Obama's dark horse nominee for World Bank President--medical doctor, PhD anthropologist, Ivy League college professor, hip-hop impresario, and Dartmouth University President Jim Yong Kim--took many power-broker insiders by surprise. JYK is not a politically connected international diplomat, as were his predecessors Robert Zoellick and Paul Wolfowitz,...

The "super committee's" apparent failure to cut a deal to trim $1.2 trillion in federal spending over the next decade is set to trigger blanket budget cuts, including $500 billion from the Pentagon's budget. In the face of looming cutbacks, maintaining cost-effective investments in the multilateral...

The purpose of bold, symbolic dissent is to catalyze debate, to challenge the inertia of the status quo with the moral clarity of a refusal to acquiesce in the face of clear injustice. When Gandhi led a long people's march to the sea to collect salt in 1930, in defiance...

One hot set of proposals at the Copenhagen climate change negotiations this week would transfer billions from developed to developing countries, by allowing rich country polluters to buy carbon offsets generated through forest conservation in poor countries -- creating a financial incentive to keep forests standing instead of razing them...

Recently Somali pirates surfaced as an imminent threat to the safety of cargo ships and seafarers. The U.S. government took firm measures in response: last month Navy Seals daringly rescued Captain Richard Phillips from a bobbing lifeboat in the Indian Ocean, shooting his captors while he stood a few feet...

At the G20 meeting last month the international community pledged 1.1 trillion to combat the global economic crisis, but the intended beneficiaries of economic development initiatives have a better idea: they're buying mobile phones.

In Fiji, mobile phones now allow any small scale subsistence fisherman with a...

Dear Governor Palin,

During your debate with Senator Biden you said you welcomed the opportunity to speak directly with the American people, "uncensored" by the media. That sounds great. In fact, I'd like to challenge you to a debate: one regular American, me, versus you, the Governor of Alaska.

Last week Congress passed a pork laden farm bill that could cost American taxpayers up to $289 billion over five years. At the same time, a global food crisis is deepening. Average prices for wheat, rice, and corn have gone up 41 percent since October 2007. Food riots are rocking...

Members of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Florida are on a hunger strike, but this is not your parents' SDS (or yours, depending on your generational perspective). For those not steeped in the lore of 1960s' leftist activism, SDS was the linchpin of the 1960s student...

World Bank employees are raising champagne toasts to celebrate the departure of Paul Wolfowitz, but sober-minded critics of the neo-conservative agenda should think twice about raising a glass.

Yes, Wolfowitz embodies the arrogance and high-handed conceit of the Bush administration. Yes, his failure of judgment helped lead us into the...