By
3 May 2012 11:41
- Gillard Government bringing forward the Defence White Paper and foreshadowing cuts.
- Yesterday, regular Interpreter contributor Jim Molan argued in The Australian that the cuts were a big risk.
- Obama's Afghanistan announcement: his aim has always been to target al Qaeda, not rebuild Afghanistan.
- Neat graphic on where most of our consumer goods come from (about 10 big companies).
- And on a related topic: how McDonald's explains the modern world economy.
- The ten most influential political voices on China's Twitter equivalent, Weibo. (Thanks Danielle.)
- Lowy's Rory Medcalf gets a write-up on Walter Russell Mead's blog.
- The Global Mail on the American gas boom, which may put an end to Middle East oil dependency.
- Brad DeLong on the looming disaster that is Europe:
I feel as though I am sitting through a Charlie Kindleberger lecture about Europe in the early 1930s. Every country thinking that the global and continental level of aggregate demand was somebody else's business. Every country thinking that if only it could impress international investors with its creditworthiness that investment would flow to it and away from other countries. Nobody willing to act like a hegemon. And nobody upset at the absence of a hegemon willing to act responsibly.