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Shalina O

Is China's rare earth power play really such a big deal? - 1 views

oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com/...er_play_really_such_a_big_deal

China rare earth metal monopoly

shared by Shalina O on 22 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Shalina O on 22 Oct 10
     
    This article is related to one that Curtis posted. Basically, China has a monopoly over "rare earth metals" which are vital for " wind turbines, advanced batteries, disc drives, flat-screen TVs, smart bombs," etc. The point being: it would be very bad if the rest of the world was cut off from these materials, especially for green-energy. Currently there is worry that China will become the new Saudi Arabia, except with rare earth metals instead of oil. However, we should carefully examine the facts before we brand China as the big bad materials-hog. There are some very interesting points on multiple sides of this debate in the article.
  • Heather Anderson on 22 Oct 10
     
    So apparently my post on Jack's article about the new 5-year plans was a little wrong. China plans to boost consumerism as well as seriously up their green industries. Which is good for them, but bad for the rest of the world. It is a little bit sobering to think about how green technologies do rely on mining - even green things still have negative environmental impacts. I guess almost everything does; maybe the least environmental impact would come from switching back to pre-industrial era technology, but that's awfully inconvenient. People have developed these technologies because they work really well and/or make our lives so much easier and more comfortable.
Jasper Arasteh

IMF urges Europe to act on debt crisis - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...to-act-decisively-on-debt.html

debt crisis

shared by Jasper Arasteh on 15 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Jasper Arasteh on 15 Oct 12
     
    In Tokyo the IMF called on the US and Europe to try and resolve their debt crisis. The IMF believes that debt in richer western countries is actually bad for developing countries and damages the world economy as a whole. It is also mentioned that Asia is the most dynamic region right now economically and that with the west falling behind Asia can't be expected to pull the economy. This addresses the debt crisis in all of the west not just greece and spain.
  • Kay Bradley on 15 Oct 12
     
    Very interesting article, Jasper, why would "The IMF believes that debt in richer western countries is actually bad for developing countries and damages the world economy as a whole?" I hope we get to discuss this in class
Kay Bradley

The Story of Catherine's iPod on Vimeo - 3 views

www.vimeo.com/17384632

shared by Kay Bradley on 03 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 03 Dec 10
     
    "The Story of Catherine's iPod"
  • ...10 more comments...
  • Curtis Serrano on 03 Dec 10
     
    I had heard about the conditions at foxconn, but I was surprised about how bad conditions are for the extraction of raw materials like tungsten.
  • Matthew Schweitzer on 03 Dec 10
     
    I would say that I was equally shocked to learn that the conditions for workers mining the metals put into the our Ipods; as I discovered while researching about flags, the products that have become quintessential parts of our consumer society harm those in other, less powerful countries.
  • Samantha Bishop on 05 Dec 10
     
    I was very surprised to find out about the rape attacks that are happening in congo in connection to the mines. The fact that our materials are coming from the places, I feel that in some way we are supporting these actions. These conditions are terrible and something needs to be done to improve them, but I don't see anyone working on this.
  • Harrison Lee on 05 Dec 10
     
    I had no idea that the minerals needed for Ipods were mined in the Congo, and I was appalled at the militarization of the area. This just shows how sensitive the corporations are about protecting their businesses. This ties in to the fact that the corporations make it impossible to accurately trace the materials to its exact source in the Congo. I am also wondering if mining has negative health impacts on the workers and to the manufacturers in China.
  • Arshia Surti on 05 Dec 10
     
    In response to Catherine's essential question, often we feel powerless to stop such things. A few people boycotting Apple products isn't going to change anything. Education, really, is the best way to combat the terrible effects our consumer economy has on the world. If enough people are made aware of the conditions and care enough to give a voice to those workers in China and the Congo, then only will change occur.
  • Amara Plaza-Jennings on 06 Dec 10
     
    What really struck me after watching Catherine's video was the inescapability of these problems. I may not need an Ipod, but to get by in school I certainly need to use a computer. And even if this computer isn't made by Apple, the same problems still apply. I agree with Arshia that education is the best way to try to eliminate terrbile practices such as those that happen in the "rape capitol." Many people at the diversity conference I just attented agreed that education was the best way to solve those problems as well.
  • Nick Petru on 06 Dec 10
     
    I had absolutely no idea conditions for the "3 t's" mining was so awful and that the congo was such a hostile environment for women. This part of the video really puts an emphasis on how different our worlds are. I really like Arshia's point- I definitely agree- education is the key.
  • larkin smith on 06 Dec 10
     
    It was disturbing to learn that all the mines in Congo are militarized. Also, the crazy stickness of the factory in China struck me as disturbing.
  • anonymous on 06 Dec 10
     
    I, too, agree with Arshia on using education to help solve this problem and one's similar. Reading all the comments to this video, it's obvious that most of us had no idea of the brutal rape in the congo-- most of us probably also didn't know the details of China's brutal labor conditions before taking this class. It's scary to think that people are so obsessed about getting the newest gadget, but generally don't know about all the horrible practices that go into making it.
  • Gregory Freiberg on 06 Dec 10
     
    I was pretty shocked to hear about the origins of what you called the "Three T's." Like you, until you read the article in the Huffington post, i had no idea about where the IPod came from (i just assumbed "assembeled in china") but really, also like the Prius, much more of the world is involved. Great Video!
  • Heather Anderson on 07 Dec 10
     
    The disconnect here is so weird. It begins with people digging in the mountainside with sticks, and ends with a tiny, sleek, lightweight computer that makes images flick past at the swipe of your finger and makes music. It's like magic, except instead of the instead of using "toe of newt and eye of frog" the world is making these products by allowing people to be greatly mistreated. Beyond educating people, as Arshia and Alison said, it seems we must either: find other materials to make electronics out of (although that doesn't strike me as very likely?) or pressure companies (who have the money and the leverage) to enforce better regulation. To follow up on Catherine's video, I put three t's into google and got an article about an investigation into the mining in the Congo (maybe Catherine has already seen this): http://africarising2010.blogspot.com/2009/11/tracing-3-ts-from-congo.html. It says: "Even though they found that it is relatively easy to determine the source of minerals based on different coloration and texture based on the source mine, there is insufficient regulation to make this work....Export companies are required to register with the government, but their method of determining the source of minerals they buy is to merely ask the seller whether their goods are from conflict mines. There is no system of confirming what the seller says."
  • Rebecca Heller on 07 Dec 10
     
    This presentation kept shocking me. I was surprised to hear that basic parts of the iPod (the Three Ts) originate in the Congo rather than China. I was then shocked (and horrified) by the rape statistics. I had heard the statistics before, but not in relation to the acquisition of the Three Ts and production of products that we use. The story about the woman whose brother was ordered to rape her and then stabbed to death when he refused was particularly awful. I was also In summary, I was appalled at all the crimes that took place in the Congo- before the Three Ts even got to the factories in China that Catherine talked about. When Catherine started talking about the factories in China, I was again shocked at the working conditions- 100 workers sleeping to a room and clothes locked in a bucket with no visitors allowed (to protect the secrecy of Apple's product plans) while workers worked 15 hour days. The suicide reports from the FoxCon (spelling) factories were also shocking, as was the revelation that workers make just half of what they did in the 1800s. It was sad that the factory earns only $4 per iPod sold- while Apple earns $80. This presentation was very thought provoking- I had never assumed that Apple would be one of the "bad" companies with very questionable labor and humanitarian practices (a la Wal-Mart). Thanks for bringing it up, Catherine. I'm now thinking about it in a whole new light.
smowat

Beijing Issues Red Alert Over Air Pollution for the First Time - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ijing-pollution-red-alert.html

shared by smowat on 08 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • smowat on 08 Dec 15
     
    "BEIJING - Officials in Beijing declared on Monday that the thick smog blanketing the city was bad enough to require a red alert, the first time they had raised the alarm to its highest level since an emergency air-pollution response system was announced in 2013. "
Kay Bradley

Katharine Hayhoe - "Our future is still in our hands" | The On Being Project - The On B... - 0 views

onbeing.org/...r-future-is-still-in-our-hands

climate climate change environment faith action

shared by Kay Bradley on 15 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • I was talking with a pastor just recently, and he asked me very genuinely, he said, “How do I talk to people about climate change, when the only solutions that we are told that there are to climate change is to stop eating meat” — which is a very big deal in Texas, with those barbecues, it really is. It’s an identity issue. I’m not saying this facetiously; it is literally an identity issue — “and stop driving trucks, also an identity issue, stop traveling, stop having children, which is also an identity issue — basically, stop all these things that actually we often see as defining who we are?” And he said, “How am I supposed to tell people that we’re supposed to do this, when it’s as if I’m telling them, you know, we have to just” — and I think these were my words — “return to the Stone Age, unplug everything, and all the solutions are bad”?
  • And sadly, the way our human psychology is built, psychologists have shown that we, as humans, are much more averse to losing what we have than gaining something new.
  • I think there are some very smart people who have put those pieces together and deliberately communicated a message to us that we’re going to lose all we hold dear, instead of messaging the truth, which is, don’t you want to be more energy independent, rather than less? Don’t you want to have a car that is faster, that you never have to go to the gas station again — especially in the days of COVID — than the one that you have today, and that doesn’t produce air pollution that’s responsible for almost 9 million deaths a year? Don’t you want to grow food in a way that is healthy and good for the soil and for people and for the animals, too? Don’t you want to invest in nature, so it can protect us by purifying our air and our water and protecting our coastlines and providing habitat for animals and preventing zoonosis? When we actually start talking about real solutions  — and that’s the Yale survey that you referred to that I talk about in the book — when we ask people about real solutions, everybody’s on board. Everybody says, heck yes, I would love to do that. And so that is where we can directly address the fear, head-on.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • what you’ve been saying. “What we need to fix this thing is rational hope.” How do you instill rational hope? And I mean, how do you do that, right, when you’re out there?
  • And then the second thing is recognizing that we are already moving towards a better future. Now, it might not seem like that, because all the headlines are full of doom and gloom and bad news. But when we start to look for hopeful news — and sadly, we have to go out and look for it, because if you just go — I did an experiment the other day, where I went to the website of a major news organization, and I just paged down through 35 headlines. And about seven or eight were very neutral; like, they didn’t evoke any emotion in me. They were just neutral, factual headlines. And every single other headline was negative — every one. So when we go and we look, though, for the hopeful stories of people who are making a difference, that imbues us with a sense of efficacy, that, wow, there’s somebody over there who’s doing something.
  • And you’re talking about what I refer to as a muscular hope.
  • Nobody in Texas knows that we have the biggest army base by land area, in the U.S., Fort Hood, that is 43 percent powered by clean energy.
  • Nobody knows that the Dallas Fort Worth airport was the first large carbon-neutral airport in North America.
  • Nobody knows that the city of Houston, which is home to, of course, most of the headquarters of many large, multinational oil and gas corporations, that the city of Houston has — is going to be meeting its Paris targets, in terms of reducing its carbon emissions.
  • we think of climate action as a giant boulder sitting at the bottom of an incredibly steep hill, and it’s only got a few hands on it. It’s got, you know, Al Gore’s hands are on it, and maybe Jane Goodall, and maybe a couple other hands, but nobody else. And so there’s just no way we’re going to make it up that hill. Like, just forget it. Why even waste my time? That’s sort of mentally how we think.
  • But the reality is, when we start to look around and see that 90 percent of new energy installed last year, during COVID, was clean energy, and we start to see that cities all over the world are taking action on climate change, and big businesses, like Microsoft and Apple and AT&T — you know, they’re building the biggest solar farm in the U.S., outside of Dallas, to supply major corporations with clean energy. So really, that giant boulder, it is already at the top of the hill, and it’s already rolling down the hill in the right direction, and it already has millions of hands on it. It just doesn’t have enough to get it going faster. And when we think, well, maybe I could add my hand to that, because I could get it going just a little bit faster, that’s totally different than if we think it’s at the bottom of the hill, not budging even an inch. So I find tremendous hope from that.
  • Texas, if Texas were its own country, it would be the seventh-most prolific emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, it’s the number one emitter in the U.S. — and Texas leads the nation in wind generation, for example.
  • that, honestly, and here’s the crazy thing. When you look at how the world has changed before — and it has changed. I mean, you know, 200 years ago it was somehow completely socially acceptable to have other human beings in slavery. And 150 years ago, it was entirely acceptable to say that women’s brains were too small and too fragile to be educated, because they would overheat.
  • It is the verse in Timothy where it talks about fear, where it says, “God has not given you a spirit of fear.”
  • that verse goes on to say, is a spirit of power, which is kind of an old-fashioned word, but in modern parlance it means to be empowered; to be able to act.
  • Or “agency.”
  • Yes, agency. Exactly — a spirit of agency. I like that.
  • And that’s the opposite of being paralyzed by fear. And we also have a spirit of love, which means we can be thinking of and considering others, not just ourselves and our own needs
  • So caring about this issue and acting on it is not only consistent with who we are, but it enables us to more genuinely express what we truly care about
  • It’s about acknowledging that, to care about climate change, you only have to be one thing, and that one thing is a human, living on planet Earth.
  • But talk about why it matters to you. Talk about how you both ski, or you’re both parents and you’re worried about your kids and the playground being too hot for them, or the fact that you fish and you’ve noticed that the fish populations are changing, or the fact that your basement got flooded last time it rained. Talk about something that matters to you and to the person that you’re talking with, and then do your research, to learn about what real climate solutions look like, and share that information with people.
  • do you know what our city is doing? Find out what your city’s doing. Tell people. Do you know what your state’s doing? Do you know what your church is doing? And if you don’t know, ask, and then if they’re not doing anything, say, hey, here are some things that you could be doing. And I even have a list on my website, because people often ask me that. So I’ve got a list of, you know, what could your church do, what can you do at school — all of these different things you can do.
  • hope begins with fear or despair or anxiety, it begins, as the bible says in the Book of Romans, it begins with suffering. And that suffering produces perseverance, and that perseverance produces character, and the character produces hope
  • in the middle of the century, it was somehow acceptable to say that, depending on the color of your skin, you could or couldn’t enter certain buildings or sit in a place on the bus. So the world has absolutely changed before, and how did it change? It was when ordinary people of no particular wealth or fame decided that the world could and should be different, and they decided to not only take personal action, but to use their voices to talk about why it mattered, what could be done, and to advocate for change in every sphere in which they were.
  • Kay Bradley on 15 Nov 21
     
    "Well, we live, today, in a country, the United States, that is more politically polarized than it's been in either of our lifetimes, ever. And that just seems to be getting worse by the day." What Hayhoe and others are pointing to is another way of communicating about climate change.
Kay Bradley

Europe's Energy Crisis Is Sending Leaders to Africa for Help - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...europe-africa-natural-gas.html

gas energy climate change

shared by Kay Bradley on 27 Oct 22 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 27 Oct 22
     
    Good idea? Bad Idea?
Thomas Peterson

Obama's New Majority - 1 views

www.theamericanconservative.com/...obamas-new-majority

Conservative Pat Buchanan Coalition

shared by Thomas Peterson on 17 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Thomas Peterson on 17 Jan 13
     
    I was surprised by how measured this article was and how much I agreed with the analysis expressed in it, given that it was written by Pat Buchanan, whose views I find reprehensible. He offers a smart and historically conscious analysis of the political moves Obama is making right now, moves he believes might allow the president to create a Democratic coalition that will outlast his tenure. Buchanan says that Obama presented the Fiscal Cliff negotiations in such a way as to divide the Republicans and make them look bad whatever they did, and that he has engineered similarly divisive and damaging strategies for the upcoming fights over the Chuck Hagel nomination, gun control, and the debt ceiling.
aleishaallen

The US has put down its cards and walked away from Syria - CNN.com - 3 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

syria at risk US pulls out Russia Assad

shared by aleishaallen on 09 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • aleishaallen on 09 Oct 16
     
    The US has decided to pull support for Syria. They are not able to come to agreements with Russia, and after both the US and Russia have dropped bombs that have killed civilians, the ceasefire is "at risk". It is possible that with this the war will be over sooner rather than later with the rebels losing, but it will not be a peaceful end.
  • gtgomes17 on 10 Oct 16
     
    I found it interesting how both sides believe the other is "the bad guy" in this situation: US thinks Russia is helping Syrians attack civilians, and Russia is upset that the US 'accidentally' dropped a bomb. I hope that the ceasefire will hold out and that the war will be over soon. I wonder if there is something that can be done for the end to have a chance of being peaceful.
Brian Call

Brutality of Syrian Rebels Posing Dilemma in West - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...bels-pose-dilemma-in-west.html

syria rebels execution nytimes

shared by Brian Call on 05 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Brian Call on 05 Sep 13
     
    There is no good side or bad side. Views differ on how many of the rebels are extremists. Complicates questions about what course of action would be best.
quinnlewis

China's economy is stumbling, but by how much? - BBC News - 5 views

www.bbc.com/...business-34340936

shared by quinnlewis on 28 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • quinnlewis on 28 Sep 15
     
    After the devaluing of the Chinese currency we now see exactly how much the Chinese economy has faltered- and who this effects.
  • ...3 more comments...
  • topiarey on 29 Sep 15
     
    Definitely really interesting, article could likely make clearer predictions as to what would happen if China's economy went into a recession
  • anishakaul on 29 Sep 15
     
    The idea that their economy's slowed growth is considered a positive thing and is considered "more stable" by the IMF is very interesting and not exactly something people say about many economies. While I had not considered it before, it is entirely logical that China should (almost intentionally) slow down in preparation for the work force to shrink and avoid a financial crash.
  • jacquelinec56 on 29 Sep 15
     
    I think that the article bring up the interesting point that even if China enters a recession, it may not be a bad event especially if the growth is more stable.
  • samoshay on 29 Sep 15
     
    I think the boom that was attributed to China's huge population has reached its near endpoint; the marginal output from each new worker is now so low (not contributing much) or negative (reducing productivity) that China's huge historic growth rate can only be further sustained by greater education and an increase in the human capital aspect.
  • Kako Ito on 29 Sep 15
     
    It's interesting to look at China as a case study of a country of super rapid development and growth that has the ability to affect the global economy. The fact that China's growth is slowing down and stabilizing means that it is catching up to its earlier developed counterparts. Having read the cap and trade article first, I wonder how the policies of that sector (and the sector itself) will affect China's overall economy and to a more general extent the global economy. Will China's become like Germany? Who can say.
Brian Call

Understanding India - 1 views

India is a very diverse country. There are over 400 spoken languages of which 20 are official languages used in parliament. There is a also huge religious and ethnic diversity in India. The majorit...

started by Brian Call on 25 Oct 13 no follow-up yet
olivialum

India and Pakistan's Dialogue of the Deaf - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...stan-dialogue-of-the-deaf.html

shared by olivialum on 11 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • They hurled accusations at each other about how the other side doesn’t really know how to talk,
  • India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring terrorism in India. Pakistan accuses India of sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan, and of having bad manners.
Kako Ito

Public insurance and the least well-off | Lane Kenworthy - 6 views

lanekenworthy.net/surance-and-the-least-well-off

public insurance economics welfare poor nordic model universalism targeting redistribution income inequality

shared by Kako Ito on 27 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Public insurance also boosts the living standards of the poor. It increases their income, and it provides them with services for which they bear relatively little of the cost.
  • Critics charge that public social programs tend to hurt the poor in the long run by reducing employment and economic growth. Are they correct?
  • Does public insurance erode self-reliance? Is a large private safety net as helpful to the least well-off as a large public one? Are universal programs more effective than targeted ones? Are income transfers the key, or are services important too?
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Once again we see no indication that public insurance generosity has had a damaging effect
  • Note also that the employment rate increased in nearly all of the countries during this period. On average, it rose by nine percentage points between 1979 and 2013. That’s not what we would expect to see if generous public insurance programs were inducing large numbers of able adults to withdraw from the labor market
  • What we see in the chart is that countries with more generous public insurance programs tend to have less material deprivation.
  • With globalization, the advance of computers and robots, increased pressure from shareholders for short-run profit maximization, union weakening, and other shifts, wages have been under pressure. Couple this with the fact that many people at the low end of the income ladder have labor market disadvantages — disability, family constraint, geographic vulnerability to structural unemployment — and we have a recipe for stagnation in the market incomes of the poor.
  • here’s a good reason for these shifts: government provision offers economies of scale and scope, which reduces the cost of a good or service and thereby makes it available to many people who couldn’t or wouldn’t get it on their own.
  • Government provides more insurance now than it used to. All of us, not just some, are dependent on it. And life for almost everyone is better because of it
  • hese expenditures are encouraged by government tax advantages.22 But they do little to help people on the bottom of the ladder, who often work for employers that don’t provide retirement or health benefits.
  • To make them more affordable, the government claws back some of the benefit by taxing it as though it were regular income. All countries do this, including the United States, but the Nordic countries do it more extensively. Does that hurt their poor? Not much. The tax rates increase with household income, so much of the tax clawback hits middle- and upper-income households.
  • Another difference is that public services such as schooling, childcare, medical care, housing, and transportation are more plentiful and of better quality for the poor in the Nordic countries. Public services reduce deprivation and free up income to be spent on other needs. It’s difficult to measure the impact of services on living standards, but one indirect way is to look at indicators of material deprivation,
  • Targeted transfers are directed (sometimes disproportionately, sometimes exclusively) to those with low incomes and assets, whereas universal transfers are provided to most or all citizens.
  • Targeted programs are more efficient at reducing poverty; each dollar or euro or kroner transferred is more likely to go to the least well-off. Increased targeting therefore could be an effective way to maintain or enhance public insurance in the face of diminished resources.
  • “the more we target benefits to the poor … the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality.”
  • Korpi and Palme found that the pattern across eleven affluent nations supported the hypothesis that greater use of targeting in transfers yields less redistribution
  • The hypothesis that targeting in social policy reduces political support and thereby lessens redistributive effort is a sensible one. Yet the experience of the rich countries in recent decades suggests reason to question it. Targeting has drawbacks relative to universalism: more stigma for recipients, lower take-up rates, and possibly less social trust.44 But targeting is less expensive. As pressures to contain government expenditures mount, policy makers may therefore turn to greater use of targeting. That may not be a bad thing.
  • Public insurance programs boost the incomes of the least well-off and improve their material well-being. If such programs are too generous, this benefit could be offset by reduced employment or economic growth, but the comparative evidence suggests that the world’s rich nations haven’t reached or exceeded the tipping point.
  • Spending lots of money on social protection is not in and of itself helpful to the poor. Total social expenditures in the United States are greater than in Denmark and Sweden, because the US has a large private welfare state. But relatively little of America’s private social spending reaches the poor.
  • Public services are an important antipoverty tool. Their benefit doesn’t show up in income data, but they appear to play a key role in reducing material hardship. Services expand the sphere of consumption for which the cost is zero or minimal. And they help to boost the earnings and capabilities of the poor by enhancing human capital, assisting with job search and placement, and facilitating work-family balance.
  • Kako Ito on 27 Sep 15
     
    Through this article I have gained a deeper insight in how public expenditures and public goods promote wealth equality in a society. "Public services are an important antipoverty tool."
  • ...2 more comments...
  • olivialum on 29 Sep 15
     
    This article really helped me deepen my understanding of redistributing wealth downwards. I never thought about it, but things like social security, affirmative action programs, and public education are actually insurances that attempt to provide everybody with more equality when it comes to living standards as well as basic human rights.
  • samoshay on 29 Sep 15
     
    Yeah, it is a very common argument to say that social expenditures disincentives workers; interesting analysis on how wealthy countries haven't reached the "tipping point." I am curious to see what happens to labor force participation and employment in the next decades as robots further divorce economic growth from labor supply/demand.
  • charlesleesohn on 29 Sep 15
     
    Cool theory in regards to "the tipping point". Interesting, and solid criticism of large social expenditures. Wonder how socialists view this, as opposed to free-market economists.
  • smowat on 29 Sep 15
     
    "Public services are an important antipoverty tool. Their benefit doesn't show up in income data, but they appear to play a key role in reducing material hardship." INteresting to see the statistics and how social expenditures help reduce poverty and the wealth gap.
Kay Bradley

Pakistan's Army Pushes Shake-Up For Government - NYTimes.com - 3 views

www.nytimes.com/...29pstan.html

Pakistan

shared by Kay Bradley on 01 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 01 Oct 10
     
    Wow!
  • Amara Plaza-Jennings on 03 Oct 10
     
    It is shocking to see the state that the government is in (especially the part about them only having two months' salary). In Pakistan's history this would have meant a military or oppositiong party takeover. However, neither general Kayani nor fromer prime minister Sharif wants to be responsible for the disaster caused by the floods. The military has been doing most of the work in flood aid. But the fact that neither group wants to take over shows just how bad Pakistan's situation is.
  • Arshia Surti on 03 Oct 10
     
    I wonder why only 2 million out of 170 million people pay taxes. It seems to be the political culture, since top government officials don't pay either. Gilani, who really runs the country, is also being blamed, instead of just Zardari. In addition, it seems that another military coup is in the near future, but how are the people going to reconcile their desire for democracy with the current government's unpopularity?
Rick Rodgers

A Transcript of a UN Committee Meeting About Transnational Crime - 0 views

www.un.org/...gashc3976.doc.htm

UN crime transnational bad stuff

shared by Rick Rodgers on 18 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Rick Rodgers on 18 Oct 10
     
    From drug trafficking to illegal fishing, transnational crime is growing. This is a transcript of a "third committee" meeting addressing some of the issues of transnational criminal organizations today. We've talked a lot about recognized and legal transnational organization, this article illuminates the fact that the aforementioned are not the only flavor available.
smowat

Putin calls plane's downing by Turkey 'stab in the back' - CNN.com - 1 views

www.cnn.com/...ashes-near-syria-turkey-border

shared by smowat on 24 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • smowat on 24 Nov 15
     
    "Istanbul (CNN)One of the world's most volatile regions was roiled further Tuesday when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkey said it hit the plane after it repeatedly violated Turkey's airspace and ignored 10 warnings. "
  • quinnlewis on 24 Nov 15
     
    If you're on break and don't have time to really read the article: - one of the two pilots was killed in the Russian jet that was shot down (they were military personnel) -Putin says this will result in "serious consequences" in reference to the relationship between Russia and Turkey -There are no ISIS members in this area so it makes the people who are allied with the USA in the fight against ISIS are enemies too, which takes the focus away from defeating ISIS -NATO called an emergency meeting which indicated the severity of the situation as far as international diplomacy goes and it seems like more officials (President Obama included) think that there is a high risk for this incident to lead to an escalation or a breaking point in the Middle East for the current tension between countries.... so essentially the takeaway is: this is really bad
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