http://www.project-syndicate.org/about_us/rss The highest quality commentaries and analysis from distinguished voices across the world en Wed, 14 May 2008 22:30:02 GMT webmaster@project-syndicate.org http://www.interglacial.com/rss/about.html http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/carter4/English Atlanta -- The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air, or land. An entire population is being brutally punished. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz99/English New York – The World’s central bankers are a close-knit club, given to fads and fashions. In the early 1980’s, they fell under the spell of monetarism, a simplistic economic theory promoted by Milton Friedman. After monetarism was discredited – at great cost to those countries that succumbed to it – the quest began for a new mantra. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rogoff42/English Cambridge – Today’s soaring commodity prices scream a fundamental truth of modern life that many politicians, particularly in the West, don’t want us to hear: the world’s natural resources are finite, and, as billions of people in Asia and elsewhere escape poverty, Western consumers will have to share them. Here is another truth: the price mechanism is a much better way to allocate natural resources than fighting wars, as the Western powers did in the last century. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/unckel1/English STOCKHOLM – The Nordic countries’ economies are performing well, and a part of the reason is that they are gradually reforming their “social model,” adapting it to new realities in ways that respond to people’s demands. But there is nothing uniquely “Nordic” about this change. On the contrary, it is one that others can emulate. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/benami17/English JERUSALEM – Israel is one of the biggest success stories of modern times. A nation was reborn out of Holocaust survivors and uprooted Jewish communities who, mostly through the quality of their human capital, built a booming economy, created one of the world’s most innovative agricultures, and revived a dead language. They also sustained, against all odds, a democracy that, however imperfect and dysfunctional, is nonetheless amazingly vibrant. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/cohnbendit2/English “Dany, you have been so successful. But don’t let yourself be manipulated by those far-left forces that would lead you to destroy everything that could arise from what you are creating.” Forty years later, those words on March 22, 1968, by Jean Baudrillard – then an assistant professor at Nanterre University – still sound right. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/jiang4/English Edmonton – Chinese President Hu Jintao will make a high-profile visit to Japan from May 6-10, making him the second Chinese head of state ever to travel there. The trip is being carefully managed by both countries, and is being watched closely around the world, with good reason: Sino-Japanese relations over the past decade have been turbulent, to say the least. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/amato2/English ROME -- A year ago, few people would have bet that the European Union, still reeling from the trauma of the Constitutional Treaty’s rejection in 2005, would be poised to ratify the new Reform Treaty, adopted in Lisbon last December. For some, the fact that the United Kingdom might ratify it even earlier than traditionally “pro-European” countries like Italy merely underscores the Treaty’s lack of new and bold initiatives to accelerate European unification. But they are wrong. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lewiso1/English STRASBOURG – On a cold winter day in 2004, a young Russian named Pavel Shtukaturov discovered that a judge had stripped him of the right to speak for himself. Deprived of legal capacity, he was prohibited from acting independently, or at all, in most areas of life. He was no longer able to work, travel, choose his place of residence, buy or sell property, or even marry.    http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/fischer25/English President George W. Bush’s Middle East policy undeniably managed to achieve one thing: it has thoroughly destabilized the region. Otherwise, the results are not at all what the United States had hoped to accomplish. A democratic, pro-Western Middle East is not in the cards. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/collierp1/English OXFORD – Because peacekeeping initiatives in post-conflict countries are expensive and complex, and because the war in Iraq has undermined rich nations’ belief in their likely success, a dispassionate look at the use of military intervention is timely. A new study for the Copenhagen Consensus project that includes the first ever cost-benefit analysis of United Nations peacekeeping initiatives concludes that military might is an important tool for reducing bloodshed around the world. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/tutu3/English JOHANNESBURG – Although the Chinese ship that was carrying arms to Zimbabwe, the An Yue Jiang, has reportedly turned back, we don’t know where else President Robert Mugabe’s military and paramilitary forces may be acquiring weapons. In light of the escalating violent repression of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change – and of those whose support apparently helped the MDC to prevail in the presidential election, the results of which have still not been announced after four weeks – an international arms embargo on Zimbabwe is urgently needed. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/nixey1/English LONDON – As Dmitri Medvedev waits in the wings for his inauguration on May 7, the West is examining his every word, eager for the slightest sign that Russia’s new president will be more “reasonable” and easier to deal with than Vladimir Putin, the man who got him elected. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/delong77/English BERKELEY – Back in 1981, America’s Republican Party gave up all belief that the government’s budget ought to be balanced. The idea took hold that tax cuts should be undertaken all the time, at every opportunity, because reducing taxes supposedly raised revenue. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/tsyvinski1/English MOSCOW – Dmitry Medvedev’s election as Russia’s new president was virtually guaranteed. Whether or not he can improve Russia’s economy after he takes office in May is far less certain.