ENERGY PRICE MANIPULATION?   BY MO SACIRBEY | June 8, 2008

Will some devious speculator pay some Nigerian guerrilla group to blow up a pipeline just as oil begins to reverse? Will some terrorist organization become also a speculator with the ability to steer prices? Can a Latin American dictator steer the direction of prices as much by heated rhetoric as production cuts? Can a reasserted imperial Russia become the new political power broker applying energy to secure its agenda as well as setting price trends? Read more

ROBERT F. KENNEDY AND HUMAN RIGHTS   | June 6, 2008   

On the 40th anniversary of assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate in 1968 elections, we present a short video with some of RFK’s statements on human rights, which ever since gained universal meaning. Watch video here.

McCAIN AND THE BUSH FATIGUE   BY STEPHANIE KIMBALL | May 24, 2008

For the first time in over a decade Americans are actively engaged in the election process, informed on the issues, and eager for change. Democrats should not prematurely conclude that this translates to a new party in power. Rather, Senator McCain’s ability to transcend traditional party labeling and affiliation enables him to talk on substantive issues that are no longer owned by a particular party. Read more

THIRTEENTH INNING STRETCH   BY RICK ROBINSON | April 30, 2008

Hillary's message received an unexpected boost when Rev. Wright appeared at the National Press Club to repeat some of the most incendiary comments that he has  reviously made in sermons. These were just the remarks that Obama sought to separate himself from when the Wright controversy initially erupted, a storm Obama had evidently weathered without visible damage in polling. Read more

OBAMA AND AMERICA'S ORIGINAL SIN   BY RICK ROBINSON | April 7, 2008

Obama, a generation younger is himself a creation of the Civil Rights struggle. He stands across a gulf from his mentor, separated by a bridge that Rev. Wright cannot fully cross even though he helped to build it. It speaks to a large segment of white Americans for whom electing a black president represents a triumph over the nations's Original Sin of proclaiming freedom while embracing slavery. Read more

MY HOUSE DIVIDED   BY SEBASTIAN AULICH | March 24, 2008

This week Bill Clinton made a remark in which he indirectly questioned Obama’s patriotism. I have been watching CNN and FOX where pundits were wondering what actually Clinton meant by saying that a race between McCain and his wife would be a one between two candidates, who love their country. Well, the implication for me was pretty simple. Are you ready America for the president, who has a dual citizenship? Read more

WILL FLORIDA AND MICHIGAN DETERMINE NEXT U.S. PRESIDENT?

BY MO SACIRBEY | March 12, 2008

      
That may sound like a rather far reaching proposition, but consider the following. By either an act of “re-voting” the Democratic Primary or an act of omission, Florida and Michigan will be decisive. Read more

THE CONTINUING DEMOCRATIC RACE   BY RICK ROBINSON | March 10, 2008

The latest major round of US presidential primaries, four states voting on 4 March, including the major states of Ohio and Texas, gave both parties a chance to resolve – or at least begin to resolve – their presidential nomination races. The Republican outcome was as expected: McCain clinched the GOP nomination by winning a majority of total delegates to the Republican convention. On the Democratic side no conclusive result was expected. Read more

U.S. ECONOMY: PHOENIX RISING OR WOUNDED DUCK FLYING?   BY MO SACIRBEY | March 1, 2008

Economic expansion rises like a phoenix from the ashes of the preceding economic recession! Well, that’s been the pattern for more recent US economic booms. A US recession is underway. What is less clear though whether it will be followed by a bounce? Further, is this recession contaminative with respect to the global economy as a whole, as has been the previous pattern? Read more

FOREMAN vs. ALI 2   BY MO SACIRBEY | February 15, 2008

She has the Democratic Party establishment. He has captured the imagination of young and independent voters. It is George Foreman hitting hard and Muhammad Ali countering. The contest for the Democratic Party nomination is likely to continue for at least another month, but even if Hillary still appears to be the champion going into the fight, he has the momentum now entering the last rounds. Read more

SUPER TUESDAY TRUTH   BY RICK ROBINSON | February 8, 2008

Who wins a tie? Each campaign has a narrative. If you compare the results on 5 February with polling in mid-January, Obama scored spectacular gains, coming from far behind to score a photo finish. Yet in spite of his enormous "mo," and an extravaganza of favorable media coverage – any candidate's dream finish – he came up no better than even. At liberal blogs (where Obama supporters predominate), the reaction as the returns came in was mild deflation for Obama supporters, who had hoped he would blast past Hillary, and enormous relief among Hillary supporters, who had feared precisely that. Read more       

INTO THE STRETCH: LANDSCAPE BEFORE FEB. 5   BY RICK ROBINSON | February 2, 2008
  

Thus, while Super Tuesday may all but end the GOP nomination race, it is very unlikely to do so for the Democratic nomination race. Nevertheless, unless the results are hairline close, the Democratic winner on Tuesday may well attain nearly unstoppable mo in the series of later primary contests that continues into early summer. Since most Democrats like both candidates, a clear Super Tuesday win may well encourage them to close ranks, the trailing candidate's supporters jumping ship in favor of a gaining rival whom they can also readily support. Read more

U.S. ECONOMY: RECESSION OR TRANSITION?   BY MO SACIRBEY | January 27, 2008

Ultimately though, the US Dollar had to lose its exclusivity and standing, but how this would be reflected domestically, within the US remained to be determined. The US Federal Reserve was faced with contradictory alternatives. The option selected, wittingly or not, has placed the largest burden of transition upon the US wage earner. Read more

TURNAROUND! – THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY RESULTS   BY RICK ROBINSON | January 10, 2008 

Some surprises are half-expected: outcomes that people know are plausible, but regard as unlikely. Other surprises are truly surprising – outcomes scarcely considered at all, because they did not even seem plausible. Barack Obama scored the first kind of surprise last week in Iowa, when young voters, "the college kids" so often promised and rarely delivered, turned out in droves for him. Hillary Clinton scored the second kind of surprise in New Hampshire, winning a race that polling and commentators anticipated as an Obama landslide. What happened? Read more

OUT OF THE GATE: OBAMA MAKES HISTORY   BY RICK ROBINSON | January 5, 2008

The big winner of the night was Obama, who achieved nothing less than a political miracle. Since the 1970s, Democratic candidates running insurgent campaigns have persuaded themselves that "the college kids" – younger voters, especially but by no means only college students – would come out for them in droves. It never happened, the most recent and familiar victim being Howard Dean in 2004. This time, however, the college kids showed up in droves, along with other younger voters, giving Obama the margin that liftedhim from a tie to a solid and convincing win. Read more

NUCLEAR BOMBS IN AMERICAN CITIES   BY SEBASTIAN AULICH | December 29, 2007

If any place in America is going to be hit by a terrorist nuclear attack, there are pretty big chances that it will be New York City again. New York is world’s financial capital with the most influential stock market on the globe (NYSE), therefore it is a very attractive target. Also it is a place where the United Nations are headquartered. [...] A small nuclear bomb, comparable to that dropped on Hiroshima, if detonated in midtown Manhattan on a typical workday, would instantly kill half a million of people. Only the damage in midtown Manhattan would amount to around $1 trillion. Read more

MIKE HUCKABEE STORY: "FROM OUT OF NOWHERE..."   BY RICK ROBINSON | December 27, 2007

Huckabee's sudden rise in the polls has naturally brought him into collision with the other candidates – especially Mitt Romney, who has seen his previous strong lead in the opening Iowa contest evaporate, recent polling averaging to about a 9 point Huckabee lead there. Huckabee riskily, if perhaps shrewdly, injected sectarianism into the debate by asking a New York Times reporter interviewing him whether it was true that Mormons believe that Satan is the brother of Jesus. (They don't.) Read more
 

AMERICAN HEALTH CARE   BY RICK ROBINSON | December 17, 2007

In this shifting environment, the cost and availability of health care is likely to emerge as a major campaign issue next fall. [...] Among the leading Democratic contenders, John Edwards' and Hillary Clinton's health care proposals are essentially similar. Each calls for allowing people to retain their existing private health insurance – generally a plan offered by their employer, the US norm since the Second World War. This is the political rock on which Hillary Clinton's previous health care initiative foundered in the 1990s. While about one in seven Americans has no health insurance, the majority do, and most are fairly satisfied with their current plan. Their anxieties revolve around losing it. Read more
  

AT THE STARTING GATE   BY RICK ROBINSON | November 15, 2007
     

As the 2008 campaign got into gear, Hillary herself (she is habitually referred to by her first name, including by her own campaign) had never been tested in a national race. Years of attacks by Republicans made her a polarizing figure, about whom half the population had a negative impression. Combined with the burden of asking the electorate to vote for a woman president in wartime, this raised serious concerns about her prospects in the 2008 general election, even in a year that could otherwise be expected to favor Democrats. Shadowed by doubts, untested on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton's frontrunning candidacy might well have been a dirigible heading into a thunderstorm. Read more

IOWA AND NEW HAMPSHIRE   BY RICK ROBINSON | October 4, 2007

In 2000, two serious candidates emerged in each party: an "establishment" candidate favored by party regulars, and an "insurgent" challenger. On the Republican side these were George W. Bush and John McCain respectively; on the Democratic side Al Gore and former senator Bill Bradley. On the Democratic side, Gore succeeded in holding off Bradley in New Hampshire; Bradley's challenge faded, and Gore subsequently cruised to the nomination. On the Republican side, McCain scored a New Hampshire upset, putting Bush's nomination prospects seriously in doubt. Two weeks later, Bush recovered by defeating McCain in an exceptionally hard-fought primary in South Carolina, whose Republican voters are more conservative. Read more

A FIFTY /FIFTY NATION   BY RICK ROBINSON | September 8, 2007

Democrats are looking forward to the 2008 election with slightly uneasy optimism, Republicans with nearly unrelieved dread.  The respective eagerness and dread are easy enough to understand: Republicans are burdened with an unpopular president and an unpopular war.  Not one of the major polls listed at PollingReport.com during 2007 showed President Bush's approval rating as high as 40 percent, or his disapproval as less than 50 percent.  Out of 32 polls reported since the beginning of June, more than a third (12) show less than 30 percent approval, and all but three show at least 60 percent disapproval. Read more

OBAMA: FOREIGN POLICY VISIONARY OR NEOPHYTE?   BY NISHA CHITTAL | August 12, 2007

Obama’s willingness to talk to dictators may prove refreshing to some; his idea that we should talk to these countries even if we don’t like them is interesting and certainly a departure from the Bush administration’s approach. However, Obama has received mixed reviews for his answer. The Clinton campaign labeled him “irresponsible” and “naive” for being willing to meet with the five dictators without preconditions, and especially within the first year of his administration. Read more

2008 RACE: DEMOCRATIC CONTENDERS   BY BRIAN M. KOSS | July 3, 2007

2006 was a good year for the Democratic Party.  After four years of opposing Republican policies in the minority, the Democrats won majorities in both the House and Senate.  While the experts debate the reasons for Democratic victory; an unpopular President, Iraq, Congressional scandals; the Democrats have viewed this chance to lead the country in a new direction and improve their chances for a Democratic President in 2008.  The question for the Democratic Presidential candidates is what kind of change in leadership will they offer? Read more

GLOBAL WARMING IN THE U.S. AND THE EU: AN ‘INCONVENIENT TRUTH’ OR A CONVENIENT FICTION?   BY MICHAEL MADSON | June 1, 2007

On February 2, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), resurrecting anew the subject of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in diplomatic and scientific forums. This AR4 has sparked a new surge of international concern, asserting for the first time that global warming is “unequivocal” and that the principal causes of the earth’s rising temperatures since 1950 are “very likely” human-caused. Read more

2008 RACE: IMMIGRATION DEBATE   BY BRIAN M. KOSS | May 10, 2007

As the old saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows. We have seen an agreement between the US Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and the Catholic Church on granting amnesty and developing a guest workers program for illegal immigrants. On the opposite side, a growing movement of citizens formed a group of volunteers, known as the “Minutemen” to voluntarily patrol the borders. Read more

THE QUEST FOR ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES   BY TIMOTHY NEENO | March 10, 2007

We are a hydrocarbon society, right down to the asphalt in our streets. Fossil fuels have served us well, in that they have long been relatively cheap, while being a quite efficient source of power for the money. This is the problem - our civilization has come to depend on abundant sources of fossil fuels, chiefly oil and natural gas, and in doing so we have laid a trap for ourselves.  Read more

U.S. SPACE POLICY: A SWOON FOR THE MOON   BY MICHAEL MADSON | March 4, 2007

On December 14, 2006, President George W. Bush officially affirmed his administration’s commitment to space exploration, adding a fitting capstone to the Global Exploration Strategy discussions that had taken place earlier that year. In a speech delivered to NASA officials, he outlined new objectives for American efforts in space, detailing a course that would climax with a return to the moon. Read more

USA-EU: TRANSATLANTIC CATHARSIS   BY GRZEGORZ LEWICKI | January 5, 2007

The United States will be unable to claim a position of moral correctness for many years. They unintentionally brought about the conflict of cultures with Europe [...] Winston Churchill used to say that America has a habit of committing every possible mistake but making proper choices in the final outcome and in decisive matters. The first part of Churchill’s statement has been proven. The second has yet to be seen. Read more

USA-EU: GOOD COP – BAD COP?   BY MARTA CICHOMSKA | December 3, 2006

America is a danger to global security. Its plans for global hegemony, its self-centered efforts to secure its own interests, and its disregard for the views of other nations, have to be stopped. An anti-American counter-force needs to be created in the shape of a new, European superpower. Read more

IRAN-USA: THE NEXT WAR?   BY TIMOTHY NEENO | November 18, 2006

We should take a lesson from European history, and call a regional conference to begin negotiating settlements to some of the issues afflicting the Middle East. Inviting Syria and Iran to a conference table, as Tony Blair has recently suggested, would give both powers a stake in resolving the situation in Iraq [...] That is the day we need to set our sights on. Read more

USA: THE SOUTHERN FLANK. (HUGO CHAVEZ AND U.S. POLICY IN LATIN AMERICA)

BY TIMOTHY NEENO | October 18, 2006

Hugo Chávez, outspoken socialist president of Venezuela, has emerged as a vocal new figure in Latin America, calling for broad social reforms and Latin American unity in the face of American imperialism and economic hegemony. [...] Chávez clearly relishes his role as international gadfly. Read more

USA-EU: RIVALRY OR COOPERATION? (THE EUROPEAN VIEW.)

BY ALEKSANDRA KORYCKA | October 14, 2006

The discussion of whether the United States and the European Union remain partners or become rivals in the years ahead, may seem to be a debate between political liberals and realists. But how the two most important economic and political centers in the world behave toward each other will not be determined by current doctrines or by today's decision-makers. Read more

USA-ASIA: JAPAN RESURGENT BY TIMOTHY NEENO | October 2, 2006

On September 26, 2006, Shinzo Abe took office as Japan’s new Prime Minister. Abe has vowed to give Japan a more prominent place in the world scene, and is calling for a revision of Article IX of the Japanese Constitution [...] which forbids Japan from having any military other than self defense forces, and permanently renounces “war as a sovereign right of the nation”. Read more

THE CORROSION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE   BY SEBASTIAN AULICH | September 23, 2006

Ancient Romans used to say “summus ius, summa iniuria” – ‘the extreme law is the greatest injustice’ or ‘the utmost formalities are the utmost injustice’. The world’s history has shown that the degeneration of the criminal justice contributes greatly to the downfall of states and is a sign of rot within a political system. Read more

USA-EU: FUTURE OF TRANSATLANTIC ECONOMIC RELATIONS BY MACIEJ JARECKI | September 3, 2006

The United States and the European Union are, along with Japan, the most important and influential players in global economy. The cooperation between these transatlantic partners has been changing and becoming more institutionalized. Read more

ERRORS OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM   BY SEBASTIAN AULICH | June 1, 2006

Criminal justice system of the United States is frequently regarded as one of the best-organized and most efficient legal systems in the world. The United States itself hosts on its territory the world’s most renowned and prestigious law schools and international law firms. Read more 

NUCLEAR TERRORISM THREAT   BY SEBASTIAN AULICH | May 22, 2006

In 1977 a young student of Princeton University, who was facing a threat of being ousted for unsatisfactory academic performance, figured an original though unusual plan which he believed would allow him to successfully continue his studies and prevent from being expelled. Read more