TEA LEAVES UNDER STONES
“ Assad Endgame : How Do We Stand Up for Our Values and Interests in Syria?”
Returning home to Washington from Europe Tuesday evening, I was just in time to hear Pres. Obama’s address to the nation on Syria. In it he rightly expressed the horror and revulsion of the civilized world at the Assad regime’s now confirmed August use of sarin gas to kill over one thousand of its citizens in opposition neighborhoods of Syria’s capital, Damascus. Continue reading
Hopefully Not Lost in Translation : What Japan’s Lost Decades Tell Us Here in the U.S.A.
[ “Part One – How Japan’s Miracle Fell Apart” appeared in the August 1-15 issue of MegaScene. It recounts how Japan’s economy fell from being fast-growing and challenging the U.S.A. for global dominance in the 1980’s to a stagnating and declining economy today. In essence, a massive financial crash in the early 1990’s saw Japanese businesses, banks and households lose much of their savings and wealth when a property market bubble suddenly collapsed. Since then, the Japanese economy never fully recovered. It fell into a long-term trap of deflation and recession. Continue reading
Hopefully Not Lost in Translation: What Japan’s Lost Decades Tell Us Here in the U.S.A.
“It is hard to let old beliefs go. They are familiar. We are comfortable with them and have spent years building systems and developing habits that depend on them. Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long he forgets he has them on, Continue reading
Polar Bears and Glaciers Are Talking. But Are We Listening?
“ What is a man alongside infinity? – To see a surprising prodigy of Nature, let him seek out the smallest thing he knows. Let a mite reveal the incomparable smallness of its body, its limbs, its veins, the smallest drops of its blood. He may think this perhaps the smallest thing in Nature. But inside it, I will show him a new abyss – an immense natural world conceivable inside the still smaller frame of an atom.” Continue reading
United States and China : Partners, Competitors, or Adversaries?
by Paul Ballard
June 16, 2013
“The appropriate label for the China-USA relationship is less partnership than “co-evolution”. It means that both countries pursue their domestic imperatives, cooperating where possible, and adjust their relations to minimize conflict. Neither side endorses all the aims of the other or presumes a total identity of interests, but both sides seek to identify and develop complementary interests.A cooperative U.S.-China relationship is essential to global stability and peace.” ~ Henry Kissinger, 2011. Continue reading
Memorial Day Remembrance : Honoring Our Silent Heroes, Giving the Peace They Call Us To
by Paul Ballard
June 1, 2013
~ “But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.” ~ Abraham Lincoln, 1863. Continue reading
Facing Up to Climate Change : How Real Is It? How Bad Could It Get? What Should We do Now?
by Paul Ballard
May 16, 2013
~ “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute – and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.” ~ Albert Eistein, 1957 Continue reading
Shale Gas and Our Energy Future – Savior, Stopgap or Ecological Disaster?
by Paul Ballard
April 16, 2013
“To increase our dependence on shale gas from fracking would be a dangerous detour from developing a responsible, sustainable energy policy. Natural gas is not a bridge; it’s a gangplank to a destabilized climate and an impoverished economy.” ~ Michael Brune, Sierra Club, 2013. Continue reading
After the Cold War, Nine Eleven, Iraq and Afghanistan, How Should America Lead in Our Globalized World?
by Paul Ballard
April 16, 2013
In 2014 when our troops finally depart Afghanistan, America will be at peace for the first time since the Nine Eleven attack in 2001. Fittingly that will be almost a quarter century since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 brought an end to the Cold War. Continue reading
Immigration is America’s DNA – How Should Reform Tap Our Secret of Success?
by Paul Ballard
April 1, 2013
Since last November’s elections, suddenly immigration reform has been taken out of deep freeze by Republican and Democrat politicians in Washington. The goal, as we know, is to reach out to the Latino community, destined to become America’s largest minority by mid-century. A Bi-Partisan Committee of U.S. Senators – encouraged by President Obama – is deliberating comprehensive immigration reform proposals. Continue reading