The 12-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan is slowly coming to a close, with most U.S. troops slated to leave the country by 2014. Since 2001, over 2,200 U.S. soldiers have been killed occupying the country, and nearly 18,000 have been wounded. By some estimates the...
With even Pope Francis wondering, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” it would appear that the world has reached a milestone in gay rights. However, a quick trip to Russia would quickly confirm that this progress is...
“Conscience laundering” is what Peter Buffett (son of Warren) calls “feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.” He provides perspective from inside the world of...
For the time being, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan—with brutal police tactics that killed four people and injured more than 8,000—appears to have successfully crushed demonstrations aimed at blocking the demolition of Gezi Park in central Istanbul and...
Only China has a more extensive high-speed train network than Spain. On Wednesday night at least 80 people were killed when a high-speed train, rounding a curve, flew off the rails in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Reuters reports: El Pais newspaper said the driver...
Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989. The Occupy movement began in the United States – at a statue of a bull standing in the heart of Wall Street in New York City. It spread quite...
One of the great advantages of the Internet is the ability to plan out one’s trip in great detail. I can reserve hotels, buy train tickets, even map out the routes that I will take between meetings. I can arrange by email or Facebook to see long-lost friends for...
As President Barack Obama arrived in Berlin last month to deliver a speech at the Brandenburg gate, many Germans were already expressing concern about revelations of NSA spying. Little did they know that they were viewing the tip of the iceberg and that tensions in...
Former counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke, famous for criticizing the Bush administration’s lax stance toward terrorism before 9/11, and former Clinton administration National Security Council official Steve Andreasen addressed the wisdom of responding to a...
In the wake of the American raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in 2011, the Pakistani government formed what came to be known as the Abbottabad Commission. Its mission: to investigate two security lapses, one more embarrassing and indicative of incompetence than the...