How currency devaluation destroys wealth
By Henry C K Liu

(For Part 1, see Economics of denial)
In today's financial world, a liquidity boom produces rising nominal or face value in return on investment (ROI) with an increasingly hollow economy in two ways: (1) by devaluing all currencies against real assets and (2) by keeping down wages and worker benefits around the globe. Thus while all currencies devalue steadily but not at the same pace, all of them devalue faster against real assets and slower against labor cost, because wage adjustments tend to lag behind both real and nominal inflation rates. This translates directly into low real valuation for labor, structurally constraining growth of demand to fall behind growth of supply. This in turn leads to an overcapacity economy of declining consumer purchasing power. Neo-classical economists call this the business cycle, which Keynesians assert must be countered with demand management through full employment supported by deficit financing.

The Crashing U.S. Economy Held Hostage
Our Economy is on an Artificial Life-support System

By Richard C. Cook
Remember when the U.S. was the world’s greatest industrial democracy? Barely thirty years ago the output of our producing economy and the skills of our workforce led the world.What happened? It’s hard to believe that in the space of a generation our character and capabilities just collapsed as, for example, did our steel and automobile industries and our family farming. What then are the causes of the decline?Here’s how I would put it today: our economy is on an artificial life-support system, a barely-breathing hostage in a lunatic asylum. That asylum is the U.S. and world financial systems which are on the verge of collapse.

Diplomacy, Not War, With Iran
By Bill Richardson

The recent tentSative agreement with North Korea over its nuclear program illustrates how diplomacy can work even with the most unsavory of regimes. Unfortunately, it took the Bush administration more than six years to commit to diplomacy. During that needless delay North Korea developed and tested nuclear weapons -- weapons its leaders still have not agreed to dismantle. Had we engaged the North Koreans earlier, instead of calling them "evil" and talking about "regime change," we might have prevented them from going nuclear. We could have, and should have, negotiated a better agreement, and sooner.

It's all about oil

By Marko Beljac - posted Monday, 5 February 2007 Sign Up for free e-mail updates!
The United States has deployed an extra aircraft carrier battle group for the Persian Gulf in order to rattle the sabre in the nuclear standoff with Iran. Given the experience with dodgy intelligence during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq it is worth reflecting on just how real is the purported Iranian nuclear threat.The Iranian nuclear program is long standing and can be traced all the way back to the Shah who held power prior to the 1979 revolution. At the time Henry Kissinger stated, the “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals”.

The writing's on the wall for Iran
By Leon Hadar

Rejecting the notion that the United States was planning to attack Iran and Syria, White House spokesman Tony Snow called it a myth or an "urban legend". "I want to address [a] kind of a rumor, an urban legend that's going around," Snow told reporters at a White House briefing two days after President George W Bush vowed to go after Iranian terrorist networks involved in Iraq violence. "What the president talked about in his speech on Iraq strategy is defending American.

Nation to honour French activist
Born Henri Groues, the Roman Catholic priest was France's leading champion of the destitute and homeless, topping a French vote on the country's favourite personalities year after year.Abbe Pierre was the codename he used - abbe is a title traditionally given to priests - during his work with the French Resistance, smuggling Jews out of occupied France during World War II.

Scientists prepare to move Doomsday Clock forward
"The major new step reflects growing concerns about a 'Second Nuclear Age' marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing 'launch-ready' status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks," the release reads.

A World Free of Nuclear Weapons
By GEORGE P. SHULTZ, WILLIAM J. PERRY, HENRY A. KISSINGER and SAM NUNN
Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. U.S. leadership will be required to take the world to the next stage -- to a solid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.

Howard Zinn on The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism
Howard Zinn is one of this country's most celebrated historians. His classic work "A People's History of the United States" changed the way we look at history in America. First published a quarter of a century ago, the book has sold over a million copies and is a phenomenon in the world of publishing - selling more copies each successive year. [includes rush transcript]

Blair's Mideast Message Echoes Past Failure
Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Dec 22 (IPS) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been touring the Middle East with one clear message -- to make peace in the Middle East, Iran must be isolated.
The war of words between the West and Iran was heated by Blair's call for an "alliance of moderation" consisting of Arab dictatorships to quell the challenge posed by "extremists" supported by Tehran.

Proportionality, or "The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything"
by Sayan Bhattacharyya
In the India Resource Center's latest press release ("Kerala Throws Out Coca-Cola and Pepsi: Seven Other States Impose Ban, Others Expected to Follow," 9 August 2006), reporting that the southern state of Kerala in India has just banned Coca Cola on account of the reckless way in which Coca Cola sells products contaminated with pesticide in India, the following paragraph in particular caught my eye:

The future of travel: where do we go from here?
Catching a plane has become a part of everyday life. But as oil prices take off, environmental concerns rise and security levels soar, how long can it be before casual travel is consigned to history? Will August 2006 be remembered as the point of no return? Simon Calder takes a trip into the future

The Battle for the Soul of the Middle East
by Mustafa Malik
President George H.K. Bush had said his 1991 war against Iraq would create a “new world order.” It didn’t. His son waged the 2003 Iraq war to bring about a new Middle Eastern order of secular Muslim democracies. Today’s Hezbollah-Hamas conflict with Israel is part of a struggle for another kind of a Middle Eastern order -- an Islamic one -- which has been fueled by America’s new Iraq war. Would it have something to show for George W. Bush’s plans?

Iran - the Pivot of Geopolitics
The question that needs to be asked is who benefits from American hostility towards Iran? Certainly not America nor Iran. The only beneficiary is Israel. The primary reason America has never adopted a pragmatic course of action towards Iran based on its own national interests is because America’s ruling Jewish elite has continually demonized Iran to deter Americans from abandoning the Jewish state as America’s main ally in the Middle East. -Bob Finch, Israel Shamir 1/4/07

Ralph Nader: “Americans Need Moral Courage!
”Baltimore, MD - On Saturday afternoon, June 10, 2006, Ralph Nader, a 3rd Party candidate for the presidency in 2004, spoke at a political rally, held in a conference room at the U. of Baltimore’s Langsdale Library.

Why do they hate us?: Interview with Stephen Kinzer, author of "Overthrow" and "All the Shah's Men"
By Fariba Amini

"For nearly three centuries the dominant fact in American life has been expansion. With the settlement of the Pacific Coast and the occupation of the free lands, this movement has come to a check. That these energies of expansion will no longer operate would be a rash prediction; and the demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for an inter-oceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon the seas, and for the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries, are indications that the movement will continue." -- Frederick Jackson Turner,1893

The End of Humanity: All of us are living in a torturing and killing World

We all live in a world of perpetrators and are identifying us with the powerful, the rich and the influent persons in this World. The other truth is, that we all are living our reality in a victims-World - have always been and always will be. We live in a perpetrators world but in fact 99 percent of human beings have in all times been victims of the eternally same horrible creatures.

Living on the Edge: Skirting With Nuclear Danger
By Alice Slater
Speech by Alice Slater at the United Nations, January 19, 2006
It is an honor to be here at the United Nations to pay tribute to a genuine world hero, Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who simply by his good instincts in 1983, went against all he was trained to do and averted a terrible nuclear holocaust on our planet. He refused to follow procedures that could have led to the launching of the Soviet nuclear arsenal against the United States, after he had observed an unexplained intrusion of Soviet air space on his computer while serving as the duty officer at Russia's main nuclear command center.

Economics of Empires
A nation-state taxes its own citizens, while an empire taxes other nation-states. The history of empires, from Greek and Roman, to Ottoman and British, teaches that the economic foundation of every single empire is the taxation of other nations. The imperial ability to tax has always rested on a better and stronger economy, and as a consequence, a better and stronger military. One part of the subject taxes went to improve the living standards of the empire; the other part went to strengthen the military dominance necessary to enforce the collection of those taxes.


What to use when the oil runs out
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
Part of the attraction of oil for most of us has probably always been its key-turning, switch-flicking simplicity. This one substance has given us food, warmth, chemicals, medicines, clothing - and above all mobility. So it is natural enough for us to look for one neat and simple replacement which will be the perfect substitute for oil in all its versatile guises.

The politics of power
By Brian Wheeler
BBC News Online political reporter
Nearly 50 years ago, the Calder Hall nuclear reactor, in West Cumbria, was plugged into the national grid for the first time. At that time, nuclear power was seen as the fuel of the future: clean, cheap and potentially unlimited.

Talking to the enemy
By Mohamed El-Moctar El-Shinqiti
In his book Politics of God, Jim Wallis who is an American wise clergyman, suggested that “the best answer to bad religion is better religion, not secularism”.
Wallis was neither talking about different religions, nor was he trying to replace one world religion by another; instead he was talking about the different interpretations of the same American Christianity.


Nuclear Clouds Gather Over Asia
The Asia-Pacific region has not only emerged as one of the main engines of the world economy but it has also taken the global centre-stage in developments pertaining to nuclear weapons and efforts to acquire a capability to make them.


From the euro to the globo
Globalization is leading to a global economy with one world currency. It’s not clear what the name of this global currency unit will be, but perhaps it will be called the globo.