Balkingpoints.com / Balkers

Video summaries below of 2000-09, during which the U.S. Republican party was in power and proceeded to wreck the world diplomatically and economically.  Non-U.S’ers will be pleased to know that they’re now a (very vocal) minority, effectively a regional party of the Southeastern U.S., with shifting demographics which portend further marginalization in the upcoming decade. Especially as the fixes implemented by a
more Progressive agenda under Obama, begin to correct the damage done at home
and abroad.

2010 will IMO begin the first decade in which we truly move away from the previous century. The first decade in which communications technologies which have shrunk the world and connected it’s people in direct ways, begin to become a political factor.
The decade in which the concept emerges that a globally-connected economy makes nations interdependent and therefore compelled to negotiate, and also puts workers in
a single boat – with shared interests & an increasingly unified voice to demand socio-economic progress on a world scale. That’s a bit hard to visualize at the ’10’s inception, but will be on the radar by it’s close I predict. Recessions on one continent pull the others in it, as we have seen. Governments need to act in coordinated ways to counter it – as they did with the present one – and social safety-nets need to be strengthened where inadequate to cover human suffering, which is most nations of course.

The global economy is not to be feared, only regulated.

That allows us to not only create new wealth and prosperity, but also share it. At least moreso than in decades and centuries prior. Click on the links in B/P Favored at right
to learn how Bill Clinton and Bill & Melinda Gates and Kiva.org, have already begun enfranchising people without regard to national boundaries. They will go down as pioneers of positive globalized change – whereas proponents of laissez-faire neglect, dereliction and vast inequality will hopefully close the decade even more on the scrapheap of history than they are at present.

I’m pleased to have launched Balkingpoints.com into these dawning prospects for
our planet.

I find it very curious that in the last couple of months Americans are finding it necessary to tell Canadians how to run their country.  First it was Michael Moore telling us that we are ruining our Health Care system….then Al Gore telling us that the “Alberta Oilsands jeopardize the survival of our species” and now the worst of all…..Sarah Palin saying “Canada needs to dismantle its public health-care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit.”.

The only comment above that doesn’t surprise me is Palin….. I expect comments from her to be out in left field.  So what has changed – ususally Americans don’t even know who we are or even care what we do…… Is it the Health Care debate going on…… is it that they don’t feel they can change their own country?  Does it have to do with us pulling out of Afganistan in 2011?

Meanwhile the US will continue to be our largest energy and water consumer……  Go figure!

The press had it leaked last week, but last night U.S. president Obama gave a speech in front of West Point military cadets, telling them that around 34,000 more of their type will be going to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. Those cadets are all officer prospects and will not bear the brunt of hostile fire if I have that correct. But the point is he is sending more, on a claim of vital national interests.

And when he says that he is talking about the western world and NATO countries also. He said pressure is being applied to allies for more troops, even while Canada is backing out. I get and can pretty much agree with the argument, that it’s protection for the west to defeat or weaken gihad crazies. This is the invasion westerners first backed, before Bush crazies attacked Iraq. Letting the Taliban get back into power in Kabul or remain around Kandahar in force gives them more ability to train and operate their terror networks with a carte blanche. But there are several similar things to the U.S. war in Vietnam to be worried about:

• historically resistant to invaders
• corrupt and illegitimate government in power
• guerilla enemy on it’s home turf, able to attack and disappear
• strategy of limited engagement, supposed to hand off war later to government forces that are inept so far
• pretty much of a quagmire already