The flow of the days

Project Syndicate

• ASIA: Central Asia’s Perfect Storm September 3, 2010
  FLORENCE – Dean Acheson, US President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, liked to quote a friend who said that being in government made him scared, but that being out of it made him worried. To those of us not privy to the hidden complexities of NATO’s military intervention in Afghanistan, the situation there – and across Central Asia -- is extremely worriso […]
  Kenneth Weisbrode
• GROS: The Skills Deficit September 3, 2010
  BRUSSELS – Two years after the world economy suffered a nervous breakdown in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, global financial markets remain unsettled, and the recovery that started so vigorously in 2009 seems to be stalling.The slowdown has predictably led to calls for further fiscal and monetary stimulus. The argument seems simple: only a mass […]
  Daniel Gros
• BEN-AMI: Colombia’s New Dawn September 3, 2010
  MADRID – Trapped since the 1960’s in a protracted armed conflict with the most unscrupulous militias imaginable, and hostage to drug lords who turned the country’s vast rural areas into fiefdoms of crime and untold atrocities, Colombia long projected to the world the image of a country addicted to violence. But no more.The Colombian paradox is that violence […]
  Shlomo Ben-Ami
• HEALTH: Killing the Cures September 2, 2010
  BOSTON – Biodiversity is essential for the functioning of ecosystems – from forests and fresh waters to coral reefs, soils, and even the atmosphere – that sustain all life on Earth. The ongoing and escalating disappearance of that diversity will harm society in myriad ways. One way that is often overlooked is the damaging impact on medical science.For millen […]
  Eric Chivian, Aaron Bernstein, Achim Steiner
• ISLAM: The Battle for Turkey’s Constitution September 2, 2010
  ISTANBUL – On September 12, Turks will vote on a set of constitutional amendments proposed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power for eight years.  Since the vote falls on the 30th anniversary of the 1980 military coup, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is portraying the referendum as an opportunity to reject the militar […]
  Haldun Gulalp
• SCIENCE: The New Pharmaceutical Frontier September 2, 2010
  SINGAPORE – It has been a challenging decade for the pharmaceutical industry. With patents expiring in high numbers, new-product pipelines drying up, and intensifying competition from generics, branded pharmaceuticals have been haemorrhaging value.At the same time, traditional markets are becoming saturated. Stark realities in industrialized countries – such […]
  Sumi Dhanarajan
• GROWTH: Too Much “Too Big to Fail”? September 2, 2010
  LONDON – Obviously, the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 was partly one of specific, systemically important banks and other financial institutions such as AIG. In response, there is an intense debate about the problems caused when such institutions are said to be “too big to fail.”Politically, that debate focuses on the costs of bailouts and on tax schem […]
  Adair Turner
• WP: The Mosque and Its Enemies September 1, 2010
  WASHINGTON, DC – Opposition to plans to build a mosque near “Ground Zero,” the spot where the World Trade Center’s twin towers fell on September 11, 2001, comes in various shades. To their credit, many of the project’s opponents have avoided the crass bigotry that is becoming a standard trait of right-wing discourse in the United States. But even moderate cr […]
  Kevin Casas-Zamora
• H RIGHTS: Millennium Development Miles September 1, 2010
  PARIS – The global economic crisis has claimed many victims – unemployed workers, underwater homeowners, and bankrupt pensioners – but nowhere have the repercussions been as devastating as in the developing world. The setback to the fragile gains of recent years, particularly in Africa, threatens to return millions of people to the extreme poverty from which […]
  Philippe Douste-Blazy
• BURUMA: The Great American Tea Party September 1, 2010
  NEW YORK – Who were those flag-waving, cheering, hollering, singing, and praying Americans who gathered in Washington DC on the last Saturday in August at a rally to “restore the honor” of the United States? This tax-free jamboree of patriotism was ostensibly non-partisan (otherwise it could not have been tax-free). The main organizer and speaker was Glenn B […]
  Ian Buruma
• ROGOFF: Why America Isn’t Working September 1, 2010
  CAMBRIDGE – As the US economy limps toward the second anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, anemic growth has left unemployment mired near 10%, with little prospect of significant improvement anytime soon. Little wonder that, with mid-term congressional elections coming in November, Americans are angrily asking why the government’s hyper-aggressive […]
  Kenneth Rogoff
• FISCHER: The Risks of Withdrawal August 31, 2010
  BERLIN – Entering a war is easy; getting out of it is the hard part. That axiom is particularly true for the United States today, as it muddles through three wars – two of which were forced upon it (Afghanistan and the “war on terror”), with the third (Iraq) started unnecessarily by a US administration blinded by ideology and hubris.The US has no prospect of […]
  Joschka Fischer