Instead, increasingly acrimonious exchanges between Beijing and Washington reveal the contradictions inherent in attempting to shoehorn an authoritarian, mercantilist, and suspicious nation into a refurbished world system that ostensibly promotes democracy, open markets, multilateralism, while forcefully advancing American interests.
In December, when Obama decided (for the second time in 2009) to add tens of thousands of additional American forces to the war, he also slapped an 18-month deadline on the military to turn the situation around and begin handing security over to the bedraggled Afghan National Army and police. Speaking to the nation from West Point, Obama said that he’d ordered American forces to start withdrawing from Afghanistan at that time.
Nearly a week after the abrupt departure of Washington’s top commander in Afghanistan, United States strategy for reversing the flood of bad news that has been recently pouring out of that strife-torn country remains as unclear as ever.
The East African Community has accelerated negotiations with Europe for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). The race is on for negotiators and lobbyists to either let Europe in or keep it out. And so far, influential EPA advocates are in the lead, according to Yash Tandon, former head of the South Centre and critic of African EPAs with Europe. As corporate proponents advance the trade deal, negotiations threaten East African unity at a critical time in its still early development.
At its London Summit in April 2009, the Group of 20 (G20) committed to “mitigate the social impact of the crisis to minimize long-lasting damage to global potential” for the most vulnerable citizens who had no hand in creating the global economic crisis. These world leaders — who represent 85 percent of global economic output — promised a total of $1.1 trillion to developing countries, 5 percent of which was committed to low-income countries. More than a year later, at their third post-crisis summit, the G20 continues to foster recovery in high and middle-income countries, but the world’s poorest suffer in economic anonymity.
Recent scrutiny of U.S.-Japan base realignment and Okinawan anti-base opposition has overshadowed U.S. military issues in South Korea. As others have argued, the struggle in Okinawa represents only one facet of the larger global struggle against U.S. bases.3
Media coverage of humanitarian crises appears to influence charitable giving. Using internet donations after the 2004 Indonesia tsunami as a case study, Philip Brown and Jessica Mintyof The William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, show that media coverage of disasters has a dramatic impact on donations to relief agencies. According to Brown and Minty, an additional minute of nightly news coverage increases donations by 13.2 percent of the average daily donation for the typical relief agency. Similarly, an additional 700-word story in The New York Times or Wall Street Journal raises donations by 18.2 percent of the daily average.7
Gorbachev had dubbed Afghanistan “the bleeding wound,” and when the wounded Red Army finally limped home, it was to a country that would soon cease to exist. For the Soviet Union, Afghanistan had literally proven “the graveyard of empires.” If, at the end, its military remained standing, the empire didn’t. (And if you don’t already find this description just a tad eerie, given the present moment in the U.S., you should.)
Shepard Fairey may have been a recurring artist over three exhibits on May 15, 2010, but the political threads that ran through each of the presentations were more exciting. “Revolutionary” was the theme du jour. Shepard Fairey’s show is a portrait gallery of revolutionary figures; Chaw Ei Thein’s tortured performance cried out for imprisoned revolutionaries in Burma; and Banksy, the producer of Exit Through the Gift Shop, is a revolutionary figure in the shadowy world of street art.
Unlike Mexican border states where drug-fueled violence has been on the upswing, violent crime rates in U.S. states bordering Mexico have been decreasing for the last several years. El Paso and San Diego are rated among the safest cities in the United States. Since 9-11, no terrorist has been detected crossing from Mexico. Even detentions of border-crossers are way down, up to 90 percent in the New Mexico corridor alone, according to media reports.