COMMENTARIES
COMMENTARIES
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Lessons from a Divided Island
Jeffrey D. Sachs Series: Economics and Justice 2001-01-29CAMBRIDGE: Seven hundred miles off Florida’s coast lies one of the most impoverished places on earth. Hispaniola was Christopher Columbus’s first stop in the New World. Just a hour-and-a-half flight south of Miami, we might expect that island to be a tropical paradise and a favored spot for offshore US business. But reality is more cruel. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 13562
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The Digital Divide
Brigitte Granville and Carol Scott Leonard Series: Frontiers of Growth 2001-01-26LONDON: A global division is arising between the world’s computer haves and have-nots. Call it the digital divide. Seven months ago at the Kyushu-Okinawa Summit the world’s leading industrial countries established a Digital Opportunity Taskforce (dotforce) to share information and communication technologies with poor countries. Are computer technologies, however, really so easily transferred? Moreover, will governments in poor and postcommunist countries seize upon the supposedly magical powers of computers as an excuse not to pursue coherent growth strategies? ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 11607
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Europe and President Bush
Giuliano Amato Series: The World in Words 2001-01-24ROME: What does the future hold for transatlantic relations? That question arises with every new American administration. Because worries about a “widening Atlantic” gap have existed since the early 1970s, it is tempting to proceed as if transatlantic relations will remain on roughly the same wavelength as before. The truth is, however, that the US and the EU are rapidly evolving along their own paths: both sides of the Atlantic thus face the challenge of managing an ever more complex relationship. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 15206
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The Hague Tribunal: Belgrade's View
Aleksa Djilas Series: Human Rights 2001-01-22BELGRADE: Opinion polls in Serbia show that large majorities believe the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to be a political instrument to bash Serbs. So they oppose extradition of the indicted - including ex-president Milosevic - to the Hague Tribunal. When the Tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, comes to Belgrade this Tuesday her welcome will not be warm. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 14787
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Russia's Tuberculosis Catastrophe
Paul Farmer Series: The World in Words 2001-01-18TOMSK, SIBERIA: Europe ignores Russia’s public health problems at its peril. So do the other industrialized countries who cheered the Soviet Union’s fall but have failed to respond to the collapse of Russia’s health and social-service infrastructure. For out of a confused swirl of economic ideology and sometimes insensitive advice has emerged a new form of drug-resistant tuberculosis that is proving hard to contain. Much has been made of Russia’s plummeting life expectancies – its "mortality crisis." Although that grim trend appears to be being slowly reversed, another problem is spiraling out of control: tuberculosis. In several regions of Russia, young men fall ill and die from tuberculosis at rates well in excess of ten times those documented a mere decade ago; in some non-Russian areas of the former USSR, the story is even worse. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 17442
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Winning at Corporate Governance
Rüdiger Dornbusch Series: Anatomy of the Global Economy 2001-01-17CAMBRIDGE: Despite NASDAQ crashes and the threat of US recession, the New Economy is here to stay. Indeed, it remains the key to improved performance in Europe and Japan in the years ahead. But where, exactly, does the heart of the New economy lie? Is it in more competitive labor markets or in better tax systems or in deregulation? Corporate governance, too, is a motor of the New Economy that should not be underrated. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 12632
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When Internet Boom Went Bust
George Soros Series: The World in Words 2001-01-16While the internet boom lasted, nothing seemed able to deflate the bubble. Few internet and dot com companies were profitable, but investors never seemed to mind. They looked at the number of customers or subscribers as the basis for valuing internet stocks. The name of the game became raising capital, not making profits. Even when fashionable stocks dipped, there was remarkably little effect on the rest of the market. People had learned that it pays to buy the dips, and were not weaned from the habit until it ceased to pay. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 17197
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The Distance Between the First and Third Rome
Alexey Bukalov Series: A Window on Russia 2001-01-12MOSCOW/ROME: For a decade, Pope John Paul II has been flying in circles around Mother Russia: one day he visits the Baltics or his homeland of Poland; the next, Orthodox Romania and Georgia. In June, 2001 Pope John Paul II will visit Ukraine and Armenia, both parts of the former Soviet Union and both still watched over warily by Russia’s Orthodox Church. Karol Wojtyla, the first Slavic Pope in history, has long dreamed of visiting Moscow; indeed he may see such a visit as putting the finishing touch on his long, turbulent pontificate. But, a decade after communism’s collapse, it is Russia’s churchmen, not its politicians, who are blocking the way. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 14813
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A New Velvet Revolution
Jiří Pehe Series: The World in Words 2001-01-10PRAGUE: Rebellion by Czech TV journalists against a new director of the publicly-owned Czech TV marks the climax of a ten year battle between two concepts of democracy. The first concept is represented by former prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, the second by President Vaclav Havel. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 11841
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Science Under Threat
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Series: Science and Society 2001-01-08PARIS: A century ago, pondering what the future might bring, Anatole France said that “my dream is to read the books of schoolboys as they shall be in the year 2000.” As the millennium passes into history, perhaps we should ask if our schoolchildren are being inspired in the way Anatole France once hoped. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 12805
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Why I Published 'The Tiananmen Papers'
Zhang Liang Series: China World 2001-01-05The Chinese leadership’s penchant for secretiveness is proverbial. But the veil that exists over how that omnipotent party makes important decisions is being lifted somewhat because a volume of unique materials about the behind-the-scenes events surrounding the infamous Tiananmen massacre of 1989 is being published this month. ... read Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 15092
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No War, No Famine
Per Ahlmark Series: The World in Words 2001-01-04STOCKHOLM: Two hundred years ago in his essay “Perpetual Peace” Immanuel Kant imagined a future “union of liberal republics.” In 1795, however, liberal republics were abstract ideas. Yet Kant imagined our present reality of flourishing liberal democracies. Moreover, Kant’s idea of perpetual peace seems even less far-fetched because no democracy has ever made war on another. Indeed, “No War Between Democracies” is as close as we are likely to get to an immutable diplomatic law. ... read Comments: 2 Recommended: 0 Read: 17151
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Supporting Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Paul Berg Series: Health and Medicine 2001-01-03Most of the cells in our bodies have a short life span and a specific job to do. Stem cells, found in many organs from skin to bone marrow, are different. The “ancestors” of ordinary cells, they can replenish themselves indefinitely. Given the right biochemical signals, these cells can divide and transform themselves into a range of different cell types as and when the need arises. ... read Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 17578
