FP: But the Arab world has remained in great pathological denial about the fact that Arabs lost that war to the Jews. For many Arab Muslims, it is inconceivable that Allah would allow a defeat to the Jews. The humiliation is indigestible. Can you touch on the psychological dynamics that were induced throughout the Arab [...]

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AS China and Russia seek to cement their strategic partnership and create a “multipolar” world in which the United States will find it much more difficult to dominate international affairs, it is tempting to see the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as an expanding bulwark against Western influence in Eurasia.
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A massive joint military exercise involving Russia and the other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is about to start in the Chelyabinsk region in the Urals. The organization consists of six central Asian countries, which co-operate on security matters.
The manoeuvres called Peace Mission 2007 will involve more than 6,000 troops.
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China continued to take over in Tibet. In Tibet today, there are more Chinese than Tibetans, according to news reports and Mort Kondracke who visited there this summer.
China continues to suck oil out of Sudan, even as it largely turns a blind eye to the genocide in Darfur.
China has sided with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to [...]

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Even on Iran, whose growing influence in the region is deeply threatening to the Saudis, Riyadh differs sharply from those hawks in the Bush Administration who advocate isolation of Iran and confrontation to resolve the nuclear issue. Riyadh made a show of hosting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad for talks late last year at a time [...]

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Economics prides itself on being the most scientific of the social sciences. Yet the X and Y axes can’t always capture globalization’s unpredictable turns. In this week’s List, FP looks at five ways in which the world economy is pushing economists to think outside the box.
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My Comments:
Definitions:
Macroeconomics - Things that economists are generally wrong [...]

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You may not have noticed it, but Africa is booming. Yet just when the world’s poorest continent is finally starting to see real economic growth, the resource curse threatens to snatch it all away.
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But the blessing of oil might turn out to be a curse in disguise. In a study published earlier this year, Paul [...]

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For many months, officials from the U.S. Treasury Department have been quietly traversing the globe in an attempt to convince managers of foreign banks to sever ties with Iran. More than 40 major financial institutions have agreed, dealing a serious blow to Iran’s ability to finance trade deals and oil projects.
Now, the two largest European [...]

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Russians have little faith in their legal system and are increasingly taking their cases abroad — to the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg. The Kremlin is not pleased.
Valentina Dolgova is a petite woman with delicate features — no candidate for a brawl. But in December 2005, a Moscow court found the then 19-year-old guilty [...]

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Thus it was two weeks ago, when he received a delegation of leaders from Nashi, the pro-Kremlin nationalist youth movement, at his dacha at Zavidovo outside Moscow. Speaking of the diplomatic confrontation between Britain and Russia over Moscow’s refusal to extradite the suspected murderer of Anatoly Litvinenko, the former Russian agent poisoned with radioactive polonium [...]

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