China is on the boil these days, and the ethnic tensions in much of the country are part of the picture. The Associated Press has a long piece worth reading in full, but here is a summary: More than two dozen Tibetans, many in their teens or 20s, have set themselves on fire since early […]

The EU is standing its ground in response to India’s and China’s defiance of Europe’s costly carbon-trading scheme for airlines, refusing to back down despite threats of a trade war. EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told the Financial Times: “You can’t threaten a trade war just because you don’t like European legislation.” […]“If there is some […]

China, the largest consumer of Iranian oil, cut its oil imports from Iran by half in February from December levels, according to Reuters.Although this reduction is temporary and largely due to a contract dispute between Tehran and Beijing rather than U.S. sanctions, it’s significant that China is expected to import 10–15 percent less oil from Iran […]

As the fighting in Syria continues, even some of Butcher Assad’s closest allies are beginning to back away from his disgraced regime. In an announcement on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized Assad’s response to the Syrian uprising as an overreaction and a mistake, and stated that “no one is inviting him to Moscow.” […]

Elements of the blue social model have been supported by members of both major parties at various times, but its most stubborn defenders today tend to come from the left. The inevitable decline of that model, then, should be a godsend for the Republican Party.Yet a new New York Times piece about divisions within Republican-controlled […]

Statistics on poverty in the developing world are always vague, often fudged, and usually useless.I remember, years ago, standing in the largest slum in Nairobi. Miserable, informal huts stretched into the distance. Countless children played in open sewers; vast hordes of people trudged towards their jobs, or towards something. Smoke from cookfires hung over the scene. […]

After years of triumphant predictions that their country would join the euro in 2011, the Poles seem to be backing away from the once coveted currency. The year passed by without serious talks about joining the Eurozone, and now the same policymakers who boldly predicted a Polish future within the euro have become more measured […]

European greens took a hit this month when China retaliated against the EU’s carbon trading scheme for airlines by freezing purchases from several European aerospace companies. Now India is piling on. New Delhi is set to force Indian airlines to withhold carbon emissions details with the EU and to forbid the purchase of any of […]

In his nationally televised farewell address last week, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao urged his country to safeguard its tremendous economic gains by adopting a more liberal political structure. Failure to do so, warned Wen, could cause the country to descend into the chaos of another Cultural Revolution. The next day, in timing that was almost […]

The conventional wisdom today holds that deep splits between conservatives and liberals have paralyzed the United States government. The country needs major changes, fast, writers like Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum say in their recent book That Used to Be Us, but polarized politics have stopped change dead in its tracks.Actually, the situation is a little […]