ABC News.com interview on Tea Party, Globalist excerpt on Greenland

My feature in the current issue of Washington Monthly argues that the Tea Party is doomed to failure in large swaths of the country, due to the underlying regional values I've identified in American Nations. Since the piece appeared in mid-October (the Monthly is no longer monthly), various polls have showed declining support for the movement, which experienced setbacks in November's off-year election.

ABC News interviewed me yesterday for their digital story on these developments -- "Is the Party Over?" -- which you can read here.

Meanwhile, The Globalist -- the online magazine on global culture, politics, and economics -- published an excerpt today from the book's epilogue describing the (re)emergence of what I call First Nation, with special focus on Greenland, a nearly-independent nation I reported from in 2007.

A couple of scheduling notes: I'll be doing a live webinar at Global Post on Tuesday mid-day, a lecture in Damariscotta, Maine on Thursday morning, and a signing in Boothbay Harbor on the evening of Dec. 21. Perhaps will see some of you at one of these events.

Canada's troubled nuclear plant rehab

If the world is to increase its reliance on nuclear power, finding a way to refurbish the world's older reactors is extremely important. But, as the people of the Canadian province of New Brunswick have found, manufacturer refurbishments don't always go as planned.

As you can read in my piece that just posted at Global Post, delays at the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant have cost the people of New Brunswick hundreds of millions of dollars, helping prompt provincial leaders to try to sell the plant and the public utility that owns it to escape a sea of debt. Unfortunately, the nuclear rehab problems also contributed to the collapse of that deal -- and probably to the federal government's decision to sell some or all of its stake in Canadian nuclear reactor vendor Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the crown corporation responsible for the delays.

[Update, 7/8/2010: An indication of AECL's standing in New Brunswick: the province just announced it is exploring the building of a second reactor at Lepreau with one of AECL's foreign competitors.]

Has European "Socialism" helped in a crisis?

The last of my stories from my recent trip to Europe just posted over at Global Post. This explores whether the European model -- a social democratic system with universal health care, a more rigid labor market, and higher taxes -- proved more resilient in coping with the shock of the Great Recession than the American "free market" alternative.

The answer, as one might expect, is nuanced. The piece, filed from Austria with input from across western Europe, can be read by subscribers to the Post's Passport service. If you don't get Passport but care about foreign news, consider trying it. Where else are you going to find a prominent Czech economist describing the situation by use of metaphors from Lord of the Rings?

Europe watches as Slovakia implements anti-Hungarian language law

Another story from my recent trip to East-Central Europe is up today over at Global Post, this one on Slovakia's draconian language law.

The country's Hungarian minority is upset because, read strictly, it criminalizes the use of any language other than Slovak in a wide range of public circumstances. The government says they're overreacting, but the government also includes a far-right party whose leader calls the country's Hungarian citizens a "cancer" which must be wiped off the national map.

Slovakia's an E.U. state, right? So what can the union do about it? As you'll read in the piece, not much. (Like most of my Global Post stories, this appears in their subscription Passport service, so you'll need to login to read it. If you care about international news, however, it's well worth the price.)

While we're in the neighborhood, Hungary's own extremist party isn't doing much to calm tensions between the two countries and is poised to enter the Parliament after April 11 elections. Jobbik, which has its own jackbooted paramilitary, has been trying to charm the foreign press corps of late, hoping to receive sympathetic coverage of their proposals to, among other things, revisit the peace settlement that ended World War I and created Slovakia. I'm on their mailing list and I listen to what they have to say: it's not charming.

Map: Hungarian minority in Slovakia (majority areas in red), Courtesy Nationalia.

Has Eastern Europe's crisis peaked?

My old stomping ground in (what we children of the Cold War called) Eastern Europe has been hard hit by the Great Recession. So has the region's crisis peaked? That's the topic of my first piece from my recent trip to the region, which posted at Global Post today.

The story is for the Post's Passport section, which means they'd like you to subscribe, but it's well worth the bother. Remember all those newspapers that cut their foreign bureaus? A lot of their veteran writers file copy for Global Post these days.

More from Europe coming up....