Romer has already taken this idea a lot farther than anyone expected.

Morning Brief: Clinton leaves for China amid Chen Guangcheng crisis

Posted: May 1, 2012, 3:26 pm by Joshua Keating

Clinton leaves for China amid Chen Guangcheng crisis

Top news: U.S. Secretary Hillary Clinton left on Monday night for talks in China that are likely to be overshadowed by the case of dissident Chen Guangchen. The blind human rights activist is believed to be holed up at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, though neither side has acknowledged his presence there.

Clinton avoided comment on Chen prior to leaving for the talks, which will include efforts to win Chinese cooperation on issues ranging from the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, to Syria's human rights crackdown, to territorial claims in the South China Sea. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is also attending to discuss longstanding disputes over currency and market access. Without mentioning Chen specifically, Clinton promised to press Chinese leaders on human rights.

President Barack Obama also avoided mentioning Chen in a Monday press conference with visiting Japanese leader Yoshihiko Noda, saying only that “every time we meet with China the issue of human rights comes up.” Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell arrived in Beijing to discuss Chen's case with Chinese officials on Sunday.

According to allies of Chen, he will not ask for political asylum but will demand to remain in China to press on with his campaign for reform.

War on terror: Obama administration counterterrorism advisor John Brennan defended the legality of U.S. drone strikes in a speech.

Europe

A British parliamentary inquiry concluded that Rupert Murdoch is "not a fit person" to run a large corporation like News Corp.
National Front leader Marine Le Pen has declined to back President Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round of France's presidential election.
Italy plans to cut $5.5 billion in spending to avoid a sales tax increase.

Africa

Soldiers loyal to ousted Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure appear to be attempting a counter-coup.
Nigerian forces raided a suspected Islamist militant base in Kano.
Troops loyal to alleged war criminal Bosco Ntaganda took two towns in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Middle East

Imprisoned Bahraini activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja says he will continue his hunger strike.
At least 23 people were killed by violence in Syria on Tuesday, which is still technically under a U.N. sponsored ceasefire.
Former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced that she is resigning from the Knesset.

Americas

Mexico's congress passed a bill to compensate victims of crime.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said there are "clear indications" that FARC rebels are holding a French journalists hostage.
Before returning to Cuba for cancer treatment, President Hugo Chavez announced steps to withdraw Venezuela from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Asia

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Two suspected insurgents were killed in a joint Afghan-NATO raid in Eastern Afghanistan.
Workers staged Asia's largest May Day rally in Indonesia.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GettyImages

Saakashvili puts it all on the line

Posted: April 30, 2012, 1:14 am by Joshua Keating

An uncomfortable promise from Georgia's combative president in reference to the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as reported by RFE/RL:

Saakashvili said he was even willing to sacrifice parts of his body that Moscow has "shown interest in" -- a hint at then-President Vladimir Putin's infamous 2008 pledge to "hang Saakashvili by the balls."

"In addition, I am ready to cut off and send them those parts of my body which they have shown interest in more than once," Saakashvili said. "I am really ready to do it, and I say this without a hint of irony, as long as they pull out their forces from here and give Georgia's people -- its multiethnic population -- an opportunity to develop within the internationally recognized borders."

The comment, initially broadcast live on Georgian pro-government television, was removed from the interview's subsequent retransmissions.

On a more literal note -- I hope -- Saakashvili said he was willing to resign if Russia withdrew troops from the regions.

It seems like the president may be spending too much time with Donald Trump.

Live: 'Sex issue' authors Eltahawy and Sadjadpour speak at the New America Foundation

Posted: April 30, 2012, 10:31 pm by Joshua Keating

Live streaming by Ustream Among the articles in Foreign Policy's Sex Issue, none have generated as much debate as Mona Eltahawy's "Why Do They Hate Us?" and Karim Sadjadpour's "The Ayatollah Under the Bed(sheets)." The discussion will continue today in Washington, as both authors join in a conversation about their articles with FP editor-in-chief Susan Glasser. You can watch the event, co-hosted by our neighbors at the New America Foundation, through the livestream available here, beginning at 4 p.m. EST.

The Election 2012 Weekly Report: A post-Gingrich world

Posted: April 27, 2012, 11:53 pm by Joshua Keating

Biden goes on the attack, but doesn't ‘stick' the landing

Vice President Joe Biden continued to step into his role as the Obama campaign's leading national-security attack dog with a speech at New York University on Thursday that questioned Mitt Romney's credentials to serve as commander-in-chief and accused him of distorting the president's record. "If you're looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President Obama has handled what we inherited, it's pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," Biden said. He also again mocked Romney's suggestion that Russia is America's primary geopolitical foe and defended the administration's handling of the Iranian nuclear program, saying, "The only step we could take that we aren't already taking is to launch a war against Iran. If that's what Gov. Romney means by a 'very different policy,' he should tell the American people."

Unfortunately for Biden, the line of the speech that got by far the most coverage was his confident assertion that "the president has a big stick."

Rubio grabs the spotlight

The day before Biden's speech, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio made a "major foreign policy address" of his own at the Brookings Institution. The speech generated quite a bit of buzz thanks to suggestions that Rubio may be on the shortlist for Romney's running mate. (For the record, Rubio has repeatedly denied that he's interested in being vice president.)

But despite the expectation that Rubio would use the speech as an audition for a spot on the ticket, Rubio differed from Romney on topics including foreign aid, the use of force in Syria and Libya, and negotiating with Iran. Saying that he often feels more affinity with hawkish democrats than isolationist republicans in the Senate, Rubio joked that "on foreign policy, if you go far enough to the right, you wind up on the left."

The Syria debate

Sure enough, the very next day Rubio found himself in a tussle with fellow Senate Republicans over a resolution he had co-sponsored condemning the Bashar al-Assad regime's violence in Syria. GOP Senators including Richard Lugar and Bob Corker objected to language calling on Assad to step down. The debate highlighted a split in opinion within the party on Syria. House GOP members demanded assurances this week that the White House would notify Congress in accordance with the war powers act should military action be taken in Syria.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called his week for the U.N. Security Council to impose an arms embargo and other tough measures on Syria. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey also told Congress that the Pentagon would be ready to provide military options in Syria should it be required.

Romney has advocated support for the anti-Assad opposition, but stopped short of supporting military involvement -- breaking with more aggressive members of his party such as Sen. John McCain. Romney campaign foreign policy director Alex Wong said this week that the Obama administration has been "shamefully absent from this crisis" in Syria.

Newt out

After five devastating primary losses to Romney, Newt Gingrich's campaign announced on Wednesday that the candidate is finally dropping out ... though not until next Tuesday. A spokesman said Gingrich is "laying out plans now how as a citizen he can best help stop [an] Obama second term and win congressional majorities." It's thought that he will most likely endorse Romney.

The former speaker of the House ends his campaign having won two states and 137 delegates -- but he leaves behind a legacy of out-of-the-box ideas on topics ranging from the virtues of janitorial work to algae fuels to conquering the moon.

Just like Condi

A CNN poll this week found that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a narrow favorite among Republicans for Romney's VP pick. (Now teaching at Stanford, she has said repeatedly that she's not interested in the job.) Rice, at 26 percent, is followed by Rick Santorum, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio. Interesting, despite the Florida senator's moderate views on immigration and internationalist foreign policy, he's still the favorite among self-described Tea Party supporters.

The latest from FP:

Paul Miller makes the case for Gen. David Petraeus as vice president.

Responding to Biden's speech, Michael A. Cohen says the Democrats need to decide if Romney is George W. Bush or Michael Dukakis.

Romney campaign advisor Richard Williamson says the recent North Korean nuclear test was Obama's Jimmy Carter moment.

Aaron David Miller offers 5 reasons why he believes Obama has the election in the bag.

Joshua E. Keating thinks Rubio's speech was pitched more toward 2016 than 2012.

Scott Clement looks at whether Americans still hate the United Nations.

From Passport, the difference between a slip of the tongue and genuine ignorance.

The Carmen Sandiego election

Posted: April 26, 2012, 6:30 pm by Joshua Keating

Everyone seems to be having some fun at the expense of Romney campaign advisor Pierre Prosper, who referred to "Czechoslovakia" when discussing missile defense in a conference call with reporters. Lord knows we've done our share of foreign-policy gaffe-spotting around here and it's fair to expect candidates and their surrogates to understand the global issues they discuss, but this is kind of a cheap shot. I think it's important to emphasize the difference between slips of the tongue and actual displays of ignorance about the world.

Is it really likely that Prosper, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor, State Department staffer, and ambassador-at-large doesn't know Czechoslovakia broke up in 1992? Or is it more reasonable to assume that he simply slipped and said the name that had been in use for the first 40 years of his life? (John McCain also got in trouble with "Czechoslovakia" in 2008.) Similarly, is it more likely that President Obama doesn't know that "Maldives" and "Malvinas" are different places or that he just slipped and mentioned the wrong island chain that starts with Mal-? These errors would get a contestant kicked off "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" but they don't actually tell us much about a candidates' knowledge of the world.

The problem with Herman Cain's Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan moment was not that he can't immediately recall the name of every head of state, it's that he mocked the idea that such knowledge would ever be necessary. Sarah Palin would have deserved a lot more slack for the infamous Katie Couric interview if she had merely mixed up whether Putin was president or prime minister or some such slip. The problem was that she was clearly feigning having any sort of knowledge about the vitally important country right next door.

It's good that we want to test candidates' knowledge of world affairs, but a geography bee isn't the best way to do it. In this election cycle, there will be more than enough actual ignorance to go around.

Franklin Graham calls for U.S. airstrikes on Sudan

Posted: April 26, 2012, 4:56 pm by Joshua Keating

In a Washington Times op-ed, the evangelical leader and son of Billy Graham says U.S. airpower is the only way to stop the escalating violence in the Nuba mountains:

Now I am asking him and his administration to do something that may sound unusual for a preacher of the Gospel. I am asking him to use our Air Force to destroy Mr. Bashir’s airstrips - the airstrips his military uses to launch bombers that carry out daily attacks in the Nuba Mountains. The Nuba people don’t want American soldiers - they can fight for themselves. They just want to be free. But they have no defense against bombs dropping from the sky on their villages, schools and hospitals.

As a pilot with 40 years of experience, I can assure you that an airplane doesn’t do well with holes in the runway. I certainly am not asking the president to kill anyone, just to break up some concrete to prevent the bombers from taking off. I think that by destroying those runways, we can force Mr. Bashir to the negotiating table. This needs to happen soon because Sudan’s rainy season is coming. If we continue to turn our backs and don’t act, it will be too late for thousands of men, women and children. We need to make it possible for Samaritan’s Purse and other aid agencies to reach these suffering people. The coming rainy season and impassible muddy roads will leave us with airlifts as our only option. But with Sudan’s MiG fighter jets and Antonov bombers overhead, we simply can’t risk the lives of our staff.

In a 2011 interivew with Foreign Policy, Graham said that he "found Bashir to be somebody you could speak with, could negotiate with."

Morning Brief: Violence continues in Hama

Posted: April 26, 2012, 3:36 pm by Joshua Keating

Violence continues in Hama

Top news: Syrian activists claim that up to 70 people were killed in an explosion that flatted part of a residential neighborhood in the city of Hama. Activists claim the explosion was caused by government shelling or a scud missile attack. State media put the number killed at 16 and said the explosion came from a rebel bomb-making factory.

According to the opposition, more than 100 people have been killed in Hama in recent days, despite a U.N. brokered ceasefire. Violence has continued in the Syrian capital as well.

U.N. envoy Kofi Annan told the Security Council on Tuesday that Syrian troops had not withdrawn from population centers. Two U.N. observers have now returned to Hama ahead of a team of 300 that the U.N. would like to send. Syria's main opposition group is calling for a special Security Council session to discuss the ongoing violence in Hama.

France's foreign minister said on Wednesday that the U.N. should consider allowing international military action in Syria if the peace plan fails.

International justice: At the Hague, former Liberian President Charles Taylor was convicted on 11 counts of aiding and abetting war crimes in Sierra Leone during the 1990s. He is the first African head of state convicted by an international tribunal.

Asia

The New York Times reports that ousted politician Bo Xilai ran an extensive spying network on fellow Chinese leaders.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was found guilty of contempt.
Japanese power broker Ichiro Ozawa was acquitted of charges in a political financing scandal.

Middle East

The head of the Israeli Defense Forces said in an interview that he does not believe Iran will develop nuclear weapons.
The White House has approved the expanded use of drones in Yemen.
Egypt confirmed that former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq will be allowed to compete in the upcoming presidential election.

Africa

There has been an explosion at the headquarters of a major newspaper in Abuja, Nigeria.
China has agreed to provide South Sudan with loans and humanitarian aid but not a new oil deal.
Mali's interim prime minister formed a government.

Europe

Testifying before a government ethics inquiry, Rupert Murdoch apologized for the News of the World hacking scandal.
The Dutch caretaker government is scrambling to reach a budget deal before a Monday EU deadline.
Germany's president has canceled a trip to Ukraine over concerns about the health of jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

America

The Mexican government says it will investigate corruption claims involving Wal-Mart.
Brazil's congress passed a controversial new forests law.
Argentina's senate approved the nationalization of oil company YPF.

LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images

Haitian former soldiers demonstrate why Haiti probably shouldn't have an army

Posted: April 24, 2012, 1:10 am by Joshua Keating

Last year, Haitian President Michel Martelly announced plans to recreate the country's military. The army had been disbanded in 1995 after a decade that included its killing of some 3,000 people. Given that military coups have traditionally been more of a threat to Haiti's security than foreign invasion, a number of critics questioned whether a new army was really a good use of Haiti's scarce resources, rather than improving its regular police force so that it could take over policing responsibilities from the unpopular U.N. peacekeeping force.

The recent actions of a renegade group of former army officers, who are essentially attempting to take the elected government hostage in order to get their old jobs back, aren't exactly reassuring:

A rogue band of armed men pushing for revival of Haiti’s military are refusing to disband and clear out of old military bases, the leaders of the group said Tuesday, despite repeated orders from the government.

In a news conference at an army barracks just outside Haiti’s capital, several veterans of the defunct army said Haitian officials broke a promise by failing to appoint them to the helm of an interim force until the military is officially reinstated.[...]

The Haitian government has repeatedly ordered the former soldiers and their followers, which number about 3,500, to vacate the old bases they seized several months ago, but it has taken no concrete action. Since then, the rogue force has paraded around the country in pickup trucks and carried weapons as if on patrol.

Last week, about 50 men in military fatigues, some of them armed, disrupted a legislative session when they showed up to speak to lawmakers about the government's plans for them.

Jeff Frankel recently wrote for FP about why more countries should consider going without a standing army:

It's hard to quarrel with the need for a permanent military establishment in many countries. But in many others, a standing army is a bad deal all round. It doesn't make borders any more secure if neighbors respond by raising armed forces of their own. It creates the permanent threat of a military coup -- or, at very least, limits the range of policy options of civilian government. And of course, it costs resources, diverting money, foreign exchange earnings and manpower from conventionally productive activities (like making stuff people want).

Such arguments haven't carried much weight, though; once an army is created to meet a threat (real or imagined), it's almost impossible to get rid of it. But two developing countries have managed to remain military-free for generations. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948 after a bloody civil war -- a decision made in part because the United States believed its interests lay in blocking a return to power of the losing side. And Mauritius chose not to create an army after it was granted independence by Britain in 1968.

Obviously, it wouldn't work for every country. But Haiti seems like a textbook example of a place where an army would create more dangers than it prevented.

Herman Cain still doesn't know who the president of Uzbekistan is

Posted: April 24, 2012, 7:42 pm by Joshua Keating

Or rather, he did know at some point, but has now forgotten again. It comes at about the 2 minute mark:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The whole interview with the Daily Show's John Oliver is worth watching, particularly the speech Cain would give in the event of an alien invasion. (For what it's worth, I really wish that was an actual debate question.)

Business as usual for China and India?

Posted: April 24, 2012, 6:39 pm by Joshua Keating

If Pakistani leaders had hoped to profit from military tension between China and India following last week's long-range missile test, it looks like they're going to be disappointed. China yesterday agreed to begin importing basmati rice from India, a foodstuff it had previously bought exclusively from Pakistan. According to the Times of India, "Islamabad is known to have been persuading China not to allow Indian basmati because it will affect its already small export basket."

Kanupriya Kapoor of the Financial Times explains the significance of the move:

Basmati rice is currently traded at $1100 per tonne. As eating habits change with rising disposable incomes in the world’s second biggest economy, Sethia is confident Indian rice will find a place in China

“China wants rice because their per capita incomes are rising and they want to try new things,” he said. “there are some areas that consume long-grain rice so with effort, we can achieve some penetration of this market. We are a surplus market, so this is good for both countries.”

Trade between India and China grew nearly 20 per cent to hit a record high of $73.9bn in 2011, according to the India-China trade center, though the trade gap stood at about $27bn in China’s favour.

The military buildup between Asia's two superpowers doesn't seem likely to slow that growth down.

Morning Brief: Sudan bombs South Sudan as Bashir vows not to negotiate

Posted: April 24, 2012, 3:23 pm by Joshua Keating

Sudan bombs South Sudan as Bashir vows not to negotiate

Top news: Sudan continued its bombardment of South Sudan yesterday, with jets launching missiles into the state capital of Bentiu. Officials say eight bombs in total were dropped last night. There have also been reports that Sudanese troops have crossed the border into their recently independent Southern neighbor. *

South Sudan announced last week that it was withdrawing from the disputed Heglig border region in order to avoid all-out war, but the scope of the current attacks seem to go beyond Heglig, and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has vowed not to negotiate until all South Sudanese troops are out of Sudan since southern leaders “do not understand anything but the language of the gun and ammunition." Last week, he referred to the South Sudanese leadership as "insects" and vowed to drive them from power.

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir is currently in Beijing to lobby for Chinese diplomatic and economic report. He said that Sudanese actions amount to a declaration of war, though neither side has yet issued a formal declaration.

Since independence last year, the two countries have argued over territorial disputes, oil pipeline rights, and accusations of supporting rebel groups within each others' countries. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged both sides "to stop the slide toward further confrontation and... to return to dialogue as a matter of urgency."

Washington: President Obama outlined his administration's genocide prevention policies in a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Museum as well as announcing new sanctions on Syria and Iran.

Middle East

The Egyptian government rejected registration applications from eight U.S. NGOs.
A Syrian intelligence officer was reportedly killed in a car bombing in central Damascus.
Iran has disconnected some its Persian Gulf oil platforms from the Internet after reports of a cyberattack.

Europe

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced the resignation of his government after failing to agree on austerity measures.
The EU has suspended most of its sanctions on Myanmar.
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has reportedly gone on a hunger strike in prison.

Americas

A Pew reports confirms that more Mexicans are now leaving the United States than entering.
Wal-Mart may pay millions to resolve bribery allegations in Mexico.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called a state TV station to refute rumors that he had died while receiving cancer treatment in Cuba.

Africa

Nigeria's parliament is due to discuss a report revealing $6 billion in fraud related to the country's fuel subsidy.
A protester was killed during a separatist demonstration in Kenya's Mombasa region.
The International Criminal Court may investigate reports of atrocities in Mali.

Asia

A Philippine exploration firm has found more natural gas than expected in a disputed area of the South China Sea.
Chinese state media reported that former officials from Wukan have been punished for their town's high-profile rebellion.
Pakistan's Supreme Court is due to announce the verdict in the contempt trial of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani today.

Update: The timeline of these events has been updated since first posted.

ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images

Kazakh foreign minister thanks Borat for making benefit country's tourism

Posted: April 23, 2012, 9:08 pm by Joshua Keating

Seven years later, Kazakhstan is still talking about Borat. They now seem to have made peace with the whole thing:

"With the release of this film, the number of visas issued by Kazakhstan grew tenfold," local news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov as telling a session of parliament.

"I am grateful to 'Borat' for helping attract tourists to Kazakhstan," the foreign minister said.

Things have certainly changed since the film came out, when the Kazakh government attempted to ban not only the film but access to Sacha Baron Cohen's website.

Kazykhanov's statement also seems a little odd given the massive global branding campaign -- including heavy advertising aimed at tourists -- that the energy-rich nation has engaged in over the last few years. I'm actually not sure I buy that the increased interest in traveling to Kazakhstan is largely Borat-related. You would think they'd give themselves a little more credit.

Marine's moment

Posted: April 23, 2012, 7:31 pm by Joshua Keating

So much for the Mélenchon surge.

The far-left candidate in yesterday's French election came in fourth with a little over 11 percent of the vote. Though it was the best result by a "left of left" party since the Communist Georges Marchais took 15 percent of the vote in 1981, it was definitely eclipsed by the impressive showing of his arch-rival Marine Le Pen of the National Front. At 18 percent, Le Pen has shocked the French political establishment with 18 percent of the vote -- the Front's best showing ever. (In 2001, her father made it to the second round of the election but with a lower vote total.) The Front often exceeds its polling thanks to a kind of reverse Bradley effect in which French voters are embarrassed to tell pollsters they support the far right.

The strong showing by the far right might seem to be good news for Sarkozy in the second round. However, while 90 percent of Mélenchon voters say they'll hold their nose and vote for Hollande in the second round -- and the candidate himself has unambiguously endorsed Hollande -- the far right is not nearly as monolithic:

According to a poll published by Ipsos, a French market research company, 18% of National Front voters will vote for Hollande in the second round, while 60% will opt for Sarkozy.

22%, however, have not yet decided.

Le Pen has also not yet asked her supporters to vote for Sarkozy in the second round. That's likely going to mean a lot more pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment from Sarkozy in his last-ditch effort to make up ground -- and further legitimization of Europe's growing tide of Islamophobia.

Former Icelandic PM convicted for negligence over financial collapse

Posted: April 23, 2012, 6:38 pm by Joshua Keating

In 2009, Iceland's Geir Haarde became the first European leader to lose power as a result of the financial crisis. (Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte seems to be the latest.) He is now also the first country leader in the world convicted of negligence because of the crash, though he was cleared of three other charges and will face no jail time. Haarde's prosecution has unsurprisingly been controversial:

Mr Haarde pleaded not guilty and called the accusations “political vendetta” that would set a “terrible precedent”. “Nobody predicted that there would be a financial collapse in Iceland” in 2008, he said.

Criticism of the trial has been widespread throughout Iceland. Many questioned why the centre-left controlled parliament chose to put only Mr Haarde on trial while rejecting charges against Social Democratic ministers who were serving in government at the same time.

Others have criticised that fact that the trial was not televised and complained that much of the political elite of Iceland chose to support Mr Haarde with their testimony.

The case against him was based partly on the charge that he had ignored the economic recommendations of a government committee in 2006. The notion of prosecuting a politician for ignoring sound advice seems pretty odd in the U.S. political context, though under the principle of "ministerial responsibility" that, in theory at least, prevails in parliamentary systems, ministers are held responsible for the actions of their subordinates, even if they are not solely to blame.

Of course, criminal liability for an act of mere incompetence is another thing entirely. As I wrote in 2010, Haarde was charged under a century-old Icelandic law, which has never before been invoked, that "stipulates that ministers can be held responsible not just for actions that put the country in danger, but for not taking action to prevent that danger."

Other European leaders are probably safe from Haarde's fate. (Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is currently on trial for a different type of indiscretion.)

The good news is that the financial bleeding seems to have stopped in Iceland, which is expected to exceed euro area growth rates this year.

Decline Watch: The U.S. is getting less popular (but not where Republicans think)

Posted: April 19, 2012, 11:19 pm by Joshua Keating

Gallup and the Meridian International Center released their annual U.S. global leadership Report today. (You can find the full version here and highlights here.)

The big takeaway is that global approval of U.S. leadership in 2011 continued its slow slide since the excitement of Barack Obama's election -- though the country is still much more popular than it was in the last years of the Bush administration:

While some of luster of the Obama administration does seem to be wearing off, what's interesting is that it's not in the countries you might think, given the rhetoric of the presidential election. The "allies" that most frequently come up in Republican rhetoric still pretty much like us. Even after a contentious year in mideast diplomacy, approval for U.S. leadership in Israel is basically unchanged at 55 percent. In Britain, despite various perceived snubs, approval of U.S. leadership improved by 13 points. As for the countries that Obama has supposedly thrown under the bus as part of the Russia reset, Georgia and Poland both showed slight improvements.

The fall in support was actually driven by Africa, where approval fell by 10 percent last year but is still quite high at 74 percent, Latin America, where it fell by 6 percent, and European countries like France, Germany, Spain and Sweden, all of which posted double-digit declines in U.S. support. If, as Mitt Romney charges, “This president takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe," they don't seem very appreciative of it. I would guess that the culprit in Latin America is the perceived lack of change in U.S. policies on trade, immigration, and drugs under Obama. Africans might be upset that despite his Kenyan roots, the president hasn't made the region much of a priority in his foreign policy.

Gallup's data from the Middle East and North Africa is a little spotty, but there doesn't seem to have been that much of a change in approval following the Arab Spring -- the U.S. remains pretty unpopular.

The country with the biggest drop popularity was Liberia, where approval of the U.S. when down 25 points. Perhaps non-Ellen Johnson Sirleaf supporting Liberians were unhappy with Washington's tacit endorsement of the Nobel Prize winner in last year's election? That doesn't really seem like a big enough factor to explain that big a drop, so I'm guessing this was something a fluke.

Belgium saw the biggest improvement from 29 percent to 45 percent. Anyone have any guesses on how America got out of the Belgian dog house?

Is the left the real story in the French election?

Posted: April 19, 2012, 8:09 pm by Joshua Keating

In the lead-up to this weekend's French presidential election, there's been quite a bit of attention paid in the U.S. media (including some fine pieces on this site) to the impact of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen on the race. While Le Pen has no chance of winning, and little chance of even making it to the second round, her substantial support has pushed Nicolas Sarkozy to the right on questions of immigration and Islam.

But I wonder if, when the dust settles, the real story of this election might be the resurgence of the French "left of the left," in the person Left Party candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The 60-year-old ex-Trotskyite who left the labor party in 2008 when he felt it had moved to far to the center, favors confiscating income above 360,000 euros per year and outlawing layoffs by profitable companies. His message seems to have struck a chord in post-crash France. He is currently polling at around 15 percent, putting him in competition with Le Pen for third place. His appeal seems to extend not just to communists -- still a considerable demographic in the French electorate -- but to disenfranchised Socialist voters as well.

Aside from ideology, Mélenchon's blunt style -- "dickhead" and "bird brain" are among the insults he's publicly hurled at journalists who've gotten on his bad side -- couldn't be more of a contrast with the milquetoast Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande. Not surprisingly, a plurality of voters -- 21 percent -- say the former student radical who grew up in Algeria is the "most rock'n'roll" candidate. Sarkozy got 5 percent and only 1 percent picked Hollande. (Efforts to make Hollande's image a little hipper have been painfully awkward.)

A strong showing by Melenchon in the first round could push Hollande to continue his slow drift to the left, which has included a recent call for a tax rate of 75 percent for all income over 1 million euros. After two decades in which it seemed like a bit of a joke that center-left European parties were still calling themselves "socialists," the old-style left may be showing signs of life.

Morning Brief: India tests nuclear-capable missile that can reach Beijing

Posted: April 19, 2012, 3:26 pm by Joshua Keating

India tests nuclear-capable missile that can reach Beijing

Top news: India successfully tested a nuclear-capable missile on Thursday with a range of more than 3,100 miles, giving it the ability to strike Beijing or Eastern Europe. The test of the primarily Indian-built Agni-V was the crowning achievement of a new arms building effort undertaken with neighboring China in mind. (Agni IV pictured.) The new missile will be operational in two years.

Defense Minister A.K. Antony said the test indicated that India had “joined the elite club of nations.” Until now, only the permanent five Security Council members, plus Israel, were thought to have long-range nuclear missile capability. India is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but its nuclear program enjoys de facto international legitimacy under a 2008 deal with the United States.

Reaction from China was mixed. "China and India are large developing nations. We are not competitors but partners," said a foreign ministry spokesman. But the government-owned Global Times tabloid warned that "India should not overestimate its strength."

The development will highlight growing fears of an arms race in East Asia. China announced a double-digit increase in military spending in March while India recently became the world's number one arms importer.

Also on Thursday, South Korea announced that it had developed and deployed a missile capable of striking any target within North Korea.

Feature: The Colombian escort at the center of the Secret Service scandal speaks with the New York Times. Three agents are being forced out of the service.

Asia

The U.S. and NATO have finalized agreements on winding down the war in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials condemned that actions of troops who posed for photographs with the corpses of Afghan insurgents.
Aung San Suu Kyi's party is in a standoff with the Myanmar government over the wording of a swearing-in oath for newly elected lawmakers.

Middle East

At least 36 people were killed in a wave of bombings across Iraq on Thursday.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Syria is failing to adhere to a U.N. sponsored peace plan.
The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen.

Africa

The U.S. special envoy to Sudan condemned the South Sudanese seizure of a contested oil town. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir vowed to teach South Sudan a "final lesson by force" in response to the seizure.
Guinea-Bissau's new military junta says it will wait two years before holding elections.
Ousted Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure -- whose whereabouts have been unknown -- is at the Senegalese embassy in Bamako, according to Senegal's president.

Europe

The Irish parliament has begun debating a bill on allowing abortion in certain cases.
Spain's cabinet if meeting tomorrow to discuss possible retaliation for Argentina's seizure of YPF.
The European parliament backed a controversial plan to give the United States access to personal information about airline passengers.

Americas

More than 1,100 Cubans were detained during the Pope's recent visit.
Mexican police seized more than 250,000 bullets being smuggled into the country from the United States.
Thousands of rural workers in Honduras took part in coordinated land invasions.

Naveen Jora/India Today Group/Getty Images

Susan G. Komen foundation teams up with Uzbek dictator's daughter

Posted: April 18, 2012, 6:15 pm by Joshua Keating

Given that it's still reeling from the controversial, and eventually reversed, decision to suspend funding to Planned Parenthood -- fundraising is reportedly down 30 percent for some of its events -- you'd think breast cancer advocacy group Susan G. Komen for the Cure would want to steer clear of potential political controversy.

Evidently not. As Nathan Hamm notes at Registan, Komen is partnering with Fund Forum, a charity run by Gulnara Karimova, the socialite, part-time pop star daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, to sponsor a series of charity runs in Uzbekistan. In addition to her dad's atrocious and well-publicized human rights record, Gulnara herself has been implicated in a range of illegal business practices, including essentially taking over rival companies at gunpoint. Then there are disturbing reports of widespread forced sterilizations of women in Uzbek hospitals and evidence that's it's being encouraged by the authorities.

You might expect this sort of thing from the fashion industry, or say, Sting, but Komen should probably know better at this point.

Update: Apparently Gulnara's other big charity campaign these days is a program dubbed “1,000 weddings, 1,000 circumcisions.” So there's that.

Update 2: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} A Susan G. Komen representative has contacted us to clarify that the organization is partnering not with Fund Forum, but with the National Breast Cancer Association of Uzbekistan. The two organizations seem to share both web space and an address in Tashkent.

Fund Forum itself seems under the impression that it is sponsoring the event. It has declared itself a fundraising partner for the race and is featured its own name as a sponsor on posters along with Komen. A previous edition of the marathon was described GulnaraKarimova.com as "a brainchild of Gulnara Karimova."

What was really going on in that racist Swedish cake photo?

Posted: April 18, 2012, 5:34 pm by Joshua Keating

If you spent some time on the Internet yesterday, you've probably seen it already -- the photo of laughing Swedish culture minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth cutting into a cake designed as a racist caricature of an African woman. Or Jezebel succinctly put it, "Swedish Official Gleefully Cuts Racist Black Lady Cake, Delights Onlookers." More disturbingly, the cake was intended as a statement on female genital mutilation and Liljeroth was asked to whisper "Your life will be better after this!" before cutting into the crotch. The image has provoked outrage in Sweden's black community and calls for Liljeroth's resignation.

As it turns out, that may have been part of the idea. In a guest post at the always-worth-reading Africa Is A Country blog, Swedish music blogger Johan Palme gives some context for the event. Accoring to Palme, Lijeroth is "reviled by large parts of the art world for her culture-sceptic stance and for previously condemning provocative art in what many see as a kind of censorship," making the atmosphere already a bit tense at the celebration of World Art Day she was attending at Stockholm's Moderna Museet:

The cake is wheeled out and uncovered. The crowd stares, tittering nervously. The culture minister is placed at the crotch end, and starts cutting into the cake – when suddenly the head starts screaming in pain. It’s the artist, Makode Linde, whose own painted head is placed as the head of the cake. The crowd’s tittering erupts in nervous laughter; the uncomfortable humour of the situation, the classic Swedish fear of conflict, triggered by the surprise sound and movement. Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth tries to play along as best she can in what she sees as a “bizarre” situation, reciprocating the laughter.

And on the other side of the cake, placed in the narrow space in front of a glass wall, stands one of the minister’s fiercest critics, visual artist and provocateur Marianne Lindberg De Geer, camera at the ready. And she snaps pictures of the whole series of events, as the minister is egged into doing more outrageous things, performing for the crowd.

It’s of course no coincidence. The whole thing was carefully planned, a “mousetrap” as one Swedish artist puts it. And based on how much traction the picture of the event has garnered, it was a very efficient mousetrap indeed.

Who’s Makode Linde, who staged the whole event? He is a visual artist, and as such has continuously asked uncomfortable questions about race, racial stereotyping and his own position as a black man in a condescending elite art world. The golliwog figure is a consistent image in his artwork, being placed on everyday objects, on paintings grinning nervously at the king, gawking in horror from children’s faces, at times undergoing almost formalist destruction. But just as importantly: he’s a club promoter and DJ, one of Sweden’s most successful, who knows exactly how to manipulate crowds and their emotions.

Palme wonders if the picture of Liljeroth and crowd's nervous reaction was actually the work of art here, rather than cake itself. The full post is well worth reading. You can still question Liljeroth's reaction here, but what's shown in the photo is a bit more complicated than a government minister laughing at a "Racist Black Lady Cake."

Introducing Anna Badkhen's 'Afghanistan By Donkey'

Posted: April 17, 2012, 12:20 am by Joshua Keating

It's been another week of heartbreakingly grim violence in Afghanistan. On Monday, the so-called "spring fighting season" began with a coordinated 18-hour Taliban attack on Kabul. Today, the violence got -- if possible -- even more senseless, with reports of the poisoning of 150 schoolgirls in the northern Takhar province and an explosion at a maternity hospital in Khost.

The scale and cruelty of the violence can often feel incomprehensible, which makes incisive reporting like Anna Badkhen's all the more valuable. Her new e-book is now available for download.

Badkhen, a courageous war correspondent, decided to embed not with American troops but with the Afghan people in 2011. Throughout the year, she returns again and again to the country, traveling by foot, by taxi - and even by donkey - to the remote villages and hamlets of the Afghan North, reporting as the Taliban take over large swaths of territory and also on the unimaginable daily hardships of life in a place where even such basics as water, electricity, a doctor, and a working school are impossible luxuries.

It's a place so remote that even the death of Osama bin Laden barely registers, where war is taken as a fact of life, along with the rituals of mourning and celebration that Badkhen is allowed to witness up close. As bestselling author Peter Bergen says in the special accompanying introduction, it is "a bleak tale told by an expert storyteller."

Maldives, Malvinas, one of those.

Posted: April 17, 2012, 11:51 pm by Joshua Keating

The president appeared to be having some difficulty with his archipelagos in this clip from a press conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. At 20:30, he means to say "Malvinas," the Spanish name for the Falkland Islands, but instead says "Maldives," an Indian-ocean nation:

Some right-wing bloggers are making the case that the real issue here is that Obama was favoring the Argentinean position on the disputed island chain by using, or at least attempting to use, the Spanish name -- yet another anti-British slight. But if you watch the whole video, Obama was responding to a question from a Spanish-speaking reporter who used the word "Malvinas" and his answer was strenuously neutral:

"And in terms of the Maldives or the Falklands, whatever your preferred term, our position on this is that we are going to remain neutral. We have good relations with both Argentina and Great Britain, and we are looking forward to them being able to continue to dialogue on this issue. But this is not something that we typically intervene in."

That's not good enough for some British observers, who want the U.S. to vocally support the British position on the islands, but the administration has made it pretty clear it's not interested in going near this dispute -- a hot-button issue in Latin American politics.

But in any case, it's definitely not the Maldives.

Julian Assange's TV debut

Posted: April 17, 2012, 11:19 pm by Joshua Keating

The first episode of Julian Assange's new TV show, The World Tomorrow, premiered on RT today with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as the first guest. Aside from a quick intro and a goofy theme song by M.I.A., it's a pretty spartan affair, consisting solely of Assange and his translators speaking with Nasrallah over skype. The newsiest quote was probably Nasrallah's fairly staunch defense of Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on protesters:

From the beginning of the events in Syria, we’ve had constant contact with the Syrian leadership. We’e spoken as friends, giving each other advice about the importance of carrying out reforms. Right from the beginning, I personally found that President Assad was very willing to carry out radical reforms. This used to reassure us regarding the positions that we took.[...]

We contacted even elements of the opposition to encourage them and to facilitate the process of dialogue with the regime. These parties rejectged dialoguel. Right from the beginning we’ve had a regime that is willing to undergo reforms and open to dialogue. On the other side, you have an opposition that is not prepared for dialogue and is not prepared to accept any reforms. All it wants is to bring down the regime.

The house-arrested Assange is a fairly generous interviewer by cable news standards, letting his guest do most of the talking. The questions were mostly softballs along the lines of Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} "What was your earliest memory as a boy?," "How did you manage to keep your people together under enemy fire?" and Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} "Why do you think the United States government is so scared of [Hezbollah satellite network] al-Manar?

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Things got a bit odd with Assange's last question, in which he asked the reglious extremist, "Isn’t Allah, or the notion of God, the ultimate superpower? Shouldn’t you as a freedom fighter also seek to liberate people from the totalitarian concept of a monotheistic god?" Not surprisingly, Nasrallah didn't buy the premise of the question.

It wasn't the most penetrating interview -- interestingly, there was only one question about the contents of a WikiLeaks cable and Nasrallah denied the veracity of it -- but that's probably why Nasrallah was willing to talk with him in the first place. (According to Assange, this was his first interview with "western" media since the 2006 war with Israel.) If he can keep getting the kind of high-profile guests who would never go near a mainstream journalist with a ten-foot poll, the show will probably continue to be worth watching.

Who would you like to see sit down with Assange next?

Morning Brief: Bo Xilai reportedly blocked murder investigation of wife

Posted: April 17, 2012, 3:20 pm by Joshua Keating

Bo Xilai reportedly blocked murder investigation of wife

Top news: More details are coming to light in the murder and corruption scandal that has rocked China's ruling elite. Reuters is reporting that former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai had allowed and then tried to block an official investigation into allegations that his wife was behind the murder of a British businessman. Neil Heywood, who was found dead on Nov. 15 and is now believed to have been poisoned, had allegedly been threatening to expose a plan by Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, to move money out of the country.

Bo's police chief, Wang Lijun, reportedly confronted Bo with evidence of Gu's involvement on Jan. 18 and was first allowed to proceed with his investigation before Bo quashed it several days later. Wang apparently attempted to seek asylum at the U.S. consulate on Feb. 6 before being arrested.

Gu and Wang are currently in custody while Bo has not been seen in public since March. The scandal involving Bo, once seen as a shoe-in for a senior party leadership post, has exposed what some observers have called the largest rift within the party since Tiananmen Square. While not mentioning Bo specifically, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao called corruption the greatest threat to the party in an interview with a respected political journal this week.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to raise the issue of Heywood's death in a meeting with a senior Chinese official at Downing Street this week. Chinese officials initially said that Heywood, who had lived in China for 10 years, died as a result of excessive alcohol consumption, an explanation accepted by the British embassy and his family. The British government has reportedly decided to allow Heywood's Chinese widow to enter the country if she wishes.

Scrutiny has also fallen on Bo's son Bo Guagua, a Harvard student whose flamboyant lifestyle has reportedly irritated party leaders.

Development: U.S. candidate Jim Yong Kim was selected to lead the World Bank.

Asia and Pacific

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that Australia will withdraw from Afghanistan earlier than planned.
The U.S. and Philippines began joint military exercises.
The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned North Korea's rocket launch but stopped short of new sanctions.

Middle East

A team of six U.N. observers set up headquarters in Damascus.
The Israeli military has suspended a soldier who was videotaped beating a pro-Palestinian activist.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said his country never promised the U.S. it would hold off on attacking Iran while nuclear talks are taking place.

Americas

The Argentinian government is seizing a majority stake in the country's largest oil company, provoking threats of retaliation from Spain. .
Prisoners at a Brazilian jail have released more than 400 hostages taken during a riot.
A magnitude-6.7 earthquake hit central Chile.

Europe

Accused mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik lashed out at the Norwegian government on the first day of his trial.
The Spanish government threatened to seize budget control of several regions if they do not mee budget targets.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is denying allegations that he tried to sell a nuclear reactor to Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2010.

Africa

Coup leaders in Guinea-Bissau have shut down the country's borders and airport. The African Union has suspended the country's membership.
The politicians were arrested in connection with the allegedly fraudulent purchase of a presidential plane in Cameroon.
Sudan's parliament voted to declare South Sudan a "enemy state."

MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images

There are a lot of ways to be disqualified from running for president in Egypt

Posted: April 16, 2012, 10:15 pm by Joshua Keating

After Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate last year, I wrote a short explainer piece looking at constitutions around the world and what they require in terms of presidential eligibility. The topic is back in the news this week after the popular Islamist candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail was disqualified from Egypt's presidential election after it was revealed that his mother was an American citizen.

As it turns out, the provisional constitution that the SCAF government adopted in March 2011 is oddly specific when it comes to eligibility requirements, even banning foreign spouses:

(Article 26)
It is required for whoever is elected president of the republic to be an Egyptian who has never held another citizenship, born of two Egyptian parents who have never held another citizenship enjoying his political and civil rights, not married to a non-Egyptian, and not falling under the age of 40 years.

A lot of this is new. Egypt's previous constitution, adopted in 1971 by Anwar Sadat, makes no mentions of previous citizenships or spouses:

Article 75

The person to be elected President of the Republic should be an Egyptian citizen born to Egyptian parents and should enjoy civil and political rights.

His age must not be less than 40 Gregorian years.

The SCAF constitution also added the requirement that candidates demonstrate the support of "at least 30,000 citizens, who have the right to vote, in at least 15 provinces whereby the number of supports in any of the provinces is at least 1,000." That requirement was the grounds for disqualifying the candidacy of former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who apparently fell 31 signatures short.

King Juan Carlos's not-so-excellent vacation

Posted: April 16, 2012, 8:13 pm by Joshua Keating

In his classic essay Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell describes an experience he had as a colonial police officer in Burma. Under public pressure from a crowd of townspeople, he puts down an out-of-control elephant against his own wishes, describing it as the moment he "first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East." As the people of the town debate the merits and legality of his actions, he wonders "whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool."

It's tempting to wonder if any similarly penetrating insights or self-reflections have come to Spanish King Juan Carlos as he lies in the hospital, having injured his hip on an elephant shooting trip in Botswana that has ignited a firestorm of controversy.

In addition to being about the least politically correct way to spend your vacation (was the baby seal-clubbing junket all booked up?) the optics of this were pretty terrible at a time when more than half of young Spaniards are out of work and Spanish banks are facing yet another downgrade. Plus, it turns out that the king -- who is Spain's official head of state -- didn't inform the government that he was leaving the country and might have used public funds in the process.

Some leftist parties are calling for the king to abdicate or hold a referendum on returning to a republic. That doesn't seem to likely at the moment, but the king may still want to stick to the beach next time if he doesnt want to his country's surging ranks of unemployed.

The Election 2012 Weekly Report: Sayonara Santo

Posted: April 13, 2012, 9:18 pm by Joshua Keating

Santorum drops out

Rick Santorum, the last credible rival for the GOP nomination, dropped out of the race on Wednesday leaving a clear path for front-runner and presumptive nominee Mitt Romney. "This game is a long, long, long way from over," Santorum told supporters. "We are going to continue to go out there and fight to make sure that we defeat President Barack Obama." Notably, Santorum did not mention Romney in his concession.

With 651 delegates, Romney may have the contest all wrapped up, but nobody appears to have told Newt Gingrich, who still vows to stay in the race until Romney collects the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. "I want to do what I do best, which is talk about big solutions and big approaches," Gingrich told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I want to keep campaigning." But $4.5 million in debt, Gingrich's campaign suffered a further indignity this week when its $500 check for the filing fee to appear on the Utah primary ballot bounced.

North Korea

On Thursday night (EDT), North Korea attempted -- but failed -- in an attempt to launch a satellite into orbit. Though the botched launch of the long-range missile, which broke apart before entering orbit, was a humiliation for North Korea's young leader Kim Jong Un, it also essentially scuttled a year of diplomatic outreach by the Obama administration, which culminated in a now-nullified deal on Feb. 29 under which Pyongyang agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment program in exchange for food aid.

The Romney campaign was quick to respond with a statement saying that the launch demonstrated the "incompetence" and weakness of the Obama administration's foreign policy. "Instead of approaching Pyongyang from a position of strength, President Obama sought to appease the regime with a food-aid deal that proved to be as naive as it was short-lived," he said.

A cold shoulder to Brazil

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was in Washington on Monday for a White House meeting with Barack Obama. But in contrast to her fellow BRICS leaders Hu Jintao and Manmohan Singh, arguably the second most powerful leader in the Western hemisphere got only a 2-hour meeting with the president on a day dominated by the White House lawn Easter Egg roll. The Brazilian government has repeatedly criticized Washington for monetary and interest rate policies that they say unfairly advantage U.S. exports and for visa requirements for Brazilian travelers that take up to 35 days to process.

The two leaders will meet again this weekend at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.

Afghan war

Public support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low according to a new Washington Post-ABC poll, with only 30 percent of respondents saying it has been worth the effort and expenditure. For the first time, a majority of Republicans do not approve of the war. As to the president's leadership, 48 percent of those polled approve of Obama's handling of the war, while 43 percent disapprove. In a sign of an accelerated effort to transfer responsibility to Afghan forces, the United States agreed this week to hand over control of the controversial nighttime raids that were once seen as critical to winning the war.

Numbers game

Romney may have a steep hill to climb if he aims to win the foreign-policy fight in the campaign. New polling shows that voters trust Obama over the GOP frontrunner by a 15 percent margin. Writing for Foreign Policy, Washington Post polling analyst Scott Clement notes that "Romney's weakness on foreign policy doesn't appear to result from Obama's strengths. Americans give Obama middling ratings on international affairs overall: 47 percent approve while 44 percent disapprove."

After the bruising primary, Romney appears to have sketched out a decidedly hawkish platform on foreign policy. Moving into the general election, with Americans increasingly skeptical of military action abroad, it remains to be seen whether the candidate will moderate his views to appear to undecided voters.

What to watch for:

Latin American summits are typically a good showcase for some outlandish behavior. Obama's opponents will likely be on the lookout to see how the president interacts with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. He was criticized for embracing the leftist leader in 2009.

The latest from Foreign Policy:

Aaron David Miller says the notion that presidents have more "flexibility" to act in their second terms is a myth.

Will Imboden gives six reasons we should hope Obama's not more flexible.

Daniel Drezner questions Romney's seriousness on foreign policy.

Michael A. Cohen looks at who's leading on the big international issues that will define the contest between Romney and Obama.

Joshua E. Keating looks back at the highlights of the Santorum campaign.

Chinese moviegoers won't get to see Kate Winslet's breasts in 3-D

Posted: April 12, 2012, 9:06 pm by Joshua Keating

The 3-D rerelease of James Cameron's Titanic may be breaking box office records in China, but some viewers are upset that one particular scene -- you know the one! -- didn't make it past the censors:

Some were upset about missing out on the romantic but controversial scenes in which Kate Winslet posed nude for sketches. Internet forums and microblogging sites were abuzz with criticism of the censorship.

"I've been waiting almost 15 years, and not for the 3D icebergs," said a post.

Given the hefty $24 ticket price, you can understand the guy's frustration. The official explanation from China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television didn't exactly help:

Considering the vivid 3D effects, we fear that viewers may reach out their hands for a touch and thus interrupt other people's viewing. To avoid potential conflicts between viewers and out of consideration of building a harmonious ethical social environment, we've decided to cut off the nudity scenes.

Good news for DVD bootleggers, I guess.

Canada may launch government-backed bitcoin competitor

Posted: April 12, 2012, 8:52 pm by Joshua Keating

Writing last year on the peer-to-peer digital currency Bitcoin, I noted that while "the disruptive power of Bitcoin on banks and central governments has surely been overstated, but these institutions might be better served to take its emergence as a warning rather than a reassurance: They may not be the only game in town forever."

It seems that at least one country is taking the Bitcoin phenomenon seriously: Canada. The Canadian mint is launching research and development on its own "virtual currency" with the tasty-sounding name MintChip. Jesse Brown of MacLeans explains:

Like BitCoin, it’s as anonymous as cash, leaving no electronic record of who paid what to who. Unlike BitCoin, it’s backed by a central authority, which is bad news for the anarcho-crypto Illuminati-fearing libertarian crowd, but good news for people who actually use it. Will it be hacked? Probably. But a currency guaranteed by a wealthy and stable mint can sustain a certain amount of fraud without collapsing. The Royal Canadian Mint has launched an app challenge to kickstart MintChip.

I suspect that a lot of potential users -- not just "the anarcho-crypto Illuminati-fearing libertarian crowd" -- are going to wonder just how anonymous a government-backed electronic payment method will be. I'd imagine there will be at least some safeguards to prevent the underground drug markets that have given Bitcoin a bad name.

Whatever happens, it should be an interesting experiment to watch. This is been a month of currency innovation for Canada, which announced it was eliminating the penny last week. It still has a ways to go to catch up with increasingly-cashless Sweden though.

Update: I neglected to mention the glow-in-the-dark dinosaur coin. The hits just keep coming from those wild and crazy guys at the Canadian Mint.

Guess who else got their hands on some Libyan weapons?

Posted: April 12, 2012, 8:31 pm by Joshua Keating

Christian Caryl wrote yesterday on the possibility that the collapse of Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime in Libya -- and the flood of suddenly available weaponry that resulted -- may be at the root of Mali's current crisis. Not surprisingly, as Reuters reports today, the Tuareg rebels may not be the only armed group in North Africa that has come into a post-Qaddafi weapons windfall:

"We found that Libyan weapons are being sold in what is the world's biggest black market for illegal gun smugglers, and Somali pirates are among those buying from sellers in Sierra Leone, Liberia and other countries," said Judith van der Merwe, of the Algiers-based African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism.

"We believe our information is credible and know that some of the pirates have acquired ship mines, as well as Stinger and other shoulder-held missile launchers," Van der Merwe told Reuters on the sidelines of an Indian Ocean naval conference. [...] The information was gathered from interviews with gun smugglers, pirates and other sources, said Van der Merwe.

Van der Merwe also notes that while the total number of pirates attacks seem to be down this year, the individual ransoms paid are increasing. Ship mines and missile launchers would seem to be a substantial upgrade for the pirate arsenal.

Morning Brief: North Korea rocket launch nears

Posted: April 12, 2012, 3:25 pm by Joshua Keating

North Korea rocket launch nears

Top news: North Korea's launch of a new long-range rocket appears imminent, with the country's government announcing that it has begun fueling. The U.S. is preparing a diplomatic response that will include the suspension of food aid and an effort to rally worldwide condemnation. However, diplomatic options are limited and will likely not include further sanctions on the U.N. Security Council as the U.S. looks to preserve its political capital for further actions against Iran or Syria.

The launching would signal the failure of a deal reached just six weeks ago between Washington and Pyongyang under which the North Koreans agreed to suspend work on uranium enrichment and allow international inspections in return for food aid. North Korea claims the planned launch, commemorating the 100th birthday of Kim Il-sung, is intended to put a peaceful satellite into orbit, but foreign governments incluing the United States and China say it will violate the country's international obligations.

The rocket is set to launch between today and Monday and its flight path will take it south between the Philippines and Japan. Both countries have vowed to shoot it down if it threatens their territory.

In other developments this week, leader Kim Jong Un was named first secretary of the party, a newly created position that analysts believe is now North Korea's top leadership position. His father Kim Jong Il was posthumously named "eternal general secretary" of the party.

Syria: The deadline for a U.N. backed ceasedfire passed today and appears to be holding for now.

Middle East

An Egyptian court declined to disqualify conservative presidential candidate Hazem Saleh Abu Ismail because of his mother's American citizenship.
The Tunisian government has reversed a ban on demonstrations in the capital's central thoroughfare.
Eight militants were reported killed in clashes in Southern Yemen.

Africa

Dioncounda Traore was sworn in as the interim president of Mali.
South Sudan says it has taken over a disputed border town.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has returned from a trip to Singapore, seemingly in good health.

Asia

China and the Philippines are in a diplomatic standoff over territorial claims in the South China Sea.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's party will keep its majority after parliamentary elections.
In the wake of the Bo Xilai affair, the Chinese government has scheduled political schooling sessions on military bases.

Europe

Greece will hold snap elections in Early May.
Turkey ordered the arrest of dozens of former military officers.
A new poll suggests the German Pirate Party may have overtaken the Green Party in popularity in Germany.

Americas

Shell Oil is investigating a 10-mile oil sheen that has appeared in the Gulf of Mexico.
Nine trapped Peruvian miners were rescued safely.
Two large earthquakes have hit Mexico in the last 24 hours.

PEDRO UGARTE/AFP/Getty Images

Putin supports new term limits ... for the next guy

Posted: April 11, 2012, 5:51 pm by Joshua Keating

Vladimir Putin says he wouldn't mind amending Russia's constitution to prevent future presidents from doing what he did -- returning to the presidency for a non-consecutive third term:

On Wednesday, during a Q&A session in Parliament, Putin said it would be "reasonable" to remove the mention of consecutive terms. But he added that this would not affect him because such a legislation cannot be retroactive — implying that his third term would considered his first term under the new law.

"Once it's passed, I will have a chance to work for the next two terms. There's no problem here," he said in televised remarks.

Now he tells us.

Turkmenistan dictator presides over week of (his own) happiness

Posted: April 11, 2012, 5:43 pm by Joshua Keating

When Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov took over as president of Turkmenistan in 2005, there were hopes that the reserved former dentist would take steps to loosen his country's autocracy and dismantle the over-the-top personality cult that had surrounded his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov.

No such luck. In addition to continuing the country's atrocious human rights record, Berdymukhamedov is exhibiting some signs of megalomania including a national “Week of Health and Happiness” that seems entirely devoted to promoting his own hobbies.

In addition to ordering that his desert country, where summer temperatures can reach 120 degrees, form an ice hockey league, he took a page out of Sacha Baron Cohen's book by unexpectedly appearing in a time-trial car race last weekend and winning it. It goes on:

In previous outings, Berdymukhamedov has been seen jogging, playing volleyball, riding horses, cycling, practicing judo and taekwondo, and shooting at the firing range.

In the nonsporting field, state media has reported on Berdymukhamedov, a 54-year old trained dentist, removing a tumor from a cancer patient and flying a plane.

Berdymukhamedov was the subject of one of the snarkiest of WikiLeaks cables, which noted that he "does not like people who are smarter than he is. Since he’s not a very bright guy, our source offered, he is suspicious of a lot of people."

Decline Watch: U.S. Army fishes for compliments on Twitter

Posted: April 10, 2012, 1:33 am by Joshua Keating

What exactly are the U.S. Army's Twitter minions thinking here:

First of all, "RT if you agree" is only acceptable Twitter usage if you're 14 and shouting out fellow members of Team Jacob.

Second, not "strongest" or "most powerful," or "mightiest," but "most decisive"? That's all $250 billion buys us?

Third, why are they fishing for compliments on Twitter? Feels kinda insecure.

Ball's in your court, PLA.

WikiLeaked cable: Invisible Children helped Ugandan security forces arrest government opponent

Posted: April 10, 2012, 12:22 am by Joshua Keating

Just days after releasing its new video, Invisible Children -- the U.S.-based NGO behind the phenomenally successful "Kony 2012" campaign -- has yet again found itself in the midst of controversy over a U.S. diplomatic cable released last year by WikiLeaks, which reports that the group cooperated with the Ugandan military to facilitate the arrest of a former child soldier who was allegedly involved in the formation of a new rebel group.

The cable, released as part of WikiLeaks' massive "Cablegate" series, was sent on June 11, 2009, and signed by then ambassador Steven Browning. Titled, "GAMES THE ACHOLI DIASPORA CONTINUE TO PLAY," it concerns reports of a "new rebellion in northern Uganda" organized by members of the Acholi ethnic group, of which Joseph Kony is also a member. The cable describes Ugandan government reports of a "new resistance group called the Peoples' Patriotic Front (PPF)" that had "begun stockpiling weapons in the districts of West Nile" and was attempting to win support of Acholis abroad for a new effort to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni.

In early 2009, the Ugandan army arrested a number of people alleged to be involved in plots by the PPF (originally known as the Uganda Patriotic Front or UPF) to attack military targets, including Patrick Komakech, who had reportedly been impersonating senior LRA commanders on behalf of the new rebel group. Komakech, reportedly a former LRA child soldier, had been involved with Invisible Children for some time and appeared in several of its videos. (A 2007 Des Moines Register story describes a bike trip he and other former child soldiers took across Iowa organized by American missionaries.)

According to the cable, it was Invisible Children that gave the government the tipoff on where to find Komakech:

The latest plot was exposed when the Government received a tip from the U.S. non-governmental organization (NGO) Invisible Children regarding the location of Patrick Komekech. He was wanted by the security services for impersonating LRA leaders to extort money from government officials, NGOs, and Acholi leaders. Komekech is purportedly a former child soldier abducted by the LRA. Invisible Children had featured him in its documentaries. Invisible Children reported that Komekech had been in Nairobi and had recently reappeared in Gulu, where he was staying with the NGO. Security organizations jumped on the tip and immediately arrested Komekech on March 5. He had a satellite telephone and other gadgets, which were confiscated when security forces picked him up.

Komakech is currently facing treason charges, along with over a dozen other alleged PPF members.

While the cable has been online for months, its contents seem to have been first reported on Sunday by the obscure New York-based website Black Star News under the inflammatory headline, "Invisible Children, Makers of Kony2012, Spied for Ugandan regime." The story has been picked up in the Ugandan media as well.

Invisible Children has been criticized by a number of observers in the United States and Uganda for working with the Ugandan government -- which has itself been implicated in a number of human rights abuses -- as part of its campaign to apprehend Kony. The group responded to this critique last month on its website, noting that it "does not defend any of the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ugandan government" and "none of the money donated through Invisible Children has ever gone to support the government of Uganda," but that nonetheless, "The Ugandan military (UPDF) is a necessary piece in counter-LRA activities."

Komakech, however, was not alleged to have been a member of the LRA at the time of his arrest. And some Uganda watchers have suggested that Museveni's government may be playing up the threat from the PPF to distract from more pedestrian problems of governance, now that the LRA threat has been largely neutralized in Uganda. The diplomatic cable itself suggests that "Several sources outside the security services say that various Government officials may be overplaying the level of threat posed by the rebel group for their own interests."

Invisible Children Uganda Spokesperson Florence Ogola was quoted in Uganda's Daily Monitor newspaper yesterday denying the truth of the cable. "That is not true. We are not involved in anything to do with security. We only deal with development," she said. She described the allegations as part of the "propaganda" campaign against the group.

Felix Kulayigye, a spokesperson for the Ugandan People's Defense Force, also told the paper, "That's a lie. Komakech was arrested in broad day light and we didn't need a muzungu [foreigner] to tell us where he was."

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In an e-mailed statement to Foreign Policy, a spokesperson for Invisible Children did not elaborate on whether it had played a role in Komakech's arrest, but did say it had discussed his case with the U.S. Embassy:

"In 2009, Invisible Children was contacted by a member at the US Embassy in Kampala regarding Patrick Komakech, a former LRA combatant who Invisible Children had been supporting in attempts to assist with his personal recovery and academic development, in keeping with Invisible Children's mandate to provide assistance to individuals affected by LRA violence. At the time, it was brought to our attention that Mr. Komakech and a group of others were allegedly involved in activities that could be jeopardizing the lives of civilians and putting the organization and its staff at risk.

"Invisible Children was deeply saddened to learn of these allegations; the organization was cooperative in providing information to the US Embassy regarding the nature of our relationship with and academic support to Mr. Komakech. In light of the severity of these allegations, the organization severed all ties immediately with Mr. Komakech. In this case and as always, Invisible Children acts in good faith to preserve the integrity of our programming and uphold the protection of human rights in the communities we work."

Our favorite Rick Santorum moments

Posted: April 10, 2012, 10:09 pm by Joshua Keating

Rick Santorum announced today that he is ending his campaign for president, which will spare him the possible humiliation of losing his home state of Pennsylvania to Mitt Romney at the end of this month. Credit where it's due, the former senator ran a remarkably impressive campaign. Having lost his last senate election by a whopping 18 points, Santorum seemed like something of an afterthought in the race until literally days before the Iowa primary. He proceeded to win 11 states and rack up 275 delegates, looking for a time like he had a real chance to beat Romney, or at least force a contested convention.

Santorum's campaign will also be remembered for some downright bizarre utterances on foreign policy. Here's a few of the most memorable:

Dutch death panels

Shortly before the Missouri primary, Santorum -- arguing against Barack Obama's healthcare law -- made some rather startling claims about the medial system in the Netherlands, claiming that 1 in 20 deaths in the country were caused by forced euthanasia, and that elderly Dutch wear bracelets that say "do not euthanize me" and "don't go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they're afraid because of budget purposes that they will not come out of that hospital if they go into it with sickness."

When asked by a Dutch reporter where the candidate had gotten these alarming facts, a campaign spokeswoman would only say, "It's a matter of what's in his heart."

Declaring war on China

If China thinks Mitt Romney's rhetoric is bombastic, they should be glad that won't have to contend with President Santorum. During a discussion of Chinese currency policy during a debate in October, the candidate unleashed this one:

"You know, Mitt, I don't want to go to a trade war, I want to beat China," he said. "I want to go to war with China and make America the most attractive place in the world to do business."

Santorum was a marginal enough candidate at the time that Chinese state media evidently didn't deem it worthy of a response.

The Arab Spring should have started in Iran

Santorum may have "recognized the looming threat of Iran's nuclear ambitions for nearly a decade," but he seems fuzzy on some basic facts about the country's population. In a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition last July, he criticized President Obama's policies in the Middle East, saying, “we see an Arab Spring that should have been a real Arab Spring starting in 2009 with the protests in Iran.”

Yes, because the Arab Spring would have been much better without all of the Arabs.

The inadvertant one-state solution

In a video from last November that surfaced around the time of the Iowa caucuses, Santorum defends Israel's West Bank settlements to a young voter, but seems to accidentally contradict official Israeli policy.

"All the people that live in the West Bank are Israelis, they're not Palestinians," he says. "There is no ‘Palestinian.'"

He should probably check with Tel Aviv before conferring Israeli citizenship on 4 million Palestinians, or whatever he wants to call them.

The Jelly Belly address

This wasn't so much about what he said as where he said it. For some reason, with his campaign starting to sputter, the candidate seemed to think that a national security address at the Jelly Belly headquarters in California would be a good idea. Yes, Ronald Reagan loved jelly beans. But the Gipper also had the good sense not to deliver the "Evil Empire" speech into a microphone with a Jelly Belly logo on it.

See also: The greatest foreign-policy hits of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry.

Free Ozzie Guillen!

Posted: April 10, 2012, 6:11 pm by Joshua Keating

The newly revamped Miami Marlins just announced that they are suspending their new manager, Ozzie Guillen, for five games because of this comment made in a recent Time magazine interview:

"I respect Fidel Castro," Guillen said in the article. "You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that son of a bitch is still there."

Obviously, praising Fidel Castro in Miami is not really a great way to endear yourself to the hometown crowd. But in partial defense of Guillen, he didn't say Castro was a great leader, just that it's impressive that he's still alive and -- somewhat -- in power. That's as undeniably true as the statement was undeniably insensitive to Castro's victims.

I'm not really sure what the Marlins were expecting from their manager. Guillen has appeared on Hugo Chavez's radio program in his native Venezuela and said of the Castro ally, "Not too many people like the president. I do." His statements about Chavez are a little confusing. In September, he denied ever supporting Chavez, saying that his wife hates the president and asking "If I was supporting Chavez, do you think I would be manager of the Marlins?" But this week he said: "I respect (President) Obama, I respect (Venezuelan President Hugo) Chavez because I always respect people."

More importantly, Guillen is a famous loudmouth, who basically told Ben McGrath of the New Yorker last week that he believes part of his job as manager is to suck up as much media attention as possible so players can focus on the game. Mission accomplished!

(Notably, Guillen was not suspended in 2006 when he called sportswriter Jay Mariotti a "fag" then told the media that he's obviously not homophobic because he goes to Madonna concerts and WNBA games.)

Guillen became a U.S. citizen in 2006 and has a legal right to express his stupid opinions. If the Marlins management expected that he would understand that certain topics were off-limits, that's a bigger miscalculation than that ugly home run statue.

Ban Ki-moon: Dictators more afraid of tweets than armies

Posted: April 9, 2012, 6:43 pm by Joshua Keating

The secretary-general has raised some eyebrows with comments made last week during an address at the Global Colloqium of University Presidents:

"To unleash the power of young people, we need to partner with them. This is what the United Nations is trying to do," he added, announcing his decision to appoint a U.N. Special Adviser on Youth.

"Some dictators in our world are more afraid of tweets than they are of opposing armies," he declared, pointing out the rising political clout of the younger generation.

Some commentators have responded to Ban's comments with mockery... on Twitter naturally. "What's Ban Ki-moon smoking? Show me one dictator who's more afraid of tweets than armies." wrote Evgeny Morozov.

FP's Daniel Drezner chipped in: "Some dictators no doubt would reply with, "How many divisions does Twitter have?... And, inevitably, some lolcat on Youtube will say, "I can haz divisions?!"

In (partial) defense of Ban, this isn't that absurd a comment if you don't take it literally. Most autocratic governments are probably under greater threat from the possibility of uprisings by their own populations -- particularly young people -- than invasions by foreign armies. Granted, it's not the tweets they're worried about but the people sending them.

The problem with presidential medical travel

Posted: April 6, 2012, 10:17 pm by Joshua Keating

There's still a lot of confusion surrounding the death of Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika from a heart attack yesterday, but from what Reuters is reporting, it seems that his country's shoddy infrastructure and medical system may have played a role:

The 78-year-old was rushed to hospital in Lilongwe on Thursday after collapsing but was dead on arrival, the sources said. State media said he had been flown to South Africa for treatment although his immediate whereabouts remained unclear.

Medical sources said the former World Bank economist had been flown out because a power and energy crisis in the nation of 13 million was so severe the Lilongwe state hospital would have been unable to carry out a proper autopsy or even keep his body refrigerated.

Many Malawians blamed Mutharika personally for the economic woes, which stemmed ultimately from a diplomatic spat with former colonial power Britain a year ago.

"We know he is dead and unfortunately he died at a local, poor hospital which he never cared about - no drugs, no power," said Chimwemwe Phiri, a Lilongwe businessman waiting in a snaking line of cars for fuel at a petrol station.

It's impossible to say if Mutharika would be alive today if he could have made it to a properly supplied hospital, but as BBC Kampala correspondent Joshua Mmali put it on Twitter last night, "Lessons outta #Malawi 4 #AfricanPresidents: You can't go to the UK or Germany to treat a heart attack. Improve your health systems"

It has indeed become a depressingly common occurence for leaders to head abroad for major medical treatment -- an option Mutharika didn't have. In recent years, we've seen Venezuela's Hugo Chavez travel to Cuba for cancer treatment, Saudi King Abdullah come to New York for tests, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh travel to Saudi Arabia to treat injuries sustained in an attack, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari go to Dubai for undisclosed medical treatment, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani head to Jordan for treatment of exhaustion and dehydration. There are plenty of other examples from Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare.

It's always a bit surprising that this isn't more politically embarrassing. If there isn't even one hospital in a leader's country where he feels confortable getting treated -- presumably by that country's best doctors and the most advanced equipment available -- that would seem to be a pretty damning indictment of his leadership.

The Election 2012 Weekly Report: The General begins

Posted: April 6, 2012, 8:31 pm by Joshua Keating

The Presumptive Nominee

After pulling off a hat trick on Tuesday night, winning the primaries in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Wisconsin, Mitt Romney now boasts an unassailable lead in delegates. Barring major unforeseen circumstances, he seems virtually guaranteed to be the Republican candidate in November. (Though second-place contender Rick Santorum -- not to mention Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul -- has given little indication that he plans to drop out.)

His new position as the presumptive nominee may give Romney more latitude to broaden his pitch to moderates and independents and focus his attacks more directly on President Barack Obama. The president certainly assumes that Romney is the opponent he will face in the fall, taking time during a speech this week to mock the former governor's support for a GOP budget he described as right-wing "social Darwinism."

Obama's hidden agenda

The Romney campaign has continued to take advantage of Obama's "hot mic" moment during a conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Last Friday, spokesperson Andrea Saul suggested that the president "should release the notes and transcripts of all his meetings with world leaders so the American people can be satisfied that he's not promising to sell out the country's interests after the election is over."

The notion that the president has a hidden agenda on foreign policy may emerge as a central campaign talking point. In a speech Wednesday to the Newspaper Association of America, Romney suggested that the incident "raises all kinds of serious questions: What exactly does President Obama intend to do differently once he is no longer accountable to the voters? Why does ‘flexibility' with foreign leaders require less accountability to the American people? And on what other issues will he state his true position only after the election is over?"

Release the Biden

Vice President Joe Biden has been relatively quiet during this primary season. But in an appearance on Face The Nation last Sunday, the VP came out swinging, questioning Romney's qualifications on foreign policy. Referring to Romney's description of Russia as America's No. 1 geopolitical foe, Biden said, "He just seems to be uninformed or stuck in a Cold War mentality." He went on to say that Russia is "united with us on Iran."

The Romney campaign responded: "Vice President Biden appears to have forgotten the Russian government's opposition to crippling sanctions on Iran, its obstructionism on Syria, and its own backsliding into authoritarianism."

Good for the Jews?

Heading into Passover weekend, a new poll shows that fears that Obama's tensions with the Israeli government would erode his support among Jewish voters may be unfounded. The poll, by the Public Religion Research Institute, showed 62 percent of Jews supporting Obama's reelection, with little evidence of change in support for the president since 2008. While Jews tend to hold more hawkish views on Iran than other American voters, according to the poll only 2 percent listed it as their top voting priority. Just 4 percent listed Israel.

In a Passover message this week, Obama referred to the recent anti-Semitic killings in France, saying that the Exodus story was a reminder that "Throughout our history, there are those who have targeted the Jewish people for harm, a fact we were so painfully reminded of just a few weeks ago in Toulouse."

Trump roast

Guess who's back? In an appearance on Laura Ingraham's radio show on Tuesday, real estate mogul, reality-show star, and onetime primary candidate Donald Trump suggested that Obama will start a war with Iran to bolster his reelection chances. "If you remember Bush, Bush was unbeatable for about two months, and then all of the sudden the world set in when he attacked Iraq. And he went from very popular to not popular at all. But I think that Obama will start in some form a war with Iran, and I think that will make him very popular for a short period of time. That will make him hard to beat also."

The comment was somewhat overshadowed the next day when the Donald offered to show his genitals to attorney Gloria Allred.

What to watch for:

Obama's week will be heavy in Latin America, with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff visiting the White House on Monday and the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, beginning April 14.

There are no primaries this week, but Romney is looking ahead to the April 24 contest in Pennsylvania, trying to put the final nail in Santorum's coffin by winning his home state.

The latest from FP:

Joshua Keating lists 7 foreign-policy flip-flops Romney needs to make now.

Heleen Mees says Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke might be the greatest obstacle to Obama's reelection.

Uri Friedman looks at the foreign-policy views of Rep. Paul Ryan, whose buzz as a possible VP contender has been growing.

Daniel Drezner asks readers to take the Trump Foreign Policy Challenge.

Did Sarkozy really ban cheese from the Elysee Palace?

Posted: April 6, 2012, 7:40 pm by Joshua Keating

This Telegraph story has been making the Internet rounds today:

It is an admission that is verging on sacrilegious for a French president. But Nicolas Sarkozy's top chef has revealed that the French head of state has banned cheese from the table at the Elysée Palace.

Charles de Gaulle once famously declared: "How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?"

The fitness mad Mr Sarkozy has chosen to remove the source of De Gaulle's angst from his sight, according to presidential chef Bernard Vaussion, who is cooking for his fifth French head of state.

J'accuse! The notion of a French president removing cheese from his sight -- at the request of his supermodel wife, naturally -- is pretty delicious. Unfortunately, that's not what Vaussion said at all. The quotes come from an interview with the AFP, which is neither cited nor linked in the Telegraph story. Here's what the chef said about the cheese:

The right-wing president personally approves the menu every morning, as his predecessors Francois Mitterrand and Valery Giscard d'Estaing did before him.

"He writes 'yes' in the margin next to the dishes I propose," said the cook, who happily notes that the incumbent has a healthy appetite.

But Sarkozy is also health conscious, preferring "light, balanced meals and poultry to red meat", in a clear break with his predecessors who were not afraid of rich fare, even at lunchtime.

Sarkozy also did away with cheese after meals, he noted.

That's it! Sarkozy has chosen to forgo a cheese course after meals. That is not the same thing as issuing some kind of anti-fromage fatwa.

The Telegraph might want to clarify before angry mobs start pelting him with wheels of camembert.

Decline Watch: Vietnamese businessmen buy Wyoming town

Posted: April 5, 2012, 11:38 pm by Joshua Keating

The "town" -- which is really more of a "gas station" -- of Buford, Wyoming, has a new owner:

The population of the least populous town in the United States appeared to at least double Thursday when two mysterious businessmen from Vietnam won the tiny hamlet with a bid of $900,000 at auction.

About a dozen bidders gathered around the town's one business to bid on Buford, Wyoming, which consists of a gas station, a three-bedroom house and a few small outbuildings on 10 acres along Interstate 80.

The bidding began at $100,000 and quickly escalated. The winning bidders were immediately whisked away by auction officials, who would not let them speak to the media.

The town's only resident, Don Sammons, said he'll miss the town but not the billboard of his face that currently adorns the highway. "I can always rent one somewhere if I need to see my face," he told CNN.

The intentions of the town's new owners have not yet been revealed.

If Scotland goes, will the Queen lose Australia too?

Posted: April 5, 2012, 8:50 pm by Joshua Keating

In a three-part series this week, Tim Judah assesses the very real chance that Scotland could vote for independence from the United Kingdom in a planned 2014 referendum -- or at least a kind of semi-separation called "devo max" under which the government in Edinburgh would take over almost all domestic political responsibilities but leave national defence to London.

But, I know you are all anxiously wondering, what would this mean for Australia? Writing in the Herald-Sun, Victoria University Law Professor David Denton suggests that "An independent Scotland may yet create an Australian Republic." His argument, essentially, is that a United Kingdom without Scotland is no longer the same United Kingdom:

If the Parliament in Westminster wishes to pass legislation to facilitate a matter touching on the succession to the Crown of a new fashioned United Kingdom (as it must inevitably become) then the Parliament of Australia must give its consent to this as it will affect the law of Australia, not the least of which is our Constitution and our States.

The "United Kingdom" Australians agreed to federate under will no longer exist. A United Kingdom which is de jure separated is not the United Kingdom for Australian Constitutional purposes. It is possible to envisage an Australian constitutional vacuum existing if ‘our' United Kingdom ceases to exist.

Whatever is to happen it seems that it is no longer a matter for Australians to simply await a re-agitation of the republic debate after the passing of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

I'm not going to pretend to have any expertise here, but this smacks of wishful thinking to me, particularly if Scotland retains the queen as head of state. Suffice to say though, it's been a rough couple of months for the Empire.

Can Azawad win international recognition?

Posted: April 5, 2012, 8:34 pm by Joshua Keating

The New York Times reports on the ceasefire in Northern Mali:

France on Thursday ruled out a “military solution” in its former colony of Mali to counter rebels in the north, who announced that they had achieved their territorial objectives and sought outside backing for a secessionist state they call Azawad.

The declaration by the main Tuareg rebel group on their Web site came after other Islamic rebel fighters, who helped seized the ancient city of Timbuktu over the weekend, were quoted by local officials as saying they planned to impose Islamic law there. [...]

In their statement, the rebel Tuareg fighters, calling themselves the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, said that they had decided “to unilaterally proclaim the end of military operations as of midnight on Thursday April 5.” The rebels said they had achieved “the complete liberation” of the territory they claim.

The statement invited outside powers to “guarantee the people of Azawad against all aggression by Mali.”

This Reuters analysis has more on the security implications of the news, including the possibility that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb may exploit the instability in Northern Mali. (The MNLA has vowed to expel al Qaeda from the region in the past but in recent weeks has formed an uneasy partnership with the more stridently Islamist militant group Ansar Dine, who have vowed to impose sharia law.)

Security concerns aside, with the MNLA have staked its claim to a significant swathe of territory, including the city of Timbuktu, and the Malian army in something of a state of disarray after last week's coup, it raises the question of whether Azaria actually has a chance of emerging as a state -- or at least joining entities like Somaliland and Abkhazia among the world's established but mostly unrecognized states.

As I've written before, the recognition of new states has much more to do with politics than any objective standard under international law. To get a better idea of the obstacles Azawad will face, I spoke with Carne Ross, executive director of Independent Diplomat, a diplomatic advisory group that worked with South Sudan and Kosovo on their statehood bids.

In Ross's view, the three main criteria for statehood are democratic legitimacy -- whether the people in a territory actually want to be independent -- protection of minority rights, and recognition by other states. The last is probably most important from a diplomatic point of view:

The thing that is most important for a state to be recognized is that other states recognize it. It sounds circular but it does happen that way.

This is bad news for prospective new states in Africa, says Ross, because of a strong political bias against recognizing new countries. With a couple of notable exceptions -- South Sudan, Eritrea, Namibia -- the continents borders haven't changed much since decolonization:

Particularly problematic is the African Union. The AU’s constitution, when it was set up, says that there should not be any alteration to the original borders of Africa as established by various colonial authorities like the 1884 Berlin Conference. It’s a strange position and one that makes the establishment of new states in Africa problematic.

Aside from concerns about Islamist militancy and the fact that Azawad doesn't seem to have a government or defined territory yet, the region's history makes it an unlikely candidate for recognized statehood:

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So far, there hasn't been much communication from the MNLA to the outside world other than some vaguely-worded proclamations on their website and Facebook page. It will be interesting to see if the new movement attempts to make its case to the world in the coming days.

Ai Weiwei ordered to stop spying on himself

Posted: April 5, 2012, 6:06 pm by Joshua Keating

Bad news if you get your kicks from watching a rotund, bearded man work on his computer in real-time. On Monday, Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei set up four live webcams throughout his home studio, streaming real-time images of himself working at his computer, sleeping, and interacting with his cat.

The WeiWeicam was a clever commentary on the constant surveillance the artist has been under since he was apprehended and held in detention for three months last year. Evidently, the authorities would prefer to be the only ones watching Ai go about his daily routine:

On Wednesday, less than 48 hours after Mr. Ai announced the launch of the live feed, the cameras — one of which had been installed on the ceiling of his bedroom — went dark. “4 minutes ago the cameras have been shut down,” the artist wrote on his Twitter feed. “byebye to all the voyeurs.”
Mr. Ai indicated to his Twitter followers on Wednesday that the decision to kill the cameras had not been his, later telling CNN and other media outlets that the cameras had been turned off on orders from public security officials

Christina Larson interviewed Ai for FP in December.

Image via Al Jazeera

Hafiz Saeed to America: Come and get me!

Posted: April 4, 2012, 8:41 pm by Joshua Keating

It was already a bit bizarre when the United States offered a $10 million reward on Monday for information leading to the capture of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba who is accused of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

After all, Saeed isn't exactly in hiding. As the New York Times reported yesterday, he lives in a well-known compound on the outskirts of Lahore and appears frequently at public rallies throughout Pakistan. (You can send my $10 million check to 1899 L St. NW., Washington D.C. 20036. Thanks!)

But things reached the level of high farce today when Saeed held a press conference essentially daring U.S. authorities to come arrest him:

The 62-year-old former engineering and Arabic professor appeared on stage at a specially convened press conference in the Flashman Hotel, close to the headquarters of the Pakistan army in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

“If the United States wants to contact me, I am present, they can contact me. I am also ready to face any American court, or wherever there is proof against me,” he told reporters in the hotel named after a fictional colonial hero.

“Americans seriously lack information. Don’t they know where I go and where I live and what I do?” he said. “These rewards are usually announced for people who are hiding in mountains or caves. I wish the Americans would give this reward money to me.”

There was evidently some U.S.-India diplomacy behind the oddly timed reward U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman announced the bounty during a visit to New Delhi. But it still seems a little odd to essentially highlight Washington's inability to apprehend a suspected terrorist living in plain sight in a country that's ostensibly a U.S. ally.

Gunter Grass's Passover surprise

Posted: April 4, 2012, 6:11 pm by Joshua Keating

The controversy-courting German author is back in the headlines today for a new poem published in several newspapers that accuses Israel of endangering world peace. Titled, "What must be said," it's available here in German. Reuters summarizes:

"Why do I say only now ... that the nuclear power Israel endangers an already fragile world peace? Because that must be said which may already be too late to say tomorrow," Grass wrote in the poem, published in German in Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

"Also because we - as Germans burdened enough - may become a subcontractor to a crime that is foreseeable," he wrote, adding that Germany's Nazi past and the Holocaust were no excuse for remaining silent now about Israel's nuclear capability.

"I will not remain silent because I am weary of the West's hypocrisy," wrote Grass, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999 for novels such as "The Tin Drum" chronicling the horrors of 20th century German history.

The poem would be controversial enough -- and editorial in Die Welt called Grass "the prototype of the educated anti-Semite" and the Israeli embassy issued a statement, saying, "What must be said is that it is a European tradition to accuse the Jews before the Passover festival of ritual murder."

But then, of course, there's Grass's background. In a 2006 autobiography, Peeling the Onion, Grass revealed for the first time that in the closing months of World War II, when he was 17, he had been drafted into the Waffen SS -- the armed wing of the Nazi party responsible for many of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust. While Grass claims to have never fired a shot, many Germans were shocked at the time that the Nobel Prize-winning author, who had for years excoriated his fellow citizens into confronting the realities of the Nazi era in novels like The Tin Drum, had kept his own past secret for so long.

The Die Welt piece, by German-Jewish journalist Henryk Broder, claims that Grass has "always had a problem with Jews." Whether or not that's true, an ex-Nazi who hid his own war record for 60 years isn't exactly the most credible critic of Israeli foreign policy.

The 'Zelikow memo' comes to light

Posted: April 4, 2012, 5:29 pm by Joshua Keating

In a remarkable post on FP's Shadow Government blog in 2009, Philip Zelikow, former counselor of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described a memo he had written in 2006, differing with the Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel's argument that interrogation techniques such as waterboarding did not constitute torture under the recently passed McCain Amendment. That amendment prohibited inhumane treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and required military interrogations to be conducted according to the army field manual.

Zelikow wrote in his post:

The OLC holds, rightly, that the United States complies with the international standard if it complies with the comparable body of constitutional prohibitions in U.S. law (the 5th, 8th, and 14th Amendments). Many years earlier, I had worked in that area of the law. I believed that the OLC opinions (especially the May 30 one) presented the U.S. government with a distorted rendering of relevant U.S. law.

At the time, in 2005, I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state, didn't entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable. My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives.

He was right. Zelikow's memo has been released by the State Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive.

In the Feb. 16, 2006 memo titled, "The McCain Amendment and U.S. Obligations under Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture," Zelikow wrote:

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In looking to objective standards to inform a judgment about evolving standards of decency or interrogation techniques that shock the conscience, three sources stand out:

American government practice, by any agency, in holding or questioning enemy combatants -- including enemy combatants who do not have Geneva protection or who were regarded at the time as suspected terrorists, guerrillas, or saboteurs. We are unaware of any precedent in Wold War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or any subsequent conflict for authorized, systematic interrogation practices similar to those in question here, even where the prisoners were presumed to be unlawful combatants

Recent practice by police and prison authorities in confining or questioning their most dangerous suspects. This practice is especially helpful since these authorities are governed by substantively similar standards to those that would apply under the [Convention Against Torture], given the Senate's reservation. We have not conducted a review of American domestic practice. From the available cases, it appears likely that some of the techniques being used would likely pass muster; several almost certainly would not.

Recent practice by other advanced governments that face potentially catastrophic terrorist dangers. [REDACTED]...governments have abandoned several of the techniques in question here.

It therefore appears to us that several of these techniques, singly or in combination, should be considered “cruel inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” within the meaning of Article 16.

The techniques least likely to be sustained are the techniques described as “coercive,’” especially viewed cumulatively, such as the waterboard, walling, dousing, stress positions, and cramped confinement.

It's definitely worth reading in full.

Philippines plans tourist resort on disputed islands

Posted: April 3, 2012, 8:54 pm by Joshua Keating

Looking for a vacation destination featuring sun, sand, and thumbing your nose at China's geopolitical ambitions? Have you considered the Spratlys?

The Philippines plans to develop a disputed island in the South China Sea into a tourism centre with a 100-metre (330-ft) concrete wharf, officials said on Monday, a bold assertion of its sovereignty that is bound to rile China.

Last week, China protested the planned construction of a beaching ramp by the Philippines on the coral-fringed island, the second largest in the Spratlys and the biggest occupied by the Philippines in the contested region.[..]

A Philippine navy commander said local authorities planned to transform military-held areas of the Spratlys into tourist attractions, including potential diving spots.

In the 1990s, Japanese tourists frequented the area for its pristine beaches and coral reefs, ferried by yacht from Cebu Island in the Philippines.

But the military will first build a pier on Thitu, possibly by the second half of the year, Juan Sta. Ana, head of the Philippine Ports Authority, told Reuters. A panel of defence, tourism and transportation and communications officials will finalise a development plan for the island after April 8.

China claims "indisputable sovereignty" over the area based on historical records, a claim that just might be motivated by the estimated 213 barrels of oil in the South China Sea. Various sections of the uninhabitable 250-island chain are claimed by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei, though only China claims all of them. The dispute has sometimes become violent: at least 70 sailors were killed in a skirmish between the Chinese and Vietnamese navies over a disputed reef in 1988.

But hey, why let that get in the way of some good diving?

Calderon pushes for U.S. to reinstate assault weapon ban

Posted: April 3, 2012, 8:23 pm by Joshua Keating

At White House Rose Garden press conference yesterday following a meeting with President Obama and Stephen Harper of Canada, Mexican President Felipe Calderon had some blunt words about U.S. gun control policy:

"The expiring of the assault weapons ban in the year 2004 coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the harshest - the harshest - period of violence we've ever seen,"[...] In remarks to reporters in the Rose Garden, Calderon urged the U.S. to do more to tamp down on gun trafficking and emphasized that the drug cartels that crime organizations are operating on both sides of the border. He claimed a direct connection between the weakening of gun laws in the U.S. and deaths in his country.

"I know that if we don't stop the traffic of weapons into Mexico, if we don't have mechanisms to forbid the sale of weapons such as we had in the '90s, or for registry of guns, at least for assault weapons, then we are never going to be able to stop the violence in Mexico or stop a future turning of those guns upon the U.S.," he said.

Obama, whose administration has not pushed to reinstate the ban, did not respond to the Mexican president's statement directly.

Is Okonjo-Iweala the 'establishment choice' for the World Bank?

Posted: April 2, 2012, 8:58 pm by Joshua Keating

On his FP blog today, Stephen Walt writes:

"When Washington gets lucky and the African Union endorses a Nigerian economist with a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from MIT, who also has ample experience at the World Bank, and who is a woman of color to boot, the smart thing to do is get behind it immediately. This course is such an obvious no-brainer that I'm amazed the Obama administration didn't leap at the opportunity."

As my former colleague Annie Lowrey writes in the Times, U.S. nominee Jim Yong Kim is still virtually assured victory because of the makeup of the World Bank's governing board, but the fact that this three-way race is even taking place -- José Antonio Ocampo of Columbia is also in the running -- marks a historic shift. It's also striking some of the voices most loudly advocating for the Bank to overturn half a century of tradition and nominate a non-American president, are some of the normally staunchest defenders of the economic status quo.

The Economist editorializes:

WHEN economists from the World Bank visit poor countries to dispense cash and advice, they routinely tell governments to reject cronyism and fill each important job with the best candidate available. It is good advice. The World Bank should take it. In appointing its next president, the bank’s board should reject the nominee of its most influential shareholder, America, and pick Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Felix Salmon of Reuters chimes in:

Kim is still the favorite for the job, just because he has the full and awesome power of US international diplomatic pressure behind him. But in any fair fight, Okonjo-Iweala would win. And if there are any signs at all that the European vote might not be completely in the bag, we might yet have a real contest on our hands here.

The Financial Times has tripled-down on its support for the Nigerian finance minister with an editorial, a column by Washington bureau chief Edward Luce, and a letter from economist Jagdish Baghwati supporting her candidacy.

Nationality may play something of a role here. These are all British publications and mostly British authors -- Bagwhati is Indian-American -- whereas the New York Times and Businessweek have both editorialized for Kim.

But supporting Okonjo-Iweala is also an easy "reformist" stance for economic conservatives to take. As these sources all note in their endorsements, Okonjo-Iweala is a fairly orthodox, free market, growth-oriented economist with a long institutional history at the bank. Kim, meanwhile, is an outsider and something of an unknown quantity: A public health expert with little background in economics whose book on inequality and health expresses skepticism about growth-led development and was favorably blurbed by Noam Chomsky. The Economist quips drily: "Were Mr Kim hoping to lead Occupy Wall Street, such views would be unremarkable."

While picking Okonjo-Iweala would of course be historic for bank-- she's non-American, a person of color, and along with Christine Lagarde of the IMF, would put women in charge of the world's two main multilateral financial institutions. But from an ideological point of view, she may actually be the status-quo choice.

How the representative from American Samoa became Bahrain's man in Washington

Posted: April 2, 2012, 7:58 pm by Joshua Keating

For ProPublica, Justin Elliot tells the unlikely story of Eni Faleomavaega, the non-voting congressional delegate from American Samoa who has become the Bahraini government's staunchest defender on Capitol Hill:

But this week he is taking a trip to Bahrain, his second in the past year, both paid for by the Bahraini government. It's part of a year-long friendship the congressman has developed with the tiny Gulf nation.

Last March, just weeks into the crisis, Faleomavaega emerged seemingly out of nowhere -- he has no history of commenting on Mideast affairs -- to enter a 2,500-word statement [5] into the Congressional Record that closely echoed the Bahraini government's spin. "Bahrain is under attack," he said, painting protesters as violent, Iran-backed vandals representing "the worst kind of seditious infiltration from a foreign enemy." He praised the Crown Prince for supposedly meeting protesters' demands for democratic reforms.

"Mr. Speaker," Faleomavaega said. "I have to ask why the demonstrators returned to protesting again, even after all their demands were agreed to."

Just days before, the government had torn down [6] the iconic Pearl Monument at the center of the protests and Saudi Arabian tanks had rolled into Bahrain to back up the government crackdown.

Not surprisingly, there's a lobbyist connection behind Faleomavaega's sudden interest in Bahrain, but also cameo appearances by the Northern Virginia Mormon community and the tuna industry. In the past, Faleomavaega has used his position to defend Kazakhstan's human rights record as well.

Romney campaign embraces radical transparency

Posted: April 2, 2012, 6:50 pm by Joshua Keating

Romney's camp seems to be pushing its luck with the aftermath of last week's "hot mic" incident judging by this response to a request from the Obama campaign for the candidate's tax records from his time at Bain capital:

“The Obama campaign is playing politics, just as he’s doing in his conduct of foreign policy," Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul wrote. "Obama should release the notes and transcripts of all his meetings with world leaders so the American people can be satisfied that he’s not promising to sell out the country’s interests after the election is over.”

The argument that all statecraft should be conducted in public so that voters can be sure there's nothing nefarious going on is a pretty impractical one, as quite a few people pointed out when WikiLeaks was making it. (Romney described the WikiLeaks CableGate release as "treason" for what it's worth.)

But questions of practicality aside, it's tempting to wonder just what might be in those transcripts -- or what Romney hopes is in them:

Obama: Mahmoud, I've got to keep up this sanctions stuff until the election. Then I'll get you those centrifuges.

Ahmadinejad: I will transmit this information to the Supreme Leader.

Obama: It's an election season, Hu. You know I've got to talk tough. Next year, I promise I'll get you those 100,000 American jobs I promised.

Hu: I will transmit this information to Xi.

Obama: Stephen, this Keystone stuff is just until November. Then we open up the border and roll out the plan for the Amero.

Harper: I will transmit this information to the NAFTA supercouncil.

DEVELOPING...

Morning Brief: Aung San Suu Kyi hails 'new era' after apparent election win

Posted: April 2, 2012, 3:26 pm by Joshua Keating

Aung San Suu Kyi hails 'new era' after apparent election win

Top news: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi appears poised to win a seat in parliament in just the third election the country has held in the last 50 years. According to her National League of Democracy's own tally, it won 43 of the 44 seats in contested in Sunday's by-election. Official results have not yet been released.

"We hope this will be the beginning of a new era," Aung San Suu Kyi said in a speech at her party headquarters in Yangon. If the results are confirmed, it would be a remarkable turnabout for the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has spent most of the past 22 years under house arrest since her victory in the 1990 general election was overturned by Myanmar's military government.

The elections were accompanied by a significant economic reform from the country's quasi-civilian government, which will now allow a managed flotation of the kyat.

International reaction to the election has been mostly positive. The EU announced it would give the country a "positive signal" when it reviews its sanctions policy this month. Indian Prime Minister Mahmohan Singh announced he would visit the country soon. India has steadily -- and controversially -- built trade relations with Myanmar over the past decade, but this will be the first visit by an Indian prime minister in 25 years.

The Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN, meanwhile, urged the international community not to succumb to "euphoria" over the election results. "The by-election process in which Suu Kyi participated should not mean that others forget all the crimes committed by the regime," said the head of ASEAN's Myanmar caucus.

Syria: At a "friends of Syria" conference in Istanbul, Arab nations pledged $100 million to pay opposition fighters and the United States agreed to supply the rebels with communications equipment. The donors stopped short of support for arming the rebels. The Syrian government dismissed the meeting, saying it had "produced only meager results, showing it was unable to shake Syrians’ rejection of foreign intervention.”

Europe

An opposition candidate appears likely to win the mayor's race in the Russian city of Yaroslavl.
Over half of Irish households have failed to meet a deadline to pay a new household tax.
Imprisoned Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is facing another legal investigation, this one into a 1990s contract killing.

Middle East

Israel freed a Palestinian woman who spent more than 40 days on hunger strike to protest her detention without trial.
Iraq's fugitive Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi left for a diplomatic trip to Qatar in defiance of Baghdad.
The U.S. has stepped up the pace of drone strikes in Yemen in recent weeks.

Africa

Leaders of the West African regional group ECOWAS will decide today whether to impose sanctions on Mali's new military government.
The city of Timbuktu fell to Tuareg rebels over the weekend.
Nigerian forces raided a suspected Boko Haram bomb-making factory, killing at least 9 suspected militants.

Asia

A Pakistani court sentenced Osama bin Laden's three widows and two daughters to 45 days in jail for entering the county illegally.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Delhi next week.
An Indian plan to retroactively tax business deals has worried foreign investors.

Americas

Britain and Argentina are marking the 30th anniversary of the Falklands war today.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has returned to Cuba for another round of cancer treatment.
The FARC has promised to release 10 military and police captives in Colombia.

aula Bronstein/Getty Images

Map: Finnish metal is the densest of all metal

Posted: March 30, 2012, 1:14 am by Joshua Keating

For your Friday afternoon map-viewing enjoyment, here's a map of heavy metal bands by population created by Reddit user depo_ by way of the good folks at the Atlantic Wire. Finland takes the crown, but the Nordic dominance shouldn't be surprising. Norway even trains its diplomats to be conversant on the finer points of True Norwegian Black Metal.

In 2010, I wrote about a slightly more academic effort to measure music exports as a percentage of GDP. The NORCs came out on top in that measurement too, with both Sweden and Finland -- not to mention Canada -- among the world's top musical exporters. Though I do wonder if the global cultural juggernaut that is K-Pop has shaken things up in the years since.

Is the U.S. the next country to embrace Gross National Happiness?

Posted: March 30, 2012, 12:46 am by Joshua Keating

The Washington Post reports:

Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a panel of experts in psychology and economics, including Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, began convening in December to try to define reliable measures of 'subjective well-being.' If successful, these could become official statistics.

The idea of the government tallying personal feelings might seem frivolous -- or impossibly difficult. For decades, after all, the world has gotten by with gauging a nation’s quality of life on the basis of its GDP, or gross domestic product, the sum of its economic output. But economists and others have long recognized that GDP, a dollars and cents measure, doesn’t count everything that might be considered important when assessing living conditions."

Alan Krueger, the chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisors is a leading researcher in the field of happiness measurement. According to the Post, President Obama has "welcomed" the effort.

The U.S. wouldn't be the first country to try something like this. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan famously pledged in 1972 to measure his country's progress not in GDP but in "gross national happiness." The idea has been somewhat discredited since, as Bhutanese government's definition of happiness seems to include ethnic cleansing and bizarrely intrusive authoritarianism.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy rolled out a new happiness measurement as an official economic indicator in 2009 after commissioning a special report from Nobel Prize winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen. British Prime Minister David Cameron has also suggested including happiness measurements along with GDP.

I'm all for investigating alternatives to GDP, and happiness measurement seems like a promising area for economic research. But politically -- particularly during a time of measurable economic distress -- this seems like a hard sell.

The Election 2012 Weekly Report: New friends and old foes

Posted: March 30, 2012, 8:27 pm by Joshua Keating

Russia Rumble

This week, the campaign was unexpectedly dominated by a debate over Russia policy. The back-and-forth was sparked by an embarrassing "hot mic" incident on Monday at a summit on Seoul, when President Barack Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more "space" to tackle controversial issues such as missile defense after the election. "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility," he told the outgoing Russian leader, who promised to "transmit this information to Vladimir."

Mitt Romney was quick to seize on the incident to bolster his argument that Obama has ignored the security threat posed by Russia. He went a bit over the top with the rhetoric, however, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "this is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe, they fight every cause for the world's worst actors, the idea that he has more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed."

Democrats -- and a few Republicans -- disputed the notion that Russia is the nation's primary foe. "You don't have to be a foreign policy expert to know that the Cold War ended 20 years ago and that the greatest threat that the president has been fighting on behalf of the American people is the threat posed by al Qaeda," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

Romney doubled down on his charge against the president with an op-ed in Foreign Policy, writing that "In his dealings with the Kremlin, as in his dealings with the rest of the world, President Obama has demonstrated breathtaking weakness -- and given the word ‘flexibility' a new and ominous meaning."

A group of Romney's senior advisors also published an open-letter on the website of the National Review detailing a list of the president's main foreign policy failings. The Obama campaign's senior foreign policy advisors pushed pushed back with a letter to Romney published in FP demanding that Romney "clarify exactly how and why you would depart from many of President Obama's policies."

Romney even got into it with Medvedev himself this week. The Russian president said the candidate's rhetoric "smacks of Hollywood" and advised him to "check his watch" to see that it's no longer the 1970s. The Romney campaign struck back with a press release calling him "President Medvedev (D-Russia)" and accusing him of "campaigning for Obama."

Santorum's Jelly Belly foreign policy

Rick Santorum chose an unusual venue on Thursday for a national security-focused address meant to reinvigorate his struggling campaign: The Jelly Belly headquarters in Fairfield, California. Attempting to associate himself with the foreign-policy acumen of GOP icon and famous jellybean fiend Ronald Reagan, Santorum made the case that "Of all of the failings of this administration, of all of the failings, perhaps the greatest is on national security."

Santorum also seized on the hot mic gaffe: "Ronald Reagan didn't whisper to Gorbachev, ‘Give me some flexibility.... He walked out of Iceland and said, ‘You either do this, or we have no deal.'"

H.W. goes all in

While Santorum while trying to channel the Gipper, his vice-president and successor George H.W. Bush officially endorsed Romney -- no surprise as he had publicly praised the candidate earlier in the race and his son Jeb endorsed last week. The 87-year-old (mis)quoted Kenny Rogers when asked about Romney's rivals, saying, ‘It's time when to hold ‘em and time when to fold ‘em."

The meeting raised questions as to when George W. Bush will make an endorsement in the race. "I haven't met with President George W. Bush. We speak from time to time," Romney said.

Newt loses his sugar daddy

The struggling campaign of Newt Gingrich, who has won only South Carolina and his home state of Georgia so far, has been kept afloat by the largesse of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The staunch Israel hawk has donated over $20 million to Gingrich's Super PAC. It appears, however, that Adelson's generosity has its limits. Speaking at the Jewish Federations of North America's annual TribeFest conference in Las Vegas this week, the billionaire said this week that Gingrich may be "at the end of the line" since mathematically, "he can't get anywhere near the number" of delegates needed. Adelson has reportedly been reaching out to supporters of the Romney campaign.

Gingrich, the onetime frontrunner, laid off one-third of his staff this week.

Is Paul coming around to Romney?

Ron Paul, currently running in fourth place with a total of 50 delegates in the bag, has previously suggested that foreign policy might be an obstacle to him throwing his support behind Romney. This week, however, Paul paid the frontrunner the mildest of compliments in an interview with Bloomberg television: "I think Mitt Romney is more likely to be more willing to listen to his advisers.... If he decides he wants to go and bomb Iran, maybe he might listen to somebody else. I'm afraid the other [candidates] would just go do it anyway."

What to watch for:

Maryland, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia hold primaries on Tuesday. Romney is favored to win all three contests. (Santorum isn't on the ballot in D.C.)

After that, it's a long wait until a set of five northeastern primaries on April 23. Santorum's Gotterdämmerung may very well come in his home state of Pennsylvania, where the latest polls show him in a statistical dead heat with Romney.

The latest from FP:

Romney's Russia op-ed.

The Obama campaign's response.

Scott Clement says that Americans really don't think of Russia as an enemy anymore.

Daniel Drezner on the dirty, little secret of second-term presidents.

Michael Cohen argues the president's real constitutional overreach wasn't healthcare, it was Libya.

In honor of Santorum's Jelly Belly address, Uri Friedman recaps the year in political food fights.

Decline Watch: Asia now leads the world in centa-millionaires

Posted: March 30, 2012, 7:13 pm by Joshua Keating

North America's 1 percent are not pulling their weight, according to a new study by CitiGroup. Boomberg summarizes:

The number of Asians with at least $100 million in disposable assets overtook North America’s tally for the first time as the world’s “economic center of gravity” continued moving east, Citigroup Inc.’s (C) private bank said.

There were 18,000 “centa-millionaires” in Southeast Asia, China and Japan at the end of 2011, compared with 17,000 in North America and 14,000 in Western Europe, the bank said today in The Wealth Report 2012, published in partnership with Knight Frank LLP.

James Poulos notes that this might actually be dangerous for Asian countries since "a growing class of superwealthy might actually exacerbate class tensions at a moment when the promise of cherry-picking Western hypercapitalism could turn more sour than ever."

Still, if you're in, say, the car elevator business, it's prety clear where your new customers are going to be.

Hat tip: My eagle-eyed colleague Preeti Aroon

Morning Brief: Myanmar prepares for historic vote

Posted: March 30, 2012, 3:35 pm by Joshua Keating

Myanmar prepares for historic vote

Top news: Voters in Myanmar are preparing to head to the polls this weekend for just the third election in last 50 years. Seventeen parties are competing for 45 seats in the country's 665-seat legislature.

Most closely watched will be formerly imprisoned democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. The NLD boycotted previous elections organized by the military government in 2010. In 1990, the NLD won a general election but the junta nullified the vote.

"I don't think we can consider it a genuinely free and fair election," Aung San Suu Kyi said of this year's contest, but said she would contest it nonetheless in order to raise public interest in politics.

The NLD's main rival will be the Union and Development Solidarity Party, which was organized by the military junta and holds most of the seats in the legislature. The elections will be interpreted as a test of the country's fledgling democratic reforms and an indicator of whether a planned general election in 2015 will be genuine.

France: French police arrested 19 alleged Islamic militants in a raid connecting to the Toulouse killings.

Middle East

U.N. envoy Kofi Annan demanded that the Syrian government implement the ceasefire they have agreed to.
Dozens have been killed in violence between rival armed groups in Southern Libya.
Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian protesters during the annual Land Day rally.

Asia

A member of the Afghan militia drugged and killed nine of his colleagues on Friday.
At a meeting in New Delhi, the leaders of the BRICS pledged to expand trade but failed to come up with a plan for an alternative to the World Bank.
North Korea may have tested several short-range missiles earlier this week.

Europe

European finance ministers agreed to increase the size of the eurozone's rescue fund.
David Cameron and the Conservative Party have begun an effort to legalize same-sex marriage.
Millions joined a general strike to protest government austerity programs in Spain.

Africa

Mali's Tuareg rebels captured another town in the country's northern desert.
Rebels in South Kordofan attacked a town near the South Sudanese border.
The president of Mauritius stepped down amid a feud with the country's prime minister.

Americas

At least 13 people were killed in a prison riot in Honduras.
Lawmakers in Colombia have proposed a bill that would legalize the growing of coca leaf and marijuana.
Brazilian police dispersed riots sparked by a celebration of the country's 1964 coup.

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Italy seizes billions in Qaddafi assets

Posted: March 29, 2012, 7:04 pm by Joshua Keating

Turns out Libya's former ruling family was pretty heavily invested in Italy:

The most valuable single item seized was a 1.26% interest in Italy's biggest bank, Unicredit, worth more than €600m (£502m). Other significant shareholdings included stakes in the oil and gas giant, ENI, the defence firm Finmeccanica and two companies in the Fiat motor group.

All the assets were held through Libya's sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority, which was set up in 2006, ostensibly to manage Libya's oil revenues and diversify the country's income. LIA's stake in Unicredit was its biggest single investment.

Several bank accounts holding cash and shares were destined to be put under temporary, special administration as a result of Wednesday's operation. Also put under sequester was a flat in the centre of Rome, close to the Via Veneto. The Harley-Davidson was one of two motorcycles confiscated by the revenue guard.
It was not immediately clear which of the assets belonged to Colonel Gaddafi, which to his son, Saif Al-Islam and which to his former head of intelligence, Abdullah Senussi.

The Qaddafis also had a 1.5 percent stake in the Juventus football club.

Senussi was arrested in Mauritania earlier this month in an operation involving French intelligence, setting the stage for a custody battle between Libya, France and the ICC -- all of whom want to try him. According to Reuters, the prevailing rumor among Arab intelligence agencies is that the French want to try him in order to prevent information about the Qaddafi's financing of Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign from going public.

That sound like a bit of a stretch, but it's safe to say there are quite a few government that would probably prefer to keep Senussi quiet.

The death penalty outliers: Japan carries out execution, India stays one

Posted: March 29, 2012, 6:36 pm by Joshua Keating

Japan is often cited as the only industrialized democracy other than the United States that retains the death penalty, though a few other places -- notably South Korea and India -- retain capital punishment on the books but almost never carry it out. Today, Japan carried out its first execution since 2010:

The men—Yasuaki Uwabe, 48, Tomoyuki Furusawa, 46, and Yasutoshi Matsuda, 44—were hanged in three different prisons in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Fukuoka. Uwabe drove his car into Shimonoseki Station in Yamaguchi Prefecture and then knifed people nearby, killing five, in 1999. Furusawa murdered his in-laws and stepson in Yokohama in 2002, while Matsuda killed two women in southern Miyazaki prefecture in 2001.

Following Japan's last execution in 2010, Justice Minister Keiko Chiba -- a longtime death penalty opponent who briefly suspended the practice after coming into power in 2009 -- ordered a nationwide review of the practice. While the ruling Democratic Party is generally opposed to the death penalty, polls show a majority of Japanese still support it.

Meanwhile in India, the execution of Balwant Singh Rajoana -- a Sikh militant convicted of the 1995 assassination of the chief minister of Punjab -- has been put on hold following a clemency petition by a Sikh religious group to President Pratibha Patil. His hanging had been scheduled for Saturday.

While a handful of people, including convicted Mumbai attacks gunman Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab are on death row in India, the practice is so rare that state governments don't even have executioners on staff.

Guess Romney won't be getting the Pravda endorsement

Posted: March 28, 2012, 12:40 am by Joshua Keating

The once proud Communist Party propaganda arm-turned-supermarket tabloid/LOL-aggregator unloads on the GOP frontrunner:

Electing Mitt Romney as the next President of the United States of America would be like appointing a serial paedophile as a kindergarten teacher, a rapist as a janitor at a girls' dormitory or a psychopath with a fixation on knives as a kitchen hand. His comments on Russia are a puerile attempt at making the grand stage and boy, did he blow it...

Romney's "number one geopolitical foe" remark seems to be bringing out the best in Russian official bombast:

...Public Chamber Foreign Affairs working group head Alexander Sokolov [compared] him to one of the “Marlboro men, those so-called cool guys, for whom only America’s interests exist and all other countries are potential enemies – or at best, rivals.”

Even the normally staid Dmitry Medvedev said Romney's remark "smacks of Hollywood" and advised him to "check his watch": “It’s 2012, not the middle of the 1970s,”

Romney reiterated his attacks on the president's open-mic incident in a piece for FP yesterday, in which he said, "It is not an accident that Mr. Medvedev is now busy attacking me. The Russians clearly prefer to do business with the current incumbent of the White House."

Obama's foreign-policy advisors responded here.

Who's in charge in Papua New Guinea?

Posted: March 27, 2012, 7:33 pm by Joshua Keating

It's not a simple question, as Edward Wolfers explains for Al Jazeera:

The impasse between the two would-be prime ministers began when the speaker of parliament accepted the opposition's claims that the prime ministership was vacant. At the time, Sir Michael Somare - who had been elected prime minister in 2007 - had been out of the country for several months while undergoing medical treatment in Singapore. Accordingly, parliament elected a new prime minister, Peter O'Neill.

O'Neill's initial parliamentary majority - of 70 to 24 - included many former members of the coalition previously put together and led by Somare. Other members have subsequently changed sides.

In December, the Supreme Court found, by a majority of three to two, that Somare was still legally prime minister. Parliament responded by retroactively withdrawing the leave on which Somare had relied while he was out of the country and re-elected O'Neill. It also passed a new law preventing a person aged 72 or older from becoming prime minister. As Somare was already 75, the new law - if it is constitutional - makes him ineligible to return as prime minister.

Although both rivals have some claim to legitimacy - O'Neill has parliament's backing, and Somare is supported by the Supreme Court - the country's chief secretary and other heads of government departments have tended to side with O'Neill.

The fight culminated in an failed coup by pro-Somare military officers in late January. For now, the issue is still being deliberated by the courts, though Somare has continued to fight for his old office, and criticize the current government from the outside, including demanding an investigation into allegations that the current deputy prime minister sexually harassed a casino blackjack dealer.

It's been an eventful couple of months in New Guinea politics. O'Neill's predecessor as acting prime minister, Sam Abal, was ousted from office shortly after a woman's body was discovered at his home and his son charged with murder.

The political uncertainty since the leadership switch and the attempted coup is understandably having a negative affect on the country's economic outlook as well. The Australian government, PNG's largest trading partner and former colonial power, seems to be working with O'Neill as the de facto leader, though Australian leaders have said little in public about the dispute.

Was Romney's Russia comment a gaffe?

Posted: March 26, 2012, 12:33 am by Joshua Keating

Mitt Romney apparently described Russia as "without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe" on CNN today, while discussing the president's unfortunate hot mic incident. Romney was challenged on the statement by host Wolf Blitzer and a number of commentators are already discussing it as a "gaffe."

Romney stuck by the claim when Blitzer asked if he was really saying that Russia is a greater foe than Iran, China or North Korea:

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Well, I'm saying in terms of a geopolitical opponent, the nation that lines up with the world's worst actors. Of course, the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran. A nuclear North Korea is already troubling enough.

But when these -- these terrible actors pursue their course in the world and we go to the United Nations looking for ways to stop them, when -- when Assad, for instance, is murdering his own people, we go -- we go to the United Nations, and who is it that always stands up for the world's worst actors?

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It is always Russia, typically with China alongside.

While one can certainly argue with the statement, it's not at all inconsistent with Romney's previously stated positions on Russia. This is the same candidate who described the New START treaty as Obama's "worst foreign policy mistake":

New-START gives Russia a massive nuclear weapon advantage over the United States. The treaty ignores tactical nuclear weapons, where Russia outnumbers us by as much as 10 to 1. Obama heralds a reduction in strategic weapons from approximately 2,200 to 1,550 but fails to mention that Russia will retain more than 10,000 nuclear warheads that are categorized as tactical because they are mounted on missiles that cannot reach the United States. But surely they can reach our allies, nations that depend on us for a nuclear umbrella. And who can know how those tactical nuclear warheads might be reconfigured? Astonishingly, while excusing tactical nukes from the treaty, the Obama administration bows to Russia's insistence that conventional weapons mounted on ICBMs are counted under the treaty's warhead and launcher limits.

By all indications, the Obama administration has been badly out-negotiated. Perhaps the president's eagerness for global disarmament led his team to accede to Russia's demands, or perhaps it led to a document that was less than carefully drafted.

Here's his take on the "reset" from an interview with Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin:

He’s under no illusions about Vladimir Putin. He is convinced that Putin dreams of “rebuilding the Russian empire.” He says, “That includes annexing populations as they did in Georgia and using gas and oil resources” to throw their weight around in Europe. He maintains that the START treaty was tilted toward Russia. “It has to end,” he says emphatically about “reset.” “We have to show strength.” I ask him about WTO, which has been much in the news as Putin blusters and demands entry into the trade organization. Romney is again definitive. “Letting people into WTO who intend to cheat is obviously a mistake.”

Is the most recent comment an escalation of rhetoric? Absolutely. But it's not really a change in position. (Yes, Romney did once call Iran "the greatest threat the world faces," but that's not quite the same thing as a "geopolitical foe".) Expect more of this line of attack as we move into the general election.

Pussy Riot vs. Putin

Posted: March 26, 2012, 10:23 pm by Joshua Keating

In Communist Czechoslovakia it was the Zappa-inspired absurdism of Plastic People of the Universe. In military-ruled Brazil it was the whimsical psychedelia of Os Mutantes. In Ben Ali's Tunisia it was the aggressive political hip-hop of El General.

Now it seems, the anti-Putin opposition may have found its musical standard bearer in the masked, riot grrrl provocateurs of Pussy Riot. The 20-ish anonymous members of the punk-feminist collective have become known for spontaneous stunts like appearing in Red Square to perform a song called "Putin Pissed Himself."

Other songs include "Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest", and "Fuck the Sexist, Fuck Putin's Henchman." But Pussy Riot took things to the next level at the end of February, shortly before Russia's recent presidential election, with an unauthorized "Punk Prayer" inside Moscow's Christ the Saviour cathedral that included lines like "Mother Mary, drive Putin away":

The performance was meant to highlight the Orthodox church's close ties to Putin. Three members of the band have been arrested and charged with hate crimes and disturbing public order. They have been jailed for at least 60 days pending an investigation. They could face up to seven years behind bars if convicted. The three have reportedly begun a hunger strike in prison.

While some prominent church leaders have called for the court to go easy on the three women, two of whom are mothers of small children, Patriarch Kirill I was not so lenient in a statement this week:

Patriarch Kirill told Russian TV he was sickened by their protest and saddened that Russian orthodox believers would defend the band.

"Those people don't believe in the power of prayer, they believe in the power of propaganda, in the power of lies and slander, in the power of Internet and mass media, in the power of money and weapons. We believe in the power of prayer. I call on the whole Russian Orthodox Church for passionate and diligent praying for our country, for our trust, for our people, for God to forgive us our sin," Kirill said.

According to Putin's press secretary, the president-elect also reacted "negatively" when told about the performance.

Not that the more established leaders of Russia's opposition seem particularly thrilled to have these women, one of whom was previously criticized for taking part in an orgy at a biology museum in 2008, be their standard bearers. Blogger Alexey Navalny thought that jailing the members of the band was excessive, but has described them as "silly girls" who committed a "very stupid but small offense."

It may not be so easy to dismiss the group, however. More than 2,000 people have signed a petition asking the church not to press charges. Three supporters, including a member of the radical art group Voina -- itself known for an NSFW brand of protest -- were arrested at a rally at the courthouse where the women were being tried on March 15.

Established activists like Navalny might prefer that the Russian opposition not be derailed by skirmishes like the ongoing Pussy Riot trial. But hey, revolutions don't always get to pick their soundtrack.

(Head over to Democracy Lab for more on Russia's dissident artists.)

Did El Salvador cut a deal with the gangs to bring down violence?

Posted: March 26, 2012, 7:55 pm by Joshua Keating

With the world's second-highest homicide rate, (around 66 per 100,000 people) it's not surprising that El Salvador might take drastic measures to stop the killing. But a sudden drop in homicides is raising questions about just what the infamous MS-13 gang is getting in return:

An intelligence report prepared in February and provided by the government official asserts that top members of the ministry “offered, if it is necessary, to make deals or negotiate with subjects who have power inside organized crime structures to reduce homicides.”

There is no dispute that, in an unprecedented move, 30 of the top leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 criminal gangs were transferred on March 8 and 9 from a maximum-security prison, where many had been for over a decade, to prisons with perks including family visits.

In the ensuing days, killings in El Salvador dropped to five a day, and sometimes even fewer, from the typical 14. All told, homicides nationwide dropped to 186 in the first 21 days of March from 411 in January and 402 in February.

Zero-tolerance crime fighting strategies generally seem to be going out of favor in the region. Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, who had vowed on the campaign trail to crush the cartels, was in the news last week for hosting a regional conference on drug legalization.

FP's new commenting system

Posted: March 26, 2012, 6:57 pm by Joshua Keating

Foreign Policy is excited to announce that we are changing our commenting system, a move that will help us build a larger and more engaged commenting community. As of today, FP will be switching over to a system that will allow you to login using different social media accounts (including Twitter, Facebook, and through the system itself, which is called LiveFyre). We're happy to announce that this new system is designed to foster meaningful conversations, make sharing your insights easier than ever, block annoying spam, and be convenient to use wherever you happen to be reading FP.

The change will not be retroactive -- we will simply change the comments moving forward, so your existing comments will not be affected. All you have to do is use a Facebook or Twitter account -- or sign up for a LiveFyre account -- in order to comment after today. Your site login will no longer allow you to comment, but you're still a member in good standing of our website, and you can use your login to sign up for one of our expanding family of newsletters.

We're excited that it will now be easier than ever to share your views on foreignpolicy.com, and we hope you'll let us know what you think. And please let us know how we're doing by emailing us at editor@foreignpolicy.com or tweeting at us (@FP_Magazine.com). Happy commenting!

The Election 2012 Weekly Report: Energy and Etch a Sketch

Posted: March 23, 2012, 10:00 pm by Joshua Keating

Romney, the sketchy frontrunner

Mitt Romney commandingly won the Illinois primary this week, picking up at least 41 delegates to Rick Santorum's 10 and bolstering his argument that he is now, essentially, the presumptive GOP nominee. Santorum's strategy now hinges on convincing delegates in states where they are selected at party conventions to switch to his side, thus preventing Romney from reaching the 1,144 delegates he needs to secure the nomination. But, right now, it looks unlikely that he'll be able to force a contested convention in Tampa.

Romney didn't have much time to enjoy his front-runner status this week, with an embarrassing gaffe by his spokesman Eric Fehrnstom on Tuesday morning, who described Romney's ability to pivot to a general election campaign as being "almost like an Etch-A-Sketch.... You can shake it up, and we start all over again." The Etch-A-Sketch children's toy -- and the illusion to Romney as a blank-slate flip-flopper -- has already become a staple prop of Santorum's stump speech.

It's the foreign policy, stupid

Both Romney and Santorum continued their attacks on the administration's foreign policy this week, lending more credibility to the emerging narrative that national security, rather than the economy, may become the dominant issue of the campaign.

Santorum criticized the Obama administration's Afghanistan policy in an appearance on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. "If the game plan is, we're leaving, irrespective of whether we're going to succeed or not, then why are we still there? Let's either commit to winning or let's get out," he said.

Romney once again deferred to "better judgment." Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Romney conceded that "I think it's very plain to see that the conditions are not going very well" in Afghanistan, but said "the timing of withdrawal is going to be dependent about what you hear from the conditions on the ground" and the advice of military commanders.

Obama to Seoul

The president is traveling to South Korea this weekend for a 50-nation nuclear summit that will likely be overshadowed by North Korea's recently announced plans to launch a rocket next month. The administration has condemned the move as a violation of Pyongyang's recent agreement to halt weapons tests and return to nuclear talks.

North Korea's nuclear program has gotten less attention on the campaign trail than Iran, though Romney has called for the United States to pursue regime change in North Korea following the death of former leader Kim Jong Il.

Energy

With the campaign now moving to Louisiana, rising gas prices and offshore drilling are very much on the agenda this week. At a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma -- a major pipeline hub -- Obama defended his administration's energy policy, emphasizing the U.S. crude production has increased under his presidency and that the number of operating oil rigs is at an all-time high.

GOP candidates have hammered the president's decision to delay construction of the northern half of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from Canada. Newt Gingrich, in particular, has reframed his struggling campaign almost entirely around the issue of gas prices. "He doesn't have a green energy policy, he has a greenback energy policy. He keeps shoveling out greenbacks to failing ideas and propping them up with our tax money and with our children's money," Gingrich told Fox this week.

Romney has also blamed the "gas-hike trio" -- Obama's Energy secretary, EPA administrator, and Interior secretary - for high fuel prices, though as critics have pointed out, Romney actually suggested high energy prices could be a good thing when he was promoting "smart growth" policies as governor of Massachusetts.

The GOP attacks on Obama's energy policies have bewildered many environmentalists, who haven't exactly seen eye-to-eye with him throughout his presidency. "The president is very much in the center -- far too much in the center for many environmentalists," global warming activist Bill McKibben told the AP.

What to watch for:

Louisiana holds its primary on Saturday, with polls showing a strong lead for Santorum. Then, it's a rare week off before Maryland, Wisconsin, and Washington D.C. hold their contests on April 3.

The latest from FP

Stephen Walt argues that the drawn-out U.S. election system prevents presidents from conducting a coherent foreign policy.

Scott Clement looks at whether Afghan's still support the U.S. war in their country.

Aaron David Miller debunks the biggest myths about Israel's clout in Washington.

Global Times editor Hu Xijin doubts Romney would back up his aggressive rhetoric on China if he makes it to the White House.

Steve Levine sees the Obama administration's decision to slap tariffs on Chinese solar panels as election year politics.

Uri Friedman finds one place where the president still has overwhelming support: Sweden.

Can you tell 1980s Libertarian Ron Paul from today's Republican Ron Paul? Take our quiz to find out.

Obama says every small country 'punches above its weight'

Posted: March 23, 2012, 9:11 pm by Joshua Keating

Uri wrote a post in November on President Obama's persistent tic of saying America has "no stronger ally" than the country of whatever leader he happens to be talking to. But I hadn't realized until seeing this Danish TV segment, flagged by the good folks at Buzzfeed, that "punches above their weight" is also one of Obama's go-to clichés:

I get that it must be a little hard to come up with new and insightful ways of describing U.S.-Danish relations, but surely he could come up with something a little less patronizing!

Was the Mali coup leader trained in the U.S.?

Posted: March 23, 2012, 8:50 pm by Joshua Keating

An interesting nugget from the AP's latest dispatch from Bamako:

A diplomat who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press said that [Capt. Amadou Haya] Sanogo, the coup leader, was among the elite tier of soldiers selected by the U.S. Embassy to receive military counterterrorism training in America. Sanogo, the official said, traveled "several times" to America for the special training.

That means that he had to pass a background check indicating that he was not complicit in any human rights crimes. The official requested not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

As blogger Laura Seay quips, "your tax dollars at work."

The U.S. hasn't yet made a decision on whether to cut off military assistance to Mali following the coup. According to State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, annual U.S. assistance to Mali is around $137 million, about half of which is humanitarian aid. France suspended its military cooperation with Mali yesterday.

See also: Elizabeth Dickinson's post from 2010 on why coups always seem to be led by captains or colonels not generals.

MentalGator

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Items by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 16, 2012, 6:59 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 16, 2012, 5:40 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 15, 2012, 12:24 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 15, 2012, 11:44 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 15, 2012, 11:28 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 15, 2012, 3:20 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 14, 2012, 12:04 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 14, 2012, 7:41 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 14, 2012, 6:33 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 11, 2012, 12:59 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 11, 2012, 12:53 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 10, 2012, 11:36 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 10, 2012, 9:06 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 10, 2012, 6:22 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 10, 2012, 3:25 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 9, 2012, 7:30 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 9, 2012, 6:21 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 8, 2012, 1:04 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 8, 2012, 7:29 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 8, 2012, 7:03 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 8, 2012, 3:24 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 7, 2012, 10:12 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 7, 2012, 8:09 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 4, 2012, 10:03 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 3, 2012, 12:46 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 3, 2012, 12:25 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 3, 2012, 5:36 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 3, 2012, 3:28 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 2, 2012, 10:17 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 1, 2012, 9:21 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 1, 2012, 8:46 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: May 1, 2012, 3:26 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 30, 2012, 1:14 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 30, 2012, 10:31 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 27, 2012, 11:53 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 26, 2012, 6:30 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 26, 2012, 4:56 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 26, 2012, 3:36 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 24, 2012, 1:10 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 24, 2012, 7:42 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 24, 2012, 6:39 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 24, 2012, 3:23 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 23, 2012, 9:08 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 23, 2012, 7:31 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 23, 2012, 6:38 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 19, 2012, 11:19 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 19, 2012, 8:09 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 19, 2012, 3:26 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 18, 2012, 6:15 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 18, 2012, 5:34 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 17, 2012, 12:20 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 17, 2012, 11:51 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 17, 2012, 11:19 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 17, 2012, 3:20 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 16, 2012, 10:15 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 16, 2012, 8:13 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 13, 2012, 9:18 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 12, 2012, 9:06 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 12, 2012, 8:52 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 12, 2012, 8:31 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 12, 2012, 3:25 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 11, 2012, 5:51 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 11, 2012, 5:43 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 10, 2012, 1:33 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 10, 2012, 12:22 am by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 10, 2012, 10:09 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 10, 2012, 6:11 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 9, 2012, 6:43 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 6, 2012, 10:17 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 6, 2012, 8:31 pm by Joshua Keating

Posted: April 6, 2012, 7:40 pm by Joshua Keating