[AfricanChristian]

While we have been focusing all our attention on the throwbacks from the Middle East, the Chinese have been stealing all our potential markets in Africa and Latin America. My, my, do we ever have some stupid people running our government.

Politicians reflect the electorate. Americans can identify with the Middle East because of Israel and 9/11, they know about China because most of the stuff from Walmart comes from there, they also know about Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and Vietnam.

But they can't identify with either Africa or Latin America, so American politicians can safely ignore these regions.

[3Fingas]

These are important developing markets that we ignore at our own peril.

Why is that our State Dept. did a better job at diplomay in Africa and Latin America 50 years ago than they do today? Is this the dumbing-down effect in our educational system? People were less worldly then, traveled less then, did not have instant access via the Internet, and yet our policy leaders, not to mention our general public, know less about geography, world history, and comparative economics now than they ever did back then. This is really pathetic!