The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation has just concluded its annual summit in Honolulu, once President Obama’s home turf. It will probably be most remembered for the traffic jams it created in the Waikiki Beach area, to the consternation of residents and tourists alike. APEC’s continuing existence is a puzzle to many, for APEC’s record of irrelevance is rivaled by few other international forums.
Europe has always been a rather tenuous concept. A rump continent, Europe represented the barbarous hinterlands for the Greeks and Romans. The first use of the term “European” occurred in a chronicle describing the forces of Charles the Hammer that turned back the northward advance of Islam at the battle of Tours in 732. Long celebrated in Europe as a victory of civilization over barbarism, the Battle of Tours was, as historian David Levering Lewis reminds us in God’s Crucible actually the opposite: “the victory of Charles the Hammer must be seen as greatly contributing to the creation of an economically retarded, balkanized, fratricidal Europe that, in defining itself in opposition to Islam made virtues out of religious persecution, cultural particularism, and hereditary aristocracy.”
Our country’s existing jobs program goes by many names: The Permanent War Economy, Military Keynesianism, The Iron Triangle, Perpetual War. The real question it raises is not whether the government should spend. It is whether the government has been spending well.
The current Republican presidential field has given little indication of any serious thought on the future of the critical relationship between the United States and China.
His name was on the lips of everyone I talked with in South Korea last week. As an underdog with little name recognition but a long history of progressive organizing, he came from behind late last month to become the new mayor of Seoul.
Remember his name. Park Won Soon is perhaps the first politician to win with an Occupy Wall Street platform.
Pork is intended to bring significant economic benefits to a representative’s district. For the most part, it’s the elite who profits from nuclear weapons projects.
In 2000, along with my colleague David Wheeler, I launched B-SPAN, a webcasting system that streamed videos of Bank policy dialogues to external audiences. The key principle of B-SPAN, based on the well-known C-SPAN model of the U.S. Congress, was that once the camera was turned on, the unedited streams would allow viewers to receive an uncensored glimpse of the debates occurring within the Bank.
After two cataclysmic world wars, the overriding concern for leaders of the day was engineering an international system that would increase state interdependence.
Jobs may have been an exceptional designer, but when it comes to the multifaceted corporate malfeasance that has come to characterize the global electronics industry, Apple is exceptional for its profit margins alone.
Standing on the imaginary line that divides the two countries, Sicilia said, “We came to ask our Central American brothers and sisters to forgive us for having not spoken up before, for not having the consciousness and the strength necessary to prevent the kidnapping and murder that has affected thousands of migrants and Mexican citizens and has torn apart their families.”