China Economic Review highlights this WSJ story on American diplomatic efforts to get the Chinese to buy more oil from Saudi Arabia. The idea is that if China buys less oil from Iran, they will be more inclined to support the sanctions the Americans are proposing. What about a converse situation? Instead of pressuring the …
Category Archives: In the News
Afghanistan
Thinking a lot this weekend about Afghanistan. I just finished Dexter Filkin’s excellent book, “The Forever War“, and read the piece Filkin’s also had in this weekend’s NY Times Magazine on General Stanley McChrystal, who is in charge of the war in Afghanistan. He is requesting at least another 40,000 troops to win the war …
Rolling Back Anti-Pot Laws
Obama’s DOJ just made it official: they will not go after people using medical marijuana under the protection of state law. Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical …
From Kyoto to Copenhagen
I attended this conference this past weekend in Copenhagen put on by my ex-employer, Project Syndicate. Firstly, it was really great on a personal level to catch up with old colleagues and see how the association has continued to grow. When I left in early 2007 it was around 300 newspapers in around 100 countries; …
Uighurs
Good Junta last night, I’ll leave it to Rindy to post some of the highlights, but for me that was what the Junta was all about: a bunch of dudes sitting around drinking and having good, engaged conversation about real topics. Relevant to last night, and other Junta topics, is the continued rioting in Xinjiang. …
Democracy
Just wanted to post something brief ahead of the next Junta. Like all of you I’m sure I’ve been following the events in Iran closely. I keep hearing the words Velvet Revolution thrown out in terms of the Iranian government’s fears that they will be pushed aside in a wave of liberal protests. But I …
Blaming the Jews
From the July Harper’s: Chance that an American thinks “the Jews” were moderately or very much to blame for the financial crisis: 1 in 4 Chance he or she thinks they were “a little” to blame: 1 in 7 I thought this was interesting in light of our recent Junta on discrimination.