US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 05/29/14 By Michael Shank and Elizabeth Beavers It’s time to end the president’s ability to wage nearly limitless war. Congress finally appears to be realizing that it has been providing neither checks nor balances to the president’s war powers for the last 13 years. While […]
NATIONAL REVIEW 05/22/14 By Michael Shank The drone memo matters, but what the West is failing to do on the ground matters more. In Washington, D.C., it is rare for any adversarial country to remain in the forefront of foreign policy for very long. Yemen is an excellent example of […]
NATIONAL REVIEW 05/12/14 By Michael Shank What should be haram (“forbidden” in Arabic) in dealing with Nigeria’s now infamous and increasingly violent Boko Haram, after the group kidnapped more than 250 schoolgirls last month, is an approach that is as rudimentary as that of the kidnappers themselves. The group, officially […]
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 04/08/14 By Michael Shank and Innocent Rugaragu Twenty years ago this week, an estimated 1 million Rwandans were killed in that country’s genocide. Needless to say, the post-genocide era has been difficult and pregnant with fears and hopes. Had the leadership at the time – […]
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT 03/11/14 By Michael Shank and Jamila Raqib The Occupy Movement has returned and is resurrecting itself in Hong Kong. But in this case, the “occupying” is not associating itself with the Occupy Wall Street of recent years. Instead, a new political initiative in Hong Kong […]
ROLL CALL 02/12/14 By Michael Shank There are several signs in the House of Representatives that indicate that members of Congress are taking seriously the call to create quality employment for Americans. This is a good thing and something of which we need to see more, especially with 50 million […]
FOX NEWS 02/01/14 By Michael Shank From a political perspective, defending Turkey’s blend of political Islam and neoliberal economic policies was not terribly difficult a decade ago. After all, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan helped build the 17th largest economy in the world and what would be the sixth largest […]
PEACEBUILDER 12/04/13 By Andrew Jenner In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly replaced its Commission on Human Rights – the organization’s main body dedicated to protection of human rights – with the reorganized and renamed UN Human Rights Council (HRC). As UN decisions and deliberations tend to be, it was […]
WASHINGTON TIMES 11/26/13 By Michael Shank and Kim Toogood WASHINGTON, November 26, 2013 — The Republic of Turkmenistan has turned a new corner. It is a country that has spent the last few years shedding its ultra-conservative status, thanks to a slightly more progressive President. As a result, the country […]
WASHINGTON TIMES 11/13/13 By Michael Shank WASHINGTON, November 13, 2013 — With the Tea Party coming out hard against President Obama’s trade agenda, there may be some synergy among conservatives and progressives in tackling this year’s hottest transnational conflict. Outspoken critic of the Obama trade agenda and Washington Times Communities […]