Michael Wines writes in today’s New York Times about the wife of a Chinese dissident who produced a tract so subversive that it got him jailed and her 24-hour surveillance.
Here are the “Fundamental Principles” from Charter 08, the document signed by Liu Xiaobo and 302 others:
OUR FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
This is a historic moment for China, and […]

Colombian superstar Juanes heard about the recent saber-rattling in Ecuador, Venezuela and his own native country. So he decided to make a statement: a concert called “Paz sin Fronteras” (”Peace Without Borders”) on the border between Colombia and Venezuela.
As can be seen in the photo above, many Latin Americans joined him in making this statement. […]

I have always been against term limits. I’d rather change the way the system is currently rigged to favor incumbents and then let the voters decide on the merits whether their elected officials deserve another term. Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee isn’t writing about term limits when he chides Arnold Schwarzenegger for practicing “all […]

Norimitsu Onishi of the New York Times reports on elections for upper house in Japan going strongly against the party of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Abe, apparently, hadn’t been in tune with what voters wanted and got the message too late:
The loss, however, will allow the opposition to check Mr. Abe’s legislative agenda. Using parliamentary […]

One of my brother’s best friends from his graduate school days at the University of Chicago is Sudhir Venkatesh. Sudhir was recently featured on NPR in a story about the underground economy in Manhattan:
Venkatesh says there are countless people like Sharelle in the inner city, scraping by on odd jobs. They make and sell box […]

Having worked in the Mexican presidential election of 2000, I find many amateur politicos here in LA coming up to me and telling me with total conviction who is going to win this weekend. My wife’s and my friend, Ana Maria Salazar, blogs on that phenomenon from her point of view as an analyst, talk […]

Molly Moore of the Washington Post describes the very different experiences of two French twentysomethings who grew up in the same Parisian suburb. If the youth protests in France are about the government unilaterally trying to change the social contract, this story helps describe what young people there are trying to hold on to:
Dhelft, a […]

Marla Dickinson of the LA Times reports on Costa Rica’s quiet success at partnering with American high-tech firms:
With little fanfare, Costa Rica has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from some of the best-known names in technology, including Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp.
Medical device makers and pharmaceutical companies are sprouting in […]

Lydia Polgreen and Larry Rohter write in the New York Times of two recently elected presidents:
In almost every sense of the word, there is a vast distance between this impoverished West African country and prosperous, sophisticated Chile. But they share a legacy of bloodshed and oppression that color the politics of today. And in both […]

AFP reports that Stan Greenberg and Jeremy Rosner have been called in to rescue the campaign of Israel’s Labor leader, Amir Peretz. Apparently, Stan will have his work cut out for him:
Despite Sharon’s incapacitation following a brain haemorrhage, Labour is still trailing a distant second in the polls ahead of a March 28 election and […]