Another roundup of tab-clearing news, much of which got pushed aside by Ukraine updates:
Human progress is not a natural evolutionary course. Nor is it an entitlement. Civilization can be broken pic.twitter.com/JWnF8O5zRg
— ★Cassie (@Cassie_Troy) February 13, 2014
Mainly linking to this story for the amazing photos. As if living in an Ex-Communist country wasn’t bad enough, a winter storm just dumped several feet of ice on them.
“Walking in a Winter Wonderland” takes on quite a different meaning when the weight of the ice brings forests worth of trees crashing to the ground.
Driving doesn’t look like much fun either, though the frozen landscape looks amazingly alien.
Another video (skip ahead a minute to omit getting out of the parking garage):
All this should make you feel better about your current weather….
This week we’ll do it Thursday rather than Friday:
The degrees of broke-ness varies: from completely and utterly broke, like Greece or Italy; to wobbly, like the U.K., France, the U.S., or Japan; to getting poorer like Germany. But all of them are going to have to raise the percentage of gross domestic product they collect in tax — and many of them very significantly.
The U.S. deficit is more than 7% of GDP. The U.K.’s deficit is just as high. There is very little sign that spending cuts to close gaps of that magnitude are on the cards, nor is there any sign that growth will be sufficiently strong to make up the difference — certainly not in countries like the U.K. or Japan.
Huge sums of additional revenue will have to be raised.
Willie Sutton once famously remarked that he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.”
In the same way, governments will look to raise more tax from companies because that’s where the money is.
Or they could, you know, actually cut spending…
Busy day! Here’s a quick Texas vs. California roundup:
It’s late August, and California’s slide toward insolvency continues apace.
News! in tiny, bite-sized portions!
An interesting development, to say the least.
I still think Monbiot is more loon than not, and Anthropogenic Global Warming more scam than threat (I think it possible that the earth has warmed slightly, but regard the case for this possible warming trend being man-made as far from proven). But at least some hardcore greens are beginning to realize that if you really want to reduce carbon emissions without wrecking the world economy, nuclear is the way to go.
On a related note, for my latest Japan update (including news on the Fukushima Daiichi reactors) go here.
Not a lot of news coming out. The longer it takes things to happen, the more likely Mubarak is to hold onto power. Yesterday brought scattered reports that the army may be wavering in support of Mubarak. Today? Not so much. There are sporadic reports of gunfire, and lots of reports that citizens groups are banding together to prevent looting.
The old links down the page stopped updating at the end of the day. The new links are:
As for what an actual popular Egyptian government might look like, Michael Totten reminds us that the answer might be pretty ugly:
In Egypt, 82 percent want stoning for those who commit adultery; 77 percent would like to see whippings and hands cut off for robbery; and 84 percent favor the death penalty for any Muslim who changes his religion.
Asked if they supported “modernizers” or “Islamists” only 27 percent said modernizers while 59 percent said Islamists.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, there are reports of unrest in Yemen. Conversely, yesterday’s reports that Syria had also taken down nationwide Internet access appear to have been false.
Like everyone else, I’m a little slow getting back into the post-Thanksgiving swing of things, so here’s a collection of links: