The Israelis and Turks, the Egyptians and Jordanians –– they’re all beating a path to the Kremlin in the hope that Vladimir Putin, the new master of the Middle East, can secure their interests and fix their problems. The latest in line is Saudi King Salman, who on Wednesday is due to become the first monarch […]
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will stay on as head of government for another term while President Xi Jinping’s name will be enshrined in the Communist Party’s charter alongside those of late leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping… Read Here – South China Morning Post
The U.S. just elected the oldest new president in history, and Congress, too, has been getting consistently older, with its average age now up around 60. But the vast majority of the government consists of the 2 million-strong federal civilian workforce. And thanks to slow-moving hiring practices and a huge cohort of baby boomers who […]
What’s the larger picture of Mohammed bin Salman as a reformer? The prince is trying to prepare Saudi Arabia for a post-petroleum order, in theory by unlocking competitiveness and creativity. His plan is detailed in Vision 2030. It includes reducing the number of royal family members on the government payroll. It also increases domestic tourism—based on […]
Farmers in oxcarts, Buddhist monks, businesspeople launching startups—they all now have the world at their thumbs. But what is it like to endure, in just a few short years, the transition Western countries have had a quarter century to work through? Tech is powerful anywhere, but it’s particularly powerful when it’s brand-new and easy to […]
Take more than 500 types of industrial product and China ranks first for 220 of them, globally. Yet Beijing isn’t satisfied with just being the world’s factory for cheap goods. More than a third of the country’s 800-million workforce produce biblical amounts of stuff, generating $3 trillion annually, but China’s position is slipping. It’s political and […]
Xi Jinping will enter the Chinese Communist Party’s national congress in Beijing on Oct. 18 as the country’s most powerful leader in decades. When it is over, he hopes to emerge as the Mao Zedong of the 21st century. In the five years since the last party congress, when he was named general secretary, Xi […]
As pretty much anyone knows, the truth can be a slippery bastard. Getting to the bottom of something requires what you might generously call a fussy personality. Read Here – Wired
The surgical strikes were the first time the political leadership owned trans-LoC operations and marked a huge shift in the sanctity of the LoC as a de-facto international boundary…This could play a significant role in future Indo-Pak negotiations over Kashmir, where India starts asserting its sovereign claim over the whole of J&K, instead of accepting […]
We are just as deluded that our model of living in ‘countries’ is inevitable and eternal. Yes, there are dictatorships and democracies, but the whole world is made up of nation-states. This means a blend of ‘nation’ (people with common attributes and characteristics) and ‘state’ (an organised political system with sovereignty over a defined space, […]
looking beyond borders 