OPINION

Photo: Edinburgh is the 17th largest financial centre in the world in 2020. CC BY 2.0

The Rationale for Scotland Returning to the European Union

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Trump wants to get in. Scotland wants to get out. That sounds a bit odd. Let me explain. A few days ago, the first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, said she’d heard that one of the White House’s planes had asked for permission to land in Glasgow airport a day before the inauguration of the new president, Joe Biden. She said she had refused it. The surmise was that Donald Trump wanted to escape to one of his favourite golf courses, near where his mother was born.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 12 January 2021

Photo: Donald Trump holds a political rally in front of The White House on The Ellipse on January 6, 2021. Uploaded to YouTube for archival purposes by Factba.se

The Assault on the Citadel of US Democracy

Viewpoint by Somar Wijayadasa*

NEW YORK (IDN) – On January 6, Americans and the world watched in disbelief, horror and disgust as President Donald Trump’s fiercest supporters, stoked by the commander in chief himself, stormed, smashed windows, and desecrated the Capitol building that hasn't been breached since the War of 1812, when British soldiers burned Washington.

It was indeed a shocking day in American history. Invoking the famous words spoken by President Franklin Roosevelt following the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said that this day “will live forever in infamy and will be a stain on our democracy”.

: Somar Wijayadasa; OPINION; 11 January 2021

Photo: The UN Secretary-General will convene this Summit to launch bold new actions to transform the way the world produces and consumes food, delivering progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Credit: Food Systems Summit.

Why We Care

By Ramu Damodaran

The writer is Chief, United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) hosted in the Department of Global Communications. This OpEd first appeared in the UNAI Weekly Newsletter – January 8.

NEW YORK (IDN | UNAI) – Graffiti is terse but truthful and even if I failed in identifying the specific trigger for a carefully executed scrawl on a boulder by the water in New York, that read “Beware of Locals,” it resonated with lessons the last 75 years of the United Nations, and the very last one in particular, have offered, that there is no purely “local” any longer and that those who see themselves as insulated from or immune to the world beyond are eminently bewareable.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 09 January 2021

Capitol Hill Insurrection Demonstrates What the US Does Abroad

Viewpoint by Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY (IDN) – While protestors were occupying Washington DC’s Capitol Hill and ransacking the Congress Chambers – the centre of American power – President-elect Joe Biden addressing the nation said that the attempted insurrection was “not what we are”, perhaps unintentionally conveying the first 'lie' of his presidential reign beginning January 20. In fact, this is what America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is masters of doing overseas.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; OPINION; 09 January 2021

Photo: American cartoon, published in 1898: "Remember the Maine! And Don't Forget the Starving Cubans!" Source: Wikimedia Commons

Is China Seeking to Remake the World in Its Own Image?

Viewpoint by Richard Hanania*

This is the second of a four-part series. Click here for Part 1

NEW YORK (IDN) – No other state was considered a fundamental threat to the U.S. over the issue, with a mix of external pressure and internal incentives leading them to ultimately develop more rigorous patent laws and enforcement. Many corporations, the parties most directly affected, treat the problem as the price of doing business.

Perhaps, then, the threat is that China seeks to remake the world in its own image? This is a popular trope among the national security establishment.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 08 January 2021

Photo: Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden host a State Luncheon in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on September 25, 2015. Source: U.S. Department of State

What Is the U.S. Afraid of China Actually Doing?

Viewpoint by Richard Hanania*

This is the first of a four-part series.

NEW YORK (IDN) – Across the political spectrum, there is widespread agreement that America must get serious about the threat posed by China. As the Trump administration comes to a close, the State Department has just released a document called ‘The Elements of the China Challenge’. A distillation of conventional wisdom among national security experts and government officials, it argues that the U.S. needs a concerted effort to push back against Beijing. On its first page, the document tells us that “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has triggered a new era of great-power competition.”

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 07 January 2021

Photo: More soldiers committed suicide last year than were killed in combat. A new study suggests that multiple concussions may be contributing to suicide risk. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Ending Our Suicidal War Against Nature

Viewpoint by John Scales Avery*

COPENHAGEN (IDN) – "Our planet is broken," the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has warned. Humanity is waging what he describes as a "suicidal" war on the natural world. "Nature always strikes back, and is doing so with gathering force and fury," he told a BBC special event on the environment. Mr Guterres wants to put tackling climate change at the heart of the UN's global mission, wrote BBC Chief Environment Correspondent Justin Rowlatt on December 2.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 06 January 2021

Photo: The Place du Luxembourg/Luxemburgplein in the European Quarter of Brussels (Belgium). View of the European Parliament (western side), including converted station entrance in front, with statue of the industrialist John Cockerill in the foreground. CC BY 3.0

There Is A Silver Lining in The Cloud of Brexit

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Writing in 1751 Voltaire described Europe as “a kind of great republic, divided into several states, some monarchical, the others mixed but all corresponding with one another. They all have the same religious foundation, even if divided into several confessions. They all have the same principles of public law and politics unknown in other parts of the world.”

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 05 January 2021

Ocean Threatened by Loss of Coral Reefs

Viewpoint by Vijay Prashad *

NORTHAMPTON, Massachusetts (IDN) – With a recent report titled “Projections of Future Coral Bleaching Conditions,” published by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in November, Leticia Carvalho—head of the Marine and Freshwater Branch of UNEP—said on December 21 that coral reefs are the “canary in the coalmine for climate’s impact on oceans.”