• RSS Feed

  Reclaim Liberty RSS Feed

• Recently Written

  • Judge Allows KBR Rape Case To Go To Trial
  • Internet Archive Successfully Challenges FBI NSL
  • Only 3% Of Crimes Solved By Use Of CCTV
  • US DOT Gives Chicago $153M To Reduce Congestion
  • UK Crossing Guards Get Cameras
  • Microsoft Device Helps Police Extract Evidence From Computers
  • Feds Decide They Can Search ANY Electronic Files At The Border
  • “Our short tenure as the world’s lone superpower has come to an end.”
  • US Prepares Readiness For War Against Iran
  • WSJ Urges Americans To Stock Up On Food

• Categories

  • Economics
  • Election 2008
  • Military
  • News
  • Opinion
  • State Government
  • UK Government
  • US Government
  • World News

• Archives

  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007

• Blogroll

  • Ron Paul 2008 - Ron Paul 2008

• Admin

  • Register
  • Login
  • Wordpress
  • XHTML

• Search

The New York Times is running a story about the global rise in food prices, and how it is affecting people and governments the world over.  There have already been food riots that have forced government changes in Haiti, and the Times correctly attributes some of the cause to “from strong demand for food from emerging economies like China’s to rising oil prices to the diversion of food resources to make biofuels”.

While these are important causes, one that is not discussed is rampant inflation.  Prices rise through increased demand and lack of supply; no one will deny that.  However, for them to have been “spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006″ means that something else must be going on.  If prices have gone up almost 50% in a year, then that means if nothing changes, they’re likely to have gone up almost 100% in two years.  A doubling of food prices in two years is astonishing, and Read more

From the PC World article:  “The Greater Manchester Police force is looking for friends — on Facebook.It has created a Facebook application to collect leads for investigations, marking the first use of the social networking site by U.K. law enforcement.

The application delivers a real-time feed of police news and appeals for information. Next to that content is a feature to share a particular story with other friends in a person’s network, as well as post comments.”

One of the recent updates is an appeal asking for information about four men, one of whom was armed with an axe, who robbed a betting shop.

A “Submit Intelligence” link takes a Facebook user to the police Web site where they can anonymously submit tips. Another link leads to the videos on YouTube featuring information on the police force, ongoing investigations and other advisories. Read more

Updated 20080414:  The World Bank has echoed these sentiments.

With global food prices continuing to rise, the International Monetary Fund has warned that hundreds of thousands of people may face starvation. As detailed in a previous post, rice prices have gone up 70% in the last year. There have already been food riots in Haiti, the Philippines, and Egypt. Quoting: “He said the problem could lead to trade imbalances that may eventually affect developed nations, ’so it is not only a humanitarian question’.”

Well, as long as it’s “not only a humanitarian question” then I guess the rich nations will actually do something about it? Isn’t it the height of arrogance and vanity that he has to make an appeal to rich nations’ self-interest to get them to consider doing something about it? There is one poignant sentence in the article that sums things up quite nicely:

Read more

How will a war with Iran start? It will start with Israel, which actually shouldn’t be a surprise. What is likely to happen is that Israel will attach Iran, and then Iran will strike back, and that will give the US a reason to attack Iran - to “protect our ally”… Read more

While you’ll never see me give up on the United States (though certainly the current administration makes one want to), it’s interesting to compare it against how things work on other parts of the globe. Many things are compared against the European Union (EU) since it has such a long history and provided much of the basis of law and commerce for the world for so long. The standard line in America is that things are significantly better here than they are there - that the ‘bastion of socialism’ that is the EU is too old and too regimented to be a good place for people to live and/or work, especially when viewed through the lens of the supposedly pure capitalism that we enjoy here. (I’d like to stress that we’re not actually a purely capitalistic country - too much government interference.) Well, it’s beginning to seem that that’s less true. Read on for the reasons why. Read more

It should be obvious to most people by now, but the “War On Drugs” is essentially un-winnable.  The “War On Terror” is essentially un-winnable as well, but it actually seems now, though, as though the Drug War is actually interfering with the Terror War.  The obvious example is in Afhganistan, where Read more

The Australian government is on a crusade to make the internet “safer” for children and families by blocking access to internet pornography, and shutting down terror sites. While the goal of “making the internet safer” always seems laudable, it never actually works, either by not filtering enough, or by filtering too much (eg, legitimate breast cancer information sites). What is most disturbing, about this, however, is not that the Aussie government will try to filter the internet, but
Read more

According to this Reuters article, up to 2,000 Iraqis are displaced every day, and most Iraqi school children have been out of school for quite some time. This raises the possibility that there will be a generation of uneducated Iraqis, something that wouldn’t have happened Read more

Although it should be obvious, AlterNet has a good article on how Bush’s spying program never had anything to do with Al-Qaeda and everything to do with spying on us.

Do the people in the Middle East not know the term “playing both sides”? The President is preparing to give the Saudis an arms deal worth $20 billion over ten years, and of course Israel is not happy about that. So the President is also preparing to significantly increase our aid to Israel as well, to the tune of $3 billion a year, which is $1 billion a year more than they’re currently getting.

Next Page →