91福利

A Pinpoint Politics article by Brendan Pastor

"Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. So for us, the base we’ve got for that is the fact that we’ve got – budgetarily we can’t afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there’s no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out.” ()

The above quote by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was in response to a question posed by billionaire and Republican Party donor Diane Hendricks, who asked if Walker could make Wisconsin a “completely red [Republican] state, and work on these unions’, transforming his state into “a right-to-work” state. Accepting Walker’s poorly phrased and politically slanted answer, Hendricks would go on to contribute over $510,000 to the Walker re-election campaign, his single biggest individual donor.

A Pinpoint Politics article by Christopher Ogunmodede

In the wake of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s failed six-point Syria peace plan and the Assad’s regime not-so-subtle admission that it possesses chemical weapons, the stakes of a Western-led military intervention have increased significantly in less than a week. A report by the Royal United Services Institute noting the possibility of chemical weapons being used or stolen, not to mention the increased capability of the opposition forces as well as the geopolitical implications of the conflict spreading to and gripping other nations, concludes that a military intervention may take place to prevent the conflict from spilling beyond Syrian borders. As the ongoing crisis continues to manifest itself in the international realm, many pro-intervention voices in academia, the media, think-tanks and policymaking circles have decided that a military intervention will be the pill that cures all that currently ails the conflict-ridden country. John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, has been making the rounds of Fox News and other right-wing press outlets decrying the administration’s response to the conflict.

Effective from 1 September, , Professor of International Politics and Japanese Studies and Head of Department in PAIS, will serve as the new Chair of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Prof Hughes will also continue in his current role as Head of Department.

A Pinpoint Politics article by Lena-Sophie Demuth

Energy is of major importance to almost every challenge and opportunity we face today, be it of economic, environmental or social nature. Leading a Sustainable Energy for All initiative that ensures universal access to modern energy services, improves efficiency and increases use of renewable sources, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is advocating a paradigm shift away from a global economy highly dependent on oil towards the use of renewable energies for all to foster sustainable development. This rhetoric of a ‘green economy’ ran like a common thread through the RIO+20 United Nations Conference of Sustainable Development, which took part last week in Brazil. In line with the motto ‘The Future We Want’, thousands of high level representatives from governments, UN organizations (e.g. UNESCO, FAO UNEP), the private sector, as well as NGOs, set their sights high to come to a binding agreement in the two main areas of a) a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication; and b) the institutional framework for sustainable development.

A Pinpoint Politics article by Andrew Kelly

Have you heard? Hope swirls in the air again. It is only over a month now since President Francois Hollande cried in his victory speech in Tulle: “le changement est arrivé. L’espérance est arrivé.” Austerity will have to go, as Greece, Spain, and Italy all lift their heads towards France in the hope that Hollande is right. With pleasantries and formalities out of the way, the austere world continues to wait as the Hollande-Merkel relationship tries to resolve to a position that is favourable for themselves and the Eurozone. A process that some may progressively liken to Sisyphus’s eternal relationship with his rock, or perhaps the more popular association between a rock and a hard place. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, President Obama has dusted off his fabled ‘Hope’ portrait (courtesy of Shepard Fairey), along with the highs and lows of his first term in office, to remind the people of why they had turned to him.