In The News

Globalization Has Role in This Double Whammy

Simon Nixon August 12, 2011
Globalization of communication, trade and financial networks highlights the potential of both prosperity and imbalances. “The creation of a rules-based multi-lateral trading system has been one of the greatest triumphs of the past 65 years,” writes Sam Nixon for the Wall Street Journal. Yet he also credits globalization with speculative bubbles, unrealistic expectations and uneven distribution of...

Operation Shady Rat – Unprecedented Cyber-Espionage Campaign and Intellectual-Property Bonanza

Michael Joseph Gross August 9, 2011
For skilled hackers, computers of top corporations and governments are as easy to break into as a locked car. For at least five years, hackers had secret access to computer systems of the United Nations, ASEAN, national governments, multinational corporations, defense contractors, media, Olympic committees and other groups, as discovered by the cyber-security firm McAfee. Operation Shady Rat...

Norway Attacks: Anders Behring Breivik Will Join History's Human Monsters

Henning Mankell July 27, 2011
Those with radical agendas do not trust the pace of political processes or their moderating force. Filled with absolute certainty, clinging to religious or ideological notions, they launch into angry action to implement their ideas. Worse, some like Anders Behring Breivik deliver their messages so out of touch with everyday society with surprising violence. Writing for the Guardian, novelist...

China's Businesses Boom, But Its Brands Don't

Rob Gifford July 25, 2011
China is the world’s factory, yet other countries supply most of the designs. Chinese brands aren’t flowing along with the “Made in China” labels on products. “A key problem for Chinese businesses is a comparative lack of legal protection,” explains Rob Gifford for NPR. For China to move toward innovation, with corporate research and development, it must develop intellectual property rights to...

Anders Breivik's Roots in Right-Wing Populism

Frank Patalong July 25, 2011
A bombing-shooting attack in Norway has left more than 70 people dead, mostly teenagers, and prompts nations to reflect on rising right-wing extremism and resentment. Populist opposition to immigration, a fast-changing culture and globalization of the economy is a potent political force. The impact of this cocktail can be seen in a 1500-page online manifesto, largely quoting other right-wing...

Middle-Class Uprising Poses a Global Threat

John Paul Rathbone July 22, 2011
The world’s greatest source of instability might not be terrorism but a middle class angered by vanishing prosperity, the loss of a lifestyle with many comforts and protections, argues John Paul Rathbone for the Financial Times. He points to an observation of journalist Moisés Naím, that most recent conflicts are within rather than between civilizations. In developed and developing countries...

The Fall of the House of Murdoch

Jonathan Schell July 11, 2011
A scandal at the News of the World – particularly a report that the newspaper oversaw hacking and erasing phone messages of a 13-year-old abduction victim, later found murdered – has outraged Britons. The Guardian uncovered that the News of the World, before closure, targeted 4000 voicemail accounts of celebrities, crime victims and soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, reports researcher...