HE GIRL WHO SILENCED THE WORLD AT THE UNITED NATION
Globalist Bookshelf > Global Governance
[WORLD POLITICS] [2008-08-20 10:59:52] by: Mark Leonard
You talk about democracy as if it were a religion which needs to be spread around the world. But elections will not solve any of the problems facing China today.”
This is how Pan Wei, a rising academic star at Beijing University, greeted me at our first meeting. He was castigating me for paying so much attention to the experiments in grass-roots democracy that have sprung up around China.
Democracy...
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News
Iran in the News
NATO resists U.S. pressure on Russia penalties
[NEWS] [2008-08-20 10:51:14] by:
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talks with EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana at a working lunch at the Hilton Hotel in Brussels, Belgium, Tuesday. NATO cannot maintain its usual working relationship with Russia as long as Russian troops remain in strength in Georgia, the alliance's foreign ministers agreed at an emergency meeting.
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Six short-term deals between the Iraqi government and international oil companies are likely to be abandoned after the US embassy said talks had broken down yesterday.
Short-term technical support contracts between the Iraqi government and the multinational companies, each worth around $500m (£268), were due to have been signed earlier this year but stalled due to disagreements over terms, a senior...
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Iran launches first home-made satellite into space
[NEWS] [2008-08-18 11:32:47] by:
TEHRAN, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Iran announced Sunday that it launched a satellite into space earlier in the day, the country's first domestically made.
The satellite, Omid (hope), was launched Sunday by using Safir (ambassador) satellite-carrier rocket, the armed forces said in a statement, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.
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Iran denies Irish singer to perform in TehranPublished:
[NEWS] [2008-08-17 13:40:22] by:
TEHRAN: Iran’s Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance denied reports that Irish singer Chris de Burgh would hold a concert in Tehran, official news agency Irna reported yesterday.
The local media reported last month that de Burgh was scheduled to perform a concert in Tehran in late November, the first concert by a Western pop singer since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The ministry’s music...
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World Politics
Political View
Georgia War a Neocon Election Ploy?
[WORLD POLITICS] [2008-08-20 10:57:46] by:
AP photo, Mary Altaffer / Irakli Gedeniedze, pool
October comes early? Sen. John McCain and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
By Robert Scheer
Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?
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Ex-Mossad chief: Ahmadinejad is Israel's greatest gift
[WORLD POLITICS] [2008-08-20 10:53:20] by: Haaretz Service
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's incendiary anti-Israel outbursts have united the international community against his country, thus serving a key Israeli interest, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy told an American-sponsored Arab satellite television network on Tuesday.
"Ahmadinejad is our greatest gift," Halevy told the Arab language television network Al-Hurra on Tuesday. "We couldn't...
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Tariffs and Tortillas
[WORLD POLITICS] [2008-08-18 11:42:41] by: Khatchik Der Ghougassian
BUENOS AIRES – Ever since Mexico’s so-called “Tortilla crisis” this past January, street protests against food shortages and high prices, or against increasing taxes on agricultural production, have spread from Haiti to Central American countries, and across Latin America. Governments have sometimes reacted with protective measures or macroeconomic initiatives, but in some cases with repression....
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LONDON — Iraq has disclosed what officials termed a timetable for U.S. military withdrawal.
Officials said the withdrawal would begin in 2009 with the departure of U.S. troops from several major Iraqi cities. They said the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki expected the pullout to be completed around 2012.
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Iran and Syria, in the role of Russia
[WORLD POLITICS] [2008-08-18 11:35:55] by: Itamar Rabinovitch
Now that the fighting in Georgia has died down, policy shapers and pundits in the West are free to analyze the maneuvers and results, and draw lessons. The picture that emerges is a dismal one. Vladimir Putin's Russia exercised brutal force with the object of bringing a rebellious neighbor to its knees. The United States, which encouraged Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to defy Moscow, did not...
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Russia may strike nuclear blow on Poland in case it deploys US Patriot missiles
[WORLD POLITICS] [2008-08-16 07:36:56] by:
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia warns Poland that it may become a priority target for Russia in the event the USA deploys elements of its missile defense system on the territory of this East European nation. To put it in a nutshell, Russia may strike a nuclear blow on Poland, which is possible after the recent change of the Russian Federation defense doctrine.
Russia may strike...
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Global Economy
Economic Theory
Putin Zings McCain on Foreign Policy
[GLOBAL ECONOMY] [2008-08-20 16:35:43] by: David Ignatius
WASHINGTON -- It was February 2006 in Munich, and John McCain's eyes were flashing with the mischievous spark that comes when he's about to fire a verbal rocket. "I've got a zinger coming," he told me, referring to a speech on Russia he would give a few hours later at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy.
And McCain did indeed deliver a zinger. He blasted Vladimir Putin for "the pursuit...
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Globalisation and the costs of international trade from 1870 to the present
[GLOBAL ECONOMY] [2008-08-18 11:56:54] by: David Jacks Christopher M. Meissner Dennis Novy
Analysts suggest that rising oil prices will sharply reduce international trade. This column argues to the contrary, noting that transport costs constitute a limited share of trade costs. Moreover, evidence from the first wave of globalisation suggests that higher shipping costs are unlikely to significantly dampen international commerce – only protectionism would seriously threaten trade.
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Project syndicate
[GLOBAL ECONOMY] [2008-08-15 06:37:13] by: Joseph E. Stiglitz
NEW YORK – Both the left and the right say they stand for economic growth. So should voters trying to decide between the two simply look at it as a matter of choosing alternative management teams?
If only matters were so easy! Part of the problem concerns the role of luck. America’s economy was blessed in the 1990s with low energy prices, a high pace of innovation, and a China increasingly offering...
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Optimal central bank transparency
[GLOBAL ECONOMY] [2008-08-13 07:32:50] by:
Transparency is the new trend in central banking, but it has both costs and benefits. This column discusses research aimed at identifying the optimal level of transparency. The results suggest that US and European central banks may be too transparent.
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Science and Technology
Futurism
I’m Not Lying, I’m Telling a Future Truth. Really.
[SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY] [2008-08-03 18:50:54] by: BENEDICT CAREY
Some tales are so tall that they trip over their own improbable feats, narrative cracks and melodrama. That one-on-one playground victory over Kobe Bryant back in the day; the 34 hours in labor without painkillers; the former girlfriend or boyfriend who spoke eight languages and was a secret agent besides.
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Texas to Tel Aviv
[SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY] [2008-07-29 14:09:12] by: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
What would happen if you cross-bred J. R. Ewing of “Dallas” and Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club? You’d get T. Boone Pickens. What would happen if you cross-bred Henry Ford and Yitzhak Rabin? You’d get Shai Agassi. And what would happen if you put together T. Boone Pickens, the green billionaire Texas oilman now obsessed with wind power, and Shai Agassi, the Jewish Henry Ford now obsessed...
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The Best Online Learning Games — 2008
[SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY] [2008-07-11 18:03:06] by: arry Ferlazzo
This is the first of several year-end “The Best…” lists I’m writing. I know it’s a bit early for a year-end list, but I since I’m experimenting with a reader’s poll at bottom of this post, I wanted to see how (and if) it worked before I tried it with my other year-end rankings.
(Note: I’ve discovered that the poll doesn’t show-up in RSS Feedreaders, and might not appear in the posts...
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The Coming of the Car-Bot
[SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY] [2008-07-07 22:08:48] by: David Kiley
Imagine the scene: You're driving your car to an office building in New York City, five minutes from a job interview. No worries. You have already dialed into the car's memory the parking garage where it's going to stay, and prepaid the bill. You shut the door. And off it goes. Driverless. And the chances of the car getting into an accident while it travels five or six treacherous city blocks are less...
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