Globalized: Are we more vulnerable?

The answer, of course, is yes.

This is a topic I studied extensively in college and, truth be told, actually frightens me. It's much more rare to hear anyone talk about the potential costs of globalization than the benefits -- those have been clear for decades. Only now are we starting to realize what it all means.

Read this and consider the cost...

The financial crisis began as turmoil in one small segment of the US mortgage market. Within months it had morphed into a global meltdown affecting almost everyone on earth.

"The speed at which these events unfolded was unprecedented," said the World Economic Forum's 2009 report on global risk.

"It has demonstrated just how tightly interconnected globalisation has made the world and its systems."

Jerusalem Post: Why does Obama smile at dictators?

This is an interesting read...

This is a tough one, in truth.

How, after all, can you be diplomatic with Hugo Chavez without appearing to kowtow to a dictator?

Obama's diplomacy is certainly a change from the Bush Administration's, but is it better?

I love this part:

And if Obama feels that he has to be the one to greet a man like Chavez, must it be with the kind of ear-to-ear grin that one might show girl scouts selling cookies? It must surely be disheartening for those who suffer oppression in countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Saudi Arabia to see the American president backslapping their oppressors when these victims have always looked up to the United States as their champions.