Migration over the last year has been dominated by economic issues, as European migration became a balance, and sometimes a conflict, between new cultures and old cultures. Rights and migration were the questions in places like Calais and reducing illegal immigration on European beaches and discovering a new way to take in immigrants who can […]
I have not been, like most of the rest of the climate change cognoscenti, writing nonstop about Copenhagen this week. I have been working on reviewing thesis work from students in the MS in Global Affairs program at NYU where I teach on climate change. I’ve had one blockbuster thesis on how to make the […]
As we’ve come to expect from this president, Obama’s Nobel Prize lecture was sophisticated and brave, as he addressed the obvious paradox of receiving a peace prize one week after ordering a major war escalation. With a solemn obligation to address such a weighty matter, it was surprising that climate issues – commonly sidelined – […]
Access to safe and legal abortion could soon be declared a human right in Europe. Irish reproductive rights advocates and 3 female plaintiffs have brought a case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), claiming harm suffered by Ireland’s abortion ban. Ireland is unique amongst European countries in the extent to which is has […]
Technology and relief A report from the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation titled New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts: The Role of Information and Social Networks turns the spotlight on how mobile communications and social networks can be used in support of crisis response, especially in impoverished or isolated regions that lack established communications and […]
Where is the COIN strategy going to be centered? A helpful map of Afghanistan’s population density can be found here. Despite my repeated calls to do a better job sealing the border, I’m beginning to think we don’t have nearly enough troops to do even a halfway adequate job. We had a chance to win […]
2 for 1 on this Friday. We’ll start with the op-eds. 1) The always provocative Gideon Levy, in Haaretz: Let’s face the facts, Israel is a semi-theocracy. 2) Nir Rosen, in the Boston Review, hammers the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. 3) Hassan Haidar, in the Lebanese daily Dar al-Hayat: The Rediscovery of Afghanistan. 4) FP […]
Most of us stumble through life never knowing how oil or gas or mining works. That’s fine — right up till we’re facing drilling or mining in our own backyard, or we want to take a stand on it. There’s a lot of fear about the process, which is completely justified — a lot can […]
The war in Afghanistan demonstrates that strategic problems arise from international law’s ambiguities. The legality of the Afghanistan War has been disputed by some from the very beginning. The major areas of dispute – whether the U.S. was required to provide evidence to the international community of Al Qaeda’s culpability for the September 11th attacks, […]
Danny Schechter does his best to dissect the mainstream media’s treatment of the approach to war with Iraq in 2003. By poring over hundreds of broadcasts, it is Schechter’s conclusion that the mainstream media merely regurgitates what the government feeds them. However, that is not the case worldwide. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/kVrobidTnoo” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Take […]
NBC news is reporting that a drone strike in Pakistan killed a “senior al-Qaeda figure”, but that it wasn’t Osama Bin Laden. Even if it were someone as high up as Ayman al-Zawahiri—al Qaeda’s number two—it would not change the reality on the ground. Capturing or killing Bin Laden or Zawahiri would be a major […]
President Obama received his Nobel Prize today and in his acceptance speech he acknowledged the irony of a wartime president receiving the peace prize while offering no apology for escalating the war in Afghanistan. Instead, he made a rousing defense of the just war doctrine and again placed the conflict in Afghanistan in the context […]
Overview In the past year, global food security has been on the radar of world leaders, who often raised food security issues and brought needed attention to the continuing food crisis and long-term concerns. Policy breakthroughs and substantial action, however, were limited. The challenge was most starkly illustrated by a joint report released by the […]
China has long claimed to be just another developing nation, even as its economic power far outstripped that of any other emerging country. Now, it is finding it harder to cast itself as a friendly alternative to an imperious American superpower. For many in Asia, it is the new colossus.