President Obama signed an executive order today that commits the federal government to massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The White House press release notes: “The Federal government occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles, employs more than 1.8 million civilians, and purchases more than $500 billion per year in goods and services. […]
Next year the Obama administration will likely push for comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes millions who are currently in the United States without documentation. The US has an estimated 11 million “illegal immigrants”, representing approximately 3% of the total population. (Note: Please see a clarification on terminology below.) This is an astonishing number. Albeit the […]
In yet another useful special report at the “Financial Times” – this one today on the gas industry – there are two articles on the theme of what I was talking about recently in which natural gas is being positioned as a “transition” fuel to the low-carbon future. (See Natural Gas – to Cut GHG […]
In a front page story that appeared in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, reporter Michael Moss reports on the problems facing the beef industry and food stores in keeping beef products, particularly ground beef, free from harmful contamination, like E. Coli. The story of Stephanie Smith and the medical problems she has […]
PEN American Center will host what promises to be an engaging, eye-opening, and interesting event (regardless of one’s political ideology) about the U.S.’s so-called war on terror. Reckoning with Torture: Memos and Testimonies from the “War on Terror” will include Matthew Alexander, Jonathan Ames, K. Anthony Appiah, Paul Auster, Ishmael Beah, Don DeLillo, Eve Ensler, […]
Congrats to the people of Rio de Janeiro on their city’s winning bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. It’s exciting and just plain fair that the Games will finally come to South America. Chicago will get over it. So will Oprah Winfrey, who still wields the power to send the entire population of Chicago […]
Thanks to your readership and support the Foreign Policy Association’s Children’s blog was voted as one of the Top 100 Blogs on the web by the Daily Reviewer. To see the other top 100 Human Rights Blogs click here.
On Thursday, China marked its 60th anniversary of communist rule. The expected parades took place in Tiananmen Square as communist party officials cheered China’s growing position as an economic powerhouse its military might. But while the world watched the celebrations more closely than they have in the past, the publicity that the anniversary has garnered […]
Charles Taylor took the stand again this week at the Special Court for Sierra Leone and decried a vast conspiracy against him calling witness testimony against him “lies” and accusing the prosecution of racism. Taylor made these impassioned assertions even as hundreds of civilian victims of Liberia’s civil war were buried just this week, fifteen […]
Yesterday I was invited to attend a civil society plenary session on UNSCR 1540 (obliging States to refrain from supporting by any means non-State actors from developing, acquiring, manufacturing, possessing, transporting, transferring or using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their delivery systems) at the UN organized by the Stanley Foundation . The session was co-sponsored by the […]
DRC band looks to raise awareness for disabled A group of polio-stricken paraplegic singers and musicians have banded together to make music and fight against social stigma and grinding poverty faced by the disabled in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The group, Staff Benda Billi, has embarked on a European tour to promote their new […]
The editor of Nature Reports Climate Change, Olive Heffernan, went to Lindau this summer to sit in on the 59th annual meeting of Nobel Laureates. She took three young scientists to hear the scientific panels and to talk with some of the Laureates, including Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, who received their prizes for discerning […]
Once portrayed as an economic and cultural concern, the ebb and flow of peoples across borders is being recast as a threat towards national security and survival. There are many motivations that may entice a political party, individual, or government to portray migration in a security-oriented context. Conversely, there are many reasons why one might seek to avoid the securitization of this particular field.
According to the UN, there are more than 370 million indigenous people in some 70 countries worldwide. For centuries, indigenous people have endured bias and, in some cases, severe racism. Their lands were (and sometimes still are) considered empty and fair game for others to exploit. Up to sixty percent of the world’s most desirable […]
President Obama is engaged in a comprehensive policy review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and meetings this week at the White House have produced a flurry of news reports about about the situation there. In this report in the LA Times, General Stanley McChrystal makes the case for a “troop-intensive counter-insurgency strategy” that would call […]