Culture in the Blender

The trial of Shell regarding the execution of Ogoni human rights and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa has started. This post will not be what one usually reads regarding multinational corporations (MNCs) and globalization and general evilness. Don’t get me wrong – what Shell has done is absolutely terrible. But having your life caught up with one and becoming a TCK because of one makes it difficult to just say that MNCs are evil and should behave. Some nuance and better understanding of why some MNCs misbehave is needed.

This morning when I switched on the BBC, the first thing I saw was an Al-Arabiya interview of Obama. The words coming out of his mouth – that he’s there to listen first, and that the United States all too often commands – were words I never thought I would hear in a hundred years [...]

It seems almost unfair that such a small part of the world population could vote in the US elections. Luckily, the Americans came through.
Sweden had a very bad prime minister for quite a while, up until the last election. But who cares if Sweden’s prime minister is an idiot other than the Swedes? No one. [...]

The IHT reports that WTO negotiators are suggesting that the WTO structure needs to change to accommodate the global south in order to simplify negotiations.
Is this the beginning of the re-balancing of economic power from the global north to the global south? Is this the moment?

Although I’ve witnessed first-hand the kinds of campaigns that Europeans that fear more integration can put on, it surprises me every time how strongly people can feel about avoiding it. Today’s article in the International Herald Tribune about the Irish voting ‘no’ to further integration was no less of a surprise than why so many [...]

Pollock and van Reken mention in their groundbreaking book that one of the unique properties of third culture kids is that we experience the world as three-dimensional, meaning that we can easily imagine that we are on the scene of a news report and understand the consequences, suffering or difficulty reported on.For me, the 四川 (Sìchuān) earthquake is [...]

I’m back in Hotelland. I’m at a conference and staying at the conference hotel, the San Fransisco Marriott. (In line with being a typical TCK, I am becoming highly educated by getting a PhD in materials science and engineering.) Last night, I sat in the bar on the top floor looking out at the San [...]

Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, is using her global, cosmopolitan outlook to both make the world a better place and money, says CNN Money. This woman is fantastic. Not only has she made it to the top as a woman of color/foreigner relative to the United States, she might get a US government post (Haha! [...]

I have heard a lot of statements to the extent that the future does not belong to America lately. I have to seriously ask myself whether that is true. If the future does not belong to America, then it may be in my best interest to leave after my Ph. D.. My task must therefore [...]

I’m reading my daily round of news on the Globalist and on BBC News. In light of what I read yesterday and the day before that, I can’t help but wonder what these backlashers make of news items like that the UK will help pay some of Africa’s debts, that the train fire that prompted [...]