Section: Institute for Policy Studies (USA)
Obama: The Fairy-Tale President?
(Image: Wikipedia) In fairy tales, the hero makes a wish. After a few trials, the wish comes true, and everyone lives happily ever after. But only in this Disney version of fairy tales is wish fulfillment so straightforward. In Goethe’s modern fairy tale, a scholar dreams of knowledge and power. A stranger grants his wish, but the ambitious...
COP21 and the carbon market menace
(Image: Shutterstock) Carbon markets are unlikely to merit even a single mention in a Paris climate change agreement, but the idea of trading emissions has not gone away. Market advocates have simply found new code-words for referring to a practice that guarantees a fight in international climate negotiations. So they’ve hedged their bets –...
Syria: Mission Possible
Imagine this new TV series coming to HBO in 2016. The planet faces an unprecedented peril. The international community brings together a team of experts, each one with a different specialty: the scientist, the general, the computer geek, the engineer, the spook. It’s their job to avert catastrophe. In the pilot episode, we see each member...
A Kumbaya Moment for the Middle East? Hardly.
Israeli soldier patrols in Hebron Market on Sep 09 2009. About 500 stores were closed by military order in the center of Hebron since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000. (Image: ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock) In his new film Taxi, Iranian director Jafar Panahi is having a conversation with his young niece. They’re sitting in the cab...
Is Putin Really as Foolish as We Are?
(Image: Flickr/Republic of Korea) Nixon lied. Surely this is not a shocker. But what’s interesting about the latest revelation concerning Nixon and Vietnam is that the most duplicitous president in U.S. history actually knew that the U.S. air war in Southeast Asia was a dismal failure. Even as Nixon was telling the media that the saturation...
