Vital Concerns for the World: What the rising demand for popular suffrage is doing to the world

Saturday, February 12, 2011

What the rising demand for popular suffrage is doing to the world

The new imaginative hope for authentic popular suffrage has enthralled the Middle East where true freedom has scarcely ever been known. Here are some ways that it is being expressed [besides the new announcement in Kazakhstan noted here earlier:

Bahrain:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/02/20112452524115600.html
Bahrain doles out money to families:
Latest appeasement comes as activists call for protests to demand political, social and economic reforms.

Algeria:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/201121235130627461.html
Algeria protesters break cordon: Pro-democracy demonstrators, inspired by the Egyptian revolution, ignore official ban and march in the capital Algiers.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/20112315364175524.html
Algeria to lift emergency powers: President says country's 19-year state of emergency will be lifted in near future in apparent bid to stave off unrest.

Syria
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/2011/02/201129135657367367.html
Q&A: Syrian activist Suhair Atassi: In an interview from her native Syria, Atassi shares her views on the need for political reform in her country.

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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 $370,000. [Bill Gross Pimco Investment Outlook Feb, 2011.]
In 2005, one-quarter of the corporations in America making a trillion dolars in revenue paid no taxes.
The 833% Medical Insurance Ripoff: Medicare charges 3% for service; the health insurance companies in Missouri charge 25% for services
The richest 1 percent of Americans have more net worth than the bottom 90 percent.
The richest 1 percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 50%. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/dec/10/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-viral-speech-says-top-1$ >