World Beat Archives - Page 52 of 159 - Foreign Policy In Focus

The Price of Democracy

by John Feffer | May 29, 2012

On health care and the military budget, no one can dispute that the United States spends exorbitantly. Whether we get our money’s worth is a matter of considerable debate. But there is one arena in which the United States is a world-class spender where you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would argue that we get world-class results for our money. I’m talking about our electoral system, which has produced a legislature that attracted a historic low of 10 percent public approval this year, an administration still beholden to Wall Street and the military industrial complex, and (indirectly) a Supreme Court that tilts so far to the right that I’m surprised the building itself hasn’t fallen over.

Scram!

by John Feffer | May 22, 2012

Get out of town. Go on, scram! That’s what a graduation ceremony is all about: the big boot. Thanks for those thousands of dollars, here’s a receipt in the form of a diploma, and now hurry up and make room for the next class. Oh, and don’t forget to write: checks that is, once you’ve somehow paid off your mountainous student debt.

I wasn’t invited to give a commencement address this year. But here’s what I would say if an institution were foolish enough to give me a microphone and an audience.

America the Serial Killer

by John Feffer | May 15, 2012

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.

Waiting for Copernicus

by John Feffer | May 8, 2012

It’s happening in Buenos Aires. It’s happening in Paris and in Athens. It’s even happening at the World Bank headquarters.The global economy is finally shifting away from the model that prevailed for the last three decades. Europeans are rejecting austerity. Latin Americans are nationalizing enterprises. The next head of the World Bank has actually done effective development work.

Maybe that long-heralded “end of the Washington consensus” is finally upon us.

NATO vs. Rogues?

by John Feffer | May 1, 2012

Institutions rarely vote themselves out of existence. Not if they still have money in their budgets. Large institutions in particular have an almost genetic propensity to cling to life even after their reasons for being have vanished. That’s why I don’t expect NATO, which will gather in Chicago later this month, to suddenly declare game over and disband – even though the alliance’s rationale has become wafer-thin. The Soviet Union is no more, al-Qaeda is a spent force, and NATO members are rushing for the door in Afghanistan. Indeed, most of Europe is cutting back on military spending, and the debt-saddled region has a diminished appetite for intervention.

Debating Syria

by John Feffer | Apr 24, 2012

Diplomats are currently scrambling to find a solution to the problem that is Syria. The country is already in a civil war. The dictator Bashar al-Assad doesn’t look like he’s packing his bags any time soon, though plenty of pundits are quick to label him a “dead dictator walking.” Russia and China are reluctant to support measures that would precipitate regime change. Talk about a diplomatic nightmare.

Scraping the Bottom

by John Feffer | Apr 17, 2012

We are all trust fund babies living off the wealth of our ancestors. I’m not talking Mommy and Daddy. I’m talking Barney. That cuddly T-Rex and all his dinosaur friends, along with those giant ferns and tiny trilobites, died millions of years ago only to become, very gradually, the energy that fuels our modern life. Until very recently, in geologic time at least, the earth held virtually all of that powerful carbon in a lockbox. “You can’t touch this buried treasure until you come of age,” the earth told humanity.

Arms Down

by John Feffer | Apr 10, 2012

Every year, in the last two weeks of their final semester, a group of seniors in the 20^th-century world history class at my high school played a mysterious game. They were honor-bound not to tell anyone what they were doing. All we knew was that, while their fellow seniors goofed off and marked time until graduation, this group of students were completely obsessed with…something. They were constantly in whispered negotiations, passing notes back and forth, passionately gesticulating. They seemed to be involved in a very serious, very adult activity. The rest of us were all intensely envious even as we made fun of their dorkiness.

The Foreign Policy President?

by John Feffer | Apr 3, 2012

Elections are decided by economics. Voters respond to pocketbook issues and are swayed by the huge sums that candidates lavish on advertising. Foreign policy issues, by contrast, are what the British call “noises off,” those sounds from off-stage that you hear occasionally to punctuate the main actions, sounds like exploding bombs and the distant cries of suffering people. According to recent polling, global issues barely register at all with Americans right now. Far below the economy, jobs, health care, the budget deficit, and gas prices, you’ll find Afghanistan at 6 percent (CNN), terrorism at 1 percent (Bloomberg), and, most distressingly, no global issue at all (CBS/New York Times).

Three Killings

by John Feffer | Mar 27, 2012

The note left next to the bloodied body of Shaima Alawadi read “go back to your country, you terrorist.” Alawadi, who died on Saturday after being taken off life support, was an Iraqi-born mother of five living outside of San Diego. Someone had delivered a similar note to the family earlier in the month. It was likely the same person who returned with a tire iron and struck her repeatedly on the head. Alawadi had lived in the United States for 17 years. Several family members reportedly provided cultural training to U.S. soldiers deployed to the Middle East. In a very sad coda, Alawadi is indeed going back to her country – to be buried.