Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
Stephan: Not all the countries in the world place profit above all other considerations and, as a consequence, the quality of life for ordinary citizens in those countries is undeniably better. American Exceptionalism is increasingly is a toxic myth.
In the age of economic hardship and endless corporate layoffs finding personal time outside of the office is a luxury many have had to forego in today’s overworked culture. But now, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has included work-life balance in the Better Life Initiative- its latest well-being index.
Based on data from 34 countries, the OECD chose three indicators to measure work life balance. These include the amount of time devoted to personal activities, the employment rate of women with children age 6 to 14 and the number of employees working over 50 hours a week.
Not surprisingly, Northern European countries fared better when it came to leaving the office on time. For instance, the Netherlands and Sweden both only have 0.001% of their respective populations regularly working over 50 hours a week.
As for working mothers, the best country to live is Denmark, where 78% of mothers jump back into the workforce after their kids head to school. Turkey is at the other end of the spectrum, with only 24% of women with children also holding down a paying job.
If you’re looking for the most personal time, relocating to Belgium might be a good idea. Belgians […]
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TERENCE P. JEFFREY, - CNS News
Stephan: I am very surprised that this has been so sparsely covered because it suggests a tidal shift in Chinese thinking about the U.S. financial status.
China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury.
Treasury bills are securities that mature in one year or less that are sold by the U.S. Treasury Department to fund the nation’s debt.
Mainland Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury bills are reported in column 9 of the Treasury report linked here.
Until October, the Chinese were generally making up for their decreasing holdings in Treasury bills by increasing their holdings of longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, until October, China’s overall holdings of U.S. debt continued to increase.
Since October, however, China has also started to divest from longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, as reported by the Treasury Department, China’s ownership of the U.S. national debt has decreased in each of the last five months on record, including November, December, January, February and March.
Prior to the fall of 2008, acccording to Treasury Department data, Chinese ownership of short-term Treasury bills was modest, standing at only $19.8 billion in August of that year. But when President George W. […]
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Stephan: Here is some good news on the solar front. The major drawback of solar has been its inability to produce at night. This new installation seems to have overcome that limitation.
Thanks to Judy Tart.
It looks like a giant art project. But this symmetrical, circular pattern of mirrored panels is the world’s first solar power station that generates electricity at night.
The Gemasolar Power Plant near Seville in southern Spain consists of an incredible 2,650 panels spread across 185 hectares of rural land. The mirrors – known as heliostats – focus 95 per cent of the sun’s radiation onto a giant receiver at the centre of the plant.
Heat of up to 900C is used to warm molten salt tanks, which create steam to power the £260million station’s turbines. But, unlike all other solar power stations, the heat stored in these tanks can be released for up to 15 hours overnight, or during periods without sunlight.
The regular sunshine in southern Spain means the facility can therefore operate through most nights, guaranteeing electrical production for a minimum of 270 days per year, up to three times more than other renewable energies.
The project, a joint venture between Abu Dhabu energy company Masdar and Spanish engineering firm SENER called Torresol Energy, took two years to construct at a cost of £260million.
It is expected to produce 110 GWh/year – enough to power 25,000 homes in the Andalucia region. The power […]
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, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: This activity on the part of the government, has cost billions of dollars, and ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding Americans. It has been an obvious failure for decades. But it is almost impossible to stop this 'war' because the budgets of so many bureaucracies, and the profits of so many corporations who service and largely control those agencies depend upon its continuance. 'The War on Drugs' is, and always has been, just another way to tap the public treasury and get access to your money.
The global war on drugs has failed and decriminalizing narcotics such as marijuana could finally help weaken organized gangs, former world leaders said Thursday in a controversial report.
Arguing for a new approach to national and global drug control policies, the Global Commission on Drug Policy called for nations to ‘break the taboo on debate and reform.’
‘The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world,’ the members of the commission said in the report released in New York.
‘Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President (Richard) Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.’
The commission includes former Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso, former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria, Mexico’s former president Ernesto Zedillo as well as ex-UN chief Kofi Annan.
It also includes noted writers such as Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes and Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.
The millions of dollars poured into the fight against drug producers and traffickers over the past decades ‘have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption,’ the report said.
‘Apparent victories in eliminating one source or trafficking organization are […]
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SIOBHAN GORMAN and JULIAN E. BARNES, - The Wall Street Journal
Stephan: Science fiction, becomes science fact.
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.
The Pentagon’s first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country’s military.
In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. ‘If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,’ said a military official.
Recent attacks on the Pentagon’s own systems-as well as the sabotaging of Iran’s nuclear program via the Stuxnet computer worm-have given new urgency to U.S. efforts to develop a more formalized approach to cyber attacks. A key moment occurred in 2008, when at least one U.S. military computer system was penetrated. This weekend Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor, acknowledged that it had been the victim of an infiltration, while playing […]
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