Author / Jacob Finke
-
![]()
A Plea for Uyghurs
This October marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This October also marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation (from self-rule) of Xinjiang, now an autonomous region of China, by People’s Liberation Army soldiers. It’s no secret that China is on everybody’s minds—including fans of the NBA and South…
-
![]()
Big Brother Is Not Just Watching
The western world has paid much attention lately to the emergence of China’s social credit system, which evokes fears of Orwellian control and Big Brother—the Chinese state, in this case—watching and controlling its citizens. The system, which was announced in 2014 by China’s State Council, is an attempt (in the State Council’s words) to encourage…
-
![]()
St. Louis’s Lacking Investment Environment
Foreign direct investment, or FDI, can provide great growth opportunities for cities, providing a new influx of capital—and usually jobs—in regions that sometimes desperately need it. Two good examples of the benefits of FDI could come from the St. Louis region and Louisville, Kentucky. St. Louis is, according to the World Trade Center St. Louis,…
-
![]()
The Cultural Revolution, Forgotten
What does it mean when a body disappears? What causes the disappearance? Death comes to mind first, but that’s not quite right. When somebody dies, their body is usually memorialized via a grave, a cremation, some sort of memorial service, a crypt, or any other kind of memorial. Sometimes, however, those memories themselves disappear. What…
-
![]()
Uz-what-istan?
On September 2, 2016, Islam Karimov, President of Uzbekistan, suffered a brain hemorrhage and died. He was 78 when he died. Why does it matter that an aging executive of a largely-irrelevant Caucasus country died? Because it has never happened before. After serving two years as head of the Soviet Bloc’s Uzbek Communist Party, Karimov…
-
![]()
The Danforth Dialogues: A Review
On Saturday, October 8th in Graham Chapel, the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics presented the Danforth Dialogues, a directive that they have been working on since the center’s founding in 2010. The goal of the Dialogues, according to Marie Griffith, the Director of the Center, was to connect this presidential election cycle with the…
