How China is Winning the Solomon Islands
Since 2019, Beijing has spent a considerable amount of money and effort setting up its position in the Solomon Islands and openly assisting in the crushing of dissent.
Robert Mugabe
The U.S. Sanctions Venezuela’s President
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The designation came a...
Policy Briefs
Gay—or Left?
On July 19, 2005, authorities in the Iranian city of Mashhad publicly lynched two teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, for the alleged crime of raping a 13-year-old boy. Horrific pictures...
Op-eds
Bradley Manning is No Gay Hero
From 1916, when the United States military first expressly prohibited homosexuals, until the 1993 passage of "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT), gay men and women were considered psychologi...
Op-eds
Madness in High Places
I am just back from a pilgrimage to Machiavelli’s town, San Casciano, and I’m happy to report that the sort of “virile Christianity” he favored is still alive and active i...
Op-eds
Yep: Robert Mugabe, UN Leader for Tourism
Surely even the United Nations would hesitate over celebrating Zimbabwe’s longtime despot, Robert Mugabe, as a “leader” of any kind? That’s why, in my...
Op-eds
Beyond Mugabe’s Madness
Even by the ridiculously low procedural standards of Africa's club of presidents-for-life, last Friday's poll in Zimbabwe was a truly pathetic exercise. As Barry Bearak, the Pulitzer Pr...
Op-eds
Zimbabwe’s Runoff Rip-off
Three months ago, Zimbabweans went to the polls and by a clear majority repudiated the nearly three-decade misrule of the Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in general and t...
Op-eds
Enabling Mugabe to Cling On
Last Friday was the twenty-eighth anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence, although the country's long-suffering people of the country might be forgiven for not exactly marking the occas...
Op-eds
Bad Faith Actor
In the pantheon of United Nations causes, Africa by many measures occupies a preeminent role. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has described “the African challenge” as “the highest...
Op-eds
Zimbabwe Zigzags Onto Another Rough Patch
The ongoing stand-off in Zimbabwe between incumbent President Robert Mugabe and the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, shows how much the political landscape can shift back and forth in t...
Op-eds
Botswana’s Success Sparkles amid African Gloom
While the world has been watching the pathetic spectacle being played out in Harare, Zimbabwe, as Robert Mugabe clings desperately to the levers of power he has held for nearly three decades (see...
Op-eds
Just Move the UN Human Rights Council to Syria
With the Assad regime murdering hundreds of protesters, it’s patently grotesque that Syria might get a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. And yet, when the General Assembly vo...
Op-eds
Abyei: The Abscess Threatening the Sudan
If all goes as planned, exactly one month from today, on January 9, 2011, voters in the ten states of southern Sudan as well as southerners living in the northern part of the country and abroad w...
Op-eds
Heart of Politically Correct Darkness: Death in Zimbabwe
I got a note today from an African friend. He describes himself as "sad and angry" over the death of our mutual friend, Kobus Joubert. We don't know all the details yet, but...
Op-eds
Eritrea: Spoiler Exacerbates Crisis in the Horn of Africa and Beyond
By Dr. J. Peter Pham One of the frustrations with which Africa's friends have had to repeatedly cope over the years has been the seemingly utter incapacity of the African l...
Op-eds
Want Detente? Be Careful What You Wish For
As the dust settles with an eerie hazmat glitter on this year's opening of the United Nations General Assembly, I'm finally ready to give up on that Bush-coined phrase, "axis of evil."...
Op-eds
The President And Two Dictators
America has "re-engaged the United Nations," said President Barack Obama in his maiden speech Wednesday to the U.N. General Assembly. Yes, it has, and within hours both Libya's Col. Muammar...
Op-eds
Axis Of Opportunism
The bad old Axis of Evil is back in the news. That's not because President Barack Obama has resurrected the label, but because he's now planning to hold direct talks with its two surviv...
Op-eds
Guinea Avoids the Deluge — At Least for Now
More than two years ago, I devoted a column in this series to the relatively obscure West African nation of Guinea which holds more than half of the world's reserves of bauxite (bauxite ore...