If the economy produces jobs over the next eight months at the same pace as it did over the past four months, the nation, under the Obama administration, will have created more jobs in 2010 alone than it did over the entire eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency.
Many stories covered in the past week by other blogs on the Foreign Policy Blog network also have a strong human rights component to them. Here is a roundup of those stories from our own blog network: Goldstone, apartheid, and the duty of a judge: Much has been said in the blogosphere since Yedioth Ahronoth […]
In 1976, Robert Jervis, quoting Ernest May, wrote this: “General Marshall, while Chief of Staff, opposed the State Department’s idea of using aid to promote reforms in the Chinese government. Then, when he became Secretary of State, he defended this very idea against challenges by the new chiefs of Staff. In “1910, Winston Churchill, as […]
Today marks the opening session of the WHO’s World Health Assembly, the 63rd of its kind. As the decision-making body of the WHO, the assembly meets annually to convene the health ministers of the 193 member states, approve the budget and appoint the Director General. Top of the agenda this year is H1N1, which has been […]
A few items of note that I read over the course of last week: Last Sunday, the New York Times published an article, “At Front Lines, AIDS War is Falling Apart”, causing a spate of emails and exchanges across the HIV/AIDS world. The article cited the funding cuts that I discussed in the round-up two weeks back, […]
Using high-speed, high-frequency programmed trades, Traders in effect bend down to pick up those pennies – often millions lying around in the stock market – then do it again, sometimes thousands of times a second. There is nothing wrong with this activity in, and of itself, however, HFTs have become a matter of financial public policy and regulatory review given a glimpse into its potential harm to efficient Markets. Left un-checked this could become the next big financial disaster waiting to happen.
Yesterday I mentioned a number of big-ticket reasons to think that nuclear power is a very bad bet indeed: It bleeds money from smarter, cheaper and much more climate-friendly options; it’s dangerous; it’s radically inefficient; it’s not, at the end of the day – that is to say, through the whole life cycle – a […]
As the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference draws to a close in New York, what’s remarkable is how little attention the meeting has got in the world press. Except for fleeting attention to the idea of making the Middle East a nuclear-weapons-free-zone, which Egypt has been promoting as leader of the “group of 77” nonaligned […]
I am, of course, borrowing from George H.W. Bush’s timeless declaration. But what’s really at issue here? There is no sense at all in building new nuclear capability in this country or, for that matter, any other. In my classes on climate change and on clean tech, I identify nuclear power, along with carbon capture […]
Blogs have been buzzing for the past week about Yedioth Ahronth’s report on Richard Goldstone’s actions as an apartheid-era South African judge. He sentenced at least 28 black men to death (though not all of them were executed, as their sentences had not been carried out by 1995, when the death penalty was abolished in […]
We are a people who don’t have money, food or clothes. But we are sleeping on gold. ~ Mohammad Ibrahim Adel, former Afghan minister of mines. Afghanistan is the second most corrupt nation in the world and its people are the poorest outside of Africa. Developing a legitimate economy, effective government, and safety for its […]
On the ninety-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the 2010 Jane Addams Peace Association‘s Children’s Book Committee announces the following Award winners and honor books. The Jane Addams Children’s Book Award is given annually to books that engage children in thinking about peace, social justice, world community, […]
By Jehan Sadat As the widow of Anwar Sadat, I cannot count myself an objective analyst of his policies; but I am not the only one who believes that the world is poorer for his absence, nor am I the first to note that statesmen of Sadat’s caliber are in short supply. Perhaps then, it […]
Since part of the mission of the FPA is to make foreign policy accessible to the American public, I like to recommend public sources and links to popular media. I don’t normally recommend academic articles, more often than not, they are hidden behind journal pay walls and not accessible to the public. I’m making an […]
Russia holds a unique place in the international economy. It isn’t the largest, fastest, strongest, or even scariest, but it is a heavyweight whose actions matter more than most. It ranked just 146 out of 180 countries on the 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index, and had the 8th largest economy in the world in 2008 according […]