Section: Institute for Policy Studies (USA)
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...
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...
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...
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...
A Just Ceasefire or Just a Ceasefire?
The United States was not the first major power to dream up the idea of destroying a country to “save” it. But in the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon and his tiny brain trust of one—policy henchman Henry Kissinger—elevated this brutally cynical approach to the status of all-encompassing strategy. What began as the destruction of individual...
Russia, NATO, and the Future of Neutrality
Neutrality was once an attractive option in Europe. Switzerland made non-alignment look almost sexy, with its ski resorts, excellent chocolates, and secure banking system. Then there was Sweden, which refused to join NATO or subordinate its military policy to Moscow, offering instead to broker peaceful compromises between east and west as well as...
Time to End the West’s Xenophobic Double Standard on Refugees
As Russian forces continue to brutalize Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their country. Most have fled to Europe, but thousands have also made their way to the United States by way of Mexico. … Read the full article at The Nation. The post Time to End the West’s Xenophobic Double Standard on Refugees appeared first...
