Good green short-termism, Ralf Martin
The current short-term crisis (economic) and the potential long term crisis (environmental) are connected; or at least they should be.
EU leaders agreed on Thursday and Friday last week to significant and welcome reflationary and environmental commitments. As the FT reports it:
The implementation of these commitments is left to Member States, and there is an opportunity in the current crisis to green the Keynesian stimulus and to link the solutions of the two crises. Ralf... more
Greece: vacuum at the heart, Takis Michas
When Greece's conservative New Democracy party came to power in March 2004 it promised three things: to "reinvent" the state, to eliminate corruption, and to initiate much-needed educational reform. Almost five years later, the situation remains unchanged: the state is still a tool for bestowing benefits and favours, corruption in the public sector is still rampant, and attempts at educational reform have fizzled out.Takis Michas is a journalist with the Greekdaily newspaper... more »
The SWISH Report (13) – part two , Paul Rogers
A report from the South Waziristan Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics to the International Security Unit of the Obama Transition Team, Washington DC, on the condition and future of the war on terror.
Part 2 [The first part of the SWISH report to the ISU of the OTT was published on 8 December 2008]
Introduction
In the first part of this report we discussed the policies of your predecessor's administration in relation to their response to the 9/11 attacks. We... more »
Chicago: tale of two cities, Charles Shaw
There have always been at least two Chicagos wrestling within America's great heartland metropolis. The election of Barack Obama and the recent criminal indictment of Governor Rod Blagojevich have once again shown how the city's angels are never far away from its demons. The iconic struggles of race, class and culture have been played out in street and park, back-room and boardroom, City Hall and union hall, and of course, in the headlines and in the hot air from which the "Windy... more »
The Embrace of Stalinism , Arseny Roginsky
The memory of Stalinism in contemporary Russia raises problems which are painful and sensitive. There is a vast amount of pro-Stalinist literature on the bookstalls: fiction, journalism and pseudo-history. In sociological surveys, Stalin invariably features among the first three "most prominent figures of all times". In the new school history textbooks, Stalinist policy is interpreted in a spirit of justification.
There are also hundreds of crucial volumes of documents,... more »
Human rights you can enforce, Martyn Bond
1948 was the year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Sixty years later – on the 10th December to be exact – it is worth looking at how these rights are upheld in practice and where they can be enforced. Rights that are only theoretical are close to worthless. Those that you can enforce are worth their weight in gold.
At UN level member states can take various measures to help uphold the high ideals of the Universal Declaration, but they often lack coherence and sometimes... more »
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