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World Politics

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Apr 23, 2015
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"Shocking’ revelation finds $5.3tn subsidy estimate for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments"

That's just simply, wow!
1.gif
 
"The biggest single source of air pollution is coal-fired power stations and China, with its large population and heavy reliance on coal power, provides $2.3tn of the annual subsidies. The next biggest fossil fuel subsidies are in the US ($700bn), Russia ($335bn)"

The good old US of A, where state money goes to the military and subsidising fossil fuels, instead of unworthy things like education and health care. Cos that'd be socialism, you know.
 
Jul 4, 2009
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....further to the fossil fuel subsidy issue
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"“The president agreed at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels. The oil, gas, and coal tax preferences the administration proposes to repeal distort markets by encouraging more investment in the fossil fuel sector than would occur under a neutral system,” said the summary.

However, the same document says the administration favors “refundable” tax “credits” for “renewable” electricity sources in order to change the energy market in a way the government deems desirable. A “refundable” tax credit allows the government to make a payment to a company that did not pay any taxes that year.

“Production of renewable electricity and investment in property qualifying for the investment tax credit for energy property furthers the administration’s policy of supporting a clean energy economy, reducing our reliance on oil, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” says the summary. “The extension of incentives for production and investment contributes to the continued success of that policy. In addition, many renewable developers have insufficient income tax liability to claim the renewable electricity production tax credits and must enter into joint ventures or other financing transactions with other firms to take advantage of them. Making the production tax credit refundable would reduce transaction costs, thereby increasing the incentives for firms to produce clean renewable energy. Extending this policy permanently will provide certainty for business planning.”

A table at the end of the the Treasury's explanation of the administration's "revenue proposals" estimates the amount of tax “revenue” the administration hopes to raise by changing the taxes that apply to the coal industry. The table says that by repealing the “expensing of exploration and development costs,” the “percentage depletion for hard mineral fossil fuels,” “capital gains treatment for royalties,” and the “domestic manufacturing deduction for the production of coal and other hard mineral fossil fuels,” the Treasury would bring in $4.252 billion in revenue."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

....from... http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/kerry-tells-china-because-climate-change-us-we-are-ending-any-funding

....note the site sited is a wee bit dodgy but the idea quote is kinda interesting ...

Cheers
 
Jun 22, 2009
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Highly recommended.

A Net Assessment of the World

To put it simply, a vast swath of the Eurasian landmass (understood to be Europe and Asia together) is in political, military and economic disarray. Europe and China are struggling with the consequences of the 2008 crisis, which left not only economic but institutional challenges. Russia is undergoing a geopolitical crisis in Ukraine and an economic problem at home. The Arab world, from the Levant to Iran, from the Turkish border through the Arabian Peninsula, is embroiled in politically destabilizing warfare. The Western Hemisphere is relatively stable, as is the Asian Archipelago. But Eurasia is destabilizing in multiple dimensions.

We can do an infinite regression to try to understand the cause, but let's begin with the last systemic shift the world experienced: the end of the Cold War.

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/net-assessment-world?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=official&utm_campaign=link
 
Sep 25, 2009
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Amsterhammer said:
Highly recommended.

A Net Assessment of the World

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/net-assessment-world?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=official&utm_campaign=link[/quote]
george friedman is one author whose opinion i always seek...not only he's a relatively rare american with in-depth understanding of europe, he's also an astute analyst..but sometimes he just over analyzes. while i agree with the major tenets of the article, some of his statements had me wonder...like this one
...Except when a regional hegemon is trying to dominate Europe, the United States limits its global exposure.
a country whose military budget nearly equals the rest of the world and that has military bases in 130 nations limits its global exposure ???

it is true that obama's foreign policy is less internationalist, but that statement - even in its context - is strange. he also, does the chicken-egg thing a bit sloppily, particularly wrt nato expansion into the eastern europe and what had followed.
 
Oct 23, 2011
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Ehh? I didn't follow this at all, but I always thought Ireland was a conservative Roman Catholic country when it came to this sort of stuff. Too bad for them I guess.....
 
Jul 4, 2009
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Bustedknuckle said:
TheGreenMonkey said:
It seems Ireland has voted to make another act of godless amorality legal.

Don't tell me..they decided to abandon the 19th century discrimination of 10% of their population?

Welcome to the 21st century. If ya don't like it, don't marry another green monkey.

....gosh darn it don't ya know the lord works in mysterious ways....I mean if he hadn't sanctified what you so casually dismiss as a "19th century discrimination" we could well be soon over-run by hordes of green monkeys....and as we all know there is absolutely nothing worse than hordes of green monkeys ( I mean just think of the havoc they would create at your bird feeder, stealing all yer seeds, chasing away the pretty birdies....they would be much more worse than squirrels, much much more most worse...)

...find below another example of them thar mysterious ways....here the good lord, working in close conjunction with one of his local "corporate" franchises, is doing sacred work as God the Real-estate Agent, providing cover for one of his earliest official franchised flocks from another version of the dreaded green monkey hordes....

" Israel’s new deputy foreign minister on Thursday delivered a defiant message to the international community, saying that Israel owes no apologies for its policies in the Holy Land and citing religious texts to back her belief that it belongs to the Jewish people."

....and...

"“We need to return to the basic truth of our rights to this country,” she said. “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

Hotovely, an Orthodox Jew, laced her speech with biblical commentaries in which God promised the land of Israel to the Jews. Speaking later in English, she signalled that she would try to rally global recognition for West Bank settlements, which are widely opposed.

“We expect as a matter of principle of the international community to recognise Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere,” she said.

Hotovely will manage the ministry’s day-to-day functions, but Netanyahu will remain in charge of foreign policy."

...ya see, this way, God's franchisees, errr, Chosen People (TM) can get rid of non-franchisees ( read green monkey hordes who don't have an official franchise and all the God-given "rights" the franchise agreement carries ) and operate as the perfect religious democracy ( which in regular secular reality makes absolutely no sense but when ya get The Big Spaghetti Monster involved becomes just another one of those mystery thingees ) as God apparently originally intended because like they got a sacred deed in black and white and so on and so forth....

....from... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/22/israels-new-deputy-foreign-minister-this-land-is-ours-all-of-it-is-ours

Cheers
 
Re:

Maaaaaaaarten said:
Ehh? I didn't follow this at all, but I always thought Ireland was a conservative Roman Catholic country when it came to this sort of stuff. Too bad for them I guess.....

Before they were caught in the wave of PC and guilt tripped for it. I'm surprised and not surprised at the same time.
 
Re: Re:

blutto said:
Bustedknuckle said:
TheGreenMonkey said:
It seems Ireland has voted to make another act of godless amorality legal.

Don't tell me..they decided to abandon the 19th century discrimination of 10% of their population?

Welcome to the 21st century. If ya don't like it, don't marry another green monkey.

....gosh darn it don't ya know the lord works in mysterious ways....I mean if he hadn't sanctified what you so casually dismiss as a "19th century discrimination" we could well be soon over-run by hordes of green monkeys....and as we all know there is absolutely nothing worse than hordes of green monkeys ( I mean just think of the havoc they would create at your bird feeder, stealing all yer seeds, chasing away the pretty birdies....they would be much more worse than squirrels, much much more most worse...)

...find below another example of them thar mysterious ways....here the good lord, working in close conjunction with one of his local "corporate" franchises, is doing sacred work as God the Real-estate Agent, providing cover for one of his earliest official franchised flocks from another version of the dreaded green monkey hordes....

" Israel’s new deputy foreign minister on Thursday delivered a defiant message to the international community, saying that Israel owes no apologies for its policies in the Holy Land and citing religious texts to back her belief that it belongs to the Jewish people."

....and...

"“We need to return to the basic truth of our rights to this country,” she said. “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

Hotovely, an Orthodox Jew, laced her speech with biblical commentaries in which God promised the land of Israel to the Jews. Speaking later in English, she signalled that she would try to rally global recognition for West Bank settlements, which are widely opposed.

“We expect as a matter of principle of the international community to recognise Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere,” she said.

Hotovely will manage the ministry’s day-to-day functions, but Netanyahu will remain in charge of foreign policy."

...ya see, this way, God's franchisees, errr, Chosen People (TM) can get rid of non-franchisees ( read green monkey hordes who don't have an official franchise and all the God-given "rights" the franchise agreement carries ) and operate as the perfect religious democracy ( which in regular secular reality makes absolutely no sense but when ya get The Big Spaghetti Monster involved becomes just another one of those mystery thingees ) as God apparently originally intended because like they got a sacred deed in black and white and so on and so forth....

....from... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/22/israels-new-deputy-foreign-minister-this-land-is-ours-all-of-it-is-ours

Cheers

What they all fail to recognize is the land is all God's land, nobody has any really claim on it, God owns it, owns everything.
 
Jul 4, 2009
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....and in news related to using fear and hate of the "other" we have this....

....from... http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1386781

http://theweek.com/articles/555921/george-w-bush-didnt-just-lie-about-iraq-war-what-did-much-worse

....wherein it says...

"In 2008, the Center for Public Integrity completed a project in which they went over the public statements by eight top Bush administration officials on the topic of Iraq, and found that no fewer than 935 were false, including 260 statements by President Bush himself. But the theory on which the White House operated was that whether or not you could fool all of the people some of the time, you could certainly scare them out of their wits. That's what was truly diabolical about their campaign"

....and...

"By playing incessantly to their fears, Bush also succeeded in turning Americans against each other--anyone who raised his or her voice to question the threat became part of the threat in the eyes of their fellow Americans. After all, if you're terrified of something, and you know by God the threat is real, someone next to you telling you not to worry, or worse, ignore the danger, becomes as bad as the enemy.

This is what Bush (and Cheney) knowingly did to the American people. He counted on their fear, not just Americans' fear of Hussein, but of each other. Iraq became a "life or death" decision. It didn't matter to him that their fear was generated completely by lies--all he needed was the fear. It was a classic exercise in propaganda and, terror inflicted on a vulnerable and scarred American public, the implicit threat always looming, hammered home day after day to get the war he and his cronies desperately wanted. And all of it deliberate:


This is one of the many sins for which Bush and those who supported him ought to spend a lifetime atoning. He looked out at the American public and decided that the way to get what he wanted was to terrify them. If he could convince them that any day now their children would die a horrible death, that they and everything they knew would be turned to radioactive ash, and that the only chance of averting this fate was to say yes to him, then he could have his war. Lies were of no less value than truth, so long as they both created enough fear."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

....all this seeing the light of day is nice as the criminals who were the drivers of this crusade should be named and shamed ( but lets not forget Hitlery and the other political opportunists who cynically used this mess to pad their patriotic cred )....and its nice to see people get all righteous at what has come to be understood as one massive cluster-fork ....but what we should realize is that the same strategy is being used today to the same effect in the crisis in The Ukraine....and I will bet that the list of lies created and used by the Obama administration to further their agenda will easily rival the mountain of lies created to facilitate the Iraq/Afghanistan/War on Terror disaster....

....and lets not lose sight of the fact that the Obama administration is very cynically using the terror card for geopolitical gain not unlike the Bush cabal...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The document shows that as early as 2012, U.S. intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a U.S. strategic asset.

While a number of analysts and journalists have documented long ago the role of western intelligence agencies in the formation and training of the armed opposition in Syria, this is the highest level internal U.S. intelligence confirmation of the theory that western governments fundamentally see ISIS as their own tool for regime change in Syria. The document matter-of-factly states just that scenario."

....from.. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41943.htm

Cheers
 
Jul 4, 2009
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Re: Re:

TheGreenMonkey said:
blutto said:
Bustedknuckle said:
TheGreenMonkey said:
It seems Ireland has voted to make another act of godless amorality legal.

Don't tell me..they decided to abandon the 19th century discrimination of 10% of their population?

Welcome to the 21st century. If ya don't like it, don't marry another green monkey.

....gosh darn it don't ya know the lord works in mysterious ways....I mean if he hadn't sanctified what you so casually dismiss as a "19th century discrimination" we could well be soon over-run by hordes of green monkeys....and as we all know there is absolutely nothing worse than hordes of green monkeys ( I mean just think of the havoc they would create at your bird feeder, stealing all yer seeds, chasing away the pretty birdies....they would be much more worse than squirrels, much much more most worse...)

...find below another example of them thar mysterious ways....here the good lord, working in close conjunction with one of his local "corporate" franchises, is doing sacred work as God the Real-estate Agent, providing cover for one of his earliest official franchised flocks from another version of the dreaded green monkey hordes....

" Israel’s new deputy foreign minister on Thursday delivered a defiant message to the international community, saying that Israel owes no apologies for its policies in the Holy Land and citing religious texts to back her belief that it belongs to the Jewish people."

....and...

"“We need to return to the basic truth of our rights to this country,” she said. “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

Hotovely, an Orthodox Jew, laced her speech with biblical commentaries in which God promised the land of Israel to the Jews. Speaking later in English, she signalled that she would try to rally global recognition for West Bank settlements, which are widely opposed.

“We expect as a matter of principle of the international community to recognise Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere,” she said.

Hotovely will manage the ministry’s day-to-day functions, but Netanyahu will remain in charge of foreign policy."

...ya see, this way, God's franchisees, errr, Chosen People (TM) can get rid of non-franchisees ( read green monkey hordes who don't have an official franchise and all the God-given "rights" the franchise agreement carries ) and operate as the perfect religious democracy ( which in regular secular reality makes absolutely no sense but when ya get The Big Spaghetti Monster involved becomes just another one of those mystery thingees ) as God apparently originally intended because like they got a sacred deed in black and white and so on and so forth....

....from... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/22/israels-new-deputy-foreign-minister-this-land-is-ours-all-of-it-is-ours

Cheers

What they all fail to recognize is the land is all God's land, nobody has any really claim on it, God owns it, owns everything.

...yeah, we know that, but whose God is it exactly?....and have your people looked at the franchisee agreement because that will more or less tell the tale...

Cheers
 
Mar 25, 2013
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Maaaaaaaarten said:
Ehh? I didn't follow this at all, but I always thought Ireland was a conservative Roman Catholic country when it came to this sort of stuff. Too bad for them I guess.....

Rural areas and the older vote are more conservative. Still having said that, only only constituency out of over 40 voted against. Urban areas carried it hugely, especially Dublin and Cork. The Ulster counties were predictably tight.

I voted No. I'm not anti-gay but my consideration was more the right of a birth child and surrogacy. Article 41 and the family and its concept from a personal point of view irespective now of whatever sex the relationship is.

Only up to February it was in some polls a near 80/20 split in favour. The No campaign with Ronan Mullen, John Walters and the people at the Iona Institute did extremely well to achieve this result. I watched all the various debates and I agree with Mullen, I say the vote was a lot tighter among the political following of the electorate.
 
Oct 23, 2011
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Jagartrott said:
If you look at the map of Europe and gay rights, it's quite easy to see this is actually an indicator of development.
I'm glad Ireland did not choose to side with the likes of Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, etc.

Too bad this one only works inside of Europe though. I'd be happy if my country sided with South Korea, Japan etc.
 
Re: Re:

Maaaaaaaarten said:
Jagartrott said:
If you look at the map of Europe and gay rights, it's quite easy to see this is actually an indicator of development.
I'm glad Ireland did not choose to side with the likes of Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, etc.

Too bad this one only works inside of Europe though. I'd be happy if my country sided with South Korea, Japan etc.

Wait, you are against gay marriage?

WTF business is it of yours if people you don't know want to get married :rolleyes:
 
Sep 25, 2009
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Re: Re:

The Hitch said:
Maaaaaaaarten said:
Jagartrott said:
If you look at the map of Europe and gay rights, it's quite easy to see this is actually an indicator of development.
I'm glad Ireland did not choose to side with the likes of Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, etc.

Too bad this one only works inside of Europe though. I'd be happy if my country sided with South Korea, Japan etc.

Wait, you are against gay marriage?

WTF business is it of yours if people you don't know want to get married :rolleyes:
what an obnoxious post ..

a poster expressed his opinion on a controversial issue... and here comes along the hitch and instead of providing reasons for a different opinion, ridicules the poster. WTF is wrong with your manners, dude ?
 
Sep 25, 2009
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gay rights IS a controversial subject. keeping the tone and minding manners is particularly important when discussing it.

of course, unless one considers his/her point superior as opposed to being just different...harsh personal remarks dont lead to anything but flaming in the maters like these...
 
Equal rights for black people was also a controversial subject. I understand minding your manners may be important as a debate strategy to win over those on the other side of the fence, but I'm not going to blame Hitch or anyone else for losing their cool on such a clear-cut issue of basic human rights. And no, I don't think advocating legal discrimination against a whole group of people on the basis of their sexual orientation is "just a different point".
 
Oct 23, 2011
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hrotha said:
Lal. Yeah right.

Anyway, while I'm glad that Yes won by a wide margin, it's still troubling at some level that an issue of simple equality and human rights can be put to the vote instead of being approved as a matter of fact.

I don't see why it has anything to do with equality. Whether or not a country accepts same sex marriage, everybody has the same rights. There isn't a law that says gays don't have the right to marry, but traditionally the laws simply described marriage in terms of a man and a woman. Nobody is being discriminated against. Nobody is being denied any rights that other people do have. The law is the same for everybody.

Marriage has simply been understood to be something between a man and a woman. Even in cultures that have accepted same sex relationships (e.g. ancient Greece, ancient Japan), they still understood marriage to be between a man and a woman. If this is changed, it's not a matter of giving a certain group a right that they have previously been denied (because everybody had the same rights under the old system anyway), but the civil institution of marriage is changed to accommodate the desires of a certain group of people. Whether or not this is a good thing is a different discussion (I think it isn't), but the whole equality and human rights rhetoric is quite misplaced in my opinion. I don't see how the right to marry someone from the same sex is some sort of intrinsic human right in a world where marriage has been understood to be a kind of relationship between a man and a woman for thousands of years by virtually everyone. In a certain sense a same sex marriage is a contradictio in terminis, unless we take the liberty to legally change what a marriage is, which is what western European countries have been doing in the last decade or two.
 
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