Adam Brickley is a writer and political commentator who contributed to The Weekly Standard in 2009 and 2010. His work for the magazine focused on international affairs, covering developments across Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Australia, with particular attention to political upheavals and elections in countries such as Ukraine, the UK, the Netherlands, and Venezuela.
Australians went to the polls on Saturday to elect a new government, and as Monday morning dawns, they still have no idea who won. Instead, the two major parties fought to a tie, with both falling just shy of a 76-seat parliamentary majority.
Hugo Chávez has stooped to a new low in his quest to hijack the memory of Latin American independence leader Simón Bolívar - cracking open the hero's tomb and pulling his body out.
Japan heads to the polls on Sunday to elect the upper house of its national legislature – and no matter what the result, Yoshimi Watanabe and his newly-minted Your Party will be big winners.
Faced with a full-fledged collapse in public support, self-declared climate change messiah Kevin Rudd has been ousted as Prime Minister of Australia. With polls now showing a near-certain loss in this year's elections, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) installed Julia Gillard as the country's first…
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is probably the happiest man in Turkey right now. He's just inherited the leadership of the country's secular socialist opposition, and now he's reaping the benefits of an incredibly boneheaded move by the "moderate" Islamists who run the country.
The nation of Kyrgyzstan is burning right now. Hundreds of ethnic Uzbeks have died at the hands of marauding bands of ethnic Kyrgyz, with 100,000 more fleeing the country. The eyes of the world have rightly turned to a part of the world normally considered a backwater.
Eight months ago, Japan's Yukio Hatoyama was a star. His leftist Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) had stormed to electoral victory, ousting a conservative party that had governed almost uninterrupted since the 1950s. Yesterday, he resigned after a massive collapse in popularity.
Dr. Antanas Mockus is a bit of an oddity in Latin American. He has a Lithuanian name, an Amish-looking beard, walks around wearing sunflowers, and gives rambling, professorial answers when you ask him a question. He's a stark contrast to the "machismo" we've come to expect from Latin American…
On Wednesday morning, it looked as though Gordon Brown might have stalled Cleggmania, inching back into second place in some polls. But then he met Gillian Duffy.
The closer Britain gets to election day, the more uncertain things become. One uncertainty, however, seems to have been cleared up - Gordon Brown and the Labour Party are out of contention.
The closer Britain gets to election day, the more uncertain things become. One uncertainty, however, seems to have been cleared up - Gordon Brown and the Labour Party are out of contention.
On the heels of the first televised election debate in British history, the country seems to have become totally enamored with Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrat party. While the LibDems traditionally languish in a distant third behind the Labour and Conservative parties, Clegg's…
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has demoted his environment minister, a former rockstar and Greenpeace board member, after the government bungled a multi-billion dollar home insulation program.
Geert Wilders of the Netherlands is one of the oddest men on the world stage. He's been banned from entering the UK, denounced as a fascist, and largely blacklisted throughout Europe due to his staunch and outspoken opposition to militant Islam. And in a few months he might be prime minister of the…
Most people couldn't find the nation of Transnistria (or Trans-Dniester) on a map, and most maps show it as part of the tiny former Soviet nation of Moldova. However, Transnistria is a very real place run by a very real government -- it merely lacks any international diplomatic recognition.…
Many of us have fond memories of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution. In fact, it seems like it was just yesterday that we were all cheering the throngs of pro-democracy Ukrainians who threw out the nations entrenched post-Soviet oligarchy. And who could forget the faces of the revolution's two…
A lot of Westerners see Libya's Muammar Qaddafi as a defanged relic of the 1980s -- a man who used to cause a lot of trouble, was pacified by Reagan's bombing, and later gave up his terrorist ambitions. This is partially true, but while Qaddafi may have given up on his violent Islamist revolution,…
In all likelihood, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will be gone by June, probably after having led his Labour Party to a singularly humiliating defeat at the hands of David Cameron and the Conservative Party. However, recent events indicate that his exit may be even messier than originally…
The Department of Justice announced Sunday that 12 detainees from Guantanamo Bay would be repatriated to Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somaliland. That we are sending these people back to largely-lawless Afghanistan and terrorist-hotbed Yemen is bad, bad news. However, it's the third country mentioned…
It turns out that insurgent, populist Conservatives are scoring victories Down Under as well as in America -- and Tea Partiers and Palinistas here in the States would do well to watch conservative Aussie leader Tony Abbott very closely. Abbott became leader of the right-wing Liberal party two weeks…