A Long View of the War in Afghanistan
October 21, 2009 1 min. read

Dexter Filkins’ recent NYTimes magazine piece is lengthy but worth reading.  Filkins, a veteran war correspondent for the NYTimes, is adept at story-telling and doesn’t disappoint in this article. With his familiar, almost folksy, tone of writing, Filkins draws a vivid picture of the American war in Afghanistan: “The Marines around McChrystal, including the local […]

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Health Impacts – Coal and Oil
October 21, 2009 2 min. read

The venerable Matt Wald at the “NY Times” had a revealing story yesterday:  Fossil Fuels’ Hidden Cost Is in Billions, Study Says.  He cites a study, commissioned by Congress, just out from the National Research Council.  Monetizing the value of human life cut short by air pollution – “small soot particles, which cause lung damage; […]

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Obama Economist Favors Stronger TBTF Reforms
October 21, 2009 3 min. read

Former Federal Reserve Bank Chair, Paul A. Volcker and Chair of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, has beed advocating for more aggressive reform and regulation of the financial industry, but is being resisted by the administration’s top economist – who have strong ties to Wall Street.

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The Emergence of a Multipolar World
October 21, 2009 3 min. read

“The multipolar world has become a global reality, recognized as a near certainty by no less an authority than the U.S. intelligence community,” writes Elizabeth Dickinson in the latest issue of Foreign Policy. While missing the complexities of the debate about the global balance of power, the article details some of the historical moments when […]

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Romero (1989)
October 20, 2009 2 min. read

“Be a patriot – kill a priest.” That was a bumper sticker seen on vehicles run by the national guard in El Salvador in the 1980s. The reason is that the entrenched elite of that country believed that Roman Catholic priests were becoming radicalized and increasingly political and who therefore threatened their interests. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ILCZh1SIypA” […]

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Earthquakes, Tsunamis and the Like
October 20, 2009 2 min. read

Someone in my class at Pace University in NYC a couple of years ago mentioned that she thought that earthquakes and other similar phenomenon were being influenced by climate change.  I pooh-poohed the idea, saying that climate change was responsible for a lot of ills – with more to come – but that it couldn’t […]

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Global Day of Action (Oct. 24)
October 20, 2009 1 min. read

Last week I dropped in, along with bloggers in 155 countries across six continents, for Blog Action Day ’09: Climate Change.  CNN covered the story and the organizers report that 13,484 blogs reached 18,076,782 readers. A big part of the reason for this effort was to further enlighten folks around the world about this coming […]

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Race Based Restrictions on Marriage Live on in Louisiana via Justices of the Peace
October 20, 2009 5 min. read

    While it is no secret that racism lives on in the United States, it was nonetheless shocking news that a justice of the peace in Louisiana had refused to marry an interracial couple because he doesn’t “believe in mixing the races that way.”  Keith Bardwell, the justice of the peace in question, has […]

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Twilight for U.S. Science & Technology?
October 20, 2009 3 min. read

The news cycle has moved on and few are talking about President Obama’s Nobel Prize award but the event did prompt me to wonder how the U.S. was doing overall in the prize count. We like to think of the U.S. as producing outstanding achievers in almost every area of human endeavor, but does the […]

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China Rising
October 20, 2009 4 min. read

China’ economic emergence mirror’s America’s rise and how it was perceived by Britain at the height of the industrial revolution more than a century ago.

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Annual Press Freedom Index Release
October 19, 2009 2 min. read

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) will release their annual Press Freedom Index tomorrow. The report ranks 174 different countries by their committment to press freedom. The Annual World Press Freedom Index for 2009 will include details on progress made by the U.S., alongside a number of high-profile journalist kidnappings. RSF will hold a press conference at […]

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Too Big to Fail: White House Doesn't Get It
October 19, 2009 3 min. read

Former NYS Governor Eliot Spitzer takes the President and his economic team to task for their light and soft approach to financial industry reform, and their failure to hold large financial corporations accountable for their continued practices that place the nation’s economy in more peril.

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