By many accounts, U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu don’t much like or trust each other. It’s important that they use their meeting on Monday (March 5) to end at least the mistrust. For many months now U.S. diplomacy has been directed as much at stopping an Israeli preemptive military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, as at Iran itself. It’s partly thanks to the tension created by Israel’s threats to act that the Obama administration was finally a

As promised in December, WikiLeaks has begun to release a stash of documents related to the modus operandi of the “private intelligence” sector, using Texas-based Stratfor as a case study. Claiming to have hacked Stratfor’s system to obtain millions of private emails, WikiLeaks has just released the first batch ― and what it suggests about the American intelligence community makes me feel as secure as day-old pizza in a frat house.The CIA has long used private intelligence firms for “black ops,”

Among the thousands of interviews I’ve conducted as a human rights investigator over the last 24 years, one of the most difficult was in 1996, outside a refugee camp along the Thai-Burma border. I was no stranger to suffering in my country. I had fled from Burma (also known as Myanmar) just a few years before, escaping the brutal military regime after being arrested and tortured.I had gone to the camp to investigate reports that villages were being uprooted and brutalized to make way for a natur

Greek opinion is divided over the government’s plan to offer the Parthenon and other heritage sites as film and photo backdrops to raise revenue during its current economic crisis. “This is sacrilege!” one Greek tour guide protested. But others thought that, humbling though the measure might be, it was at least better than begging for foreign bailouts.For some Greeks, the debate may have evoked a sense of deja vu. Pericles, the great Athenian statesman, also proposed raiding the Parthenon to mee

The Indonesian government’s plan to buy 100 used Leopard tanks has sparked debate within the House of Representatives, but apparently the show must go on as part of the country’s long overdue modernization of defense equipment. Deputy Minister of Defense Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin provided the Jakarta Post’s Novan Iman Santosa, Dwi Atmanta and Imanuddin Razak with a broader picture of the issues of primary weaponry system modernisation.Question: What is the latest update on negotiations to purchase sec

Ideas would be much more important for China than money, former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping told Robert McNamara, the then president of the World Bank, in 1980. The World Bank report, “China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society,” which was released on Monday, bears full testimony to Deng’s prescience. More than three decades of remarkable growth have transformed China, from a largely insignificant player in the global market, into the world’s second largest econ

Further efforts by Europe are indispensable if it is to contain its debt crisis. Japan, the United States and emerging economies took this stern position vis-a-vis Europe during the latest meeting of the Group of 20 economic powers.The G20 meeting, which ended Sunday in Mexico after adopting a joint statement, was participated in by finance ministers and central bank governors of the 20 major economies, including Japan, the United States and the European Union plus China and Brazil.The focal poi

Chalk up another win for the law of unintended consequences. When federal courts ruled in 2010 against restricting donations to political action committees, Republican strategists rejoiced. Here, they thought, was a way for the GOP’s deep-pocketed donors to gain an advantage over President Obama’s fundraising machine.But look what happened. “Super PACs,” as the newly empowered political action committees are known, have mutated like election-year Godzillas, wreaking havoc in an increasingly bloo

Washington had Watergate, Italy bunga bunga-gate, London Murdoch-gate. Now, Hong Kong brings us basement-gate. It’s a scandal that many of us outside the city of 7 million might find hard to fathom. Henry Tang, the favorite to be Hong Kong’s next leader, has an illegal basement. In my mind, that’s only a problem if you are storing drugs, trafficking humans or evading taxes. For Hong Kong residents squeezed by surging rents and living costs, Tang’s underground aerie, which he built without a gove