With western media continuing to blame Russia and its allies for the escalation of violence in Syria and elsewhere, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told participants at the Munich Security Conference-- itself a relic of the Cold War designed to promote defense spending-- that “all sides in Syria are guilty.”
Speaking to the same audience in Munich, Russian prime minister Dmitry Ledbedev said he feels Western ...
President Barack Obama, seeking to shape his legacy, said that COP 21 makes the United States, which did not ratify the earlier Kyoto Protocol, “the world leader in fighting climate change.”
But Obama will not be around to lead the COP 21 fight, which is not scheduled to start until 2020. By that time another U.S. president ...
While Brazil's “strategic allies” --Germany and France-- are now turning away Syrians and other refugees Brazil has already provided asylum to 2,900 people presumed to be Syrian nationals fleeing the bloody civil war. The United States, which open sources indicate is spending billions of dollars to provide asylum to refugees from many nations, including Syria, operates sophisticated screening operations to examine the backgrounds of asylum seekers. As seen by the refugee ...
Good idea, bad timing?
It's not clear whether the world's worst drought in over a century provided impetus for the agriculture ministers of the BRICS nations to gather in Brasilia in March and launch a manifesto designed to make the group a key player in the global food security regime. But they did. Now the world is waiting.
From a moral and business ethics perspective the effort makes sense and can add value to the BRICS brand.
But success ...
In what is being branded as an effort to provide palliative assistance to reduce hunger and boost democracy building living standards Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank and Ban Ki Moon, secretary general of the United Nations, have launched a plan that expands the strategically significant “Horn of Africa” to encompass ...
... entire process back to square one.
Billions of dollars are spent annually, and thousands of jobs are created in government and the private sector by all major actors. Yet there seems to be an inability to act with mental toughness and provide the sound analysis that avoids “miscalculations.” The European Community dawdled and miscalculated badly on Ukraine and Crimea.
One can see the sense of anomie and disconnectedness in the influential American journal Foreign Policy. An article calling for Russian president Vladimir Putin to be "kicked ...