Gigantismo imperial y decadencia del planeta Tierra Se extendía desde el Caspio al Mar Báltico, desde el centro de Europa a las Islas Kuriles en el Pacífico, de Siberia a Asia Central. Su arsenal nuclear incluía 45.000 ojivas y sus fuerzas armadas tenían cinco millones de soldados bajo las armas. No había existido nada parecido en [...]

Imperial Gigantism and the Decline of Planet Earth It stretched from the Caspian to the Baltic Sea, from the middle of Europe to the Kurile Islands in the Pacific, from Siberia to Central Asia.  Its nuclear arsenal held 45,000 warheads, and its military had five million troops under arms.  There had been nothing like it in Eurasia since [...]

On the same day we learned of the Obama Administration’s intent to dig in its heels and refuse to share its standards for drone strike targeting with the U.S. Senate, we also learned that China had considered becoming the second nation to launch a drone-based missile strike against one of its enemies on foreign soil. [...]

Will China-Japan-U.S. Tensions in the Pacific Ignite a Conflict and Sink the Global Economy? Don’t look now, but conditions are deteriorating in the western Pacific.  Things are turning ugly, with consequences that could prove deadly and spell catastrophe for the global economy.

Megatrends, Game-Changers, Black Swans, Tectonic Shifts, and a World Not That Different From 2012 Think of it as a simple formula: if you’ve been hired (and paid handsomely) to protect what is, you’re going to be congenitally ill-equipped to imagine what might be.  And yet the urge not just to know the contours of the [...]

El Partido Comunista Chino sueña con un mundo que comercia en yuanes, pero tiene que empezar limpiando su propia casa Todos conocemos los nombres de la nueva generación, de Xi Jinping, ahora secretario general del Partido Comunista Chino (PCCH) antes de ser consagrado como presidente el próximo año, al vice-premier Li Keqiang. ¿Pero qué importa el [...]

Seldom has a global conference been so devoid of positive expectations than the coming United Nations Climate Conference that will take place in Doha, Qatar in late November and early December. People could be forgiven for thinking a joke was being played on them, given that the meeting is being held in Qatar, one of [...]

Noam Chomsky on U.S.-Fueled Dangers, from Climate Change to Nuclear Weapons In the week when President Obama and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney debated issues of foreign policy and the economy, we turn to world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and MIT professor, Noam Chomsky. In a recent speech, Chomsky examined topics largely ignored or glossed over [...]

La presidenta en cálido abrazo con los nuevos potentados surgidos bajo el generoso cobijo del comunismo chino. Ella va en búsqueda de más capitales que se instalen en zonas francas en Costa Rica. Ya no será billetes de rubia cabellera y ojos azules. En cambio, sus ojos rasgados, con el fondo de cadenciosas óperas chinas, [...]

Introducción del editor de TomDispatch En mayo de 2007, tropecé con bocetos en el sitio en la web de una firma arquitectónica de Kansas contratada para construir una monstruosa embajada combinada con ciudadela para el centro de comando de Gran Medio Oriente en 42 hectáreas en el centro de la capital iraquí, Bagdad. Presentaban las impresiones [...]