Yet again the Western world gazes baffled and powerless at the ever more tragic mess unfolding across the Middle East. The wishful-thinking euphoria that greeted the “Arab Spring” two years ago seems a million miles away as Egypt plunges into bloody chaos… Read Here – The Telegraph, London
Bo Xilai, the former Politburo member charged with bribery and abuse of power, will go on trial on Aug. 22, bringing the Communist Party’s gravest scandal in more than 20 years a step closer to its conclusion. Bo will face trial in the eastern Chinese city of Jinan in Shandong province, the official Xinhua News Agency […]
We live in a world where no single country or group of countries can provide dominant, sustainable global leadership—G-Zero, as I call it—and that’s in large part because so many countries lack solid leadership at home, writes Ian Bremmer. Read Here – Reuters
The Liaoning is part of a three-way arms race involving the naval forces of China, Japan, and the other big Asian power, India. With China embroiled in territorial disputes with both Japan and India, all three countries are coming out with bigger and better warships to make sure they hold their own in the region. Read Here […]
Germans love Angela Merkel, first and foremost because she asks little of them. It is a strategy she will be likely to continue following should she return to the Chancellery for a third term. But it is also one that has blinded Germany to the dangers facing Europe. Read Here – Der Spiegel
Imagine a government dominated by paranoia, convinced of conspiracies around every corner. That, in short, was the most defining aspect of the Muslim Brotherhood’s year in power in Egypt. Though the country’s first democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup in July, the Brotherhood made its fair share of critical mistakes. Read Here […]
Thursday of this week was a bad day in modern Arab history. The four leading Arab cities of recent eras – Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Cairo – were simultaneously engulfed in bombings or urban warfare, mostly carried out with brutal savagery and cruelty against civilians in urban settings. Even more problematic is that the carnage was predominantly the work […]
China’s leaders going back to Deng Xiaoping have made the case that the country could—and should—pursue economic reform before political reform. Now, they are pursuing neither. Why? Economic reforms, initiated at the end of 1978 by Deng, have enriched state institutions, and these institutions have been able to translate economic success into political power. They […]
Egypt‘s army-backed interim prime minister defends the government’s decision to order the crushing of camps of supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi, saying the authorities had no choice but to act. Read Here – AlJazeera
Each explosion of “disruptive transformation,” be it the anti-corruption campaign or the post-Nirbhaya protests, has ended in a whimper. For the past 20 years, India has been growing and growing while remaining exactly the same. The glitz of ‘new’ India has proved skin-deep, and each day brings a new revelation of the same old ugly […]
looking beyond borders 