In the Maldives, the cabinet strapped on scuba gear and met under water to emphasize the risk of global warming to their island nation. In Nepal, the ministers put on oxygen tanks and conducted their business high up on Mt. Everest to focus attention on the impact of climate change on the world’s highest peak.
Perhaps the sun is setting on the world’s most prominent example of hyper-capitalism.
We must call the White House and let the driver-in-chief know that we’re here, we’re clear, and we don’t want this war no more.
The traffic circles in Tirana, the capital of Albania, are a free-for-all. There are no lanes. There are no signs. There are no rules.
The Russians and Japanese, as well as large numbers of Europeans, are not having enough children to replace themselves. The birth rates across a large swath of Eurasia are considerably below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies.
Just as the ruling party wraps itself in the republican flag, the father of modern Turkey can reveal his Muslim roots.
The heads of major corporations won’t suddenly do the right thing even if someone — somehow, somewhere, some day — manages to reveal to them the errors of their ways.
In the game of geopolitics, South Asia is the big swing region. It commands the very center of the vast Eurasian heartland, which the founders of geopolitics identified as pivotal to control of the globe.
The Nobel award acknowledges aspiration more than achievement, just as the words “all men are created equal” referred not to the United States as it was but as it should be.
On the one hand, there’s Obama’s “open hand” approach that rewards the unclenched fist with a handshake. On the other hand there’s the other hand, the one that Obama keeps close to his chest. This “hand” is the set of cards that Obama the gambler plays with poker bluff and blackjack daring. Two hands: two governing metaphors. The challenge arises, in language as in policy, when the metaphors mix.