In the war zone of Burma, Antonio Graceffo meets Mater Kawn Zanie, a legendary, undisputed master of Lai Tai, Shan Kung Fu; a soldier with decades of combat experience who often goes out on patrols armed only with Shan double swords, and no gun.
Professor Christian Bromberger talks about Iran’s cultural heritage and the festival of Nowrouz.
President Obama struggles with the consequences of American folly and faces the dilemma that his predecessors faced in Vietnam. Neither he can abruptly withdraw from Afghanistan nor can he sustain the erroneous strategy that got America into yet another quagmire.
Somalia is in the news, once again, for all the wrong reasons. And thanks to the ‘Pirates of the Horn of Africa’ there is a flurry of activity everywhere. Take international maritime powers for instance. They are busy drawing plans to beef up security in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean to ward off further attempts of commercial ships getting hijacked despite their heavy presence.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Wednesday and outlined the Obama administration’s policy goals on Iran, arguing that engaging in talks would serve the purpose of getting more members of the international community on board with implementing tougher sanctions against Iran.
The war effects of the war in Burma don’t stop at the border. Host Antonio Gracefo takes us to a Buddhist monastery in Thailand where a Shan soldier, Tun Yee, has returned to the monk-hood, in order to travel to a border town where he heard a runor that his mother was still alive. “I don’t remember her face,” Tun Yee told Antonio in a previous video, entitled “Orphan to Soldier.” Since that horrible day, ten or eleven years ago, when the SPDC burned his village and murdered many of his neighbors, Tun Yee hasn’t had any word of his mother.
The “fundamental question” to Friedman and his ilk is what the limits are on the president’s obligation under his oath of office, implying that the Executive may have a duty to use torture under the U.S. Constitution – the very argument employed by the authors of the legal memos in question.
Western leaders have reacted with anger and scorn to remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations conference on racism on Monday, which were interrupted by protestors dressed as clowns and by delegates storming out in protest of his harsh criticism of Israel.
The full text of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remarks at the United Nations Durban Review Conference on racism in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 20, 2009.
Last month, the Bolivian government expelled a senior “diplomat” from the US embassy in La Paz, whom it accused of covertly supporting efforts to depose the country’s leftist president, Evo Morales. This past week, Bolivian authorities announced they had foiled operations by a major international anti-government mercenary group operating out of the city of Santa Cruz, a hotbed of anti-government activity in the country’s wealthy eastern provinces.
FPJ Blog – Between the Lines
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