Category Archives: International

White America Fear Michelle More Than Barack?

Why white America perhaps fears Michelle more than Barack.
Excerpts from a ‘Jack & Jill politics’ newsletter:

Michelle Obama…as hard as it is to accept a black president, it’s even harder to accept a black first lady. First Lady has always held a beloved sentimental mother/wife of the nation symbolism. Conservatives are not ready to have to look at this very BLACK woman with her degrees and her fierceness and see her as the epitome of the American mother/wife.
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Higher you climb, harder you fall

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, October 26th 2008

Trini PeopleLAST week, when I suggested that the masses of poor and middle-income people across the world may yet have the last laugh in the midst of the global financial crisis, many readers laughed at me. “You can’t be serious?” several of my friends called to ask, exploding into loud guffaws. “Of course I am,” I responded. I proceeded to explain why I thought the super-wealthy would cry more tears than the wretched of the earth.
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Latin American and Caribbean Unity

By Noam Chomsky
October 2nd 2008; ZNet

CaribbeanThis talk was given to the VII Social Summit for Latin American and Caribbean Unit, via video feed.

During the past decade, Latin America has become the most exciting region of the world. The dynamic has very largely flowed from right where you are meeting, in Caracas, with the election of a leftist president dedicated to using Venezuela’s rich resources for the benefit of the population rather than for wealth and privilege at home and abroad, and to promote the regional integration that is so desperately needed as a prerequisite for independence, for democracy, and for meaningful development. The initiatives taken in Venezuela have had a significant impact throughout the subcontinent, what has now come to be called “the pink tide.” The impact is revealed within the individual countries, most recently Paraguay, and in the regional institutions that are in the process of formation. Among these are the Banco del Sur, an initiative that was endorsed here in Caracas a year ago by Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz; and the ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean, which might prove to be a true dawn if its initial promise can be realized.
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60 Minutes: A Look at Wallstreet’s Shadow Market

October 05, 2008
CBS News

Wall St.Steve Kroft looks at some of the arcane Wall Street financial instruments that have magnified the economic crisis.

It began with a terrible bet that was magnified by reckless borrowing, complex securities, and a vast, unregulated shadow market worth nearly $60 trillion that hid the risks until it was too late to do anything about them.

And as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, it’s far from being over.
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Vision and visionaries to steer us through crisis

By Raffique Shah
October 05, 2008

Wall St.With Ronald Reagan now dead and Margaret Thatcher barely alive, I shall resist the urge to blame this global financial crisis solely on them. In many ways, they cannot be blamed for today’s debacle. Some enterprises Thatcher divested should never have been state-owned: a trucking business (National Freight Corporation), 27 railway hotels, carmakers Jaguar and Rolls-Royce. Why would any government engage in such ventures?
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Taxing The Middle Class to Fund Conferences

By Stephen Kangal
October 01, 2008

PM Patrick ManningOn what basis can PM Manning justify spending an astronomical $503m (one percent of the 2009 budget that is equivalent to the sum for the construction of the Tobago power plant) to host the Summits of the Americas and the Commonwealth in 2009 if not to boost his already inflated ego? What diplomatic goodwill and political and economic benefits will accrue to the pauperized people of T&T from hosting these Conferences when we are burdened with a poverty rate of 27%? The poverty gap is widening and pensioners on fixed incomes are ketching their “nennen”.
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Collapse of ‘Reaganomics’ and ‘Thatcherism’

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, September 28th 2008

Wall St.OVER the six decades I’ve been on this here Earth, more so during the latter four, I have learned to be wary of the very wealthy. Not all, mark you, but most. Some decent people earned their millions through sheer hard work and wise choices. Others educated themselves and used their professions to become rich. Among the aforementioned, you usually encounter nice men and women who just happen to be rich, and who see their wealth as a means to live comfortably, even to help the less fortunate in their communities and countries.
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Anti-Empire Report: Obama-Biden, Russia-U.S.

By William Blum
September 05, 2008
www.killinghope.org

Obama, McCainIm sorry to say that I think that John McCain is going to be the next president of the United States. After the long night of Bush horror any Democrat should easily win, but the Dems are screwing it up and McCain has been running more-or-less even with Barack Obama in the polls. The Democrats should run on the slogan “If you liked Bush, you’ll love McCain”, but that would be too outspoken, too direct for the spineless Nancy Pelosi and her spineless party. Or, “If you liked Iraq, you’ll love Iran.” But the Democrat leadership is not on record as categorically opposing either conflict.
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