Most economists would say that the most crucial factors in economic growth are workforce, the quantity and quality of it, and capital. Often ignored is the subtle but crucially important role of culture, the way people in a society behave towards other members of the society. A case in point is the economic gap between the U.S. and Brazil: While both countries are endowed with abundant natural resources and filled with non-aboriginal people, Brazil has been unable to match the U.S. for all these

In the opening scene of George Romero’s 1968-horror classic “Night of the Living Dead,” two characters ― Barbra and Johnny ― drive along a convoluted rural road. They’re visiting a desolate cemetery where their father lays buried. He has been dead for many years ― in fact so long that Johnny doesn’t even remember what he looks like. Barbra and Johnny are both adults now, living in a big city, far away from the place where they grew up. They’ve been making the annual trip to their father’s grave

As the Korean government presses ahead with its plan to complete the selection of a new fighter jet model for the Air Force by October, questions are being raised about the wisdom of rushing the multibillion-dollar procurement project. Critics are urging the government to halt the process and leave it to the next government, noting that it is unwise for an outgoing government to try to handle an issue that would take so much time to sort out.The Defense Acquisition Program Administration said it

A special reform committee of the Unified Progressive Party has identified a set of core tasks the beleaguered party should carry out to shake off its pro-Pyongyang image and regain voter confidence.First of all, the committee urged the left-wing party to unequivocally state its stance on three North Korea-related issues ― Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programs, its human rights violations, and third-generation power succession ― because a political party should not avoid public scrutiny on its id

JP Morgan, BP, Walmart, and the multibillionaire Koch brothers have just launched a TV advertisement blasting President Obama for the national debt.Actually, I don’t know who’s behind the ad because there’s no way to know. And that’s a big problem.The ad was paid for by Crossroads GPS, the sister organization to the super PAC American Crossroads run by Republican political operative Karl Rove. But because Crossroads GPS is a nonprofit, tax-exempt “social welfare organization,” it can spend unlim

Remarkable advances in information and communication technology (ICT) are affecting people’s lives in a variety of ways. With ICT, exchange of ideas and information can transcend great geographical distances and help realize the notion of a global village. Yet the benefits of ICT do not stop at providing global interconnectivity. It can provide valuable tools to achieve inclusive, sustainable development at a national and regional level. Instances of ICT being employed in areas including distanc

YANGON ― Across the Middle East, and now in Burma (Myanmar), one of the great questions of contemporary global politics has resurfaced: How can countries move from a failing authoritarianism to some form of self-sustaining pluralism? Foreign ministers everywhere, in turn, face crucial policy questions: When a country launches such a political transition, when should other countries help, and what is the best way to do so?Happy transitions, to paraphrase Tolstoy, are all alike; but every unhappy

As economic indicators go, Lady Gaga isn’t a big market mover. The pop superstar’s decision to scrap a sold-out concert in Indonesia last month had the country in the news for all the wrong reasons. Threats and protests by Islamic hardliners made it easy for the performer ― who advocates gay rights and features sexually suggestive dance routines in concert ― to bypass Jakarta on her Asian tour. Such local sensitivities risk upending something bigger: the very direction of Southeast Asia’s larges

In 1764 an Italian nobleman named Cesare Beccaria published a short treatise entitled “On Crimes and Punishments.” In this text he argued convincingly for the abolition of the death penalty from modern society. As we approach the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of this text there is a worldwide movement for the abolition of the death penalty. South Korea has been a part of this movement since 1998 after Kim Dae-jung, a former death row inmate, was inaugurated as president

The United States has been has been waging a secret war on Iran since the beginning of President Barack Obama’s presidency.At least, it is war by the definition of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who told ABC News only three weeks ago that a major cyber attack on U.S. electrical or other infrastructure would be considered an act of war on a par with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.How would this be different from the technological attacks Obama has launched to debilitate and destroy Iran’s n

NEW YORK ― One of the world’s preeminent scientific publications, Nature, has just issued a scathing report card in advance of next week’s Rio+20 summit on sustainable development. The grades for implementation of the three great treaties signed at the first Rio Earth Summit in 1992 were as follows: Climate Change ― F; Biological Diversity ― F; and Combating Desertification ― F. Can humanity still avoid getting itself expelled?We have known for at least a generation that the world needs a course

Now that Greek voters have done the right thing, it’s Angela Merkel’s turn to tell the German electorate a few home truths about the euro. Sunday’s narrow victory for pro-bailout parties in Greece offers heartening proof that voters can reject comforting delusions ― such as the defeated Syriza party’s idea that Greece could renege on its bailout terms and stay in the euro ― provided that politicians take a clear stand to explain reality, warts and all. The election won no more than breathing spa

The English-teacher son of a Pulitzer Prize winner gave a much-ballyhooed commencement speech recently to students graduating from an American high school that one might categorize as privileged. David McCullough Jr., a teacher at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts and the son of the Pulitzer-winning historian David McCullough, began by comparing the “great forward-looking ceremony” to another kind of ceremony, weddings, before promptly dismissing both as overhyped. It was the first sign tha

SEOUL ― Last month, the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea agreed to begin negotiations later this year on a trilateral free-trade agreement. If the talks succeed, the global trade map will need to be redrawn. An FTA that encompasses, respectively, the world’s second, third, and 12th biggest economies (in purchasing power parity terms in 2011), with a population of 1.5 billion, would dwarf the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement, comprising the United States, Canada,

Even before NATO forces begin leaving Afghanistan, predator nations are pouring lavish praise, diplomatic agreements and buckets full of cash on Afghan leaders, trying to win access to the nation’s vast natural resources after Western troops leave.Chief among them are China, Iran and India ― nations that contributed nothing toward the military effort over the last decade but hope to reap benefits from it anyway.For example, in Beijing late last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Chinese Pre

PRAGUE ― The grim spectacle of young monks, nuns, and lay people setting themselves on fire to protest conditions in their homeland is a stark reminder of the gloom and despair that now prevails on the Tibetan Plateau. These acts of self-immolation ― at least 36 since March 2011 ― have been staged to protest the increasingly heavy controls that China’s government in Beijing has imposed on Buddhist religious practices. At the end of May, a self-immolation occurred for the first time, in Lhasa, th

ROME ― The romantic side of the Germanic soul has always loved the Italian volksgeist. Like Goethe, northerners have long sought to escape, if only on temporary vacations, an unforgiving ethos of prudence and discipline in search of the charming inefficiency and sensuality of Mediterranean climes and culture.The single European currency, combined with the burdens of the Bismarck-invented welfare state that faces demographic demise and competition from the rising rest around the globe, has put an

NEW YORK ― Western media describe my friend and colleague Chen Guangcheng as a blind activist who made a flight to freedom when China allowed him to journey from Beijing to the United States. What is essential about Chen is neither his blindness nor his family’s visit to the U.S., but the fact that he upholds a vision of universal human rights, a vision that can be fully realized only when, and if, China honors its promise to allow him one day to return home.China has a history of forcing schola

BEIRUT ― For a generation, Lebanese lived the nightmare of sectarian civil war. Now they are watching a similar vortex gather velocity in neighboring Syria, and many fear that Lebanon will be sucked into a conflict that nearly everyone dreads. Already, the Syrian strife is starting to bleed into Lebanon. The Akkar region in the northeast has become a transit point for medical and other relief supplies ― and the Syrian opposition hopes to use it as a staging ground for operations across the borde

NEW YORK ― It is now clear that the main cause of the euro crisis is the member states’ surrender of their right to print money to the European Central Bank. They did not understand just what that surrender entailed ― and neither did the European authorities.When the euro was introduced, regulators allowed banks to buy unlimited amounts of government bonds without setting aside any equity capital, and the ECB discounted all eurozone government bonds on equal terms. Commercial banks found it adva