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| Author: | April Rabkin |
|---|
July 2, 2008
Last week, amid continuing calls from activists in Europe and the United States to boycott the Olympics to protest China’s record on human rights, came a rare rebuke from the International Olympic Committee. The committee expressed disappointment with a speech in which Tibet’s Communist Party leader used the occasion of an Olympic torch ceremony to denounce the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
What the committee and the rest of the world don’t realize is how little China cares what they think. Here in Beijing, the Olympic Games are primarily for domestic consumption, justifying the government’s new global power to its own people.
My neighbor’s 12-year-old son has seen half a dozen movies starring the five balloon-headed Olympic mascots: Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and Nini. He has been reminded of the Olympics every day at school and on the street by billboards depicting the masses as a gray ocean converging like a wave to lift up a red-uniformed basketball player making a layup. He listens to Olympic tunes — one of which sounds like a drill sergeant singing along to carousel music.
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Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
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