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I just attended a meeting of the subcommittee on human rights at the European Parliament in Brussels.  On the agenda was Burma.  And as ever, the lack of political will and inaction in the international community was particularly salient. For two decades Aung Sun Suu Kyi has been in the headlines.  Her cause celebrated and […]

Overlook Press has recently published Dilip Hiro’s new book: Inside Central Asia, which is an all-encompassing history of practically everything the average reader of history might want to know about the region. It even considers the ancient history of the 5 major “stan” countries, as well as Iran and Turkey. In fact, the first chapter […]

It wasn’t Paul Kennedy who first said that great powers who over-extend themselves — either externally or internally — fast-forward the date of their decline, but he wrote about imperial over-extension and decline so convincingly in a best-selling book in the late 80’s.  Political Scientist Robert Gilpin in War and Change in World Politics argued […]

According to the most recent economic data released this week, the U.S. trade deficit in July hit the highest level in six months as a record rise in imports outpaced a third straight month’s increase in foreign demand for American products, according to government data released Thursday. This is a boon for the Obama recovery stimulus paln.

Iran has reportedly replied to Security Council requests with a new package of proposals designed to avoid a new round of sanctions over its nuclear program even as the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded that the U.N. has reached a stalemate with Iran and in the absence of a breakthrough it’s […]

Banks and credit unions have long pitched debit cards as a convenient and prudent way to buy. But a growing number are now allowing consumers to exceed their balances — for a hefty, some say, abusive, fee. Banks market it as overdraft protection, and the fees it generates have become an important stream of revenue fees for the banking industry. This year alone, banks are expected to bring in $27 billion by covering overdrafts on checking accounts, typically on debit card purchases or checks that exceed a customer’s balance.

Governments and religions around the world remain intensely interested in what women, but not so much what men, are wearing in public. On September 6, 2009 I wrote about the proposed parliamentary ban on the public wearing of the niqab in France. On September 8, media outlets lit up with discussions of the recent trial […]

I like it when things line up. Syzygy, they call it. What do Mongolia, Iraq, and Venezuela have in common? (Hint: it’s not oil.) It’s that they have all recently bumped into the sharp edge of resource reality. There is something about the discovery of  valuable resources that make people and countries take leave of […]

Natural phenomena are causing severe conditions in many countries around the world, causing and in some cases, exacerbating, food shortages that are affecting large populations. The BBC reports that in Guatemala, President Alvaro Colom has sprung into action, declaring a “state of public calamity” and seeking to aid 54,000 Guatemalans whose access to food has […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has set up a new registry for food and animal feed companies to report any instance of contamination in their facilities, reports The Wall Street Journal.  The incidence of several high profile cases of food-borne illness in the United States, especially in the last two years, have led […]

One of the scenarios that Gore discusses in “An Inconvenient Truth” is the triggering of a massive cooling in the Northern Hemisphere as a consequence of the altering of the “Great Ocean Conveyor.”  NASA scientists, among others, have looked closely at this “chilling possibility.” The freezing of the North, the warming of the South, and […]

  I discussed Mexico’s fiscal woes and compared them to Brazil’s in a previous post.  Today, financial market analysts reacted positively to the Mexican government’s fiscal plan, set to limit the widening of the federal deficit in 2010.  Like Barack Obama’s unwillingness to confront Congress on the cap-and-trade carbon emissions plan or health care reform, Felipe Calderon’s government once again skirted the […]