A quick solution to climate change from the US: stop fighting

This linked article by Daniel Kammen at GreenBiz offers simple options to change the US energy consumption profile. His six point plan is: A national commitment to saving money and energy through energy efficiency measures at every step of the economic value chain (some states, including California are fully 40 percent more efficient than the …
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Let poor children suffer

Despite the rhetoric being bandied about by Presidential candidates Bush has threatened to veto additional federal funding for a the State Children’s Health Insurance Program which insures children from low-income families.  Another sad sign of where the current administration’s priorities are.  Our hope for enlightened leadership from the global superpower dims a bit more.

Baghdad dividing wall counters peace

Construction of another dividing wall in Baghdad between Shula and Ghazaliya districts causes more division than unity. It is another sign of the primitive knee-jerk thinking of an administration resorting to primitive policy. The wall is an attempt to separate Sunni and Shia districts. But of course it also separates families, neighbours and communities, it …
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US August data modest

Retail sales and industrial output both slowed in the US in August. Shop sales grew 0.3% in August, below market expectations of a 0.5% rise and below July’s 0.5% increase, but excluding car sales, which are at their strongest in two years, retail spending actually declined 0.4% in August. Industrial output rose 0.2%, the slowest …
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US executive tends to secularism

Religion can be a useful guide to morality, but history has shown that it should be separate from politics.  This is more so today than ever before because there is such diversity of belief and there is no majority view, even on a nominal basis, let alone a practising one. The current US president has …
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Self-inflicted terror in America

While we have come around to the notion that peace is an appropriate minimum standard of behaviour for developed countries it has never been an easy argument to make in our world today. The difficulty of fighting minds with armaments George Friedman, eminent strategic analyst, offers a sobering perspective on the fall-out from the American …
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