In The News

Bollywood: To the Next Level

Amy Kazmin November 1, 2011
India’s Bollywood, a prolific producer of films, but a marginal player in the global market, has launched a film designed to win over foreign audiences. Ra.One cost $30 million, a record for Bollywood but inexpensive for Hollywood, reports the Financial Times. It combines traditional Bollywood song and dance themes with state-of-the-art visual effects and fast action to appeal to Western...

The 19th-Century World-System

Immanuel Wallerstein October 31, 2011
Sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, the originator of the modern world-system theory, published volume four of his opus, which examines the development of centrist liberalism during the 19th century and its inevitable imbalances. Centrist liberalism, encompassing enlightened conservatives and pragmatic radicals, supported the expansion of state powers. The powerful feared the exercise of popular...

Where Did Global Warming Go?

Elisabeth Rosenthal October 31, 2011
As a political issue, climate change has fallen off the US policy agenda due to an economic downturn and dogged insistence by climate-change naysayers that science has not produced enough evidence on whether human activity contributes to global warming. The United States stands as the “one significant outlier” on responding to climate change, suggests an HSBC global research report, while other...

Global Population of 10 Billion by 2100? – Not So Fast

Joseph Chamie October 26, 2011
As the world welcomes its 7 billionth person, the global fertility rate is about 2.5 children per woman. If maintained, that rate would lead to a global population of 15 billion by 2100. Pundits even fret about the most widely used scenario for global population – a UN projection based on about 2 children per woman, leading to a population of 10 billion. The UN projection is based on an...

The New Geopolitics of Food

Lester R. Brown October 18, 2011
“Prices [of food] are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally,” argues Lester Brown in Foreign Policy. Temperature increases, drying wells, mismanagement of soils, and ever-increasing population growth, with an additional 80 million of people to feed per year, are behind the price hikes. As a result, the gap between food supply and demand is widening, carrying political...

Beyond the PC

Martin Giles October 14, 2011
Getting computers into more hands over the past two decades spurred innovation: Early in Apple’s history, the late Steve Jobs, 56, encouraged company secretaries to train in computer skills and offer ideas, one Wall Street Journal columnist reminisced. Thus a desktop meeting scheduler was born. Merging smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices – all developed and promoted by Jobs – into...

Problems Will Be Global – And Solutions Will Be, Too

Anne-Marie Slaughter October 13, 2011
A politically integrated world; the United Nations Security Council hosting expanded and regional organizations, like the African Union; and new applications of economic integration – this could be the face of global diplomacy 15 years from now, predicts Anne-Marie Slaughter in an article for Foreign Policy. The strongest states in 2025 will be those that have maintained “vibrant economies...