"The Great Liberation Of France"

by marco Tue Jan 24th, 2017 at 02:16:46 PM EST

Just caught this article by Buzzfeed:

"Inside The Private Chatrooms Trump Supporters Are Using To Manipulate French Voters - Welcome to "The Great Liberation Of France.""

Just as I was starting to hope that the left was catching up with the right in terms of online-to-offline mobilisation, reading this article gave me a reality check.

Frontpaged - Frank Schnittger

LQD: Charlie Hebdo is 'troubled by her veil'

by marco Mon Apr 4th, 2016 at 02:47:37 AM EST

Surprising op-ed by Charlie Hebdo in English was published last week.

It is being reviled on social media for being islamophobic.

Although I found the op-ed hard to understand, I would have to agree.  In particular, this clause from the concluding paragraph jumped out at me:

the woman who forbids you to admit that you are troubled by her veil

Charlie Hebdo is troubled by the veil?  Sounds to me like the very definition of islamophobia (or is it religiophobia).

HOW DID WE END UP HERE? | 2016-03-30 Charlie Hebdo

... the attacks are merely the visible part of a very large iceberg indeed. They are the last phase of a process of cowing and silencing long in motion and on the widest possible scale. ...

The Global Savings Glut that will not die

by marco Mon Aug 24th, 2015 at 08:32:42 AM EST

Also sprach Krugman:

... More than a decade ago, Ben Bernanke famously argued that a ballooning U.S. trade deficit was the result, not of domestic factors, but of a "global saving glut": a huge excess of savings over investment in China and other developing nations, driven in part by policy reactions to the Asian crisis of the 1990s, which was flowing to the United States in search of returns. He worried a bit about the fact that the inflow of capital was being channeled, not into business investment, but into housing; obviously he should have worried much more. (Some of us did.) But his suggestion that the U.S. housing boom was in part caused by weakness in foreign economies still looks valid.

Greek Tax Evasion

by marco Fri Jul 10th, 2015 at 05:07:56 AM EST

In July 2012, a paper titled Tax Evasion Across Industries: Soft Credit Evidence from Greece was published by Nikolaos T. Artavanis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Adair Morse of Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and Margarita Tsoutsoura of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

The paper was referenced by The Wall Street and in turn by The Washington Post that summarizes:

Comparing bank data with government data, the authors found that the true income of the average Greek person is about 1.92 times larger than what's actually reported to the government. In 2009, that shrunk the tax base by about $34 billion. Assuming that money was taxed at a 40 percent rate, that's 31 percent of the country's budget deficit in 2009 right there.

Sisyphean syphilis

by marco Thu Mar 26th, 2015 at 07:50:39 AM EST

If economic crisis were a venereal disease, would we continue to engage in risky economic behavior?

Does short-term gratification always trump long-term health?

Are we just children in the marshmallow experiment?

Are our economic systems doomed by the insufficiently stoic character of the majority of human beings?

Eight years and eighteen days ago, das monde wrote a diary titled Is Civilisation A Pyramid Scheme? in which he remarked:

As I write, financial markets are having a bad day across the world, after a rocky week. Can we make more sense of this than a combination of factors?

The hypothesis is that the modern economy is dominated by ever increasing and ever expanding speculation in stock and real estate markets. These markets will grow just as long as the volume increases. The markets are vastly overvalued due to a pyramid-style growth of the number of players. The markets will fail when there won't be any bottom to add to participants' pyramid.

promoted by afew

When "born monsters" try to get help, and society cannot provide it

by marco Tue Apr 22nd, 2014 at 07:38:51 PM EST

Last Sunday, the weekly American radio program This American Life did an episode about stories of people being threatened and punished with public shame.  The first segment in that episode was about the pernicious power of malicious online gossip in small towns.  While that segment was very good, the second segment stunned me:

Help Wanted

There's one group of people that is universally tarred and feathered in the United States and most of the world. We never hear from them, because they can't identify themselves without putting their livelihoods and reputations at risk. That group is pedophiles. It turns out lots of them desperately want help, but because it's so hard to talk about their situation it's almost impossible for them to find it. Reporter Luke Malone spent a year and a half talking to people in this situation, and he has this story about one of them. More of Luke Malone's reporting on this topic will appear next month on Medium.com. (27 minutes)

Luke Malone

Testing Huntington in Ukraine

by marco Mon Mar 3rd, 2014 at 04:33:55 AM EST

In summer 1993, Samuel Huntington wrote in an (in)famous essay:

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. ...

The most significant dividing line in Europe, as William Wallace has suggested, may well be the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500. This line runs along what are now the boundaries between Finland and Russia and between the Baltic states and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine separating the more Catholic western Ukraine from Orthodox eastern Ukraine, swings westward separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then goes through Yugoslavia almost exactly along the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia. ...

... The Velvet Curtain of culture has replaced the Iron Curtain of ideology as the most significant dividing line in Europe. As the events in Yugoslavia show, it is not only a line of difference; it is also at times a line of bloody conflict.

Huntington emphasized the hypothetical nature of his idea with that ? at the end of the essay's title.  Two decades later, what can events currently unfolding in Ukraine say anything about this hypothesis?

front-paged by afew

Who's up for a *sharing* in London?

by marco Sat Nov 30th, 2013 at 04:44:40 AM EST

here's a shot in the dark:

anyone around London free for an ET meet-up sharing between Christmas and New Year's, or in the week following New Year's?

Time and place fixed (thanks forHelen's suggestion):

December 27 from Two to Six o'clock
The King's Head, a Nicholson's Pub
just five minutes northwest of Green Park

Hope others can make it!

Res. 377 to get around Russia & China vetoes to attack Syria

by marco Wed Aug 28th, 2013 at 08:50:31 PM EST

Has this been discussed yet as a legal recourse that France, Britain and the USA could resort to if they really wanted to attack Syria despite vetoes from Russia and China in the UN Security Council?

By adopting A/RES/377 A, on 3 November 1950, over two-thirds of UN Member states declared that, according to the UN Charter, the permanent members of the UNSC cannot and should not prevent the UNGA from taking any and all action necessary to restore international peace and security, in cases where the UNSC has failed to exercise its 'primary responsibility' for maintaining peace. Such an interpretation sees the UNGA as being awarded 'final responsibility'--rather than 'secondary responsibility'--for matters of international peace and security, by the UN Charter. Various official and semi-official UN reports make explicit reference to the Uniting for Peace resolution as providing a mechanism for the UNGA to overrule any UNSC vetoes;[35][36][37][38] thus rendering them little more than delays in UN action, should two-thirds of the Assembly subsequently agree that action is necessary.

Wikipedia: "United Nations General Assembly Resolution 377"

Origins of German Neo-Austerianism

by marco Tue May 7th, 2013 at 02:35:59 AM EST

A great piece by Mark Blyth on the roots of the "The Austerity Delusion: Why a Bad Idea Won Over the West" in general zeroes in on a question that I have been asking myself eversince this madness started in 2008:  Why the peculiarly German impetus to austerity?

Yes, I had heard the proverbial explanation based on collective memory of Weimar hyperinflation and the Nazi nightmare that ensued.

But Blyth's account post-war, practical and policy-based, and while nothing new for readers of this forum, is worth quoting for its clarity:

Given Germany's history with inflation and deflation in the 1920s and 1930s, financial stability has always been the watchword of postwar German economics. But what has really distinguished German economic thinking is its dismissal of Keynesianism -- because the theory never made much sense to German policymakers considering the way the German economy actually functions.

front-paged by afew

Facebook effect on poll turn-out: How significant?

by marco Wed Sep 12th, 2012 at 09:05:15 PM EST

I need sharper analytical minds than mine to help assess the significance of some findings just published in Nature: A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization:

The results showed that those who got the informational message voted at the same rate as those who saw no message at all. But those who saw the social message were 2% more likely to click the 'I voted' button and 0.3% more likely to seek information about a polling place than those who received the informational message, and 0.4% more likely to head to the polls than either other group.

Facebook Experiment Found to Boost U.S. Voter Turnout, Scientific American

What I couldn't get was the "0.4% more likely to head to the polls than either other group":  how is that significant?

Send your message to the UN Climate Talks delegates in Tianjin

by marco Fri Oct 8th, 2010 at 05:38:45 AM EST

As some of you may know, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been holding a week-long intercessional meeting in Tianjin, China in preparation for the 2010 UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico this November 29~December 10.

I am actually working at this conference in Tianjin as a volunteer with Greenpeace China, and we are organizing an event today which attempts to engage public interest and expression from online observers of the conference around the world.

It is this activity that I would like to describe in this diary and invite you to join, if you are interested.

[UPDATE 12:20 PM CEST ~ 2010.10.8 : Event has been concluded already]

promoted by afew

Beautiful Beijing

by marco Tue Aug 3rd, 2010 at 09:57:40 AM EST

I moved to Beijing this May, and this summer has been a descent into hell, in terms of temperature, humidity, and, as it turns out, air pollution.

The past few days have been god-awful bad.  Walk five minutes to the bus stop and you're drenched in your own sweat.

But what has been perhaps more disturbing is the thick, jet gray color of the sky/air/smog.  Ironically, I remember being surprised to see the full moon on Sunday night, a rare sight indeed in urban China.  But that was temporary respite.

front-paged by afew

Algae Energy: Potential and Perils

by marco Tue Jul 27th, 2010 at 11:31:11 PM EST

wonder what y'all's thoughts on algae as a source of fuel are:

Exploring Algae as Fuel - NYTimes.com

Algae are attracting attention because the strains can potentially produce 10 or more times more fuel per acre than the corn used to make ethanol or the soybeans used to make biodiesel. Moreover, algae might be grown on arid land and brackish water, so that fuel production would not compete with food production. And algae are voracious consumers of carbon dioxide, potentially helping to keep some of this greenhouse gas from contributing to global warming¹.

But efforts to genetically engineer algae, which usually means to splice in genes from other organisms, worry some experts because algae play a vital role in the environment. The single-celled photosynthetic organisms produce much of the oxygen on earth and are the base of the marine food chain.

Plus de bonnes poires en Allemagne

by marco Tue Apr 13th, 2010 at 05:42:33 AM EST

France and Germany traditionally have been the "motor" of the European Union, but relations between the two countries are badly strained over the Greek debt crisis, which is just the latest example of a new German willingness to resist the demands of Europe and assert its self-interest under Chancellor Angela Merkel.

All apparently is not well in the EU household, according to a New York Times article yesterday that describes the contrasting and conflicting outlooks and agendas of France and Germany with respect to how to deal with the Greek fiasco, among other things.

China's 'Moral Sandstorms' and 'National Character Problem' by Yi Zhongtian

by marco Tue Feb 23rd, 2010 at 08:22:47 AM EST

The following is an interview with Chinese historian and blogger 易中天  Yì Zhōngtiān in Guangdong news magazine 时代周报 The Time Weekly (2009 December 31).  I discovered it via 洪晃 Hóng Huǎng, another prominent Chinese blogger, who introduced the piece writing:

最近总想写，总写不出来。终于有人写出来了，而且如此精辟。贴出来和大家分享吧。 晃

As much I've wanted to, I haven't managed to write recently. In the end, others have managed to write, and have done so incisively. Posting here to share with everybody. Huǎng

It's probably more "incisive" in the original Chinese than in my translation, but I found it it intriguing nonetheless.

About 易中天  Yì Zhōngtiān:

易中天  Yì Zhōngtiān (born 1947) is a Chinese historian, author, scholar and TV personality. He is a professor at Xiamen University. ...

______

Second in a series of attempts to translate essays by prominent Chinese bloggers into English, the first of which was 'China Must Lead the Emissions Reduction Century' by Xue Yong

front-paged by afew

Losing Tibet in Translation

by marco Sun Feb 21st, 2010 at 06:55:02 AM EST

These following two paragraphs are from what is left of Isaac Stone Fish's February 17 Newsweek article "Charity Case -- Whether they like it or not, China has been good for Tibet" [as it was translated into Chinese and published in 参考消息 Cānkǎo Xiāoxí, China's answer to Courrier International]:

对西藏来说，中国是合适的 | 美国《新闻周刊》 2月17日文章 艾萨克 斯通 菲什		China Has Been Good For Tibet | U.S. Newsweek (February 17) Isaac Stone Fish
原题：慈善实例		Original Title: Charity Case
奥巴马总统本周与达赖喇嘛的会面充满争议，这件事已经 激怒中国。中国表示，西藏是其领土的一部分，此次会晤 是对其内政的不必要干涉。但大多数美国人仍视达赖喇嘛 为一个受中国统治压迫的民族的代表。然而事实上，中国 已经在这个多山的地区建立起了繁荣的经济。看看经济增 长、生活水平、基础设施、国内生产总值，有一件事十分 明显：对于西藏来说，中国是合适的。		President Obama's controversial meeting with the Dalai Lama will take place this week. But most Americans still see the Dalai Lama as the representative of a people oppressed by Chinese rule. Despite China's many blunders in Tibet, it has erected a booming economy there. Looking at growth, standard of living, infrastructure, and GDP, one thing is clear: China has been good for Tibet.
<...>		<...>
美国凯斯--西部保留地大学西藏研究中心负责人梅尔文？戈尔茨坦说："我为这些村子花的钱感到吃惊。"戈尔茨坦发现，"医疗保险计划变得更好了，银行贷款更容易拿到了，小学和中学教育免费，水电供应也在改善"。在改善后的学校，学生们学习汉语普通话，藏人因此可以到西藏政府办公室去工作，也有机会在全中国的公司工作。		"I was amazed at the amount of money actually being spent in these villages," said Melvyn Goldstein, codirector of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University. Goldstein found that "health-insurance plans are getting better, bank loans are now more accessible, schooling is free for primary school and middle school, and access to electricity and water is improving." At the improved schools, students learn Mandarin, which gives Tibetans access to work opportunities in government offices in Tibet and in companies throughout China.

Bruce Humes does a nice job of highlighting which parts of Fish's original article were censored [abridged] and which parts of the 参考消息 Cānkǎo Xiāoxí version were inserted by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda [conscientious editors].  For example, below you can see how the above two paragraphs were edited:

To form a more perfect Euro Union

by marco Wed Feb 17th, 2010 at 05:16:23 AM EST

In his latest column, "The Making of a Euromess", Paul Krugman gets pretty harsh on Europe's "elites" --

specifically, the policy elites who pushed Europe into adopting a single currency well before the continent was ready for such an experiment

-- and concludes that now that they have gotten Europe into this mess (Greece, etc.), there is only one way out:

to move much further toward political union, so that European nations start to function more like American states.

(The alternative of breaking up the euro zone back into national currencies would be the "mother of financial crises", even if it were practically possible, which it isn't.)

[Update note: Originally posted as "The 'Euromess' as spur towards more political (European) union", but changed title to be shorter and more to the point that interests me.]

frontpaged - Nomad

Babies are the best ally of male domination

by marco Tue Feb 16th, 2010 at 09:13:42 AM EST

and the belief that all mothers must breast-feed reduces women to the status of an animal species.*

Or so says philosopher and author Élisabeth Badinter in an interview in Libération last week. Sort of. The French Wikipedia entry on her cites her profession as "femme de lettres et philosophe féministe".  But what is more relevant to me is that she has three children.  I am curious if they took her prisoner, too, when they were babies, or if being an old school "humaniste rationaliste", she was able to dodge that fate.

*A swedish kind of death in his comment below is correct: In hastily writing up this introduction, I was not fair to Badinter, so I added the phrase the belief that all mothers must breast-feed in the first sentence above.

WTO Financial Services Agreement

by marco Mon Feb 8th, 2010 at 09:25:06 AM EST

In this morning's Salon, ARGeezer flagged a story about The OTHER Reason that the U.S. is Not Regulating Wall Street: In short, the U.S. (along with the European Union and about thirty other countries) has legally bound itself to WTO rules which make legislating certain key financial reforms impossible.

As "George Washington", the author of that article, puts it:

Even if some politicians tried to stand up to Wall Street - or even if we "throw out all of the bums" currently in political roles - the U.S. would still be locked into the WTO's scheme for helping the financial giants to grow ever bigger and to take ever-bigger and ever-riskier gambles.

He also references a Democracy Now interview with Lori Wallach, founder of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, excerpts of which are below the fold.  This interview took place during the during the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh last September.

I don't know how accurate "George Washington"'s and Wallach's descriptions of this issue are, nor how consequential it is to begin with, but after reading through her interview, I was alarmed enough to be very skeptical (if admiring) of Wallach's hopeful words that:

... we need to make such a ruckus about it that basically a huge spotlight is shined on the issue, because there are a lot of very powerful financial service interests.

<...>

So it's not just a matter of what we need domestically, though it's critical. You don't want Granny's pension robbed, your mortgage gone. But on top of that, for the other countries, we've got to fix these WTO rules and stop the Doha round.

front-paged by afew

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