International Affairs

The talk of a bailout for the American automobile manufacturers reminds me of the decision by the United States Olympic Committee to start using professional basketball players in the early ’90s.


Let me explain.


During much of the Cold War, basketball was the one sport that America clearly dominated. That was true up until 1972, when the Soviet Union team beat the American squad in a contested and controversial game. Read more...

A son of Turkish immigrants has been chosen as the head of the influential Green Party in Germany, in part a consequence of German Obama-mania, no doubt. Read the story here.

Similar things are happening in other parts of Europe, as reported by The Associated Press. Read more...

I don’t mean to beat this idea into the ground, but I can’t get over how Barack Obama’s election has brought out such tremendous fervency of devotion to American ideals — or, perhaps I should say, to an ideal America — in the Arab world.

I just went to the doctor for a routine checkup here in Casablanca, Morocco. My appointment was with an evidently devout Muslim physician, who, judging by his name, is from a prominent Arab family. I’d never seen him before. After our consultation, he leaned toward me across his desk and asked, “So, how did you feel about the election in the United States?” I confessed that I had been deeply moved by it. Read more...

Nov. 4, 2008 was certainly an historic day, but not just for politics.

The first annual Junior Ambassadors Tennis Cup held its finals, right here in Washington, at the William H.G. Fitzgerald Tennis Center.

Eight countries had 14-and-under boys and girls in the draws: the U.S., France, Italy, Venezuela, Japan, Czech Republic, Canada and Kazakhstan. Read more...

One of the recurring themes in the post-election commentary is this: Now that we’ve elected Barack Obama, the U.S. has a chance to redeem itself in the eyes of the world.

Gail Collins, writing in The New York Times, put it nicely: “Today ... [we] can bask in the realization that that there are billions of people around the planet who loathed our country last week but are now in awe of its capacity to rise above historic fears and prejudices, that once again, the United States will have a president the world wants to follow.” Read more...

Paddy Power, Ireland’s largest bookmaker, has announced that it will not wait for the results on Election Day and will pay out over a million euros’ worth of bets on Obama to become the next president.

Paddy Power occasionally makes early payouts when the betting public is significantly behind a bet. In this case, the smart and wishful money has been flooding to Obama. The early payout gives Paddy Power a nice bit of publicity and encourages winning betters to gamble back their winnings on the upcoming weekend of soccer matches. Having benefited from one of these early payouts before, I have to admit I didn’t even last till the weekend and was betting on the live simulcast greyhound racing action from Romford, but I digress. Read more...

If, like Sarah Palin, you're a regular reader of The Economist, you may have already taken part in the global election to choose the next U.S. president.

“What if the whole world could vote?” the magazine's website asks.

Indeed.

Judging from results as of Oct. 11, the race is heavily one-sided. Of the nearly 30,000 ballots counted so far from all around the world, Obama leads by a 4-to-1 margin. Read more...

I was a little disappointed to read the other day that an American would likely not get the Nobel Prize for Literature this year.

"Europe is still the center of the literary world," not the United States, said Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize. He suggested that American writers were "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture."

He added: "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

Too bad. I thought Neil Young was sure to get it this time. Dang. Not even on the list. Read more...

Last week, John McCain and Newt Gingrich cited Ireland's low corporate tax rate of 11 and 12 percent, respectively, (it's actually 12.5 percent) as evidence that American business were overtaxed.

Well, you don't have to be Warren Buffett or Bono to know that there are some large differences between the U.S. and Irish economies and that what works for the Irish economy is certainly not what would work for the U.S. economy (though I wonder why they didn’t mention Ireland’s universal healthcare system, or free tuition at its universities). Read more...

I first heard the term “Islamofascism” on a summer visit to the U.S. six years ago. Though its source was dubious — talk radio of the most strident sort — the expression immediately rang true with me. Yes, fascism did seem a good way to characterize the extreme Islamic fundamentalism that appeared to be spreading through the Muslim world and beyond.

Before going further, it's worth noting that few expressions are more offensive to Muslims than “Islamofascism,” since it associates their religion with something that is patently evil. You have only to pair fascism with your preferred religious system to see why: “Christian fascism,” “Jewish fascism,” “Buddhist fascism” — we'd like to think all of these are contradictions in terms.

So I'm going to generalize the term and use “religious fascism” instead. Read more...