Recent blog posts

The gathering of Latin American leaders in Cancun, Mexico on February 23 grabbed the headlines after its 32 participants pledged to create a Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. The new alliance, which includes Cuba and excludes the United States and Canada, was conceived as an alternative to the Organization of American States (OAS), a regional institution established in 1948 to fight communism and promote democracy and human rights.

Professor Aldo Civico is the director of the Center for International Conflict Resolution (CICR) at Columbia University's Schools of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). An anthropologist, he has been doing fieldwork in Colombia since 2001 focusing on internally displaced people and the paramilitary. Since 2003, he has been facilitating the peace efforts with the ELN guerrilla. Previously, he worked as a senior political adviser to Mr.

Increasingly, NGOs are drawing on marketing techniques, such as paid advertising, branding, celebrity endorsement programmes, and audience profiling, to project their messages and to attempt to influence policy. Whilst this trend has been widely accepted in countries like the United States and the UK, many Indian NGOs engaged in advocacy work are, on the basis of political ideology, questioning its suitability in India.

One of my earliest memories of foreign affairs from my childhood was the brief war between Argentina and Great Britain over the small, wind-swept Falkland Islands in 1982. In response to the Argentine seizure of the islands, which they call Islas Malvinas and claim as their own, the British sent a naval flotilla halfway around the world to retake them. Without GPS, YouTube, broadband satellite uplinks or any of the other tools of modern journalism, I remember watching the progress of the British fleet on the nightly news as a red dot on a map slowly, very slowly, making its way down the length of the Atlantic Ocean towards the Falklands.

This week, I continue my review of John Heilemann's and Mark Halperin's book, Game Change, and discuss the book's portrayal of Sarah Palin. 

Brooklyn’s Soapbox Gallery was hopping February 19 for the opening reception for works presented by artists Chaw Ei Thein and Brad Darcy. The DJ spun some smooth tunes, curator Nunu Hung held court, and a packed house took in the striking works of the two artists coming together under the banner of “Transformed Conversation.”

In politics, as in everyday life, a convergence of circumstances can prove fateful -- gleefully so for the winners, and maddeningly unfair in the view of the defeated. This is one of the many observations one may divine from John Heilemann's and Mark Halperin's newly-released book on the 2008 U.S. presidential race, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.

For policymakers seeking an entry-point to engage the Middle East in dialogue, there may be an opening created by the apparent disillusionment of many ME societies with both Islamist groups and Muslim leaders.

This picture above is of the zero currency rupees designed by a anti-corruption organization in India called 5th pillar. The group has invented the rupees in hopes that they will be passed on to wrong doers as a sort of tangible scarlett letter against those searching for a bribe or operating under fraudlent pretences.  

"The zero currency note in your country's currency is a tool to help you achive the goal of zero corruption. The note is a way for any human being to say NO to corruption without the fear of facing an encounter with persons in authority.

Next time someone asks you for a bribe, just take your country's zero currency note and hand it to them. This will let the other person know that you refuse to give or take any money in order to perform services required by law or to give or take money to do something illegal"

Props to Designboom