<![CDATA[Joho the Blog: Yay for democracy:
<
p style=”color:#330000″>
I find myself torn. I am thrilled Saddam is gone and people are voting. But it’s still not how I’d choose to spend the money and lives this war we were lied into cost.]]>
<![CDATA[AKMA’s Random Thoughts: If It Came In A Bottle:
As I reflected on this point — so vividly (or, more to the point, so dully) reflected in daily discourse — I remembered the wounded disclaimers I’ve so often encountered from people who wrote or said clumsy things. Somewhere, somehow, many people have gotten the idea that it should be easy to communicate exactly what they want to communicate. That belief has attained the status of an axiom for these writers, so that the repeated evidence that communicating accurately is not that easy tends not to disconfirm the axiom, but rather to demonstrate that everyone else bears the fault.
I couldn’t agree more. There is no entitlement to being understood if you can’t express yourself clearly.]]>
<![CDATA[The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | The Election Syndrome | Ari Berman:
For months, the Bush Administration hyped the Iraqi elections as the “most important step” for Iraq’s reconstruction, the pivotal moment when Iraq would finally control its own destiny. Now, amidst chaos on the ground and not-so-subtle pressure from Washington, it appears likely that the election of a new national assembly won’t provide an answer to the occupation’s central question: when will US troops leave so Iraqis can take charge of their own security?
In the run-up to elections, most major Iraqi candidates, as predicted by the CIA, emphasized US withdrawal in their campaign platforms. Iyad Allawi, Iraq’s current Prime Minister, won plaudits after his website called for a “conditions-based withdrawal.” The campaign literature of the Shiite-backed United Iraqi Alliance–supported by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani–listed “setting a timetable for the withdrawal of multinational forces from Iraq” as its No. 2 promise.
Read more.]]>
<![CDATA[The Doc Searls Weblog : Monday, January 31, 2005:
Now Democracy
I’ve never been a fan of the Iraq war; but I’ll aways be a fan of democracy (I agree with Churchill), and there can be no doubt that Sunday’s elections were a huge milestone for democratic progress in the Middle East. (Eeyore complaints withstanding.)
This pic doesn’t say it all; but it does say a lot.A toast to everybody who helped make it happen.
Here’s the thing: You can’t give a people democracy. They have to take it. We’ll see if the images and enthusiasm of this very inspiring day turn into permanent political change.]]>
<![CDATA[My Red Herring posting today follows up on the call I made last year that Nokia’s business was turning around, the exhumation of AT&T’s rotting corpse and Microsoft’s record-breaking quarter that means it is still in trouble.]]>
<![CDATA[Economists are reacting to slower-than-expected economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2005, which disappointed Wall Street today. For about a year now I’ve been pointing to the rising trade deficit and ballooning federal deficit as huge red flags waving over the U.S. economy and the impact of both is clearly evident in today’s numbers. Basically, the domestic economy grew but we gave away hundreds of billions in interest payments and actually saw falling exports despite the devalued dollar (a cheap dollar should make our products more attractive globally).
Listening to the economists, it’s actually sort of entertaining how they spin this upside-down economic phenomenon:
“It’s sort of a back to the future report because we are back in a situation where domestic demand is growing strongly — at 4.7 percent — but GDP is only 3.1 percent. The difference is trade,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at the research firm Global Insight.
“In effect, it means the US is still the locomotive of growth in the global economy. It’s really alarming in the sense is that while the US continues to chug along, we haven’t made any progresss in terms of rebalancing growth in the global economy.”
Steve Stanley, chief economist for RBS Greenwich, added, “It is difficult to make a case that the economy is slowing down. Rather, in our view, there was an unsustainably large negative shock on the trade side.”
Similar views came from Moodys Investors Service chief economist John Lonksi, who said, “the contraction of exports brings attention to the still sluggish rates of growth both in eurozone and Japan. And it also brings attention to a loss of global competitiveness on the part of US manufacturers.”
]]>
<![CDATA[Our sponsors, including Marqui and the National Center for the Mangling of the English Language, make this blog possible.]]>
<![CDATA[See why.]]>