BLOG… Post #138: Food Politics: The GMO Conspiracy 3 Dec 201627 Feb 2017 One of the longest-standing tricks of the corporate trade is to produce an item that is dangerous, breakable, or soon to be obsolete and then produce another item that will…
American Politics and the World… Post #133: Left Unsaid at the Third Debate 21 Oct 201627 Feb 2017 Donald Trump waited one day before delivering the punch line to his sad joke, “I will keep you in suspense” about respecting the election results. “Unless I win,” he said…
BLOG… Post #114: The Panama Papers and the 1% 15 Apr 201627 Feb 2017 One of the many tools at the disposal of multinational corporations (MNCs) for maximizing profits and undermining state sovereignty is moving operations to low-tax countries. Global companies do not simply…
BLOG… Post #111: China–Broken Rice Bowls, Stifled Voices 23 Mar 201627 Feb 2017 Amidst the economic downturn in China, two developments that are not “in the human interest” stand out: rising unemployment among workers in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and repression of criticism of…
BLOG… Post #89: China’s Insecurity 27 Aug 201527 Feb 2017 Several developments in China over the past few weeks have shown us a country quite different from the one often portrayed by outsiders—an emerging superpower, with global economic reach and…
American Politics and the World… Post #76 – TPP: A Deeply Flawed Partnership 4 May 201527 Feb 2017 (Note: A longer version of this post was subsequently published at http://japanfocus.org/-Mel-Gurtov/4318/article.html.) The American people have become used to government trickery in foreign affairs—wars and interventions based on lies and…
BLOG… Post #75 – India’s Shame, and the World’s 23 Apr 201527 Feb 2017 A democracy is supposed to have the advantage of affording people of any social class, gender, or religious or ethnic group the opportunity to advance. In contrast with authoritarian political…
BLOG… Post #65 – Give Greece a Chance 1 Feb 201527 Feb 2017 The electoral victory of Alexis Tzipras may provide new hope for the overwhelming majority of Greeks, who are living in Third World-like conditions as the economy deteriorates and external debt…
BLOG… Post #63 – Davos: The One Percent and the Rest 20 Jan 201527 Feb 2017 Ever been to Davos? I haven’t, but I hear it’s a lovely Swiss town, with many chalets and all the other fine things that we associate with the Alps. Davos…
BLOG… Post #62 – Human Rights: The Rising Record of Abuses 12 Jan 201527 Feb 2017 The terrorist attacks in Paris and the ongoing abductions of Boko Haram in Nigeria bring to mind this fact of life: systematic, large-scale abuses of human rights are on the…
BLOG… Post #51 – Back to Basics on an Israeli-Palestinian Peace 1 Nov 201427 Feb 2017 The September 2014 issue of Harper’s carried a fascinating dialogue among eight prominent Israeli and Palestinian citizens on the future of their relationship. It took place against the background of…
BLOG… Post #50 – The Lessons of Ebola 24 Oct 201427 Feb 2017 The battle against Ebola is in danger of being lost. A top official of MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders), the lead NGO in West Africa with about…
BLOG… Post #49 – “I’m Not a Scientist, But…” 13 Oct 201427 Feb 2017 The People’s Climate March in New York City and (so it was declared) in 155 other countries has come and gone. Climate change, unfortunately, parades on. While people marched—an estimated…
BLOG… Post #39 – What Works? Microfinance: Financing Dignity 11 Aug 201427 Feb 2017 Back in the 1970s, Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh had a brilliant idea. He would found a bank to provide seed money to poor people who otherwise would have no way…
BLOG… Post #36 – What Works? Person- and Planet-centered Development 22 Jul 201427 Feb 2017 The usual script for international development is the provision of aid—mostly in loans, occasionally in outright grants—by a “developed” country or international institution to an “underdeveloped” one. The money goes…
BLOG… Post #28 – What Works? Saving Young Lives 17 Jun 201427 Feb 2017 While living in Tokyo back in 2001, my attention was captivated by a US public television program on a cardiovascular surgeon in Phoenix who was making annual trips to Sri…
BLOG… Post #21-Take the Money and Run: The Privileged World of the Multinational Corporation (Part 1) 12 May 201427 Feb 2017 Another tax season has come and gone, and most of us—good citizens that we are—have sighed and paid our share. But how many of us are aware that there’s a…
BLOG… Post #12: Some Footnotes on Inequality 3 Apr 201427 Feb 2017 Readers have raised issues related to the two previous posts on inequality. Here are my responses: 1. Definitions of middle and upper class. There are economists' answers and sociologists' answers,…
BLOG… Post #10: Inequality: Pretense and Reality, Part 2 28 Mar 201427 Feb 2017 Let’s not forget to keep an eye on another place where inequality is being abetted. The outstanding economist Joe Stiglitz has written a powerful critique of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which…
BLOG… Post #9: Inequality: Pretense and Reality (Part 1) 28 Mar 201427 Feb 2017 The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, has recently come out against rising income inequality. Imagine, a leading figure in global finance actually acknowledged that “rising inequality…
In the Human Interest - Mel Gurtov 