Last month, Oxfam, the international aid organization, launched a campaign called “Behind the Brands.” The goal is to assess the transparency of the world’s ten biggest food and beverage companies concerning how their goods are produced, and to rate their performance on sensitive issues like the treatment of small-scale farmers, sustainable water and land use, climate change, […]
Australia may be set for a record 22ndstraight year of economic expansion, but it will not save the federal budget or Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s job. That was the message from the latest economic data along with an election in Western Australia state, where voters handed Gillard’s Labor Party another drubbing. Read Here – The […]
Nations that want to be taken seriously must match their actions with that aspiration. The refusal to send back Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone — the Marines aboard the merchant ship Enrica Lexie accused of shooting and killing two fishermen off the Kerala coast after mistaking them for pirates — may win the new Italian government brownie […]
Beneath a giant hammer and sickle, the elite at the top of the Communist Party assembled for the country’s annual parliament session last week, all wearing the same unofficial uniform. As they stood to listen to the county’s national anthem, the politicians stood in perfect rows, spaced a few feet apart. Each person had a white […]
When Arab societies rose up and toppled four dictators during 2011—in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya—people around the world joined in the celebration. Yet soon after the autocrats’ fall, a wave of apprehension washed over many in the policy and intellectual elite in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East itself. The warnings and […]
Some well-known names in China’s cabinet, including central banker Zhou Xiaochuan, and senior provincial officials, entered leadership of the country’s top political advisory body. The leaders that comprises a chairman and 23 vice chairpersons were elected by members of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). Yu Zhengsheng, 67, a member of […]
The United States often uses exaggerated civilian casualty numbers to make a case for military intervention in strife-torn regions. Since the 1990s, the West has justified its military interventions on liberal grounds — to remove noxious leaders who oppress their people or who have begun to conduct policies that appear genocidal. Buoyed by the intervention […]
Since the second half of 2012, financial markets have recovered strongly worldwide. Indeed, in the United States, the Dow Jones industrial average reached an all-time high in early March, having risen by close to 9% since September. In Europe, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s “guns of August” turned out to be remarkably effective….But this financial market […]
Two new books lament the outsized role of the military in Israeli national security decisionmaking, blaming the generals for favoring force over diplomacy. But the military has sometimes been a force for peace and moderation, and in truth the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the result of far more than just Israel’s bureaucratic politics. […]
Early this year, China found a missing province, one doing very well for itself. The total GDP for 2012, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, was 51.9 trillion yuan. The total GDP figures of China’s 31 provinces for 2012 added up to 57.6 trillion yuan, giving the phantom 32nd province an annual GDP of 5.7 […]
