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Russophobia lives

Matt SteinglassJune 7, 2009 17:18
Probably the most tense panel discussion of the current International Press Institute conference came this afternoon, with former Soviet and Russian ambassador to the U.K. Anatoly Adamishin, The Economist's Russia and Eastern Europe correspondent Edward Lucas, and Indian international affairs scholar Brahma Chellaney discussing the question of whether a "new Cold War" was in the cards between Russia and the West.

Democracy vs. technocracy in Washington and Beijing

Matt SteinglassJune 4, 2009 23:17
I'm about to travel to Helsinki to discuss freedom of the press with a couple of excellent and eminent Chinese journalists. So I've been thinking a lot about the question of progress towards democracy in East Asia and whether or not it's really happening, or whether it's actually something else that's happening. And on this anniversary of the crushing of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen 20 years ago, it seems apt to talk about what's happening with Medicare.

All-electric, all-Texas

Matt SteinglassJune 21, 2009 11:04Updated May 30, 2010 12:57
HANOI — It’s hard to find a place in Hanoi where you don’t hear motorbikes. The city has 1.8 million of the gasoline-powered beasts, roughly one for every two inhabitants. They are the dominant mode of transit, and the source of most of the city’s caustic air pollution. A 2006 study found pedestrians in downtown Hanoi breathe particulate matter levels of almost 500 parts per million, ten times higher than WHO guidelines. But Christian Okonsky, an engineer from Austin, Texas, has a device that could change all that.

Agent Orange lawsuits: one of these things is not like the others

Matt SteinglassMay 26, 2009 23:41
  In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, former State Department legal adviser John Bellinger pens an op-ed arguing that U.S. courts are being improperly used as a venue for disputes that have nothing to do with the U.S., under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789. Bellinger supplies a few examples; see you if you can spot the one that seems strikingly out of place: 

North Korea nuclear test alarms diplomats

Matt SteinglassMay 26, 2009 01:11
Forty-five chief diplomats from all over Europe and Asia had just gathered in Hanoi for the ASEM Foreign Ministers' Meeting on Monday morning when the news came through that North Korea had detonated its second nuclear bomb.

"A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist"?

Matt SteinglassMay 19, 2009 01:54
Vietnam deported an Australian man of Vietnamese ethnicity on Monday on charges of "terrorism." What the Vietnamese meant by this was that Nguyen Van Be, 57, is a member of the Viet Tan Party, a Vietnamese exile group with chapters in the U.S., Australia, France and elsewhere that agitates for a transition from single-party Communist rule in Vietnam to a multi-party democratic system.

VietNamNet: Help wanted?

VietNamNetMay 13, 2009 09:30Updated May 30, 2010 12:55
(Editor's note: This story comes from our partner, VietNamNet) HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — The Employment Service Centre, a unit of the HCM City Export Processing Zones Authority (HEPZA) has received big orders from employers who need to hire thousands of workers.

Footloose in Hanoi

Matt SteinglassMay 9, 2009 13:21Updated May 30, 2010 12:53
HANOI — On Bui Thi Xuan street in Hanoi, the karaoke bars start to fill up around 9 p.m. Crowds of 20-somethings — the boys in business clothes, girls in satin shirts, tight jeans and high heels — hop off of motorbikes and sashay in. From the rooms inside comes the muffled sound of syrupy Vietnamese pop, and the drone of off-key voices muffled by thick reverb. But it’s not a good idea to try dancing in one of the city's thumping karaoke bars. The Vietnamese government is proposing to ban it.

Hanoi torture tour

Matt SteinglassApril 22, 2009 11:56
The Army Cinema sits towards the northern end of Ly Nam De street, a narrow leafy avenue that marks the eastern edge of Hanoi's formerly walled Citadel, headquarters of the People's Army of Vietnam. The cinema is an oblong purplish building with a marquee that generally displays second-run Hollywood movies — "Quantum of Solace," "Mamma Mia" — and a disheveled outdoor coffee bar splaying out of its right side. Adjacent to the coffee bar, a parking lot gives onto several older, yellow-ochre buildings that occupy the interior of the city block.
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