Tag: Spotlight
In 1997, Ambassador Robert Houdek was the senior U.S. official in eastern Congo.
His job was to assist in the repatriation of Hutu refugees who fled Rwanda after the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took control following Rwanda’s 1990-1994 civil war.
A former senior U.S. official characterized Houdek as “our man...
On November 22, 1963, the same day as the JFK assassination, Mehdi Ben Barka, an anti-colonial politician and head of the left-wing Union of Popular Forces (UNFP) of Morocco, was sentenced to death in absentia for conspiracy to overthrow King Hassan II.
The sentence was carried out two years later...
Bradley Birkenfeld, who exposed one of the largest tax scams in U.S. history, should also be pardoned
On February 20, 2025, Donald Trump created the new position of the “Pardon Czar” to recommend “executive clemency” candidates, naming Alice Marie Johnson to that role.
Johnson had been sentenced to life imprisonment without...
This is the second part of a two-part series, the first of which focused on Japan’s occupation of China prior to and during World War II, the human experimentation that occurred at Unit 731 (Japan’s bioweapons research facility in occupied Manchuria), and the after-effects of the Empire of the...
Congress is set to vote soon on reauthorization of the Section 702 warrantless surveillance program, part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA...
On September 3, 2025, the People’s Republic of China held a commemorative military parade to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Chinese victory over Imperial Japan in the second Sino-Japanese War.
The parade sparked outrage from Japan, inciting Tokyo’s leadership to urge European and Asian...
On April 6, The New York Times ran an article under the headline “CIA’s Deception Plan Helped Divert Iranians from Missing American” by Julian Barnes.
The article noted that, when two American pilots ejected from their plane after it was shot down and took refuge in the mountains, the CIA...
Even when the U.S. and Israel fired missiles and dropped bombs on the home of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his wife and other members of his family, killing more than 40 members of the leadership of Iran, senior Iranian officials had maintained that Iran would never develop...
At the March 4, 2026, Intelligence and Security Committee, Green Party national security and intelligence spokesperson Teanau Tuiono asked the heads of New Zealand’s two primary spy agencies to clarify the country’s intelligence relationship with Israel. “I’ve been thinking about…the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran,…and I wonder if you could...
On August 8, 1973, Kim Dae-jung, an opposition leader with the Korean New Democratic Party (KNDP), was kidnapped by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) from the 22nd floor of the Grand Palace Hotel in Tokyo and drugged while he was imprisoned.
The plot was to swiftly eliminate Kim, though...
Radhika Desai is a Professor of Political Studies at the University of Manitoba, Winnepeg, Canada, Director of its Geopolitical Economy Research Group, and Convenor of the International Manifesto Group. Ms. Desai is an author of multiple books, including Geopolitical Economy(2013) and her most recent Capitalism, Coronavirus and War(2022). Ms. Desai hosts a fortnightly show, Geopolitical Economy Hour on the Geopolitical Economy Report website.
Yan Pan is a Chinese PhD researcher at LUT University, Finland. Her work examines the political economy of China’s technological and industrial development, with a particular focus on the industrialization and governance of neurotechnology in China. Her research concerns industrial policy models for future industries in Chinese and Global South contexts. Prior to her PhD, she researched educational reforms and structural change in labor demand in China.
Ken Hammond is professor emeritus of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University. He has lived and worked in China from time to time since 1982. A lifelong political activist, he is a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.