I continue to be knocked out by all the innovation and hard-driving progress in building out a zero-carbon world. I was telling a young man today, a very smart carbon offset development consultant, that I truly never thought, 15 years ago, that I’d live to see the day when we would have the activity and […]
What is a criminal act and what is standard operating procedure? That is the question asked again and again in this excellent documentary about the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Director Errol Morris (“The Fog of War”) does a wonderful job of showing the gray area of what happened there. He […]
The Washington Post reports that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the U.S., France, Britain, Russia, and China — along with Japan and South Korea “reached agreement Wednesday on a draft U.N. resolution that condemns North Korea’s recent underground nuclear test and imposes additional military, financial and trade sanctions on the […]
The U.S. and its allies in Europe are undergoing exactly what Paul Kennedy warned against over twenty years ago in his book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Sovereign financial solvency is the foundation on which military and political power can be projected, and this foundation crumbles when governments ignore deteriorating finances. Governments today must act quickly to cut deficits, once signs of a durable recovery are clear.
Nobel winning Columbia University economist, and former World Bank president Joseph E. Stiglitz examines how Wall Street’s culture of ‘cowboy capitalism’ and its risk-taking propensities have ruined the American brand of capitalism. He is featured in the July 2009 issue of Vanity Fair magazine.
All too often reports coming out of Africa paint a bleak picture of war, disease, and famine. While no one can deny the sad state of affairs in certain areas of the continent, there are numerous success stories of prosperity and hope. According to the recently published 2009 Annual Africa Report, Africa’s overall trend has been […]
Leslie Gelb, president emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue Foreign Policy, argues that even though the United States is the world’s “indispensable leader” it cannot dictate solutions to global ills. The US lacks the power to act alone. America needs the support of some […]
The Democratic-led Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee supported legislation today that would allow for oil and gas exploration off the coast of Florida. In an ironic twist, this includes an area that Republican President George W. Bush took off limits in 2002. Far more Congressional action is needed before the legislation is past, but […]
Today Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would give up all of its nuclear weapons if other nations that held them did the same thing (ie. the US and others). Putin was at a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier who had been urging Moscow to cultivate more positive relations […]
Press freedoms and diversity of the press have long been contentious issues in Italy ever since the current Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi secured almost 90% of the entire private Italian media market. Berlusconi, who has been rapt in scandals and corruption charges since his first stint as prime minister in 1994, seems immune as he continues […]
Today US Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced in a Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee hearing that Russia has come around to share the same feelings as the US about the urgency of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Gates explained that in a previous meeting with the then-president and now current Russian Prime Minister Vladimir […]
Last week U.S. President Obama directly spoke to the Muslim world (again), and it seems that this time everyone has taken notice. In the President’s historic address from Cairo – supported by Al Azhar and Cairo University, there was great humility presented in order to try and ease the current tensions between the Muslim world […]
2,000. The United States spends nearly $2,000 a person on defense and accounts for over 40 percent of global military expenditure. Yesterday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released its annual yearbook on arms and international security. Worldwide defense spending reached $1.46 trillion in 2008, up four percent from 2007 and 45 percent since 1999. […]
North Korea officials sentenced American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling to 12 years of hard labor on Monday. The women were working for Current TV along the China-North Korea border when they were taken by North Korean government officials. They have been in jail since March. Numerous journalist advocacy organizations have called for their […]
Kaing Guek Eav, the leader at the notorious S-21 prison for the Khmer Rouge regime known simply as Duch, told a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal Monday that the children of inmates were murdered to keep them silent. “When children arrived at the center I gave the order to kill them because we were afraid those […]