In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
On the Great Atlantic Divide Published on Sunday, October 26, 2003 by TomDispatch.com. By Susan Sontag.
I came across this piece at
dailyKos
"Two weeks ago during the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Association of German Publishers and Booksellers awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade) to Susan Sontag. She was cited for standing up for "the dignity of free thinking" and for her role as an "intellectual ambassador" between the United States and Europe. The association's director Dieter Schormann commented, "In a world of false images and distorted truths, she defends the honor of free thought." In its over half-century of existence, the Friedenspreis Prize has been awarded to Chinua Achebe, Max Frisch, Jurgen Habermas, Yehudi Menuhin, and Vaclav Havel among many others.
An excerpt from Susan Sontag's acceptance speech was published today in the Los Angeles Times Book Review section, but I thought the whole speech, which focuses on the increasingly embattled relationship between Europe and the United States, or rather between much of Europe, especially the various peoples of Europe, and the Bush administration, was well worth reproducing as a whole. Near its end is a rare moment in which Sontag considers an aspect of her early life in public. Her most recent book, by the way, is Regarding the Pain of Others. What follows then, with her kind permission, is her full acceptance speech. (The title and subheads are, however, mine.) Tom "
posted by Postroad
on Jan 5, 2005 -
9 comments
Friedman quotes a former Swedish prime minister. "Our defining date is now 1989 and yours is 2001," I find this to be true. For most of the 90's, the US struggled to find a new purpose for its power. A few peace-keeping missions, a skirmish in Iraq (the first time), but for the most part, no real global strategy. Europe, on the other hand, has made significant progress with developing the EU, the euro (which no one believed would ever come about so quickly), and a semi-unified policy concerning the rest of the world (GB being the notable exception).
NY Times
posted by BlueTrain
on Nov 2, 2003 -
72 comments
Joshka Fischer Said What? That The U.S. Needs Another Boston Tea Party? Hidden in the depths of this very interesting article by
Timothy Garton-Ash, on Europe's misplaced anti-Americanism, is a very interesting revelation from Germany's Green Party-carrying Foreign Minister. To what extent are relations between the pro-American and the anti-American Europe and the United States - the so-called "Old and New Europe" - based on misperceptions? Is Europe, like the Middle East and, well, the whole wide world, too complex for the current U.S. administration to understand? Is it really possible for American foreign to swerve round France and Germany?
[Fwiw, my two centimes is that it is.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Jun 14, 2003 -
8 comments
Old And In The Way. Their economy has lost any resemblance of dynamism, their military might has shrunk to the point of irrelevance, and their society is regressing towards a centrally planned socialist political system. Now with their standard of living dipping below even the poorest sub-group of Americans, is Europe a dying continent, with all its glory days already way behind it? [more inside]
posted by VeGiTo
on Mar 11, 2003 -
38 comments
