Jacek Popiel A few weeks ago we examined the source of China’s “meteoric” rise to the rank of the second largest world economy and concluded that the “miracle” was essentially a one-off play based on offering the lowest cost for the production of goods for export. While successful, the policy destroyed both income and assets…
Jacek Popiel For years our financial press and media have hailed the rise of China to the rank of global power. Such phrases as “the Chinese miracle”, “the workshop of the world” or “the engine of the global economy” and “the Asian (meaning China’s) century” have become common parlance. The tone started changing, quite suddenly,…
b. traven, W.J. Astore, and Stuart Lyle We at The Contrary Perspective believe in freewheeling debate. We recently had such a debate, largely behind the scenes, on the causes and larger meaning of America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. We offer this debate to our readers, unedited except for the addition of links and clarifications,…
James Keye I created this list of “American Myths” 25 years ago thinking that some significant part of the people would begin to understand them over time. What seems to be happening is that the country is dividing into those who cling with increasing aggression to these myths as others realize the falseness of them.…
Steve Naidamast In my last two pieces (“Why Nothing Works – Parts I & II”), I discussed the failure of software development to support the transactions in daily life dominated by current software foundations. Further, the misuse of modern software capabilities is having deleterious effects sociologically across a wide spectrum of users, especially here in…
W.J. Astore The more the United States has come to talk about dominance, the less dominant we’ve become. To compensate, we’ve become a steroidal nation, to include the violent side effects associated with steroid use (just look at the latest stories out of the NFL about spousal and child abuse, or our steroidal police forces,…
By Don Rose. Introduction by William Astore. Charter schools, in theory, offer advantages to public schools. They’re advertised as offering “choice” to concerned parents, who shop for the “best” schools as measured by test scores and related data. They promise to hold teachers accountable. They say they offer novelty in pedagogy. But in practice…
I started writing for TomDispatch, a remarkable contrarian site founded and edited by Tom Engelhardt, a fine editor/writer and even finer gentleman, in October 2007. My first article was on the Petraeus surge and how President Bush and his administration were hiding behind the absurdly bemedaled and beribboned uniform of that general. Tom Engelhardt’s generous…
A friend of mine knew the big wigs at a leading manufacturer of agricultural equipment back in the late 1960s. He recalls reading an article back then in the Wall Street Journal about the company being sued for the deaths of farmers. The gas tanks on some of their tractors were exploding because they were…
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