The Billion-Dollar Caliphate

Last month, U.S. fighter jets unleashed airstrikes against oil fields, refineries, and hundreds of tanker trucks near the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor. Dubbed Operation Tidal Wave II, the attacks were the latest phase in a campaign to bomb the Islamic State into bankruptcy, striking at the heart of the black-market economy and extortionist tax system that have underwritten the salaries of tens of thousands of extremist fighters.

Climate finance: what was actually agreed in Paris?

The head of the Bank of England Mark Carney said, in his keynote speech during COP21, that climate change was the issue for the future of the financial sector. 

Financial institutions and private investors finally seem to be getting the message; they’ve tumbled over each other to launch new initiatives on climate action in the run up to and during the UN negotiations. 

CAMERON'S EU REFORMS: WILL EUROPE BUY THEM?

There will be no agreement on David Cameron’s reform plans at the European Council summit on December 17th-18th. But Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, will try to help Cameron bridge the gap between the UK and other member-states, possibly setting the stage for a final deal in February.

In a new policy brief, ‘Cameron’s EU reforms: Will Europe buy them?’, CER research fellow Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska asks which of Cameron’s reforms might be acceptable to his European colleagues, and which member-states will be the most and least helpful in achieving them.

Greeks Bearing Gifts: How Europe’s poorest country is doing more than anyone else to help Syrian refugees.

One Friday in late summer, just as the Syrian refugee crisis was beginning to peak, a blue station wagon pulled up to the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. The car’s side mirror was held on with masking tape and force of will. Big letters on the side said “Free Food For All” in English and Greek. A half-dozen sunburned, chain-smoking Greek leftists of all ages piled out, followed by two barrel-sized aluminum vats, several gas burners with propane tanks, two folding tables, forty bags of pasta, a box of spices, a dozen car-battery-sized cans of tomato paste and a couple of three-foot-long wooden paddles for stirring soup.