Section: The Huffington Post (USA)
U.S. To Train Ukraine Military Following Russian Agression
WASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) – U.S. troops will begin training regular Ukrainian military forces later this year in an expansion of their current mission, which so far has been limited to instructing Interior Ministry national guard units, the State Department said on Friday.”This training is part of our long-running defense...
Weekend Roundup: Politics Is the Art of the Possible
In 1867, then Prime Minister of Prussia Otto von Bismarck (who, with parallels today, maintained German hegemony over Europe) famously said that politics is the art of the possible. If you don’t have to deal with a political opponent, you can dream up the perfect policy. But when you have an opponent, you have to set aside the dream and...
Being An Athlete Isn’t Just About Playing Sports, And It Shouldn’t Be
After Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones began tweeting about #BlackLivesMatter on Thursday, someone responded by telling the college athlete on Twitter to just “worry about getting us fans another championship….. Stay out of this bullshit.” Jones quickly issued his own take, and the debate shifted from the issue of African...
Is MH17 Putin’s Katyn Wood Massacre?
Blocking accountability and seeking to blame others for its crimes, even when premeditated is a KGB tactic, but only marginally successful. Putin should have learned the lesson that the truth is bound to come through. However, he uses Russia’s veto within the UN Security Council in the vain pursuit of pressing upon the world fairy tales and...
Greece, Iran, and the Rules of the Game
Alexis Tsipras had a choice. As the leader of the fledgling Syriza government in Greece, he could have told the European Union to stuff its austerity plan. He could have taken the risk that the EU would offer a better deal to keep Greece in the Eurozone. Or, failing that, he could have navigated his country into the uncharted waters of economic...
Strategic Investment and Engagement in Africa – Theory or Practice?
Think of Africa. What comes to mind? Ebola? Boko Haram? ISIS and violent conflict? Famine, poverty and disease? Wild animals and threatened species? What if I told you that the cradle of civilization is conducting cutting edge research on HIV/AIDS in Botswana? That Africa attracted more than $8 billion in renewable energy investments last year,...
Ukraine’s Volunteers Saving the Day
Young Maley in a Kiev hospital bed recovering from shrapnel wounds in war against Russia KIEV, UKRAINE Days after Russia took over Crimea last year, Ukrainian teenager “Maley” contacted his local army recruitment office to sign up. His calls went unanswered for weeks, so he went to the front with his grandfather’s hunting rifle...
The Eurasian Big Bang
How China and Russia Are Running Rings Around WashingtonCross-posted with TomDispatch.comLet’s start with the geopolitical Big Bang you know nothing about, the one that occurred just two weeks ago. Here are its results: from now on, any possible future attack on Iran threatened by the Pentagon (in conjunction with NATO) would essentially be...
Why Russia Opposed the MH17 Tribunal
MOSCOW — The anniversary of the tragic downing of flight MH17 over the Donbass on July 17, 2014 that killed all 298 on board caused another surge of debate over who committed this crime. Fueling that debate is a draft resolution before the UN Security Council calling for the establishment of an international tribunal to punish those...
Interview With Bernard Kouchner Flying Over Africa. Part II
Elena Cué: Did you achieve more for human rights using your political platform or through your humanitarian work?Bernard Kouchner: I think that it’s very complex to balance any inference of so-called political things. Human rights are political, and it will take years and years to explain to the people that the solution to the massacres is...
