Incredible. Hopefully the death toll is low, but I haven’t seen any estimates yet.
Only positive is that at least this hit a rich and well built country like Japan. Imagine something like this happening in Brazil. Hell, think back to what happened in Haiti.
January 3, 2011 – 11:23 am
And people think government is anathema to business:
The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show.
In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in late 2007, the ambassador, Craig Stapleton, [...]
November 28, 2010 – 8:36 pm
Today Wikileaks released approximately 250,000 confidential documents related to U.S. government diplomacy. This NY Times story runs down some of the highlights.
The big takeaways?
Saudi Arabia wants us to attack Iran for them
Israel is ready to attack Iran
U.S. diplomats to the U.N. are spying on their colleagues
The U.S. is really worried about Pakistan’s nukes
The Chinese government is [...]
August 13, 2010 – 12:12 pm
The UK’s public inquiry into the Iraq war (the “Chilcot Inquiry“) has featured testimony from major figures at the time of the invasion and has further strengthened criticism of the war on multiple fronts. Testimony affirms that pre-war intelligence did not paint Saddam Hussein as a threat, that the coalition had decided to wage war [...]
August 12, 2010 – 8:45 am
Sure our economy is in shambles, but at least we don’t have to worry about radiation from burning nuclear forests.
Picture of Russian wildfire from Boston.com.
Update: This.
“We are ready to sit down with Mr .Obama face-to-face, and put the global issues on the table, man-to-man, freely, and in front of the media and see whose solutions are better,” Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday.
His country has been the target of a series of U.N. sanctions, most recently in June, because of [...]
A brilliant animation set to a brief lecture by Professor David Harvey on the roots of the global economic crisis. Animation provided by RSA Animate. Theoretical foundations provided by Karl Marx.
The G20 Summit in Toronto concluded with a declaration that the “advanced economies have committed to fiscal plans that will at least halve deficits by 2013 and stabilize or reduce government debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016.” The non-binding agreement follows shortly after the Greek debt crisis, which in turn has sparked a crisis of confidence regarding [...]
Here’s an article describing how Iran has been evading economic sanctions put in place because of their nuclear program.
Let’s also remember that decades of sanctions against Cuba has yet to lead to regime change there but has likely set back their economy great deal (and kept me from getting top-notch cigars). Likewise, decades of sanctions [...]
This weekend Israel attacked Turkish ships in international waters that were on their way to delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians trapped in the Gaza strip. At least nine civilians aboard the transport ships were killed, many more were wounded.
Israel has been blockading Gaza since Hamas won the 2006 elections in the occupied territory. Israel’s blockade [...]