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Cities Without Borders
An anonymous reader writes "There is a very interesting article about Cities Without Borders in the latest issue of Mindjack. The author, Paul Hartzog, argues that we are seeing the emergency of 'global cities' concentrating command-and-control functions for the global economy. For instance, the increasing importance of certain cities such as New York, London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Sydney or Miami shows they not only support complex webs of businesses but also participate in a global network for the production and distribution of finance and capital. This is just one example. You should read the original article to see if you agree with the author -- or not."
Hmm. Maybe it has something to do with the type of government and economic system.
Israel: Parliamentary democracy, capitalism.
"Palestine": Tinpot terrorist dictatorship, kleptocracy.
Naaaaaw, that's got nothing to do with it. It's all the fault of teh 3vil J00Z!
But they live in "refugee camps"! Yeah, yeah, what-the-fuck-ever. I know we westerners are supposed to think of tents and mud when we see the term "refugee camp", but take your green goggles off and just look at the damn place. "Refugee camps" of 100,000 people, featuring roads, water, brick and mortar construction, and that have been there for 30 years... anywhere else on the planet, those are called cities. (Of course, in states with functioning market economies - as opposed to terrorist kleptocracies - there's something to do in those cities other than figure out new ways to kill the Jews, but there we go on the GDP per capita front again. Guess when Saddam stopped paying $25K per suicide bomber, the only economic activity in "Palestine" really crashed.)
Fun exercise: Divide the subsidies from the US to Israel, and from the UN and European states to "Palestine" by the respective populations the two countries.
OK, so I suppose "Palestine" isn't subsidized by the EU or the UN on the grounds that all the money ends up in Switzerland under the control of some French chick. But unless you believe Yasser's AIDS-wracked corpse underwent a last-minute conversion to Judaism last week, you're gonna have a hard time convincing anyone (except possibly the Muslims) that teh 3vil j00z are behind it.
And to stay on topic. I love NYC, but... fuck Hollywood.
Coooome oooooon! Not even a mention of Canada there!
It mentioned Sydney but not Toronto or Montreal? You know we *are* part of the G8 (Australia isn't). We are the US's biggest trading partner. The Oscar winning Chicago was shot in Toronto. We were also atop the Human Development Index for a number of years.
I know it's easy to forget about us Canadians, but we'll forgive you for it this time...
This is left as an exercise for the reader.