Free Republic

Migration: Who Cares? by: Ben Giles, July 17, 2008 Coming to the conclusion that migration should not be thought of as a distinctly national issue, authors Marie Price and Lisa Benton-Short presented data on their research of metropolitan cities experiencing and influx of foreign-born immigrants. Their new book, Migration to the Metropolis: The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities, reveals that 20 major cities across the globe account for 37 million of foreign-born residents. Or, one in five immigrants will choose one of those cities as their end destination. Audience reception to the authors’ July 15 presentation of their book was...

Trade Facilitation by: Ben Giles, July 15, 2008 The Cato Institute’s Daniel Ikenson and World Bank’s Simeon Djankov presented the findings of a new Cato trade policy analysis at the Rayburn House Office Building on July 11. Ikenson’s paper, entitled Protection without Protectionism: Reconciling Trade and Homeland Security, highlights the disconnect between Americans’ perception of the economy and the realities of international trade. “The polls tell us that Americans have soured on trade…” said Ikenson. “It’s because Americans are barraged nightly by reports on the news that they’re losing their jobs and that the economy is imperiled by globalization and...

Last year, more than 20 workers at a factory in Wuxi, Jiangsu province that produces nickel-cadmium batteries for electronic products giant Panasonic were found to be suffering from high levels of cadmium, a toxic and cancer-causing chemical. Two of the workers were diagnosed to be suffering from cadmium poisoning, an affliction high on health authorities' danger list of occupational diseases. Such poisoning is said to be able to cause kidney failure, lung cancer and bone disease. "For the safety of workers and environmental protection, this kind of battery, which is cheap to produce and safe to use but hazardous to...

June 11, 2008 Oil price crisis threatens to reverse globalisation Carl Mortished: World Business Briefing With brutal efficiency, the oil price is beginning to duff up a monster of the 20th century: globalisation. Those great tentacles that gripped our world in a hideous embrace are suddenly weakening and the multinational octopus is looking a bit pale and sickly. The extraordinary rise in the price of crude oil is wrecking outsourced business models everywhere and distance from your customer is no longer merely a matter of dull logistics. Whether you are selling coiled steel or cut flowers, the cost of transport...

Jihad is an ugly word to weak politicians, limp professors and lapdog liberal media who refuse to look at Surah 2:190 in any copy of the Koran and read where every Muslim on Earth gets his marching orders to participate in holy fighting and is clearly commanded that no one but Allah be worshipped. Denial comes so easily for those who noodle aimlessly around recorded facts, or try to change them.

For the first time in history, a genuinely global economic system has come into being with prospects of heretofore unimagined well-being. At the same time - paradoxically - the process of globalization tempts a nationalism that threatens its fulfillment. The basic premise of globalization is that competition will sort out the most efficient, a process that, by definition, involves winners and losers. If there are perennial losers, they will turn to their familiar political institutions for relief. They will not be mollified by the valid proposition that the benefits of global growth far outstrip its costs. Moreover, to remain competitive,...

What's the world's greatest moral challenge, as judged by its capacity to inflict human tragedy? It is not, I think, global warming, whose effects -- if they become as grim as predicted -- will occur over many years and provide societies time to adapt. A plausible case can be made for preventing nuclear proliferation, which threatens untold deaths and collapse of the world economy. But the most urgent present moral challenge, I submit, is most obvious: global poverty. There are roughly 6 billion people now alive; in 2004, perhaps 2.5 billion survived on $2 a day or less, says the...

WASHINGTON—In March, inspectors checking Chinese seafood arriving at U.S. ports made some unsettling discoveries: fish infected with salmonella in Baltimore and Seattle, and shrimp with banned veterinary drugs in Florida. Meanwhile, a shipment intercepted in Los Angeles on March 19 and labeled "channel catfish" wasn't catfish at all, though records don't say what it was. "A lot of those products coming in from overseas, you have no clue as to what is in them," said Paul Hitchens, an aquaculture specialist in Southern Illinois, where cut-rate Chinese catfish are threatening the livelihood of fish farmers. China rapidly has become the leading...

...The globalization paradigm has turned out to be very convenient for politicians. It allows them to blame foreigners for economic woes. It allows them to pretend that by rewriting trade deals, they can assuage economic anxiety... But there’s a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn’t really explain most of what is happening in the world. Globalization is real and important. It’s just not the central force driving economic change. Some Americans have seen their jobs shipped overseas, but global competition has accounted for a small share of job creation and destruction over the past few...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Sovereign wealth funds are growing at a whopping 24% a year, and could grow at that pace for at least the next three years, surpassing the economic output of the U.S. by 2015, according to a study released Monday. New data from financial analysis firm Global Insight showed that sovereign wealth funds racked up a combined $3.5 trillion in 2007. The largest funds were fielded by China, with $1.2 trillion, Russia and Kuwait, but could soon be outpaced by up and coming funds in Nigeria and Oman, the report said. Funds from developing countries are advancing...

Is the world reverting to a struggle between great powers? Or is the democratising spirit of 1989 still alive? NO, democracy is not: Robert Kagan YES, democracy is winning: Robert Cooper Excerpt:The assumption that the cold war was won as an inevitable consequence of the superiority of liberalism failed to recognize the contingency of events—battles won or lost, social movements successful or crushed, economic practices implemented or discarded. The spread of democracy was not merely the unfolding of certain ineluctable processes of economic and political development. The global shift towards liberal democracy coincided with the historical shift in the balance...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a notice Monday reminding reactor license applicants and nuclear power plant operators to prevent counterfeit parts from posing a safety concern. The notice cites two counterfeit valves at the Hatch facility near Baxley, Ga., of which NRC learned in November 2007, and one of these was installed as a cooling water pump discharge stop check valve on Hatch Unit 2. Catawba, a facility in Rock Hill, S.C., removed four circuit breakers from its stock after checking and being unable to confirm their authenticity, according to the notice, which stresses that none of these items was...

I. In the early 1990s, optimism was understandable. The collapse of the communist empire and the apparent embrace of democracy by Russia seemed to augur a new era of global convergence. The great adversaries of the Cold War suddenly shared many common goals, including a desire for economic and political integration. Even after the political crackdown that began in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the disturbing signs of instability that appeared in Russia after 1993, most Americans and Europeans believed that China and Russia were on a path toward liberalism. Boris Yeltsin's Russia seemed committed to the liberal model of...

If you had to define “globalisation” with an image, what would it be? A container ship from China stuffed with toys and T-shirts? A programmer tapping at a keyboard in Bangalore? A plane circling gloomily over Heathrow airport? Most people’s pictures of globalisation are to do with economics, technology and business. But before markets, modems and manufacturers could do their work, political changes had to take place. The foundations of the globalised business world are political – and so are the biggest threats to the system. The challenge to the globalisation consensus comes from below. Political elites in the US,...

'Terror and Consent': brilliant, contrarian By James E. McWilliams SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN Sunday, March 30, 2008 During the course of a long, intellectually demanding narrative, "Terror and Consent" pivots on several paradigm-shifting claims. One of them, which appears in the introduction, stands out for its humanitarian implications: "During the era of twentieth century industrial nation states ... 80 percent of the dead and wounded in warfare were civilians." For Philip Bobbitt, a distinguished lecturer and senior fellow at the University of Texas and a law professor at Columbia University, this is more than a gee-whiz factoid. It's the basis...

As the Democratic presidential campaign marches on, its most alarming public policy issue is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's antitrade advocacy. As liberal leaders, they are of course for higher income taxes, greater federal spending, and rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. But passionate protectionism illustrates the pro-government, anti-market philosophy that is the core of their beliefs, and it reflects the seriously wrong direction in which they will take America if one of them becomes our next president. International trade is good for the U.S. economy. It creates jobs to produce the products America exports, provides workers for foreign...

As the dollar skids, dropping earlier this month to a 12-year low against the yen and another record low against the euro, U.S. exports are surging. That is providing a lone bright spot in an otherwise-gloomy economy and distinguishing this downturn from the last recession. When the U.S. faced recession in 2001, the greenback's value was riding high relative to other currencies, which hobbled exporters. This time, the opposite is occurring. Exports have already helped to counteract the impact of the beleaguered housing market. Over the past six quarters, exports have contributed, on average, nearly one percentage point to economic...

"Superclass — The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 379 pages, $26), by David Rothkopf: It's not just trade and finance that's being globalized these days, it's sheer power — the power of about 6,000 distinguished people to get big things done across national frontiers, says author David Rothkopf. Trouble is, he complains, this "Superclass" isn't helping 2 billion powerless people who get along on $2 a day or less. He warns that unless those 2 billion get a voice, globalization will be in danger. The 6,000 are a scattered lot. Americans know...

New Deals in the Developing World ECONOMIC ACTIVITY between Africa and Asia is booming like never before. Business between the two continents is not new: India's trade with Africa's eastern and southern regions dates back to at least the days of the Silk Road, and China has been involved on the continent since it started investing there, mostly in infrastructure, during the postcolonial era. But today, partly as a result of accelerating commerce between developing countries throughout the world, the scale and pace of trade and investment flows between Africa and India and China are exceptional. (Throughout, Africa is used...

Blair to teach 'faith and globalisation' at Yale University JAMES TAPSFIELD TONY Blair is to further his interest in religion by teaching classes on "faith and globalisation" at the prestigious Yale University in an initiative linked to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, due to be launched later this year. Academics at Yale School of Management and Divinity are working with Mr Blair to finalise details of the course. A source close to the former prime minister said he was "delighted" to be taking on the new challenge. The Connecticut university's president, Richard Levin, said staff were "honoured" Mr Blair would...