“Neo-liberal pro-rich reform in the 1980s. According to World Bank data, the world economy used to grow in per capita terms at over 3 per cent during the 1960s and 70s, while since the 1980s it has been growing at the rate of 1.4 per cent per year”
– Ha-Joon Chang – Faculty of Economics and Politics, University of Cambridge
Tag: Politics
On the Streets of Alexandria, Egypt
Yet the atmosphere in the city is tense. There is hope, but also frustration in the air. The political situation is uncertain, and the unemployment rate high. Private parks have opened. The governor’s office has been razed. Street vendors are no longer harassed by the police. People talk about politics in public. Taking part in this discussion at this time is something
Source : Polis
Congress: Trading stock on inside information?
“Schweizer says he wanted to know why some congressmen and senators managed to accumulate significant wealth beyond their salaries, and proved particularly adept at buying and selling stocks. “
Source :CBSnews
#25 Collected Reading – Protest edition
Quote of the week
“The service of a good citizen is never useless : being heard and seen, he helps by his expression, a nod of his head, a stubborn silence, even his gait. ”
– Seneca
1.Why Establishment Media & the Power Elite Loathe Occupy Wall Street
“The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
activism,culture,economics,Financial,global
Source :Dissenter.com
2. What’s behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?
“Some of these critiques are ludicrous. Does anyone really not know what the basic message is of this protest: that Wall Street is oozing corruption and criminality and its unrestrained political power — in the form of crony capitalism and ownership of political institutions — is destroying financial security for everyone else?”
activism,culture,economics,Financial,global
Source : Salon
3. Unequal Responsibility for Crime
“The case Mokhiber cited is not unique. In 1982 a study of America’s five hundred largest corporations reported that “23 percent of them had been convicted of a major crime or had paid more than $50,000 in penalties for serious misbehavior during the previous decade”
corporations,crime,politics,usa
Source :Truth Out
4. Freedom Riders Documentary PBS
“In 1908, journalist Ray Stannard Baker observed that “no other point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed among Negroes as the Jim Crow car.” As bus travel became widespread in the South over the first half of the 20th century, it followed the same pattern”
culture, race, USA, nonviolence
Source : PBS
5. Israelis plan million-strong march as protesters call for social justice
“It is certainly one of the largest street protests we have experienced in Israel,” said Tamar Hermann, of the Israel Democracy Institute. “But what really makes it different is its heterogeneous nature. Normally protest is homogeneous. Diversity is as important as size.”
democracy,israel,policy,politics,protest
Source : The Guardian
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
#20 Collected Reading – 5 View points on the London Riots
Quote of the week
“If the Western world is still determined to rule mankind by force,” the 1945 conference declared, “then Africans as a last resort, may have to appeal to force in the effort to achieve freedom, even if force destroys them and the world.” The demand for freedom came alongside the demand for socialism: “We condemn the monopoly of capital and the rule of private wealth and industry for profit alone.”
-The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World – by Vijay Prashad
1.Everywhere is a target, everywhere is symbolic
“the riots and its crowd-logics that recalls the frenzy that characterises financial markets today. Indeed it’s a strange though not necessarily ironic coincidence that the Blackberry through its private messaging network, BBM, was it is claimed, the method of organising London’s riots allowing people to group and regroup with mystifying speed. Not so long ago, the Blackberry was the singular device that symbolised the world of modern business.”
Riots, UK, Politics, Policy, Culture, Networks
Source :Domus
2. Teens are left to their own devices as council axes all youth services
“It’s just the boredom,” she says. “Boredom causes trouble.”
Riots, UK, Politics, Policy, Culture, Economics
Source : The Guardian
3. Handmade hashtag. Impromptu bulletin board gives positive voice to riot-struck Londoners
“My immediate neighbour was drawn to the A4 sheet saying ‘we should be producers, not just consumers”
Riots, UK, Politics, Policy, Culture, Community
Source :Eye Magazine
4. The year we realised our democratically elected leaders can no longer protect us
“The irony of all this is that outside Britain, Europe and the US, the great story of 2011 has been the Arab spring, as the people of Syria, Yemen and beyond have taken to the streets. It seems that just as those nations demand the tools of democracy, we are finding them rusting and blunt in our hands.”
Riots, UK, Politics, Policy, Culture, Democracy
Source : The Guardian
5. Thinking Allowed BBC Radio 4 – Liverpool Riots
“30 years ago riots broke out in Liverpool which lead to 160 arrests and 258 police officers needing hospital treatment. The four days of street battles, arson and looting lead to violent disturbances in many other British cities and have changed community relations and disorder policing in the country forever.”
Riots, Liverpool, Politics, Culture
Source : BBC Thinking Allowed
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
#19 Collected Reading
Quote of the week
“To describe a problem is part of the solution. This implies: not to make creative decisions as promoted by feeling but by intellectual criteria. The more exact and complete these criteria are, the more create the work becomes. The creative process is to be reduced to an act of selection. Designing means : to pick out determing elements and combining them.”
-Karl Gerstner
1.What Jaron Lanier Thinks of Technology Now
“These arguments have proved popular. The book has received admiring reviews in the Times and (twice) in The New York Review of Books. In the months after “Gadget” was published, Lanier lectured at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, travelled to Seoul to speak at a major conference about innovation, and made Time’s list of the hundred “most influential people in the world.” At the South by Southwest Interactive conference, in Austin, in March of 2010, Lanier gave a talk, before which he asked his audience not to blog, text, or tweet while he was speaking. He later wrote that his message to the crowd had been: “If you listen first, and write later, then whatever you write will have had time to filter through your brain, and you’ll be in what you say. This is what makes you exist. If you are only a reflector of information, are you really there?”
Technology, USA, Culture, Design
Source :The New Yorker
2. Blog Archive Better (and more) Social Bonuses
“While they were purchasing a gift for a teammate, they also became more interested in their teammate and were happier to help them further in multiple other ways.”
Business, USA, Culture, collaboration
Source : Dan Ariely
3. Handmade hashtag. Impromptu bulletin board gives positive voice to riot-struck Londoners
“My immediate neighbour was drawn to the A4 sheet saying ‘we should be producers, not just consumers’.”
Culture, Community, London, Public, Memorial
Source :Eye Magazine
4. Examining the Limitations of a Neoliberal Safety Net: Romney’s Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts
“rightfully in my humble opinion, ignore this because the government isn’t doing what the government is best at – absorbing risks. All the government is doing is setting the stage for the individual to confront the entirety of their economic risks by themselves.”
Economics, USA, Culture, Policy
Source : Rortybomb
5. The Motorcycle Gangs
“they know it—and that is their meaning; for unlike most losers in today’s society, the Hell’s Angels not only know but spitefully proclaim exactly where they stand.”
Gangs, Culture, Media, USA, politics
Source : The Nation
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
#17 Collected Reading
Quote of the week
“When we are shown scenes of starving children in Africa, with a call for us to do something to help them, the underlying ideological message is something like: “Don’t think, don’t politicize, forget about the true causes of their poverty, just act, contribute money, so that you will not have to think!” – Living in the End Times by Slavoj Zizek
1. Calling all Dickens detectives
“Week in week out, for over 20 years, Dickens was at the helm of two of the most successful weekly magazines available in the mid-Victorian era, working with a tiny team out of bare offices in Wellington Street”
Literature, UK, Dickens, Editorial, Curation
Source :The Guardian
2. Obama as Chess Master: ‘Think of Him as Bobby Fischer’
“Liberals: Obama will end two wars, ended DADT, created the CFPA, got $20b from BP in the face of strong opposition, saved Detroit, signed New START, and enacted universal healthcare – the defining goal of the liberal movement.”
Politics, Policy, USA,
Source : The Atlantic
3. Lost world: Scenes from North Korea’s closed society
“With few factories, the unpolluted air over Pyongyang is crisp and clear, though at dusk, with power stations struggling to crank out enough electricity to light up the streets, the city turns prison-grey. At night, dim 40-watt bulbs wink from apartments. The brightest-lit structures are the illuminated Kim portraits dotted throughout the city and the560ft Juche Tower, a monument to Kim Il-Sung’s deluded philosophy of self-reliance.”
Photography, Reporting, North Korea, Culture
Source : The independant
4. Niger delta oil spills clean-up will take 30 years, says UN
“Since life expectancy in Nigeria is less than 50 years it is a fair assumption most people in Ogoniland have lived with chronic oil pollution throughout their lives,” the report says.”
Environment, Nigeria, Policy, Global, Corporations
Source : The Guardian
5. The Hidden History Of Prison Labor
“Prison labor has already started to undercut the business of corporations that don’t use it. In Florida, PRIDE has become one of the largest printing corporations in the state, its cheap labor having a significant impact upon smaller local printers. This scenario is playing out in states across the country.”
Prisons, USA, Policy, Work
Source : The Nation
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
#15 Collected Reading
Quote of the week
“To curb as if in fetters unbridled hopes and a mind obsessed with the future, and to aim to acquire riches from ourselves rather than from Fortune.” – Seneca
1. Gillard puts future on the line with radical plan for Australian carbon tax
“Australia generates more carbon pollution per head than any other developed country, thanks to its heavy reliance on coal-fired power stations. With a population of 22 million, Australia is responsible for 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By comparison, Britain, with nearly three times the population, produces just 1.7%.”
australia, environment, policy, politics
Source :The Guardian
2.Spelling mistakes ‘cost millions’ in lost online sales
“James Fothergill, the CBI’s head of education and skills, said: “Our recent research shows that 42% of employers are not satisfied with the basic reading and writing skills of school and college leavers and almost half have had to invest in remedial training to get their staff’s skills up to scratch.”
education,policy,technology,uk
Source : BBC
3. A grotesque symbol of starving Africa
“Increasing numbers of children are dropping dead on the long trek to refugee camps. Those who do get there are more severely malnourished than ever before. And, says the UN, the number of people under threat has now reached 11 million – equivalent to every man, woman and child in Belgium facing starvation. Thus, the chronic food crisis of the Horn of Africa edges with every hungry day towards full-blown famine.”
africa,economics,policy,politics
Source : The independant
4. Forests soak up third of fossil fuel emissions
“Once deforestation and regrowth are taken into account, however, tropical forests have been essentially carbon neutral.”
environment,global,policy
Source : The independant
5. Pay as You Go with Smartphones
“Should this technology take off, the cellphone could become the central repository of not just bank account information but coupons, loyalty points, and membership cards, allowing companies such as Google to route deals to cellphones at just the right time and place.”
Technology, Culture, Economic, Global, Mobile
Source : Business Week
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
#14 Collected Reading
Thinking Allowed one of my favorite shows on radio
Thinking allowed covers two topics in every episode, it is hosted by Laurie Taylor a professor of social science. What makes this show great is that the host is actually trying to get the guests to enter into a dialogue with both the listeners and the subject matter.
Take a listen and let me know what you think. The listener feedback he reads out between the two parts of the show are some of the most insightful I have ever heard on radio.
1. Streetlife – Performing politics in the square
“How does urban geography effect the way societies develop? What have streets given to politics?”
Place, Politics, Policy
Source :Thinking Allowed
2. Utopia
“In an age that some describe as filled with anxiety and uncertainty, are we breeding a kind of fatalism towards the future that excludes any notion of utopia?”
Philosophy, Social Science
Source : Thinking Allowed
3. Secrets of Capitalism – Religion and Science
“The United States does not have the highest living standard in the world – The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet – People in poor countries are more entrepreneurial than people in rich countries: Three contentions from the economist Ha-Joon Chang”
Economics, Policy
Source : Thinking Allowed
4. Ethical capital – The Burden of Happiness
“The British government is seeking to develop a way to accurately measure the happiness of the population. In France such a gauge already exists, but is happiness really the proper goal of life?”
Happiness, Culture
Source : Thinking Allowed
5. Cosmopolitanism – Dietetics
“We should regard ourselves as citizens of the world rather than members of nations..
Culture, Nations
Source : Thinking Allowed
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
#7 Collected Reading June 5th, 2011
Quote of the week
“Indeed, we may go this far: The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. – Neil Postman”
1.Playing For Change | Gimme Shelter
“Oh, a storm is threat’ning .
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away”
Music, Collaboration, Global
Source :Playing for Change
2. UK green spaces worth at least £30bn a year in health and welfare, report finds
“If the UK’s ecosystems are properly cared for, they could add an extra £30bn a year to the UK’s economy; if they are neglected, the economic cost would be more than £20bn a year, the report found. Inland wetlands, for instance, are worth £1.5bn a year in improving water quality alone, and pollinators such as bees are worth at least £430m a year to agriculture.”
Environment, Economy, UK
Source : The Guardian
3. Shakespeare’s Works from the London Globe Will Hit Movie Theatres
“Each performance will begin at 7 PM local time and will include a special 20-minute historical perspective on the Globe, the reconstruction process, the work of the Globe today, and a behind-the-scenes look at each production with interviews from the actors and creative team involved.”
Shakespeare, Movies, Culture
Source : Playbill
4. Tenth Anniversary of the Bush-era Tax Cuts
“In 2010, the top 1% of earners (i.e., tax filers making over $645,000) received 38% of the breaks in the 2001-08 tax changes; 55% of the tax breaks went to the top 10% of earners (those making over $170,000)”
Taxes, Politics, Policy
Source : Economic Policy Institute
5. Tony Ray-Jones: The English : Photography
“When photographer Tony Ray-Jones returned from New York to Britain in 1965, he toured seaside towns, villages, cities and festivals, documenting the English way of life ‘before it became too Americanised’. An exhibition of his work will be on show at the 2011 Guernsey Photography Festival from 1 June..”
Photography, British, Sea-Side
Source : The Guardian
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
Collected Reading 