World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

One of the saddest aspects of the tragedy of the Syrian civil war is the status of the Syrians who have sought refuge outside of their country.  There are 1.7 million refugees and all but 7,000 have been living in refugee camps in a small number of neighboring countries, none of which has the resources to deal adequately with the needs of the displaced people.  There will be a conference in Geneva this week, and an urgent plea is being made for rich countries to take a larger number of refugees.  Unfortunately, I suspect that the plea will fall on deaf ears–the rich countries apparently have no shame and no conscience.

The US Senate is close to releasing parts of its 6,000 page report on US torture tactics in the “Global War on Terror.”  We actually do not know how much of the report will be released since there are still fierce negotiations going on between the Executive Branch of government (primarily the US CIA) and the Congress over ‘sensitive” parts of the report.   The release of the report is long overdue since the American people deserve to know what was done to other human beings in their name.  One can only hope that information will shake the American people from their long slumber over the massive violations of human rights.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an organization devoted to the economic interests of the rich countries in the world, has issued a report which argues that economic inequality seriously compromises economic growth.   Indeed, the organization found that rising inequality cost the economy almost nine percentage points of GDP growth in  Great Britain between 1990 and 2010.  The results suggest that addressing income inequality could be an effective way to stimulate economic growth–not a strategy that has received much attention from most governments thus far.