Monday, November 30, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
This New Coca Cola Ad Shows Mexico’s White Savior Problem
Telesurtv.net - 27 November 2015
A new Coca-Cola ad released earlier this week aims to send an important message to its white and Mestizo consumers in Mexico this Christmas: break with your comfort zone and bring civilization to Indigenous people.This, at least, is what their most recent advertisement seems to convey. “81.6 percent of Mexican Indigenous have felt rejected for speaking another language,” the ad purports to inform while somber Indigenous faces fill the screen. Fortunately for Mexico’s Indigenous, white Mexican hipsters are here to save them this Christmas with a “special message,” the ad tells us. What follows next is a painful metaphor of ongoing colonialism in the country: white kids storm the Mixe Indigenous community, as if a crusade, distribute coke bottles and build a giant Coca-Cola Christmas tree for all to idolize.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3XIcEdIBVE
Like most white savior plots, the ad is all about having a huge emotional experience about Brown victimhood that urges European descendants to take up the moral duty to save the oppressed from their oppression. It is founded on a white egocentric myth that there is something that Brown people must need that only White people can give them. In this colonial fairy tale Brown people can only be conceived as passive objects in need of white care, not active agents that might outright just reject white rescue missions. In fact, for the Indigenous of Mexico, white people bringing Coca-Cola is not just a joyful Christmas ad, it is a reality of corporate and cultural domination and destruction. “The video is a clear demonstration of the presence of transnationals in the Indigenous territories of Oaxaca. In the last years, these companies have increasingly been taking over natural, economic and now cultural resources from the communities,” Laura Melchor, a human rights advocate in Oaxaca, told teleSUR English. Since 2000, Coca-Cola has worked with the Mexican government to privatize water resources, including aquifers and rivers that belong to Indigenous peoples. Coca-Cola even uses some of these simply to dump their industrial waste into public waters. The increasing privatization of water has left well over 15 million Mexicans without access to drinking water, turning Mexico into the second top consumer of bottled water in the world. Horrifyingly enough, these too are mostly sold by the very same Coca-Cola company.
READ MORE.....
A new Coca-Cola ad released earlier this week aims to send an important message to its white and Mestizo consumers in Mexico this Christmas: break with your comfort zone and bring civilization to Indigenous people.This, at least, is what their most recent advertisement seems to convey. “81.6 percent of Mexican Indigenous have felt rejected for speaking another language,” the ad purports to inform while somber Indigenous faces fill the screen. Fortunately for Mexico’s Indigenous, white Mexican hipsters are here to save them this Christmas with a “special message,” the ad tells us. What follows next is a painful metaphor of ongoing colonialism in the country: white kids storm the Mixe Indigenous community, as if a crusade, distribute coke bottles and build a giant Coca-Cola Christmas tree for all to idolize.
Like most white savior plots, the ad is all about having a huge emotional experience about Brown victimhood that urges European descendants to take up the moral duty to save the oppressed from their oppression. It is founded on a white egocentric myth that there is something that Brown people must need that only White people can give them. In this colonial fairy tale Brown people can only be conceived as passive objects in need of white care, not active agents that might outright just reject white rescue missions. In fact, for the Indigenous of Mexico, white people bringing Coca-Cola is not just a joyful Christmas ad, it is a reality of corporate and cultural domination and destruction. “The video is a clear demonstration of the presence of transnationals in the Indigenous territories of Oaxaca. In the last years, these companies have increasingly been taking over natural, economic and now cultural resources from the communities,” Laura Melchor, a human rights advocate in Oaxaca, told teleSUR English. Since 2000, Coca-Cola has worked with the Mexican government to privatize water resources, including aquifers and rivers that belong to Indigenous peoples. Coca-Cola even uses some of these simply to dump their industrial waste into public waters. The increasing privatization of water has left well over 15 million Mexicans without access to drinking water, turning Mexico into the second top consumer of bottled water in the world. Horrifyingly enough, these too are mostly sold by the very same Coca-Cola company.
READ MORE.....
What lies behind different reactions to Paris and Beirut attacks
The Conversation - November 16, 2015
Events of this past weekend shook the core of the world as ISIS struck not just in Beirut, but Paris as well. These attacks follow an equally brutal show of terror in January 2015 when Charlie Hebdo’s offices were targeted because of cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad. France is also a country with a strong anti-immigration political rhetoric that actively discriminates against those who are different. The most renowned case was the controversy surrounding the hijab. ISIS has claimed responsibility for these attacks. World leaders have pledged support, solidarity and condemnation of terrorism. In the next few weeks we may even see a resurgence of rhetoric calling for more resources to fight this War on Terror. There is also the inherent risk that Islamophobia may take deeper root – not just in France but in Europe as a whole. Yet as the world consumed the messages of support, sentiments of outrage and condemnation of violence, some also asked: why such a strong show of support for Paris and not Beirut? The answer, seemingly, was that it is because Arab lives matter less than those of Europeans.
READ MORE.......
Events of this past weekend shook the core of the world as ISIS struck not just in Beirut, but Paris as well. These attacks follow an equally brutal show of terror in January 2015 when Charlie Hebdo’s offices were targeted because of cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad. France is also a country with a strong anti-immigration political rhetoric that actively discriminates against those who are different. The most renowned case was the controversy surrounding the hijab. ISIS has claimed responsibility for these attacks. World leaders have pledged support, solidarity and condemnation of terrorism. In the next few weeks we may even see a resurgence of rhetoric calling for more resources to fight this War on Terror. There is also the inherent risk that Islamophobia may take deeper root – not just in France but in Europe as a whole. Yet as the world consumed the messages of support, sentiments of outrage and condemnation of violence, some also asked: why such a strong show of support for Paris and not Beirut? The answer, seemingly, was that it is because Arab lives matter less than those of Europeans.
READ MORE.......
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Sociology of Islam Mailing List Subscriber Statistic
* Country Subscribers * ------- ----------- * Algeria 1 * Armenia 2 * Australia 32 * Austria 3 * Bangladesh 3 * Belgium 11 * Bosnia and Herzegovina 1 * Botswana 1 * Brazil 3 * Brunei Darussalam 1 * Bulgaria 1 * Canada 75 * Chile 2 * China 1 * Czech Republic 1 * Denmark 17 * ??? (EU) 9 * Egypt 1 * Finland 6 * France 26 * Germany 90 * Greece 1 * Hong Kong 1 * Hungary 3 * India 3 * Indonesia 3 * Ireland 3 * Islamic Republic of Iran 13 * Israel 20 * Italy 23 * Japan 9 * Kenya 2 * Kyrgyzstan 1 * Lebanon 5 * Luxembourg 1 * Malaysia 3 * Mexico 2 * Morocco 4 * Netherlands 28 * New Zealand 1 * Nigeria 3 * Norway 9 * Pakistan 8 * Palestinian Territory 1 * Poland 3 * Qatar 20 * Republic of Korea 3 * Russian Federation 6 * Saudi Arabia 1 * Singapore 5 * South Africa 6 * Spain 30 * Sweden 20 * Switzerland 9 * Thailand 1 * Turkey 97 * Uganda 1 * United Republic of Tanzania 1 * United arab emirates 7 * United kingdom 113 * United states 1,562 * * Total number of users subscribed to the list: 2319 * Total number of countries represented: 61 * Total number of local host users on the list: 0
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
What the world thinks about climate change in 7 charts
By Richard Wike
PEW RESEARCH - November 5, 2015
As world leaders prepare to negotiate a major climate change agreement later this month at the United Nations’ Paris 2015 conference, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that people around the world see the issue as a significant challenge and want their governments to take action. Here are seven key findings from the poll:
1) Majorities in all 40 nations polled say climate change is a serious problem, and a global median of 54% believe it is a very serious problem. Still, the intensity of concern varies substantially across regions and nations. Latin Americans and sub-Saharan Africans are particularly worried about climate change. Americans and Chinese, whose countries have the highest overall carbon dioxide emissions, are less concerned.
READ MORE.....
PEW RESEARCH - November 5, 2015
As world leaders prepare to negotiate a major climate change agreement later this month at the United Nations’ Paris 2015 conference, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that people around the world see the issue as a significant challenge and want their governments to take action. Here are seven key findings from the poll:
1) Majorities in all 40 nations polled say climate change is a serious problem, and a global median of 54% believe it is a very serious problem. Still, the intensity of concern varies substantially across regions and nations. Latin Americans and sub-Saharan Africans are particularly worried about climate change. Americans and Chinese, whose countries have the highest overall carbon dioxide emissions, are less concerned.
READ MORE.....
Yale’s most popular course is a Harvard class
By Steve Annear
THE BOSTON GLOBE - November 17, 2015
On the gridiron this weekend, Harvard and Yale will clash as their long-running rivalry reaches its annual climax. But in the classroom, students from both Ivy League institutions have found computer compatibility. Harvard University professor David Malan’s computer programming course, CS50, now has the highest enrollment numbers at both colleges. Malan helped Yale implement a pilot program modeled on his wildly popular Cambridge lectures at the New Haven school this fall. “For the first time in history,” Malan said, “students have classmates at Yale, or classmates at Harvard, respectively.” After Malan brainstormed in the summer of 2014 with Joan Feigenbaum, the chairwoman of Yale’s computer science department, the course was finally approved at the Connecticut school that December.
READ MORE....
THE BOSTON GLOBE - November 17, 2015
On the gridiron this weekend, Harvard and Yale will clash as their long-running rivalry reaches its annual climax. But in the classroom, students from both Ivy League institutions have found computer compatibility. Harvard University professor David Malan’s computer programming course, CS50, now has the highest enrollment numbers at both colleges. Malan helped Yale implement a pilot program modeled on his wildly popular Cambridge lectures at the New Haven school this fall. “For the first time in history,” Malan said, “students have classmates at Yale, or classmates at Harvard, respectively.” After Malan brainstormed in the summer of 2014 with Joan Feigenbaum, the chairwoman of Yale’s computer science department, the course was finally approved at the Connecticut school that December.
READ MORE....
University Group Pushes 'Technology Transfer' in Tenure, Promotion
Inside Higher Ed - November 17, 2015
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities is calling for public research universities to formally consider technology transfer issues in tenure and promotion decisions where applicable. In a report out today, APLU defines technology transfer loosely as “entrepreneurship, innovation and technology-based economic development activities,” and says that faculty members who participate in it should be credited in personnel decisions.
“A faculty member’s accomplishments in technology transfer, innovation and entrepreneurship are worthy of consideration in the review process for tenure and advancement,” the report says. “As with other forms of faculty work, it is essential that the evaluation of technology transfer activities weigh the likely impact of the work, its quality and its foreseeable societal benefit. When it is successful, technology transfer can invigorate the university and establish relationships with other private and public sectors that affirm the value of a research university.”
READ MORE....
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities is calling for public research universities to formally consider technology transfer issues in tenure and promotion decisions where applicable. In a report out today, APLU defines technology transfer loosely as “entrepreneurship, innovation and technology-based economic development activities,” and says that faculty members who participate in it should be credited in personnel decisions.
“A faculty member’s accomplishments in technology transfer, innovation and entrepreneurship are worthy of consideration in the review process for tenure and advancement,” the report says. “As with other forms of faculty work, it is essential that the evaluation of technology transfer activities weigh the likely impact of the work, its quality and its foreseeable societal benefit. When it is successful, technology transfer can invigorate the university and establish relationships with other private and public sectors that affirm the value of a research university.”
READ MORE....
A New Report: "Anxiety, Nostalgia, and Mistrust”
Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey ‒
"Anxiety, Nostalgia, and Mistrust”
http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PRRI-AVS-2015-Web.pdf
PRRI’s sixth annual American Values Survey explores attitudes toward the 2016 election, economic inequality, racial tensions, immigration, and more.
"Anxiety, Nostalgia, and Mistrust”
http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PRRI-AVS-2015-Web.pdf
PRRI’s sixth annual American Values Survey explores attitudes toward the 2016 election, economic inequality, racial tensions, immigration, and more.
A New Chinese Movie: Goodbye Mr Loser 《夏洛特烦恼 Opens October 9th in the US & Canada!
If he’d had the time after meeting American captains of industry in Seattle and Barack Obama at the White House, Chinese President Xi Jinping might have ducked out at the close of his United Nations appearance and into a New York movie theater to check on how China’s other soft power ambassadors—its movies, not its pandas—are playing to American audiences.
Struggling to get off the ground, as it turns out.
Though Hollywood studio films are making greater returns than ever at China’s box office—despite imports being limited to 34 each year—market forces pigeonhole screenings of Chinese-language films from the People’s Republic into a small but growing group of U.S. theaters that dedicate a few screens to serving an audience made up almost exclusively of diaspora Chinese and Chinese students studying abroad.
READ MORE......
Monday, November 16, 2015
From Beirut, This Is Paris: In A World That Doesn't Care About Arab Lives
Elie Fares
HUFFINGTON POST - 11/15/201
When a friend told me past midnight to check the news about Paris, I had no idea that I would be looking at a map of a city I love, delineating locations undergoing terrorist attacks simultaneously. I zoomed in on that map closer; one of the locations was right to where I had stayed when I was there in 2013, down that same boulevard.
The more I read, the higher the number of fatalities went. It was horrible; it was dehumanizing; it was utterly and irrevocably hopeless. 2015 was ending the way it started -- with terrorists attacks occurring in Lebanon and France almost at the same time, in the same context of demented creatures spreading hate and fear and death wherever they went.
I woke up this morning to two broken cities. My friends in Paris who only yesterday were asking what was happening in Beirut were now on the opposite side of the line. Both our capitals were broken and scarred, old news to us perhaps but foreign territory to them.
READ MORE....
HUFFINGTON POST - 11/15/201
When a friend told me past midnight to check the news about Paris, I had no idea that I would be looking at a map of a city I love, delineating locations undergoing terrorist attacks simultaneously. I zoomed in on that map closer; one of the locations was right to where I had stayed when I was there in 2013, down that same boulevard.
The more I read, the higher the number of fatalities went. It was horrible; it was dehumanizing; it was utterly and irrevocably hopeless. 2015 was ending the way it started -- with terrorists attacks occurring in Lebanon and France almost at the same time, in the same context of demented creatures spreading hate and fear and death wherever they went.
I woke up this morning to two broken cities. My friends in Paris who only yesterday were asking what was happening in Beirut were now on the opposite side of the line. Both our capitals were broken and scarred, old news to us perhaps but foreign territory to them.
READ MORE....
The Islamic State’s trap for Europe
By Harleen Gambhir
THE WASHINGTON POST - November 15, 2015
The writer is a counterterrorism analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. Last week, President Obama said that the Islamic State is “ contained ” in Iraq and Syria, but the group’s attacks in Paris soon afterward showed that it poses a greater threat to the West than ever. The Islamic State is executing a global strategy to defend its territory in Iraq and Syria, foster affiliates in other Muslim-majority areas, and encourage and direct terrorist attacks in the wider world. It has exported its brutality and military methods to groups in Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now it is using tactical skills acquired on Middle Eastern battlefields to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash that will generate even more recruits within Western societies. The United States and its allies must respond quickly to this threat. The Islamic State’s strategy is to polarize Western society — to “destroy the grayzone,” as it says in its publications. The group hopes frequent, devastating attacks in its name will provoke overreactions by European governments against innocent Muslims, thereby alienating and radicalizing Muslim communities throughout the continent. The atrocities in Paris are only the most recent instances of this accelerating campaign. Since January, European citizens fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have provided online and material support to lethal operations in Paris, Copenhagen and near Lyon, France, as well as attempted attacks in London, Barcelona and near Brussels. Islamic State fighters are likely responsible for destroying the Russian airliner over the Sinai. These attacks are not random, nor are they aimed primarily at affecting Western policy in the Middle East. They are, rather, part of a militarily capable organization’s campaign to mobilize extremist actors already in Europe and to recruit new ones.
READ MORE.....
THE WASHINGTON POST - November 15, 2015
The writer is a counterterrorism analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. Last week, President Obama said that the Islamic State is “ contained ” in Iraq and Syria, but the group’s attacks in Paris soon afterward showed that it poses a greater threat to the West than ever. The Islamic State is executing a global strategy to defend its territory in Iraq and Syria, foster affiliates in other Muslim-majority areas, and encourage and direct terrorist attacks in the wider world. It has exported its brutality and military methods to groups in Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now it is using tactical skills acquired on Middle Eastern battlefields to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash that will generate even more recruits within Western societies. The United States and its allies must respond quickly to this threat. The Islamic State’s strategy is to polarize Western society — to “destroy the grayzone,” as it says in its publications. The group hopes frequent, devastating attacks in its name will provoke overreactions by European governments against innocent Muslims, thereby alienating and radicalizing Muslim communities throughout the continent. The atrocities in Paris are only the most recent instances of this accelerating campaign. Since January, European citizens fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have provided online and material support to lethal operations in Paris, Copenhagen and near Lyon, France, as well as attempted attacks in London, Barcelona and near Brussels. Islamic State fighters are likely responsible for destroying the Russian airliner over the Sinai. These attacks are not random, nor are they aimed primarily at affecting Western policy in the Middle East. They are, rather, part of a militarily capable organization’s campaign to mobilize extremist actors already in Europe and to recruit new ones.
READ MORE.....
Sunday, November 15, 2015
World leaders gather in Antalya for G20 summit
CCTV.com 11-15-2015
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has held a welcoming ceremony for the leaders attending the G20 summit in Antalya on the Mediterranean coast.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is joining other world leaders in seeking ways to find new impetus for global economic development. The two-day summit will also focus on security issues and the Syrian conflict after the terrorist attacks in Paris. The summit will also consider the refugee crisis, climate change and tax avoidance.
The gathering offers the first possibility of a meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin since Russia launched its air campaign in Syria.
READ MORE....
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has held a welcoming ceremony for the leaders attending the G20 summit in Antalya on the Mediterranean coast.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is joining other world leaders in seeking ways to find new impetus for global economic development. The two-day summit will also focus on security issues and the Syrian conflict after the terrorist attacks in Paris. The summit will also consider the refugee crisis, climate change and tax avoidance.
The gathering offers the first possibility of a meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin since Russia launched its air campaign in Syria.
READ MORE....
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Sunday, November 8, 2015
These countries speak English as a second language best
by Bethan McKernan in discover
THE INDEPENDENT - NOV. 5, 2015
Nearly two billion people - that's almost one in three people - study English as a non-native language. In the developing world, English is less of a foreign language skill and more a tool synonymous with development, expanding a country's economy and increasing its connectedness to the rest of the world. And for small countries with few native-language speakers, it also makes sense to learn a little of the world's lingua franca for business and policy making. The English Proficiency Index has just released statistics on where English is learned around the world and quality of teaching to find the countries with the highest proficiency of English as a second language:
All five Nordic countries come top of the rankings, with at least 65 per cent of the population fluent in English.
Eastern and German-speaking Europe fill out the rest of the list.
The only non-European countries to feature are highly-developed city state Singapore, and its neighbour Malaysia, as well as Argentina.
You can read the full report here.
READ MORE.....
THE INDEPENDENT - NOV. 5, 2015
Nearly two billion people - that's almost one in three people - study English as a non-native language. In the developing world, English is less of a foreign language skill and more a tool synonymous with development, expanding a country's economy and increasing its connectedness to the rest of the world. And for small countries with few native-language speakers, it also makes sense to learn a little of the world's lingua franca for business and policy making. The English Proficiency Index has just released statistics on where English is learned around the world and quality of teaching to find the countries with the highest proficiency of English as a second language:
All five Nordic countries come top of the rankings, with at least 65 per cent of the population fluent in English.
Eastern and German-speaking Europe fill out the rest of the list.
The only non-European countries to feature are highly-developed city state Singapore, and its neighbour Malaysia, as well as Argentina.
You can read the full report here.
READ MORE.....
Tuition and Fees, 1998-99 Through 2015-16
This table shows the "sticker prices"—published tuition and required fees—at more than 3,100 colleges and universities for the 2015-16 academic year. Click the institutions' names to see historical data back to 1998.
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION - November 4, 2015
If an institution charges in-state and out-of-state residents the same rate, the amount is repeated in the "Out-of-state" columns so that readers can sort institutions accordingly. Many institutions, including most community colleges, do not offer room and board. In those cases, the "Total" columns repeat the tuition and fees figure.
The figures represent charges to first-time, full-time undergraduates based, typically, on a nine-month academic year of 30 semester hours or 45 quarter hours. The data do not reflect the cost of attendance at an institution after grants and other student aid are considered. That net cost is lower than the published fees shown. Room-and-board fees charged by colleges may represent differing numbers of meals per week and so may not be comparable among institutions.
Historical data are in real dollars by default, but can be adjusted for inflation, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics national figures, using the toggle button in the expanded historical view.
READ MORE.....
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION - November 4, 2015
If an institution charges in-state and out-of-state residents the same rate, the amount is repeated in the "Out-of-state" columns so that readers can sort institutions accordingly. Many institutions, including most community colleges, do not offer room and board. In those cases, the "Total" columns repeat the tuition and fees figure.
The figures represent charges to first-time, full-time undergraduates based, typically, on a nine-month academic year of 30 semester hours or 45 quarter hours. The data do not reflect the cost of attendance at an institution after grants and other student aid are considered. That net cost is lower than the published fees shown. Room-and-board fees charged by colleges may represent differing numbers of meals per week and so may not be comparable among institutions.
Historical data are in real dollars by default, but can be adjusted for inflation, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics national figures, using the toggle button in the expanded historical view.
READ MORE.....
US Navy operations send muddled message to China
Demetri Sevastopulo and Geoff Dyer
FINANCIAL TIMES - November 7, 2015
When a US warship recently sailed near a Chinese-controlled artificial island in the South China Sea, it signalled the White House was finally taking a tougher stance on Chinese behaviour in the waters.
Beijing described the move as an illegal incursion into the waters around Subi Reef, which is also claimed by Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam. Washington labelled it a freedom of navigation exercise that was aimed at demonstrating that the US does not recognise Chinese claims in the area.
According to five people familiar with the operation, the USS Lassen conducted what is known under international law as innocent passage when it sailed within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, which could leave the legal significance of the US manoeuvre open to different interpretations.
READ MORE......
FINANCIAL TIMES - November 7, 2015
When a US warship recently sailed near a Chinese-controlled artificial island in the South China Sea, it signalled the White House was finally taking a tougher stance on Chinese behaviour in the waters.
Beijing described the move as an illegal incursion into the waters around Subi Reef, which is also claimed by Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam. Washington labelled it a freedom of navigation exercise that was aimed at demonstrating that the US does not recognise Chinese claims in the area.
According to five people familiar with the operation, the USS Lassen conducted what is known under international law as innocent passage when it sailed within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, which could leave the legal significance of the US manoeuvre open to different interpretations.
READ MORE......
Has the World Lost Faith in Capitalism?
A new survey suggests that restoring confidence in free enterprise will mean ensuring that the same rules apply to everyone
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - Nov. 6, 2015
If you want to find people who still believe in “the American dream”—the magnetic idea that anyone can build a better life for themselves and their families, regardless of circumstance—you might be best advised to travel to Mumbai. Half of the Indians in a recent poll agreed that “the next generation will probably be richer, safer and healthier than the last.”
The Indians are the most sanguine of the more than 1,000 adults in each of seven nations surveyed in early September by the market-research firm YouGov for the London-based Legatum Institute (with which I am affiliated). The percentage of optimists drops to 42 in Thailand, 39 in Indonesia, 29 in Brazil, 19 in the U.K. and 15 in Germany. But it isn’t old-world Britain or Germany that is gloomiest about the future. It is new-world America, where only 14% of those surveyed think that life will be better for their children, and 52% disagree.
The trajectory of the world doesn’t justify this pessimism. People are living longer on every continent. They’re doing less arduous, backbreaking work. Natural disasters are killing fewer people. Fewer crops are failing. Some 100,000 people are being lifted out of poverty every day, according to World Bank data.
Life is also getting better in the U.S., on multiple measures, but the survey found that 55% of Americans think the “rich get richer” and the “poor get poorer” under capitalism. Sixty-five percent agree that most big businesses have “dodged taxes, damaged the environment or bought special favors from politicians,” and 58% want restrictions on the import of manufactured goods.
These findings don’t mean that Americans are necessarily ready to give up on free enterprise. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, they think that capitalism is absolutely the worst economic system—except for all of the others that have been tried from time to time. Forty-nine percent still agree that free enterprise is the best system for lifting people out of poverty; only 18% disagree. And by 61% to 12%, Americans agree that unemployment is a bigger social problem than the existence of a “superrich” elite.
Friends of capitalism cannot be complacent, however. The findings of the survey underline the extent to which people think that wealth creation is a dirty business. When big majorities in so many major nations think that big corporations behave unethically and even illegally, it is a system that is always vulnerable to attack from populist politicians.
John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, has long worried about the sustainability of the free enterprise system if large numbers of voters come to think of businesses as “basically a bunch of psychopaths running around trying to line their own pockets.” If the public doesn’t think business is fundamentally good, he has argued, then business is inviting destructive regulation. If, by contrast, business shows responsibility to all its stakeholders—customers, employees, investors, suppliers and the wider community—“the impulse to regulate and control would be lessened.”
Mr. Mackey wants businesses to focus on maximizing purpose as much as profit. He highlights how, for Southwest Airlines, the mission is to give more Americans the ability to see the world. That aim is communicated from the top to the bottom of the company. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information so that it is universally accessible. For his Whole Foods chain, it is about helping people lead longer, healthier lives through better food choices.
Of course, many big businesses see close connections with government as part of their purpose and as a blessing rather than a curse. In his recent book, “The Great Divide,” the economist Joseph Stiglitz identifies those capitalists who have found innovative ways of persuading the government to protect their market status. He calls this phenomenon “socialism for the rich.”
Michael Gove, a minister in Britain’s Tory government who represents a different brand of politics from Prof. Stiglitz’s, has reached similar conclusions. He makes a distinction between the “deserving rich” who work hard and creatively, adding value to society, and an “undeserving rich” who feast on government interventions, rig rules and sit on each other’s remuneration committees.
Banks are uppermost in the minds of most people when we think of crony capitalism. We remember how some banks quickly punished small-business people or private households when they fell into financial distress. But when those same banks and financial institutions got into trouble seven years ago, they were bailed out by the taxpayer, and a different set of rules seemed to apply.
For today’s pessimism about capitalism to be overturned, people must think that the same rules apply to everyone. For capitalism to enjoy the public’s confidence, we need a system where the rich can get poorer as well as the poor richer. There must be snakes as well as ladders in the boardroom board game.
Which capitalists are still popular? Another global survey conducted by YouGov seeks to identify the world’s most popular person each year. The winner for the past two years hasn’t been a celebrity or sports star. It hasn’t been Barack Obama or even the pope. It has been Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and a transformational philanthropist.
Those who are determined to restore faith in capitalism won’t just champion figures like Bill Gates and John Mackey. They will be tough on the crony capitalists who cheat emissions regulators or fix financial markets. When capitalism is seen to be both fair and effective, it can be popular again.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - Nov. 6, 2015
If you want to find people who still believe in “the American dream”—the magnetic idea that anyone can build a better life for themselves and their families, regardless of circumstance—you might be best advised to travel to Mumbai. Half of the Indians in a recent poll agreed that “the next generation will probably be richer, safer and healthier than the last.”
The Indians are the most sanguine of the more than 1,000 adults in each of seven nations surveyed in early September by the market-research firm YouGov for the London-based Legatum Institute (with which I am affiliated). The percentage of optimists drops to 42 in Thailand, 39 in Indonesia, 29 in Brazil, 19 in the U.K. and 15 in Germany. But it isn’t old-world Britain or Germany that is gloomiest about the future. It is new-world America, where only 14% of those surveyed think that life will be better for their children, and 52% disagree.
The trajectory of the world doesn’t justify this pessimism. People are living longer on every continent. They’re doing less arduous, backbreaking work. Natural disasters are killing fewer people. Fewer crops are failing. Some 100,000 people are being lifted out of poverty every day, according to World Bank data.
Life is also getting better in the U.S., on multiple measures, but the survey found that 55% of Americans think the “rich get richer” and the “poor get poorer” under capitalism. Sixty-five percent agree that most big businesses have “dodged taxes, damaged the environment or bought special favors from politicians,” and 58% want restrictions on the import of manufactured goods.
These findings don’t mean that Americans are necessarily ready to give up on free enterprise. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, they think that capitalism is absolutely the worst economic system—except for all of the others that have been tried from time to time. Forty-nine percent still agree that free enterprise is the best system for lifting people out of poverty; only 18% disagree. And by 61% to 12%, Americans agree that unemployment is a bigger social problem than the existence of a “superrich” elite.
Friends of capitalism cannot be complacent, however. The findings of the survey underline the extent to which people think that wealth creation is a dirty business. When big majorities in so many major nations think that big corporations behave unethically and even illegally, it is a system that is always vulnerable to attack from populist politicians.
John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, has long worried about the sustainability of the free enterprise system if large numbers of voters come to think of businesses as “basically a bunch of psychopaths running around trying to line their own pockets.” If the public doesn’t think business is fundamentally good, he has argued, then business is inviting destructive regulation. If, by contrast, business shows responsibility to all its stakeholders—customers, employees, investors, suppliers and the wider community—“the impulse to regulate and control would be lessened.”
Mr. Mackey wants businesses to focus on maximizing purpose as much as profit. He highlights how, for Southwest Airlines, the mission is to give more Americans the ability to see the world. That aim is communicated from the top to the bottom of the company. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information so that it is universally accessible. For his Whole Foods chain, it is about helping people lead longer, healthier lives through better food choices.
Of course, many big businesses see close connections with government as part of their purpose and as a blessing rather than a curse. In his recent book, “The Great Divide,” the economist Joseph Stiglitz identifies those capitalists who have found innovative ways of persuading the government to protect their market status. He calls this phenomenon “socialism for the rich.”
Michael Gove, a minister in Britain’s Tory government who represents a different brand of politics from Prof. Stiglitz’s, has reached similar conclusions. He makes a distinction between the “deserving rich” who work hard and creatively, adding value to society, and an “undeserving rich” who feast on government interventions, rig rules and sit on each other’s remuneration committees.
Banks are uppermost in the minds of most people when we think of crony capitalism. We remember how some banks quickly punished small-business people or private households when they fell into financial distress. But when those same banks and financial institutions got into trouble seven years ago, they were bailed out by the taxpayer, and a different set of rules seemed to apply.
For today’s pessimism about capitalism to be overturned, people must think that the same rules apply to everyone. For capitalism to enjoy the public’s confidence, we need a system where the rich can get poorer as well as the poor richer. There must be snakes as well as ladders in the boardroom board game.
Which capitalists are still popular? Another global survey conducted by YouGov seeks to identify the world’s most popular person each year. The winner for the past two years hasn’t been a celebrity or sports star. It hasn’t been Barack Obama or even the pope. It has been Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and a transformational philanthropist.
Those who are determined to restore faith in capitalism won’t just champion figures like Bill Gates and John Mackey. They will be tough on the crony capitalists who cheat emissions regulators or fix financial markets. When capitalism is seen to be both fair and effective, it can be popular again.
Don't misinterpret Quran to have more than one wife, says HC
Ahmedabad, Nov 5, 2015
In a strongly-worded order, the Gujarat High Court on Thursday said the Quran was being misinterpreted by Muslim men to have more than one wife and the provision of polygamy was being misused by them for "selfish reasons". The high court also stated that time has come for the country to embrace the uniform civil code as such provisions are in violation of the Constitution. Justice J B Pardiwala made these observations while pronouncing the order related to section 494 of IPC, which deals with punishment for having more than one wife. The petitioner, Jafar Abbas Merchant, had approached the high court to quash an FIR against him filed by his wife who alleged that he got married to another woman without her consent. In the FIR, she invoked section 494 of IPC (marrying again during lifetime of husband or wife) against Jafar. In his plea, Jafar, however, claimed that the Muslim Personal Law allows Muslim men to marry four times and hence the FIR against him does not stand legal scrutiny. In the order, Pardiwala noted "the Quran is being misinterpreted by Muslim men to have more than one wife." "When the Quran allowed polygamy, it was for a fair reason. When men use that provision today, they do it for a selfish reason. Polygamy finds mention in the Quran only once, and it is about conditional polygamy," the order said.
READ MORE.....
In a strongly-worded order, the Gujarat High Court on Thursday said the Quran was being misinterpreted by Muslim men to have more than one wife and the provision of polygamy was being misused by them for "selfish reasons". The high court also stated that time has come for the country to embrace the uniform civil code as such provisions are in violation of the Constitution. Justice J B Pardiwala made these observations while pronouncing the order related to section 494 of IPC, which deals with punishment for having more than one wife. The petitioner, Jafar Abbas Merchant, had approached the high court to quash an FIR against him filed by his wife who alleged that he got married to another woman without her consent. In the FIR, she invoked section 494 of IPC (marrying again during lifetime of husband or wife) against Jafar. In his plea, Jafar, however, claimed that the Muslim Personal Law allows Muslim men to marry four times and hence the FIR against him does not stand legal scrutiny. In the order, Pardiwala noted "the Quran is being misinterpreted by Muslim men to have more than one wife." "When the Quran allowed polygamy, it was for a fair reason. When men use that provision today, they do it for a selfish reason. Polygamy finds mention in the Quran only once, and it is about conditional polygamy," the order said.
READ MORE.....
University Returns $1 Million Grant to Coca-Cola
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
THE NEW YORK TIMES - November 6, 2015
The University of Colorado School of Medicine announced Friday that it was returning a $1 million gift from Coca-Cola after it was revealed that the money had been used to establish an advocacy group that played down the link between soft drinks and obesity.
THE NEW YORK TIMES - November 6, 2015
The University of Colorado School of Medicine announced Friday that it was returning a $1 million gift from Coca-Cola after it was revealed that the money had been used to establish an advocacy group that played down the link between soft drinks and obesity.
Coca-Cola
donated the money in 2014 to help establish the Global Energy Balance
Network, a nonprofit group of scientists that urged people to focus more
on exercise and worry less about what they eat and drink. Coke’s
financial ties to the group prompted criticism that the soft drink giant
was supporting scientists as a way to shape obesity research, an issue reported by The New York Times in August.
In
response to the article, Coke’s chief executive, Muhtar Kent, disclosed
that the company had spent almost $120 million since 2010 to pay for
academic health research and for partnerships with major medical and
community groups involved in curbing the obesity epidemic. Recipients
included the American Academy of Pediatrics, which accepted $3 million
from Coke to launch its healthychildren.org website, and the Academy of
Nutrition and Dietetics, the country’s largest group of dietitians,
which had received $1.7 million from Coke. After the disclosure, both
groups said they were ending their relationships with Coca-Cola.
What most people get wrong about political Islam
Shadi Hamid
BROOKINGS | October 1, 2015
Political scientists, myself included, have tended to see religion, ideology, and identity as “epiphenomenal”—products of a given set of material factors. These factors are the things we can touch, grasp, and measure. For example, when explaining why suicide bombers do what they do, we assume that these young men are depressed about their own accumulated failures, frustrated with a dire economic situation, or humiliated by political repression and foreign occupation. While these are all undoubtedly factors, they are not—and cannot be—the whole story.
But the role, and power, of religion in the modern Middle East is more mundane than that (after all, the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not think about becoming suicide bombers). “Islamism” has become a bad word, because the Islamists we hear about most often are those of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Most Islamists, however, are not jihadists or extremists; they are members of mainstream Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood whose distinguishing feature is their gradualism (historically eschewing revolution), acceptance of parliamentary politics, and willingness to work within existing state structures, even secular ones. Contrary to popular imagination, Islamists do not necessarily harken back to seventh century Arabia.
READ MORE....
BROOKINGS | October 1, 2015
Political scientists, myself included, have tended to see religion, ideology, and identity as “epiphenomenal”—products of a given set of material factors. These factors are the things we can touch, grasp, and measure. For example, when explaining why suicide bombers do what they do, we assume that these young men are depressed about their own accumulated failures, frustrated with a dire economic situation, or humiliated by political repression and foreign occupation. While these are all undoubtedly factors, they are not—and cannot be—the whole story.
But the role, and power, of religion in the modern Middle East is more mundane than that (after all, the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not think about becoming suicide bombers). “Islamism” has become a bad word, because the Islamists we hear about most often are those of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Most Islamists, however, are not jihadists or extremists; they are members of mainstream Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood whose distinguishing feature is their gradualism (historically eschewing revolution), acceptance of parliamentary politics, and willingness to work within existing state structures, even secular ones. Contrary to popular imagination, Islamists do not necessarily harken back to seventh century Arabia.
READ MORE....
China has more than 200,000 journalists
English.news.cn - 2015-11-08
BEIJING, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- China has about 208,000 registered journalists, including more than 1,100 reporters working for Internet news portals, press authorities said on Sunday, the country's 16th Journalists' Day.
Male reporters make up about 53 percent, and most of the country's journalists have university degrees, said a statement of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
Among them, more than 82,000 journalists are employed by newspapers and about 5,400 by periodicals. About 2,600 reporters work for news agencies and there are nearly 117,000 TV reporters and 1,100 Internet reporters, the statement said.
The number of reporters younger than 30 makes up more than 12 percent; those aged between 30 and 40 about 40 percent. Nearly 33 percent are between 40 and 50, with only 14 percent over 50.
READ MORE....
BEIJING, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- China has about 208,000 registered journalists, including more than 1,100 reporters working for Internet news portals, press authorities said on Sunday, the country's 16th Journalists' Day.
Male reporters make up about 53 percent, and most of the country's journalists have university degrees, said a statement of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
Among them, more than 82,000 journalists are employed by newspapers and about 5,400 by periodicals. About 2,600 reporters work for news agencies and there are nearly 117,000 TV reporters and 1,100 Internet reporters, the statement said.
The number of reporters younger than 30 makes up more than 12 percent; those aged between 30 and 40 about 40 percent. Nearly 33 percent are between 40 and 50, with only 14 percent over 50.
READ MORE....
Dispatch from Italy: Ending Rural Hunger
Homi Kharas and John McArthur
BROOKINGS | October 21, 2015
Italy hosted two major events for global food and nutrition security last week. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) convened its 42nd annual session in Rome. And leading figures then gathered to honor World Food Day at Expo 2015 in Milan, which has already been visited by over 20 million people.
The CFS was first launched in 1974. It forms an inclusive international and intergovernmental platform to promote coordination on norms and standards for food security and nutrition (FSN). This year, the committee agreed to place implementation of the sustainable development goals, especially Sustainable Development Goal 2 on ending hunger and malnutrition, at the center of its efforts through 2030. The multi-year work program is being developed with that in mind.
READ MORE....
BROOKINGS | October 21, 2015
Italy hosted two major events for global food and nutrition security last week. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) convened its 42nd annual session in Rome. And leading figures then gathered to honor World Food Day at Expo 2015 in Milan, which has already been visited by over 20 million people.
The CFS was first launched in 1974. It forms an inclusive international and intergovernmental platform to promote coordination on norms and standards for food security and nutrition (FSN). This year, the committee agreed to place implementation of the sustainable development goals, especially Sustainable Development Goal 2 on ending hunger and malnutrition, at the center of its efforts through 2030. The multi-year work program is being developed with that in mind.
READ MORE....
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Gūney Amerika'da Kūltūr ve Siyaset, Erol Anar
Yazar Erol Anar'ın, İstanbul Maltepe Üniversitesi Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararasi Iliskiler bölūmū
öǧrencilerine verdiǧi tele konferanstır. Bu konferans, aynı
ūniversitenin Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararasi Iliskiler bölūmūnde ders veren Yrd. Doç. Dr. Tuǧrul
Keskin'in talebi ūzerine gerçekleşmiştir. Brezilya, 3 Kasım 2015.
Birinci Bolum
Ikinci Bolum
Ucuncu Bolum
Sunday, November 1, 2015
A Mass Migration Crisis, and It May Yet Get Worse
By ROD NORDLAND
THE NEW YORK TIMES - OCT. 31, 2015
READ MORE......
THE NEW YORK TIMES - OCT. 31, 2015
SID,
Serbia — They arrived in an unceasing stream, 10,000 a day at the
height, as many as a million migrants heading for Europe this year,
pushing infants in strollers and elderly parents in wheelchairs,
carrying children on their shoulders and life savings in their socks.
They came in search of a new life, but in many ways they were the
heralds of a new age.
There are more displaced people and refugees now than at any other time in recorded history — 60 million in all — and they are on the march in numbers not seen since World War II. They are coming not just from Syria, but from an array of countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Iraq,
Gaza, even Haiti, as well as any of a dozen or so nations in
sub-Saharan and North Africa. They are unofficial ambassadors of failed
states, unending wars, intractable conflicts.
The most striking thing about the current migration crisis, however, is how much bigger it could still get.
READ MORE......
Thursday, October 29, 2015
China issues 13th Five-Year Plan communique
CCTV.com 10-29-2015
The 5th plenary session of the 18th CPC central committee came to an end early this afternoon. During the last day of the plenum, party leaders issued suggestions to the 13th Five-Year Plan that maps out strategies for the economic and social development in China from 2016 to 2020. Tang Bo has more.
The 5th plenary session of the 18th CPC central committee stresses that, to achieve the goals of building a moderately prosperous society and promoting sustainable and healthy economic and social development, the following principles should be followed:
They are adherence to the dominant position of the people, to scientific development and deepening reform, to the rule of law, to the consideration of both domestic and international situations, and adherence to the party's leadership.
The plenum also stresses on the requirements needed for building up a well-off society, which include maintaining the economic growth at a midium-high speed, doubling the gross domestic product and per capita income of urban and rural residents by 2020 from 2010, increasing the contribution of consumption to economic growth, and improving the household population urbanization rate.
The requirements also include the significant improvement of agricultural modernization and people's living standards and qualities, overcoming poverty in rural area under the current standards of fighting poverty, as well as the improvement of social civilization and ecological environmental quality.
READ MORE AND WATCH FULL COVERAGE OF The Fifth Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee.....
The 5th plenary session of the 18th CPC central committee came to an end early this afternoon. During the last day of the plenum, party leaders issued suggestions to the 13th Five-Year Plan that maps out strategies for the economic and social development in China from 2016 to 2020. Tang Bo has more.
The 5th plenary session of the 18th CPC central committee stresses that, to achieve the goals of building a moderately prosperous society and promoting sustainable and healthy economic and social development, the following principles should be followed:
They are adherence to the dominant position of the people, to scientific development and deepening reform, to the rule of law, to the consideration of both domestic and international situations, and adherence to the party's leadership.
The plenum also stresses on the requirements needed for building up a well-off society, which include maintaining the economic growth at a midium-high speed, doubling the gross domestic product and per capita income of urban and rural residents by 2020 from 2010, increasing the contribution of consumption to economic growth, and improving the household population urbanization rate.
The requirements also include the significant improvement of agricultural modernization and people's living standards and qualities, overcoming poverty in rural area under the current standards of fighting poverty, as well as the improvement of social civilization and ecological environmental quality.
READ MORE AND WATCH FULL COVERAGE OF The Fifth Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee.....
There Are No Peasants Here
Honduras’ brave new economic experiment is buoying an era of development by kicking poor farmers off their land.
By Lauren Carasik
FOREIGN AFFAIRS - October 23, 2015
Standing in the shade of his modest house in the still-sweltering Honduran heat, Santos Hernandez Ortiz pointed to the wall that had been recently built just a few feet from his home, cutting him off from the land and trees he has been cultivating for 40 years. The wall — which stands more than 10 feet tall and is made of stone, runs through Ortiz’s modest lot as well as his neighbors’ — was constructed under the watchful eye of seven balaclava-clad police officers after a wealthy landowner claimed it for his own. Now, the leaves of the partitioned trees hang over the wall, but its fruits are maddeningly out of reach. Ortiz worries that he might lose his house next.
READ MORE....
By Lauren Carasik
FOREIGN AFFAIRS - October 23, 2015
Standing in the shade of his modest house in the still-sweltering Honduran heat, Santos Hernandez Ortiz pointed to the wall that had been recently built just a few feet from his home, cutting him off from the land and trees he has been cultivating for 40 years. The wall — which stands more than 10 feet tall and is made of stone, runs through Ortiz’s modest lot as well as his neighbors’ — was constructed under the watchful eye of seven balaclava-clad police officers after a wealthy landowner claimed it for his own. Now, the leaves of the partitioned trees hang over the wall, but its fruits are maddeningly out of reach. Ortiz worries that he might lose his house next.
READ MORE....
A New Book: The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China By Guobin Yang
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015
Raised to be "flowers of the nation," the first generation born after
the founding of the People's Republic of China was united in its
political outlook and ambitions. Its members embraced the Cultural
Revolution of 1966 but soon split into warring factions. Guobin Yang
investigates the causes of this fracture and argues that Chinese youth
engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a
political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove one's
revolutionary credentials. This same competitive dynamic would later
turn the Red Guard against the communist government. Throughout
the 1970s, the majority of Red Guard youth were sent to work in rural
villages. These relocated revolutionaries developed an appreciation for
the values of ordinary life, and an underground cultural movement was
born. Rejecting idolatry, their new form of resistance marked a distinct
reversal of Red Guard radicalism and signaled a new era of
enlightenment, culminating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late
1970s and, finally, the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang completes his
significant recasting of Red Guard activism with a chapter on the
politics of history and memory, arguing that contemporary memories of
the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along the lines of political
division that formed fifty years before.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
1. Violence in Chongqing
2. Flowers of the Nation
3. Theory and Dissent
4. Ordinary Life
5. Underground Culture
6. New Enlightenment
7. Factionalized Memories
Conclusion
READ MORE.......
CONTENTS:
Introduction
1. Violence in Chongqing
2. Flowers of the Nation
3. Theory and Dissent
4. Ordinary Life
5. Underground Culture
6. New Enlightenment
7. Factionalized Memories
Conclusion
READ MORE.......
Half of top leadership reshuffled before plenum
Global Times - October 26, 2015
More than half of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee members elected during the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012 have been moved to different positions or were removed from their current jobs ahead of the CPC's fifth plenary session that kicks off on Monday.
The large-scale reshuffle is extremely rare in the history of the CPC, a result, said observers of the anti-graft campaign, which has been of unprecedented severity, and to guarantee a solid start to China's new five-year blueprint amid a slowing economy.
A WeChat account operated by Beijing's Party organ newspaper, the Beijing Daily, revealed that a total of 104 out of the 205 CPC Central Committee members have been promoted, demoted or expelled from their positions since 2012.
Among them, 81 were promoted to key positions, 16 were transferred to less important posts, and seven were removed from their jobs.
Some of the seven members may have their membership revoked during the fifth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee that runs until Thursday, experts said.
Since the sweeping anti-graft campaign was launched in 2012, the announcement of any personnel reshuffles has drawn greater attention.
READ MORE....
More than half of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee members elected during the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012 have been moved to different positions or were removed from their current jobs ahead of the CPC's fifth plenary session that kicks off on Monday.
The large-scale reshuffle is extremely rare in the history of the CPC, a result, said observers of the anti-graft campaign, which has been of unprecedented severity, and to guarantee a solid start to China's new five-year blueprint amid a slowing economy.
A WeChat account operated by Beijing's Party organ newspaper, the Beijing Daily, revealed that a total of 104 out of the 205 CPC Central Committee members have been promoted, demoted or expelled from their positions since 2012.
Among them, 81 were promoted to key positions, 16 were transferred to less important posts, and seven were removed from their jobs.
Some of the seven members may have their membership revoked during the fifth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee that runs until Thursday, experts said.
Since the sweeping anti-graft campaign was launched in 2012, the announcement of any personnel reshuffles has drawn greater attention.
READ MORE....
Commentary: Where will China go in the next five years?
(People's Daily Online) - October 26, 2015
The autumn in Beijing is not only about foliage. We always have more to expect.
Chinese Communist Party will hold a vital meeting in Beijing from October 26 to October 29, at which the development roadmap for China from 2016 to 2020 will be discussed, namely China’s 13th Five-Year Plan.
The Five-Year plans are China’s development agendas set by CPC. We have accomplished 12 Five-Year plans in the past, and here comes the 13th. In Chinese traditions, every 60 years marks a circle, so the year 2016 will be the beginning of a new circle. Hence, we have good reasons to believe that the 13th Five-Year Plan will be a brand new start for China.
People all around China are paying close attention to this plan. In accordance with China’s development goal, a moderately prosperous society shall be built by 2020. The phrase “moderately prosperous society” or in Chinese “Xiaokang”, has its special meaning to Chinese people. For thousands of years, it describes a promising prospect for the development of our nation and the improvement of people’s life. It means not only steady economic growth, but also a real leap-forward for people’s living standard, including the 70 million impoverished populations in China.
READ MORE....
The autumn in Beijing is not only about foliage. We always have more to expect.
Chinese Communist Party will hold a vital meeting in Beijing from October 26 to October 29, at which the development roadmap for China from 2016 to 2020 will be discussed, namely China’s 13th Five-Year Plan.
The Five-Year plans are China’s development agendas set by CPC. We have accomplished 12 Five-Year plans in the past, and here comes the 13th. In Chinese traditions, every 60 years marks a circle, so the year 2016 will be the beginning of a new circle. Hence, we have good reasons to believe that the 13th Five-Year Plan will be a brand new start for China.
People all around China are paying close attention to this plan. In accordance with China’s development goal, a moderately prosperous society shall be built by 2020. The phrase “moderately prosperous society” or in Chinese “Xiaokang”, has its special meaning to Chinese people. For thousands of years, it describes a promising prospect for the development of our nation and the improvement of people’s life. It means not only steady economic growth, but also a real leap-forward for people’s living standard, including the 70 million impoverished populations in China.
READ MORE....
The Making of Salafism Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century By Henri Lauzière
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015
Some Islamic scholars hold that Salafism is an innovative and
rationalist effort at Islamic reform that emerged in the late nineteenth
century but disappeared in the mid twentieth. Others argue Salafism is
an anti-innovative and antirationalist movement of Islamic purism that
dates back to the medieval period yet persists today. Though they
contradict each other, both narratives are considered authoritative,
making it hard for outsiders to grasp the history of the ideology and
its core beliefs.
Introducing a third, empirically based genealogy, The Making of Salafism understands the movement as a recent conception of Islam projected back onto the past, and it sees its purist evolution as a direct result of decolonization. Henri Lauzière builds his history on the transnational networks of Taqi al-Din al-Hilali (1894-1987), a Moroccan Salafi who, with his associates, oversaw Salafism's modern development. Traveling from Rabat to Mecca, from Calcutta to Berlin, al-Hilali interacted with high-profile Salafi scholars and activists who eventually abandoned Islamic modernism in favor of a more purist approach to Islam. Today, Salafis claim a monopoly on religious truth and freely confront other Muslims on theological and legal issues. Lauzière's pathbreaking history recognizes the social forces behind this purist turn, uncovering the popular origins of what has become a global phenomenon.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
1. Being Salafi in the Early Twentieth Century
2. Rashid Rida's Rehabilitation of the Wahhabis and Its Consequences
3. Purist Salafism in the Age of Islamic Nationalism
4. The Ironies of Modernity and the Advent of Modernist Salafism
5. Searching for a Raison d'Être in the Postindependence Era
6. The Triumph and Ideologization of Purist Salafism
Conclusion
READ MORE.....
Introducing a third, empirically based genealogy, The Making of Salafism understands the movement as a recent conception of Islam projected back onto the past, and it sees its purist evolution as a direct result of decolonization. Henri Lauzière builds his history on the transnational networks of Taqi al-Din al-Hilali (1894-1987), a Moroccan Salafi who, with his associates, oversaw Salafism's modern development. Traveling from Rabat to Mecca, from Calcutta to Berlin, al-Hilali interacted with high-profile Salafi scholars and activists who eventually abandoned Islamic modernism in favor of a more purist approach to Islam. Today, Salafis claim a monopoly on religious truth and freely confront other Muslims on theological and legal issues. Lauzière's pathbreaking history recognizes the social forces behind this purist turn, uncovering the popular origins of what has become a global phenomenon.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
1. Being Salafi in the Early Twentieth Century
2. Rashid Rida's Rehabilitation of the Wahhabis and Its Consequences
3. Purist Salafism in the Age of Islamic Nationalism
4. The Ironies of Modernity and the Advent of Modernist Salafism
5. Searching for a Raison d'Être in the Postindependence Era
6. The Triumph and Ideologization of Purist Salafism
Conclusion
READ MORE.....
BRICS bank, AIIB well on track for start of operations: officials
English.news.cn 2015-10-28
BEIJING, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- Preparations are going smoothly for the the New Development Bank (NDB) for BRICS countries, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), officials said Wednesday. The NDB, initiated by BRICS members -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- is expected to approve its first loans next April, said NDB vice president Vladimir Kazbekov at a seminar in Beijing. The bank has already received loan applications and is hoping to issue its first loan to an energy-efficient project, Kazbekov said, noting that the bank plans to increase its staff to 100 from more than 20.
Aimed at financing infrastructure projects, mainly in BRICS countries, the NDB opened in Shanghai in July and is scheduled to start operations at the end of this year or early 2016. Work is also going well for the multilateral AIIB, with formal operations beginning next year, said Chen Huan, who is in charge of preparations for the bank's launch.
READ MORE.....
BEIJING, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- Preparations are going smoothly for the the New Development Bank (NDB) for BRICS countries, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), officials said Wednesday. The NDB, initiated by BRICS members -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- is expected to approve its first loans next April, said NDB vice president Vladimir Kazbekov at a seminar in Beijing. The bank has already received loan applications and is hoping to issue its first loan to an energy-efficient project, Kazbekov said, noting that the bank plans to increase its staff to 100 from more than 20.
Aimed at financing infrastructure projects, mainly in BRICS countries, the NDB opened in Shanghai in July and is scheduled to start operations at the end of this year or early 2016. Work is also going well for the multilateral AIIB, with formal operations beginning next year, said Chen Huan, who is in charge of preparations for the bank's launch.
READ MORE.....
Premier Li meets German Chancellor Merkel in Beijing
By Shen Chen
(People's Daily Online) - October 29, 2015
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel Thursday morning at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
The two sides agreed to continue carrying out the consensus reached at last round of China–Germany governmental consultation to deepen mutual trust and enhance cooperation at various areas. An upgraded version of Sino-German cooperation is expected from both sides.
After the meeting, Premier Li and Chancellor Merkel witnessed the signing of 13 agreements in fields like finance, manufacturing and communication between youth in two countries.
At Li's invitation, Merkel is making an official visit to China from Thursday to Friday. It is her eighth visit to China since 2005 in the capacity of chancellor.
READ MORE.....
(People's Daily Online) - October 29, 2015
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel Thursday morning at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
The two sides agreed to continue carrying out the consensus reached at last round of China–Germany governmental consultation to deepen mutual trust and enhance cooperation at various areas. An upgraded version of Sino-German cooperation is expected from both sides.
After the meeting, Premier Li and Chancellor Merkel witnessed the signing of 13 agreements in fields like finance, manufacturing and communication between youth in two countries.
At Li's invitation, Merkel is making an official visit to China from Thursday to Friday. It is her eighth visit to China since 2005 in the capacity of chancellor.
READ MORE.....
Advancing financial inclusion in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East
Robin Lewis, John Villasenor and Darrell M. West
BROOKINGS | September 16, 2015
Of the 21 countries ranked in the 2015 Financial and Digital Inclusion Project (FDIP) Report and Scorecard, no countries in Asia placed in the top 5 in the overall ranking. However, all of the FDIP Asian countries have demonstrated progress within at least one of the four dimensions of the 2015 Scorecard: country commitment, mobile capacity, regulatory environment, and adoption of traditional and digital financial services.
This blog post will dive into a few of the obstacles and opportunities facing FDIP countries in central Asia, the Middle East, and southeast Asia as they move toward greater access to and usage of financial services among marginalized groups. We explore these countries in order of their overall score: Turkey (74 percent), Indonesia (70 percent), the Philippines (68 percent), Bangladesh (67 percent), Pakistan (65 percent), and Afghanistan (58 percent). You can also read our separate post on financial inclusion in India, available here.
READ MORE....
BROOKINGS | September 16, 2015
Of the 21 countries ranked in the 2015 Financial and Digital Inclusion Project (FDIP) Report and Scorecard, no countries in Asia placed in the top 5 in the overall ranking. However, all of the FDIP Asian countries have demonstrated progress within at least one of the four dimensions of the 2015 Scorecard: country commitment, mobile capacity, regulatory environment, and adoption of traditional and digital financial services.
This blog post will dive into a few of the obstacles and opportunities facing FDIP countries in central Asia, the Middle East, and southeast Asia as they move toward greater access to and usage of financial services among marginalized groups. We explore these countries in order of their overall score: Turkey (74 percent), Indonesia (70 percent), the Philippines (68 percent), Bangladesh (67 percent), Pakistan (65 percent), and Afghanistan (58 percent). You can also read our separate post on financial inclusion in India, available here.
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Nubia announces first eye-scan smartphone
China Daily, October 29, 2015
Nubia, the handset brand that has been used by Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan, unveiled a series of upgraded smartphones on Wednesday to mark three-year anniversary of the company's establishment. One of the devices, Nubia Z9 Mini Elite, has been upgraded with new biometric authentication -- eye pattern recognition, the same technology embedded on ZTE's latest flagship Axon. "Our users can use eye-scan to unlock their phone or encrypt applications," said Ni Fei, senior vice-president of Nubia Technology. "The technology brings maximum protection of user's privacy as well as creates a new interactive experience." ZTE, the parent firm of Nubia before the latter announced financial autonomy in June, has jointly worked with US biometric security technology startup EyeVerify Inc to launch the "world's first smartphone" with eye-based biometric solution, called the Grand S3, at the Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona. Nubia Z9 Max Elite and rose gold colored Nubia "MyPrague" were also introduced at the launch event.
READ MORE.....
Nubia, the handset brand that has been used by Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan, unveiled a series of upgraded smartphones on Wednesday to mark three-year anniversary of the company's establishment. One of the devices, Nubia Z9 Mini Elite, has been upgraded with new biometric authentication -- eye pattern recognition, the same technology embedded on ZTE's latest flagship Axon. "Our users can use eye-scan to unlock their phone or encrypt applications," said Ni Fei, senior vice-president of Nubia Technology. "The technology brings maximum protection of user's privacy as well as creates a new interactive experience." ZTE, the parent firm of Nubia before the latter announced financial autonomy in June, has jointly worked with US biometric security technology startup EyeVerify Inc to launch the "world's first smartphone" with eye-based biometric solution, called the Grand S3, at the Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona. Nubia Z9 Max Elite and rose gold colored Nubia "MyPrague" were also introduced at the launch event.
READ MORE.....
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Chinese films win big at Chicago Film Fest
Xinhua, October 25, 2015
Emerging Chinese director Song
Pengfei could hardly believe that his first try at film directing would
turn out to be an immediate success. At Friday night, amid applause and
enthusiasm, Song, director of a movie entitled "Underground Fragrance,"
came to the stage at the Peninsula Hotel, Chicago, a city in the U.S.
state of Illinois, to claim Gold Hugo for New Directors at the 51st
Chicago International Film Festival. "Underground Fragrance" is a
feature film presenting ordinary people striving to move up in today's
China. Song was joined by Song Zhantao,
director of the documentary "In the Underground," which tells about the
lives of miners in north China's Hebei Province, who won the Silver Hugo
Award for the documentary, and Jia Shaowei, producer of "In the
Underground." The two Songs are not related. "I'm mesmerized by the film," said
Claudia Landsberger, jury of New Directors Competition, referring Song
Pengfei's feature film "Underground Fragrance." "When you watch the movie, you can
actually feel it, smell it. It's your life there," she said. "When the
film ends, you want to know what happened to the people afterwards." Landsberger said the film tells so much about modern China and it's amazing that such a film is from a new director.
Chinese bribed top official to stall UN reforms?
Indrani Bagchi
TNN | Oct 23, 2015
NEW DELHI: The arrest of former president of the UN General Assembly, John Ashe, on charges of bribery by the Chinese has vindicated India's suspicion that key top level officials in the UN system were being paid off to delay or scuttle the Security Council reform process, among other things.
Earlier this month, Ashe, former envoy from Antigua & Barbuda was charged by US attorney Preet Bharara for accepting a bribe of $1.3 million from Chinese businessmen and officials for support for a multi-billion dollar "south south" UN-sponsored conference centre in casino capital Macau. Bharara's complaint also stated that other Chinese nationals paid Ashe hundreds of thousands of dollars to facilitate their businesses in Antigua. While only some of the details of the bribery processes have been made public, they are enough to provide a clue to the methods China uses to influence UN processes.
READ MORE....
TNN | Oct 23, 2015
NEW DELHI: The arrest of former president of the UN General Assembly, John Ashe, on charges of bribery by the Chinese has vindicated India's suspicion that key top level officials in the UN system were being paid off to delay or scuttle the Security Council reform process, among other things.
Earlier this month, Ashe, former envoy from Antigua & Barbuda was charged by US attorney Preet Bharara for accepting a bribe of $1.3 million from Chinese businessmen and officials for support for a multi-billion dollar "south south" UN-sponsored conference centre in casino capital Macau. Bharara's complaint also stated that other Chinese nationals paid Ashe hundreds of thousands of dollars to facilitate their businesses in Antigua. While only some of the details of the bribery processes have been made public, they are enough to provide a clue to the methods China uses to influence UN processes.
READ MORE....
Obama vetoes US defense bill, sends it back to Congress
CHINA DAILY - 2015-10-23
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama vetoed a sweeping $612 billion defense policy bill on Thursday, returning the measure to the Republican-controlled Congress because of the way it uses money meant for war spending to avoid automatic budget cuts to military programs.
"I'm going to be sending it back to Congress and my message to them is very simple: 'Let's do this right,'" Obama told reporters.
"We're in the midst of budget discussions. Let's have a budget that properly funds our national security as well as economic security," he said.
Obama also said he disagreed with provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have limited his ability to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center before he leaves office in January 2017.
"Guantanamo is one of the premier mechanisms for jihadists to recruit," he told reporters at a rare White House veto signing ceremony.
READ MORE....
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama vetoed a sweeping $612 billion defense policy bill on Thursday, returning the measure to the Republican-controlled Congress because of the way it uses money meant for war spending to avoid automatic budget cuts to military programs.
"I'm going to be sending it back to Congress and my message to them is very simple: 'Let's do this right,'" Obama told reporters.
"We're in the midst of budget discussions. Let's have a budget that properly funds our national security as well as economic security," he said.
Obama also said he disagreed with provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have limited his ability to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center before he leaves office in January 2017.
"Guantanamo is one of the premier mechanisms for jihadists to recruit," he told reporters at a rare White House veto signing ceremony.
READ MORE....
Obama vs. Putin: Mutual finger-pointing deepens ideological clash
RUSSIA DIRECT - Sep 29, 2015
BY Ivan Tsvetkov
The recent speeches made by Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama at the 70th UN General Assembly clearly show that Russian and American leaders are once again locked in a global ideological confrontation of the type once witnessed during the Cold War. The unusual excitement preceding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to New York seemed fully understandable. This was the first time in ten years that the Russian leader had come to speak at the UN General Assembly and his first full-fledged meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis. Moreover, there were hopes for overcoming the deadlock over Syria, as well as hopes for forming effective international mechanisms to confront the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) terrorists. And yet, especially after all the scheduled meetings and performances had already taken place, it is hard to escape the feeling that most people are unwilling to believe that a pair of beautiful speeches and an hour and a half conversation behind closed doors can interrupt the course of history.
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BY Ivan Tsvetkov
The recent speeches made by Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama at the 70th UN General Assembly clearly show that Russian and American leaders are once again locked in a global ideological confrontation of the type once witnessed during the Cold War. The unusual excitement preceding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to New York seemed fully understandable. This was the first time in ten years that the Russian leader had come to speak at the UN General Assembly and his first full-fledged meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis. Moreover, there were hopes for overcoming the deadlock over Syria, as well as hopes for forming effective international mechanisms to confront the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) terrorists. And yet, especially after all the scheduled meetings and performances had already taken place, it is hard to escape the feeling that most people are unwilling to believe that a pair of beautiful speeches and an hour and a half conversation behind closed doors can interrupt the course of history.
READ MORE....
Book Review: On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City by Alice Goffman
LONDON SCHOOL SO ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. Alice Goffman. University of Chicago Press.
There are currently 2.3 million people incarcerated in American prisons
and jails. There are a further five million or more under some form of
penal supervision – generally parole or probation. Such is the scale of
imprisonment (America’s rate is close to five times that of England, and
we are at record levels), and the disproportionate nature of its impact
(one in 15 African-American males aged 18 or older is incarcerated
compared with one in every 106 white males of the same age) that
scholars have started to refer to what is occurring as mass incarceration. This
unprecedented social ‘experiment’ has generated some wonderful,
critical scholarship, most recently in the form of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Becky Pettit’s Invisible Men, both published in 2012.
READ MORE....
On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. Alice Goffman. University of Chicago Press.
There are currently 2.3 million people incarcerated in American prisons
and jails. There are a further five million or more under some form of
penal supervision – generally parole or probation. Such is the scale of
imprisonment (America’s rate is close to five times that of England, and
we are at record levels), and the disproportionate nature of its impact
(one in 15 African-American males aged 18 or older is incarcerated
compared with one in every 106 white males of the same age) that
scholars have started to refer to what is occurring as mass incarceration. This
unprecedented social ‘experiment’ has generated some wonderful,
critical scholarship, most recently in the form of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Becky Pettit’s Invisible Men, both published in 2012.READ MORE....
Man completes his sociology Ph.D. at age 90
By Kathy Hovis
CORNELL CHRONICLE - Oct. 22, 2015
Back in 1972, Benjamin Franco Suarez was diligently working toward his doctorate in sociology at Cornell, studying the fertility behavior of Bolivian women as part of his work on demography, economic development in developing countries and Latin American studies.
He passed his B exams, but needed money and a job, so he took what he thought would be a short leave of absence to earn some money, planning to return quickly to finish up.
Forty-three years later, Franco Suarez, now 90, received his doctorate in September and was honored at an Oct. 19 campus reception. He spent the last year confirming his results by using correlation analysis on the data he’s been carrying with him for nearly four decades.
READ MORE....
CORNELL CHRONICLE - Oct. 22, 2015
Back in 1972, Benjamin Franco Suarez was diligently working toward his doctorate in sociology at Cornell, studying the fertility behavior of Bolivian women as part of his work on demography, economic development in developing countries and Latin American studies.
He passed his B exams, but needed money and a job, so he took what he thought would be a short leave of absence to earn some money, planning to return quickly to finish up.
Forty-three years later, Franco Suarez, now 90, received his doctorate in September and was honored at an Oct. 19 campus reception. He spent the last year confirming his results by using correlation analysis on the data he’s been carrying with him for nearly four decades.
READ MORE....
Screw Finding Your Passion
MARKMANSON - October 22, 2015
Remember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought to yourself, “What are the relative merits of learning baseball versus football?” You just ran around the playground and played baseball and football. You built sand castles and played tag and asked silly questions and looked for bugs and dug up grass and pretended you were a sewer monster. Nobody told you to do it, you just did it. You were led merely by your curiosity and excitement. And the beautiful thing was, if you hated baseball, you just stopped playing it. There was no guilt involved. There was no arguing or debate. You either liked it, or you didn’t. And if you loved looking for bugs, you just did that. There was no second-level analysis of, “Well, is looking for bugs really what I should be doing with my time as a child? Nobody else wants to look for bugs, does that mean there’s something wrong with me? How will looking for bugs affect my future prospects?” There was no bullshit. If you liked something, you just did it.
READ MORE....
Remember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought to yourself, “What are the relative merits of learning baseball versus football?” You just ran around the playground and played baseball and football. You built sand castles and played tag and asked silly questions and looked for bugs and dug up grass and pretended you were a sewer monster. Nobody told you to do it, you just did it. You were led merely by your curiosity and excitement. And the beautiful thing was, if you hated baseball, you just stopped playing it. There was no guilt involved. There was no arguing or debate. You either liked it, or you didn’t. And if you loved looking for bugs, you just did that. There was no second-level analysis of, “Well, is looking for bugs really what I should be doing with my time as a child? Nobody else wants to look for bugs, does that mean there’s something wrong with me? How will looking for bugs affect my future prospects?” There was no bullshit. If you liked something, you just did it.
READ MORE....
Germany's oldest student, 102, gets PhD denied by Nazis
By Damien McGuinness
BBC News, Berlin - 9 June 2015
A 102-year-old German woman has become the world's oldest person to be awarded a doctorate on Tuesday, almost 80 years after the Nazis prevented her from sitting her final exam. Ingeborg Rapoport (then Syllm) finished her medical studies in 1937 and wrote her doctoral thesis on diphtheria - a serious problem in Germany at the time. But because of Nazi oppression she has had to wait almost eight decades before being awarded her PhD. Her mother was a Jewish pianist. So, under Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic race laws, Ingeborg was refused entry to the final oral exam. She had written confirmation from Hamburg University that she would have received her doctorate "if the applicable laws did not prohibit Ms Syllm's admission to the doctoral exam due to her ancestry".
READ MORE....
BBC News, Berlin - 9 June 2015
A 102-year-old German woman has become the world's oldest person to be awarded a doctorate on Tuesday, almost 80 years after the Nazis prevented her from sitting her final exam. Ingeborg Rapoport (then Syllm) finished her medical studies in 1937 and wrote her doctoral thesis on diphtheria - a serious problem in Germany at the time. But because of Nazi oppression she has had to wait almost eight decades before being awarded her PhD. Her mother was a Jewish pianist. So, under Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic race laws, Ingeborg was refused entry to the final oral exam. She had written confirmation from Hamburg University that she would have received her doctorate "if the applicable laws did not prohibit Ms Syllm's admission to the doctoral exam due to her ancestry".
READ MORE....
1150 Free Online Courses from Top Universities
OPEN CULTURE
Get 1150 free online courses from the world’s leading universities — Stanford, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford and more. You can download these audio & video courses (often from iTunes, YouTube, or university web sites) straight to your computer or mp3 player. Over 30,000 hours of free audio & video lectures, await you now.
READ MORE.....
Get 1150 free online courses from the world’s leading universities — Stanford, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford and more. You can download these audio & video courses (often from iTunes, YouTube, or university web sites) straight to your computer or mp3 player. Over 30,000 hours of free audio & video lectures, await you now.
READ MORE.....
Turks Clash With Kurds in Tokyo, at Least 4 Injured
SPUTNIK - 25.10.2015
At least four people were injured in scuffle between Turks and Kurds near the Turkish embassy in the Japanese capital of Tokyo, local media reported Sunday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to the Japanese NHK broadcaster, some 600 Turkish citizens both of Turkish and Kurdish origin came to the embassy to participate in the snap parliamentary elections.
Brawl between Turks and Kurds outside turkish embassy in Tokyo this morning. pic.twitter.com/3uapgsq6eV — Tom Wilson (@tomwilson1983) 25 октября 2015 Soon after the clashes broke out, Japanese police arrived at the accident site and took actions to reconcile the rival groups.
READ MORE.....
At least four people were injured in scuffle between Turks and Kurds near the Turkish embassy in the Japanese capital of Tokyo, local media reported Sunday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to the Japanese NHK broadcaster, some 600 Turkish citizens both of Turkish and Kurdish origin came to the embassy to participate in the snap parliamentary elections.
Brawl between Turks and Kurds outside turkish embassy in Tokyo this morning. pic.twitter.com/3uapgsq6eV — Tom Wilson (@tomwilson1983) 25 октября 2015 Soon after the clashes broke out, Japanese police arrived at the accident site and took actions to reconcile the rival groups.
READ MORE.....
What America’s immigrants looked like when they arrived on Ellis Island
By Ana Swanson
THE WASHINGTON POST - October 24, 2015
We hear so often that America is "a nation of immigrants" or a "cultural mixing pot" that the phrase has become kind of a tired cliche. But actually seeing that history is a different story. The fascinating photographs below -- of people in their native costume passing through Ellis Island in the early 20th Century -- hint at just how incredible and unique America's history is as a nation of immigrants.
These photos were taken by Augustus Sherman, an amateur photographer who worked as the chief registry clerk on Ellis Island from 1892 until 1925. Sherman snapped these photographs of people passing through customs in their native costume. They were published in National Geographic in 1907 and once hung on the walls in the headquarters of the federal Immigration Service in Manhattan, according to the Public Domain Review. They are now housed by the New York Public Library.
READ MORE.....
THE WASHINGTON POST - October 24, 2015
We hear so often that America is "a nation of immigrants" or a "cultural mixing pot" that the phrase has become kind of a tired cliche. But actually seeing that history is a different story. The fascinating photographs below -- of people in their native costume passing through Ellis Island in the early 20th Century -- hint at just how incredible and unique America's history is as a nation of immigrants.
These photos were taken by Augustus Sherman, an amateur photographer who worked as the chief registry clerk on Ellis Island from 1892 until 1925. Sherman snapped these photographs of people passing through customs in their native costume. They were published in National Geographic in 1907 and once hung on the walls in the headquarters of the federal Immigration Service in Manhattan, according to the Public Domain Review. They are now housed by the New York Public Library.
READ MORE.....
1906-1912 Ellis Island portraits
The faces that became America
by Alex Q. Arbuckle
MASHABLE
First opened in 1892, the immigration station at Ellis Island in New York harbor processed more than 12 million immigrants before being closed in 1954. At the station's peak in 1907, more than one million immigrants passed through in a single year, with 3,000 to 5,000 entering every day, mostly from Europe and its periphery. While most entrants to Ellis Island answered a few questions and passed through to the mainland within a few hours, some were detained on the island for longer periods. Augustus Francis Sherman was the chief registry clerk at Ellis Island, and an avid amateur photographer. He had special access to the immigrants who were temporarily detained while waiting on escorts, money or travel tickets. Sherman persuaded many of these immigrants to pose for his camera, encouraging them to put on their finest clothes or national dress. His photographs, captioned simply with the subject’s place of origin, were published in National Geographic in 1907 and hung for many years in the headquarters of the Federal Immigration Service.
READ MORE.....
by Alex Q. Arbuckle
MASHABLE
First opened in 1892, the immigration station at Ellis Island in New York harbor processed more than 12 million immigrants before being closed in 1954. At the station's peak in 1907, more than one million immigrants passed through in a single year, with 3,000 to 5,000 entering every day, mostly from Europe and its periphery. While most entrants to Ellis Island answered a few questions and passed through to the mainland within a few hours, some were detained on the island for longer periods. Augustus Francis Sherman was the chief registry clerk at Ellis Island, and an avid amateur photographer. He had special access to the immigrants who were temporarily detained while waiting on escorts, money or travel tickets. Sherman persuaded many of these immigrants to pose for his camera, encouraging them to put on their finest clothes or national dress. His photographs, captioned simply with the subject’s place of origin, were published in National Geographic in 1907 and hung for many years in the headquarters of the Federal Immigration Service.
READ MORE.....
Blair, the Iraq War and me
How my doctoral thesis was used by Tony Blair's government to concoct a credible public case to invade Iraq in 2003.
AL-JAZEERA - 25 Oct 2015
Ibrahim Al-Marashi
How was I, a PhD student at Oxford University in 2003, linked to Tony Blair, the case for the Iraq War, and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email affair?
For the first time, Blair has apologised for his role in the Iraq War, just a week after the UK Daily Mail reported on a recently released memo by Colin Powell, dated a year before the Iraq war of 2003. That memo reveals how I would become connected to a political controversy that continues to this day in the UK. The timing of this released memo in the US and Blair's apology on Fareed Zakaria's CNN programme coincides with the anticipated release of the Chilcot Inquiry report, an investigation that has been going for several years into the circumstances that led the UK into the Iraq war.
READ MORE.....
AL-JAZEERA - 25 Oct 2015
Ibrahim Al-Marashi
How was I, a PhD student at Oxford University in 2003, linked to Tony Blair, the case for the Iraq War, and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email affair?
For the first time, Blair has apologised for his role in the Iraq War, just a week after the UK Daily Mail reported on a recently released memo by Colin Powell, dated a year before the Iraq war of 2003. That memo reveals how I would become connected to a political controversy that continues to this day in the UK. The timing of this released memo in the US and Blair's apology on Fareed Zakaria's CNN programme coincides with the anticipated release of the Chilcot Inquiry report, an investigation that has been going for several years into the circumstances that led the UK into the Iraq war.
READ MORE.....
China's Yantai Xinchao to buy U.S. oilfields for $1.3 bln
REUTERS - Sun Oct 25, 2015
Oct 25 China's Yantai Xinchao Industry Co Ltd has agreed to spend about 8.3 billion yuan ($1.31 billion) to buy oilfields in the U.S. state of Texas, the company said in a corporate filing late on Saturday.
The oilfields, in Howard and Borden counties, will be bought from Tall City Exploration LLC and Plymouth Petroleum LLC, Xinchao said in the filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The transaction has aready been approved by the U.S. Treasury's Committee on Foreign Investment, it added. ($1 = 6.3488 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Meng Meng; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
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Oct 25 China's Yantai Xinchao Industry Co Ltd has agreed to spend about 8.3 billion yuan ($1.31 billion) to buy oilfields in the U.S. state of Texas, the company said in a corporate filing late on Saturday.
The oilfields, in Howard and Borden counties, will be bought from Tall City Exploration LLC and Plymouth Petroleum LLC, Xinchao said in the filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The transaction has aready been approved by the U.S. Treasury's Committee on Foreign Investment, it added. ($1 = 6.3488 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Meng Meng; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
READ MORE.....
The Bizarre, Dangerous Worldview of Kissinger and Washington
The Cairo Review Of the Global Affairs - October 25, 2015
Rami G. Khouri
In an important op-ed article published earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Henry Kissinger provided a fascinating window into the foreign policy mindset of American officialdom that he has so consistently mirrored for nearly half a century now. His important article, entitled “A Path out of the Middle East Collapse,” captures concisely two things that the world should grasp about American foreign policy—especially in the Middle East, where it has been actively engaged in warfare for over a quarter of a century, as its relations and interests frayed.
Rather than offering any path out of anywhere, Kissinger inadvertently clarifies the American role in the path that has brought the Middle East to this point of turbulence, violence, and occasional state contraction or collapse. I see several main problems in the text—and in the official American mindset in Washington that it reflects.
READ MORE.....
Rami G. Khouri
In an important op-ed article published earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Henry Kissinger provided a fascinating window into the foreign policy mindset of American officialdom that he has so consistently mirrored for nearly half a century now. His important article, entitled “A Path out of the Middle East Collapse,” captures concisely two things that the world should grasp about American foreign policy—especially in the Middle East, where it has been actively engaged in warfare for over a quarter of a century, as its relations and interests frayed.
Rather than offering any path out of anywhere, Kissinger inadvertently clarifies the American role in the path that has brought the Middle East to this point of turbulence, violence, and occasional state contraction or collapse. I see several main problems in the text—and in the official American mindset in Washington that it reflects.
READ MORE.....
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Inside Iran’s Revolutionary Courts
By Jenny Norton
BBC World Service - 17 October 2015
After Iran's Islamic Revolution secretive courts were set up to try suspected ideological opponents of the regime, with no jury, no defence lawyers and often no evidence beyond a confession extracted from the defendant by means of torture. Those who survived them still bear the psychological scars today. In the living room of their flat in Calgary, Canada, Shoreh Roshani and her mother Parvin are watching a flickering video. Shoreh has her arm around her mother, and both women are weeping softly. The grainy footage, which only recently came to light, is of a trial in 1981 and shows the final hours in the life of Shoreh's father, Sirus. Shortly after it ended, he and the other six defendants were taken away and shot.
READ MORE....
BBC World Service - 17 October 2015
After Iran's Islamic Revolution secretive courts were set up to try suspected ideological opponents of the regime, with no jury, no defence lawyers and often no evidence beyond a confession extracted from the defendant by means of torture. Those who survived them still bear the psychological scars today. In the living room of their flat in Calgary, Canada, Shoreh Roshani and her mother Parvin are watching a flickering video. Shoreh has her arm around her mother, and both women are weeping softly. The grainy footage, which only recently came to light, is of a trial in 1981 and shows the final hours in the life of Shoreh's father, Sirus. Shortly after it ended, he and the other six defendants were taken away and shot.
READ MORE....
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Friday, September 25, 2015
Mapping Migration in the United States
THE NEW YORK TIMES - AUG. 15, 2014
Continue reading the main story Select a year 1900 1950 2012 Where people who lived in each state in 2012 were born Each shape represents where the people living in a state were born. Within a state, larger shapes mean a group makes up a larger share of the population.
READ MORE....
Continue reading the main story Select a year 1900 1950 2012 Where people who lived in each state in 2012 were born Each shape represents where the people living in a state were born. Within a state, larger shapes mean a group makes up a larger share of the population.
On Thursday, we published a series of interactive charts
showing how Americans have moved between states since 1900. The charts
show striking patterns for many states: You can trace the rise of
migrant and immigrant populations all along the Southwest, particularly
in Texas and Arizona; the influx of New Yorkers and other
Northeasterners into Florida starting in the 1970s; and the growth in
the Southern share of the Illinois population during the Great
Migration.
In
1900, 95 percent of the people living in the Carolinas were born there,
with similarly high numbers all through the Southeast. More than a
hundred years later, those percentages are nearly cut in half.
Taken
individually, each state tells its own story, and each makes for
fascinating reading. As a follow-up, here is the big picture: a map
showing all of the states at a given time.
READ MORE....
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Which U.S.-China Tech Leaders Met with Xi Jinping (And Why)
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - SEPTEMBER 24, 2015
Chinese President Xi Jinping met Wednesday in Seattle with top executives of U.S. and Chinese tech companies. Here’s a look at the 28 executives — two of them women — who joined the gathering, which comes at a time of mounting tension over cyberattacks and restrictions on U.S. firms.
READ MORE.....
Chinese President Xi Jinping met Wednesday in Seattle with top executives of U.S. and Chinese tech companies. Here’s a look at the 28 executives — two of them women — who joined the gathering, which comes at a time of mounting tension over cyberattacks and restrictions on U.S. firms.
READ MORE.....
Call for Abstracts: True Detective and Philosophy
Call for Abstracts
True Detective and Philosophy
Edited by Jacob Graham & Tom Sparrow
The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series
Please circulate and post widely. Apologies for Cross-posting.
To propose ideas for future volumes in the Blackwell series please contact the Series Editor, William Irwin, at williamirwin@kings.edu
Abstracts and subsequent essays should be philosophically substantial but accessible, written to engage the intelligent lay reader. Contributors of accepted essays will receive an honorarium.
Possible themes and topics may include, but are not limited to:
The Virtues of Rust and the Vices of Marty; Ray’s and Marty’s Habits and the Failure of Character; Does Rust Really Know Who He Is?; Where is the Real Woodrugh?; Green Paint and the Contingency of Redemption; The Masks of Criminals and Detectives and the Face of the True Self; Self-Consciousness as an Evolutionary Mistake; Rust’s Pessimism and the Limits of the Bleak; Nietzschean Evaluation of the City of Vinci and its Denizens; Are Ray, Ani, and Frank Beyond Redemption?; True Nihilists in the Bayou?; If “the light’s winning,” Should Rust Despair?; It’s All About the Kids, Maggie: Antinatalism, Happiness, and Parenthood; Erroll Childress: More Than Just a Psychopath; Logic and the Truth of Detective Work; Philosophy as Detection; Frank’s Debts and Debt as a Moral Category; Marty’s Noble Lie and the Murder of Ledoux; Vinci Cops, Crooks, and the Complexity of Social Contracts; Antigone Bezzerides and the Law; Ani Bezzerides and the Women of True Detective; Fragile Masculinity and the Men of True Detective; Feminism and Sexual Violence as Aesthetic Device; True Direction: Pizzolatto, Season 2, and the Risks of Collaborative Creation; Maggie and the Subtleties of Sexism/Misogyny; Thrasymachus’s Challenge to Socrates and the Empty Promise of Justice; Is Ani a Pawn of Patriarchy? Ani and Double Standards; “Time is a Flat Circle”; The Problem of Evil and Theodicy in a World Beyond Good and Evil; Tent Revivals and the Manipulation of the Masses; Rust on Our Capacity for Illusion as Virtue; The “Ontological Fallacy” of Optimism; Rust’s Anti-Teleology: “Surely this is all for me… I’m so fucking important… Fuck You!”; Truth and Falsity of the Cynic; Marty, Rust, and Aristotelian Friendship; Monsters, Maniacs, and the Mundane; Thin Conceptions of Flourishing in a Bleak World; Carcosa, Mythology, and Mysticism; Drugs, Alcohol, and the Doors of Perception; Dependency and the Myth of Autonomy; Rust and the Rationalization of Belief; Tuttle’s and Ledoux’s Master Morality; “The world needs bad men” (Rust).
Submission Guidelines:
- Deadline for abstracts (100-500 words) and brief CVs: November 1, 2015
- Deadline for first drafts of accepted chapters: February 1, 2016
The Truth About Chávez Bernie Sanders is wrong — Hugo Chávez was no dictator.
by Gabriel Hetland
jacobinmag.com - /2015/09
Dear Bernie,
Like millions of Americans, I’ve been watching your campaign with growing excitement. You’re spot on about the pernicious effects of rising inequality and absolutely correct that the United States now resembles an oligarchy more than a democracy. I applaud your willingness to directly and repeatedly denounce the billionaire class that runs this country. And I wholeheartedly support your call for universal health care. It’s been a joy to watch you make Hillary Clinton squirm as your poll numbers rise. I smile every time I imagine the possibility of a self-described socialist calling for a political revolution winning the Democratic nomination. I’m encouraged that you have made fighting racism a priority in your campaign, alongside the rest of your progressive agenda.
READ MORE....
jacobinmag.com - /2015/09
Dear Bernie,
Like millions of Americans, I’ve been watching your campaign with growing excitement. You’re spot on about the pernicious effects of rising inequality and absolutely correct that the United States now resembles an oligarchy more than a democracy. I applaud your willingness to directly and repeatedly denounce the billionaire class that runs this country. And I wholeheartedly support your call for universal health care. It’s been a joy to watch you make Hillary Clinton squirm as your poll numbers rise. I smile every time I imagine the possibility of a self-described socialist calling for a political revolution winning the Democratic nomination. I’m encouraged that you have made fighting racism a priority in your campaign, alongside the rest of your progressive agenda.
READ MORE....
The day 100,000 Iranian women protested the head scarf
A seldom-seen collection of photographs, shot in Tehran in 1979, is challenging perceptions of the feminist movement in Iran
Pip Cummings
WOMEN IN THE WORLD - 09.15.15
When 34-year-old photographer Azadeh Fatehrad first laid eyes on an image by Hengameh Golestan, of women protesting in the streets of Tehran in 1979, she was struck immediately — it was unlike anything she had seen before. Born in 1981 in Iran, Fatehrad had learned in school that women made a smooth transition to Islamic rules imposed after the 1979 Revolution — in particular adopting a compulsory dress code, the hijab. But Golestan’s image told a different story: thousands of women in the street, protesting the announcement that the headwear would be mandatory. “I couldn’t believe that photo was taken in Iran — I was completely surprised,” Fatehrad tells Women in the World by email. She describes this kind of historical record as “inaccessible” in Iran.
READ MORE....
Pip Cummings
WOMEN IN THE WORLD - 09.15.15
When 34-year-old photographer Azadeh Fatehrad first laid eyes on an image by Hengameh Golestan, of women protesting in the streets of Tehran in 1979, she was struck immediately — it was unlike anything she had seen before. Born in 1981 in Iran, Fatehrad had learned in school that women made a smooth transition to Islamic rules imposed after the 1979 Revolution — in particular adopting a compulsory dress code, the hijab. But Golestan’s image told a different story: thousands of women in the street, protesting the announcement that the headwear would be mandatory. “I couldn’t believe that photo was taken in Iran — I was completely surprised,” Fatehrad tells Women in the World by email. She describes this kind of historical record as “inaccessible” in Iran.
READ MORE....
The Most Diverse Cities Are Often The Most Segregated
By Nate Silver
Urban Diversity - May 1, 2015
When I was a freshman at the University of Chicago in 1996, I heard the same thing again and again: Do not leave the boundaries of Hyde Park. Do not go north of 47th Street. Do not go south of 61st Street. Do not go west of Cottage Grove Avenue. 1 These boundaries were fairly explicit, almost to the point of being an official university policy. The campus police department was not committed to protecting students beyond the area,2 and the campus safety brochure advised students not to use the “El” train stops just a couple of blocks beyond them unless “traveling in groups and during the daytime.” What usually wasn’t said — on a campus that brags about the diversity of its urban setting but where only about 5 percent of students are black — was that the neighborhoods beyond these boundaries were overwhelmingly black and poor. The U. of C. has, for many decades, treated Hyde Park as its “fortress on the South Side,” and its legacy of trying to keep its students within the neighborhood — and the black residents of surrounding communities out — has left its mark on Chicago.
READ MORE...
Urban Diversity - May 1, 2015
When I was a freshman at the University of Chicago in 1996, I heard the same thing again and again: Do not leave the boundaries of Hyde Park. Do not go north of 47th Street. Do not go south of 61st Street. Do not go west of Cottage Grove Avenue. 1 These boundaries were fairly explicit, almost to the point of being an official university policy. The campus police department was not committed to protecting students beyond the area,2 and the campus safety brochure advised students not to use the “El” train stops just a couple of blocks beyond them unless “traveling in groups and during the daytime.” What usually wasn’t said — on a campus that brags about the diversity of its urban setting but where only about 5 percent of students are black — was that the neighborhoods beyond these boundaries were overwhelmingly black and poor. The U. of C. has, for many decades, treated Hyde Park as its “fortress on the South Side,” and its legacy of trying to keep its students within the neighborhood — and the black residents of surrounding communities out — has left its mark on Chicago.
READ MORE...
Improvement of Global Governance Needs Joint Efforts from China and the US: President Xi
People's Daily - September 22, 2015
China and the US should work together to improve the global governance system, enhance cooperation and jointly respond to major challenges facing mankind, said Xi Jinping on Tuesday ahead of his first official state visit to the US as the Chinese President. “The global governance system is built and shared by the world, not monopolized by a single country, ” said Xi in a written interview with The Wall Street Journal. “China certainly has no intention to do so.” China is involved in building the current international system, and has always done its part to uphold the international order and system with the UN as its core and the purposes and principles of the UN charter as its foundation, Xi said. He added that China stands ready to work with all the other UN member states to build a new type of international relationship featuring win-win cooperation, improve the architecture of global governance, and build a community of shared future for mankind. Citing the annual shortfall in funding for Asian infrastructural development is around $800 billion, he noted that the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) is established mainly to meet the need of Asian countries for infrastructure development and further cooperation. “China welcomes the US to join the AIIB. This has been our position from the very outset,” said the president.
READ MORE....
China and the US should work together to improve the global governance system, enhance cooperation and jointly respond to major challenges facing mankind, said Xi Jinping on Tuesday ahead of his first official state visit to the US as the Chinese President. “The global governance system is built and shared by the world, not monopolized by a single country, ” said Xi in a written interview with The Wall Street Journal. “China certainly has no intention to do so.” China is involved in building the current international system, and has always done its part to uphold the international order and system with the UN as its core and the purposes and principles of the UN charter as its foundation, Xi said. He added that China stands ready to work with all the other UN member states to build a new type of international relationship featuring win-win cooperation, improve the architecture of global governance, and build a community of shared future for mankind. Citing the annual shortfall in funding for Asian infrastructural development is around $800 billion, he noted that the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) is established mainly to meet the need of Asian countries for infrastructure development and further cooperation. “China welcomes the US to join the AIIB. This has been our position from the very outset,” said the president.
READ MORE....
Russian Foreign Policy in Historical and Current Context A Reassessment
By Olga Oliker, Christopher S. Chivvis, Keith Crane, Olesya Tkacheva, Scott Boston
RAND - 2015
This Perspective provides an overview and analysis of sources of Russian foreign policy to help explain Russia's actions in Ukraine in 2014 and 2015. It evaluates arguments based on Russian historical strategic interests, economic policy, and domestic policy to determine which explanations, alone or in combination, stand up best to Russia's actual choices and actions. The authors conclude that Russia's general attitude toward Ukraine is largely consistent with historical Russian (and Soviet) thinking about security interests and foreign policy, which have focused on buffer states, influence on its neighbors, and a perception of continued competition with the United States. However, these historical patterns alone are insufficient to fully explain Russian actions. Neither can public opinion, elite interests, or the pursuit of economic growth be defined as key drivers of Russian behavior. Moscow has sought to shape, rather than respond to, public opinion, and has done so with great success. Decisionmaking in the Kremlin has become highly centralized, obviating the possibility of elite group influence. Finally, economic growth goals have been jettisoned, rather than pursued, in this crisis. This said, the authors argue that an important component of the Kremlin's decision calculus also stems from how Russia's leaders, particularly Russian President Vladimir Putin, have interpreted the implications of the Maidan uprising in Ukraine for their own country. As a result, Putin's fear that popular opposition and unrest will threaten his power has led him to endanger many of the things he has worked to build over his tenure.
READ MORE...
RAND - 2015
This Perspective provides an overview and analysis of sources of Russian foreign policy to help explain Russia's actions in Ukraine in 2014 and 2015. It evaluates arguments based on Russian historical strategic interests, economic policy, and domestic policy to determine which explanations, alone or in combination, stand up best to Russia's actual choices and actions. The authors conclude that Russia's general attitude toward Ukraine is largely consistent with historical Russian (and Soviet) thinking about security interests and foreign policy, which have focused on buffer states, influence on its neighbors, and a perception of continued competition with the United States. However, these historical patterns alone are insufficient to fully explain Russian actions. Neither can public opinion, elite interests, or the pursuit of economic growth be defined as key drivers of Russian behavior. Moscow has sought to shape, rather than respond to, public opinion, and has done so with great success. Decisionmaking in the Kremlin has become highly centralized, obviating the possibility of elite group influence. Finally, economic growth goals have been jettisoned, rather than pursued, in this crisis. This said, the authors argue that an important component of the Kremlin's decision calculus also stems from how Russia's leaders, particularly Russian President Vladimir Putin, have interpreted the implications of the Maidan uprising in Ukraine for their own country. As a result, Putin's fear that popular opposition and unrest will threaten his power has led him to endanger many of the things he has worked to build over his tenure.
READ MORE...
NGOs and Global Policy-Making
By James A. Paul
Global Policy Forum - June 2000
READ MORE...
Global Policy Forum - June 2000
Organizations like Oxfam, Greenpeace, Amnesty
International and thousands of others serve the public on a national and
international scale. Known variously as "private voluntary
organizations," "civil society organizations," and "citizen
associations," they are increasingly called "NGOs," an acronym that
stands for "non-governmental organizations." The United Nations system
uses this term to distinguish representatives of these agencies from
those of governments. While many NGOs dislike the term, it has come into
wide use, because the UN system is the main focus of international
rule-making and policy formulation in the fields where most NGOs
operate.
Charitable and community organizations, separate from
the state, have existed in many historical settings, but NGOs are
primarily a modern phenomenon. With the extension of citizenship rights
in Europe and the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
people founded increasing numbers of these organizations, as instruments
to meet community needs, defend interests or promote new policies. The
French writer Alexis de Toqueville emphasized the importance of what he
called "political associations" as institutions of democracy, uniquely
numerous and influential in the United States at the time of his famous
visit in 1831. New legal rules for private corporations, emerging at
this same time, provided modern juridical authority for the
organizations and increased their defenses against state interference.
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