Watching the impact of 6.5 billion individuals on 1 little planet
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and Happiness. - Thomas Jefferson
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Even on a quiet day, the sounds of tractor-trailers cannot be heard from Lake Red Rock.
The lake, located in Knoxville, just southwest of the Pella border, is the largest one in Iowa. DML Land Development plans to create a 250-acre, $700 million development off the lake’s southeastern shore that would include hotels, retail, a water park, a marina and, some hope, an indoor rain forest. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Political on 09/18/2006 06:33 pm by admin
Carlson is a loudmouth, but the volume of his rants seems mainly designed to keep the listener from focusing on the details, which are fraught with falsehoods to bolster his ludicrous political views.
source: http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff01102005.html
Tucker - You really show how far an un-educated, glory-seeking attitude that is short on information and long on wind can go in the United States of America!
If uncomfortable for some, perhaps because is to close to truth.
Posted in Political on 09/17/2006 06:42 pm by admin
In the past, those risking oversimplification tended to see these annual gatherings as battlegrounds between rich and poor countries, especially because of the anti-globalization protests like the one in Seattle in 1999. Protests have not been much in evidence here because of tight security; Singapore has banned demonstrations and refused visas to people it deemed to be troublemakers.
Representatives of 500 nongovernmental groups, many of them dissenting vehemently from policies at the World Bank and the Fund, have been holding quiet seminars on the fringes of the meetings calling attention to the problems of poverty, environmental degradation and diseases like AIDS. What these meetings show is that there are actually three groups of nations here: the rich, the poor and the “middle income” poor, led by China but including India and many of the countries that surround Singapore.
Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. Treasury secretary and former Harvard president, has also been on the fringes here, talking about how unprecedented it is that in the past few years, the “poor” countries of the world have ended up being the bankers of the United States. Summers estimates that “emerging markets” possess $2 trillion in “excess reserves,” or what is in excess of what is normally considered necessary to protect against trade and economic downturns.
In effect, the poor countries are helping Americans consume more and save less. If the situation were reversed, many economists say, the United States would be enlisting the IMF to demand austerity of the errant poor countries.
Like the Fund, the World Bank is also wrestling with the phenomenon of “middle income” poor countries and plans to issue a report Monday on the subject.
Swing in global order is apparent
By Steven R. Weisman — The New York Times Published: September 17, 2006http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/17/business/imf.php
