Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
MATTHEW ROSENBERG, - The New York Times
Stephan: The profligacy with which we squander money in Afghanistan, while American children go hungry, and the elderly must postpone needed medical treatments is a sign of madness in a nation. Particularly when the payments go on month after month even though they so obviously produce nothing in return.
KABUL, Afghanistan – For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president – courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Off-the-books cash delivered directly to President Karzai’s office shows payments on a vast scale.
All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
‘We called it ‘ghost money,’
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Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
KENNETH NEIL CUKIER and VIKTOR MAYER-SCHOENBERGER, Data Editor of The Economist and Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford U. - Foreign Affairs
Stephan: This is an excellent essay on the power of data. Big data. It describes the first stages of the emerging Metaview Trend, which is going to change our lives. And has the potential to recreate democracy in an electronic age.
Everyone knows that the Internet has changed how businesses operate, governments function, and people live. But a new, less visible technological trend is just as transformative: ‘big data.
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Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
DAVID ROSNER and GERALD MARKOWITZ, - Salon
Stephan: The issues in this report will be familiar to SR readers, but there is something about seeing it all together, so that a metaview is possible to really grasp what is going on.
As the result of the gutting of the regulatory agencies, and the corruption of the Congress, in the service of special interest, we have created an environment in which we are the lab animals, in a giant animal study involving toxins, hormones, pharmaceuticals, herbicides, plastics, and on and on. The report presents some of the relevant data that prove this assertion.
A hidden epidemic is poisoning America. The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them. We can’t escape it in our cars. It’s in cities and suburbs. It afflicts rich and poor, young and old. And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name – and no antidote.
The culprit behind this silent killer is lead. And vinyl. And formaldehyde. And asbestos. And Bisphenol A. And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised ‘better living through chemistry,
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Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
ED MAURER and EUGENE CORDERO, - Market Watch
Stephan: Our spending practices, as a country, are completely upside down. We spend endless billions on war instead of what it will take to keep the U.S. functioning as a country, as this report makes clear. Think about what is being said here, just in reference to your own area.
SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA — Recently, the American Society of Civil Engineers released its latest Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, a measure of the condition, capacity, and maintenance of the nation’s vital systems, accounting for their ability to meet future needs and ensure public safety and health.
How did we fare? D+. That composite grade includes things like our energy systems (D+), drinking water systems (D), waterways and levees (D-), roads (D), schools, (D), transit (D) and on and on. The brightest spot was a B- for how we deal with solid waste.
This discouraging assessment appeared on the heels of news documenting how climate change is affecting us now: 2012 shattered the record as the hottest year ever recorded in the U.S. Global warming shares some of the blame for last summer’s drought that impacted nearly two-thirds of the lower 48 states, and for the unprecedented intense heat of the Australian ‘angry summer.
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Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
IAN BREMMER, - Foreign Policy
Stephan: Here is a rare interview with one of the virtual state oligarchs, Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Co. I agree with what he says, and the emphasis he places on education, as an expression of national will. I take all of this as good news, because it says to me that that the resistance to change will go down because one more member of the one tenth of one per cent has awoken to facts. That is good news.
The financial crisis altered the very nature of the international balance of power. Five years later, the presumption is that the crisis is in the rearview mirror — and that the volatility that shook markets and felled governments is behind us too. But we’ve entered a new order that’s vastly more uncertain than what preceded it. International coordination is breaking down. Global challenges like climate change and nuclear proliferation are becoming more intractable as no one country or group of countries is in a position to set the international agenda. The G-20 is too crowded and conflicted; the U.S.-led G-7 can no longer run the show. In such an environment, we have to ask: What are the big question marks for sustainable global prosperity going forward? How are the roles of the United States and China evolving? And where are the world’s next big opportunities?
I sat down in New York not long ago with Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Co., to talk about how global power dynamics are shifting and what that means, tactically and strategically, for a $180 billion company dealing with customers and governments in more than 200 countries, from Suriname to Vietnam. Coca-Cola […]
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