The Editor's Desk

NEWSWEEK
Published Dec 20, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Jan 5, 2009

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  • Posted By: jbz7879 @ 12/30/2008 12:50:43 PM

    in one word an awful year with bleak aspects for the next year too
    happy new year

  • Posted By: ultima @ 12/29/2008 10:23:19 PM

    Zakaria also seems to limit his perspective to the benefits of immigration and open borders. I would mention two significant drawbacks: (1) the limit of finite natural resources as population grows without bounds is zero; (2) 300 million more people by the end of the century will mean 6 billion more metric tons of pollutants annually at the present UN estimated rate of 20 metric tons per capita. Even if we were to be able to cut our per capita output in half to the level of Mexico, we would have made no progress on reducing the present unacceptable total output of pollutants as the population doubles.

  • Posted By: ultima @ 12/29/2008 10:16:06 PM

    Zakaria also suggested that the U.S. defense budget is much higher than China???s but without normalizing the data to account for the fact that a given budget will buy many times more soldiers and planes in China than it will in the U.S., that suggestion may be totally misleading. What does a Chinese soldier get paid including the cost of housing, health care, and veterans??? benefits as compared to what a U.S. soldier gets paid in the all volunteer Army? What does it cost in labor and material to build an airplane in China vs. the U.S.?

  • Posted By: ultima @ 12/29/2008 10:09:39 PM

    In his latest book Zakaria seems to suggest that the all powerful in Washington are the lobbyists, special interests, and the fundraisers. The Gingrich revolution also promised change and a year later was in shambles, defeated by the power structure. As much as we yearn for a resurgent America, we should not forget the Gingrich failure. The constraints of the past aren???t transient phenomena.

  • Posted By: rajarambojji @ 12/21/2008 11:54:09 AM

    it is a historic opportunity for Obama to cause a paradigm shift on the energy scene. The most surprising characteristic of our society is when problems of energy crunch and global warming threatening our very existence arise, still the lobbies promoting damaging lifestyles still get political clout and also successfully lull the majority to become complacent about such issues. Obama seems to have broken free of such forces and his choice of energy secretary and science advisors give us hope.
    Further it is an excellent move to think of 5 to 7% of national economy to be used for priming the economy. Two cardinal principles, of course, I expect the wise architects of this massive conscious effort,to follow.One is employment generation with creation of permanent assets which all the future generations would be grateful for being a wealth generator and not budget guzzler posting losses and proving to be financial burden; secondly this opportunity should be treated as golden chance to cause a paradigm shift in our life style reducing dependence on fossil fuel as much as possible. One such massive and ideal initiative to my mind is to implement alternate gravity energy based transportation technologies of US origin, to eliminate import of 8 to 10 million barrels of oil, prevent spewing out of 3.5 billion tons of carbon annually while making handsome profits of 30 to 40% providing high quality service of 200 mph transportation from city to city, 60 mph transportation cargo from any point to any point and urban transportation at 60mph, generating a million jobs in green energy, all with alternate energy source gravity.(US Patent Appln. 12184151 dt 07/31/2008) This is a unique but simple technology innovation from USA with vast global implications and USA can again claim the technology leadership to free many a nation from the polluting energy from fossil fuels draining their economies and hurting the planet too with global warming.

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