Financial Markets

 Sec Paulson and Chairman Bernanke need to put in checks/balances  else . . . .   :
Inside Europe’s corruption capital: How Bulgaria’s crime mafia plunders EU grant money
Tilled to this day by horse-drawn ploughs, the rolling pastures of rural Bulgaria have long been known for their cheap wines, strong tobaccos, sweet honey and juicy apricots.
By Colin [...]

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Russia is not covered well by the Western media:

Oleg Deripaska: A will of iron made him the aluminium king
A night aboard his yacht has proved tempestuous for Lord Mandelson, but then the richest of all Russian oligarchs  didn’t get to the top of the post-communist heap by being a soft touch, says William Langley
 

By William Langley [...]

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A good global perspective from US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates :

U.S. Department of Defense
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)
Speech

On the Web: 
http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1275
Media contact: +1 (703) 697-5131/697-5132
 
Public contact:
http://www.defenselink.mil/faq/comment.html
or +1 (703) 428-0711 +1

Oxford Analytica (United Kingdom)
As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, United Kingdom, Friday, September 19, 2008

Thank you, David, for [...]

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Politics at the global level - challenges facing the USA.

The Medvedev Doctrine and American Strategy
September 2, 2008

 By George Friedman
The United States has been fighting a war in the Islamic world since 2001. Its main theaters of operation are in Afghanistan and Iraq, but its politico-military focus spreads throughout the Islamic world, from Mindanao to Morocco. [...]

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Insight into the developments in Iraq - the big message is that it takes time to build anything worthwhile

Barnett: Develop Iraq to cut deals with world
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
Sunday, August 31, 2008

 With American combat troops now slated to depart Iraq by 2011, our intervention moves into its final phase, with the crucial goal being the [...]

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Lex on McCain - Palin:
The question for McCain came down to what was more important: Standing on a weak base trying to beat Obama for the votes of the center with the legacy media pretty much giving up any pretense of objectivity (watch the fall debates for the tightly framed face shots of the elder [...]

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Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates laying the groundwork for getting the US military focussed on the likely challenges of the future rather than extrapolating from past experiences :
 In my view, America’s key asymmetric advantage is our people. And getting the present right when it comes to care of our men and women in uniform [...]

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Something I love to do . . learn/build/nurture . .  career, staff, business, family, plants, garden, pets, home, younger generation . . . . . here is a nice story from Iraq in the same vein :
“There was so much stuff to learn about,” Lieutenant Bibler said. “Generator power, water treatment plant filtration. One of our big [...]

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In an article in Foreign Affairs, Andrew Natsios, special envoy to Sudan in 2006-7 and former Administrator of the US Agency for International  Development,  details the major combatants in the ongoing conflict in Sudan. Surprisingly, in a major change of his views, he now proposes the the USA and western allies “engage” with the Sudanese government.
 
He says:
Engagement is [...]

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Tom Barnett in an artilce here reminds us that building democracies takes decades if not centuries. We need patience when we view developments in China, Russia, Iraq and many other countries that will eventually have demoratic governments. It just takes time !
Quote :
Americans spend little time remembering our history, preferring to focus on current and future [...]

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