Login

How slow will it go? Economists on the global slowdown

FT roundtable, FT.Com

Al Gore: New thinking on climate crisis

The Economics of Climate Change: Risk, Ethics, a Global Deal

Nicholas Stern - Author, "Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change", LSE - January 2008
Home arrow NexThink arrow Thinking Globally

Growing interdependance is a fact of life of contemporary world. Although globalization trascends and influences national systems, it requires new and more intensive forms of international cooperation to realize its benefits and to counteract economic and political nationalism. Moreover, one of the most important issues the world must deal with today is how sovereign countries can join together to make globalization work for everyone, not just the priviledged.
 
Thinking Globally is a users-developed, open , re-search , debate and information area. The Thinking Globally Platform integrates collaborative -  WikiBee - and community - Be-a-Bee -  applications.


The "Great Game": Eurasia and the History of War

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, for Global Research

 

The History of War

History is often self-repeating. Those who are oblivious to the lessons of history are, by virtue of ignorance, doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Samuel P. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations,” is an outright camouflage, an ideological instrument used to reach geo-political objectives. This "conflict notion" is part of a broad strategy which has been used throughout history to divide, conquer, and rule. By Huntington’s definitions, nine diverse civilizations co-inhabit Eurasia; establishing conflict between them is a means towards controlling them and eventually absorbing them in the Spencerian sense of war and the social evolution of nation-states and societies, as defined by British sociologist Herbert Spencer. Is humanity witness once again to a gradual march towards a large-scale international war like the Second World War, as Vladimir Putin has warned the Russian people? Or is fear being used to push forward otherwise unacceptable global economic policies? If the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the dual-thrones of Austria and Hungary (the Austro-Hungarian Empire), on June 28, 1914 was the cause of the First World War why then was there talk of a major war throughout Europe in 1905? It was on the eve of the First World War that radical changes were made to the banking system in the U.S. and on the eve of the Second World War that otherwise unpopular economic reforms were implemented in Britain. War allows otherwise unpopular measures to be accepted by domestic populations or gives them stealthy means for execution.

 

Following sections: Mackinder’s Warnings: Divide the Continentals (Eurasians) - Learning from History: The Prevention of the German Ostbewegung - A Lesson from History: Playing the Russians and the Germans in War - The Roots of an Anglo-American Compact - The Second World War: Playing the Soviets against the Germans - The Roots of Strategic Balkanization: Preventing the Unification of Eurasia - Redrawing Eastern Europe and the Middle East: The Template for Iraq - The Pirenne Thesis - The Eurasians Strike Back: The New Silk Road - A Mediterranean Union and an Islamic Union: The West versus the Eurasian Heartland - The Bloc Concept and Regionalization: Orwellian Showdown between Oceania and Eurasia? 

Read full article  

 
A comeback for the greenback?

Washington abandons its laissez-faire attitude to the falling dollar

by Mark Schieritz for The German Times

A weak dollar served the interests of the Americans. Now, those days are over. Washington has rediscovered the virtues of a strong currency.

How times do change: A few weeks ago, U.S. authorities were still calmly watching the dollar plunge. Now, hardly a day goes by without a warning from Washington about the dangers of continuing dollar devaluation. “We pay careful attention to the consequences of changes in the value of the dollar for inflation and expected inflation,” Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve said recently. And Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson did not even want to rule out interventions in the currency market.

Read full article

 
A very Israeli decision

by  Herb Keinon, The Jerusalem Post

 

Much will be said and written in the coming days about Sunday's cabinet decision approving the release of Samir Kuntar, four Hizbullah fighters, an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners, dozens of Hizbullah and Palestinian bodies, and information on the disappearance of four Iranian diplomats in exchange for Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, both now presumed dead, and a Hizbullah report on the fate of Ron Arad.

But one thing is clear. This decision reflects some key characteristics of Israeli society. Indeed, it is fair to say it was a typically Israeli decision - for better and for worse.

Read full article  

 
  		 
People vs. Dinosaurs

by Thomas Friedman, NYT

Tefen Industrial Park, Israel

Question: What do America’s premier investor, Warren Buffett, and Iran’s toxic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have in common? Answer: They’ve both made a bet about Israel’s future.

Read full article

  		 
The Future of the G8: From "Library Group" to G13?

by Anthony Payne,  Chatham House

This summary was prepared by the Atlantic Community editorial team from "The G8 in a changing economic order" published here in Chatham House's International Affairs of May 2008.

Over the last few years, the annual G8 summits have attracted more attention than ever before in the history of this group of states originally known as the "Library Group." The rise in power of Brazil, China or India sparks heated debates regarding the duties of the G8, whether it is equipped to accomplish them, and if not, which reforms are now necessary. Today's global economic order confronts the G8 with existential questions: what is the role of a group made up of the eight leading industrial nations and Russia in a world where states are only one of many actors contributing to the concert of international politics and economics, and where new emerging economic nations considerably limit the influence of the traditional G7 states? 

Read More
  		 
Which Idea Will Dominate the 21st Century?

by Sundeep Waslekar, Director of Strategic Foresight, for Turkish Weekly

The most influential force in the world is the idea. Gods, priests, kings, dictators, democrats, terrorists, anarchists all need an idea to justify themselves. It is on the strength of one idea that we once believed that the world was flat and scientists had to work hard to prove that it was actually round. We again believe in a flat world from a completely different perspective.

Read More