The International Affairs Association

A few days ago the UN voted to condemn the continued US embargo on Cuba that has been in effect for almost half a century.  This is by no means the first condemnation of the US embargo by the international community, and like the many before it, it will not deter the current US government [...]

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This week, Angela Merkel was sworn in for her second term as chancellor of Germany. There is a bit of hype around what she has set to accomplish over the next few years. She and her team claim that they will have tax cuts, more investment on education, health care reform, and a reform of [...]

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The big story from the United Nations is about the inspectors who are in Iran for a 3-day examination of one Iran’s uranium enrichment sites. At this point, there’s not a lot to say until results come in. So until those results come in I’ll focus on something perhaps a little less critical.
The United Nations [...]

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The Afghan elections have been fraught with problems from the very beginning. It was expected that any election in Afghanistan would involve a degree of fraud and those suspicions have now been confirmed by the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC). Hamid Karzai who had initially secured a comfortable victory (54.6% of the votes) now has [...]

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The Sri Lankan government prides itself on not giving into the demands of Western countries without a fight. This could be admirable, until it begins to harm others. The country is now faced with wide - spread protest to human rights violations that took place in the conflict with the Tamil Tigers. The EU recently [...]

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In the early 1990s an unspeakable amount of atrocities were committed during the conflicts that erupted after the breakup of Yugoslavia.  Perhaps the most common image many of us have of those conflicts is what occurred in Bosnia from the Srebrenica Massacre to the bombardment of Sarajevo.  Though no side in these conflicts was without [...]

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The recent UN probe into the Afghan elections turned out to be very successful, evidenced by Karzai’s recent agreement to hold runoff elections. Even though Karzai had denied all accusations of fraud in the previous few months, he has finally agreed to the runoff. According to the Secretary-General, the United Nations will also play a [...]

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Raj Rajaratnam, a Wharton alum and one of the US’s richest men, was arrested this Friday for insider trading pertaining to hedge funds. Rajaratnam is the manager for a prominent hedge fund known as the Galleon Group, and he was caught sharing and collecting private information about public companies in order to receive greater investment [...]

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Consistent with his recent redefinitions of U.S. foreign policy in North Korea and Iran, President Obama today announced U.S.-orchestrated incentives for the Sudanese government to restore peace in Darfur.
That is, he announced the existence of said incentives. Frustratingly enough, the incentives themselves are deemed classified information, such that we really have no idea what they [...]

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This edition of Ban Ki Croons is strictly opinionated.
 
It has been reported that African leaders from throughout the continent have raised over $65 billion dollars, which they aim to contribute to the United Nations’ initiative to prevent global warming. I think this is ridiculous.
The African continent is in complete disarray right now. We all know [...]

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