International cooperation is in decline both in the political and financial spheres. The UN has failed to address any of the major conflicts since the end of the cold war; the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference left a sour aftertaste; the World Trade Organization hasn’t concluded a major trade round since 1994. The International Monetary […]
According to theannual Global Peace Index report, released on Wednesday, there are more than 50 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) around the globe right now. Put another way, that’s one in every 133 people worldwide and 0.75 percent of the world population. Put yet another way, that’s roughly the equivalent of the entire […]
Nine months before the September 11 attacks—and just days after the Supreme Court halted the Florida recount, handing the presidency to George W. Bush—U.S. intelligence officials published an 85-page prediction for what the world would look like in 2015. It’s a world that seems familiar in some ways, and utterly foreign in others. And it’s […]
Whatever the reasons for observed differences in social adaptive capacities, it follows that some societies will be roiled more and others less when significant change and associated accelerated pluralization occur on a planetary scale, as is occurring today. Some societies are thus bound to be seen as causing or “owning” the sources of change while […]
Ecuador, inspired by a vision of a pre-modern world with more freedom to wander, has been experimenting in recent years with making political boundaries more flexible. It’s one of the world’s boldest contemporary efforts to reinvent human migration. Is it working? Read Here – The Atlantic
What’s in a name? Place names often change, and those changes stem from a tangle of politics and language. A fun tool from Google, the Ngram Viewer, lets us watch those changes play out across history. The Ngram Viewer charts how often a particular word appears in some five million books digitized as part of the […]
Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, countries are in the first stage of the nutrition transition, away from widespread malnourishment. Almost as rapidly, they are entering a second stage of the transition: toward a spiraling body mass. The evidence that this trend can be halted and reversed provides hope that the whole world can achieve […]
For months now, protestors have gathered in the capitals of many developing nations—Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, Venezuela, Malaysia, and Cambodia, among others—in demonstrations united by some key features. Read Here – Businessweek
The modern loosening of ties between the citizen and the state, apart from a number of beneficial consequences, also altered the nature of citizenship, depriving it of some of its psychological value without diminishing its practical worth. Read Here – WorldAffairsJournal
Precisely a hundred years ago, the richest man in the world sent New Year’s greetings to a thousand of the most influential leaders in the U.S. and Europe announcing: mission accomplished. “International Peace,” he proclaimed, “is to prevail through the Great Powers agreeing to settle their disputes by International Law, the pen thus proving mightier […]
looking beyond borders 