Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
Commentaries

Annotate This… President Bush’s Sept 13 Speech to the Nation on Iraq

by , | Sep 14, 2007

Instead of charting a new direction for U.S. policy in Iraq, President Bush’s speech to the nation last evening was an impassioned plea to the American public to stay the course. But much of Bush’s argument for staying the course was based on spin instead of reality. In this edition of Annotate This… Stephen Zunes and Erik Leaver analyze Bush’s statements and offer an alternative interpretation of the situation on the ground.

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Postcard from…Istanbul

Postcard from…Istanbul

by | Sep 10, 2007

As the call to prayers in Istanbul gets louder – thanks to more sophisticated amplifying systems – the number and size of Turkish flags have grown in proportion. This is the fundamental conflict in Turkey today. On one side are the secularists, the heirs of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. On the other side are the Islamists, who are divided into moderate and fundamentalist factions. Since the landslide win of the moderate Islamists in the recent elections, the conflict between religion and politics has sharpened, at least at the symbolic level. In a country where women who wear headscarves are still banned from higher political office, the wife of the new president Abdullah Gul, has broken a taboo by wearing the turban. The army, the institution most committed to secular nationalism, has responded by boycotting the president’s swearing-in ceremony.

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Interview with Anya Achtenberg

Interview with Anya Achtenberg

by , | Sep 5, 2007

Anya Achtenberg is an award-winning poet and novelist. Her latest novel, History Artist, grapples with recent Cambodian history. FPIF’s E. Ethelbert Miller talks to her about fighting against social amnesia and the challenge of inhabiting the lives of others in writing fiction.

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Bush Won’t Stop the Bucks

by , | Aug 30, 2007

Having already sacrificed its international and domestic political effectiveness to prolong the ill-fated war in Iraq, the White House now stands poised to throw more money at the problem. The ethical and strategic costs of the war in Iraq have always been too great to bear, but the ever-increasing financial costs imperil future American economic solvency.

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Executive Pay Debate Raging in Europe and the United States

by , | Aug 28, 2007

European business leaders have traditionally taken home far less compensation than their American counterparts. But European executive compensation has been rising, and these pay increases have citizens in European nations deeply concerned. In fact, public outrage on both sides of the Atlantic has contributed to an unprecedented political debate over what to do about excessive executive pay.

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The Dangers of Scolding an Embattled Arab Leader

by , | Aug 24, 2007

The last few days have brought a flurry of tense words between the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. At a press conference earlier this week, Bush lamented the ongoing violence, strife, and sectarianism and then pointed the finger quite directly at Mr. Maliki suggesting that the real question in all this mess is "will the Iraqi government respond to the demands of the people?" U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was even harsher; phrases like "extremely disappointed" and "our support is not a blank check" tumbled from his mouth with a dire tone not heard from the administration before. Mr. Maliki registered his offense at the words (if politely, given his precarious position), noting he found them "discourteous."

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How to Stop AIDS Now

by , | Aug 21, 2007

Back in the 1980s, AIDS activists employed this technique of “birdogging” (going to the public appearance of a target and trying to get him or her to commit to a new policy) to put the HIV/AIDS crisis on the map. We were preparing to use the same strategy. Now, however, our demand was not limited to just domestic policy, but rather has evolved, as the global epidemic has evolved,  to demand that our foreign policy has to act on the international HIV/AIDS crisis. More specifically, in this particular instance, our goal was targeted at Presidential hopefuls Obama and Edwards to get them to commit to $50 billion dollars over the next 5 years to fight AIDS, a funding level that experts agree will be needed to turn the tide of the AIDS epidemic.

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On Political Poetry

On Political Poetry

by , | Aug 17, 2007

The poet Samuel Hazo, at his installation as the first state poet of Pennsylvania in 1993, declared that “we should learn to listen to our poets here and now — and not wait for history to confer on them their already earned validity.” Poets like Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Lorca, Yeats, Whitman, and Frost, he continued, would be remembered long after their contemporaries – the military leaders, political officials, industrialists, and celebrities – have been forgotten. “One reason for the unforgettability of poets is that they somehow speak for more than themselves,” Hazo continued. “Day by day we are so used to hearing voices that speak for individual constituencies or institutions that we tend to be deaf to those voices that speak from and to our common humanity.”

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