To commentators such as Thomas Friedman, today’s globalization is a largely technological phenomenon. Once learned, new technologies are typically not forgotten, which is why globalization can seem an irresistible force, destined to bind us ever more tightly together for the foreseeable future. History, however, suggests that globalization is as much a political as a technological [...]

read more....

If one extrapolates Russia’s development during the last eight years into the future, we will not only witness a second Cold War. The Russian Federation might become something like a new apartheid state where foreigners and non-Slavic citizens are treated separately from white citizens of Russia by governmental and non-governmental institutions. Some observers do, [...]

read more....

SINCE 2002, Austrian exports to Iran have doubled, but are still in the millions, not billions. The planned OMV deal with Iran would change this, bringing Austria and Europe into a long-term strategic partnership with the Iranian regime. As Iranian Chamber of Commerce president Ali Naghi Khamoushi put it in November 2006, “Austria is the [...]

read more....

Recently, two European nations have emerged from a long period of national humiliation and, in a way, subservient position toward the USA: Germany and Russia. In both instances, there is a new sense of stability in the minds of the countries’ elite, and this required a new vision of the past. In this construction of [...]

read more....

NORTH Korea has slowed nuclear disarmament to a snail’s pace because it has received only part of the energy aid it was promised and does not believe it has made progress towards being removed from the US state terrorism list.
Speaking at the weekend, a delegation of US experts said they had broad access to North [...]

read more....

Venezuelan scientists and military officers set out Friday on their country’s first expedition to Antarctica, leaving Friday from Uruguay’s capital Montevideo aboard the Uruguayan naval research ship “Oyarbide”.
Read More…

read more....

Defense Minister Ehud Barak speculated Sunday that Syria and Iran might help Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrilla group retaliate for the assassination of its top commander, wanted in a string of deadly attacks on U.S. and Jewish targets.
Imad Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing Tuesday in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Hezbollah and its Iranian backers [...]

read more....

If a struggle for resources unfolds between East and West, democratic values could be in for a battering.
Polls show that about one-third of Americans think China will soon dominate the world, and almost half fear its rise as a threat to world peace – results that could have time-travelled from the Cold War.
India, with its [...]

read more....

Russia backed its ally Serbia on Sunday in condemning Kosovo’s declaration of independence and called for the United Nations to annul the move, which the Serbian prime minister said had been accomplished to further U.S. military goals.
The immediate U.S. response to the long-anticipated decision to formally split from Serbia was muted by comparison, with the [...]

read more....

Pick any dictatorship at random and chances are you’ll find China lurking in the background
At the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics, spectators will watch as athletes from the worst regimes on the planet parade by. Whether they are from dictatorships of the left or right, secular or theocratic, they will have one thing in [...]

read more....