Coming on the heels of the democratic thaw which promises to alter the country’s politics, Myanmar has more surprises in store this month. A detailed article by the redoubtable Andrew Higgins in the Washington Post discusses the Burmese government’s recent shift on a Chinese dam project in Burmese territory: After five years of cozy cooperation […]

Could the growing crisis in American academia be eliciting some smart thinking from the inside?  Maybe so.  From the Washington Post’s “On Leadership” roundtable, president of Arizona State Michael Crow: What is missing at present are…pathways for more students to achieve higher levels of educational attainment while graduating at the lowest possible cost…[We] often lack […]

Hold on to your seats; according to The Conference Board, perhaps the most important business oriented forecasting group in the world, revolution is coming to China.That’s not what the group’s latest global forecast says literally, but this or something like it is the clear meaning of the forecast that China’s growth is likely to slow […]

The most marginalized and poorly served group of people in the United States is also the key to our future: young men. The WSJ reports that prospects for male twenty-somethings are bleak: The unemployment rate for males between 25 and 34 years old with high-school diplomas is 14.4%—up from 6.1% before the downturn four years […]

Stop the presses! Via Meadia has just received word that teenagers are both mean and rude. According to the New York Times, a new study shows that nearly half of student polled have experienced harassment of some form: Nearly half of 7th to 12th graders experienced sexual harassment in the last school year, according to […]

If they fail to oust President Obama in 2012, perhaps the Tea Partiers could seek political asylum in Germany. Germany has already passed a balanced budget amendment and now, gearing up for another election, the coalition government of Angela Merkel is planning on giving low- and middle-wage earners a tax cut. The WSJ reports: German […]

Last week’s re-elect Nicolas Sarkozy rally, also known as the G-20 economic summit in Cannes, sputtered to a predictably lame conclusion.  Many photos of world “leaders” arm in arm were snapped; nothing of substance was decided or done.  As usual there was plenty of speculation in advance that something earth shaking would transpire; the press […]

The scariest thing in the world has nothing to do with Greek debt plans, Italian bond yields or even American pension funds.  It is not the prospect of war in the Persian Gulf over the Iranian nuclear program. The scariest thing in the world is the prospect that the identity wars are spreading from Europe […]

“You can’t stay young forever,” says writer John Helyar, “but nobody ever said anything about immature.”  Argentina seems to bent on proving his point; the most cosmopolitan and in some ways most European of Latin American countries is getting older, but its commitment to underdevelopment and economic failure appears undiminished with time.Having just elected its […]

The failure of China’s state owned CNOOC oil company to complete a deal to purchase BP’s interest in an Argentine oil company may signal a new level of international worry about Argentine policy.  As a Reuters dispatch on the failed transaction notes, China’s regulatory agencies failed to approve the $7 billion purchase.Given the thirst for […]