In January 2012, Google, Wikipedia and Flickr temporarily closed their websites in protest of two proposed U.S. Congressional bills: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The legislation, if enacted, would have undermined online freedom of speech, and would have allowed governments and corporations to […]

Recent academic work has delivered a blow to the neoconservative agenda. Specifically, leading academics argue that past CIA interventions make countries less democratic, primarily benefiting U.S. corporations at the developing world’s expense. The results cast doubt on aggressive foreign policy’s ability to promote democracy abroad. Economists and political scientists have […]

As part of our  coverage on “The New City” we asked our bloggers for some pictures from their cities. Are there any places in their cities that are prime examples for sustainable urban living? But it could also be a negative example in order to show how a city should not […]

Last October, news surfaced that the U.S. technology company Blue Coat Systems had provided the censorship equipment used by Syria in the government’s repression of its citizens. The company initially denied the charge, first brought by the European hacker collective Telecomix with traffic data taken from within Syria, but with […]

In recent years microfinance organizations have become a popular way for US Americans to support entrepreneurship and small businesses in the developing world. I first learned about the concept a few years ago from a friend who showed me the website kiva.org. At the time I was a student on […]