If global greens are good for one thing, it is that as long as they are around the world will never run short of the ever-renewable resource of wishful thinking. Take these words, for example, from a Chinese CEO quoted in Tom Friedman’s NYT column last year: “China was asleep during the Industrial Revolution. She […]

Brazil’s effort to escape 200 years of underachievement continues to run into trouble. Various international banks cut this and next year’s growth forecasts to as low as 3.1 percent, from a high prediction of 4.5 percent. The FT explains: Brazil’s government has continuously warned that the country is not ‘immune’ to events abroad but the […]

This past week’s protests in India instantly commanded a lot of sympathy around the world; who doesn’t want an end to the rampant corruption that pervades Indian politics and is the greatest threat to the country’s emergence as a great power?  It is not clear, however, that the anti-corruption movement can lead to constructive reform.  […]

I wrote yesterday that the Obama administration’s policies in the Middle East look more and more like President Bush’s third term.  Democracy is the goal, regime change one of the options, and military force is not off the table.This morning we see another similarity between the Obama policies and the Bush years: as celebrations in […]

EJ Dionne, writing in the Washington Post, urges President Obama to set his inner Keynes free and lead the US and the world out of the dangers of another economic collapse, regardless of domestic political resistance.I’m not as confident as EJ and Paul Krugman this this would work either politically or economically.  And I’m not […]

The blue social model’s war against the young is one of the dominant — and little reported — characteristics of our time.   Those curious about the long-term effects of blue social policy would do well to look to Southern Europe, where an entire generation of young people is facing the prospect of entering mid-adulthood without […]

Felix Salmon has some very smart analysis of the real crisis underlying the near-universal chaos breaking out across this troubled world. Most fundamentally, what I’m seeing as I look around the world is a massive decrease of trust in the institutions of government. Where those institutions are oppressive and totalitarian, the ability of popular uprisings […]

Last week we noted that Hamas was betraying the Palestinian cause in a servile surrender to its Syrian and Iranian paymasters.   By remaining silent as Syria shelled a Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia and cracking down on anti-Assad demonstrators in the Gaza Strip the allegedly pro-Palestinian movement was clearly placing the interests of foreign […]

Every time anyone points out the flaws (obvious, fatal) in many green policy prescriptions, greens essentially respond that the sky is falling and that their critics hate science.  Partly a cheap rhetorical trick and partly reflecting the degree to which greens are thinking emotionally rather than politically, the habit doesn’t help the greens.Largely as a […]

Legislators in West Bengal, the formerly Marxist-ruled Indian state in northeastern India, kept foreign investment out of their state for years by the simple expedient of being communist.  Just to make sure nobody missed their message, they renamed the street where the US Consulate stands after Ho Chi Minh.Driving into the provincial capital of Kolkata […]