In The News

Stable Oil Prices Likely to Become a War Casualty, Experts Say

Neela Banerjee October 2, 2002
The current conflict between the US and Iraq, should it escalate to outright war, would have major de-stabilizing effects on the world oil market. A variety of scenarios exist, including short-term price spikes, long-term price decreases, and increases or decreases in Saudi Arabian political and economic influence. Whatever changes may ensue, one thing is clear – oil is the blood that pumps...

A Place to Find Out for Yourself About War

Eric Umansky September 22, 2002
Freedom of information, the internet, international law, and free markets all converge on the issue of satellite imagery and its use – especially when the images are of military bases. Commercial satellite firms can now produce images that pinpoint a car on the ground – photo quality that only governments used to possess. And these firms are not only in the U.S., but are also cropping up in...

Immigration Reform and National Security

Tamar Jacoby September 16, 2002
Despite Mexican President Vicente Fox’s appeal to the U.S. Congress last year for more favorable immigration policies, the issue of immigration reform has been swept under the proverbial rug. The plan proposed to increase the number of visas for Mexican workers and to legalize the status of many previously undocumented workers in the U.S. A year after the plan first reached Washington, issues...

Central Asian Authorities Keep IMU Threat Alive

September 16, 2002
During the American campaign in Afghanistan there were reports that, along with Taliban and al Qaeda members, the military leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Juma Namangani, was killed. However, one Tajik official says that Namangani was actually regrouping and hoping to launch a strike into the Ferghana Valley. Other Central Asian political figures have also publicly worried...

A Free World

Martin Wolf September 3, 2002
Martin Wolf believes that the current era of globalization is better positioned to maintain its momentum than was the globalization wave of the late 19th and early 20th century. The earlier period’s economic integration collapsed between 1914 and 1945 due to 4 factors: 1) the rise of militarism, imperialism, nationalism, communism, and fascism; 2) the rise of protectionism, particularly in the US...

Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp

Jennifer Lee July 25, 2002
The stories about two people ‘meeting’ over the internet (and later falling in love) are countless and even old. Scandals and tragedies over personal information being disclosed without one’s approval, however, are beginning to alarm people. Search engines like Google and Altavista, portals through which over 3 billion pages can be accessed, yield thousands of results upon typing in a person’s...

Europe Must Now Defend Itself

Quentin Peel July 7, 2002
The U.S. and the European Union (EU) still have not reached an agreement on the International Criminal Court (ICC), mainly due to the American fear that its own soldiers may face trials in a non-American court in accordance with the statutes of the ICC. In this article, the author argues that if the U.S. wants to block the renewal of the mission mandates of the ICC, it can either cut its...