OP-ED: Weapons into Ploughshares, and Crises into Opportunity

The crisis that started a few years ago with the collapse of major financial institutions in the United States is now centred in Europe and threatens other parts of the world. Many emerging countries in Asia and Latin America that had thus far avoided contamination because of their sound economic and fiscal policies and their timely adoption of domestic consumption stimulus packages are now beginning to experience secondary effects.

TURKEY: Caught Between Syria’s Kurds and a Hard Spot

In a display of muscle-flexing, Turkish tanks this week carried out military exercises on the Syrian border, just a few kilometres away from towns that Syrian Kurds had seized from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

AZERBAIJAN: Signs Point to Russia’s Departure from Gabala Radar Base

It may look like just a 27-year-old radar station in a remote stretch of northern Azerbaijan. But, in reality, Gabala is all about Baku’s desire to assert its own weight as a regional power – even against its onetime patron, Russia.

UZBEKISTAN: Tashkent’s Sticky Fingers Spoiling Foreign Investors’ Appetites

The recent travails in Uzbekistan of Russian cellphone giant MTS – hit by employee arrests and a three-month suspension – highlight the perils for foreigners of doing business in Central Asia’s most populous country.

Investigation Exposes Cruelty at Foie Gras Farms

Roasted foie gras fillet, with fresh chestnuts and soymilk skin. This dish from Mugaritz, considered the third-best restaurant in the world, sounds exotic. But how this "delicacy" - foie gras means "fat liver" - is produced and at what cost have been unmasked in an investigation led by Animal Equality.

Portugal’s Innovative Drug Policy Offers Hope*

Portugal was traditionally one of the European countries with the lowest levels of drug use, until the 1980s and 1990s, when problematic drug abuse, especially of heroin, became a major problem.

Mainstream Rhetoric on Nuclear Power Far From Reality

The catastrophe following the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactor in March 2011 has turned the old debate on nuclear power into a war of words between international agencies and independent experts with diametrically opposed views.

Q&A: “In Portugal, We Fight the Illness, Not the People Who Suffer from It”

Portugal’s anti-drug policies have been gaining international visibility since this country began to publish the results of its 2001 decision to eliminate all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs.

Banksters Hijack Microfinance

For several decades, microcredit presented itself as a magical and benign financial tool for the poorest people in the world, who were otherwise completely excluded from conventional commercial banking services, to secure easy access to loans in order to set up their own businesses and live a dignified life.

Bankers or ‘Banksters’?

European media, political leaders, and the citizenry are bashing bankers again, overtly calling them at best accomplices of numerous illegal activities, at worst downright criminals.

Poets Caught in Political Web

As two young Azeri poets enter their 11th week in detention in Iran, efforts to secure their release are not losing steam, nor are political tensions between the two countries.

Balkans Bristles Under Turkey’s Gaze

In the decade following the break-up of Yugoslavia, it was rare for a statement made by a foreign politician to stir heated debate in the Eastern European bloc.

Celebrating the Olympic Ideal with a Big Mac

As the 2012 London Olympics gears up to open on Jul. 27, criticism of the longstanding partnership between the Games and sponsor McDonald’s has stolen a small portion of the limelight.

KYRGYZSTAN: Rape Trial Spotlights Women’s Plight

Allegations that a member of Kyrgyzstan's KGB-successor agency organised the brutal rape of his wife have outraged women’s rights activists in Bishkek. But what rights defenders call an ordinary crime is having an extraordinary effect because of the victim’s response: she pressed charges.

Austerity Package Sparks Protests in Spain

"This is war. Parliament has got to go! They're trying to make civil servants take the blame for a situation that was caused by the banking sector and which the government has allowed to happen."

Family Planning Essential for Development

Improving family planning to avoid unwanted pregnancies in developing countries, as well as assuring girls’ access to education, and women’s participation in the economy, are essential components of a sound development policy, according to Western experts and African activists.

Will Austerity Prompt Nuclear Disarmament?

The changing international political order and a dramatic budgetary situation at home are forcing France to consider giving up the extremely expensive nuclear arsenal the country has maintained since the late 1950s.

The Bicycle Revolution in Paris, Five Years Later

In July 2007, many Parisians laughed at their mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, when he announced the creation of a public bicycle sharing system aimed at reducing traffic in the French capital.

Europe Dithering on Tobin Tax

Despite the grave financial and sovereign debt crisis sweeping the region, the European Union has once again failed to reach unanimous approval of a proposition made by its executive body, the European Commission (EC), to tax financial transactions in order to reduce speculation and increase state revenues.

‘Reforms’ Legacy Rocks Romania Again

Romanian President Traian Basescu is close to being impeached after the Parliament suspended him Friday. The political crisis, however, distracts from citizens’ calls for a more responsive political class and a halt to declining standards of living.

Going Dutch Means Staying Stuck

Growing numbers of asylum seekers are being denied refugee status by the Dutch authorities, but cannot go back to their own country either. Forced removals are doing little to better the situation.