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Welcome to this month's issue of The Global Dispatches.
We have Sergii Leshchenko, Deputy-Editor-in-Chief of Ukrainska Pravda on Ukraine's new President Petro Poroshenko, economists ClaudioBorio and Piti Disyatat on secular stagnation and debt, Jaffar Al-Rikabi in Baghdad waiting for the arrival if the ISIS, Christopher Klein on John L. Sullivan, the Irish-American heavy-weight boxing champion who in 1883, went on a tour of the USA offering a prize to any person who could last four rounds with him in the ring. A true story of how the railroads and the popular press made Sullivan into America’s first sports superstar. And much more....
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 | "It is easy to confuse sophistication with civilisation. Sophistication can be a soulless exercise in superiority rather than an appreciation of cultivated taste for its life-enhancing qualities." The ability of art to transcend context, to become Art, cannot be a matter of chance. Nor can it can be simply a question of personal taste. There must be rules. |
 | President Petro Poroshenko is not an ideal Western-type politician, and certainly not the answer to Maidan's dreams. But could he be the answer to Ukraine’s many problems? Society’s main demand is the eradication of corruption, if not at the very top, then on the lower level that citizens have to deal with, every day of their lives. |
 | After two months in the global spotlight, the insurgency in northern Nigeria is fast turning into a national political crisis. President Jonathan has not convinced his own people that the government has a strategy to rescue the Chibok girls or contain, let alone defeat, Boko Haram. |
 | Real interest rates have fallen to historic lows, and some economists are concerned that an era of secular stagnation has begun. |
 | The remarkable resurgence of Sunni-fundamentalist violence in Iraq has taken the west by surprise, yet it is a symptom of the long-evident inability of the Shia-led government there to exercise authority impartially. |
 | One thing this is definitely not about: the wishes of the Iraqi people. Local Sunni citizens who are the alleged beneficiaries of these rebels are not polled – they are merely brainwashed, bribed, expelled, beaten, or killed. |
 | In 1883, the Irish-American heavy-weight boxing champion John L. Sullivan went on a tour of the USA offering a prize to any person who could last four rounds with him in the ring. A true story of how the railroads and the popular press made Sullivan into America’s first sports superstar. |
 | Like Big Tobacco, Big Energy targets the developing world for future profits. The fossil fuel companies—producers of oil, coal, and natural gas—are similarly expanding their operations in low- and middle-income countries where ensuring the growth of energy supplies is considered more critical than preventing climate catastrophe. |
 | Cautious conciliatory overtures between Riyadh and Tehran indicate that the realities of the regional power balance might outweigh long-standing hostilities and differences on political and religious ideologies. |
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