Like many of you, this week for me has been a hectic week of post-holiday busyness and as I know that many of you are still digging out (both literally and figuratively) I thought I’d call your attention to two important speeches that deserve your attention when things settle down. The first speech (full text), […]
An exclusive Newsweek interview with the wife of Dr. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the suicide bomber in Afghanistan who killed himself and 7 CIA agents, reveals a chilling anti-American sentiment. During the interview, Defne Bayrak, 31, spent more than an hour at the offices of NEWSWEEK Türkiye in Istanbul talking about her husband and his […]
China sold more than 13.5 million vehicles in 2009, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday, overtaking the United States to become the world’s largest auto market as China’s government stimulus policy initiatives spurred demand.
With the election of Andre Dawson to the Baseball Hall of Fame, I have been thinking about one way that I initially became interested in other cultures – through baseball. Let me explain: from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, Dawson played for the Montreal Expos, a major league baseball team that existed from 1969 through […]
The fight to combat modern slavery ended one decade on a high note, and entered the next on yet again another high note. The new administration has given considerable focus to the increasing the fight globally. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, continued to raise her voice against human trafficking on December 2, 2009, the International […]
Another missed-during-holiday-hiatus story worth looking at comes from ArmsControlWonk. Peruse the results of a 2005 survey of nonproliferation experts: More than 78% of respondents agreed that one or two new nations would acquire nuclear weapons during the next five years. More than 89% agreed that between one and three new nuclear nations would emerge during […]
All the usual caveats about uncertainty assumed, here are 7 climate and energy trends we’re already seeing, that will pick up speed in to 2010: 1. We’ll get better at making reasonable distinctions between solutions that are politically, versus scientifically, versus economically possible. The current debate over whether carbon emissions should be reduced to 450 […]
Halfway through Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid, I find myself with many of the same thoughts that plagued me during my graduate studies – how could so many smart people get this so entirely wrong? Regardless of whether you agree with the intensity of Moyo’s criticism, you will find your head nodding along at some point. […]
An arm of the Federal Reserve, then led by now-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, told bailed-out insurance giant AIG to withhold key details from the public about overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs. The sordid tale unfolds in a series of e-mails between the company and the New York Fed while Geithner was its president.
On Wall Street the past year was filled with one opportunity after another to fix the myriad fundamental structural deficiencies — revealed all too painfully by the financial crisis — that continue to plague the nation’s economic outlook. But as we enter 2010, not a single one of the “systemic failures” in the financial system has been adequately addressed, let alone resolved. This ongoing failure to act in the face of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression is especially disappointing since President Barack Obama was elected, in part, on a promise to bring constructive and lasting change to the canyons of Wall Street.
Today U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on development at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The full speech is available here. The speech gives an overview of how development should work in coordination with defense and diplomacy and offered some specific insights into the ongoing Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and […]
Nature has been designing things better and for a lot longer than people have. We seem to have a tendency to waste energy and resources in our design. We also tend to create byproducts in our production processes that can – and usually do – have all sorts of negative impacts, not only for ourselves […]
Last week President Obama issued an executive order to systematize and accelerate the declassification of national security documents. National security is always the arch nemesis of transparency, the ace in the sleeve of politicians who aren’t quite comfortable with whatever pledges of openness they have made. Obama’s decision is therefore admirable not only for the […]
* From Juan Cole – Find out about Andy Worthington’s comprehensive research on Guantanamo detainees. * From Opinio Juris – Find out about the recent D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision on some Guantanamo habeas petitions.