Category: economics

why the USA must QUIT the Middle East

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, government, Islam, things getting worseLeave a comment

President Barack Obama said on Sunday the longest war in American history was coming to a responsible conclusion.

Obama was welcoming the end of US combat operations in Afghanistan, which was marked with a ceremony in Kabul. …

Obama honored the more than 2,200 Americans who have died in Afghanistan since the war started 13 years ago. Obama said those years had tested the US and its military. From a peak 140,000 troops in 2010, the US and Nato plan to leave just 13,500 behind. …

Obama heralds formal end of war in Afghanistan after 13 years

The Taliban immediately declared they’d ‘defeated’ Nato:

A Taliban statement said the US-led force had “rolled up its flag” without having achieved “anything substantial”. …

Like every other Afghan invader, the costs NATO paid far outweighed anything gained. 😦

Afghanis must decide their own fate.
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On December 12th, 2013 a wedding convoy, outside the town of Radda in the al-Baydah province of Yemen, was struck by a US drone.

Following the attack, Yemeni officials claimed that around ‘14 innocent civilians were killed, 22 injured and 9 were in critical condition.’

According to the US government, the attack had intended to strike a known AQ militant Shawqi Ali Ahmad al Badani. The US government denied the deaths of civilians, claiming that they had killed militants associated with al Badani.

3. The Wedding Convoy – Yemeni

drone strike

The U.S. government lied, as they do often.

Most of those killed were innocent.

This is an example of why so many people distrust and fear the U.S. military overseas. This is an example of an incident which inspires and motivates terrorists. Ultimately making the USA and the world less safe.

If the U.S., which claims the strike was clean and justified, didn’t pony up the $800,000 in cash and guns as reparations, then who did?

Nothing Says “Sorry Our Drones Hit Your Wedding Party” Like $800,000 And Some Guns

Update Dec 2014 – The Unspoken Truth Of The US War Against Terrorism in Yemen

Officially, the money awarded in Yemen came from the Yemeni government. But the human rights group Reprieve says the funds must have come from Washington …

Families of Victims of One Drone Strike in Yemen Paid more than an Entire Year’s Worth of Victims in Afghanistan

Africa – Heart of Darkness

On By Rick McIn bad news, books, economics, education, ethics, governmentLeave a comment

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a short novel (1899) about Charles Marlow’s life as an ivory transporter down the Congo …

The story is a complex exploration of the attitudes people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized society and the attitudes on colonialism and racism that were part and parcel of European imperialism …

Joseph Conrad acknowledged that Heart of Darkness was in part based on his own experiences during his travels in Africa. In 1890, at the age of 31, he was appointed by a Belgian trading company to serve as the captain of a steamer on the Congo River. …

He reportedly became disillusioned with Imperialism, after witnessing the cruelty and corruption perpetrated by the European companies in the area. …

heartofdarkness

Leopold II (9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909), second King of the Belgians, was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 2 to 15 million Congolese. Yet very few remember him as one of the worst mass killers all time.

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
– Joseph Stalin

In 2014 Africans are quick to blame European imperialists for … everything.

Yet in 2014 if you see something of QUALITY in sub-Saharan Africa, you assume some foreigner is involved. Africans have been – in the main – very unsuccessful in moving themselves from tribal cultures to modern societies.

Long term, I’m not optimistic for Africa. Despite tremendous economic opportunities.

For example – Bill Gates – Can the Asian Miracle Happen in Africa?

To move forward, Africa needs clean drinking water, education of girls and good leadership.

Will that happen?

In nations like Congo Brazzaville, the richest Africans move money out of the country faster than foreign aid comes in. They steal as much as they can, moving their families to Paris or London.

With African leadership like this, what future for Congo?

Corruption is killing African potential.

The most corrupt nations in the world 2014:

Somalia
North Korea
Sudan
Afghanistan
South Sudan
Iraq
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Libya
Eritrea

One bright spot, I hear, is Rwanda. A British woman living there told me the nation is moving forward rapidly. Internet is faster than in London.

If another dozen nations make progress like Rwanda, over the next ten years, then there is hope. Those nations will thrive, draw business investment. Forcing the corrupt, less efficient nations to compete.

In the end, it’s competition that improves the world.
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related – The 10 least corrupt countries in the world:

Denmark
New Zealand
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Switzerland
Singapore
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Canada

on Obamacare …

On By Rick McIn economics, good news, government, health & fitnessLeave a comment

Here’s the good news.

Number of Uninsured Americans Near Historic Low

Just 11.3 percent of Americans were uninsured in the second quarter …

But that progress has come at great cost. Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the co-authors of the Affordable Care Act, now thinks Democrats may have been better off not passing it at all and holding out for a better bill.

ObamaCare2_2

It’s a mixed legacy.

Obama 2nd worst President all time

On By Rick McIn economics, government1 Comment

I was an early fan of Barack Obama. He gave me … HOPE.

obama-1

His Presidency has been deeply disappointing to me.

Neil Macdonald, CBC News:

Six years after he assumed power, nearly 120 of his promises remain unfulfilled, according to the Pulitzer-prize-winning website Politifact. For example, he promised to “hold accountable” the financial firms whose criminal negligence — let’s dispense with euphemisms — nearly destroyed the economy in 2008.

Obama’s attorney-general eventually decided not to charge a single Wall Street executive, fearing the “collateral consequences” might be too hard on shareholders and office workers who might lose their jobs if a corporate collapse resulted.

Obama also promised a foreclosure prevention fund to protect homeowners threatened by Wall Street’s behaviour, and a law allowing judges to modify people’s mortgages as the vultures descended. Never happened.

Obama has not enacted protections for striking workers, or made it easier to unionize, or required employers to provide at least seven days of paid sick leave per year, all of which he promised.

He has not raised the federal minimum wage. …

CBC – ANALYSIS – How Barack Obama’s presidency has come undone

Nice guy. Could have. Should have done better.

He should have done the opposite of GW Bush, not continued as a weaker version of the same.

He’ll be a far, far better exPresident.

Upsides?

Obamacare was a slight improvement to an extremely expensive and inefficient Health Care system.

He did bring down the deficit GW Bush left him.

deficit

He did manage to pull most troops out of the Middle East … and dodged the Red Line bluff in Syria. But the current military adventures in the region will turn out to be a huge mistake.

USA should QUIT the Middle East completely aside from working with Nuclear powers Pakistan and Israel.

Still, he should have gone stronger to the left. Instead, history will judge him a weak Republican.

USA spent $10 trillion in the Middle East

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, governmentLeave a comment

Are U.S. taxpayers getting good value for that expenditure?

NO. The USA should QUIT the Middle East.

The U.S. gets only around 10% of its net oil and natural gas from the region.

David Vine:

With the launch of a new US-led war in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (IS), the United States has engaged in aggressive military action in at least 13 countries in the Greater Middle East since 1980. In that time, every American president has invaded, occupied, bombed, or gone to war in at least one country in the region. …

As in prior military operations in the Greater Middle East, US forces fighting IS have been aided by access to and the use of an unprecedented collection of military bases. …

In the Persian Gulf alone, the US has major bases in every country save Iran. …

Members of Congress spend billions of dollars on base construction and maintenance every year in the region, but ask few questions about where the money is going, why there are so many bases, and what role they really serve. By one estimate, the United States has spent $10 trillion protecting Persian Gulf oil supplies over the past four decades. …

On their own, the existence of these bases has helped generate radicalism and anti-American sentiment. …

Mother Jones – America Still Has Hundreds of Military Bases Worldwide. Have They Made Us Any Safer?

David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia.

base

The USA has about an $18 trillion dollar debt. Canada, by comparison, will run a surplus budget this year,

Obama on net neutrality

On By Rick McIn economics, government, internetLeave a comment

Obama is saying the right things. But so often his right words do not translate into right action.

Let’s wait and see.

President Obama … urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take up the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality, the principle that says Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all internet traffic equally.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

world poverty dropping fast

On By Rick McIn economics, good news, government, things getting betterLeave a comment

In 1820  the vast majority of people lived in extreme poverty and only a tiny elite enjoyed higher standards of living.

Economic growth over the last 200 years completely transformed our world and poverty fell continuously over the whole 2 last centuries. This is even more remarkable when we consider that the population increased 7-fold over the same time (which in itself is a consequence of increasing living standards and decreasing mortality – especially of infants and children – around the world). …

Even in 1981 more than 50% of the world population lived in absolute poverty – this is now down to about 20%. This is still a large number of people but the change is happening incredibly fast and for our present world the data tells us that poverty is now falling more quickly than ever before in world history. The first of the Millenium Development Goals set by the UN was to halve the population living in absolute poverty between 1990 and 2015. Rapid economic growth meant that this goal  – arguably the most important – was achieved (5 years ahead of time) in 2010.

Our World in Data

ourworldindata_global-poverty-1820-2010-share-of-people-living-in-extreme-poverty-–-max-roser

If you like that good news, click over to their home page for even more positive data. The world is improving in many ways.

ourworldindata.org

Eisenhower was wrong

On By Rick McIn economics, government, travel2 Comments

It’s as if you can’t trust a President / Commander in Chief. 😦

Though he never directly used the term “domino theory“, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower put the theory into words during an April 7, 1954 news conference, when referring to communism in Indochina:

Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the “falling domino” principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.

Introducing the domino theory, that if Vietnam fell to communism, the rest of Southeast Asia would soon follow. Press conference, April 7, 1954.

wikipedia

Today Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Canada? are NOT Communist.

domino_theory

Eisenhower was wrong.

… Hanoi will be the fastest growing city in the world in term of GDP growth from 2008 to 2025 …

On February 2013 Dubai-based property developer Global Sphere announced a mega-project to build about 70 residential towers in Hanoi in an area dubbed the Hanoi Wall Street. The first phase, valued at $10 billion, is expected to be finished by 2020. …

Fall of Saigon - evacuation of CIA personnel 1975
Fall of Saigon – evacuation of CIA personnel 1975

The USA could not win in Vietnam. Nor can they win in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, …

Santayana
George Santayana – The Life of Reason

When you hear a leader call for armed intervention, follow the money. Who’s going to profit in the proposed military action?