In The News

Can Authoritarian Capitalism Outlive Lee Kuan Yew?

John Cassidy April 6, 2015
From 1959 to 1990, Lee Kuan Yew guided Singapore’s remarkable rise to an Asian economic powerhouse. The Singaporean prime minister trail-blazed the creation of an “authoritarian capitalist” model of economic development, soon followed by China. The model was built on western ideas favored by Lee including meritocracy, universal public education, and emphasis on science and technology.. But the...

Major Companies Threaten to End Relationships With Indiana Over “License to Discriminate” Law

Louis Weisberg April 2, 2015
A storm of criticism from multinational corporations and human-rights groups has convinced lawmakers in Indiana to backtrack on a vague law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, suggesting that governments could not “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” and individuals or businesses could assert such claims in legal proceedings. The law was crafted soon after courts required...

North Korea Tactic: Discredit Reports of Human-Rights Abuses

Steven Borowiec March 24, 2015
In 2013, the UN Human Rights Council established the Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, mandating an investigation of violations including the right to food; torture and inhuman treatment inside prison camps; severe limits on freedom of expression, the right to life, freedom of movement; and enforced disappearances, including in the form of...

Netanyahu’s Win Is Good for Palestine

Yousef Munayyer March 19, 2015
Benjamin Netanyahu handily won re-election in Israel, in part perhaps to a last-minute declaration that he would not support a Palestinian state. “Netanyahu’s victory is actually the best plausible outcome for those seeking to end Israel’s occupation,” writes Yousef Munayyer in an opinion essay for the New York Times, adding that “political dynamics in Israel and internationally mean that another...

US Congress Blocks World Bank Move to Slash Safeguards

January 16, 2015
The US Congress has inserted a provision in an appropriations act that requires greater “protection for the environment or for human rights than the bank’s current safeguards,” reports Environment News Service. The United States is the largest contributor for World Bank operations, and the measure formalizes criticism about the World Bank’s 2014 proposal on environmental and social safeguards: “...

US Congress Blocks World Bank Move on Safeguards

January 12, 2015
The US Congress has inserted a provision in an appropriations act that requires greater “protection for the environment or for human rights than the bank’s current safeguards,” reports Environment News Service. The United States is the largest contributor for World Bank operations, and the measure formalizes criticism about the World Bank’s 2014 proposal on environmental and social safeguards: “...

Putin, ISIS, Ebola: How Globalization Harms Us More Than Helps

Melik Kaylan October 16, 2014
Upheaval over geopolitical rivalries, religious strife and disease raises questions as to whether greater interconnectedness is destabilizing the world. Melik Kaylan, writing for Forbes, suggests that Russia’s President Putin is at the helm of a worldwide reaction against globalization: “The multicultural poly-sexual utopia without borders that American-style globalism sells as a matter of...