"The politics of murder
Economic and technical limits of neo-nationalism by ESER KARAKAŞ
The developments over the last weeks clearly reveal that neo-nationalism has very serious economic and technical limits, the latter depending on the threat of the former.
Sotheby's Announces It Will Introduce London Contemporary Art Week in February 2008Francis Bacon's Study of a Nude with Figure in a Mirror
Myth of the Strongman
So Time magazine is the latest to swoon at Vladimir Putin's "steely confidence and strength," his "chiseled facial features and those penetrating eyes." The Russian president is a man of "contained power," Time finds, whose gaze says: "I'm in charge."...
Daily Telegraph The growing Anglosphere in world politics
John O'Sullivan asks why the English-speaking network civilisation, termed "the Anglosphere", is something from which the Brits themselves shy away.The Top Five Nuclear Issues of 2008
Does Movie Violence Increase Violent Crime? (PDF; 609 KB)
Source: Research Papers in Economics (RePeC)
Passport Update: What’s In Store for 2008
I’m not good at crystal ball gazing but it seems to me that although the State Department managed to get its act together enough to play passport issuance catch-up over the past six months to the point where the wait-time is reportedly four to six weeks for regular processing and no more than three weeks for expedited processing, whether this will last is something else again. Why it took Congressional pressure and media criticism to force State to clean up the mess last summer is beyond me – but nevertheless, the outside pressure is clearly what made the difference.
Buzzwords 2007 All We Are Saying
National Portrait Gallery in London Presents Groundbreaking Exhibition "Pop Art Portraits"Interesting Journey (detail) by Allen Jones (1962).
THOMAS PM BARNETT: The white man's burden revisited
Governing Diversity: Democratic Solutions in Multicultural Societies EDG A 100-page collection of 10 essays discussing how to govern multicultural societies in a democratic manner
Five bright ideas that illuminated 2007 Will Hutton: There's much to celebrate in the moves towards greater tolerance of others and understanding of ourselves and the world around us
An article on the Malthusian energy-trap, old Europe, and new China: The world's energy crisis may lead China to save as well as shake the world.
CEPS Beyond the Bali Roadmap: The New International Climate Change Agenda Encompasses Trade
Foreign Affairs The Rise of China and the Future of the WestCan the Liberal System Survive? By G. John Ikenberry China's rise will inevitably bring the United States' unipolar moment to an end. But that does not necessarily mean a violent power struggle or the overthrow of the Western system. The U.S.-led international order can remain dominant even while integrating a more powerful China -- but only if Washington sets about strengthening that liberal order now.
Foreign Affairs Anglo-Saxon AttitudesOwen Harries Walter Russell Mead rightly argues that the United Kingdom and the United States made the modern world. But his call for Washington to pursue both a maritime grand strategy and Niebuhrian realism will not fly.
GuardianObama's American revolution Dominique Moisi The next US president needs to adopt a more humanistic approach to bring the world on-side and Barack Obama is the ideal candidate
Christmas Thoughts
In contrast to the recent political smoke-blowing over religion, I’d like to suggest a meeting-ground within and between religions.
Spiritual/ethical/religious conviction is rooted in experiences that tell us yes, this is how the universe should be. The experience may be a lifetime in an established religion and family that provides an ongoing feeling of rightness, or it may be a revelation that utterly contradicts what has gone before......
Climate security: the new determinism, Mike Hulme
There is a new form of climatic determinism on the rise and the allure of this thinking for the naïve or for the mischievous is dangerous. It finds its expression in some of the balder claims made about the future impacts of climate change: 180 million people in Africa to die from hunger; 40% of known species to be wiped out; 20% of global GDP to be lost. But such determinism is perhaps at its most insidious when found in the new discourse about climate (in)security. Here are only five recent examples, among an increasing number:
Who gains from global warming?, John Jackson
It seems that the climate of our planet is reverting rapidly to that which has persisted for much of the last 300 million years. Average temperatures and sea levels were higher, there were no polar ice-caps and temperature differences between poles and the equator were lower. The rate of this reversion, certainly in so far as it is connected with greenhouse gases, is being accelerated by humans and their activities and to such an extent that their must be a risk of "overshoot" into a situation which is entirely new.
The End of Free Trade By Robert J. Samuelson Even as countries become more economically interdependent, they're also growing more nationalistic. Here's today quiz. What do the following have in common: (a) Vladimir Putin; (b) China's currency, the renminbi; (c) the U.S.-Peru trade agreement; and (d) Hugo Ch¿vez? Answer: They all reflect the “new mercantilism."
Asia in 2008: Its rise is a global good If communists, tyrants or authoritarians think they can modernise their economies without unleashing political reform, they are deceiving themselves, says Victor Mallet
The politics of murder, Irfan Husain
Also in openDemocracy on Benazir Bhutto's death:Kanishk Tharoor, "Benazir murdered: what next?" (27 December 2007)
Ayesha Siddiqa, "Pakistan: after Benazir Bhutto" (28 December 2008)
Just days before she returned to Karachi on 18 October 2007, Benazir Bhutto gave an interview to the BBC in which she called Pakistan "one of the most dangerous countries in the world". She was to be proved right just hours after touchdown when two suicide-bombs killed more than 140 of her supporters as they accompanied her in a mammoth rally from the airport.
