This is "the blog," brought to you by The Utopian magazine.
On "the blog" we will feature regularly updated content - including opinion pieces, essays, music, video and more - by regular contributors to The Utopian magazine.
To explore our main site, go to www.the-utopian.org.
By Juan Gabriel Vásquez; translated by Jeremy Osner.
__
After Salman Rushdie cancelled his trip to the Jaipur Literary Festival due to apparent death threats, a writer named Hari Kunzru downloaded passages of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which is banned in India, and read them in public at the festival. While many disagreed with his actions, he did something important: he kept the bigots from winning.
__
By Minxin Pei
__
Nixon himself was probably not bothered by the nature of the Chinese regime four decades ago. The fact that the question must be addressed now attests to China’s astonishing progress since then. But it also shows that China’s long march toward global integration remains unfinished.
By Steve Tsang
__
A rising great power like China taking on a proactive global role is, in principle, a positive development. But the world will not be a better place if China’s newfound assertiveness is focused – or, just as importantly, is perceived to be focused – almost exclusively on helping autocrats to stay in power through brutal repression of their citizens.
By Jacob Zuma and Tarja Halonen
__
The world is on an unsustainable path, and must urgently chart a new course forward, one that brings equity and environmental concerns into the economic mainstream. To do so, we must put sustainable development into practice now, not in spite of the economic crisis, but because of it.
By Schlomo Ben-Ami
__
The West faces serious challenges – as it always has. But the values of human freedom and dignity that drive Western civilization remain the dream of the vast majority of humanity.
By Javier Solana
__
Ominously, the same arguments that turned the 1929 financial crisis into the Great Depression are being used today in favor of austerity at all costs. We cannot allow history to repeat itself.
By Andrés Velasco
__
Latin America’s challenge is to transform its huge natural-resource wealth into the kind of wealth that does not run out, because it is constantly enlarged by human creativity. The big question is how quickly its anti-innovation culture can change.
By Alex Gourevitch and Chris Bickerton
__
In an earlier post, we commented on the difficulty movements such as Occupy Wall Street or Indignados were having in influencing the course of electoral politics. That might all be changing.
By Jeffrey Frankel
__
Emerging markets have performed amazingly well over the last seven years. As 2012 begins, however, investors are wondering if emerging markets may be due for a correction, triggered by a new wave of “risk off” behavior.
By Robert Skidelsky
__
As with “the specter of Communism” that haunted Europe in Karl Marx’s famous manifesto, so today “[a]ll the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise” the specter of national debt. But statesmen who aim to liquidate the debt should recall another famous specter – the specter of revolution.
