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経済的な観点においては、盛況していた１９９０年代には世界は今とは違い、インターネットによりすべてが変わると信じる人も多くいました。 １９７０年代早期から１９９０年代の早期にかけて年間平均が1.5％だった.生産性の伸びは、今では3％に近づいています。 ビル・クリントン大統領の2期目においては、製造部門の生産性は6％以上の伸びを記録することもありました。 連邦準備制度理事会議長であるアラン・グリーンスパンは、継続する生産性の伸びを見せる新経済について言及し、この背景にはインターネットによる古い経営方法の排他がありました。 そして国債が完全に処理されたのち、どのように.金融政策を実行すればいいかとさえ大々的に心配していました。 ジョージ・W・ブッシュ大統領の残した致命的な後遺症の規模に注目してみると、次期大統領は長期にわたる経済再生を行わなければならないことが分かります。 アメリカ経済に打撃を与える多くの事象があり、イラク戦争やグアンタナモ刑務所とアブグレイブ刑務所での失態、市民的自由の衰退などがその例として挙げられます。これらの事象からの影響は次期政権の任期後にも残ることでしょう。

Image Source: graphics8.nytimes.com

This is what Obama has to say after winning the election. He believes that America is ready for change. He is the first ever African-American to become the President of the United States. Obama had a significant lead over his leading contender, John McCain. But McCain promised to help out Obama in his work to lead the American people. He called Obama to congratulate him and offered him to a have a it down meeting so they could talk about how they could work together. Meanwhile, President Bush was ready at hand to congratulate Obama and invited the president elect to visit him in the White House as soon as it would be possible to do so. Bush assured Obama that he is about to begin the greatest journey of his life.

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Sister Emmanuelle, a nun who lived for more than 20 years among scavengers in Cairo, died on Monday. She was 99. Sister Emanuelle has been compared to Mother Teresa. Both fought to defend the rights of the poor. She died in her sleep. She was living in a retirement home in Callian, France. She comes from Belgium. Sister Emmanuelle was moved with the lives of Cairo’s zabbaleen. Their garbage collectors. Through her works there, she established schools, clinics and gardens to serve the desolate children. Then she founded an association which now extends up to eight countries, from Lebanon to Burkina Faso. her work in Cairo was very crucial. and evidently, it is a great loss now that she is gone. Jewish and Muslim leaders in France expressed their sadness through emotional statements about her death. she will always be remembered as a woman of high convictions and also one of action.

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Economically speaking the world was a different place during the roaring 90’s and many had believed that the Internet would transform everything. The averaged 1.5 percent a year from the early 1970s through the early 90s, now approached 3 percent in productivity gains. Manufacturing productivity during Bill Clinton’s second term sometimes even surpassed 6 percent in gains. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve spoke of a New Economy marked by continued productivity gains as the Internet buried the old ways of doing business. He even worried aloud about how he’d ever be able to manage monetary policy once the nation’s debt is fully paid of. When we look back and see how far George W. Bush administration’s crippling legacy left us, the next president will have to deal with the long economic struggle to recoup. We will think of many things which damaged the American economy like the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame, of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the erosion of civil liberties. The repercussions of all these will be felt beyond the lifetime of the next administration to come.

The present Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej has made some huge political blunders both internally and internationally such as bringing Thailand close to combating with Cambodia over the border line close to the Preah Vihear temple which was established in 1962 by the World Court. The Thai People always felt embittered about this and PM Samak had “solved” the problem in a one day meeting with the Cambodian leader about six months ago. There has been a military assemble up on the border near this temple in the last few months…
So … between the conviction and some actions and decisions that are not particularly cared for by the general population many Thai People are not pleased with the current Prime Minister. The opposition party is staging protests and has been for the past 3 or more months. Peaceful protesting is a healthy appearance of democracy, when the government allows people to express themselves in the open.

Reward your friends and punish your enemies.

Social psychologists identified five types of power. The two was given out in the quote above: incentive power and coercive power. Incentive power is the power to give rewards; coercive power is the power to give out punishments. And from this two types of power, there grow out three other types.

According to David Easton, it is the authoritative allocation of values. Simply put, the power of someone or something to hand out things that are generally considered good. Harold Laswell defined it as a matter of benefit, who gets what, how and when.

A term which cannot be separated from politics is government. Government is that organization that hands out the things that are good. It is the structure that identifies who the beneficiaries are, what they get and how. A key element in government is legitimacy. To be legitimate, it has to be widely accepted that something is rightfully necessary or legally binding. Politics goes hand in hand with government.

Source: cas.unt.edu

Almost at the top of world crisis is terrorism, that of extremist religious sects waging a war against other people in order to unite them under one religion or to avenge any slight done to their people. These radicals are some of the most dangerous people in the world, for they kill for neither pleasure nor money, but for their principles and faith. Governments around the world must find a way to achieve peace with them and to gain a sort of middle ground to agree on, because failure to do so will result to more innocent deaths and widespread destruction.

A new trend is now arising among terrorists – that of self-radicalization. People under this category are not members of any sect nor are some of them even bonafide Muslims, but they have radicalized themselves online and through other means. This is an alarming trend because the genuine terrorists may use this event to intensify their recruitment process, through the internet, printed material and such. A number of Singaporeans are currently behind bars for trying to enter extremist sects and join the holy war called Jihad. They are now a new breed of terrorists who do not even need to be in foreign countries in order to participate in terrorist activities.