President Obama is on a tour in Asia, visiting Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The trip reflects Obama’s “pivot” from Europe to Asia, as the US tries to figure out how to juggle its pre-existing military commitments with the rising power of China. China is not a stop on the trip, but China will be on the agenda of every meeting Obama has with Asian leaders. The US has a very difficult balancing act as it tries to accommodate Chinese power without alienating its allies in the region. Given that there are outstanding disputes between China and US allies, the task is extremely delicate. But the commitment Obama has shown to the allies is undoubtedly welcome by them; one would suppose that there are back channels to China going on at the same time to ameliorate Chinese apprehensions.
Uganda has passed draconian laws against homosexuality and liberal societies have expressed disapproval of those laws. The World Bank has gone so far as to withhold funds from Uganda for the presumed violations of human rights of gays and lesbians. The disagreement raises a very delicate matter: is the West’s disapproval of Uganda’s laws an expression of support for human rights, or is it an expression of cultural imperialism?
The New York Times conducted a study of incomes in the United States and the data suggest that the Middle Class in the US is shrinking. The US middle class was in many respects the key to US economic activity as well as its political stability. The decline of the incomes of the middle class have been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the incomes of the very wealthy in the US, indicating that the flow of money has been from the less to the more wealthy–not the direction that is celebrated in what is usually referred to as the American Dream. The decline of the middle class raises some serious questions about the economic policies that have been purused by both the Republican and Democratic Parties over the last 40 years.
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