Earlier this week, Australia passed the Minerals Resource Rent Tax, a tax of 30 percent on profits of the largest iron ore and coal mining companies operating in Australia. The first, tougher version of this initiative was  introduced by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and it ruined him. Unremitting attacks on his environmental policies helped drive […]

New York State held several special elections this week, and the New York Observer took the occasion to point out that one in four members of New York’s state legislature have been elected through these special channels, ushered into an election by closed-doors party selection instead of through a primary process.New York’s machine politics thrives […]

The New York Times carries good tidings from Cambridge: Harvard announced on Wednesday that it would open a campus office for the Army R.O.T.C. later this year, a move the Army believes will lead to greater participation in the program by Harvard undergraduates…Under its agreement with the Army, Harvard will provide office space for the […]

One of the biggest intellectual failures of the global green movement against climate change is the persistent failure of its leaders and spokespeople to grasp the way their own advocacy fatally undermines their credibility. They blame cunning, unscrupulous and well funded enemies for disasters that their own inaccuracies, overstatements and disingenuous advocacy have brought on […]

In a front page story on Friday, the New York Times covered a surprising new development that could revolutionize the way America powers itself and conducts foreign policy: The US is surprisingly close to becoming self-reliant on energy. With oil and especially gas production booming due to fracking, deep-water drilling, and new oil discoveries, American […]

After stalling for months on the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, President Obama has partially given in to his critics, pledging to expedite the approval of the southern portion of the project.  A new Gallup poll helps explain this new sudden reversal: Americans overwhelmingly approve of the pipeline, by a margin of 57 percent to […]

Israeli policymakers and analysts are increasingly in agreement that Assad eventually will fall, and that his ouster will be a net benefit for Israel—no matter who succeeds him. AI board member Itamar Rabinovich was quoted in the FT explaining Israel’s shifting perspective on their nettlesome neighbor: A few years ago, the Israeli outlook would have been different. There was a […]

Rhode Island took a major step forward in its fight against big blue on Thursday, announcing a new plan that will give local mayors much more leeway to reform the state pension plans that are driving many municipalities to the brink of bankruptcy. Boston.com reports that  Governor Lincoln Chafee, an Independent, plans to allow localities […]

Thousands of Brazilian schoolchildren now wear uniforms with computer chips embedded in the fabric. The chips send text messages to parents notifying them when their child enters school, or doesn’t.In Japan, new surveillance cameras can scan 36 million faces in mere seconds.In December 2010, Iran spent $130 million to purchase phone-monitoring technology from China. The state telecom […]

How do politicians in a democracy balance domestic politics and international realities?They juggle, and that is what India did at the UN’s Human Rights Council vote on (credibly) alleged war crimes and other violations of the rights of the Tamil minority on Sri Lanka. India voted for the resolution, pleasing the 60 million Tamils who […]