Between the presidential election and Hurricane Sandy there hasn’t been much room in the news for anything else lately, but for anybody trying to understand the big issues facing the United States a just-released report that Accenture commissioned from Oxford Economics makes riveting reading.Looking at demographic trends and trends in the costs of service delivery, […]

Late last month, violence exploded in western Burma for the second time this year. The government reported over 80 people killed 4,600 houses burned, and more than 22,000 people displaced, numbers that are almost certainly underestimated. This outburst is patterned on a similar orgy of violence in June, when scores of Rohingya Muslims were killed […]

The long fight between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s education commissioner and the Newark teacher’s union is finally drawing to a close. After a months-long struggle, the two parties have come to an agreement on merit pay. On Monday union members will vote to approve (or reject) a contract where teachers’ bonuses would be rewarded […]

Now that the three groups of explanation for American political dysfunction have been laid out and their mutual connections sketched (in parts one, two and three), we can begin to discuss programmatic solutions for our problems. The ten proposals below represent “torque points” in American politics—places where positive change would resonate throughout our political culture. […]

With Greece slowly circling the drain, the Greeks and the European officials charged with rescuing it badly need some good news. Instead, they get this: Quartz reports that the recent case in which an American hedge fund successfully sued Argentina for the full value of its bonds may set a precedent for similar actions by Greek creditors: […]

If you aren’t yet paranoid about someone spying on you using the webcam built in to your laptop or desktop monitor or smartphone, perhaps you should be. There’s a must-read story in Ars Technica about the latest skirmish in the long-running cyber war between Russia and Georgia. The piece is worth reading just for the geopolitical […]

French President Hollande is having a rough first year. He entered office during a grave crisis, and now he is under siege from all sides: his own party is chastising him for abiding by European deficit rules; the opposition has attacked him for raising taxes during a downturn; big business resents his support for government-mandated […]

More than a thousand protestors gathered in Ningbo, China, to protest the construction of a chemical plant that they feared would pollute the environment last weekend. Police dispersed the protestors, and then the authorities announced they were giving in to public anger and abandoning the project.At first glance, it looks like the public furor succeeded […]

The battle lines are drawn in Nigeria: the government’s security services just executed “dozens” of youths in a northern town known as Boko Haram’s stronghold. The BBC reports: Dozens of young men have been shot dead in Nigeria by the military in Maiduguri, residents in the north-eastern city have told the BBC. . .Malam Aji […]

For years, one of the main conceits of the American left has been that that it is a stalwart defender of tolerance against a bigoted and intolerant right wing. But the constant attacks on Mormonism in liberal papers, to name only one such prejudice, have made it abundantly clear that left-wing bigotry and intolerance are far more […]