Al Qaeda on the Ropes: One Fighter's Inside Story (Yousafzai and Moreau) from the Daily Beast
"A young jihadist returns to his former unit on the Afghan border and finds only the desperate remnants of bin Laden’s once-dreaded organization."
After Tumult of 2011, Watch These Global Hotspots from the Editorial Board of the Bloomberg News Service
"Could the world in 2012 surprise us more than it did in 2011? Certainly, after Japan’s earthquake, the Middle East’s upheavals and Osama bin Laden’s death, the bar on shockers will be high. The known unknowns for 2012 already form a daunting list: the fate of the euro zone (CRIS); the war in Afghanistan and the “peac..."
In China, the Grievances Keep Coming (Yu Hua) from the New York Times
"Victims of corruption and injustice have no faith in the law, and yet they bring complaints, dreaming that an upright official will emerge to right their wrongs."
The Coming Collapse of China: 2012 Edition (Gordon Chang) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Many analysts assume this growth streak can continue indefinitely. For instance, Justin Yifu Lin, the World Bank's chief economist, believes the country can grow for at least two more decades at 8 percent, and the International Monetary Fund predicts China's economy will surpass America's in size by 2016. Don't believe any of this."
The World Left After 2011 (Immanuel Wallerstein) from wallerstein.com
"By any definition, 2011 was a good year for the world left – however narrowly or broadly one defines the world left. The basic reason was the negative economic conditions from which most of the world was suffering. Unemployment was high and becoming higher. ... The result was a worldwide revolt of what the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements called “the 99%.”"
The Ides Of 2011 (Andrew Sullivan) from the Daily Beast
"It was a dreadful year in many ways: the embarrassment of the debt ceiling clusterfuck, Europe's lurching inability to manage its own currency, mass slaughter in Syria, civil war in Libya, the Japanese nuclear disaster, and the GOP primary circus. But it also felt to me, with my nose pressed up against history's fleeting present, as a deeply transformative and actually positive year, in which underlying tectonic plates in world politics and culture shifted - for the better."
Putin’s Children (Bill Keller) from the New York Times
"How many generations does it take to grow a democracy?"
Even Despots Don't Live Forever (Doyle McManus) from the Los Angeles Times
"Three villains — Osama bin Laden, Moammar Kadafi and Kim Jong Il — are gone."
Nobody Understands Debt (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"... when people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they’re talking about — and the people who talk the most understand the least.
Perhaps most obviously, the economic “experts” on whom much of Congress relies have been repeatedly, utterly wrong about the short-run effects of budget deficits."
America’s Top Export in 2011 was ... Fuel? (Brad Plumer) from the Washington Post
"Fuel is now the top U.S. export. The Associated Press reports that America is on pace to ship out more gasoline, diesel and jet fuel than anything else in 2011. (Aircraft, motor vehicles, vacuum tubes and telecom equipment were next on the list of top exports.) Granted, this is only for refined petroleum products — and those exports are still dwarfed by America’s much, much larger imports of crude oil. Still, it’s the first time fuel has been our top export in 21 years. So how did this happen?"
Yes We Can (Can't We?) (Andrew Romano) from the Daily Beast
"Team Obama has quietly built a juggernaut reelection machine in Chicago. Andrew Romano goes inside."
She Made Me Run! (Maureen Dowd) from the New York Times
"...as Iowa reaches a crescendo, three Republican wives say they’re forcing their humble, self-effacing mates to sacrifice themselves to save the nation. That might be believable, if the mates weren’t Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump."
Gallup: Republican Race 'Most Volatile' Since Polling Started from The Hill
"The lead for the GOP presidential nomination has changed seven times says a new Gallup poll report which calls the Republican race the "most volatile for the GOP since the advent of polling." The Gallup report says this is the first time since 1964 where the GOP front-runner spot has seen so many changes."
The Iowa Caucuses’ Bitter Harvest (Frank Bruni) from the New York Times
"Extreme positions on the campaign trail in Iowa do damage to the Republican Party."
HISTORY BOOK NUGGET!!
What All Those New Presidential Bios Say About America’s Mood (Larry Doyle) from Time Magazine
"Three media personalities have written bestsellers about presidents. It must mean something."
BRITISH HISTORY NUGGET!!
Mean Streets: A Review of Beyond the Tower: A History of East London by John Marriott from the New Republic
"As early as his second paragraph, Marriott has begun to explore a “distinct mythology,” bred up in the nineteenth century, “within which the East End was seen as a site of danger, depravity and destitution, and hence to be avoided by genteel and respectable persons.”"
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