Columns
GMO Wars: The Global Battlefield

GMO Wars: The Global Battlefield

This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com.  The GMO wars escalated earlier this month when the 2013 World Food Prize was awarded to three chemical company executives, including Monsanto executive vice president and chief...

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The World Without U.S.

The World Without U.S.

In his 2007 bestseller, The World Without Us, journalist Alan Weisman describes a planet that regenerates itself after the disappearance of human beings. Skyscrapers crumble and bridges collapse into rivers, but the primeval forests take over and the buffalo return to...

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Letter From Sofia: Old Tanks and Modern Mayhem

Letter From Sofia: Old Tanks and Modern Mayhem

The military museum in Bulgaria's sprawling capital city consists of a tiny building and a huge outdoor display of weapons that look as if they had been wheeled in fresh from the battlefields and parked, higgledy piggledy: mountain howitzers that shelled Turks in 1912...

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Collapsism

Collapsism

When small children want something to go away, they close their eyes. Poof! The monster disappears. The spoonful of spinach vanishes. The spilled milk evaporates. Except that they don’t. U.S policymakers indulge in a similar variety of child’s play called collapsism....

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Ghana’s Chinese Gold Rush

Ghana’s Chinese Gold Rush

Compared to the West’s neoliberalism, China’s approach to investment in Africa has often been somewhat idealized as more of a “partnership” with the host country, with less moralizing by the Chinese over human rights practices and fewer strings attached economically....

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The Jellification of Politics

The Jellification of Politics

The world will not end with bang or a whimper. It will end with the silent slither of jellyfish. Literally. And figuratively. On the literal level, jellyfish are indeed taking over. As a result of global warming, overfishing, and fertilizer runoff, these surprisingly...

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At the UN, a Latin American Rebellion

At the UN, a Latin American Rebellion

Without a doubt, the 68th UN General Assembly will be remembered as a watershed. Nations reached an agreement on control of chemical weapons that could avoid a global war in Syria. The volatile stalemate on the Iran nuclear program came a step closer to diplomacy....

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Syria: What’s Next?

Syria: What’s Next?

World BeatIt started as a peaceful revolt. It descended into a civil war that has so far claimed over 100,000 casualties and ejected nearly one-third of the population from their homes. Even worse, it has broadened into a regional conflict in which neighboring...

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Israel on the Sidelines

Israel on the Sidelines

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren recently spelled out quite clearly for MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell his government’s attitude toward possible new openings in relations between the United States and Iran. Mitchell had asked him: “What is Israel's posture towards this...

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