Opinions
Education gap between rich and poor is growing wider
The wounds of segregation were still raw in the 1970s. With only rare exceptions, African-American children had nowhere near the same educational opportunities as whites....
In Myanmar, a soft coup ahead of an election
Campaigning formally started on Tuesday for Myanmar’s first general election since the end of direct military rule, but don’t be fooled by the display of colorful logos and slogans from various political parties: The army is back in force....
Here’s why industrial food is deceivingly cheap
Conventional agriculture isn’t cheap. From the use of artificial fertilizer and pesticides to the obesity epidemic, our current food system has a number of hidden costs to the natural environment and human health, far outweighing the benefits of cheap food....
Destruction of US credibility at WTO: It is hypocritical of the US to give price support to its farmers while denying it to the world’s poorest farm...
The tenth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), to be held in Nairobi on 15-18 December, is already mired in discord, with negotiators unable to agree on a mandated post-Bali work programme....
Julian Bond had the long view of this journey toward justice
Combing through the many tributes that have appeared since Julian Bond’s death, I was struck by one photograph in particular....
The end of polio in Africa?
AFRICA HAS reported some genuinely good news in the battle to eradicate polio. Late last month , Nigeria passed a full year without a case of wild poliovirus. As of Aug. 11, it has been a year since the last case was detected anywhere on the continent (it was in Somalia). These anniversaries are uno...
The GM labeling law to end all labeling laws
As the vitriol intensifies in what passes for debate over the safety of genetically modified foods, scientific inquiry, thankfully, continues. A Tufts researcher, Sheldon Krimsky, recently published his assessment of the last seven years of peer-reviewed evidence, finding 26 studies that "reported a...
The U.S. has 35,000 museums. Why is only one about slavery?
The United States is home to more than 35,000 museums that explore our nation’s culture and history. Restored plantations that commemorate the Old South are popular among them, celebrated as “bastions of a genteel culture” ( in the words of an official New Orleans Web site) and monuments to th...
The mystery of ISIS
Ahmad Fadhil was eighteen when his father died in 1984. Photographs suggest that he was relatively short, chubby, and wore large glasses. He wasn’t a particularly poor student—he received a B grade in junior high—but he decided to leave school. There was work in the garment and leather factori...
Fit for whose purpose? Private funding and corporate influence in the United Nations
A critical issue repeatedly arising in the post-2015 negotiations relates to responsibility. There is shared responsibility, the preference of rich countries who would like to shift traditional official development assistance (ODA) and other “burdens” given the “rise” of some developing coun...
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