Politics
Psychology, Propaganda, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Editor’s Note: This article is a revised version of “Chinese Cultural Revolution: Facing History and Shaping Today“. What we know as propaganda uses a constructed language on media to implant ideas in the minds of individuals. It creates public trends on how susceptible we are to authorities at the individual level. Unfortunately, the human tendency [...]
Chinese Cultural Revolution: Facing History and Shaping Today
Editor’s Note: A revised version of this article has been posted on “Psychology, Propaganda, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution“. What we know as propaganda uses a constructed language on media to implant ideas in the minds of individuals. It creates public trends on how susceptible we are to authorities at the individual level. Unfortunately, the [...]
Medicare: “Generational Divide” and the Future
In April of this year, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) of the House Budget Committee released a proposal for the 2012 federal budget. While Ryan’s budget would reduce spending by $5.8 trillion over the next ten years, Republican leaders backed down from the proposal in May, mainly because it included a controversial plan to completely overhaul [...]
Muslim Brotherhood: A Different Breed of Islamists
In theory, Americans and their government unreservedly support democratic movements. In practice, however, they worry about democratic alternatives to long-standing dictatorships. Sure, America is pro-democracy; but US interests come first. And while Arab dictators are certainly corrupt and oppressive, they do maintain regional stability. Along these lines, Western coverage of the latest resistance to Arab [...]
The Altruism of Recycling
Why do we recycle? A 1996 New York Times commentary declared recycling to be “the most wasteful activity in modern America” [1]. Critics have suggested that recycling lowers industrial rates of production and consumes enough energy to easily outweigh its scant benefits to the environment [2]. On the other hand, there is also evidence proposing [...]
Do Better Weapons Win Wars? The Role of Technology in Warfare
An in-depth discussion of the way in which weapons technology influences the outcomes of international conflicts
Climate Change: An Ethical Perspective on Mitigating its Impact
Climate change, the shifting temperature of the earth due to amplified levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) from fossil fuels and deforestation, is currently a topic of heated discussions worldwide. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations organization, stated that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” [1]. GHGs persist in [...]
Law and Technology: The Changing Face of War and its Legal Ramifications
Over the last ten years, leaps in technology have led to warfare being augmented by developments that would seem to be more suited to science fiction. However, the use of drone warfare, cyberwarfare, and data mining has caused a dramatic shift in the way a war is thought of and conducted, in addition to raising [...]
British Petroleum Versus Bhopal
By Parth Chauhan, George Washington University The headlines on BBC News website on September 19th, 2010, read “Gulf oil spill ‘finally sealed,’” putting an end to a five month ordeal for the citizens of the Gulf of Mexico. [8] On April 20th, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, owned by British Petroleum, exploded, leaving eleven workers [...]
Imperfect Information: The Unavoidable Paradox
Are there times when we might prefer people to be less informed? Can advantages flow from the structure of some political institutions that limit political information? How can we benefit from a society in which imperfect information is and will continue to be a widespread phenomenon?
Social Medicine: Prescribing Information to Bridge the Gap between Poverty and Health
Any good healthcare provider will tell you that there is no one single cause to diseases or illnesses. While there are a host of variables and conditions that contribute to poor health, poverty is usually a common cofactor. Globally, 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty, while one in eight Americans live under the poverty [...]
Torturing America: Securing the American Interest
Originally Published in The Cornell International Affairs Review, vol. III, no. 2, Spring 2010 Even before his inauguration, President Barack Obama made it clear that he believed torture was morally reprehensible and promised that under his administration the U.S. would no longer practice torture.1 Accordingly, on April 16th, 2009 Mr. Obama and the U.S. Department [...]
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