Vital Concerns for the World: My interview with the Pakistani Spectator

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

My interview with the Pakistani Spectator

I have been asked by the Pakistani Spectator to notify my readers of my on-line interview with them. It can be found at:
http://www.pakspectator.com/interview-with-blogger-robert-l-canfield/

Pakistani Spectator seems to be a new blog aimed at reaching a wide audience, not only of Pakistanis but also of interested people around the world. The organizers of this blog are interesting to me and I hope to others outside of Pakistan because they represent a very different perspective on the world than often appears in the news about Pakistan. One role of journalism is to draw attention to important events and developments but the result of that can be an undue emphasis on the more horrific events, the extreme viewpoints, the most unseemly elements in a country. I will follow this website because it seems to represent the middle class elements of Pakistan, elements who are sometimes shut out of the news by the importance given to dramatic events and extreme actions taken in the country. I suspect the creators of this website/blog are young and therefore represent a group with high aspirations for their country. They also represent a large proportion of the population, as Pakistan is a very young country, the median age being something less than 21. I wish them success in this ambitious endeavor.

And thanks for the attention given to me and my views. [Click on the title for a link to their home page.]

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A major source of the American debt problem

Notable Concerns

"Not one has taken responsibility for the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history." Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rica, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith.
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. AlJazeera 10/15/11
GE, America's largest corporation, paid no taxes last year even though it made 5.1 billion dollars profit in the country [and even more outside the country] [source: same as below]
In 2009 the richest 5% held 63.5% of American wealth; the bottom 80% controlled 12.8%. [source: same as below]
Between 2000 and 2007 the richest 10% in America benefited from all of the average growth in the period. In the post WW II period the top 10% benefited from only one third of the growth, the bottom 90% benefiting from the rest of the growth. [Economic Policy Institute, cited by Bob Herbert, NYT 3/26/11]
In 2010 a "premier" investment bank paid each of its 26,000 employees an average of $370,000. [Bill Gross Pimco Investment Outlook Feb, 2011.]
In 2005, one-quarter of the corporations in America making a trillion dolars in revenue paid no taxes.
The 833% Medical Insurance Ripoff: Medicare charges 3% for service; the health insurance companies in Missouri charge 25% for services
The richest 1 percent of Americans have more net worth than the bottom 90 percent.
The richest 1 percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 50%. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/dec/10/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-viral-speech-says-top-1$ >