Aung San Suu Kyi and the democratic forces will need all the support they can get from the outside world as they negotiate the swirling political currents over the next few years in their terribly challenging task of steering Burma toward genuine electoral democracy.
The freer flow of commodities and capital has been one of the features of the contemporary process of globalization. Unlike in the earlier phase of globalization in the 19thcentury, however, the freer flow of commodities and capital has not been accompanied by a freer movement of labor globally.
A representative of the Philippine parliament visits Syria to bring home overseas workers caught in the civil war.
Transnational corporations and their practice of outsourcing jobs are front-and-center when it comes to the current economic crisis.
Source: Foreign Policy in Focus
Germany towers over Europe like a colossus. Its economy is the biggest in the European Union, accounting for 20 percent of the EU’s gross domestic product. While most of Europe’s economies are stagnating, Germany’s will have grown by some 2.9 percent in 2011. It boasts the lowest unemployment rate, 5.5 percent, of Europe’s major economies, compared to those of France (9.5 percent), the United Kingdom (8.3 percent), and Italy (8.1 percent).
In many ways, Germany is like Japan. Both countries were forced to give up armed expansion during the Second World War, only to have the national energy channeled into building formidable economies. But whereas Japan faltered in the 1990s, Germany has steadily plowed ahead, becoming the world’s biggest exporter from 1992 to 2009, replaced in first place by China only in 2010.
Source: Foreign Policy in Focus
The world’s population surpassed 7 billion on October 31. But except for perhaps the anti-family planning lobby, this was a milestone that few were in a mood to celebrate.
Concerns about overpopulation were present when the world hit the 6 billion mark in 1999, but they were subdued in that era of growth and — at least in the North — optimism. There was a sense then that although there would be major hurdles along the way, the world’s future could only get brighter.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019