The Political Inquirer

This news isn’t being thrown around in the main stream so I think it is necessary to put it out to folks.
Reuters
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russia’s deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war “very close”, a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday.
Separately, in comments certain [...]

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Steve Hargreaves at CNN Money thinks that $120 oil is good because it will force us to start looking at alternative energy. If this were a normal market without government intervention, that would be the case. However, since governments have legalized cartels like OPEC, supply and demand does not work correctly in the oil market–government [...]

Filed under: Asia, Economics, Geopolitics | 5 Comments »

Somehow I never thought of this (From the Angry Economist):
First is that there are sources of huge amounts of oil which are not profitable to extract when the Saudis are dumping oil. Second is that nobody is going to invest in these oil sources unless it looks like they can successfully sell their oil. [...]

Filed under: Asia, Economics, Geopolitics, Politics | Tagged: Oil, Saudi Arabia | 1 Comment »

(Slight spoilers)
The Iron Man movie’s underlying story is political–mainly about the Afghanistan operations and character Tony Stark’s company’s involvement in selling arms to both sides of the conflict. Americans and terrorists are both shooting each other with Stark Enterprise weapons.
Iron Man becomes a movie about some sort of moral sense to Tony Stark that his [...]

Filed under: Asia, Entertainment, Geopolitics, Media, Movies, News, Politics | 4 Comments »

Norm sent an article my way from TIME about the Bush administration appealing the classification of visitor’s logs as public information. I can’t speak for the opinions of others on the site but I feel that virtually everything our government does should be public information–especially visitor’s logs. What if the President were conspiring with leaders [...]

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I cannot speak for what happened to the Olympic torch relays in places like England, France, and Greece. But I can wonder out loud why anyone would choose San Francisco as the North American representative for such an event. Especially since I am a resident.
I am first befuddled by the choice of Beijing. The day [...]

Filed under: Asia, China, Commentary, Culture, Geopolitics | Tagged: Beijing, Olympics, San Francisco | 2 Comments »

Despite starting off the new millennium as “friends” and “partners”, Bush and Putin are at odds near the end of both of their terms. This AP report points out some of the rising tensions between the Kremlin and the White House:
ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) - President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, short-time leaders in a [...]

Filed under: Asia, Europe, Geopolitics, Media, News, Russia | Tagged: George Bush, Vladimir Putin | No Comments »

Reuters reports that the U.S. missile shield in Central/Southern Europe is going to have the approval of NATO. With the former anti-Russian alliance approving the plan, the Russian government is sure to get a little upset. Russian-US relations have disintegrated a lot under Putin and Bush, I hope it does not lead to another proxy [...]

Filed under: Asia, Europe, Geopolitics, Russia | 1 Comment »

In a recent announcement, China labeled the Dhali Llama a “wolf in monk’s wobes” and his followers “the scum of Buddhism,” the AP reports. I wish this was an April fools day joke, but it seems that China is really getting desperate in light of the international attention and the impending Olympics. And [...]

Filed under: Asia, China, Geopolitics, Politics | Tagged: bush, China, Olympics, pelosi, terrorism, Tibet | 3 Comments »

Going up nearly a dollar a day at this point. According to Bloomberg News the price of crude oil is $111 per barrel. Tensions in the Middle East seem to be part of the concern, driving up prices for fear of a future military conflict.

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Yesterday I posted when oil hit $107, but by the end of the trading hours it had topped out at $108. Today’s price: $109 per barrel.

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Republicans need to stop fooling themselves, too. The latest announcement over Obama’s phony antiwar stance involves an Iowa Republican that said terrorists would be “dancing in the streets” if Barack Obama became the president. I disagree vehemently. Obama has carefully planned his rhetoric as a cheap way to make people believe he is against foreign [...]

Filed under: Asia, Congress, Democrats, Election 2008, Geopolitics, Iraq, Politics | 3 Comments »