About Get Alerts Login
November 21, 2009
Browse by Regions and/or Topics

WPR Blogs

What Happened to Ivory Coast?

Posted By The Editors 15 Dec 2006 In out latest podcast, World Politics Review contributor Blake Lambert reports from Ivory Coast on the prospects for peace in what was once one of West Africa's most prosperous countries. Lambert interviews two Ivoirians with different perspectives on what caused the country's current troubles.

Hit the play button below to listen (must have Flash installed to use audio player):



To download the audio, click here.

Iran's Appalling Holocaust Conference

Posted By The Editors 11 Dec 2006 The Islamic Republic News Agency, the Iranian regime's media organ, has some choice reporting from the appalling conference of holocaust deniers the regime is hosting in Tehran this week:

Secretary General of Int'l Congress to Support Palestinian Intifada Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipour emphasizing need for survey and research on Holocaust, said here Monday, "Results of surveys so far show Holocaust is no more than a myth."

Speaking to IRNA on the sidelines of the Foreign Ministry sponsored International Conference to Survey Holocaust: A Global Vision", December 11-12, he added, "The Western and Zionist media have always been aggrandizing the dimensions of the reality of Holocaust, mixing a bit of truth with a lot of lies."

He stressed, "Results of surveys and research work at hand today around the globe prove the fact to the world nations that much of what has been said in the West about the Holocaust is nothing but a big myth."

Mohtashamipur meanwhile reiterated, "Saying that Holocaust is a myth does not mean that the Nazis committed no crimes in the course of World War II."

The former Iranian Interior Minister said, "They committed horrendous crimes during WWII, but the Zionists' narration of the massacre of six million jews at Nazi death camps is far from reality."

He emphasized that a fact finding research committee needs to be established to shed light on real dimensions of Holocaust, adding, "The truth seekers would be glad to hear the results of that committee's unbiased studies."

Mohtashamipour added, "The establishment of such an international committee is not impossible despite strong opposition of the US and the Zionist regimes, although it might prove to be very difficult." Mohtashamipour that presided over the first session of the Holocaust Conference also said, "The Zionists need to present strong, authentic proof for their claims regarding Holocaust the way they have so far propagated about it."

While we're on the subject of propaganda, the very respectful coverage this abhorrent farce is receiving in China's state press is perhaps more worthy of note.

See the Xinhua report on the conference, as well as China Daily's dutifully balanced article.

Kofi Annan Delivers Swan Song in Missouri

Posted By The Editors 11 Dec 2006 Kofi Annan's farewell speech Monday at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., is being reported as a thinly veiled attack on President Bush and on recent U.S. foreign policy.

The good thing about discrete news events such as speeches, however, is there is no need to rely on the reporting of others. We say: You be the judge.

Listen to Guy Taylor on PRI's 'To the Point'

Posted By The Editors 11 Dec 2006 World Politics Review International News Editor Guy Taylor appeared on PRI's "To the Point" with Warren Olney Dec. 1 as part of the show's "Reporter's Notebook" feature.

To listen to the segment, click here. The segment begins with about 15 minutes left in the hour-long show, so scroll rightward on the audio player to skip to the beginning of Guy's interview with Warren Olney.

Guy returned from Venezuela last week. Go here for links to some of the articles he filed while there.

The Death of Alexander Litvinenko

Posted By The Editors 07 Dec 2006 The Dec. 5 episode of The Charlie Rose Show featured an excellent discussion of the mysterious death of Alexander Litvinenko. The discussion, featuring former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock, NYU Russia Expert Stephen Cohen, Litvinenko friend and author Yuri Felshtinsky, and investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein, challenges facile explanations of the apparent murder, and provides insight into the larger question of what the incident reveals about Russia's internal stabiliity and external relations.

Watch it below (must have Flash enabled to view the video player):

President Receives Iraq Study Group Report

Posted By The Editors 06 Dec 2006 President Bush today received the long-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group at the White House. The report is not yet public, but it shouldn't be long now, as the commission will deliver it to Congress next. (UDATE: Download the report here.)

The Washington Post reports some of the contents of the report, and also has video of the president's remarks upon receiving it.

The delivery of the ISG report is one of several events this week that are bound to affect Iraq policy. Another is the Senate Armed Services Committee's approval of Robert Gates as Donald Rumsfeld's replacement as defense secretary after a hearing yesterday (the full Senate is expected to vote by Friday for confirmation).

Another significant event for Iraq in Washington this week, which was overshadowed by the Gates hearing and the ISG report in press coverage, was the meeting Monday at the White House between Bush and Iraqi Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Roland Flamini reports on that meeting today in our news section. Flamini sums up the significance of the meeting:

By meeting al-Hakim, observers said, Bush is involving himself directly in the Byzantine complexities of Iraqi politics. With the administration seemingly losing confidence in Nouri al-Maliki, the high level reception given to another powerful political leader could be seen as a signal to the prime minister to make a greater effort.

By holding talks with a senior Shiite theologian, Bush was also acknowledging the religious dynamic at work in Iraqi politics. . . .

It is also significant that al-Hakim, unlike his rival al-Sadr, does not support the immediate withdawal of American troops. Finally, Flamini's article looks at the prospects for an Iraqi reconciliation conference and for a regional or international conference to address the country's problems.

Flamini has followed Iraq in a number of WPR articles. In addition, in our commentary section WPR has published views on various aspects of the Iraq strategy debate. To browse all of our articles on Iraq, click here.

Photo Feature: Venezuela on Election Day

Posted By Andrew Cutraro 05 Dec 2006 wpw_blog8b

Che Guevera impersonator (top) and line of voters in 23 January slums of Caracas on election day. Photos by Andrew Cutraro/Aurora.

Gates Confirmation Hearing Today

Posted By The Editors 05 Dec 2006 The Senate Armed Services Committee's confirmation hearing for incoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates is underway on Capitol Hill. It began this morning at 9:30 a.m. and likely will last most of the day.

To follow the hearings live, C-SPAN's Web feed is here. And the folks over at InsideDefense.com are live-blogging the hearing. They've already posted 12 times in less than two hours.

'Social Software' Could Revolutionize Intelligence

Posted By The Editors 04 Dec 2006 The New York Times magazine this Sunday published a must-read article about using blogs, wikis and other "social software" that is already revolutionizing the way people share information on the public Internet to improve the moribund information-sharing systems of the U.S. intelligence community.

And, yes, we did say moribund. The opening paragraphs of the article, by Clive Thompson, demonstrate just how behind the times the intel community is when it comes to information technology:

When Matthew Burton arrived at the Defense Intelligence Agency in January 2003, he was excited about getting to his computer. Burton, who was then 22, had long been interested in international relations: he had studied Russian politics and interned at the U.S. consulate in Ukraine, helping to speed refugee applications of politically persecuted Ukrainians. But he was also a big high-tech geek fluent in Web-page engineering, and he spent hours every day chatting online with friends and updating his own blog. When he was hired by the D.I.A., he told me recently, his mind boggled at the futuristic, secret spy technology he would get to play with: search engines that can read minds, he figured. Desktop video conferencing with colleagues around the world. If the everyday Internet was so awesome, just imagine how much better the spy tools would be.

But when he got to his cubicle, his high-tech dreams collapsed. "The reality," he later wrote ruefully, "was a colossal letdown."

The spy agencies were saddled with technology that might have seemed cutting edge in 1995. When he went onto Intelink — the spy agencies' secure internal computer network — the search engines were a pale shadow of Google, flooding him with thousands of useless results. If Burton wanted to find an expert to answer a question, the personnel directories were of no help. Worse, instant messaging with colleagues, his favorite way to hack out a problem, was impossible: every three-letter agency — from the Central Intelligence Agency to the National Security Agency to army commands — used different discussion groups and chat applications that couldn't connect to one another. In a community of secret agents supposedly devoted to quickly amassing information, nobody had even a simple blog — that ubiquitous tool for broadly distributing your thoughts.

But Thompson also reports the good news that some at the intelligence agencies have realized the seriousness of this problem and are beginning to experiment with new approaches to intelligence sharing using technology such as the new "intellipedia," the existence of which was announced in October (pdf).

As Thompson's article makes clear, use of such technology also necessitates more openness, because much of the value of applications like blogs, wikis and even "link analysis" search engines like Google lies in the ability of a large community to access, link to and evaluate the information that is disseminated using them.

Fortunately, the intelligence community also seems increasingly to recognize the value of open-source information. Last year, the office of the director of national intelligence created an Open Source Center to gather and analyze information from newspapers, the Web and other open sources.

There are dinosaurs in the intelligence business who will tell you that information that isn't secret can't be called intelligence. But this nonsensical view looks to be on the way out. As Gen. Michael V. Hayden said at a November, 2005, news briefing announcing the center's creation, "Just because information is stolen, that doesn't make it more useful."

Perhaps it bodes well for this enlightened approach that Hayden, who was then DNI Negroponte's deputy, is now the CIA director.

Tracking Global Power Via the Opinion Press

Posted By The Editors 04 Dec 2006 Last week, the Washington Post's online "Post Global" section launched a new feature called the "Global Power Barometer," which is described as "a simple way to understand 24/7 who's winning and losing globally."

The barometer, developed by an outfit called the Denver Research Group, "provides a relative measure of how well various nations, ideologies and political movements are exercising their power to move global opinion and events in the directions they desire," says the site.

The day-to-day measurements of which countries are up and which are down in the news and opinion pages is pretty useless. But the four-week tracking view could prove to be interesting to follow. Right now, China, Iran, Islamists and North Korea are on the upswing, while the United States and Israel are not doing well in the influence game.

Measuring "Global Thought" through media is certainly not a definitive way to gauge power, but given the importance of opinion and perceptions in contributing to "soft power," the trends depicted by the GPB may be worth a look from time to time.