Section: Institute for Policy Studies (USA)
Report: Billionaire Enabler States
Billionaire Enabler States: How U.S. States Captured by the Trust Industry Help the World’s Wealthy Hide Their Fortunes Kalena Thomhave | Chuck Collins Introduction: After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine’s allies zeroed in on a possible weak spot for the attacking country: the hidden fortunes of Russian elites. Russian...
Learning from Gorbachev’s Failures
Last year in Moscow, at a performance of the play Gorbachev, the audience gave a standing ovation to the two remarkable performers who played Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa Gorbacheva. The applause became even more thunderous when the performers identified the frail old man in a box seat. A spotlight illuminated Gorbachev as he acknowledged...
The Weaponization of Food
When Russia bombed the port in Odesa last week, it was not an auspicious beginning to the new deal on grain exports. If anyone believed that this agreement between Moscow and Kyiv would have some positive spillover effect on the war grinding on elsewhere in Ukraine, the Russian military surely destroyed that wishful thinking. International outcry...
The Fateful Fist Bump
The fist bump has been the default method of person-to-person contact in the COVID era. Shaking hands is too intimate and bumping elbows is too awkward. But the brief collision of fists has been deemed just about right to avoid the risks of both mutual contamination and mutual embarrassment. Perhaps Joe Biden’s advisors thought that a fist...
What’s Really Going On with the War in Ukraine?
Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, joined a panel hosted by The Progressive to discuss what’s really going on with the war in Ukraine. Co-sponsors of the panel include: Code Pink, Madison Veterans for Peace, Madison Working Group on Peace in Ukraine, Physicians for Social...
Pentagon Increases in 2022 Could Almost Fund Build Back Better
Remember Build Back Better? Way back in December, President Biden and advocates across a wide spectrum of issues fought to fund the president’s signature plan, which included major new investments in clean energy, child care and preschool, health care, and financial help for struggling families. It ultimately failed due to one...
China Will Decide the Outcome of Russia Versus the West
In its attempt to swallow Ukraine whole, Russia has so far managed to bite off only the eastern Donbas region and a portion of its southern coast. The rest of the country remains independent, with its capital Kyiv intact. No one knows how this meal will end. Ukraine is eager to force Russia to disgorge what it’s already devoured, while the...
Only in Top Gun Can the Military Solve All Our Problems
Somewhere at a theater near you, Top Gun: Maverick is serving up a feel-good drama about a plucky U.S. Navy pilot who dispatches some unnamed bad guys before he gets the girl. Meanwhile, a real-life drama is unfolding in Washington around the massive resources we put into the real U.S. military, where the stakes are much different than in the...
Vladimir Putin: Global Gunman
On one side are the dead: 10 people in a Buffalo grocery store. On the other side is the mass murderer who shot them. Why is the media so focused on the survivors of the Buffalo shooting and the stories of the victims? Why haven’t journalists given the gunman an opportunity to tell his story? He had no friends. He felt rejected by his...
Biden’s Golden Opportunity to Reverse Course on China
Joe Biden has wrapped up his first trip to Asia. He met with new South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol to shore up the U.S.-ROK alliance. He traveled to Tokyo to reinvigorate the Quad grouping with Japan, Australia, and India. And he peddled the new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, an attempt by the United States to reinsert itself into the Asian...