In The News

In Virtual Museums, an Archive of the World

James Gorman January 12, 2003
Museums around the US are attempting to move their collections into cyberspace. Once completed, digitization projects such as that at the American Museum of Natural History will allow anyone around the globe with a connection to the internet to browse and study images and notes on millions of fossils, plants, animals, and – of course – pieces of art. "The goal, officials at several museums...

U.S. Threatens to Act Against Europeans Over Modified Foods

Elizabeth Becker January 10, 2003
US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said yesterday that the European Union's position on genetically modified (GM) foods was "immoral" and caused greater suffering in starving African nations. The EU has banned imports of GM foods, and earlier last year several African nations refused American food aid for fear that GM foods from the US would contaminate their own local crops...

Illegal Migration in the 21st Century

Bertil Lintner January 10, 2003
Globalization is often described in terms of increased 'flows' or 'movements' of money, ideas, or goods. But the movement of people across national borders remains highly regulated and a point of major contention between many countries. Governments of rich industrialized nations spend billions of dollars each year to control inflows of poorer people seeking greater economic...

The World Still Watches America

Neal Gabler January 9, 2003
Some observers point to the decreasing popularity of American TV shows abroad as evidence that anti-American sentiment is on the rise around the world. Indeed, anti-globalization protestors who fear that globalization will lead to an American-dominated global mono-culture may take solace in the fact that the top-ranked US TV show, C.S.I., garners only three percent of the viewing audience in...

Terrorism Fails to Halt Globalisation

Guy de Jonquiýres January 7, 2003
A study by A.T. Kearney and Foreign Policy Magazine has concluded that globalization has not been halted by terrorist attacks on the US and other countries. This summary in the Financial Times explains, "Rejecting suggestions that September 11 will halt globalisation, [the report] says terrorism has instead injected impetus by spurring closer international political co-operation, while...

Looking at History in the Light of Globalization

Bruce Mazlish January 3, 2003
Although there is nothing totally new under the sun, there is merit in studying the past from the newly acquired global perspective. The traditional way of looking at history - bound in geographical space and bracketed in a particular time period - is no longer adequate. Scientific and technological advance allows us to look at the earth from “outside” as a unit, and challenges us to trace...

American Congress Can Affect Global Warming

James Gustave Speth December 27, 2002
We live in a world where air and oceans know no national boundaries, and where political choices made in one area have direct repercussions for others. Carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles and electricity plants in the US must be reduced today to avoid heating up our globe even more in coming decades. But American leaders in Congress, and President Bush in the White House, seem determined...