Blimey: Pope Benedict XVI last night called off a visit to Rome's main university in the face of hostility from some of its academics and students, who...
Alex Evans
Alex Evans is a Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, and the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren't Enough? (Penguin, 2017), a book about the power of deep stories to unlock transformational change. He lives in North Yorkshire and is currently working on political polarisation and learning dry stone walling. Full biog here.
How the Pentagon planted a false story on Straits of Hormuz
Readers will recall the story on January 9 of Iranian speedboats swarming around US ships, with one of them apparently saying over the radio that, "you will...
Eyewitness account of the Serena Hotel bombing in Kabul
Barney Rubin's friend Naser Shahalemi was in the Serena Hotel in Kabul when suicide bombers shot their way in and blew themselves up: I look through the glass...
The shipping sector’s carbon footprint
A coalition of international shipping companies have banded together to create a 'Container Shipping Information Service' to counter what they worry may be an...
The erection theory of foreign policy
Gideon Rachman caused me to laugh out loud on a crowded Northern Line tube train earlier this morning, causing startled glances from my fellow passengers. ...
“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven, but…”
The NY Times has this sorry tale: Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy...
Simulating urban panics
Regular readers will know that we do love a good old-fashioned urban panic here at Global Dashboard. So imagine the delight here when Bruce Schneier noted...
Troops deployed to guard grain stores in Pakistan
Charlie Edwards at Demos points us towards news from the BBC: The authorities in Pakistan have deployed paramilitary troops to guard wheat supplies around the...
Sterling in freefall; France now richer than Britain
Sterling's down nine per cent against the euro since November, which as the FT helpfully reminded us this morning is a rate of decline not far off that seen...
Joining the dots on water scarcity
Tom Engelhardt at The Nation has a good question: Why is it that, except at relatively obscure websites, you can hardly find a mainstream piece that mentions...
What if… Spain began to think about leaving the eurozone?
That's the scenario posited by in an article today by John Dizard, who's toying with scenarios in which gold would do well. His reasoning goes like this:...
How did support for torture become a test of Republican fealty?
As Steve Benen noted yesterday on The Carpetbagger Report, "it's become a little too common for Republicans to use torture techniques as a litmus test for...
Possibly the best television show I’ve ever seen
David's going to laugh when he reads this post: he lent me season 1 of The Wire three days ago, and already I find myself compelled to write a post explaining...
WEF’s latest Global Risks report
The latest report of the Global Risks Network at the World Economic Forum is just out - here it is if you fancy a look. The report begins with the words:...
In defence of climate sceptics
David and I have an article on the Guardian's Comment is Free site this morning. Here's a taster: As we move from discussing the problem of climate change to...
Sarkozy “not the illegitimate son of Jacques Chirac” shock
Gordon Brown's new year relaunch has met with generally sullen reaction from the media, who seem less than enchanted with his rather dry emphasis on...
Is poverty really falling?
Lawrence Haddad, the thoughtful Director of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, has published a list of eight events and trends...
China suspends food exports to N Korea
Via Blake at ForeignPolicy.com, news of the latest casualty of rising food prices: detente with North Korea. Full details: Measures to stabilize soaring...
What happened to the anti-globalisation movement?
Amid the general surfeit of apocalyptic language being used about the solvency crunch, climate change, oil prices and various other dark sides of...
Political line of the year
Yeah, yeah, we're a week in. But Obama's surgical rebuttal today of Hillary's 'false hopes' line is going to take some beating: “I have been teased and even...
More from Global Dashboard
5 flashing warning lights on the dashboard of the global humanitarian system
In case you hadn't noticed, these are extraordinary times for the global emergency relief system, which has never looked more overstretched. 5 facts lifted from a new paper by my CIC colleagues Sarah Hearn and Alison Burt: 1. 76 million people now depend on the...
Bill, Melinda, and the SDGs
About a week ago, the Humanosphere blog caused something of a stir in development circles with a piece on the UN's draft Sustainable Development Goals entitled "Gates Foundation rallies the troops to attack UN development goals". Its headline message: The Gates...
“Organizadas Somos Fortes” – Organised we are powerful. Reflections from the landless movement in Brazil.
"This dance is not mine alone, this dance is by us all” – they move as one circle, hand in hand. Then, still as one circle, they put their arms around each other – “when we are tired, we have each other’s shoulders to rest on.” The women proudly show us the fruits of...