Gag order on shooting of Embassy personnel?
A week after a van with diplomatic plates was ambushed by Mexican Federal Police members, wounding two CIA agents, neither the U.S. or Mexican governments have much to say about the incident. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland treated a question on the attack like the political hot potato it is. She seemed to plead for [...]
Searching for Peace in Assam
We were all sitting in our homes relaxed when a part of India was burning. But then the flames started spreading in other parts of the country, we woke up to the reality, northeast is a problematic area of the country. The Assam riots had begun as a clash between the natives and the settlers [...]
Can Foreign Aid Improve Pakistan’s Political Economy?
Like many struggling countries, Pakistan’s two most critical problems are feckless leaders and a feeble state. Can donors do anything to help get such countries’ political economy moving in the right direction? I recently convened a working group of leading Pakistani development professionals and outside experts at the Global Economic Symposium (GES) to discuss just [...]
Vietnam: Immediately release of 17 Vietnamese social activists and bloggers and the withdrawal of all charges
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, Socialist Republic of Vietnam Re: Vietnam: Immediately release of 17 Vietnamese social activists and bloggers and the withdrawal of all charges Dear Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, I am William Nicholas Gomes, Human Rights Ambassador for Salem-News.com. I have been informed by Human Rights watch regarding seventeen Vietnamese social activists, [...]
On Shattered Selves and Young Communists
My article, “The Shattered Self of Komsomol Civil War Memoirs,” has come out in the Fall 2012 issues of the Slavic Review. You can download it here (PDF). Here are the opening paragraphs: Komsomol literature in the 1920s repeatedly evoked the memory of the civil war as a means to inspire young communists to sacrifice themselves [...]
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