Monday, September 1, 2014
American Labor Day 2014
Today is Labor Day in the United States, where the unemployment rate is 6.2%, although experts say the real unemployment rate us about 12.6%. ~~~~~ **Eurozone unemployment remained unchanged in July at 11.5%. It is much higher in countries hardest hit by Europe's debt crisis. Spain has an unemployment rate of 24.5%, although it fell from 26.2% compared to a year ago. The German unemployment rate is up slightly to 6.7%, with 2.90 million jobless (Minneapolis Star Tribune - 8/28/2014). **The inflation rate has fallen to 0.3% in countries that use the Euro; pressure is on the European Central Bank to act this week act to avoid deflation (FOX News - 8/29/2014). **In the Middle East and North Africa, the economic growth rate in 2013 was too low to generate sufficient employment opportunities for a rapidly growing population, and unemployment remained the highest in the world. In Sub-Saharan Africa, paid employment opportunities are scarce and the 'vulnerable' employment rate of those whose jobs are on the margin of the economy, at 77.4% in 2013, remained the world's highest. ~~~~~ Dear readers, while Americans lucky enough to have jobs celebrate their national Labor Day by having a holiday, all of us should give a thought to the hundreds of millions of people who do not have jobs because of war, or displacement as refugees, or economies too weak to provide jobs for all who want and need to work. So, today while many in America celebrate their work - and even in America there are millions of unemployed who lost their jobs in the Great Recession and have not found jobs for several years - give a thought to those all over the world who would gladly work today, if only they had a job.
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We should all count our blessing no matter how great or small they are, We should help someone who is out of everything - and hope being the most dangerous.
ReplyDeleteGod NEVER gives us more that we can handle - just ask for help and He will provide.
Take a thought back a single year, - Labor Day weekend 2013. Then think about all that has happened:
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese ADIZ [that is, China’s unilateral extension of it defense perimeter in the South China Sea], the Russian annexation of Crimea, the rise of ISIS, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fall of Mosul, the end of Hungarian liberal democracy, the Central American refugee crisis, the Egyptian-UAE attacks on Libya, the extermination of Iraqi Christians, the Yazidi genocide, the scramble to revise NATO’s eastern-frontier defenses, the Kristallnacht-style pogroms in European cities, the reemergence of mainstream anti-Semitism, the third (or fourth, perhaps) American war in Iraq, . . . All this was to be a possibility in the future – the 1 year ago future.
Galileo observed 400 years ago, “Nature abhors a vacuum” That sucking sound you are hearing when reading the alarming list of what Secretary of State John Kerry might have dismissed as “19th-century” behavior, unbecoming of a modern, blow-dried state, that rushing wind is the sound of a profound leadership deficit. It’s what happens when a great power abandons, when it stops acting like an adult and gives free rein to its inner community/city organizer (Obama).
In 2009, shortly after taking office, Obama went to Cairo to deliver his now infamous speech about America’s relations with Islam. “I have come here,” he said, to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”
Consider the words “justice,” “progress,” “tolerance,” and the idea of “the dignity of all human beings.” Is it true that Islam and the West have anything like a shared understanding of the ideas these terms name? How much tolerance for religious diversity, for example, is there in any Muslim country, let alone in the territories controlled by the Islamic State? What sort of dignity is accorded to Jews, Christians, women, homosexuals? Answers to any of these questions encouraging?
So much change in so little time …where will we be on Labor Day weekend 2015? Better where will the Middle East be on Labor Day 2015?
“It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.”
ReplyDeleteGandalf the Grey