Can President Obama persuade China not to be so dependent on growth, particularly trade-dependent growth? Likening Beijing’s obsession with growth to a Chinese version of the ‘Berlin Wall,’ Feng Mengyun of China’s state-run Global Geographic Times expresses his hope that President Obama can do something to talk the Beijing leadership into turning over a new leaf. With some surprising...

The story of Stephanie Spielman, wife of Ohio State University and NFL star Chris Spielman, mother of four children, who was a 30 year old woman 12 years ago who gave herself a self-breast exam and discovered a lump that she then had examined and screened, died of breast cancer today at age 42. Her story represents the stories that I dread will become absolutely the norm and her story represents the stories...

According to this blog entry from the Web site of China’s Global Geographic Times, a U.S. Embassy request that China use a new spelling of Obama’s Chinese name has been met with suspicion among that nation’s ‘Netizens.’ So what’s in a name, one might ask? For the Global Geographic Times, Scholar Jiang Huai writes in part: “On November 12, officials at the U.S. Embassy...

On my trips abroad, I have rarely found an Indian restaurant that would satisfy my native taste buds. In the West, there has been a “curry” revolution and its impact has been the most in Britain. However, there is a growing realization that Indian cooking is not just meant to set your tongue on fire or titillate the palate, it actually mixes common sense with the ancient science of Ayurveda, gaining...

In the years that we have pursued this project, today’s posting is one of the strangest international press articles I can recall. And while it indicates that Hamas may be allowing more press freedom than we thought – the conclusions of the author are anything but comforting. Keeping in mind that the accused killer is of Palestinian origin, the author of this article from the Al Watan Voice, a newspaper...

I’m bummed out on politics for the moment and as Keith Olbermann does more often than not escape into the world of sports entertainment as Plan B. Just to piss off Glenn Beck and annoy Rush Limbaugh who hasn’t thought of it, I am applying for the position of College Football Czar as an adviser to President Obama. With the powers invested in me by executive order, the first and only decision I will...

According to China’s state-run Global Geographic Times, the state-controlled Internet chat rooms are filled with tough questions for, and sharp criticism of, President Obama. On his Global Geographic Times blog page, a man named Tian Yifeng lays out some of the comments and explains why they show the insight of Chinese Netizens. The topics of the comments run the gamut, from economics, to history, to...

In an NPR story this morning, David Gergen, professor of public service at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of its Center for Public Leadership, comments on Sarah Palin’s book tour and whether it has anything to do with her possible candidacy for the GOP nomination to the White House in 2012: I don’t think this looks like a presidential campaign…[it has] more the sense...

This article from the China Daily either indicates an opening up of China’s state-run media, or officials in Shanghai have done something serous to anger Beijing. Whatever the case, in this China Daily op-ed, columnist Hong Liang uses the imminent visit of Barack Obama to explain why young people in Shanghai love the president – and loath the ‘authoritarian excess’ that critics regard...

Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died on October 30th (aged 100), made the study of anthropology as fashionable as philosophy and poetry. The Economist pays a tribute: “Before Claude Lévi-Strauss revolutionised the discipline, anthropology in France, and generally elsewhere, was a matter of ill-attended lectures in small, cold halls, and the collection of feathers and fish-hooks as evidence of the quaint divergences...

CAPTIONS SAYS: ‘DREAM OF THE ARABS’, AS A ‘ZIONIST’ ARM PUNCTURES THE BALLOON OF THE DREAM Continuing our coverage of the global reaction to the Fort Hood killings, this morning we posted this Arabic op-ed from the United Arab Emirates – a moderate Arab state considered friendly toward the United States. Writing for the Dar Al Khaleej, columnist Saad Mehyo suggests a common Arab...

It was a busy blogging day today for me: Anti-Israel partisans were soundly defeated in their effort to convince the Norwegian NTNU to boycott Israel, as the university’s executive board unanimously rejected the measure. Rhode Island’s governor vetoed a bill which would have allowed domestic partners the right to dispose of their partner’s remains. It’s a slippery slope to human dignity,...

As the Venezuela article we posted yesterday headlined If War Breaks Out, Venezuela’s ‘Fifth Column’ Will Have to Be Confronted ably demonstrates, tensions – and paranoia – are increasing along the Venezuela-Colombia border. A few days ago during his weekly radio show Hello President, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez told his country to ‘prepare for war’ against Colombia...

I have been away for a little while but I have collected my thoughts about a few items that may make you want to hmmm… 1) Memphis is a great city. Beale Street has the best blues clubs in the country. Graceland was interesting but I have a question: Why is U.S. 51 named for Danny Thomas in town but Elvis Presley outside of Memphis? Is the King not good enough to have the entire road named for him? 2)...

Hold on to your hats! As if there wasn’t enough conflict occurring at the present time, the war of words between Colombia and Venezuela seems to be escalating – along with the paranoia. And just as Washington has won permission to open seven military bases in Colombia. This somewhat hair-raising article from Venezuela’s El Universal shows just how thorny such a war would be – and warns...

‘HOPE FOR THE OTHER WALLS’ Despite the mind-boggling number of issues he must attend to – was it a mistake for President Obama to refrain from traveling to Germany for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall? According to Le Figaro’s chief editorialist, Pierre Rousselin, President Obama not only missed a chance to demonstrate the strength of democracy, he showed how low Europe...

The day the Wall came down: Bewildered East German border guards puzzle over whether to shake the hands of their former adversaries from the West, on November 9, 1989. Yes – today is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A reading of this op-ed by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev shows, however, that the wounds that divide Russia and the West – and even Europe’s...

My social work field placement was in the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court in 1989-1990.  A large chunk of my work was conducting a part of the process performed that leads to the clinicians providing information to the jurists so that they can decide whether or not a minor is “amenable” to treatment or other juvenile court options if the minor is “found delinquint” or should be “bound...

Judge Oscar Magi: Repercussions over his decision to convict 23 CIA agents of kidnapping on Italian soil are already being felt. Italians today may be proud that their system of justice hasn’t spared intelligence agents of the world’s mightiest power, but the children of ancient Rome are well-acquainted with the consequences that are sure to follow. In regard to Thursday’s convictions by an...

In light of the not so recent end of the George W. Bush administration, it is worth evaluating the value of a high IQ versus the ability to make rational, fact-based decisions. I found this article very enlightening: Clever fools: Why a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re smart It is something worth thinking about. — Cross-posted between Random Fate and The Moderate Voice. — Technorati :...

JUST WESTERN BLUSTER BEFORE THE INEVITABLE DEAL? Could it be that at the end of this tortuous process of negotiating with Iran, the United States and the West will arrive at some sort of entente with Tehran that leaves America’s current Arab allies out in the cold? That is precisely the prediction of Le Quotidien d’Oran Kharroubi Habib, who sounds this clarion call to his Arab brethren to prepare for...

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Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro has done something no one else has: He has obtained the first convictions involving the CIA practice of ‘rendition.’ For those interested in reading the Italian coverage of yesterday’s first ever convictions for the U.S. government’s practice of ‘renditioning,’ this is the write-thru from the Corriere Della Sera, which includes a number of...

It is important we do our best to catalogue moments of joy.  We must write joy down and  proclaim joy to those who will listen.  We need records of joy, monuments of joy, places of joy we can revisit.  We must contend for joy, or the bitter water will overwhelm us all. Last night my two little boys turned joy into a dance.  Nathaneal is seven and Samuel is three.  Each boy has his own personality.  They...

Pro-regime demonstrators lampoon President Obama at the site of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran on the 30th anniversary of the storming of the facility. Continuing with our coverage of the 30th anniversary of the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran, this editorial from the state-run Web site of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting responds to the question of why it occurred. Laying out it’s position...