Preeti Aroon
"Cubans now can enjoy cellphones, DVDs ... legally," by Sara Miller Llana of the Christian Science Monitor. Cubans can now own cellphones and DVD players, as well as stay at hotels once limited to foreign tourists, thanks to Raúl Castro. But given that the average Cuban's monthly salary is $17, the new president's changes may be more politically symbolic than economically liberating.
Blake Hounshell
"Caution: NAFTA at Work," in Miller-McCune. Princeton's Douglas Massey argues that only by massively deepening its economic integration with Mexico can the United States solve its illegal-immigration problem. (Hat tip: Matt Yglesias)
Joshua Keating
"After America: Is the West Being Overtaken by the Rest," by Ian Buruma in the New Yorker. Buruma reviews the "grand thesis" of the West's decline and Asia's rise as it appears in new books by Fareed Zakaria, Robert Kagan, and Bill Emmott. He concludes that, even in the new Asian order, the U.S. will continue to play an indespensible role. "Democracy would be a far more persuasive model than Chinese or Russian autocracy," he cautions, "if some of its main proponents were less eager to believe that the open society comes out of the barrel of a gun."
Prerna Mankad
"
The technology that will save humanity," at Salon.com. Joseph Romm lauds concentrated solar power (CSP), also known as solar electric thermal, as the technology closest to providing a "silver bullet for global warming." Thanks to government incentives and significant investment, CSP is set to generate power for hundreds of thousands of households and is at the heart of a number of the
world's largest solar-energy projects.
Carolyn O'Hara
"The New E-spionage Threat" in BusinessWeek. In a recent interview with FP, former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke describes Chinese hacks on U.S. government and defense industry computers as "massive espionage." BW's cover story this week examines the growing threat.
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