Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

President Chavez, the book publicist? See the BBC Article.

Iraq War Boosts Terrorism

Intelligence Agencies Report that the Iraq War has Boosted Terrorism

This has been quite obvious for some time, but it doesn't hurt to have the intelligence services chime in on the topic. All the same, the neocons are likely to remain in denial (or keep lying), no matter what.

Coup in Thailand --- Where's U.S. Media?

The media in the United States has become increasingly useless as a source of news (news, as in give us the facts to the best of your ability to gather them without bias). A glaring example of this is the coup in Thailand. The Thai military ousted the elected prime minister, parliament, and the Thai constitution. They also seized control of media outlets. The American public is, however, very poorly informed on Thailand, both the events leading up to the coup, as well as the coup itself. Why is this? Why does the U.S. media not serve as the "Fourth Estate" and keep our citizenry informed, so that democracy in this nation might function all the better? Indeed, how can democracy work at all if the media is not vigilant at finding and exposing information, with as little bias as possible? To make matters worse, when the coup was mentioned, it was typically placed in a bizarre "Thai government redefines democracy" context. Democracy and coups are NOT compatible. The media should treat Thailand's military no different than any group of armed thugs taking over an elected government. Thailand has (or had) elections. There was a way of bringing about regime change through the popular vote. If might makes right, then democracy loses. So, I'm afraid that the increasingly weak state of our Fourth Estate represents, at best, a crippling of this leg of democracy, and, given the increasing concentration of corporate control over media outlets (often in the hands of corporations with direct ties to the military and specific political candidates), perhaps the media leg of democracy is completely amputated at this point.

Afghanistan Making Progress

BBC Photo (thanks to David Ruccio for the heads up on this one):

China FDI Slowing

The pace of foreign direct investment in China has been slowing in the last couple of months, down 5.49% in July from the previous month. This may not be a big concern, at least not just yet, given that China continues to attract billions of dollars in such foreign investment projects, $32.7 billion in the last seven months, according to China Daily. A slowdown in FDI may even be welcome, as the Chinese authorities have been trying to slow down the seemingly runaway train of economic growth (with all the associated problems, both near term and long term, of growth that outpaces the capacity of the nation's, and perhaps global, resources to provide sufficient fuel or carrying capacity). Nevertheless, we should keep our eyes on this. The housing bubble in China is also being deflated, with lots of help from the authorities (and not just the People's Bank of China). If growth slows too fast or too much, it could bode ill for the global economy, including the United States. Stay tuned.

Steve Irwin

Our condolences to Terri (another transplanted Oregonian):


(Reuters Photo)