united states
The United States government’s decision to place Uzbekistan in the lowest category of its annual human trafficking report sends a message of solidarity to the well over a million Uzbeks forced to pick the country’s cotton crop, the Cotton Campaign, of which Human Rights Watch is a member, said today.
Sheikia Norris, known lyrically as “Purple Haze”, was born and raised in the birthplace of Hip Hop itself—the Bronx, New York. Sheikia earned her Bachelor’s degree in Community Health Education from Johnson C. Smith University, and she has worked in health education and arts education for over eight years. She was part of the Next Level, a crew of American hip-hop artists who performed at the American Center, Kolkata. She speaks to BE’s Abhijit Ganguly.
As Al Qaeda-inspired ISIS continues its violent march towards Baghdad, the group's social media outreach is being closely examined.
US President Barack Obama ordered American troops back onto Iraqi soil. Granted, it's only a few hundred this time, and they are ostensibly there just to protect the US embassy in Baghdad — a far cry from the thousands that flooded the country after the 2003 invasion. Still, US troops in Iraq carry the baggage of that long, bloody war, a fact that is not lost on the average Iraqi.
In this podcast, Rockower and 2-Tone explain the value of hip hop as a form of cultural diplomacy, and give first person accounts of their experiences in India. This is a rare glimpse at some of the creative work the United States is doing overseas, complete with audio samples of 2-Tone’s work.
Who would have thought that it is the hard power driven Vladimir Putin who would demonstrate to the world the use of the whole spectrum of power tools in the 21st century. He learned from his past mistakes, picked up our debate on soft/smart power, and, by the time he decided to invade Ukraine, he knew exactly how to wield the whole set of his tools.
In this video, members of Pakistani indie rock band, Poor Rich Boy, talk about utilizing the universal language of music to tell their story to American audiences through their month-long Center Stage tour in the U.S.
In East Asia a new kind of big country-small country relationship is taking shape. There are two big countries involved in this situation: a rising China and the long-established power that is the United States. These two big countries need to find a way of accommodating each other’s aspirations and managing current tensions or there could be a disruption of the existing relative peace in the region.