Iran, Venezuela and the United States exchanged verbal machine-gun fire at the United Nations. The Pope ignited a new fight over semantics with Islam and U.S. politicians locked horns over the terminology of torture law. A war of words broke out across the globe this week and commentators wasted no time filling the world’s English-language opinion pages with clarifications of what was being said. There was also a coup in Thailand and a few new things were written — although unsurprisingly nothing was done — about the crisis in Sudan. Kaveh L. Afrasiabi observed in the Sept. 23 Asia Times [...]
Colombia is at a crossroads, and whether it finds the road to peace depends largely on the success of newly re-elected President Alvaro Uribe’s two-pronged strategy to end a decades-long internal armed conflict. Uribe was re-elected in May largely because he seemed to be achieving success where so many of his predecessors had failed — in the fight against the country’s leftist guerrillas, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. At the same time, the newly enacted Justice and Peace Law is an attempt to get the country’s rightist paramilitaries, under the umbrella of the United Self-Defense [...]
Although we seek to be timely and relevant here at World Politics Review, covering breaking news is not our prime focus. We like to think that news stories and commentary that go deeper, and put current events into context,is our forte. But, on the other hand, if we can from time to time cover breaking stories in our usual way, and do it well, then of course we’ll jump at the chance. Thanks to some great contributors, we’ve had that chance today. First, we are lucky to have contributor and veteran international affairs reporter Roland Flamini on the scene at [...]
