A few days back I had a post, Iraq’s Legacy, which dealt with the issue of whether or not the continuing Iraq war was in fact serving to increase the level of international terrorism, and whether at the end of the day we might not be left with a bigger headache than the one we [...]

All those ‘O’s and ‘C’s, I just couldn’t resist it. So what the hell is this one about. Well, something quite important really. They are oil companies, and one of them is in China. Brad Setser has a great post on it. The issue is what China is starting to do with all those surplus [...]

Politically incorrect as ever, Samuel Brittan asks an interesting question in today’s FT: have we got it wrong on China. Have Western leaders so obsessed themselves with the need to lecture China on what they should be doing with the Renminbi that we are missing a historic opportunity to put pressure on them about human [...]

This issue has, I think, been obvious for some time now.
“A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda’s early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat.
The assessment, completed [...]

Evidence has been mounting for some time now of ‘ethnic cleansing’ type activities in Iraq’s Kurdish zone. The latest addition to the list is a piece by Washington Post reporters Steve Fainaru and Anthony Shadid. They claim to have gotten hold of a US State Department memo which states that “extra-judicial detentions” form [...]

The Washington Post has sent a correspondent and a photographer to Finland for three weeks to “figure the place out.”
“Finland just might be the world’s most interesting country that Americans know least about. It has the best school system in the world, some of the most liberated women (the president is female), more cell phones [...]

As John Quiggin suggests, perhaps the best starting point is Eurasian politics and news blog Registan. (As they inform us: ?Registan? means ?sandy place? in Uzbek and a number of other Turkic languages). Surfing around Registan can send you off in any number of directions.

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Ok, I’m feeling guilty. Back in November, when the ‘orange revolution’ was thriving in Ukraine, we were all over it here at Afoe. Now, with an estimated several hundred dead in Andizhan, Uzbekistan we’re strangely silent. Why, because it isn’t Europe? Well, we are a Europe centred blog, but I hope that doesn’t mean we [...]

Views of immigration are changing. Back in the mists of time, when I first came to the conclusion that ongoing demographic changes were going to be important, the voices in favour of a reconsideration of immigration policy were few and far between. Perhaps the first and most notable of these voices was the UN population [...]

For once something positive to report:
After months of deadlock, the Doha round of global trade talks has taken a big step forward, thanks largely to an abstruse but important deal over agricultural tariffs….On May 4th, negotiators from America, the European Union, Brazil, India and Australia hammered out a formula for converting specific tariffs on agricultural [...]