Some thoughts on lobbying and other interesting reads for today

• A Lobbyist Just for You – And two other solutions to counter corporate influence in Washington.
• Has the global economy slowed down? – Big macroeconomic changes happen slowly, sometimes they aren’t clearly visible until years later. We may currently be living through a structural change in the global economy as big as any since World War II without fully realising it. The world economy may be becoming less integrated, with one of the important drivers of globalisation swinging into reverse. This week the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis released its latest estimates of world trade. This widely-followed measure showed that world trade grew by 3.3% in 2014, that’s up from 2.7% in 2013 and 2.1% in 2012 but still well below the long term average of growth of 5%.

• What would happen if an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead detonated above midtown Manhattan?
• The war at home: how Russia is winning the battle for hearts and minds – Recent attention on the Kremlin has focussed on its revanchism abroad and its treatment of opposition at home. But its soft-power advance into Britain has gone almost unnoticed.
• The Robots Are Coming – It says a lot about the current moment that as we stand facing a future which might resemble either a hyper-capitalist dystopia or a socialist paradise, the second option doesn’t get a mention.
• The Girl from Karak – A Pakistani woman’s frustrated quest for justice
• Benjamin Netanyahu’s long history of crying wolf about Iran’s nuclear weapons – The Israeli Prime Minister is expected to warn the U.S. Congress an Iranian bomb is imminent — just as he warned in 1992, 1995, 2002, 2009, and 2012.