- Why the WTO is Going Nowhere:
Economist Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University has been one of the most visible and resolute intellectual advocates for free-market globalization, but lately he sounds a lot like Lori Wallach, the brainy lawyer who leads Global Trade Watch. “The process of trade liberalization is becoming a sham,” Bhagwati wrote recently in the Financial Times, “the ultimate objective being the capture, reshaping and distortion of the WTO in the image of American lobbying interests.”
Wallach and other leaders of worldwide popular dissent have been making the same argument about bait-and-switch diplomacy for a decade. “Oh, absolutely,” Bhagwati exclaims. “People like Lori Wallach are right.” The multinational corporate interests essentially hijacked the pure “free trade” principles Bhagwati espouses and turned “free-trade agreements” into their own agenda for a densely layered legal code–investment rules that impose a straitjacket of do’s and don’ts on developing-country governments.
Hint: Possibly because it embraces mercantilism, Keynesianism and merely pays lip-service to open-markets.
- Venus possibly habitable for billions of years:
The hellish climate of Venus may have arisen far more recently than previously supposed, suggests new research. If so, pleasant Earth-like conditions probably persisted for two billion years after the planet’s birth - plenty of time for life to have developed.
Venus is virtually the same size as Earth and, on average, is our nearest neighbour. Today, its atmospheric temperatures are hot enough to melt lead and concentrated sulfuric acid continuously drizzles down from thick sulphurous clouds that completely block out the Sun.
But the planet once had a climate similar to Earth’s and vast oceans of water. Planetary scientists agree that period ended when Venus lost its water due to a runaway greenhouse effect, but the question is when.
So uhh, Yukon Ho or Venus Ho?
- A Deep Voice From Deep Space - Black Hole’s Profoundly Low Note May Leak a Secret of Star Formation:
Astronomers for the first time have detected sound waves emanating from a supermassive black hole, researchers said yesterday. With a frequency of 10 million years, the wave is the deepest “note” ever found in the universe — a B-flat that is 57 octaves below a piano’s middle C.
Researchers said heat generated by the sound wave may explain why gases moving within clusters of galaxies do not cool down to form more stars — an anomaly that has puzzled astrophysicists for years.
Eat your heart out Opera Lady!
- eBay - Wolverine Replica Sideburns (REAL!) — What will they think of next? That reminds me of this weird eBay product: an old bra that fell out of a ceiling.
- For Many Chinese, America’s Allure Is Fading:
“Life is much more difficult than he expected, so I regret sending him to America,” said the father, Mr. Wang, who — like some others interviewed for this article — spoke on the condition that only his surname be used. “He is miserable. He says to me, `Why am I working so hard in America? I can get rich at home.’ It’s very different from the way it used to be.”
While not too specific on what jobs he was performing, that could be a new trend… as it reminds me of the specialized computer engineers from India that are moving back to India because of an environment now supposedly conducive for innovation and commerce (compared to Silicon Valley, supposedly).
- China to stop police torturing suspects:
A REPORT in the People’s Daily said that from January next year, cops will be stopped from using torture, threats and deception to get results.
[…]
Other things being banned in mainland China include a ban on interrogation of victims suspects for more than 12 hours at a time, except with special permission. And the Chinese cops will not be allowed to keep money and goods taken from suspects for more than 15 days.
That leaves Detroit and Washinton D.C. as the last two places in the Northern Hemisphere as the oddballs. Maybe if everyone points and stares they’ll get the idea and acquiese.
- Mexican Town Forgoes Law for Order
Park where you like, speed if you want to, run a red light, don’t bother renewing your driver’s license and let that seat belt flap in the wind. Nobody’s going to bust you as long as Mayor Eruviel Avila Villegas is in charge.
Avila’s first official act when he took office last month was to abolish parking and traffic fines in this city of 2.5 million people just north of Mexico City. Avila, 34, a soft-spoken lawyer with curly hair, is nobody’s anarchist. He’s just looking for radical new ways to solve one of Mexico’s most annoying problems: cops demanding bribes.
That sounds like a good idea, a vote for Bart is a vote for anarchy! A vote for Villegas is a vote for, err, fiestafied anarchy?
Notes In The Margin (nice line Justin): You know how I discussed the $44 trillion debt a few months ago? A friend of mine, ehmunro, found the abstract for the original report (written for Congress) which can actually be viewed online at the Congressional Budget Office - whodathunkit.
- RIAA sued for amnesty offer:
A day after the Recording Industry Association of America filed a slew of lawsuits against alleged illegal song swappers, it became the target of legal action over its own “amnesty” program.
[...]
It is “designed to induce members of the general public…to incriminate themselves and provide the RIAA and others with actionable admissions of wrongdoing under penalty of perjury while (receiving)…no legally binding release of claims…in return,” according to the complaint.”This lawsuit seeks a remedy to stop the RIAA from engaging in unlawful, misleading and fraudulent business practices,” the suit reads.
Bittersweet or just poetic justice?
- P2P boss to pay schoolgirl’s RIAA bill:
Grokster chief ‘disgusted’ at RIAA’s treatment of 12 year-old girlThe head of peer-to-peer (P2P) company Grokster has offered to pay the $2,000 settlement the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has agreed with a 12-year-old girl over her file sharing.
Wayne Rosso, president of P2P software development company Grokster, said he had made the offer because he was “disgusted” by the RIAA’s tactics.
[...]
But Rosso plans to step in and pay the fine. “I’m trying to contact the mother to offer to pay the $2,000 for her out of my own pocket. I’m disgusted by the RIAA and its extortion tactics,” he told vnunet.com.
“I thought that the two Joes, McCarthy and Stalin, were dead. But little did I know that they’re both alive and well and running the RIAA.”
I think the sequel is going to give everyone a run for their money, so add a third Joe, Joe Banana.
- ‘Father of the H-bomb’ dies
Atomic scientist Edward Teller, widely known as the “father of the H-bomb”, has died at the age of 95.Teller played a key role in US defence and energy policies for more than half a century, championing the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs.
He made the world safe for perpetual war(tm)
- Prince uncovers 19th-century plot to make Texas German:
AN EXTRAORDINARY 19th- century plot by German nobility to take over Texas and turn it into a German country has been uncovered by a historian looking through old records of some of Germany’s oldest families.Prince Hans von Sachsen-Altenburg discovered that in the 1840s, when Texas was still a republic, the nobles managed to raise a small fortune from the state of Prussia under cover of an economic club known as the Adelsverein, or Association of Nobility.
I actually found this story very interesting as I am a degreed historian that was been born and raised in Texas. I was always told the story as to where these Germans came from (religious and political persecution), and along comes this iconoclastic revisionist tale. How super neat is that?
- Iraqi war financial costs approaching those of World War I:
With $166 billion spent or requested, Bush’s war spending in 2003 and 2004 already exceeds the inflation-adjusted costs of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish American War and the Persian Gulf War combined, according to a study by Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus. The Iraq war approaches the $191 billion inflation-adjusted cost of World War I.
It’s not like investors, producers or entrepreneurs had any need for that $166 billion either… gotta fix all those broken windows.
- Monthly costs of Iraq, Afghan wars approach that of Vietnam:
The Pentagon is spending nearly $5 billion per month in Iraq and Afghanistan, a pace that would bring yearly costs to almost $60 billion. Those expenses do not include money being spent on rebuilding Iraq’s electric grid, water supply and other infrastructure, costs which had no parallel in Vietnam.In Vietnam, the last sustained war the nation fought, the United States spent $111 billion during the eight years of the war, from 1964 to 1972. Adjusted for inflation, that’s more than $494 billion, an average of $61.8 billion per year, or $5.15 billion per month.
Hey, at least the GDP increases, right?
- Asian debt withdrawal threat to US deficit:
Economists fear that Asian investors, who are the largest foreign owners of US Treasuries, may cut their holdings of US government debt, withdrawing a key source of financing for America’s large current account deficit.The worries have been fuelled by recent sharp falls in the price of US government debt.
Hearsay I tell you, T-bills are selling like hot-cakes during a blizzard in Cleveland!
- Snowed Under - Why the treasury secretary didn’t get very far with China and Japan last week:
“…much if not most of the production heading from China to the U.S. market is coming from the factories of American companies in China — and those companies like the currency the way it is.More important than either of these considerations, however, is the fact that the United States is highly dependent on a steady inflow of dollars from both China and Japan to buy the U.S. bonds and other assets that fund the U.S. budget deficit and current account deficit. Think about it this way: In order to keep the U.S. dollar strong and interest rates low, Snow has to find about $2 billion every day.”
That shouldn’t be too difficult, it’s not like there is a war going on or anything.
