By Roberto A. Ferdman
Quartz - March 18, 2014
Italy’s financial woes come at a gastronomic cost too. + Le Beccherie, the Italian restaurant credited with inventing tiramisu, the popular cocoa-dusted and coffee-soaked dessert, will be shuttering its doors at the end of the month. The news was first reported by Italian news site Corriere della Sera (link in Italian). 1 The reason? A lame Italian economy. The iconic restaurant simply hasn’t been able to seat enough customers to justify its overhead these days. “There has been a fall in the number of customers,” owner Carlo Campeol told Corriere della Serra. “We’ve lost politicians, businesspeople, and members of the general public.” + La Beccherie has been around for more than seven decades—it was first opened in 1939 in the town of Treviso. Its tiramisu has been around for more than four decades—it was first made at Campeol’s relative, Ada Campeol, in the late 1970s. Treviso asked to be recognized as the official birthplace of tiramisu this past fall. “It’s very sad, because this place was established by my grandfather,” Campeol recently told CS Monitor.
Read more.....
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
What’s the Point of Academic Publishing?
Sarah Kendzior
By Sarah Kendzior Chronicle Vitae - January 24, 2014
In December 2013, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs made a startling announcement. “Today I wouldn't get an academic job,” he told The Guardian. “It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough.” Higgs noted that quantity, not quality, is the metric by which success in the sciences in measured. Unlike in 1964, when he was hired, scientists are now pressured to churn out as many papers as possible in order to retain their jobs. Had he not been nominated for the Nobel, Higgs says, he would have been fired. His scientific discovery was made possible by his era’s relatively lax publishing norms, which left him time to think, dream, and discover. In January 2014, creative-writing professor Cathy Day published a rundown of her publications since 2011: 300 pages of a novel, 100 pages of non-fiction, seven essays, two short stories, and 200 blog posts. The blog posts, dedicated to the craft of writing, attracted the most attention, garnering over 160,000 pageviews. Day’s last post was particularly popular: It announced the end of her blog.
Read more....
Killing Pigs and Weed Maps: The Mostly Unread World of Academic Papers
By Aaron Gordon
Pacific Standard - March 18, 2014
At one of the first academic conferences I ever attended, I heard an economist joke that dissertations are only read by three people: the author, their advisor, and the committee chair. It’s funny in the way that academic jokes are funny: not actually funny but it gets listeners to nod along with the central truth. This specific central truth must resonate with established academics, since I heard versions of this same joke at nearly every conference I attended thereafter.
Like many jokes, this particular one turns out to be half true. A burgeoning field of academic study called citation analysis (it’s exactly what it sounds like) has found that this joke holds true for not just dissertations, but many academic papers. A study at Indiana University found that “as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors.” That same study concluded that “some 90% of papers that have been published in academic journals are never cited.” That is, nine out of 10 academic papers—which both often take years to research, compile, submit, and get published, and are a major component by which a scholar’s output is measured—contribute little to the academic conversation.
Read more....
Pacific Standard - March 18, 2014
At one of the first academic conferences I ever attended, I heard an economist joke that dissertations are only read by three people: the author, their advisor, and the committee chair. It’s funny in the way that academic jokes are funny: not actually funny but it gets listeners to nod along with the central truth. This specific central truth must resonate with established academics, since I heard versions of this same joke at nearly every conference I attended thereafter.
Like many jokes, this particular one turns out to be half true. A burgeoning field of academic study called citation analysis (it’s exactly what it sounds like) has found that this joke holds true for not just dissertations, but many academic papers. A study at Indiana University found that “as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors.” That same study concluded that “some 90% of papers that have been published in academic journals are never cited.” That is, nine out of 10 academic papers—which both often take years to research, compile, submit, and get published, and are a major component by which a scholar’s output is measured—contribute little to the academic conversation.
Read more....
Monday, March 17, 2014
India's arms imports almost three times of China, Pak: SIPRI report
By Rajat Pandit
TNN | Mar 17, 2014
NEW DELHI: India's continuing abject failure to build a robust defence industrial base (DIB) has come to into focus once again, with an international thinktank holding its arms imports are now almost three times as high as those of the second and third largest arms importers, China and Pakistan.
As per the latest data on international arms transfers released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the volume of Indian imports of major weapons rose by 111% between 2004-08 and 2009-13, and its share of the volume of international arms imports increased from 7% to 14%.
The major suppliers of arms to India in 2009-13 were Russia (accounting for 75% of imports) and the US (7%), which for the first time became the second largest arms supplier to India, said SIPRI. As earlier reported by TOI, the US has already bagged defence deals close to $10 billion over the last decade in the lucrative Indian defence market, with the latest being the $1.01 billion one for six additional C-130J "Super Hercules" aircraft.Read more.....
TNN | Mar 17, 2014
NEW DELHI: India's continuing abject failure to build a robust defence industrial base (DIB) has come to into focus once again, with an international thinktank holding its arms imports are now almost three times as high as those of the second and third largest arms importers, China and Pakistan.
As per the latest data on international arms transfers released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the volume of Indian imports of major weapons rose by 111% between 2004-08 and 2009-13, and its share of the volume of international arms imports increased from 7% to 14%.
The major suppliers of arms to India in 2009-13 were Russia (accounting for 75% of imports) and the US (7%), which for the first time became the second largest arms supplier to India, said SIPRI. As earlier reported by TOI, the US has already bagged defence deals close to $10 billion over the last decade in the lucrative Indian defence market, with the latest being the $1.01 billion one for six additional C-130J "Super Hercules" aircraft.Read more.....
Finnish Education Chief: 'We Created a School System Based on Equality'
An interview with the country's minister of education, Krista Kiuru
By Christine Gross-Loh
The Atlantic - Mar 17 2014
Finnish education often seems paradoxical to outside observers because it appears to break a lot of the rules we take for granted. Finnish children don’t begin school until age 7. They have more recess, shorter school hours than many U.S. children do (nearly 300 fewer hours per year in elementary school), and the lightest homework load of any industrialized nation. There are no gifted programs, almost no private schools, and no high-stakes national standardized tests.
Yet over the past decade Finland has consistently performed among the top nations on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test given to 15-year olds in 65 nations and territories around the world. Finland’s school children didn’t always excel. Finland built its excellent, efficient, and equitable educational system in a few decades from scratch, and the concept guiding almost every educational reform has been equity. The Finnish paradox is that by focusing on the bigger picture for all, Finland has succeeded at fostering the individual potential of most every child.
Read more....
By Christine Gross-Loh
The Atlantic - Mar 17 2014
Finnish education often seems paradoxical to outside observers because it appears to break a lot of the rules we take for granted. Finnish children don’t begin school until age 7. They have more recess, shorter school hours than many U.S. children do (nearly 300 fewer hours per year in elementary school), and the lightest homework load of any industrialized nation. There are no gifted programs, almost no private schools, and no high-stakes national standardized tests.
Yet over the past decade Finland has consistently performed among the top nations on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test given to 15-year olds in 65 nations and territories around the world. Finland’s school children didn’t always excel. Finland built its excellent, efficient, and equitable educational system in a few decades from scratch, and the concept guiding almost every educational reform has been equity. The Finnish paradox is that by focusing on the bigger picture for all, Finland has succeeded at fostering the individual potential of most every child.
Read more....
The U.S. has treated Russia like a loser since the end of the Cold War.
By Jack F. Matlock Jr.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., ambassador to the U.S.S.R. from 1987 to 1991, is the author of “Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended.”
The Washington Post - March 14, 2014
One afternoon in September 1987, Secretary of State George Shultz settled in a chair across the table from Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in a New York conference room. Both were in the city for the United Nations General Assembly.
As he habitually did at the start of such meetings , Shultz handed Shevardnadze a list of reported human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze’s predecessor, Andrei Gromyko, had always received such lists grudgingly and would lecture us for interfering in Soviet internal affairs.
This time, though, Shevardnadze looked Shultz in the eye and said through his interpreter: “George, I will check this out, and if your information is correct, I will do what I can to correct the problem. But I want you to know one thing: I am not doing this because you ask me to; I am doing it because it is what my country needs to do.”
Read more....
Jack F. Matlock Jr., ambassador to the U.S.S.R. from 1987 to 1991, is the author of “Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended.”
The Washington Post - March 14, 2014
One afternoon in September 1987, Secretary of State George Shultz settled in a chair across the table from Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in a New York conference room. Both were in the city for the United Nations General Assembly.
As he habitually did at the start of such meetings , Shultz handed Shevardnadze a list of reported human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze’s predecessor, Andrei Gromyko, had always received such lists grudgingly and would lecture us for interfering in Soviet internal affairs.
This time, though, Shevardnadze looked Shultz in the eye and said through his interpreter: “George, I will check this out, and if your information is correct, I will do what I can to correct the problem. But I want you to know one thing: I am not doing this because you ask me to; I am doing it because it is what my country needs to do.”
Read more....
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times - MARCH 15, 2014
Read more....
The New York Times - MARCH 15, 2014
Last
April, President Obama assembled some of the nation’s most august
scientific dignitaries in the East Room of the White House. Joking that
his grades in physics made him a dubious candidate for “scientist in
chief,” he spoke of using technological innovation “to grow our
economy” and unveiled “the next great American project”: a $100 million
initiative to probe the mysteries of the human brain.
Along
the way, he invoked the government’s leading role in a history of
scientific glories, from putting a man on the moon to creating the
Internet. The Brain initiative,
as he described it, would be a continuation of that grand tradition, an
ambitious rebuttal to deep cuts in federal financing for scientific
research.
“We can’t afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races ahead,” Mr. Obama said.
“We have to seize them. I don’t want the next job-creating discoveries
to happen in China or India or Germany. I want them to happen right
here.”
Read more....
Does Singapore deserve its 'miserable' tag?
By Charlotte Ashton Singapore
BBC - 14 March 2014
"Check this out," posted one friend on my Facebook wall, with a link to a survey of 148 countries in which Singaporeans were revealed to be the least positive people on earth.
At the bottom of the happy pile along with Iraqis, Armenians and Serbians. "Good luck in misery city!" he wrote.
Over the next few months a happiness battle kicked off around us. Singapore's politicians reinforced their commitment to well-being and Starhub - a mobile network provider - launched an advertising campaign called "happiness everywhere", full of smiling Singaporeans dancing to plinky-plonky guitar music.
Read more....
BBC - 14 March 2014
Singapore's reputation as
a wealthy, aspirational and hi-tech country ensures it attracts a great
deal of foreign talent - so why is it labelled the world's least
positive country?
It was Christmas, but as my husband and I waited for our
luggage in the shiny arrivals hall of Changi airport, the internet
delivered tidings of no joy. "Check this out," posted one friend on my Facebook wall, with a link to a survey of 148 countries in which Singaporeans were revealed to be the least positive people on earth.
At the bottom of the happy pile along with Iraqis, Armenians and Serbians. "Good luck in misery city!" he wrote.
Over the next few months a happiness battle kicked off around us. Singapore's politicians reinforced their commitment to well-being and Starhub - a mobile network provider - launched an advertising campaign called "happiness everywhere", full of smiling Singaporeans dancing to plinky-plonky guitar music.
Read more....
The Gender Pay Gap Is Alive And Well In All 50 States, Shows Study
By Alanna Vagianos
The Huffington Post | 03/13/2014
Not only does the gender wage gap have real staying power, but it's alive and kicking in all 50 states.
According to a new report released earlier this week by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the gender pay gap -- which had significantly narrowed since the 1970s -- has slowly plateaued in recent years.
Compiling data from the Census Bureau, the Department of Education and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, AAUW calculated the median salaries for full-time employment in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In the U.S., women are paid 23 percent less than men on average. Although down from a 2012 figure of 91 percent, Washington, D.C. maintains the smallest wage gap in the U.S., with women earning 90 percent of what their male counterparts do ($66,754 vs. $60,116). Also consistent with last year's results, Wyoming came in last with women taking home a shocking 64 percent of men's average earnings ($51,932 vs. $33,152).
While it remains important to note that geography and local industry have a large influence on differing salaries, there are other major factors that come into play -- namely education level, race/ethnicity and age.
Read more.....
The Huffington Post | 03/13/2014
Not only does the gender wage gap have real staying power, but it's alive and kicking in all 50 states.
According to a new report released earlier this week by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the gender pay gap -- which had significantly narrowed since the 1970s -- has slowly plateaued in recent years.
Compiling data from the Census Bureau, the Department of Education and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, AAUW calculated the median salaries for full-time employment in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In the U.S., women are paid 23 percent less than men on average. Although down from a 2012 figure of 91 percent, Washington, D.C. maintains the smallest wage gap in the U.S., with women earning 90 percent of what their male counterparts do ($66,754 vs. $60,116). Also consistent with last year's results, Wyoming came in last with women taking home a shocking 64 percent of men's average earnings ($51,932 vs. $33,152).
While it remains important to note that geography and local industry have a large influence on differing salaries, there are other major factors that come into play -- namely education level, race/ethnicity and age.
Read more.....
Secretive Pentagon think tank knows no bounds
By PHILIP EWING
Politico | 3/12/14
From Vladimir Putin’s body language to the histories of religious warfare, from the development of new technologies to accounts of ancient empires, there isn’t much the Pentagon’s internal think tank won’t pursue.
The Office of Net Assessment, which is headed by a seldom-seen, 92-year-old Nixon-era defense analyst named Andrew Marshall, is just a tiny compartment in the labyrinthine Defense Department, but its interests are vast. In a recent solicitation, the ONA said it’s seeking research about nuclear proliferation, future naval warfare and the use of space, among other topics.
Read more....
Politico | 3/12/14
From Vladimir Putin’s body language to the histories of religious warfare, from the development of new technologies to accounts of ancient empires, there isn’t much the Pentagon’s internal think tank won’t pursue.
The Office of Net Assessment, which is headed by a seldom-seen, 92-year-old Nixon-era defense analyst named Andrew Marshall, is just a tiny compartment in the labyrinthine Defense Department, but its interests are vast. In a recent solicitation, the ONA said it’s seeking research about nuclear proliferation, future naval warfare and the use of space, among other topics.
Read more....
The Secret World of American Spies in the Middle East
BY FREDERICK DEKNATEL
The New Republic - JANUARY 6, 2014
In September 1947, on the day the Central Intelligence Agency was formally established in Washington, D.C., two of Teddy Roosevelt’s grandsons, Archie and Kim, drove from Beirut across the Lebanese mountains into Damascus to meet a fellow spy named Miles Copeland. Archie, 29, was the CIA’s first station chief in Beirut; Copeland, 31, was its man in Damascus. Kim (or Kermit Jr., whose namesake and father had roared around the Middle East like T.E. Lawrence during World War I) would, by 1949 at age 33, head the CIA’s covert operations in the region. For now he was traveling, nominally, as a private citizen, working on a book based on his posting to Cairo during World War II for the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA.
In two years, Copeland would help engineer the first military coup in the Arab world: the 1949 bloodless putsch by Colonel Husni al-Za’im in Syria. To what degree is a matter of debate, including Copeland’s own boasts, and then retractions, in subsequent memoirs. Archie would try and fail to engineer another military overthrow in Syria in 1957, after a series of coups and countercoups in Damascus (Za’im only lasted a few months before he was overthrown and executed by rival officers). But the 1947 meeting, like the men’s CIA years in the Middle East during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, was a mix of business and pleasure. As Copeland later wrote, after Archie and Kim arrived in Damascus, they set out “on a tour of Crusader castles and off-the-beaten-path places.”
Read more....
The New Republic - JANUARY 6, 2014
In September 1947, on the day the Central Intelligence Agency was formally established in Washington, D.C., two of Teddy Roosevelt’s grandsons, Archie and Kim, drove from Beirut across the Lebanese mountains into Damascus to meet a fellow spy named Miles Copeland. Archie, 29, was the CIA’s first station chief in Beirut; Copeland, 31, was its man in Damascus. Kim (or Kermit Jr., whose namesake and father had roared around the Middle East like T.E. Lawrence during World War I) would, by 1949 at age 33, head the CIA’s covert operations in the region. For now he was traveling, nominally, as a private citizen, working on a book based on his posting to Cairo during World War II for the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA.
In two years, Copeland would help engineer the first military coup in the Arab world: the 1949 bloodless putsch by Colonel Husni al-Za’im in Syria. To what degree is a matter of debate, including Copeland’s own boasts, and then retractions, in subsequent memoirs. Archie would try and fail to engineer another military overthrow in Syria in 1957, after a series of coups and countercoups in Damascus (Za’im only lasted a few months before he was overthrown and executed by rival officers). But the 1947 meeting, like the men’s CIA years in the Middle East during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, was a mix of business and pleasure. As Copeland later wrote, after Archie and Kim arrived in Damascus, they set out “on a tour of Crusader castles and off-the-beaten-path places.”
Read more....
How China (and the Rest of the Emerging Markets) Spend Today
After 30 years of catchup growth, consumers around the world are starting to look more and more American.
By Matthew O'Brien
The Atlantic - Mar 14 2014
Emerging market consumers—they're becoming just like us!
They're earning more. They're spending more. And they're spending more on the same things we do. The same gear, the same gadgets, and, particularly in China, the same luxury goods.
It's the best news our beleaguered global economy has gotten in a while. For too long, the world has relied on Americans to be the consumers of last resort, to keep buying no matter how much debt it took. That worked until it didn't in 2008. But a world where hundreds of millions of Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian families are entering the global middle class—and spending like it—is one where growth could theoretically be more stable. A new report from Credit Suisse shows us just how this world is emerging, and what it means for all of us. Here are the big takeaways.
Read more....
By Matthew O'Brien
The Atlantic - Mar 14 2014
Emerging market consumers—they're becoming just like us!
They're earning more. They're spending more. And they're spending more on the same things we do. The same gear, the same gadgets, and, particularly in China, the same luxury goods.
It's the best news our beleaguered global economy has gotten in a while. For too long, the world has relied on Americans to be the consumers of last resort, to keep buying no matter how much debt it took. That worked until it didn't in 2008. But a world where hundreds of millions of Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian families are entering the global middle class—and spending like it—is one where growth could theoretically be more stable. A new report from Credit Suisse shows us just how this world is emerging, and what it means for all of us. Here are the big takeaways.
Read more....
Income Gap, Meet the Longevity Gap
By ANNIE LOWREY
The New York Times - MARCH 15, 2014
Read more....
The New York Times - MARCH 15, 2014
Fairfax
County, Va., and McDowell County, W.Va., are separated by 350 miles,
about a half-day’s drive. Traveling west from Fairfax County, the gated
communities and bland architecture of military contractors give way to
exurbs, then to farmland and eventually to McDowell’s coal mines and the
forested slopes of the Appalachians. Perhaps the greatest distance
between the two counties is this: Fairfax is a place of the haves, and
McDowell of the have-nots. Just outside of Washington, fat government
contracts and a growing technology sector buoy the median household
income in Fairfax County up to $107,000, one of the highest in the
nation. McDowell, with the decline of coal, has little in the way of
industry. Unemployment is high. Drug abuse is rampant. Median household income is about one-fifth that of Fairfax.
One of the starkest consequences of that divide is seen in the life expectancies
of the people there. Residents of Fairfax County are among the
longest-lived in the country: Men have an average life expectancy of 82
years and women, 85, about the same as in Sweden. In McDowell, the
averages are 64 and 73, about the same as in Iraq.
Read more....
Saturday, March 15, 2014
The Rise of Anti-Capitalism
By JEREMY RIFKIN
The New York Times - MARCH 15, 2014
Read more.....
The New York Times - MARCH 15, 2014
WE
are beginning to witness a paradox at the heart of capitalism, one that
has propelled it to greatness but is now threatening its future: The
inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down
that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no
longer subject to market forces. While economists have always welcomed a
reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a
technological revolution that might bring those costs to near zero.
The
first inkling of the paradox came in 1999 when Napster, the music
service, developed a network enabling millions of people to share music
without paying the producers and artists, wreaking havoc on the music
industry. Similar phenomena went on to severely disrupt the newspaper
and book publishing industries. Consumers began sharing their own
information and entertainment, via videos, audio and text, nearly free,
bypassing the traditional markets altogether.
Read more.....
In a first, Vrindavan widows play with colours on Holi
By Amit Bhattacharya
TNN | Mar 16, 2014
.jpg)
VRINDAVAN:
The long-ostracized widows of Vrindavan played Holi with gulal and
buckets of coloured water on Friday, in a cathartic celebration that
snubbed tradition which bids them to stay away from festivities.
Last year, these women had taken the first step to reclaim their place in the mainstream when they played Holi with flowers and songs in a much-applauded event that also drew criticism in certain conservative quarters.
On Friday, the widows went a step ahead. Pichkaaris (water guns) and gulal (coloured powder) were out in force at the Ras Behari Sadan and Leela Kunj, two adjacent widow homes in the heart of the temple town. The women — many defiantly wearing colourful sarees — were in no mood to hold back. They smeared each other and the guests with gulal and danced in the ashram courtyard as buckets of coloured water were poured on them from above.Read more....
TNN | Mar 16, 2014
VRINDAVAN:
The long-ostracized widows of Vrindavan played Holi with gulal and
buckets of coloured water on Friday, in a cathartic celebration that
snubbed tradition which bids them to stay away from festivities. Last year, these women had taken the first step to reclaim their place in the mainstream when they played Holi with flowers and songs in a much-applauded event that also drew criticism in certain conservative quarters.
On Friday, the widows went a step ahead. Pichkaaris (water guns) and gulal (coloured powder) were out in force at the Ras Behari Sadan and Leela Kunj, two adjacent widow homes in the heart of the temple town. The women — many defiantly wearing colourful sarees — were in no mood to hold back. They smeared each other and the guests with gulal and danced in the ashram courtyard as buckets of coloured water were poured on them from above.Read more....
The CIA’s Poisonous Tree
By David Cole
The New York Review of Books - March 15, 2014
The old Washington adage that the cover-up is worse than the crime may not apply when it comes to the revelations this week that the Central Intelligence Agency interfered with a Senate torture investigation. It’s not that the cover-up isn’t serious. It is extremely serious—as Senator Dianne Feinstein said, the CIA may have violated the separation of powers, the Fourth Amendment, and a prohibition on spying inside the United States. It’s just that in this case, the underlying crimes are still worse: the dispute arises because the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Feinstein chairs, has written an as-yet-secret 6,300 page report on the CIA’s use of torture and disappearance—among the gravest crimes the world recognizes—against al-Qaeda suspects in the “war on terror.”
By Senator Feinstein’s account, the CIA has directly and repeatedly interfered with the committee’s investigation: it conducted covert unauthorized searches of the computers assigned to the Senate committee for its review of CIA files, and it secretly removed potentially incriminating documents from the computers the committee was using. That’s the stuff that often leads to resignations, independent counsels, and criminal charges; indeed, the CIA’s own Inspector General has referred the CIA’s conduct to the Justice Department for a potential criminal investigation.
Read more.....
The New York Review of Books - March 15, 2014
The old Washington adage that the cover-up is worse than the crime may not apply when it comes to the revelations this week that the Central Intelligence Agency interfered with a Senate torture investigation. It’s not that the cover-up isn’t serious. It is extremely serious—as Senator Dianne Feinstein said, the CIA may have violated the separation of powers, the Fourth Amendment, and a prohibition on spying inside the United States. It’s just that in this case, the underlying crimes are still worse: the dispute arises because the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Feinstein chairs, has written an as-yet-secret 6,300 page report on the CIA’s use of torture and disappearance—among the gravest crimes the world recognizes—against al-Qaeda suspects in the “war on terror.”
By Senator Feinstein’s account, the CIA has directly and repeatedly interfered with the committee’s investigation: it conducted covert unauthorized searches of the computers assigned to the Senate committee for its review of CIA files, and it secretly removed potentially incriminating documents from the computers the committee was using. That’s the stuff that often leads to resignations, independent counsels, and criminal charges; indeed, the CIA’s own Inspector General has referred the CIA’s conduct to the Justice Department for a potential criminal investigation.
Read more.....
Friday, March 14, 2014
A View From Within the 'Vast Conspiracy' Against Russia and Turkey
Today's autocrats claim foreign agents are trying to overthrow them. But the real scandal is the way they're stifling civil society.
By Moisés Naím
The Atlantic - Mar 14 2014
Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro agree: There is a vast international conspiracy underway to destabilize their governments and eventually oust them from power.
They are convinced that the protesters storming the streets of Istanbul and Caracas are nothing more than mercenaries serving foreign powers or “useful idiots” unwittingly aiding the shadowy interests working to overthrow their governments. Vladimir Putin shares this view. He has said that the revolts in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, which forced his ally, former President Viktor Yanukovych, to flee to Russia, were also instigated by foreigners. And who, according to these autocrats, is behind this dark global conspiracy?
Western Democracies, of course.
Putin, Erdoğan, Maduro, and other leaders who share their fears (Bashar al-Assad, Robert Mugabe, etc.) assume that foreign intelligence services and other secret agencies are the main instigators, organizers, and funders of the protests against their governments. Their fears are not entirely unfounded. After all, the CIA does have a history of helping overthrow leaders that the U.S. government didn’t like at the time: Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973. But today’s dictators and their semi-authoritarian colleagues seem to feel equally threatened by private philanthropic organizations that operate openly in support of democracy and human rights.
Read more.....
By Moisés Naím
The Atlantic - Mar 14 2014
Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro agree: There is a vast international conspiracy underway to destabilize their governments and eventually oust them from power.
They are convinced that the protesters storming the streets of Istanbul and Caracas are nothing more than mercenaries serving foreign powers or “useful idiots” unwittingly aiding the shadowy interests working to overthrow their governments. Vladimir Putin shares this view. He has said that the revolts in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, which forced his ally, former President Viktor Yanukovych, to flee to Russia, were also instigated by foreigners. And who, according to these autocrats, is behind this dark global conspiracy?
Western Democracies, of course.
Putin, Erdoğan, Maduro, and other leaders who share their fears (Bashar al-Assad, Robert Mugabe, etc.) assume that foreign intelligence services and other secret agencies are the main instigators, organizers, and funders of the protests against their governments. Their fears are not entirely unfounded. After all, the CIA does have a history of helping overthrow leaders that the U.S. government didn’t like at the time: Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973. But today’s dictators and their semi-authoritarian colleagues seem to feel equally threatened by private philanthropic organizations that operate openly in support of democracy and human rights.
Read more.....
Remembering British MP Tony Benn, a Lifelong Critic of War and Capitalism
Democracynow.org
March 14, 2014
Tony Benn, the former British Cabinet minister, longtime Parliament member and antiwar activist, has died at the age of 88. He was the longest-serving member of Parliament in the history of Britain’s Labour Party, serving more than half a century. He left Parliament in 2001, saying he planned to "spend more time on politics." In 2009 he appeared on Democracy Now! to talk about the war in Afghanistan and Britain’s fight for a nationalized healthcare system. "You’ve got to judge a country by whether its needs are met and not just by whether some people make a profit," Benn said. "I’ve never met Mr. Dow Jones, and I’m sure he works very, very hard with his averages — we get them every hour — but I don’t think the happiness of a nation is decided by the share values in Wall Street."
Read more....
March 14, 2014
Tony Benn, the former British Cabinet minister, longtime Parliament member and antiwar activist, has died at the age of 88. He was the longest-serving member of Parliament in the history of Britain’s Labour Party, serving more than half a century. He left Parliament in 2001, saying he planned to "spend more time on politics." In 2009 he appeared on Democracy Now! to talk about the war in Afghanistan and Britain’s fight for a nationalized healthcare system. "You’ve got to judge a country by whether its needs are met and not just by whether some people make a profit," Benn said. "I’ve never met Mr. Dow Jones, and I’m sure he works very, very hard with his averages — we get them every hour — but I don’t think the happiness of a nation is decided by the share values in Wall Street."
Read more....
Getting Ukraine Wrong
By JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER
The New York Times - MARCH 13, 2014
Read more....
The New York Times - MARCH 13, 2014
President
Obama has decided to get tough with Russia by imposing sanctions and
increasing support for Ukraine’s new government. This is a big mistake.
This response is based on the same faulty logic that helped precipitate
the crisis. Instead of resolving the dispute, it will lead to more
trouble.
The
White House view, widely shared by Beltway insiders, is that the United
States bears no responsibility for causing the current crisis. In their
eyes, it’s all President Vladimir V. Putin’s fault — and his motives
are illegitimate. This is wrong. Washington played a key role in
precipitating this dangerous situation, and Mr. Putin’s behavior is
motivated by the same geopolitical considerations that influence all
great powers, including the United States.
Read more....
Oil and gas could explain Putin's costly attempt to control the Crimea
According to Kremlin insiders the annexation has been 6 years in the planning
The Independent - Friday 14 March 2014
Why does Putin want the Crimea?
If the President of the Russian Federation is to be believed his whole campaign is driven by the need to protect ethnic Russians from neo-Nazi extremists that they claim have infiltrated the new temporary government in Kiev.
That sounds laudable - until you look at the wider picture of how Russians are actually treated in their homeland today. Russia has very serious social problems with drug and alcohol abuse and HIV Aids, but the state does virtually nothing to help. Ethnic minorities are treated with disdain whilst the gay community has been forced underground. Those close to the Kremlin enjoy limitless wealth whilst real poverty now affects over 20 per cent of the population. Clearly support for ethnic Russians in Russia is not a Presidential priority.
Read more.....
The Independent - Friday 14 March 2014
Why does Putin want the Crimea?
If the President of the Russian Federation is to be believed his whole campaign is driven by the need to protect ethnic Russians from neo-Nazi extremists that they claim have infiltrated the new temporary government in Kiev.
That sounds laudable - until you look at the wider picture of how Russians are actually treated in their homeland today. Russia has very serious social problems with drug and alcohol abuse and HIV Aids, but the state does virtually nothing to help. Ethnic minorities are treated with disdain whilst the gay community has been forced underground. Those close to the Kremlin enjoy limitless wealth whilst real poverty now affects over 20 per cent of the population. Clearly support for ethnic Russians in Russia is not a Presidential priority.
Read more.....
Columbia University Fired Two Eminent Public Intellectuals. Here’s Why It Matters.
The fate of Carole Vance and Kim Hopper should worry everyone who wants academics to play a larger role in public debates.
By Michelle Goldberg
The Nation - March 12, 2014
About a month ago, The New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof wrote a much-discussed column calling for academics to take on a greater role in public life. Most professors, he lamented, “just don’t matter in today’s great debates,” having instead burrowed into rabbit holes of hyper-specialization. PhD programs, he wrote, “have fostered a culture that glorifies arcane unintelligibility while disdaining impact and audience.” Professors, Kristof pleaded, “don’t cloister yourselves like medieval monks—we need you!”
Shortly before his column came out, Carole Vance and Kim Hopper, longtime professors at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, learned that they were losing their jobs because they hadn’t brought in enough grant money. Both, ironically, are models for the sort of publicly engaged intellectual Kristof wants to see more of. Vance has done pioneering work on the intersection of gender, health and human rights. “She has been a mentor and a leading influence on generations of scholars as well as activists and practitioners,” says Rebecca Schleifer, the former advocacy director for the health and human rights division at Human Rights Watch. Hopper, who divides his time between Columbia and the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, is both an advocate for the homeless and one of the nation’s foremost scholars on homelessness. Last year, American Anthropologist ran a piece highlighting his work beyond academia, noting that Hopper “has long urged anthropologists to take part in public debates, to translate ethnographic findings into policy proposals.”
Read more.....
By Michelle Goldberg
The Nation - March 12, 2014
About a month ago, The New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof wrote a much-discussed column calling for academics to take on a greater role in public life. Most professors, he lamented, “just don’t matter in today’s great debates,” having instead burrowed into rabbit holes of hyper-specialization. PhD programs, he wrote, “have fostered a culture that glorifies arcane unintelligibility while disdaining impact and audience.” Professors, Kristof pleaded, “don’t cloister yourselves like medieval monks—we need you!”
Shortly before his column came out, Carole Vance and Kim Hopper, longtime professors at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, learned that they were losing their jobs because they hadn’t brought in enough grant money. Both, ironically, are models for the sort of publicly engaged intellectual Kristof wants to see more of. Vance has done pioneering work on the intersection of gender, health and human rights. “She has been a mentor and a leading influence on generations of scholars as well as activists and practitioners,” says Rebecca Schleifer, the former advocacy director for the health and human rights division at Human Rights Watch. Hopper, who divides his time between Columbia and the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, is both an advocate for the homeless and one of the nation’s foremost scholars on homelessness. Last year, American Anthropologist ran a piece highlighting his work beyond academia, noting that Hopper “has long urged anthropologists to take part in public debates, to translate ethnographic findings into policy proposals.”
Read more.....
Why Stuart Hall Mattered
The Marxist intellectual revolutionized how we think about pop culture. But the U.S. media barely noted his death.
BY Susan J. Douglas
In these Times - March 14, 2014
Imagine the unimaginable for just a minute. A towering Marxist public intellectual—who influenced multiple generations of professors and their students—dies, and the U.S. press is filled with encomia about what he meant.
When Stuart Hall died February 10, the outpouring in the British press over an avowedly left-wing, anti-racist, anti-imperialist activist and theorist of the highest order served as just another reminder of the impoverishment of intellectual life in the United States. Here, Hall was known primarily in academic circles; the New York Times reported his passing seven days late.
As one of the founding figures of cultural studies, Hall’s contributions to academic discourse cannot be overemphasized. It’s hard to imagine now, with communication studies one of the most popular majors in the United States, that in the 1960s and early 1970s, studying the media was regarded as beneath contempt. There was an elitist hierarchy affirming “high” culture as possessing quality, rigor and virtuosity, and “low” or popular culture as being banal, trashy and hardly worth academic attention. Hall, as the director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University, changed that.
Read more.....
BY Susan J. Douglas
In these Times - March 14, 2014
Imagine the unimaginable for just a minute. A towering Marxist public intellectual—who influenced multiple generations of professors and their students—dies, and the U.S. press is filled with encomia about what he meant.
When Stuart Hall died February 10, the outpouring in the British press over an avowedly left-wing, anti-racist, anti-imperialist activist and theorist of the highest order served as just another reminder of the impoverishment of intellectual life in the United States. Here, Hall was known primarily in academic circles; the New York Times reported his passing seven days late.
As one of the founding figures of cultural studies, Hall’s contributions to academic discourse cannot be overemphasized. It’s hard to imagine now, with communication studies one of the most popular majors in the United States, that in the 1960s and early 1970s, studying the media was regarded as beneath contempt. There was an elitist hierarchy affirming “high” culture as possessing quality, rigor and virtuosity, and “low” or popular culture as being banal, trashy and hardly worth academic attention. Hall, as the director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University, changed that.
Read more.....
China U. Confucius Institutes censor political discussions and restrain the free exchange of ideas.
Why, then, do American universities sponsor them?
By Marshall Sahlins
The Nation - October 29, 2013
We were sitting in his office, Ted Foss and I, on the third floor of Judd Hall at the University of Chicago. Foss is the associate director of the Center for East Asian Studies, a classic area studies program that gathers under its roof specialists in various disciplines who work on China, Korea and Japan. Above us, on the fourth floor, were the offices and seminar room of the university’s Confucius Institute, which opened its doors in 2010. A Confucius Institute is an academic unit that provides accredited instruction in Chinese language and culture and sponsors a variety of extracurricular activities, including art exhibitions, lectures, conferences, film screenings and celebrations of Chinese festivals; at Chicago and a number of other schools, it also funds the research projects of local faculty members on Chinese subjects. I asked Foss if Chicago’s CI had ever organized lectures or conferences on issues controversial in China, such as Tibetan independence or the political status of Taiwan. Gesturing to a far wall, he said, “I can put up a picture of the Dalai Lama in this office. But on the fourth floor, we wouldn’t do that.”
Read more.....
By Marshall Sahlins
The Nation - October 29, 2013
We were sitting in his office, Ted Foss and I, on the third floor of Judd Hall at the University of Chicago. Foss is the associate director of the Center for East Asian Studies, a classic area studies program that gathers under its roof specialists in various disciplines who work on China, Korea and Japan. Above us, on the fourth floor, were the offices and seminar room of the university’s Confucius Institute, which opened its doors in 2010. A Confucius Institute is an academic unit that provides accredited instruction in Chinese language and culture and sponsors a variety of extracurricular activities, including art exhibitions, lectures, conferences, film screenings and celebrations of Chinese festivals; at Chicago and a number of other schools, it also funds the research projects of local faculty members on Chinese subjects. I asked Foss if Chicago’s CI had ever organized lectures or conferences on issues controversial in China, such as Tibetan independence or the political status of Taiwan. Gesturing to a far wall, he said, “I can put up a picture of the Dalai Lama in this office. But on the fourth floor, we wouldn’t do that.”
Read more.....
Thursday, March 13, 2014
China's Li Keqiang warns investors to prepare for wave of bankruptcies
World's second largest economy is facing 'serious challenges' and many companies with high debts are being forced to the wall
By Phillip Inman economics correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday 13 March 2014
China is braced for a wave of industrial bankruptcies as its slowing economy forces companies with sky-high debts to the wall, the country's premier has said.
Premier Li Keqiang told lenders to China's private sector factories they should expect debt defaults as the world's second largest economy encounters "serious challenges" in the year ahead.
Speaking after the annual session of the national people's congress, Li Keqiang said: "We are going to confront serious challenges this year and some challenges may be even more complex." He told lenders to China's private sector factories they should expect debt defaults.
Li said China must "ensure steady growth, ensure employment, avert inflation and defuse risks" while also fighting pollution, among other tasks.
"So we need to strike a proper balance amidst all these goals and objectives," he added. "This is not going to be easy," he said.
Read more.....
By Phillip Inman economics correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday 13 March 2014
China is braced for a wave of industrial bankruptcies as its slowing economy forces companies with sky-high debts to the wall, the country's premier has said.
Premier Li Keqiang told lenders to China's private sector factories they should expect debt defaults as the world's second largest economy encounters "serious challenges" in the year ahead.
Speaking after the annual session of the national people's congress, Li Keqiang said: "We are going to confront serious challenges this year and some challenges may be even more complex." He told lenders to China's private sector factories they should expect debt defaults.
Li said China must "ensure steady growth, ensure employment, avert inflation and defuse risks" while also fighting pollution, among other tasks.
"So we need to strike a proper balance amidst all these goals and objectives," he added. "This is not going to be easy," he said.
Read more.....
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Soros Says Europe Faces 25-Year Slump Without Overhaul
By Jesse Westbrook
Bloomberg - Mar 12, 2014
Billionaire investor George Soros said Europe faces 25 years of Japanese-style stagnation unless politicians pursue further integration of the currency bloc and change policies that have discouraged banks from lending.
While the immediate financial crisis that has plagued Europe since 2010 “is over,” it still faces a political crisis that has divided the region between creditor and debtor nations, Soros, 83, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in London today. At the same time, banks have been encouraged to pass stress tests, rather than boost the economy by providing capital to businesses, he said.
Read more....
Bloomberg - Mar 12, 2014
Billionaire investor George Soros said Europe faces 25 years of Japanese-style stagnation unless politicians pursue further integration of the currency bloc and change policies that have discouraged banks from lending.
While the immediate financial crisis that has plagued Europe since 2010 “is over,” it still faces a political crisis that has divided the region between creditor and debtor nations, Soros, 83, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in London today. At the same time, banks have been encouraged to pass stress tests, rather than boost the economy by providing capital to businesses, he said.
Read more....
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
What do policymakers want from researchers?
Blogs, elevator pitches and good old fashioned press mentions.
By Duncan Green
The London School of Economics and Political Science - March 11, 2014
Interesting survey of US policymakers in December’s International Studies Quarterly journal. I’m not linking to it because it’s gated, thereby excluding more or less everyone outside a traditional academic institution (open data anyone?) but here’s a draft of What Do Policymakers Want From Us?, by Paul Avey and Michael Desch. The results are as relevant to NGO advocacy people trying to influence governments as they are to scholars. Maybe more so. I’ve added my own running translation.
The authors surveyed all senior White House officials involved in national security under both George Bushes and Bill Clinton. 234 out of 915 responded (pretty good response rate for people this senior). Conclusions?
Read more.....
By Duncan Green
The London School of Economics and Political Science - March 11, 2014
Interesting survey of US policymakers in December’s International Studies Quarterly journal. I’m not linking to it because it’s gated, thereby excluding more or less everyone outside a traditional academic institution (open data anyone?) but here’s a draft of What Do Policymakers Want From Us?, by Paul Avey and Michael Desch. The results are as relevant to NGO advocacy people trying to influence governments as they are to scholars. Maybe more so. I’ve added my own running translation.
The authors surveyed all senior White House officials involved in national security under both George Bushes and Bill Clinton. 234 out of 915 responded (pretty good response rate for people this senior). Conclusions?
Read more.....
The future of Egyptian democracy: Political Islam becomes less political
By Nathan J. Brown
The Immanent Frame – March 11, 2014
For the past few years, much of the scholarly literature on Islamist movements has danced around the “participation/moderation” idea: that participation in democratic politics tends to moderate the ideology and positions of Islamists. I choose my term deliberately. When I say “danced around” I do not mean that scholars have endorsed its automatic applicability; far from it. Most have eschewed the vague term “moderation,” but even those who have used it have tried to give it specificity. And they have noted that the “participation” in question has generally been in non-democratic systems, so that a generalization culled from scholarship on political party behavior in democratic electoral systems (one that has plenty of qualifications and exceptions attached) is unlikely to be transferable to elections in which the existing regime will not allow itself to lose.
But while avoiding any simple “participation/moderation” argument, scholars were drawn to the idea that the ideology and behavior of Islamist movements could shift in response to changes in the political environment in which they operated. In short, they directed their attention away from how Islamists changed politics and instead focused on how politics changes Islamists.
Read more....
The Immanent Frame – March 11, 2014
For the past few years, much of the scholarly literature on Islamist movements has danced around the “participation/moderation” idea: that participation in democratic politics tends to moderate the ideology and positions of Islamists. I choose my term deliberately. When I say “danced around” I do not mean that scholars have endorsed its automatic applicability; far from it. Most have eschewed the vague term “moderation,” but even those who have used it have tried to give it specificity. And they have noted that the “participation” in question has generally been in non-democratic systems, so that a generalization culled from scholarship on political party behavior in democratic electoral systems (one that has plenty of qualifications and exceptions attached) is unlikely to be transferable to elections in which the existing regime will not allow itself to lose.
But while avoiding any simple “participation/moderation” argument, scholars were drawn to the idea that the ideology and behavior of Islamist movements could shift in response to changes in the political environment in which they operated. In short, they directed their attention away from how Islamists changed politics and instead focused on how politics changes Islamists.
Read more....
35 countries where the U.S. has supported fascists, drug lords and terrorists
As the situation in Ukraine continues to fester, a handy history guide -- from A (Argentina) to Z (Zaire)
By Nicolas J.S. Davies
AlterNet - March 10, 2014
Read more....
By Nicolas J.S. Davies
AlterNet - March 10, 2014
The U.S. is backing Ukraine’s extreme right-wing Svoboda
party and violent neo-Nazis whose armed uprising paved the way for a
Western-backed coup. Events in the Ukraine are giving us another glimpse
through the looking-glass of U.S. propaganda wars against fascism,
drugs and terrorism. The ugly reality behind the mirror is that the U.S.
government has a long and unbroken record of working with fascists,
dictators, druglords and state sponsors of terrorism in every region of
the world in its elusive but relentless quest for unchallenged global
power.
Behind a firewall of impunity and protection from the State
Department and the CIA, U.S. clients and puppets have engaged in the
worst crimes known to man, from murder and torture to coups and
genocide. The trail of blood from this carnage and chaos leads directly
back to the steps of the U.S. Capitol and the White House. As historian
Gabriel Kolko observed in 1988, “The notion of an honest puppet is a
contradiction Washington has failed to resolve anywhere in the world
since 1945.” What follows is a brief A to Z guide to the history of that
failure.Read more....
The United States of China
By SCOTT MOORE
The New York Times - MARCH 11, 2014
Read more....
The New York Times - MARCH 11, 2014
Last
week, China’s two primary legislative bodies, the National People’s
Congress and the People’s Political Consultative Congress, convened
their annual meetings in Beijing. Although the delegates’ primary
function is to ratify decisions made by Communist Party leaders, the
occasion of the two assemblies often stokes debate on policy reforms.
The
delegates had much to discuss, including a recent murderous rampage on
civilians at a train station in the south, linked by the government to a
separatist movement in the west. Yet the most promising path for
long-term political reform in China was not on the agenda: federalism.
Read more....
How (Not) to Kill a Philosopher
By Rafael Khachaturian
Dissent - March 11, 2014
In a recent review of Louis Althusser’s On the Reproduction of Capitalism, Anne Boyer misrepresents key aspects of his thought. At the center of her argument is the claim that “Althusserianism has been a Marxism for those who prefer their class struggle as Philosophy.” In this she is admittedly repeating the earlier critiques of figures like E.P. Thompson and Jacques Rancière. But whereas those writers at least made a concerted effort to critique Althusser from within (Rancière is one of his best known former students), Boyer’s excessively unsympathetic takedown relies mostly on rehashed ad hominem attacks that only tangentially touch the book.
Reading the review, one is led to believe that Althusser embodied the very same ideology that he critiqued—“a pure dream fabricated by nothing,” a Master who only appeared to be one to interpellated subjects. How and why this fraud influenced an entire generation of French intellectuals is inconceivable for Boyer, unless we accept that he appealed to their basically anti-political stance, which—in her account—was swept away by the revolutionary tide of 1968.
Read more....
Dissent - March 11, 2014
In a recent review of Louis Althusser’s On the Reproduction of Capitalism, Anne Boyer misrepresents key aspects of his thought. At the center of her argument is the claim that “Althusserianism has been a Marxism for those who prefer their class struggle as Philosophy.” In this she is admittedly repeating the earlier critiques of figures like E.P. Thompson and Jacques Rancière. But whereas those writers at least made a concerted effort to critique Althusser from within (Rancière is one of his best known former students), Boyer’s excessively unsympathetic takedown relies mostly on rehashed ad hominem attacks that only tangentially touch the book.
Reading the review, one is led to believe that Althusser embodied the very same ideology that he critiqued—“a pure dream fabricated by nothing,” a Master who only appeared to be one to interpellated subjects. How and why this fraud influenced an entire generation of French intellectuals is inconceivable for Boyer, unless we accept that he appealed to their basically anti-political stance, which—in her account—was swept away by the revolutionary tide of 1968.
Read more....
Cultural production of ignorance provides rich field for study
Robert Proctor is one of the world's leading experts in agnotology, a neologism signifying the study of the cultural production of ignorance.
Los Angeles Times - March 9, 2014
Robert Proctor doesn't think ignorance is bliss. He thinks that what you don't know can hurt you. And that there's more ignorance around than there used to be, and that its purveyors have gotten much better at filling our heads with nonsense.
Read more....
Los Angeles Times - March 9, 2014
Robert Proctor doesn't think ignorance is bliss. He thinks that what you don't know can hurt you. And that there's more ignorance around than there used to be, and that its purveyors have gotten much better at filling our heads with nonsense.
Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, is one of the world's leading experts in agnotology,
a neologism signifying the study of the cultural production of
ignorance. It's a rich field, especially today when whole industries
devote themselves to sowing public misinformation and doubt about their
products and activities.
The tobacco industry was a pioneer at this. Its goal was to erode public acceptance of the scientifically proven links between smoking and disease: In the words of an internal 1969 memo legal opponents extracted from Brown & Williamson's files, "Doubt is our product." Big Tobacco's method should not be to debunk the evidence, the memo's author wrote, but to establish a "controversy."
The tobacco industry was a pioneer at this. Its goal was to erode public acceptance of the scientifically proven links between smoking and disease: In the words of an internal 1969 memo legal opponents extracted from Brown & Williamson's files, "Doubt is our product." Big Tobacco's method should not be to debunk the evidence, the memo's author wrote, but to establish a "controversy."
Read more....
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Stanford's new major integrates humanities, computer science
By Kristen V. Brown
San Francisco Gate - Saturday, March 8, 2014
English majors of the future: It may be time to consider studying something other than comparative modern literature.
A new joint major program at Stanford offers the liberal arts-inclined just that, integrating humanities and computer science in an experimental merger of left- and right-brained thinking.
The CS+X program, announced Friday, will offer undergraduates the opportunity to jointly study computer science and either English or music beginning in fall 2014. But the idea isn't just to study the two subjects separately - it's to pursue a degree that mixes both disciplines, studying topics such as computing technique in literary analysis.
It is, as Stanford English Professor Jennifer Summit put it, a crossing of the "techie-fuzzy divide."
Read more.....
San Francisco Gate - Saturday, March 8, 2014
English majors of the future: It may be time to consider studying something other than comparative modern literature.
A new joint major program at Stanford offers the liberal arts-inclined just that, integrating humanities and computer science in an experimental merger of left- and right-brained thinking.
The CS+X program, announced Friday, will offer undergraduates the opportunity to jointly study computer science and either English or music beginning in fall 2014. But the idea isn't just to study the two subjects separately - it's to pursue a degree that mixes both disciplines, studying topics such as computing technique in literary analysis.
It is, as Stanford English Professor Jennifer Summit put it, a crossing of the "techie-fuzzy divide."
Read more.....
Putin’s Counter-Revolution
James Meek reports from Ukraine
London Review of Books - 7 March 2014
The Russians and Ukrainians of the 1990s were able to temper regret at the collapse of the USSR with their own knowledge of the dismembered country’s shortcomings. A generation later, this is less and less the case. Many of the most articulate and thoughtful Russians and Ukrainians, those of middle age who knew the realities of Soviet life and later prospered in the post-Soviet world, have moved abroad, gone into a small business or been intimidated: in any case they have been taken out of the political arena. In Russia and Russophone Ukraine the stage is left to neo-Soviet populists who propagate the false notion of the USSR as a paradisiac Russian-speaking commonwealth, benignly ruled from Moscow, a natural continuum of the tsarist empire, disturbed only by Nazi invaders to whom ‘the west’ are heirs and the only obstacle to its re-creation. If you were born after 1985 you have no remembered reality to measure against this false vision, just as you have no way to situate those charming Soviet musical comedies of the 1960s and 1970s, idyllic portrayals of an idealised Russophone socialism, brightly coloured and fun, propaganda now in a way they weren’t when they were made. This is the context that has made it possible for Vladimir Putin and his government to sell Russia’s opportunistic invasion of Ukraine to his own people and to Ukrainian neo-Soviets: the idea that it undoes what should never have been done, an artificial division of Russian-speaking Eurasia by fascists/the West/America/rabid Ukrainian nationalists – in neo-Soviet discourse, avatars of a single anti-Russian monster.
Read more....
London Review of Books - 7 March 2014
The Russians and Ukrainians of the 1990s were able to temper regret at the collapse of the USSR with their own knowledge of the dismembered country’s shortcomings. A generation later, this is less and less the case. Many of the most articulate and thoughtful Russians and Ukrainians, those of middle age who knew the realities of Soviet life and later prospered in the post-Soviet world, have moved abroad, gone into a small business or been intimidated: in any case they have been taken out of the political arena. In Russia and Russophone Ukraine the stage is left to neo-Soviet populists who propagate the false notion of the USSR as a paradisiac Russian-speaking commonwealth, benignly ruled from Moscow, a natural continuum of the tsarist empire, disturbed only by Nazi invaders to whom ‘the west’ are heirs and the only obstacle to its re-creation. If you were born after 1985 you have no remembered reality to measure against this false vision, just as you have no way to situate those charming Soviet musical comedies of the 1960s and 1970s, idyllic portrayals of an idealised Russophone socialism, brightly coloured and fun, propaganda now in a way they weren’t when they were made. This is the context that has made it possible for Vladimir Putin and his government to sell Russia’s opportunistic invasion of Ukraine to his own people and to Ukrainian neo-Soviets: the idea that it undoes what should never have been done, an artificial division of Russian-speaking Eurasia by fascists/the West/America/rabid Ukrainian nationalists – in neo-Soviet discourse, avatars of a single anti-Russian monster.
Read more....
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Footprints of the US State Department Chronology of the Ukrainian Coup
By RENEE PARSONS
Counterpunch - March 05, 2014
Listening to the US media, even the most diligent news junkie would find it difficult to know that the U.S. State Department played not only a vital role in the violence and chaos underway in Ukraine but was also complicit in creating the coup that ousted democratically elected President Viktor Yanuyovch. Given the Russian Parliament’s approval of Putin’s request for military troops to be moved into Crimea, Americans uninformed about the history of that region might also be persuaded that Russia is the aggressor and the sole perpetrator of the violence. Let’s be clear about what is at stake here: NATO missiles on the adjacent Ukraine border aimed directly at Russia would make that country extremely vulnerable to Western goals and destabilization efforts while threatening Russia’s only water access to its naval fleet in Crimean peninsula, the Balkans, the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East – and not the least of which would allow world economic dominance by the US, the European Union, the IMF, World Bank and international financiers all of whom had already brought staggering suffering to millions around the globe.
Read more....
Counterpunch - March 05, 2014
Listening to the US media, even the most diligent news junkie would find it difficult to know that the U.S. State Department played not only a vital role in the violence and chaos underway in Ukraine but was also complicit in creating the coup that ousted democratically elected President Viktor Yanuyovch. Given the Russian Parliament’s approval of Putin’s request for military troops to be moved into Crimea, Americans uninformed about the history of that region might also be persuaded that Russia is the aggressor and the sole perpetrator of the violence. Let’s be clear about what is at stake here: NATO missiles on the adjacent Ukraine border aimed directly at Russia would make that country extremely vulnerable to Western goals and destabilization efforts while threatening Russia’s only water access to its naval fleet in Crimean peninsula, the Balkans, the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East – and not the least of which would allow world economic dominance by the US, the European Union, the IMF, World Bank and international financiers all of whom had already brought staggering suffering to millions around the globe.
Read more....
China Remodels an Ancient Silk Road City, and an Ethnic Rift Widens
By DAN LEVIN
The New York Times - MARCH 5, 2014
KASHGAR, China — Visitors walking through the mud-brick rubble and yawning craters where close-packed houses and bazaars once stood could be forgiven for thinking that the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar had been irrevocably lost to the wrecking ball. A billboard looming over the ruins tries to counter that impression: “Inherit and preserve the historical culture to showcase a brand new Kashgar.”
The Chinese authorities set out five years ago to modernize Kashgar’s fabled Old City district while promising to preserve its dense Casbah-like charms. But the results underscore the growing divide between the government and the ethnic minority that lives here — the Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people who have chafed at Beijing’s rule since Communist troops took over their traditional homeland in 1949. The region, in China’s far west, is now known as Xinjiang, a Mandarin term meaning “new frontier.”
Read more....
The New York Times - MARCH 5, 2014
KASHGAR, China — Visitors walking through the mud-brick rubble and yawning craters where close-packed houses and bazaars once stood could be forgiven for thinking that the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar had been irrevocably lost to the wrecking ball. A billboard looming over the ruins tries to counter that impression: “Inherit and preserve the historical culture to showcase a brand new Kashgar.”
The Chinese authorities set out five years ago to modernize Kashgar’s fabled Old City district while promising to preserve its dense Casbah-like charms. But the results underscore the growing divide between the government and the ethnic minority that lives here — the Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people who have chafed at Beijing’s rule since Communist troops took over their traditional homeland in 1949. The region, in China’s far west, is now known as Xinjiang, a Mandarin term meaning “new frontier.”
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Obama's Liberal Imperialism
By David Rieff
The National Interest | February 11, 2014
To accuse President Obama of being exceptional in his refusal to embrace American exceptionalism has been a perennial staple of discourse among hawkish conservatives intent on proving that he has a proclivity for going AWOL when it comes to national security. During the 2008 election campaign, Senator John McCain, for example, accused then candidate Obama of not believing in America’s role as the world’s leader and of not pushing back hard when confronted by those in other countries who doubted America’s greatness. And Mitt Romney tried to play the same card in 2012: “Our president doesn’t have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do. And I think over the last three or four years, some people around the world have begun to question that.”
For those, like me, who would prefer our country to be more of a republic and less of an empire, and to eschew its historic global role of the “dangerous nation,” to use the characterization coined by Robert Kagan, who meant it as praise, the most obvious response to these claims is a heartfelt: “If only!”
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The National Interest | February 11, 2014
To accuse President Obama of being exceptional in his refusal to embrace American exceptionalism has been a perennial staple of discourse among hawkish conservatives intent on proving that he has a proclivity for going AWOL when it comes to national security. During the 2008 election campaign, Senator John McCain, for example, accused then candidate Obama of not believing in America’s role as the world’s leader and of not pushing back hard when confronted by those in other countries who doubted America’s greatness. And Mitt Romney tried to play the same card in 2012: “Our president doesn’t have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do. And I think over the last three or four years, some people around the world have begun to question that.”
For those, like me, who would prefer our country to be more of a republic and less of an empire, and to eschew its historic global role of the “dangerous nation,” to use the characterization coined by Robert Kagan, who meant it as praise, the most obvious response to these claims is a heartfelt: “If only!”
Read more....
US Policy of Isolating Russia and Expanding NATO Is a Dismal Failure
By Rodrigue Tremblay
Information Clearing House - March 8, 2014
[NATO's goal is] to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. — Hastings Ismay, first NATO Secretary-General
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. — James Madison (1751-1836), fourth American President
March 06, 2014 "Information Clearing House - "Dissident Voice" - - The hazards associated with American foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 should appear obvious to all, because it is precisely this policy that has caused the crisis in Ukraine with all its negative consequences for the coming months and years. President Barack Obama was candid in admitting it on March 3, 2014: “we are indicating to the Russians [that] if in fact they continue on the current trajectory they’re on, then we are examining a whole series of steps — economic, diplomatic— that will isolate Russia.” Well, it is precisely this desire to expand NATO and to isolate Russia by incorporating all the countries bordering Russia into NATO; i.e., a strategy of geopolitical and military encirclement of Russia, which has provoked that country when it felt threatened in its national security. This is easy to understand. For example, what would the United States do if a hypothetical Russian Empire were to incorporate Mexico or Canada into a military alliance? To ask the question is to answer it. Why is it so difficult to understand that the best way to start a war is to threaten a country’s vital interests?
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Information Clearing House - March 8, 2014
[NATO's goal is] to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. — Hastings Ismay, first NATO Secretary-General
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. — James Madison (1751-1836), fourth American President
March 06, 2014 "Information Clearing House - "Dissident Voice" - - The hazards associated with American foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 should appear obvious to all, because it is precisely this policy that has caused the crisis in Ukraine with all its negative consequences for the coming months and years. President Barack Obama was candid in admitting it on March 3, 2014: “we are indicating to the Russians [that] if in fact they continue on the current trajectory they’re on, then we are examining a whole series of steps — economic, diplomatic— that will isolate Russia.” Well, it is precisely this desire to expand NATO and to isolate Russia by incorporating all the countries bordering Russia into NATO; i.e., a strategy of geopolitical and military encirclement of Russia, which has provoked that country when it felt threatened in its national security. This is easy to understand. For example, what would the United States do if a hypothetical Russian Empire were to incorporate Mexico or Canada into a military alliance? To ask the question is to answer it. Why is it so difficult to understand that the best way to start a war is to threaten a country’s vital interests?
Read more.....
Pray for Venezuela … to remain a sovereign nation
by Lisa Sullivan @lisavenezuela
Al-Jazeera - March 6, 2014
US media give distorted view of country I call home
I was in Guatemala on Feb. 15 when I first received the news that Venezuela — my home for the past three decades — was on the brink of civil war. My inbox flooded with questions from friends and journalists asking what was happening in my adopted country. “Pray for Venezuela,” said numerous other email messages from people in the U.S.
I had just returned from the Mayan Ixil community of Cocop, in the state of Quiche, in the western highlands of Guatemala, where I met with survivors of the 1981 massacre there. The 58 victims of Cocop were among 1,700 Ixils murdered by the army under the leadership of Gen. Jose Efrain Rios Montt, the former Guatemalan president who was recently convicted for genocide, although the conviction was overturned by the Constitutional Court and will be retried. All told, approximately 200,000 were killed in Guatemala’s 1981–96 civil war.
At Cocop’s small cemetery, the president of the town’s survivors’ committee, Jacinto de Paz, turned to me and said, “I'd like to introduce you to my parents.” His hand then swept to two tombs. As he shared the story of how the army gunned down nine family members, his body trembled and tears fell. He was 13 at the time. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “It still hurts so much.”
Back at the hotel, I learned that two Venezuelan students and a government supporter had been gunned down at a demonstration in Caracas. There were “only” three victims at that point. (The death toll would climb to 17 by the end of the month.) But, having just embraced a sobbing Jacinto 30 years after his parents’ massacre, I knew that the pain of one loss is enough to rip apart your world forever. For the families of the Venezuelan victims, it makes no difference if their loved one shared that fate with two or 199,999 others. Their pain is just as real.
Read more....
Al-Jazeera - March 6, 2014
US media give distorted view of country I call home
I was in Guatemala on Feb. 15 when I first received the news that Venezuela — my home for the past three decades — was on the brink of civil war. My inbox flooded with questions from friends and journalists asking what was happening in my adopted country. “Pray for Venezuela,” said numerous other email messages from people in the U.S.
I had just returned from the Mayan Ixil community of Cocop, in the state of Quiche, in the western highlands of Guatemala, where I met with survivors of the 1981 massacre there. The 58 victims of Cocop were among 1,700 Ixils murdered by the army under the leadership of Gen. Jose Efrain Rios Montt, the former Guatemalan president who was recently convicted for genocide, although the conviction was overturned by the Constitutional Court and will be retried. All told, approximately 200,000 were killed in Guatemala’s 1981–96 civil war.
At Cocop’s small cemetery, the president of the town’s survivors’ committee, Jacinto de Paz, turned to me and said, “I'd like to introduce you to my parents.” His hand then swept to two tombs. As he shared the story of how the army gunned down nine family members, his body trembled and tears fell. He was 13 at the time. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “It still hurts so much.”
Back at the hotel, I learned that two Venezuelan students and a government supporter had been gunned down at a demonstration in Caracas. There were “only” three victims at that point. (The death toll would climb to 17 by the end of the month.) But, having just embraced a sobbing Jacinto 30 years after his parents’ massacre, I knew that the pain of one loss is enough to rip apart your world forever. For the families of the Venezuelan victims, it makes no difference if their loved one shared that fate with two or 199,999 others. Their pain is just as real.
Read more....
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
The Everyday Psychology of Nationalism
South Koreans were enraged when their countrywoman lost to a Russian competitor at the Sochi Olympics. That reaction may or may not have been right, but it was perfectly healthy.
By Monica Kim
The Atlantic - Mar 4 2014
It was a good old-fashioned Olympic scandal in Sochi, when South Korean figure skater Kim Yuna, known as “the Queen,” lost to a less experienced Russian. The judgment spurred millions of angry Tweets, and a Change.org petition protesting the result was the fastest growing one on site record—reportedly more than 1.2 million signatures in about 12 hours.
Skating officials and fans around the world have questioned the decision, but critics remain focused on the South Korean outrage, largely since their sports fanaticism has made headlines before. Diehard citizens of countries like South Korea may seem odd to some; a post on Yahoo had the misguided headline: “Deal with it, South Korea.” But that injunction doesn't really understand the nature and depth of nationalist feeling—and the extent to which a sentiment often associated with extremism, even war, can be pervasive in the psychology of everyday life, including in sports fandom.
The ideology of nationalism has a complex history, originating in early-modern Europe and evolving in many different ways as it's spread throughout the world. Today nationalism can be civic, ethnic, or a combination of the two, but all nationalists “carry strong attitudes and beliefs about their own people and about others, who feel their attachment to their nation passionately, and who even, at times, act with great cruelty against their enemies,” according to Joshua Searle-White in his book The Psychology of Nationalism. This “us versus them” mentality and its negative effects have been well examined from a political and historical standpoint, but surprisingly few have studied its psychological roots. From a social psychological perspective, nationalist sentiment is thought to stem from two main points: attachment and identity.
Read more.....
By Monica Kim
The Atlantic - Mar 4 2014
It was a good old-fashioned Olympic scandal in Sochi, when South Korean figure skater Kim Yuna, known as “the Queen,” lost to a less experienced Russian. The judgment spurred millions of angry Tweets, and a Change.org petition protesting the result was the fastest growing one on site record—reportedly more than 1.2 million signatures in about 12 hours.
Skating officials and fans around the world have questioned the decision, but critics remain focused on the South Korean outrage, largely since their sports fanaticism has made headlines before. Diehard citizens of countries like South Korea may seem odd to some; a post on Yahoo had the misguided headline: “Deal with it, South Korea.” But that injunction doesn't really understand the nature and depth of nationalist feeling—and the extent to which a sentiment often associated with extremism, even war, can be pervasive in the psychology of everyday life, including in sports fandom.
The ideology of nationalism has a complex history, originating in early-modern Europe and evolving in many different ways as it's spread throughout the world. Today nationalism can be civic, ethnic, or a combination of the two, but all nationalists “carry strong attitudes and beliefs about their own people and about others, who feel their attachment to their nation passionately, and who even, at times, act with great cruelty against their enemies,” according to Joshua Searle-White in his book The Psychology of Nationalism. This “us versus them” mentality and its negative effects have been well examined from a political and historical standpoint, but surprisingly few have studied its psychological roots. From a social psychological perspective, nationalist sentiment is thought to stem from two main points: attachment and identity.
Read more.....
Monday, March 3, 2014
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Putin’s Nationalist Strategy
By Masha Lipman
The New Yorker - March 2, 2014
What is happening in the Crimean peninsula is not a war, exactly—or not if bloodshed is the standard for war. It is an ominous, creeping occupation (for now) of a region of sovereign Ukraine by the Russian armed forces at the order of the Kremlin. So far there have been no casualties, almost no shooting. In the predominantly pro-Russian Crimea, the Russian servicemen are generally welcomed by the local inhabitants. As Russian troops encircle and block Ukrainian military units in Crimea, the Ukrainian government in Kiev, the capital, is preparing for resistance. What will come next—full-blown war, negotiations, or a prolonged standoff—is anyone’s guess.
The one moment of promising news Sunday came when Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he would accept her proposal to establish an international fact-finding “contact group” to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. Putin, in his conversation with Merkel, however, insisted that his actions were justified by an “unrelenting threat of violence” to Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. Merkel, for her part, called the invasion a contravention of international law.
Read more.....
The New Yorker - March 2, 2014
What is happening in the Crimean peninsula is not a war, exactly—or not if bloodshed is the standard for war. It is an ominous, creeping occupation (for now) of a region of sovereign Ukraine by the Russian armed forces at the order of the Kremlin. So far there have been no casualties, almost no shooting. In the predominantly pro-Russian Crimea, the Russian servicemen are generally welcomed by the local inhabitants. As Russian troops encircle and block Ukrainian military units in Crimea, the Ukrainian government in Kiev, the capital, is preparing for resistance. What will come next—full-blown war, negotiations, or a prolonged standoff—is anyone’s guess.
The one moment of promising news Sunday came when Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he would accept her proposal to establish an international fact-finding “contact group” to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. Putin, in his conversation with Merkel, however, insisted that his actions were justified by an “unrelenting threat of violence” to Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. Merkel, for her part, called the invasion a contravention of international law.
Read more.....
The Real Reason Nobody Reads Academics
By Ezra Klein
Bloomberg View - Feb 28, 2014
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently ignited a bit of a firestorm with a column asking why academics are irrelevant to public debates. I’d turn the question around: Why aren’t journalists better at taking advantage of academic expertise?
The most efficient arrangement would have academics communicate directly with the public. Thankfully for journalists, they don’t. That presents a kind of arbitrage opportunity for journalists: Although academics write in jargon, they speak in English. And they’re typically happy to donate absurd amounts of time walking reporters through the thickets of their expertise. Their knowledge becomes our stories -- and, ultimately, our page views and advertising impressions. It would be a disaster for our profession if academics became good at communicating what they know.
Read more.....
Bloomberg View - Feb 28, 2014
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently ignited a bit of a firestorm with a column asking why academics are irrelevant to public debates. I’d turn the question around: Why aren’t journalists better at taking advantage of academic expertise?
The most efficient arrangement would have academics communicate directly with the public. Thankfully for journalists, they don’t. That presents a kind of arbitrage opportunity for journalists: Although academics write in jargon, they speak in English. And they’re typically happy to donate absurd amounts of time walking reporters through the thickets of their expertise. Their knowledge becomes our stories -- and, ultimately, our page views and advertising impressions. It would be a disaster for our profession if academics became good at communicating what they know.
Read more.....
India and the politics of ‘corruption’
By Anjan Chakrabarti & Anup Dhar
Philosophers of Change - February 4, 2014
There is little doubt that the rise of AAP, especially since its extraordinary electoral success in Delhi, has transformed at least some of the political language in India. Using ‘corruption’ — itself a term that needs much unpacking, even deconstructive work: as the ‘entry point’ (to some this would nevertheless appear to be a simple entry point; we shall try to show how it is not simple with respect to India) and then connect it to a host of other related processes. It has inaugurated a new political language and praxis that is in turn a critique of what AAP has designated as the Indian ‘political system’ and the political class. The appreciation of the overdetermined nature of reality by at least leading AAP functionaries has given to its political praxis immense flexibility and the option to shift the focus of public attention and critique from region to region, issue to issue. Consequently, as it moves from Delhi to Haryana to Uttar Pradesh to Gujarat to Karnataka and even to Maharashtra and so on, what it means to be AAP mutates.
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Philosophers of Change - February 4, 2014
Politics begins where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begins. — LeninThink of all the people in Tagore’s Red Oleander, residing perhaps in post-independent India -- who did not have names and were identified as mere numbers, 21F, 79D, 84M, etc. — forming their own party with the assistance of Nandini, the female rebel protagonist (Ranjan — the other rebel protagonist had already been killed by the King) and challenging the King, the Gosain (clergy), the Adhyapak (professor) and a host of other sycophants; throw in also the madness and music of Bishu Paagla (Bishu, the mad one), the carnivalesque anarchism of the multitude — and you have something like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
There is little doubt that the rise of AAP, especially since its extraordinary electoral success in Delhi, has transformed at least some of the political language in India. Using ‘corruption’ — itself a term that needs much unpacking, even deconstructive work: as the ‘entry point’ (to some this would nevertheless appear to be a simple entry point; we shall try to show how it is not simple with respect to India) and then connect it to a host of other related processes. It has inaugurated a new political language and praxis that is in turn a critique of what AAP has designated as the Indian ‘political system’ and the political class. The appreciation of the overdetermined nature of reality by at least leading AAP functionaries has given to its political praxis immense flexibility and the option to shift the focus of public attention and critique from region to region, issue to issue. Consequently, as it moves from Delhi to Haryana to Uttar Pradesh to Gujarat to Karnataka and even to Maharashtra and so on, what it means to be AAP mutates.
Read more....
The End of the ‘Developing World’
By DAYO OLOPADE
The New York Times - FEB. 28, 2014
Read more....
The New York Times - FEB. 28, 2014
BILL GATES, in his foundation’s annual letter,
declared that “the terms ‘developing countries’ and ‘developed
countries’ have outlived their usefulness.” He’s right. If we want to
understand the modern global economy, we need a better vocabulary.
Mr.
Gates was making a point about improvements in income and gross
domestic product; unfortunately, these formal measures generate
categories that tend to obscure obvious distinctions. Only when
employing a crude “development” binary could anyone lump Mozambique and
Mexico together.
It’s
tough to pick a satisfying replacement. Talk of first, second and third
worlds is passé, and it’s hard to bear the Dickensian awkwardness of
“industrialized nations.” Forget, too, the more recent jargon about the
“global south” and “global north.” It makes little sense to counterpose
poor countries with “the West” when many of the biggest economic success
stories in the past few decades have come from the East.
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Why Russia No Longer Fears the West
By BEN JUDAH
Politico Magazine - March 02, 2014
The West is blinking in disbelief – Vladimir Putin just invaded Ukraine. German diplomats, French Eurocrats and American pundits are all stunned. Why has Russia chosen to gamble its trillion-dollar ties with the West?
Western leaders are stunned because they haven’t realized Russia’s owners no longer respect Europeans the way they once did after the Cold War. Russia thinks the West is no longer a crusading alliance. Russia thinks the West is now all about the money.
Putin’s henchmen know this personally. Russia’s rulers have been buying up Europe for years. They have mansions and luxury flats from London’s West End to France’s Cote d’Azure. Their children are safe at British boarding and Swiss finishing schools. And their money is squirrelled away in Austrian banks and British tax havens.
Read more....
Politico Magazine - March 02, 2014
The West is blinking in disbelief – Vladimir Putin just invaded Ukraine. German diplomats, French Eurocrats and American pundits are all stunned. Why has Russia chosen to gamble its trillion-dollar ties with the West?
Western leaders are stunned because they haven’t realized Russia’s owners no longer respect Europeans the way they once did after the Cold War. Russia thinks the West is no longer a crusading alliance. Russia thinks the West is now all about the money.
Putin’s henchmen know this personally. Russia’s rulers have been buying up Europe for years. They have mansions and luxury flats from London’s West End to France’s Cote d’Azure. Their children are safe at British boarding and Swiss finishing schools. And their money is squirrelled away in Austrian banks and British tax havens.
Read more....
Doing Higher Ed Right
Increasing education funding! Hiring full-time professors! Are these places for real?
By Rebecca Schuman
The Slate - Feb. 10, 2-14
Seems sometimes like every week is a bad week for higher education. Last week was no different: First came news of the University of Akron threatening to shutter 55 degree programs—you know, frivolous ones, like elementary education—broken on the heels of comments by the school’s vice provost, Rex Ramsier, that if his institution stopped using underpaid adjunct labor, it would have to raise tuition 40 percent.
Read more....
By Rebecca Schuman
The Slate - Feb. 10, 2-14
Seems sometimes like every week is a bad week for higher education. Last week was no different: First came news of the University of Akron threatening to shutter 55 degree programs—you know, frivolous ones, like elementary education—broken on the heels of comments by the school’s vice provost, Rex Ramsier, that if his institution stopped using underpaid adjunct labor, it would have to raise tuition 40 percent.
Meanwhile, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting reveals that Ramsier, his six-figure salary,
and the adjuncts he loves to impugn are business as usual. According to
the report, since 1987, the number of administrators and other
nonteaching employees at colleges nationwide more than doubled, “vastly
outpacing” growth of not just faculty, but students. So,
another week, another set of woes about which I can cry foul, and then
get a bunch of condescending responses about supply and demand, as if I
have never heard of such a thing.
Read more....
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Exclusive: One of Washington’s wealthiest is giving $20 million to a top conservative think tank
By Zachary Goldfarb
Washington Post - February 24, 2014
Daniel A. D'Aniello, the co-founder and chairman of the Washington-basedprivate-equity giant Carlyle Group, is contributing $20 million to the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
The contribution by D'Aniello — set to be announced Tuesday — marks a new foray into policy advocacy by the top Carlyle executive, who has maintained a much lower profile than co-founder David Rubenstein. It also represents the marriage of one of Washington's business titans to one of its top think tanks.
AEI will name its new building after D'Aniello before moving in late next year. The building, at 1785 Massachusetts Ave. NW, formerly owned by Andrew Mellon and purchased from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is in a neighborhood that houses a number of think tanks, including the Brookings Institution.
Read more.....
Washington Post - February 24, 2014
Daniel A. D'Aniello, the co-founder and chairman of the Washington-basedprivate-equity giant Carlyle Group, is contributing $20 million to the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
The contribution by D'Aniello — set to be announced Tuesday — marks a new foray into policy advocacy by the top Carlyle executive, who has maintained a much lower profile than co-founder David Rubenstein. It also represents the marriage of one of Washington's business titans to one of its top think tanks.
AEI will name its new building after D'Aniello before moving in late next year. The building, at 1785 Massachusetts Ave. NW, formerly owned by Andrew Mellon and purchased from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is in a neighborhood that houses a number of think tanks, including the Brookings Institution.
Read more.....
China horrified as mass stabbings at Kunming rail station leave dozens dead
Unidentified raiders shot by police after 'violent terror attack' at crowded ticket hall in Yunnan province, south-west China
By Barry Neild and agencies
The Observer, Saturday 1 March 2014
China was reeling from what was described as a "violent terror attack" on Saturday in which a knife-wielding gang stabbed 28 people to death and left scores more injured at a railway station.
State media blamed the killings at Kunming in Yunnan province, south-west China, on militants from Xinjiang in the country's restive north-west. "Evidence at the crime scene showed that the Kunming railway station terrorist attack was carried out by Xinjiang separatist forces," the Xinhua news agency said, quoting officials in the city.
Reports said five attackers were shot dead by police following the incident on Saturday evening and another five were being hunted. Unverified photographs circulating on social media appeared to show the blood-soaked bodies of victims lined up on the floor. Other images showed distraught people running away from the station and crowds gathering among police officers and ambulances.
Read more....
By Barry Neild and agencies
The Observer, Saturday 1 March 2014
China was reeling from what was described as a "violent terror attack" on Saturday in which a knife-wielding gang stabbed 28 people to death and left scores more injured at a railway station.
State media blamed the killings at Kunming in Yunnan province, south-west China, on militants from Xinjiang in the country's restive north-west. "Evidence at the crime scene showed that the Kunming railway station terrorist attack was carried out by Xinjiang separatist forces," the Xinhua news agency said, quoting officials in the city.
Reports said five attackers were shot dead by police following the incident on Saturday evening and another five were being hunted. Unverified photographs circulating on social media appeared to show the blood-soaked bodies of victims lined up on the floor. Other images showed distraught people running away from the station and crowds gathering among police officers and ambulances.
Read more....
The Academic-Industrial Complex
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
The New York Times - July 31, 2010
WHAT does Shirley Ann Jackson know about shipping parcels? For that matter, what does Steven B. Sample understand about mutual funds?
Dr. Jackson, who is a theoretical physicist and the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., has served as an outside director on the board of FedEx since 1999.
Dr. Sample, an electrical engineer and the retiring president of the University of Southern California, sits on the boards of directors of the American Mutual and Amcap mutual funds. He is also a director of another company, and stepped down two years ago from the board of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the candy maker.
Dr. Jackson and Dr. Sample are part of a cozy and lucrative club: presidents and other senior university officials who cross from academia into the business world to serve on corporate boards.
Read more....
The New York Times - July 31, 2010
WHAT does Shirley Ann Jackson know about shipping parcels? For that matter, what does Steven B. Sample understand about mutual funds?
Dr. Jackson, who is a theoretical physicist and the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., has served as an outside director on the board of FedEx since 1999.
Dr. Sample, an electrical engineer and the retiring president of the University of Southern California, sits on the boards of directors of the American Mutual and Amcap mutual funds. He is also a director of another company, and stepped down two years ago from the board of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the candy maker.
Dr. Jackson and Dr. Sample are part of a cozy and lucrative club: presidents and other senior university officials who cross from academia into the business world to serve on corporate boards.
Read more....
Neoliberalism and the commercialization of higher education
By Holly Brentnall
The International - SUNDAY JULY 28, 2013
Cuts in spending and the replacement of academic staff by technology are not the only pressures faced by British academia. Increasingly, education is fashioning students into a productive labor force rather than teaching them more traditional academic ideals. Last year’s plans to raise tuition fees in Britain to a maximum of £9000, $13,731 at today’s exchange rate, were coterminous with cuts of £2 billion in funding for education. Universities’ lack of funding caused them to compensate for lost income by hiking up tuition fees. This is perceived as disastrous for Britain’s progression up the global league tables, which, conducted by the Times educational supplement, rank universities by teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. With increasing competition from universities around the world, the UK’s University and College Union warns that Britain is at risk of being left behind. The neoliberal turn to privatization and the commercialization of education is an area of concern for British universities. Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has been expressing itself in university syllabi. Abandoning previous values of critical-thinking and challenging basic assumptions, the focus leans towards teaching vaguely defined “skills” such as “teamwork,” “communication” and “leadership.”
Read more....
The International - SUNDAY JULY 28, 2013
Cuts in spending and the replacement of academic staff by technology are not the only pressures faced by British academia. Increasingly, education is fashioning students into a productive labor force rather than teaching them more traditional academic ideals. Last year’s plans to raise tuition fees in Britain to a maximum of £9000, $13,731 at today’s exchange rate, were coterminous with cuts of £2 billion in funding for education. Universities’ lack of funding caused them to compensate for lost income by hiking up tuition fees. This is perceived as disastrous for Britain’s progression up the global league tables, which, conducted by the Times educational supplement, rank universities by teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. With increasing competition from universities around the world, the UK’s University and College Union warns that Britain is at risk of being left behind. The neoliberal turn to privatization and the commercialization of education is an area of concern for British universities. Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has been expressing itself in university syllabi. Abandoning previous values of critical-thinking and challenging basic assumptions, the focus leans towards teaching vaguely defined “skills” such as “teamwork,” “communication” and “leadership.”
Read more....
The neoliberal assault on academia
The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition hikes and budget cuts, notes Barkawi.
By Tarak Barkawi
Tarak Barkawi is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics, New School for Social Research.
Al-Jazeera - 25 Apr 2013
he New York Times, Slate and Al Jazeera have recently drawn attention to the adjunctification of the professoriate in the US. Only 24 per cent of the academic workforce are now tenured or tenure-track.
Much of the coverage has focused on the sub-poverty wages of adjunct faculty, their lack of job security and the growing legions of unemployed and under-employed PhDs. Elsewhere, the focus has been on web-based learning and the massive open online courses (MOOCs), with some commentators celebrating and others lamenting their arrival.
The two developments are not unrelated. Harvard recently asked its alumni to volunteer their time as "online mentors" and "discussion group managers" for an online course. Fewer professors and fewer qualified - or even paid - teaching assistants will be required in higher education's New Order.
Lost amid the fetishisation of information technology and the pathos of the struggle over proper working conditions for adjunct faculty is the deeper crisis of the academic profession occasioned by neoliberalism. This crisis is connected to the economics of higher education but it is not primarily about that.
The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition fee hikes and budget cuts.
Read more....
By Tarak Barkawi
Tarak Barkawi is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics, New School for Social Research.
Al-Jazeera - 25 Apr 2013
he New York Times, Slate and Al Jazeera have recently drawn attention to the adjunctification of the professoriate in the US. Only 24 per cent of the academic workforce are now tenured or tenure-track.
Much of the coverage has focused on the sub-poverty wages of adjunct faculty, their lack of job security and the growing legions of unemployed and under-employed PhDs. Elsewhere, the focus has been on web-based learning and the massive open online courses (MOOCs), with some commentators celebrating and others lamenting their arrival.
The two developments are not unrelated. Harvard recently asked its alumni to volunteer their time as "online mentors" and "discussion group managers" for an online course. Fewer professors and fewer qualified - or even paid - teaching assistants will be required in higher education's New Order.
Lost amid the fetishisation of information technology and the pathos of the struggle over proper working conditions for adjunct faculty is the deeper crisis of the academic profession occasioned by neoliberalism. This crisis is connected to the economics of higher education but it is not primarily about that.
The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition fee hikes and budget cuts.
Read more....
"Neoliberalism and the Academic-Industrial Complex"
By Jason Del Gandio
Truthout - Thursday, 12 August 2010
Read more....
Truthout - Thursday, 12 August 2010
A recently published New York Times article entitled
"The Academic-Industrial Complex" (July 31, 2010) outlines the growing
trend of university presidents and other senior university officials
serving on corporate boards. As author Graham Bowley states:
According to a 2008 survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education, presidents from 19 of the top 40 research universities with the largest operating budgets sat on at least one company board. The trend is more widespread among public universities, but the private ones are catching up: the American Council on Education says that from 2001 to 2006, the proportion of presidents from all doctorate-granting institutions sitting on corporate boards rose to 52.1 percent from 47.8 percent at public institutions and to 50.9 percent from 40.6 percent at private ones.[1]
The article brings attention to this growing
academic-corporate connection and, on occasion, addresses some important
concerns. For example, can university presidents properly fulfill their
duties while serving on multiple corporate boards? Are there any
conflicts of interests between academic and corporate obligations? And,
perhaps most importantly, are students and faculty likely to censor
their corporate critiques (of sweatshop labor or financial scandals, for
instance) if their president serves the targeted corporation?
Read more....
Chomsky: How America's Great University System Is Getting Destroyed
By Noam Chomsky
Alternet - February 28, 2014
The following is an edited transcript of remarks given by Noam Chomsky via Skype on 4 February 2014 to a gathering of members and allies of the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, PA. The transcript was prepared by Robin J. Sowards and edited by Prof. Chomsky.
On hiring faculty off the tenure track
That’s part of the business model. It’s the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call “associates” at Wal-Mart, employees that aren’t owed benefits. It’s a part of a corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility. When universities become corporatized, as has been happening quite systematically over the last generation as part of the general neoliberal assault on the population, their business model means that what matters is the bottom line. The effective owners are the trustees (or the legislature, in the case of state universities), and they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps. Just as the hiring of temps has gone way up in the neoliberal period, you’re getting the same phenomenon in the universities. The idea is to divide society into two groups. One group is sometimes called the “plutonomy” (a term used by Citibank when they were advising their investors on where to invest their funds), the top sector of wealth, globally but concentrated mostly in places like the United States. The other group, the rest of the population, is a “precariat,” living a precarious existence.
Read more.....
Alternet - February 28, 2014
The following is an edited transcript of remarks given by Noam Chomsky via Skype on 4 February 2014 to a gathering of members and allies of the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, PA. The transcript was prepared by Robin J. Sowards and edited by Prof. Chomsky.
On hiring faculty off the tenure track
That’s part of the business model. It’s the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call “associates” at Wal-Mart, employees that aren’t owed benefits. It’s a part of a corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility. When universities become corporatized, as has been happening quite systematically over the last generation as part of the general neoliberal assault on the population, their business model means that what matters is the bottom line. The effective owners are the trustees (or the legislature, in the case of state universities), and they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps. Just as the hiring of temps has gone way up in the neoliberal period, you’re getting the same phenomenon in the universities. The idea is to divide society into two groups. One group is sometimes called the “plutonomy” (a term used by Citibank when they were advising their investors on where to invest their funds), the top sector of wealth, globally but concentrated mostly in places like the United States. The other group, the rest of the population, is a “precariat,” living a precarious existence.
Read more.....
University of Chicago Hires Notorious Goldman Sachs Fraudster to Teach Economics to Undergrads
By Patrick Caldwell
Mother Jones | Thu Feb. 27, 2014
The lone individual found liable for committing fraud during the lead up to the financial crisis will soon be teaching undergrads the basics of economics at one of America's most prestigious universities. Former Goldman Sachs banker Fabrice Tourre—better known by his self-assigned nickname, "Fabulous Fab"—is studying to get his Ph.D. in economics from University of Chicago. Per the Chicago Maroon, the school's student newspaper, Tourre will teach a class this semester, offering honors students the opportunity to learn "Elements of Economics Analysis 3" from a man who owes over $1 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Tourre is a poster child for Wall Street malfeasance. While working at Goldman in 2007, he designed a financial product called Abacus 2007-AC1. This collection of mortgage-backed securities was designed to fail—hedge funder John Paulson had asked Goldman to sell a package of bad mortgages that he could then bet against. Thanks to Tourre and the foreclosure crisis, Paulson made a cool $1 billion. Fab and Paulson knew Abacus was a bum product from the get-go, but Tourre hid that information from investors. Goldman rewarded Tourre handsomely for the scheme: He was promoted and earned a reported $2 million.
Read more....
Mother Jones | Thu Feb. 27, 2014
The lone individual found liable for committing fraud during the lead up to the financial crisis will soon be teaching undergrads the basics of economics at one of America's most prestigious universities. Former Goldman Sachs banker Fabrice Tourre—better known by his self-assigned nickname, "Fabulous Fab"—is studying to get his Ph.D. in economics from University of Chicago. Per the Chicago Maroon, the school's student newspaper, Tourre will teach a class this semester, offering honors students the opportunity to learn "Elements of Economics Analysis 3" from a man who owes over $1 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Tourre is a poster child for Wall Street malfeasance. While working at Goldman in 2007, he designed a financial product called Abacus 2007-AC1. This collection of mortgage-backed securities was designed to fail—hedge funder John Paulson had asked Goldman to sell a package of bad mortgages that he could then bet against. Thanks to Tourre and the foreclosure crisis, Paulson made a cool $1 billion. Fab and Paulson knew Abacus was a bum product from the get-go, but Tourre hid that information from investors. Goldman rewarded Tourre handsomely for the scheme: He was promoted and earned a reported $2 million.
Read more....
From Academic Freedom to Academic Capitalism
By Diane Reay, University of Cambridge
Discoversociety - February 15, 2014
For the first decade of the 2000s I was a member of FAAB – Feminists against Academic Bollocks. We wrote satirical sketches, sang and danced, tried to embody innovative forms of resistance to the academic status quo, and gave conference performances. In part, this was about performance as reclaiming a feminist identity, but it was also centrally about what is legitimated and delegitimated in the academy, and the gendering and classing of the academic persona. One of the songs we sang to the lyrics of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I will survive’ started:
At first we were feminists, we were organised
Then we entered academia and were atomised
But then we spent so many nights
cursing how you did us wrong
Read more.....
Discoversociety - February 15, 2014
For the first decade of the 2000s I was a member of FAAB – Feminists against Academic Bollocks. We wrote satirical sketches, sang and danced, tried to embody innovative forms of resistance to the academic status quo, and gave conference performances. In part, this was about performance as reclaiming a feminist identity, but it was also centrally about what is legitimated and delegitimated in the academy, and the gendering and classing of the academic persona. One of the songs we sang to the lyrics of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I will survive’ started:
At first we were feminists, we were organised
Then we entered academia and were atomised
But then we spent so many nights
cursing how you did us wrong
Read more.....
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