JohnLeGear (ASA) Globalization has bad rap. Some of it is, no doubt, deserved. The practice is great at giving us (in the “rich world”) poorly made plastic doodads that we don’t need, but at prices we can’t resist. By doing so it’s probably increased the amount of raw materials needlessly wasted, and encouraged the desire […]

Last week, I counted Kosovo’s declaration of independence as a good thing. I still think that, on balance, it was. But I’m increasingly interested and perhaps troubled by how much I didn’t and don’t know about the whole thing. And sadly, what commentary I’ve seen about it hasn’t really clarified the issue for me. Most […]

Irotzabal If there are four big pieces of international news this week, it would be hard to make them anything but these. And if there were for big pieces of good international news this week, it would be hard to make them anything but these: The Kofi Annan-led mediation team seems to be getting close […]

DEMOSH The world recently celebrated a rather unceremonious “monthiversary.” Kenya—which up until a month ago was often described as the brightest spot in East Africa, if not the whole continent—is still in chaos. See some of the haunting reports and photographs of The Vigilante Journalist if you doubt that fact. A month ago Kenya’s president, […]

Earlier this week I encountered a pretty interesting piece in the New York Review of Books. Entitled “As Iraqis See It,” the piece gives an inside look into the lives of Iraqis working for the McClatchy news organization, one of America’s biggest. McClatchy provides these reporters with a blog, called Inside Iraq, which is where […]