What Putin Wants
The Russian leader is focused on his legacy, which means that economic sanctions don’t concern him.
Suicide Truckers
The “Freedom Convoy” in Canada wants to spread its anti-government, antisocial, and ultimately self-defeating messages far and wide.
Americans Shouldn’t Have to Rely on the National Guard for Basic Services
Time and again, why is it only the military that has extra resources to go around?
U.S. Sanctions on Afghanistan Could Be Deadlier Than 20 Years of War
The collective punishment of Afghans is hideously wrong — and the Biden administration can ease it with the stroke of a pen.
Global and national resistance to GMOs
Our focus in this presentation is on modern biotechnology in crops and animal species. Traditional biotechnology is as old as agriculture and quite harmless. We are not also looking at hybridisation of crops or animals. We will also not advance into any detail on the area of nanotechnology, or the newer and probably more worrisome, synthetic biology.
Fear, Loathing and Electoral Love in Mexico
Mexico’s federal election campaign officially kicked off March 30, but the contest arguably began in earnest days earlier when Pope Benedict XVI visited the right-wing stronghold of Guanajuato state. In a story worthy of Mexican surrealism, the daily La Jornada chronicled how all the presidential candidates joined with hundreds of thousands of people in the town of Silao to welcome the leader of an institution that is officially prohibited from participating in politics.
Israel’s Reluctant Friend
A new and perhaps surprising country took center stage recently in the ongoing row over Iran’s nuclear program – Azerbaijan. Citing anonymous “high-level sources” from U.S. diplomatic and intelligence circles, a controversial article in Foreign Policy at the end of March suggested the possibility that Israel might have been proffered the use of Azerbaijani airstrips for any strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
America the Serial Killer
Everybody loves Dexter. He’s handsome. He’s helpful. He works at the Miami Metro Police Department, and he’s very good at his job as a blood-splatter analyst. Oh, did I mention that he moonlights as a serial killer? Don’t worry: he only kills bad guys. That’s part of the code that Dexter’s adoptive father, himself a police officer, passed down to his son. As a child who had watched his mother die a horrendous death, Dexter couldn’t overcome the murderous impulses that surged within him. His father, channeling those impulses in the only constructive way he could think of, created a better monster of his son’s nature: a serial killer of serial killers.
Mexican President Calderon: Kingpin of the Kingpin Strategy
The next president should reject current President Felipe Calderón’s profligate use of the military, and should make protection of human rights a cornerstone of a policy to back the power of traffickers.
U.S. Sides With Israel’s Nukes Over Iran’s Lack Thereof
The United States sides with a state with an illegal nuclear weapons program over one without one.
Syrian Kurds Fleeing to Iraqi Safe Haven
It was a January evening when his Syrian army unit raided a house near the city of Zabadani, not far from Damascus, the former sergeant recalled. A 70-year-old man wearing a hospital gown was brought to the house, and the soldiers, including a colonel, interrogated him. When he wasn’t able to respond to their satisfaction, one of the guards beat him ferociously in the face with a helmet.
Truce Between Salvador’s Maras for Real — for Now
The government turning its iron fist into an open hand and collaboration on music projects have helped cement a truce between rival gangs in El Salvador.
Stateless and Fancy-Free
Conservatives and Tea Partiers don’t understand that the rich — including U.S. corporations — don’t see themselves as Americans.
Labor Trafficking: Modern-day Slave Trade
The freer flow of commodities and capital has been one of the features of the contemporary process of globalization. Unlike in the earlier phase of globalization in the 19th century, however, the freer flow of commodities and capital has not been accompanied by a freer movement of labor globally. The dynamic centers of the global economy, after all, have imposed ever tighter restrictions on migration from the poorer countries.Yet the demand for cheap labor in the richer parts of the world continues to grow, even as more and more people in developing countries seek to escape conditions of economic stagnation and poverty that are often the result of the same dynamics of a system of global capitalism that have created prosperity in the developed world.