Africa is more important than ever to the United States. The continent, home to six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies, is booming. And democracy has become the African norm rather than the exception. This year alone, no fewer than fifteen sub-Saharan countries will hold elections. With their combination of liberal politics and market economics, […]
Beyond his zebra-rearing, art-collecting eccentricities, we don’t know all that much about Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose Georgian Dream coalition won a shock victory in Monday’s parliamentary elections here. But after his victory news conference, we do know one thing for sure: He’s no orator. In a long meeting with the media in a sweaty room at Georgian Dream […]
When Xiaobo Zhang got married in the early 1990s, he and his bride, like millions of other couples across China, were given a small room to live in by his danwei, or work unit. At the time a lecturer at Nankai University in Tianjin, Zhang’s room was utilitarian and unremarkable, virtually indistinguishable from the ones inhabited […]
The finance industry is to blame for the growing divide between the rich and poor in the United States, says Nobel Prize-winning economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. In an interview with SPIEGEL, he accuses the industry of preying on the poor and buying government policies that help them get richer. Read Here – Der Spiegel
In baseball, a game without a clock, each player on a team that is behind by a bunch of runs is advised to “stay within yourself.” That baseball lingo means: Do not try to do too much. Instead, get ’em on, get ’em over, get ’em in. There are no five-run home runs. Small, incremental gains matter […]
Had Eric Hobsbawm died 25 years ago, the obituaries would have described him as Britain’s most distinguished Marxist historian and would have left it more or less there. Yet by the time of his death at the age of 95, he had achieved a unique position in the country’s intellectual life. In his later years he became […]
Fifty-two years ago, the United States and Japan signed the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. Forged just 15 years after a brutal, racially charged war between the two nations, the treaty was an exercise in realpolitik. It was written with an eye toward not only Japan‘s security but the containment of communism across Asia. The […]
Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, and her finance minister, Guido Mantega, are attacking the U.S. Federal Reserve for embarking on a third round of quantitative easing. By aggressively buying bonds, the Fed aims to push interest rates lower, and that will nudge the dollar down as well. This will hurt Brazil and other developing-country exporters, Mantega says, and […]
It is human nature to want leaders we can admire and emulate, and who can inspire us. With the recent death of Vaclav Havel and the passing of Nelson Mandela into a long twilight, there is only one global figure who nearly universally embodies aspirations for freedom and human dignity around the world. She is […]
Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili’s opposition coalition unexpectedly won the most votes in a parliamentary election yesterday, dealing a blow to U.S.-backed President Mikheil Saakashvili. Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream group took the most ballots for party lists, according to some exit polls, while Saakashvili’s United National Movement claimed a stronger performance in single-member districts. The parliamentary majority […]
