Monday, August 8, 2011

By James M. Dorsey

Syrian president Bashar al Assad has succeeded where US and European diplomacy failed: five months into anti-government demonstrations demanding his resignation, Mr. Assad has united the international community in decrying the brutality of his failed effort to crush the protests.

Increasingly cornered, Mr. Assad failed in the past week to read the writing on the wall. His ferocious attack on Hama, Syria’s…

By Search For Common Ground

 

The United States spent more than $7 billion in military aid to Colombia since the year 2000.

"There are several powerful companies and lobbies in Washington such as Lockheed Martin, say Raytheon, Northrop Grumman; military intelligence contractors who lobby Congress and their contacts within the Pentagon and the CIA to engage in special programs in Colombia with provisos written to make sure that the money actually cycles back to the United States," the WikiLeaks founder…

Fellowship

To help rabbis to lead the way in bringing Jewish ideas to the widest possible audiences, RWB invites applications for its Fellowship Program. The Fellowship Program will bring together rabbis from across the country and across the ideological spectrum to study with leading thinkers, authors, and influential people working in the fields of media, politics, public policy, American religion, and contemporary…

At the death of U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, there is no end to the praise. Obama, CNN and Wesley Clarke are out of all proportions. Tiny fact like these are left aside:

1) Holbrooke gave the green light for the Kwangju massacre on South Korean students 1980.

2) He undermined non-violent Dr. Rugova in Kosovo by helping the murky US -defined terrorists of the Kosovo Liberation Army to take over.

3) He was a prime mover in the expansion of NATO after the Cold…

World

• Vincenc Fisas of the School for a Culture of Peace released his report on the progress of peace processes in the third quarter of 2010. Sudan, Chad, the Western Sahara, Myanmar talks with the NLD, China-Tibet talks, Israeli-Palestinian talks and Yemen were all listed as progressing poorly in their respective peace…

World

• The UN will be having its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit in New York city from the 20th to the 22nd of September. They are looking to accelerate the progress towards the MDGs by 2015, review successes, best practices and lessons learned, obstacles and gaps, challenges and opportunities to lead to more “concrete strategies of action”.
• A new…

hostages in Iran

Sarah Shourd (with her mother), one of the 3 US hikers held in Evin Prison,…