NPR LINK
Recently I wrote an article about the financial crisis that has destroyed
Spain’s economy. This next move,
by the rather poor country of Argentina, will be the biggest blow yet. Argentina’s female president, Cristina
Fernandez, has declared her plans to nationalize the Spanish Oil company. Both countries are currently facing
financial challenges at the moment.
However this was a very foolish move because every single other time this
has been attempted it has failed miserably usually with the instigator losing
millions and gaining nothing. She
says it is mandatory to help her country gain a market in the development of new
energy sources, without which would leave her country in the dust.
The president declared in her defense “I am a head of state, ad not a
hoodlum. “ She also stated
that Repsol, the Spanish Oil Company, will be compensated, however the amount
will be determined by an Argentine panel.
Company shares have plummeted in value since this seizure for obvious
reasons and foreshadowing the obvious downfall of her plan.
The company states that it shares were worth 10.5 billion before the
seizure, however now they are already drastically less so how much they get
compensated is up in the air at the moment.
The Spanish retort to all this by saying “Fernandez’s left-leaning
government has mismanaged the economy and is in need of money.”
Argentina is a lagging behind many of the other countries starting to
develop in Latin America. Despite
all this, she is very popular in her country receiving over the 54% of the
vote. The problem now she says is
that they need a steady flow of foreign exchange, a feat that will be hard to do
seeing as she just angered many of the world’s most powerful countries.
BBCThe French Socialist party has come out ahead in the recent polls. Leading by a mere 2% (28% to 26%) they proved their dominance and popularity over Nicolas Sarkozy. This election has been dominated primarily by widespread anxiety over not only the French economy, but the entire Western European financial crisis. Something interesting about this is it the first time a French President running for re-election has not come out ahead in the primaries since the 1950s. Not only is there a socialist party running for election of the French government, but the French Communist Party also obtained a whopping 11% of the votes. This really goes to show you how desperate the French, and on a broader note, Western Europeaners are about this crisis they are experiencing. Most French parties are promising to adopt the American policy of taxing citizens who aren’t currently living in the country. Also the Socialist party has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than 1m euros a year. Not only that he plans on raising the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers and lower the retirement ages as a few of his more radical promises. This is crazy that France is so desperate that its people are willing to turn to a system that enslaved their country less than a century ago. This is all do to a terrible welfare system that is overly generous to the people and is starving the government of all its tax payer dollars.
BBC LINK
Libya has been a very oppressed country under the rule of its former tyrant, Gaddafi. During his rule, proffessional athletes were neglected and received little to no financial aid from sponserships. In fact, Libya hasn't receieved an Olympic medal, well... Ever! Fortunately, Gaddafi's reign has come to an end and the people have a chance to rebuild and where better to start than the Olympics. Mohamed Khawaja, who has as described by many as "a pocket model" of his heroes, Usain Bolt and Michael Johnson. Standing at well under 6ft and weighing just 65 kilograms. He doesn't appear to be any stud. This coulnd't be further from the truth. It is joked that he carries not an ounce of fat, and the crazy thing is this is basically true. In the making of this star, nothing went to waste. With a 400 meter time of under 45 seconds, he shows promise in bringing Libya its first ever olympic medal and starting the time for change and rebuilding. I know that one Olympic medal won't bring drastic change to the impoverished country of Libya, but I do think it can provide a great starting point for a country to flourish. All you can do now is pray for the underdog and hope he can bring to his country an Olympic medal to mark as the transition point from rags to riches for the country of Libya. I bet that come the summer olympics, he will pull off a spectacular gold medal finish and a movie might even be made about him and his journey to break free from the shcakles that bound his country for over 3 decades!
BBC LINK I saw this one fact and it angered me. "Half of all Spain's youth are unemployeed." What angers me is that the unemployment rate seems to be rising and inflations occuring and what not, but we only have ourselves to blame. This generation of youth are the laziest bunch of people I've seen in or read about ever. Its pathetic. They have adults urging them to get active and involved in their communities and they think that they are better than that so decide to reside in their basements playing video games and doing recreational drugs. Whats even more stupid is some of my tax paying dollars (I work two jobs currently) are going to end up going to their sorry asses because they did nothing to prepare themselves for a demanding job and more likely than not will just fail. Then they will just be like "oh well" I still get unemplyment maybe I just am not cut out for working. Half of Spain's youth is unemployed is a sign of how lazy people are becoming. Its awful because its been proven in hundreds of studies throughout time that if you don't do anything accomplishing you will never feel accomplished and become depressed. They are setting themselves, and the future up, to faill. The current systems arn't working and are the results of people going down the wrong paths more and more over the years.
The worst part is I don't see a solution to this crisis that doens't require a complete revamp in the entire "system". When somethings beyond fixable, I believe you have to scrap everything and start anew.
BBC LINK
The Taliban's "Spring offensive" has officially began with a series of coordinated attacks across the country of Afghanistan. A total of 19 people were killed and about 30 more injured in the biggest attacks since September of last year. An interesting fact I thought was that their "fighting season" begins when the warmer weather melts snow in the mountain passes that run along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, allowing easier crossing. Two rockets hit the British embassy. What really bothers me is that it was reported that the insurgents were heard yelling that they intended to fight to the death. However, they gave no cause for which they were fighting and no attempt at any form of a peaceful settlement. I believe they have simply been brainwashed into believing that the only option is violence. On another note, many countries including Japan and Germany reported their embassies being hit in the attacks. However, Russia denies any damage to its embassy, which was right in the middle of the whole thing. I have started noticing recently that Russia has been acting very strange when dealing with the Middle East and Northern Africa. Something I also found to be comical was that Afghan forces managed to capture two suicide bombers, alive. The only way you can do that is if they simply choose not to detonate their device. This leads me to believe that they were not really wanting to ever be suicide bombers. This in turn leads you to assume they didn't believe in the cause the Taliban sent them out to give their life for. This all goes back to the question of is it really Taliban soldiers we are fighting, or brainwashed people who are just pawns in the Taliban's sick game.
LinkI would like to start out this blog by asking how this article made the front page of the NYTIMES. Honestly nothing must have happened to today to result in such a bland, irrellevant, piece of literature being publicized world wide on a paper detailing America's top stories. On to the news.
Muhammad Rashid, an activists in Queens, has fought for the rights of those held in detention, south the preservation of local movie theaters, and and promoted diversity. None of that brought him much contrevorsy until he revealed his stance on yoga. He used to believe that yoga was denouncing his religion, but now believes it is good and encourages other Muslims to do it. What really got me is why its considered bad for Muslims. The only reason I found that they believe it is in fact bad is because that is how Hindus worship. This is one of those horrible instances where people make stupid and rash decisoins because they refuse to see eye to eye. Just because you might not agree with your neihgbor does not make every single they do inately bad. Unfortunateley with religion and culture in general sometimes this becomes the case. This is shown when Mr. Rashid, who also tutors children had his students try it out for a while. Three of them quit almost immediatly and he believes it to be because their parents stance on yoga based on their religion. Towards the end of the article it says muslims arn't the only ones effected by this because some Southern Christian Baptist Pastures also have declared this practice Blasphamous.
Link Russia always seems to amaze me with its relationship between government and the public. Since the 1900's, I don't think there has been a more unstable government in Europe than the Soviet Union, I mean Russia ;). They started WW1 and dropped out because of an internal war that sparked. When else in history have you ever heard of that happening? Today's Russia seems to be not much different. Protestors seem to be relentless about the supposedley (and I'm not getting onto a side of this) ballot rigging that took place in what was supposed to be a newly democratic and free nation. The article is about how they recently oppened the Red Square to protestors again after what appears to be an on and off struggle between protestors and the government. The only "arrrest" that was made was of 3 protestors who attempted to set up a tent on the Square and they were shortly released with a court summons for minor hooliganims. The most ironic thing about all this is, that some citizens are now asking, "where are the police" after months of protesting to get them off that very same symbolic square. Some have described it as another planet and now more rallies are going to be held their over the reportedly rigged eleciton of Vladimir Putin. He is due sometime in the next few weeks to be inagurated as President of Russia. The position formerly held by the corrupt "Kremlin." Russia is a mess right now, the Media's praising Putin, there are illegal anti-Putin protestors, and everything isn't going together smoothly.
Link A did an earlier blog post defending the position of the North Koreans. I've been trying to see things from "the enemies" point of view for a while now, but I feel like the extension article I just read defeats all the defences I had prepared for North Korean. While at first they only mentioned launching a missle in honor of their late leader, now they announced that they plan on launching a nuclear missle test as well. Many nations feared all along that this was in fact a long range missle test, and I tried to stay neutral except this newest bit kind of points of that they may have in fact been lying and using it as a cover up for a long range missle test. What I wasn't aware of when I defender them originally was that a similar event to this has occured in 2009 and restrictions were imposed on them henceforth. Now they are violating those restrictions again which sounds very suspicious. South Korea and Japan have already declared they will shoot it down without hesitation if it strays to close to either of their territories. I defend them on this decision because their motives clearly don't appear peaceful anymore at this point and I'd bet my left nut that this is probobly a cover up for a long range missle test. While it is expected to go straight South, only time will tell if they were covering up, or in fact telling the truth.
BBC LINK Going into my vacation, I was under the assumption that the Syrian crisis had already climaxed but I fear I was mistaken. The rebel oppostion National Council has announced an incentive (money) for Syrian Government soldiers to defect from the government's army and join the rebels. Apperently this is all being funded by wealthy Arabs in the Gulf which is good to see other countries are trying to take an initiative to stop the madness. Russia seems to still be staying out of the entire conflict. The new group funding all this named the SNC is committed to take charge and pay the salaries of all officer soldiers and otheres of the "Free Syrian Army". Many people say this decision is an important part of the campaign to out the President. I would probobly have to agree here and this actually seems to be one of the first legitimant steps anyone has taken in a long time to have a positive impact on this horrible tragedy occuring in Syria. The most important and signifcant thing about this to me is that this is in fact non-lethal aid as compared to guns and ammo so it really shows you that there are good people in the world after all who have their eyes set on a more peaceful future. Odly enough however, there are still many who believe that the SNC's leadership is ineffective and should be replaced. Although based on the evidence I have seen, I wouldn't quite agree, but then again I haven't seen all the evidence either so only time will tell.
First off, I was at the spot of an event that made the world news for a bit. Apperently a passenger of a Disney Cruise that had docked at Cozumel was scuba-diving right out near our hotel and was taken under by the current and never seen again. On a somewhat lighter note...
While I did really enjoy my vacation, I noticed some things that probobly wouldn't have even struck my mind had I not been in World Humanities. While the ocean front was indeed beautiful, I saw a quite different story on the inerior of the island. We rented a dunebuggy one day to explore the island and as we left the comfort of our hotel, I immediatly began noticing a significant decrease in the quality of life for the actual citizens of Cozumel. What I observed was row after row of ghettos that I wouldn't even deem safe for human life. The streets and "sidewalks" were littered (like you couldn't see the grass at some points) with garbage which I assume was from tourists partying and a lack of care for the islands ecosystem. Most of the citizens there work on meager wages serving the people who are trashing their (the citizens) home, and while the tourist gets to go back home to their nice house, the Cozumel citizens are left in the trash left by the careless tourist. Many of the street merchants even begged for tourists to buy their wares and I'm sure if they couldn't manage to sell something, they would go home to an empty dinner table.
I'm not saying all of Cozumel is a dump, nor am I saying that all Cozumel citizens are poor, I'm just pointing out that something is fundamentaly wrong.
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