America as we know it is now scheduled to end in 10 weeks, with the inauguration of Donald Trump as President on January 20th. Our statue of liberty says “I lift my lamp beside the golden door”; Trump has promised a wall. Our Constitution defines checks and balances, such as…

A high-flying candidate for president’s connections to Russia are becoming increasingly clear: Russian spies appear to have intervened in the US election, and he’s called on them to do it again. …

Brexit is such an awful mess it’s hard to know where to begin. It may mark the beginning of the end of the EU, which until recently has stood as our strongest example of humanity’s potential to transcend the intrinsic pettiness of national borders. Compounding the tragedy is the multifaceted…

Everyone concerned about climate change won a huge victory on Friday when President Obama rejected the Keysone XL pipeline. Stopping Keystone has been a top priority on the climate front for the past few years. Noted environmental writer David Roberts explains why activists chose Keystone as our line in the…

How the Blockchain Could Prevent World War III Escalating tensions between the US and China, while ominous, offer a useful reminder that the artificial division of our world into separate nation-states may no longer serve us, and present a compelling reason to consider a better model, based in part on…

Today’s Trade Agreements are Backwards, But We Can Do Better Today’s Times has an exposé on the draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the latest international trade agreement under negotiation, based on a disclosure from Wikileaks. It highlights one of the scariest things about this and previous trade agreements: it “would…

25 Years After the Berlin Wall, Let’s Think Bigger Along with the welcome recent news on immigration, another milestone related to borders this month was the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. People filled the streets in celebration, cheered on by virtually everyone around the world. For…

Introducing the case for a single, globally inclusive democracy. — I believe that world peace is possible, within our lifetimes, and that we should make it our goal. Is there any higher goal? I can’t think of one. If we define world peace not as the elimination of all conflict, but rather as the end of wars — organized violence…