The African Union launched an invasion of a separatist-controlled island off the coast of Mozambique last week in part, to bolster the multilateral organization’s image abroad. Around 1,300 AU troops joined 400 Comorian government troops to oust Col. Mohamed Bacar from Anjouan, one of the three islands that make up the Union of the Comoros. In a one-day fight, the AU-Comorian troops gained full control of the island, and Bacar fled to French-controlled Mayotte, the other island on the Comorian archipelago. The only problem for the AU was that hardly anyone noticed the successful mission. In the United States, there [...]
Common sense suggests that when a house is burning down, the owners do not charge the firefighters an exorbitant fee to enter. Nor do the owners bar the relief brigade from entry and accuse them of spying for the neighbors down the street. When occupants inside the house start dousing the flames on their own, they are not viewed as betrayers and traitors. Yet that scenario more or less captures the reprehensible attitude of the Zimbabwe government toward the media in advance of today’s (March 29) presidential and legislative elections. The Information Ministry has charged reporters at least $1,700 to [...]
In a March 26 interview at the White House with foreign journalists, U.S. President George W. Bush said he had accepted an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss bilateral issues at Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi on April 6. Remarking that “It’s important that we have good relations with Russia,” Bush characterized the summit as “a follow-up” to the March 17-18 meeting between senior U.S. and Russian national security officials in Moscow. That “2+2” meeting — which included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the American side, and Foreign Minister Sergei [...]
