Google has a superb new toy called Google Trends, which allows you to track how often a particular term is searched for on Google (here its .co.uk variant),...
Alex Evans
Alex Evans is a Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, and the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren't Enough? (Penguin, 2017), a book about the power of deep stories to unlock transformational change. He lives in North Yorkshire and is currently working on political polarisation and learning dry stone walling. Full biog here.
Influencing Burma
At ForeignPolicy.com, Blake's been doing some research into the standard media assumption that China is Burma's biggest trading partner. While China is indeed...
Time for a war on deer
Gideon Rachman in the FT is concerned: In a recent book John Mueller, an American academic, notes that the number of his fellow-countrymen killed by...
A new European Council on Foreign Relations
David Miliband's blog links to something I missed in the FT last week: the formation of a new European Council on Foreign Relations, as a complement /...
The US’s increasing reliance on China
Yesterday's NY Times had an excellent piece about what it argues to be the US's increasing reliance on China in numerous matters diplomatic. The piece quotes...
Those foreign policy advisers in full (but where are the women?)
The Washington Post has helpfully published a comprehensive list of who is advising which Presidential candidates on foreign policy. Quite how policy...
Our man in Kabul
It's like buses: you wait months for David Miliband to resume his blog, and then no less than six officially sanctioned FCO bloggers come along at once -...
But tell us the good news…
William Lind is back from his summer holidays: If [the downward spiral of events in Europe before the First World War] reminds us of the Middle East today, it...
How presentations should be done
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w] Here's the most engaging presentation on international development I think I've ever seen. You'll laugh...
Dani Rodrik on food prices
Hurrah - Dani Rodrik has a blog. Rodrik is a great international development thinker and a co-author - together with Nancy Birdsall and Arvind Subramanian -...
Who loses if the City slumps?
Chris Giles in the FT has a useful corrective to a commonplace nostrum that often does the rounds: namely, that the UK has become so dependent on strong...
Down with Hillary
From Wired: Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton dominates the airwaves, the Sunday political talk shows and the polls. And it turns out...
Ban Ki-Moon’s UN climate summit
So, what to make of the UN Secretary-General's high level event on climate change in New York earlier this week? First, a few quick observations in no...
Training programs a la Blackwater
Blackwater doesn't only provide protection for US State Dept staff in Iraq and elsewhere: they also run numerous training programs in VIP protection and other...
Iran: drifting to war?
So let's catch up with things on Iran since our last couple of posts (mine, David's). In Europe on Sunday night, French foreign minister (and founder of...
Meanwhile, back in the real economy…
The FT notes that: Oil touched an all-time high at the end of last week, reaching $80.36 at one point, as traders reacted to last week's OPEC decision to...
The state he’s in
Given the obvious risk of self-fulfilling prophecy when terms like 'bank run' start being bandied about in the midst of a low level consumer panic, sensible...
Michael Chertoff’s blog
As we wait for David Miliband's promised return to the blogosphere, the news arrives that none other than Michael Chertoff, the US Secretary for Homeland...
Citizen Gore
Michael Tomasky has a thoughtful piece about Al Gore in the current New York Review of Books. He doesn't reckon there's much prospect of Gore running: When...
Bin Laden’s new video
Osama's new video is worth watching / reading in full. He's been reading Chomsky, and it shows. Multinational corporations figure heavily, and there's even...
More from Global Dashboard
Has securitising Ebola paid off?
UN officials are expressing cautious optimism that the tide has been turned in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa which has now claimed more than 8,600 lives. The World Health Organisation, WHO, announced last week that the number of new cases of Ebola in the three...
What can be done about women’s economic inequality?
Alongside last week’s Davos meeting has been a welcome focus on global economic inequality – but much less on gender inequality. Everyone agrees that women’s economic inequality is important, especially in developing countries, but change is agonisingly slow. The...
Why the Green surge is an opportunity for Labour as well as a threat
What a week for the Greens: first they sail past both UKIP and the Liberal Democrats on membership numbers; then they secure a place in the televised leaders' debates during the election campaign. I suspect I'm not the only Labour member who feels a bit conflicted by...