OCTOBER 15, 2012 – In the run-up to the November 2 presidential election in the United States, polls are indicating an almost evenly divided electorate. As of this writing, support for President Barack Obama was standing just above 46%, support for Republican challenger Mitt Romney just above 47% (RealClearPolitics). Given these figures, imagine entering a room of 200 randomly chosen U.S. voters, with people sitting at tables by party-affiliation, but with no table signs to indicate which party-table was which. To avoid a night of tea-party polemics, you might reasonably wish to find a table of Obama supporters, and you…
2 CommentsTag: U.S.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2012 – For the Financial Post, the actions of the Bolivian government in nationalizing a Canadian mine this summer, confirmed the country’s status as an “outlaw nation” (Grace, 2012). But for less biased observers, the reality was a little different. Responding to pressure from local indigenous communities the Bolivian government confirmed, August 2, that it would expropriate the operations of a Canadian-owned mining project. This represents in the short term, the success of local social movements in putting an end to violence created by the tactics of the corporation, and in the long term, one small step towards…
3 CommentsNeil Armstrong, who on July 20 1969 became the first human to walk on the moon, died August 25, 2012. In the wake of his passing, the press is awash in reminiscences of “THE MOMENT” (as headlined in The Globe and Mail 2012) when Armstrong took what he famously decribed as “a giant leap for mankind”. Armstrong and his fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin left a plaque behind, reading: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind” (Koring 2012). But 1969 has to be remembered with a…
One CommentJULY 26, 2011 – As July came to an end, the United States central government had come up against its congressionally mandated debt ceiling. Without an agreement to raise that debt ceiling – last set at $14.3-trillion – the U.S. central government will be unable to borrow money to pay its bills. The consequences could be extremely serious – soaring interest rates, a collapse of the U.S. dollar, not to speak of social security stipends, pensions and salaries going unpaid. The barrier to raising the debt ceiling comes from the sudden rise of a new right-wing in the Republican Party.…
Comments closedDECEMBER 2, 2010 – There is a growing chorus of voices in the media and the academy singling out the actions of the Chinese state as central to the dilemmas of the world economy. This focus finds its most articulate presentations, not in the xenophobia of the right, but in the polite analysis of many left-liberals. Paul Krugman, for instance, writing in the run-up to November’s G20 summit in South Korea, praised the United States’ approach of creating money out of nothing (“Quantitative Easing”) as being helpful to the world economy, and criticized the Chinese state’s attempts to keep its…
One CommentIf you travel to Washington D.C., and you visit only one historic site, make it the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A gentle scar in the park that surrounds it, the modest stone wall slowly emerges into view as you walk towards it. On the pathway by the wall, medals lie propped up, along with letters, teddy bears – mementos of loved ones who passed away in the hell that was the American War in Vietnam. And on their knees, head in hand, or on their toes, reaching up to touch a name carved on a high portion of the wall, middle-aged…
Comments closedOCTOBER 23, 2010 – In uncertain times, the headline was soothing – “Secretary Geithner vows not to devalue dollar.”[1] United States Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner was saying, in other words, that if there were to be “currency wars” – competitive devaluations by major economies in attempts to gain trade advantage with their rivals – the United States would not be to blame. Who, then, would be the villain? China, of course. Earlier this year, Democratic Party congressman Tim Murphy sponsored a bill authorizing the United States to impose duties on Chinese imports, made too inexpensive (according to Murphy…
5 CommentsPity the poor priests of laissez-faire (the French phrase associated with the advocates of free market capitalism). They want to name a building at the University of Chicago after Milton Friedman. Milton was teaching there in 1976 when he won the Nobel Prize in economics. But 100 faculty members have signed a petition objecting. One of the 100, Bruce Lincoln told the press: “He was the darling of the Reaganite revolution and the American right … He was a scathing critic of the state playing a role of any importance … It’s now a whole lot more obvious to everyone…
Comments closedIt was September 11, 1973, that the neo-liberal experiment began. The brutal U.S.-backed coup against Salvador Allende’s government opened the door for the “Chicago Boys” – a group of Chilean economists who had studied under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago[1] – to “reconstruct the Chilean economy … along free-market lines, privatizing public assets, opening up natural resources to private exploitation and facilitating foreign direct investment and free trade.”[2] September 7, 2008 – thirty-five years later – that experiment came to an end, not with a whimper, but a bang. The neo-liberal regime of George Bush – more closely…
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Focus on Tiger Woods – The Issue is Racism
Published March 31, 2011 by pkellogg
December 11, 2010 (Last in a series of articles, “Reflections on 2010”) • Eldrick “Tiger” Woods might have lost his top spot in golf rankings in 2010, but he kept his place at the top of search engines around the world, coming in, for instance, at seven out of 10 for the year on searches carried out by Yahoo Canada.[1] Of course what drove this was not his golf game. For the first time since 1995, Woods did not win a tournament, let alone a major. The year 2010 saw his record 623-week reign as the world’s number one ranked…