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South Korea Plans National 100 Mbps Network
prostoalex writes "Korean Ministry of Information and Communication is planning to wire the entire country with high-speed 50-100 Mbps network. A total of $80.4 billion will be spent on the project that's expected to be completed in 2010."
If Iraq chooses an anti-US communist or islamic regime, you seriously think that the White House is going to just shrug its shoulders and say "well, that's democracy".
If the US was interested in freedom, they'd have intervened in Zimbabwe and Rwanda (but I guess that they don't count because they don't have oil).
Personally, I'd rather see South Korea become a major tech power, and the population of California start making T-shirts in non-unionised conditions for a far eastern company. Maybe the US will learn something soon.
Incidentally, it won't get broadcast much, but Bush is in the UK, and most of us think he's a scumbag, even though our Prime Minister would like you to think otherwise, and that marches against Bush are being suppressed.
Your media might not report it, Tony Blair is way out of line on public opinion. Most of us think Bush is a liar and a crook.
That's not entirely true. Some numbers:
43% of Britons welcome the Bushes trip.
36% said they would rather not have him visit.
But regardless, majority/minority opinion is useless here. Blair's position all along has been that his Iraq decision may well be unpopular but it is in fact the right thing to do both in terms of humanitarianly and politically. Public opinion oscillates, but right and wrong in his view are more important. Having a Prime Minister who varies his views and policies based on the latest overnight tracking poll would not be very happy sight. The best recourse is to make Blair reget his decision by backing his ouster. But even his poll numbers are rebounding. At one point 70% of Britons disfavoured him, but now thats coming back to his normal levels. Last check it was hovering around the 51-52%. It dropped from 61% from just a few weeks ago.
Second, your inference about Halliburton and Iraq:
Out of $87B+ about $500M have been/will be inked in contracts toward Halliburton. Thats not quite one-half of one percent. They are about a $10B company, have a ~1% profit margin (in line with their competitors). On its face in terms of dollars it doesn't seem to be vastly corrupt. Details dont point that way either. The arrangement they have with the government is indentical to deals they had 1992 and 1999 when the army was in Balkans. They competed this time with 3 other US companies for contracts. Last time it was nearly a dozen. The cap for the contract was much higher, but since the work was providing support services and equipment for oil well repair in Iraq (and since there was minimal damage to wells compared to what was thought - $7B was the limit, $500M was spent) it seems interesting to suggest foul play.
Halliburton is a huge company - 83,000 employees, with lots of oil expertise. Do you think its weird that such a company would win a contract supporting oil-well repair in an oil rich country? It hardly seems a leap, especially since they've been doing work like this under contract for the Army for a very, very, very long time and under many different administrations ranging from Carter, to Reagan, to Bush, to Clinton and now Bush again.
The BBC has this good bit about it, for more information
So I guess you should be more explicit. What exactly are you saying about Halliburton? Seems like a lot of inference and very little substance.
Finally, about Mugabe. Bush has imposed sanctions on Mugabe, something that Clinton never did. Bush's representatives in the UN have pushed for more pressure to be put on him. Again, the UN is essentially useless, but regardless, the effort is there. Fundamentally Mugabe doesn't draw a lot of attention because his rule is weak compared to other dictators, his control over the country not nearly as strong as other dictators often possess, and he has never taken aggressive action against a neighbor - invasions, bombings, etc. Additionally, he is barely pursuing anything except a naked power grab let alone larger plans of weaponization. So whats your point there?
Maybe instead of relying on innuendo to do the job, you could acutally say something concrete.