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Its that time of the year again, Songkran or Thai New Year, when the majority of Thais head home for the five day holiday. And so it is that I find myself once again in my wife’s village in the...
[ Read Post (new window) ]Barack Obama’s presidency began in hope and goodwill, but its test will be its success or failure on the economics. Did the president and his team correctly diagnose the problem? Did they act with sufficient imagination and force? And did...
[ Read Post (new window) ]According to the Asian Development Bank the fall in the value of financial assets may have reached $50,000 billion, with estimated losses in Asia (excluding Japan) of at least $9,625 billion. Many developing nations face a financing gap of between...
[ Read Post (new window) ]Alligators basking off the English coast; a vast Brazilian desert; the mythical lost cities of Saigon, New Orleans, Venice and Mumbai; and 90 per cent of humanity vanished. Welcome to the world warmed by 4°C. Clearly this is a vision...
[ Read Post (new window) ]The fatal flaw in the current global warming debate is that most of the key players are singing off the wrong song sheet. Current policy proposals are based on scientific information which at least five years out-of-date. The latest information...
[ Read Post (new window) ]In a previous posting some weeks ago I suggested that the US model of capitalism, fuelled by easy credit, driven by greed, and populated by a deluge of complicated financial products that few people even pretend to understand, is doomed....
[ Read Post (new window) ]The Context:Based on debt and compounded interest on debt, funded by the wealthy seeking even greater wealth, dependent upon easy credit leading to easy consumption, driven by an insatiable desire for more of everything and resulting in unprecedented material comfort...
[ Read Post (new window) ]The whole drama of human history is enacted in a frame of meaning too large for human comprehension or management Last month the acknowledged rate of unemployment in the US rose to a 25-year high of over 8 per cent...
[ Read Post (new window) ]Networks of beliefThe Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people, said Moshe Yaalon, the then Israel Defence Forces (IDF) chief-of-staff in 2002. The war launched by Israel in...
[ Read Post (new window) ]It is 2am and I am exhausted. Barely two hours ago Suna and I were among thousands of other revellers at Patong Beach in Phuket. We had come together for one purpose - to greet the New Year.The air was...
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