Foreign Policy Public Health Blog

Putin to Bush: My dog is "Bigger, stronger, faster" than yours

World leaders, they're just like us... only more petty and childish apparently. Reuters pulls this tidbit out of former President George W. Bush's forthcoming book, Decision Points: Bush says he had introduced then-Russian President Putin to his...

Published Thu, Nov 04 2010 8:19 AM by FP Passport

Russian space debris fears shut down Shanghai airport

Via China Digital Times , Shanghai Daily reports that fears about debris from a destroyed Russian Mars probe forced the temporary shutdown of two Shanghai airports last month: SOME 17 flights were told to defer landing at Shanghai's two airports late...

Published Tue, Feb 07 2012 2:25 PM by FP Passport

Even death won't stop prosecution of Russian lawyer

In a move straight out of Kafka, Russian police are taking the unusual step of filing new tax evasion charges against lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in their custody two years ago: The trial of the defendant, Sergei L. Magnitsky, would be the first...

Published Wed, Feb 08 2012 8:55 AM by FP Passport

Decline Watch: Is the U.S. Constitution going out of style?

On Monday, we disussed Ruth Bader Ginsburg's now-controversial interview with an Egyptian television station in which she suggested that the U.S. Constitution may not be the best guide for a country writing its own founding document in the 21st century...

Published Thu, Feb 09 2012 10:03 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Decline Watch

Filming Homs's horrors

President Bashar al-Assad's assault on Homs continues, and the world has watched it unfold in real time. For the past week, activists have uploaded gruesome videos of indiscriminate shelling and civilian shelling that has given viewers worldwide a...

Published Fri, Feb 10 2012 9:50 AM by FP Passport

Want to spruce up your tired old concept? Put a 2.0 on it!

Today, Luke Bozier, a former Labour Party web guru who recently defected to the Tories, has an op-ed up at the Huffington Pos t recommending " intervention 2.0 " as an international strategy for responding to the bloodshed in Syria. Here's...

Published Tue, Feb 21 2012 9:42 AM by FP Passport

Guest blog: Why globalization isn't working

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 So it turns out that Columbus was right all along. The world isn't flat. That's essentially what the G-20 was trying to tell President Obama in Seoul last week. As I predicted...

Published Mon, Nov 15 2010 10:25 AM by FP Passport

Soros: China has better functioning government than U.S.

If nothing else, Glenn Beck probably has his top story set for tonight's show: "There is a really remarkable, rapid shift of power and influence from the United States to China," Mr. Soros said, likening the U.S.'s decline to that of...

Published Tue, Nov 16 2010 8:35 AM by FP Passport

The Saudi succession battle spills into the press

A number of smart people have spent considerable energy on the question of what will happen after Egypt's 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak finally passes on to that great pyramid in the sky. But it may actually be Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by...

Published Tue, Nov 16 2010 2:08 PM by FP Passport

Currency wars and conventional wisdom

Yesterday I received one of those "Q and A" e-mails that think tanks use to promote their views from the Carnegie Endowment yesterday. The first question was: "What is the danger that a currency war could break out?" Obviously the...

Published Wed, Nov 17 2010 1:00 PM by FP Passport

Bank of America shuts down Angolan embassy's checking account

This seems embarassing : The Angolan Embassy here canceled tonight's celebration planned to mark the country's 35th independence anniversary, following a decision by Bank of America to close the embassy's checking accounts. [...] The Angolan...

Published Thu, Nov 18 2010 1:46 PM by FP Passport

Beijing Air: 'Crazy Bad'

The U.S. embassy in Beijing has an air-quality monitoring station that tracks the level of certain pollutants in China's notoriously smoggy capital -- and then broadcasts results via Twitter. Most tweets from the sober-minded scientists behind @BeijingAir...

Published Fri, Nov 19 2010 9:14 AM by FP Passport

Putin praises Soviet-era spying

FP's newest contributor , Vladimir Putin, has made stregnthening Russia's defenses a ceterpiece of his reelection campaign. To that effect, during a recent interview, he praised Soviet-era spying in the United States: "You know, when the...

Published Wed, Feb 22 2012 3:20 PM by FP Passport

'I get to give the answers I want': Foreign-policy highlights from the Arizona debate

Last night's debate in Arizona featured the usual rhetoric in the economy, more conversation than usual about contraception, and more evidence for the theory that Ron Paul is essentially running as a blocking tight-end for Mitt Romney at this point...

Published Thu, Feb 23 2012 7:55 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Election 2012

Morning Brief: 'Friends of Syria' meet in Tunis

'Friends of Syria' meet in Tunis Top news: Diplomats and officials from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States are gathering in Tunis for the so-called "friends of Syria" meeting, meant to increase pressure on the Syrian government...

Published Fri, Feb 24 2012 5:37 AM by FP Passport

Filed under: Morning Brief