The rules for playing football are well-known and fixed: spectators can reasonably expect 90 minutes of fair play. The rules for running international football organizations are secretive and broken, supplanted by deal-making. Under FIFA’s guidance, the World Cup became defined by corruption, authoritarianism and getting away with as much as you can. When the stench of […]
Continue Reading →
There are plenty of absurdities one can point to and laugh at, and more one can deride with horror, about the Trump-Kim summit on June 12th. The extraordinary spectacle of Trump going from threatening “fire and fury” and boasting about the size of his nuclear button, to praising “Little Rocket Man” as “very talented”, and […]
Continue Reading →
In today’s New York Times, Alex de Waal argues that, famine “leaves behind a bitter legacy, and a long trail of rancor. If mass starvation takes hold in Yemen, expect an even more deeply divided country. Expect radicalization. Expect an exodus across the Arabian Peninsula and up the Red Sea, toward the […]
Continue Reading →
For its storied history of corruption charges, including criminal and civil offenses across multiple jurisdictions, this months’ EOM is the defense company Leonardo SpA, previously called Finmeccanica. The nomination comes to us by way of our colleagues at Corruption Watch UK and their latest report, “The Anglo-Italian Job: Leonardo, AgustaWestland and Corruption Around the World.” We reprint the Executive Summary and encourage you to read the full Report.
Continue Reading →
In the preamble to the Protocol of the Constitutive Act Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU), AU member states’ lamented that ‘no single internal factor has contributed more to … the suffering of the civilian population [in Africa] than the scourge of conflicts within and […]
Continue Reading →
Recognizing that in today’s geopolitics, no idea is bad enough to be put to rest, we draw on a 2013 interview with Trita Parsi, founder and current president of the National Iranian American Council, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States (2007) and A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (2012). The interview took place during a period of mounting US pressure on Iran to cease their nuclear program, but before the Joint Comprehesnive Pan of Action that the Obama Administration signed with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the European Union, and Iran. Parsi’s warnings then about the perceived ‘military solution’ are as relevant today as they were then.
Continue Reading →Follow Us!
