East 55 – The new issue

The latest issue of EAST Global Geopolitics is at newsstands and bookshops from September first.

Sins of omission and Foreign Policy: Former EU President Romano Prodi and his military advisor, Gen. Giuseppe Cucchi, provide insight into the Western blunders that have unleashed the new (and spectacularly bloody) Caliphate in the Middle East.

A great future behind him? Barack Obama faces a drastic loss of popularity in the US, where in many polls his approval rating has fallen below that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. A European, Danilo Taino, and an American, Talbot Logan, offer parallel takes on the issue.

We were only kidding about Mad Cow Disease, Avian Flu and Swine Fever! The Ebola epidemic may though be the real thing. The ‘legendary’ Subcomandante Marcos now admits he was a fraud – a ‘hologram’ of a revolutionary – and goes quietly into retirement, as do Corsica’s ‘disco terrorists’ and the Basque separatists of ETA; their successors are all on the Web and each wants to register the domain www.rebels.com.

Which English do you speak? Globalization cheerfully and recklessly relied on the English to unite world markets. The language is beginning to buckle under the weight of its own success.

Bullfighters, violinists, Cordon Bleu chefs, little soldiers and ‘power babies.’ Our dossier looks at talent, that intangible and precious ability to do things better than anyone else. Is it inborn or acquired?

‘Post-feminist’ China has too many quality women.

Lifeguards and bakers are better off. The Super Europe voted in with the recent European Parliamentary elections doesn’t seem to know what to do with the super graduates coming out of its universities. When not unemployed they’re under-employed, often in temporary and badly paid jobs that waste expensive educations.  

The megacities are drowning, sinking below sea level even before the oceans can rise to swamp them. If we owe the modern economy to the insights of the fabulous Fuggers, what are we to make of Catastrophe Bonds, new risk-linked securities that create wealth from disaster? Meanwhile, cigarette smugglers are innovating, changing with the times and doing very well.