It is easier to excuse "collateral damage" if you believe the victims are your sworn enemies. But Pakistan is not anti-American
This is the third of a series of fictional character sketches from the openDemocracy writer’s latest novel, Unimportant People…
III
Anyone on the street can tell you about his
Pop singer Rihanna has offered to re-film the music video 'Man Down', in which she plays a rape victim who shoots her abuser. But was the controversy caused by the film's sexual and violent content, or because it shows a woman answering back on her own terms?
Barack Obama’s hopes of a second term are still bright. But twin policy crises and Republican stirrings are clouds on his re-election horizon, says Godfrey Hodgson.
China's development of a space programme threatens to increase Sino-US tension as the latter's dominance of space, with all its military and commercial potential, is undermined.
Long-standing maritime disputes between China and its neighbours intensify. Afghan President Hamai Karzai visits Islamabad. Departing US Defence Secretary Gates criticizes European reluctance to contribute to Nato efforts and Syrian troops move forward as the number of refugees to Turkey increases
Pakistan and China hail their relationship during a recent state visit of Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Gilani to Beijing. In Sudan, fighting between Northern and Southern armed forces in the contested border region intensifies. India buys transport aircraft from the US in the highest value mili
Jennifer Egan's fiction asks whether our experience is now technologically mediated to the point that we routinely mistake the map for the territory. In her book A Visit from the Goon Squad, she evokes a world where the pressure constantly to self-reinvent threatens to erode our sense of identity.
To get beyond the current impasse in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the "Quartet principles" need to be abandoned in favor of an active promotion of Fatah-Hamas reconciliation.
The state of the U.S. economy is still looming large over the opening presidential election race. It will likely remain the dominant issue, while foreign policy developments and the 2010 Supreme Court decision on campaign financing will play prominent roles, argues Frank Groome
In his first two years in office, President Obama had six foreign-policy goals. None has been achieved.
