World War 3

A world war is a near impossibility. How can the whole world fall out over the same thing?

Well they cant. A world war is when two world powers fall out and then the rest takes sides or hide under a rock. World war II was between Britain and Germany, the reason is not important.

I am going to bet that in under 10 years time, there is going to be another world war, this will be between America and China.

As most already know, America is in huge debt. What most people don't know, is that America owe most of that debt to China. China is going to pretty soon overtake America as the new world super power and they want what is owed to them. America knows that they cant afford to pay China back in full, so what they are doing is rather clever; America is printing money like there is no tomorrow. Billions and billions have already been printed, all in high domination bills. The money is so vast that it cant be introduced into circulation or else it would cause hyper inflation like you wouldn't believe  Printing the money is fine, as long as you have the gold reserves to match the papers worth. The problem is that America now has far more paper currency then it has gold and this is driving the worth of their currency down. As the american currency becomes weaker, the overall debt to China goes down due to the fact that the world trading currency is dollars. 

If america owed $1 billion for example, and they print large amounts of paper currency without gold counterpart, then the debt might reduce to $800 million if you measure it by the original worth of the money. 

China has worked this out, and they are now doing all they can to change the world trading currency into Chinese currency to thwart Americas attempts to dilute the debt. This however is not working, and i reckon that it will result in war. 

Time will tell, but as it stands, China hold the better hand and america knows it.

Leveson

For those of you that follow British Politics and other related news will be aware of the current ongoing inquiry into 'phone hacking'. This court case has now escalated and has brought not just celebrity victims to the stand but also high value politicians such as Tony Blair and most recently David Cameron as the inquiry decides whether there was any foul play by ministers and PMs regarding the media coverage they recived.

This is rather a complex subject, and whilst i don't want to 'dumb it down' too much, i feel that getting into the fine detail would be irrelevant to help me explain and examine what i intend too.

The basic jist of what has been happening most recently in the inquiry is this: Politicians are being accused or meeting with high ranking editors and even owners of national newspapers and engaging in 'under the table' deals in order to secure support from that particular newspaper. As im sure you know, all national papers have some sort of general political slant, for example, during the time of Tony Blair the SUN newspaper was in high support however when Gordon Brown succeeded him the sun made a controversial jump over the 'political neutral zone' in favour of the conservatives. David Cameron has this past week been attempting to convince the court that there was no 'foul play' involved in that aforementioned event and that no such immoral behaviour ever occurs.

David Cameron did however seem rather shaken up by then end his time in the stand, often referring back to his "foggy memory". The evidence however did not look good for him, he met with James Murdoch (son of Rupert Murdoch, who owns the largest share in the media industry in the world, including many of the main national newspapers in England) 15 times while he was in opposition and has been stated to have met with over 1,000 journalists during his political career.

Irrelevant to the evidence, all of which is circumstantial, David Cameron denies that there is a "nod wink" relationship between the Tories and the Murdoch family.

I am focusing on the Prime Minister because of his position, but there has been a whole host of high ranking politicians, and journalists who have crawled out the 'woodwork', all have been making accusations and all have been accused in equal measure.

Apart from outlining the recent events in the inquiry i also want to give my slant:
When you are talking about media and politics, it is important that you consider that it is a fine equilibrium; Media keeps politicians in check simply by posing the threat of negative press and Politicians keep media in check through its legislation and such like, however in many ways the two subjects are like 'oil and water' but in other ways they are like 'fish and chips' (cant have one without the other).

When corruption creeps into politics and media...then both entities collapse and that is what is being investigated in this inquiry, personally i feel that the people of power have attained and remained in power through the deals that no one knows about, with lots of 'winks and nods'. Time will only tell what is uncovered, but hopefully both the Media and Politics will be the better for it.

Thriller

Michael Jackson was possibly the king of pop music, and his music is possibly the most well know in the world. My issue is not with his talent, which is undeniable, my concern is the individual himself. I am aware that it might seem distasteful to criticize someone who has passed away, but criticism is not my intention. I want to look at the effects success had on Michael Jackson.

Forget your Justin Bieber's and Lady Gaga's, Michael was the biggest and the richest musician that has ever lived, he was also the most famous, this is not mere opinion as it has been recognised by the guinness book of world records. This man has contribute more to dance, fashion and music then any other individual dead or alive and this is why he saw such success.

Sadly however Michael Jackson was not perfect, his huge wealth led to the development of an addiction to spending; Michael was infamous for spending literally millions per binge and this led to his financial demise. By the end of his career he had sold 750 million records and won more awards then any other artist in history but he was tainted from constant negative press and his addiction to spending money. Michael received huge media attention when it came out that he had been having medical assistance to change the colour of his skin, and although he denied this to start of with, it became clear pretty soon that he had in fact had his skin bleached; this was an act that lost him a great many supporters, particularly in the African-american community. Such was his overall popularity that any amount of negative press would not dent the millions of fans he had over the world. Another scandle that tainted his reputation was that of Child molesting, and although nothing was ever proved, it didn't help his wavering supporters.

The addiction to spending money was the result of what was reported to be a $900 million fortune, some even claim that his bank balance alone reached levels close to this which would have made him the first billionaire musician if you take into consideration his assets and the music catalogue he owned, including all of the Beatles tracks which he reportedly paid $46 million for;however much of this was rough estimation and speculation. There was also another side to Michael; by the end of his life in 2009, he had donated £300 million to charity's across the world and although he had received so much negative media attention over his career, he funeral in 2009 was the most high profile in history, with over 1 billion viewers across the world.

To summarise: Although flawed, Michael Jackson was and is the Most successful and most loved musician ever and he has donated more money then any other celebrity. Arguably money corrupted him slightly and at times his fame hindered him, but over all he was a man that standards are now set by and that is a feat to which all can strive for.