wealth-of-nations

Korean Joint Exercises: Saber Rattling or Just Diplomacy by Other Means?

2010-06-03T00:00:00Z

In the half-century-old conflict on the Korean peninsula, there have been countless ebbs and flows of tensions. Presently, it's flow time. South Korea and the United States are reportedly set to stage a large-scale naval exercise next week in the Yellow Sea, where North Korea allegedly sank a South Korean warship, Cheonan, about two months ago.

Stocks Open Sharply Down on Korean Tension

2010-05-25T00:00:00Z

Stocks across the globe opened dramatically lower today in response to North Korea's reported threat to take military action against South Korea, as well as deepening worries over the Bank of Spain's bailout of a major bank.

Find the Balance in Your Life

2010-05-23T00:00:00Z

Professional tennis is all about control. Control the ball, the power, the placement, the point, the set, the match. Control yourself. The tennis season circles the globe for about 11 months a year. Those months are packed with airports, training, matches, sponsors, the press, and then more airports. There's often an entourage with you to maintain that control: coaches for your game, agents and managers to handle the business, nutritionists and trainers for your body, family and psychologists for mental support.

By the Numbers: Going Low-Tech

2010-05-21T00:00:00Z

Over the past decade, the U.S. has scaled back on high-tech exports to China, even as trade between the countries booms. New numbers from the Council on Foreign Relations show that America now exports relatively less machinery and more crude materials than it did a decade ago, due largely to national-security concerns:

10
Crude-materials exports, as a percentage of total U.S. exports to China, in 1999.

27
Crude-materials exports, as a percentage of total U.S. exports to China, in 2009.

Pakistan to the Internets: Shut Up!

2010-05-21T00:00:00Z

What happens when the president of Pakistan awkwardly interrupts a stump speech to lean to the side of his podium and sneer "Shut up" at a group of noisy spectators below? The Internet happens, of course; every smart-ass with a Youtube account promptly gets to work setting Zardari's deliciously unfortunate gaffe to pop music, in loop. But then Pakistan's government happens right back, shutting down the entire video-sharing site for hours to keep news of the gaffe from spreading.

Four months later, here we are again. On Wednesday, Pakistan's Lahore High Court ordered the country's telecommunications agency to ban Facebook, then piled on Wikipedia, Youtube, and Twitter, after a forum of Islamic lawyers filed a petition against a Facebook page called "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day." The page found its muse in a cartoon mocking Comedy Central's decision to tamp down on South Park's depictions of the Muslim prophet, but even the original cartoonist appears to find it offensive, considering she's joined yet another Facebook group protesting the other page. In any case, the ban is now in effect until May 31, when the Pakistani court will conduct a hearing to determine whether to make it permanent.

It would be easy to point out the human-rights implications of such an action by the Pakistani government. After all, one can very validly argue against a legal system that punishes by death or life imprisonment any statement or action it considers "blasphemous." Or one can point out the hypocrisy of a government that allows the Tehrik-i-Taliban to maintain its own YouTube channel but refuses to tolerate discussion of an embarrassing political gaffe or a juvenile cartoon.

But on some level, that imbues Pakistan's most recent foray into Internet censorship with seriousness, when in fact it deserves to be recognized more for its sheer absurdity. The Pakistani government's logic is that the medium is the problem, as well as the message. So upon hearing that a single idiot decided to form an offensive Facebook group that even the original cartoonist doesn't support, their response is to ban the modern world's main instruments of information dissemination. A single tidbit of offensive content is somehow grounds to shut down the whole damn party, as if a single bite of rotten fruit should be enough to drive a person away from eating altogether.

By that standard, perhaps the Pakistan Telecommunications Agency (PTA) should also consider banning the Internet altogether, since a quick Google search will reveal that those nonsense Danish cartoons from 2006 are still online. The PTA should certainly not allow books in Pakistan, as some guy named Rushdie once penned his thoughts on the satanic verses. Nor should it permit newspapers or magazines, since the National Review has surely written all sorts of insulting things about the prophet over the years. And couldn't people just e-mail each other about the offending cartoons? The PTA should definitely ban e-mail, in that case. Or just get rid of computers altogether, since some wily programmers are probably already busy building new versions of everything previously banned.

Of course, most of what fills the pages of Web sites, social networks, magazines, books, and tweets is not problematic at all. It's useful—or plain harmless, like cute sloth videos or virtual farm games. Speaking of which, the ban will surely add insult to injury once Pakistanis realize they've lost precious ground against their competitors in Farmville, Facebook's mind-numbingly addictive farm game. Indian Twitter user @fakebalthakre was already plotting sabotage on Wednesday, advising his followers, "Pakisthanis can’t use FB until May 31. Excellent opportunity for Hindusthan to block water to all Pak farms on Farmville." Battle on, Internet-freedom warriors.

Moscow's Own Color Revolutions

2010-05-20T00:00:00Z

Half a decade after a series of "color revolutions" replaced Moscow-backed rulers across the former Soviet Union with pro-Western ones, the Kremlin may finally be getting its payback. Already this year the presidents of Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan have been ousted by challengers friendlier to Moscow. While Russia wasn't the sole architect of Ukraine's election and Kyrgyzstan's coup, it sheltered Kyrgyz opposition leaders and made it clear to Ukrainian voters that Viktor Yanukovych's victory would usher in a new era of cheap gas and increased trade. More, this year's strategic wins have inspired the Kremlin to encourage further regime change nearby.

Tensions Flare Over Sinking of South Korean Ship

2010-05-20T00:00:00Z

When a South Korean warship sank near the marine border between North and South Korea in late March, it caused increased friction between the two countries, which remain formally at war, but the issue faded. The release on Thursday of a report accusing North Korea of sinking the ship has reignited the spat.

Israel Faces a New Boycott Threat

2010-05-19T00:00:00Z

By presidential decree, Palestinians began boycotting products made in Israeli settlements this month, part of a campaign to end Israel's West Bank occupation. Observers can be forgiven for wondering: so what? Economists estimate that only 2 or 3 percent of Israel's 2009 exports were manufactured in the settlements, and only a small percentage of those ended up in the Palestinian market.

BP Continues Stealth Public Relations During Its Crisis

2010-05-19T00:00:00Z

Knowing that its name and future are at stake, BP has had to walk a fine line. Doing nothing to quell public outrage over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill would quickly erode the company's image. But undertaking aggressive and overt marketing to downplay the effects of the incident could just as easily paint the company as more concerned with profits than ecological impact.

School Killers Stir Muted Sympathy

2010-05-18T09:30:53Z

Since March, China has been plagued by a spate of horrific copycat murders. On May 12 a man hacked seven kindergartners and two adults to death with a cleaver; this came on the heels of five reported assaults on Chinese schoolchildren in which 17 were killed and almost 100 injured. All the alleged murderers were poor, middle-aged men.

A Coalition of the Willing In Great Britain

2010-05-17T15:59:16Z

Now that the question of who will lead the country is settled, politicians can get down to answering the more important query: can a coalition government work in Britain? There hasn't been one since World War II, and Britons are famously skeptical of them. Yet after the general election left no party with an outright majority, the Conservatives, who won the largest chunk of the vote, agreed to govern with the third-place finishers, the Liberal Democrats. Bookmakers are offering odds of less than 2-1 that the coalition will survive longer than a year, and financiers are nervous that the tandem won't be able to agree on how to rein in the national debt. According to the skeptics, Prime Minister David Cameron's brave talk of "a new politics" where "cooperation wins out over confrontation" disguises a fragile deal struck for reasons of expedience.

Thai Protests Escalate in Bangkok "War Zone"

2010-05-17T13:39:38Z

The streets of Bangkok devolved into violence over the weekend as soldiers launched a crackdown on red shirt protesters, bringing the official death toll since Thursday to 35 in Thailand's deadliest conflict in two decades. The Washington Post described conditions in downtown Bangkok as a "war zone."

Is Nick Clegg Anti-American?

2010-05-17T09:26:19Z

Is Britain's new deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, "anti-American"? Former prime minister Gordon Brown seemed to think so. He said exactly that about the leader of the Liberal Democrats in a televised debate before the May 6 election. On the one hand, Brown's slur could be dismissed as a desperate politician's runaway rhetoric. After all, Clegg sits at the heart of a brand-new coalition government led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, while Brown is back home in Scotland nursing defeat.

China Sees Boom in Internet Hours and E-Commerce

2010-05-14T13:30:12Z

By The Numbers
China Online

Wave of Violence Sweeps Bangkok: Dissident General Is Shot

2010-05-13T14:27:58Z

It was another bloody day in violence-stricken Thailand Thursday night, as a dissident general was shot in the head.

China Races to Secure Middle East Oil Deals

2010-05-13T13:25:32Z

China is racing to secure Middle East oil deals, putting it on a possible collision course with U.S. interests in the world's most volatile region. China is now the biggest importer of Saudi oil, the second-biggest of Iranian oil, and the largest player in the Iraqi oil game. China is "being very aggressive," says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They're putting a lot of money on the bet that having ownership of oil fields is a better guarantee of supply than buying oil on the open market."

Savings Rate Down as Americans Spend More

2010-05-12T13:24:05Z

Leading Indicator

The First Vatican-Approved Stock Index

2010-05-11T13:22:37Z

Ever wonder how the pope would do as a stock picker? We might find out. Last month the first Vatican-approved equity index launched. The Stoxx Europe Christian Index is a compilation of 533 European companies that adhere to Catholic values. Meaning no profits from porn, gambling, weapons, tobacco, or birth control. Oil, on the other hand, is OK. BP and Shell are among the index's top 10 components. "Environmental issues are not part of our screening criteria," says Michael VanDam of Christian Brothers Investment Services, a cosponsor of the index and one of six committee members determining its components.

Greece May Survive, But the Bailout Won’t Help It Heal

2010-05-10T21:31:51Z

Europe's gargantuan bond and bank bailout this weekend is nothing but "morphine to stabilize the patient," according to the International Monetary Fund's Director for Europe, Mark Belka. The joint deal by the European Union and the IMF to pump up to one trillion dollars in loans and guarantees into Greece and other European countries threatened by government insolvency was far larger than expected, a case of shock and awe that has for now impressed the markets. Finally European leaders ended their months of fiddling while Athens burned and burned. By the end of trading Monday, European stocks were up a spectacular 7.39 percent.

BP Oil Spill, by the Numbers

2010-05-10T19:00:00Z

As of today, BP has spent about $350 million—or $16 million a day—on cleanup and related problems due to the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf. Sure, it’s a lot of money, but cleanup and related costs are only the beginning. While it’s difficult to predict the long-term impact of the spill, here’s a closer look at the short term.

400
The minimum number of species threatened by the oil spill

2,000
Number of estimated square miles of oil slick

7,000
Square miles of federal fishing area in the Gulf that has closed because of the slick

10
Minimum number of days the federal government is restricting fishing in federal waters most affected by the BP oil spill

25 million
Number of birds that crisscross the Gulf Coast each day, and could be at risk from the oil spill