September 2012 - Foreign Policy Public Health Blog

And the award for worst analysis of yesterday's events goes to...

By the US accepting the UK siege on the Ecuadorian embassy in London it gave tacit approval for attacks on embassies around the world. — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 12, 2012 A lot of readers thought it was unfair of me to blame WikiLeaks for alienating...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 2:34 PM by FP Passport

Did the "Innocence of Muslims" cast know what they were making?

The story of the film that reportedly inspired yesterday's protests in Egypt and Libya -- though according to U.S. officials, not the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya -- keeps getting stranger and more confusing. As I noted in an update...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 2:10 PM by FP Passport

Why the Japan-China island dispute is an American problem

The dispute over the small island chain in the East China Sea known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese heated up this week after the Japanese government announced it would buy the islands from their private Japanese owners for around $30 million...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 1:42 PM by FP Passport

Libya attack overshadows Vanity Fair's big Obama profile

President Obama hasn't mentioned the unpopular Libyan intervention much on the campaign trail, making only a passing reference to the successful operation in his convention speech last week (Senator John Kerry was the only speaker who addressed the...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 11:00 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Election 2012, 2012 Election Poster 1, Barack Obama

Guest post: The many (imagined) lives of Xi Jinping

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 BEIJING -- Where is Xi? On this, the eleventh day since Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping has disappeared from public view, speculation has yet to abate over the senior leader's...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 10:03 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: China

What's actually in the Mohammed video?

Sam Bacile has reportedly gone into hiding after his film, the “ Innocence of Muslims ,” provoked yesterday's violence in Egypt in Libya, including the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephens. According to the Israeli-American Bacile...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 9:58 AM by FP Passport

Mourning four of Afghanistan's skateboarding kids

We here at FP loved going through pictures of the young skateboarders for our photo essay on the kids of Skateistan , the group teaching Afghan youth to skaetboard in order to build their self-esteem and foster a strong sense of community. It was heartbreaking...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 6:32 AM by FP Passport

Morning Brief: U.S. ambassador killed in Libya

U.S. ambassador killed in Libya Top news: President Obama has confirmed that Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, was killed along with three members of his staff in an attack by an armed mob on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 5:20 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Morning Brief

Tragedy in Libya

As I write, Al Jazeera is reporting that Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, was killed amid an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi along with three others. Video and screen captures, supposedly of his body, are circulating on Twitter...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 3:23 AM by FP Passport

U.S. ambassador reportedly killed in Libya

The news in Libya is going from bad to worse: U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has reportedly been killed in a rocket attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Stevens is said to have died from smoke inhalation; journalist Zaid Benjamin tweeted a photo...

Published Wed, Sep 12 2012 3:00 AM by FP Passport

Would Obama still be winning if he hadn’t killed Osama?

At their convention in Charlotte last week, Democrats seized on Barack Obama's rare advantage over Mitt Romney on national security, portraying the Republican candidate and his running mate as bumbling foreign-policy novices, repeatedly referencing...

Published Tue, Sep 11 2012 6:00 PM by FP Passport

Netanyahu blasts Obama administration ahead of election

Last week, I pointed out that Republicans and Democrats were both invoking Benjamin Netanyahu's statements to argue that the Israeli prime minister was on their side, even though Netanyahu himself has not explicitly expressed support for either Barack...

Published Tue, Sep 11 2012 12:22 PM by FP Passport

Filed under: Election 2012, Barack Obama

Protesters storm U.S. embassy in Cairo

A number of old political traumas are colliding in Cairo tonight. On the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Salafist protesters broke into the U.S. embassy in Egypt and tore down the American flag outside, replacing it with the black flag similar to the...

Published Tue, Sep 11 2012 11:06 AM by FP Passport

Romney team touts the governor's French-language skills

In defending Mitt Romney's national security credentials to BuzzFeed on Tuesday, foreign policy advisor Robert O'Brien cited a rather curious data point -- the French Romney picked up while serving as a Mormon missionary in France in the late...

Published Tue, Sep 11 2012 9:34 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Election 2012, Mitt Romney

What would 9/11 have been like with Twitter?

I asked my Twitter followers this morning what it would have been like had Twitter been around during the Sept. 11 attacks. It seems crazy that only 11 years ago, we didn't even have smart phones integrated with cameras and 3G Internet. There was...

Published Tue, Sep 11 2012 8:47 AM by FP Passport