Links you may have missed (Nov 6, 2011)
#OccupyOakland General Strike Closes Port, 5th Biggest in US (Naked Capitalism) – great post!
Bill Black on the Real News Network on His Three Big, Simple Demands (Naked Capitalism) – another link from Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism, one of the most informative websites about finance and current events.
Ma SuperMario non basta (epistemes.org) – commentary about new ECB chief Mario Draghi (in Italian only).
Laurie Penny: A woman’s opinion is the mini-skirt of the internet (The Independent)
Lindblad Expeditions: Day 12 (Carl Safina blog)
The best of our graphic short story prize (Guardian) – if you like cartoonists, this is a feast.
“United” (Playing For Change/United Nations Population Fund) – click on screenshot below for music video.
Beware of Greeks cradling democracy
This morning while reading a couple of analyses about the great Greek referendum brouhaha, the shade of John Lennon floated past murmuring “Democracy is what happens while politicians are busy making other plans.”
Might that be the case if the Greeks are allowed to vote on the EU’s latest proposal to rescue/doom them into penury for years to come? Wouldn’t that be nice (shades of the Beach Boys just now floated by). Messy? Maybe yes, but maybe not.
The two informative commentaries mentioned above are “Time to resign Mr Papandreou” by Greek economics professor Yanis Varoufakis (here), and “Papandreou shows no regret as he faces a grilling from Sarkozy and Merkel” by the Guardian‘s Helena Smith (here). They offer differing perspectives on the Greek PM. Varoufakis scorns his government leader’s latest referendum maneuver as political ploy only. Smith, in contrast, casts Papandreou more admirably, as in this quote from an unidentified “adviser”:
He is not afraid to upset others if he firmly believes it is in the interests of his country. And as a committed socialist George really does believe in the value of participatory democracy.
Well, notwithstanding that Varoufakis makes powerful argument to the contrary, we can hope that Smith’s featured adviser may prove to be auspicious. That whether mere political operator or democracy’s champion, Papandreou will by hook or crook give the people a voice. That would be true democratic process, wouldn’t it?
Imagine.
Wikileaks needs you
As for me, I prefer to make my own decisions about who I do or don’t support, rather than allow banks and credit card companies to make them for me.
Click on image above to play video.
Links you may have missed (Oct 16, 2011)
Elizabeth Warren on Debt Crisis, Fair Taxation (YouTube) – precisely put! No wonder her fan base is growing.
Panic of the Plutocrats (New York Times) – Paul Krugman
The Story Of Occupy Wall Street Told Through Online Videos (Social Times)
Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story (TEDTalks) – video – from 2009 but golden.
Mike Biddle: We can recycle plastic (TEDTalks) – video – this may be some of the very best news for planet earth.
Did Van Gogh die in an unfortunate brush with fate? (The Independent)
Neo and Toxedo – Two Dogs in Paris (Dogwork.com) – fantastico!
Canzoni di 18mila giorni, il ritorno di Gianmaria Testa (la Repubblica) – music video – click on screenshot below
Links you may have missed (Oct 9, 2011)
A new era for Denmark as left takes power (Aljazeera)
Yang Lan: The generation that’s remaking China (TEDTalks) – one of China’s richest talks about the country – video
Occupy Wall Street: Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo shares his first-person account of the movement (CurrentTV) – a fresh new voice on the grassroots scene in US – video
5 motivi per cui Facebook, e gran parte dei Social Network esistenti, non sono e non potranno mai essere una democrazia! (The Social.COMunicator) - my friend Ivan Turatti writes about a major problem with Facebook
Nobel Women’s Initiative — their new website is up and looking good
Island hopping in Galápagos: Santiago Island and Floreana Island (Guardian) – click on screenshot below for video
Links you may have missed (Oct 1, 2011)
Barroso’s crucial eurozone gamble (Irish Examiner)
Egyptian women and the revolution (Arabist)
More details on the “faster than the speed of light” neutrinos (ars technica)
The end of motoring (Guardian) – again, something no one predicted offers some hope in climate change crisis
Hal Foster: ‘If the Shard is a symbol of anything it’s a symbol of finance capitalism’ (Guardian) – video – Princeton art professor discusses Renzo Piano’s new creation from a political perspective. Interesting!
Links you may have missed (Sept 25, 2011)
“Kindly kill yourself immediately”: a tale of writing about 4chan (ars technica) – review of new book about 4chan
Professor Einstein, you can relax. E still equals mc2. Probably … (Guardian)
Saudi women given voting rights (Aljazeera) – with video
Al Jazeera’s change of guard (Aljazeera) — the news channel reports on itself and recent management surprise
Claire Tomalin: ‘Writing induces melancholy. You’re alone, a hermit’ (Guardian) – interview with author of new Charles Dickens biography. I can’t wait to read it! – related video below.
Links you may have missed today (Sept 19, 2011)
“Imran Khan: ‘America is destroying Pakistan” (Guardian) — a top contender to be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan voices a highly critical perspective on the US – Pakistan relationship
“Microsoft paid out ‘more than £1 million’ to female executive” (Telegraph)
“THE VIRTUAL MUSEUM: Google Zooms In On Art” (Huffington Post) – extraordinary!
Today’s treat: (click on video)
The dumb economics of opting out of the Eurozone (Protesilaos Stavrou)
Impressively concise assessment of what it means to belong to a currency union — in this case the Euro — offered this week by Protesilaos Stavrou, a young European studies student from Cypress (“Should Germany leave the euro and let others crash and burn?” Aug 27, 2011).
Excerpt:
Countries in a currency union are interconnected, since they have first abolished all or most of the trade barriers between them, their economies have practically merged into a single market and their banking sector, as well as other important sectors of the economy, are organically linked. Severing a part of this “organism” will doom both the part and the whole just as if a vital organ is removed from the human body where both die.
The reason that is true is because the country that opts out will trigger a chain effect in the banking sector and in all other sectors it can influence, which will see private banks and other corporations falling one after the other just like in a domino.
Read full post here. (Saw this link at Bloggingportal.eu)
How do you run a Chinese Bank?
It’s not at all hard to find China in the news headlines, given that increasing numbers of people — experts and ordinary citizens — reportedly see it fast arriving as the world’s new superpower.
Highly detailed views from particularly informed experts, however, are not so plentiful. A lengthy video discussion recently between Carl Walter of JP Morgan and Victor Shih of Northwestern University, hosted by G+, is “spectacular” (per MacroBusiness.com) and informative.
For me, one of the most thought provoking observations comes in the first video (starts at 13:44). Walter describes the reaction of the Chinese government to the 2008 financial crisis and the fall of Lehman Brothers. At that point, the highly alarmed Chinese, according to Walter, lost all faith in the Western financial model.
Summing this up, Walter says:
The Chinese want to have a clear model that they can try out and see if it works and then expand on, and now that [Western model] financial system is gone…
Watch the full discussion here, posted on MacroBusiness. Note — the comments section is also interesting.
