| What EU should be telling Turkey?
A heavy traffic of meetings, statements and visits is the case. This hustle and bustle is as real as EU works are virtual. Mutual expectations are so low that even the tiniest "not negative" wording or an infinitesimally small gesture is exaggerated to the limit. Works to be done are self-evident, it is said. Turkey will roll up sleeves, benefit from the rosy environment created after the July 22 elections, pass foundation laws, abolish articles 301 and sail away to the brightest of the bright horizon as though nothing has happened. That is playing Pollyanna to the utmost degree. We are talking about bilateral relations in which mutual trust is badly eroded. If only were easy to rekindle this! Let's see the facts.EU institutions In Europe, the European Parliament (EP) is busy preparing its annual report.
The New Focus Groups: Online Networks
Some have created profiles on popular social-networking sites such as Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace, while others, including Procter & Gamble, have set up their own social-networking sites. But many of those efforts have fallen flat, because people typically join a social-networking venue not to talk about brands but to socialize with friends. Other marketers, particularly in the tech community, have tried scanning blogs for consumer insights. Networks such as "I Love My Dog" help remove some of the guesswork for marketers, by letting brands know exactly to whom they are talking -- and giving them more control over the discussions. The companies work with technology firms such as MarketTools and Passenger to create the members-only networks, whose participants are often drawn from a company's internal databases.
The world in 2008: a year and an era
This is the third year in succession openDemocracy has invited our contributors to look ahead to the year to come. The previous collections are: ▪ What does 2006 have in store? - parts one and two ▪ 2007: reflections and predictions The coming year has the potential to be a revolutionary one that forces European publics into a radical re-perception of the world. The Beijing Olympics will mark the shift from a Europe-centred world to an Asia-centred one. The hosting of this major spectacle is but one indication of China's arrival as a global superpower. A worldwide economic slowdown - perhaps recession - will accelerate the shift and make awareness of it unavoidable. And as liberal democracy continues to lose its monopoly on political discourse, the world's China-focus will increase interest in liberal democracy's competitors: Beijing's one-party capitalism or the Kremlin's "sovereign democracy".
Blood, Tears, Toys and NGOs
They are poor migrants from China's countryside, and they endure work days averaging 11 hours, six to seven days a week, to earn take-home pay of $100 or less a month. In China, a truly frightening number of such workers suffer from occupational diseases and industrial injuries. As just one example, a survey of hospitals in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province revealed that in a recent year they had dealt with more than 40,000 fingers that had been chopped off by machinery. Another Chinese source states, more alarmingly, that in the factories of Shenzhen in a recent year 17,000 limbs were severed. The neglect of safety standards in these factories used to be more severe before the big brand-name corporations that contract out their production to China-based factories came under attack in the 1990s in an anti-sweatshop campaign by Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Wild Card/Vacation Day 11 of 12
Only two more shopping days until I return to the final days of the City Council campaigns. Then, we'll have fun taking apart the campaigns. Any dirt yet? Any mudslinging. You know, the good stuff. Or is everyone behaving? My wife is now looking over my shoulder -- literally -- so I have to pretend that I'm just checking ball scores. See ya in two days. Here's Wild Card ... .
Verizon's Small- and Medium-Sized Business Customers Get a More Robust ...
NEW YORK, Dec. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- For a modern small business, a Web site offers the power of a Yellow Pages ad, the timeliness of a newspaper ad and the convenience of a catalog with an online checkout counter. That's why Verizon now offers an improved Web hosting experience for small businesses at great prices. "Now more than ever, a business of any size cannot afford to do business without a Web site," said Alan J. Lough, director of business broadband services for Verizon. "We make it easy for small and medium-sized businesses to create an online presence. We'll handle the technical aspects, and we provide the Internet infrastructure to host their Web sites so they can focus on their business." Industry intelligence indicates the demand for Web hosting and related services is expected to grow at an annual rate of nearly 20 percent for the next three years, to more than $3 billion in 2009.
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