Four theories of globalization

My professor for Wealth & Poverty wrote a book that outlines four theories of globalization. One is the dominant theory and two are resistance theories to that one.

I want to explain these theories to you, as it will help in my understanding of them, too. These are all separate theories that each have their own idea of the best society.

* Neoliberal: the dominant theory in society, economics and market and open trade is seen as the best, profit is seen as the best

1. individualism: me-centered

2. prosperity: wealth as an indication of success, global market, rich worked hard to get there and poor didn’t work hard, focus on economics and profit

3. freedom (individual liberty): narrow sense of freedom, don’t want government regulation

I wonder if we want corporations to be the leading political powers in our time in history. We’re giving them this power, we’re letting them hold onto it. They’re making policies and ways we live and influencing how others live. Do we want them to have such power? As Peters said, these transnational corporations are quickly gaining more power and wealth than some of the world’s smallest countries. I don’t know if this is a good thing.

* Development: two-thirds world nations need to be developed, our ideas are the best so we’ll give them to two-thirds nations, major institutions such as the World Bank or International Monetary Fund come in and enforce policies

1. responsibility: those who have a lot have a responsibility to give back

2. progress: progress of developing nations, technological progress, cultural progress, industrial innovation, focus on economics

3. equity: everyone has enough to get by, not more, want state to get involved to ensure no one falls below a certain line and all the way into poverty, welfare, social safety net

I really like the part of the development theory that feels the obligation to act as a sort of safety net for people, so that they don’t fall too far below a certain line. I think this ideal and the programs it translates into (welfare for example) are necessary. People sometimes fall into poverty, or very close to it, and it’s not always because they are lazy and don’t work — so I think it is our/the state’s/the government’s moral obligation to ensure that people don’t fall below a certain point.

Resistance theories

* Earthist: local is good, sustainability, respect for the planet and for others, local production

1. mutuality: helping others, decisions based on dialogue with others, local farming, bioregionalism

2. justice: for Earth, for humans, interdependence of life

3. sustainability: not harming the planet, not just about people, green energy

* Postcolonial: looking at history in a different way, through the eyes of the marginalized people, the colonized people were taken advantage of

1. community: a step away from the individual as most important, common good, decisions made in community, what group needs is more important than individual

2. respect for culture: rejection of Westernization of cultures and nations, cultural knowledge is respected, respecting own and other cultures

3. communal autonomy: local communities, self-governance, getting the community and local level more involved in the political process/in governing themselves

I agree with the communal autonomy idea of this theory. It is important for people to be in charge of their own lives, to lead their own lives, to make decisions of their own lives. And this theory holds that opinion, too. I also really believe in the power and ideology of people’s movements. Communities know what they need and how they want to live their version of the good life, they only need the resources to get there, so these people’s movements are attempting to give these resources.

Photo courtesy of incontemptcomics.com.

Peters also framed the book in a Christian ethical perspective, which was interesting for me. I come from a Jewish tradition, but try to become informed about all religions and take objectivity from my journalism ethics in order to objectively look at things. I think it helps to look at things without a bias in order to understand it better and more clearly. She would often use the Christian Bible as a source and phrases such as, “God calls us to action,” which definitely doesn’t speak to everyone, especially atheists and possibly people of other religions because they may think she is referring to only the Christian God.

While I feel that the book and arguments made in it would have been more powerful without using a religious background, because using one religion excludes people, I do also see how injection a moral sense to globalization is interesting and something that isn’t often done. Peters reflected on these four theories of globalization with several moral and Christian ethics qualities, judging each of them on moral regards to see if they offered all people “the good life.” (The good life, however, is also an exclusive concept, as it is sometimes seen as a religious idea. But it is also talked about in philosophy, more secular thinking, the bigger questions of humanity). She came out to say that the neoliberalism and development theories weren’t enough and didn’t offer everyone the good life for some reason or another — they fell short in the moral qualities. In her conclusion, she said that the earthist and postcolonial theories are better and more morally sound than the others. But she didn’t leave it there, she said that dialogue between adherents of these separate theories needs to happen, and a sharing of ideas. I like this. Sharing ideas and having continual dialogue encourages critique and criticism and questioning — questioning leads to finding problems and suggesting solutions, instead of allowing things to stay the same, instead of allowing bad things to occur without question and without anyone speaking out.

Central Bank (what is it good for?)

If you ask Ron Paul, yep ... absolutely nothing! Jamie Galbraith has a different view, and he told it to Paul, the chairman of the House Sub-Committee On Domestic Monetary Policy. He said:

"We cannot escape the need for a central bank. The United States before the Federal Reserve Act suffered from chronic deflation and financial panics; for this reason the period from 1873 to 1896 was known as the Great Depression, until the 1930s got that title. In the past century only the communist countries dispensed with central banks and private banking firms, and this arrangement did not serve them well. For this reason, I cannot join in supporting bills that would repeal the Federal Reserve Act or bar lending by commercial banks."

He also argued in favor of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act (note that he was a member of the team that drafted the legislation). The Fed mandate is important for him, and this is how he justifies it why he and his monetarists colleagues alike worked to draft:

"The “dual mandate,” which was expressed as “to promote full employment, production, and real income, balanced growth, adequate productivity growth, proper attention to national priorities, and reasonable price stability” in the preamble of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act and as “maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates” in the Federal Reserve Act.

My staff colleagues were committed monetarists. They believed that the Federal Reserve should pursue a policy of monetary control, to contain inflation. But they did not try to dictate that to the Federal Reserve. Nor would I have tried to dictate the pursuit of full employment over all other policy goals. Writing economic theory into law is dangerous and we steered clear of it as best we could."

Read the rest here.

Cenk Uygur’s Daffy Advice To CNN On "Real Reporting"

Liberal talk show host Ceyk Uygur had some advice for the former “Worldwide Leader in News” in a column he wrote last week about the network’s plummeting ratings. Here’s Cenk:

CNN just had their lowest ratings in a decade. They are in disastrous shape. When I was on MSNBC, we would beat them with a stick. Even after "pro-CNN" stories like revolutions in Egypt and Libya, Japanese nuclear meltdowns and the killing of Osama bin Laden (CNN does much better when major news or international stories break out), we still beat them. Now they're doing so poorly I might even catch them on Current.

We started at almost nothing on Current, but we have been steadily improving our numbers. Why are we getting traction? Because people want an alternative -- the real news. So, I should just stay quiet and let CNN drive off that cliff. By the way, when I catch Erin Burnett -- which is not that far off because I'm beginning to see her in the distance in the demos -- everyone will know it. Who knows, that might be the event that precipitates CNN re-thinking their entire model. Imagine if a network that started at nearly nothing catches CNN within a year.

But I am not going to wait until then to give them some friendly advice. I know they won't perceive it that way, but I am actually trying to help them. So here it is -- for the love of God, stop doing "he said, she said" crap that doesn't actually deliver the news to anyone. Democrats said this and Republicans said that -- who cares? What is the reality?! Your job is supposed to be to bring us facts, not what official spokespeople told you in their press releases and talking points.

The problem is that CNN doesn't have the courage to do this. They're afraid it might offend some folks if you tell the American people reality. I want to be clear; I'm not saying they should give us opinion. There's plenty of that in other parts of cable, including my show. They're never going to out-opinion me. But if Mitt Romney says his proposal balances the budget, well, why don't you crunch the numbers and tell us whether that's true or not? Of course the reality is that it creates trillions of dollars in deficits just so that the rich can have more tax cuts. But CNN would consider reporting those facts as being biased.

If the Giants play the Cowboys and beat them silly, it is not biased to report that they won. You don't have a pro-Giants bias if you report the score. I'm a progressive but I have no interest in CNN skewing issues in favor of Democrats. By all means, call them out just as aggressively. The Democratic Party takes huge amounts of cash from corporations and unions to vote a certain way. My God, CNN doesn't even cover the role of money in politics. They take politicians at their word. Are you kidding? It seems like the people who work at CNN are the last people in the country who actually trust our politicians. Congressional approval ratings were recently at 11 percent. How well do you think you're going to do on television if you're sucking up to those guys?

By the way, following along with artificially created Fox News scandals doesn't give you balance. It makes you sad and pathetic. There are plenty of real Democratic scandals without falling into the rubbish Fox talks about. How much money does Chuck Schumer take from Wall Street? What favors does he give them in return? Why do Democratic leaders keep writing legislation rigged against the Internet -- could it have something to do with the tremendous amount of cash they take from Hollywood companies? Why does President Obama get a free pass on following George Bush's civil liberties abuses like warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detentions?

In other words, do your job -- report the news. The real news, not dueling talking points and manufactured controversies. My God, where is your investigative team? What's the last story you broke? Of course, the reality is that you don't want to break stories about Washington because that might offend some people. What kind of a so-called news operation is this afraid of their own shadow? "Oh my God, what if we offended someone in power. They might not come on our shows anymore and they might call us biased." Or they might call you journalists.

There are a couple of important points to make here that Uygur completely misses in his article. First of all, what is the real reason CNN’s brass is so afraid that the network “might offend some people?” Does a global news operation, as Unger supposes, really have anything to fear by ruffling the feathers of some Senator or Congressman, or even the President? Is it the power of the politicians they are afraid of, or as is more likely, do they dread the possibility of angering their corporate bosses, who after all ultimately work for the billionaires whose contributions put the political puppets into office? Don’t piss off the boss is one of the very first rules that people learn when they join the American workforce.

Some might object and say that news organizations have ALWAYS been owned by corporations, and yet there actually was a time when despite that fact they often aggressively pursued stories that that made government officials or even corporate bigwigs look bad beyond just the latest titillating sex scandal. So what has changed?

Quite simply, it is the expectations of the viewer that have changed. Thirty years ago, when CNN was an upstart network first entering the television news landscape, the only other available outlets in America were CBS, NBC and ABC. Those were the days of titans of the medium, like Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley and John Chancellor—when Americans across the political spectrum shared a common perception of what was going on in their country and internationally as viewed through the lens of national news organizations that, while far from perfect, were at least outwardly dedicated to objectivity.

Since the arrival of CNN on the scene, to be joined later later Fox News and other cable outlets, to say nothing of the Internet, the American media landscape has been forever splintering into mutually exclusive audiences. These days, if you’re a Republican and a conservative you faithfully watch Fox News and get all of your information delivered with a Republican/conservative spin. If you are a liberal or a progressive, you watch MSNBC and/or the Comedy Central shows and get, if not a total lock step Democratic spin certainly a liberal/progressive one. It is easy for people caught in this dynamic to look at those on the other side as if they have two heads, because they literally perceive the world in ways that are diametrically opposed to one another.

The problem with advising CNN to start reporting “real news” as a way of boosting its ratings is that this dynamic has been going for long enough now that doing so would cause the network to be rejected by BOTH sides. The sad fact is that most people DO NOT WANT to hear objective truth anymore. They want information presented to them in such a way that panders to their preexisting prejudices and beliefs, and liberals and progressives are every bit as guilty of this phenomenon as are conservatives. Additionally, this dynamic not even include the many millions of people who only care about American Idol, the NFL season and the latest antics of the Kardashian sisters and won’t watch CNN at all unless it covers the never ending antics of vacuous celebrities. That’s your American media landscape these days—a third of the population devoted to one end of the political spectrum, a third just as devoted at the other end and a remaining third that doesn’t care in the slightest.

If you don’t believe me, just imagine for a moment what would happen if CNN were to do a completely accurate expose on the subject of Peak Oil. In order to do so, it would have to tell some truths unpalatable to conservatives—that oil, coal and gas are finite resources, that worldwide production of those resources is peaking and already choking off the possibility of long term economic growth, and that no amount of “drill, baby, drill” is going to change that fact. It would have to follow that with some truths unpalatable to most liberals and progressives, namely that “green energy” is a cruel pipe dream and that “alternative” fuels are not going to allow us to maintain our suburbanized, automobile centric economy. Imagine the reaction of both sides when the show wraps up by saying that our only hope to survive with our civilization intact is for everyone to immediately begin powering down and accepting a dramatic reduction in their standard of living. The days of carefree trips to the mall, motoring vacations every summer and having your own big backyard are over, and they’re never coming back.

Does anyone really think a show like that would be a big shot in the arm to CNN’s ratings? Sounds to me more like a recipe for the network falling into oblivion once the deluge of angry emails and text messages from viewers all across the political spectrum finally started to die down.

The small minority of us who live in what I call the “reality-based community” accept that the resources vital to maintaining and growing an advanced, globalized industrial civilization are rapidly depleting. “Real reporting” on just about any issue—from budgets and “austerity,” to unemployment, to the housing market, to our crumbling infrastructure, to creeping authoritarianism, to the Middle East uprisings, to the breakdown of our political system—has to be built upon that understanding in order to even hope to present our many problems in such a way that allows genuine solutions to be considered.

Because so few people have accepted that reality, “real reporting” will be rejected out of hand by the vast majority. Ultimately, CNN is a dinosaur that’s heading toward extinction thanks to a change in the media climate that it did so much to help initiate. But Cenk Uygur shouldn’t get too cocky. For when the glorious façade created by the Hologram does finally start to crumble, it won’t spare him or his Current TV viewers either.


Bonus: Here's Bill's take on CNN from 20 years ago

49% Of Americans Aren't Saving For Retirement

From the No Shit, Sherlock Network CNN, here comes a report that shows just how dire our collective long term economic predicament really is:

America has a serious problem saving for retirement.

About 49% of Americans say they aren't contributing to any retirement plan, according to a new survey conducted by LIMRA, a trade association for the financial services industry.

"The findings from this survey were disturbing, given that people will increasingly need to rely on their personal savings to make ends meet in retirement," said Matthew Drinkwater, associate managing director at LIMRA's retirement research division.

People ages 18 to 34 are the least likely to be saving, with 56% reporting that they are not currently contributing to a retirement plan like an IRA or a 401(k).

"In order to have the adequate savings necessary to meet their financial needs in retirement -- which could last 20 or more years -- it is critical that these individuals begin saving systematically early in their working years," Drinkwater said.

So what is the reason that so many people are being so neglectful in preparing for their future?

Nearly half of consumers said they aren't planning to contribute to an IRA because they can't afford to, and only a quarter of Americans have worked with a financial professional to plan for retirement, the survey found.

In order to "work with a financial professional to plan for retirement" you gotta have something to plan WITH. If you don't have jack shit, you can't very well make a plan with it. What's maddening is just how much difficulty the mainstream media seems to have in grasping this basic concept.

Free Trade and Inclusive Development

By Suranjana Nabar-Bhaduri

One of the central elements in the development of any country is the creation of economic activities that transform the production structure by significantly increasing labor productivity, or the amount of production per worker. By helping to absorb more people into quality employment, the creation of such activities helps to generate a more inclusive and sustainable path of long-run economic growth. While economists and policy-makers accept the necessity of this transformation, there are differing views on the policies that developing countries should follow to achieve this transformation.

Many Western countries and institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, argue that minimizing the role of the State in economic activity, and opening up the economy to external markets is vital to achieving this transformation. But other economists (e.g., Prebisch 1959, Cimoli and Correa 2002, and Ocampo 2005) stress that active industrial and employment generation policies are also essential ingredients for this transformation, and that it is necessary to complement liberalization with such policies.

Read the rest here.

The Truth Unmasked: House Panel Reduces Aid for Poor to Avoid "Defense" Cuts

Make no mistake...when assholes like Paul Ryan blabber on about "austerity" what they are really talking about is making the less fortunate pay so that the corporate welfare gravy train can continue rolling along. How else can you possibly explain this report from Bloomberg:

A U.S. House panel voted to cut spending on food stamps, health insurance and other aid for the poor to avoid planned cuts in defense spending.

(snip)

The spending reductions are triggered by a so-called supercommittee’s failure last year to come up with a plan to reduce the government’s $1.2 trillion budget deficit. About $55 billion would be subtracted from the Pentagon budget, with an equal amount from non-defense programs.

Also yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee unveiled plans to boost defense spending next year by $1 billion to $519 billion, with an additional $88.5 billion for the war in Afghanistan.

The Budget Committee’s measure would cut off food stamps to 1.8 million Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while reducing assistance to millions more. About 280,000 children would no longer be automatically eligible for free school lunches because they receive food stamps, according to CBO.

The bill would give states more ability to pare their Medicaid rolls and would end social services block grants, which fund programs such as Meals on Wheels for senior citizens. The bill would tighten rules on who may claim child-care tax credits in an effort to prevent aid from going to illegal immigrants.

It's an election year, and yet these fuckers apparently believe that they will not suffer at the polls from such a blatant attempt to keep enriching defense war contractors at the expense of the most vulnerable members of our society. And the really sick part is, they're probably right.


From my You Tube channel: "Ain't this new world a shame...I can't stop thinking that it doesn't have to be this way"

Some lessons from the sub-prime crisis responses

There are very few counterfactuals in social sciences. The closest to such a counterfactual are the contrasting responses of US and Europe to resolving their respective financial market crises. Though in recent months, Europe has taken steps to emulate the US, the initial responses across both sides of the Atlantic bear a striking contrast.

In the US, at the first signs of the sub-prime crisis bursting, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve aggressively intervened to contain the damage. The Treasury came forward with its Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to directly assist the beleaguered banks and other financial institutions with equity injections. The Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet many times and initiated quantitative easing programs to emerge as the lender, insurer, and buyer of last resort for the financial markets.

However, across the Atlantic, driven both by lack of similar political resolve and strong ideological predilections, the Eurozone governments and the European Central Bank refrained from aggressive intervention. They let events take their own course in the hope that markets would soon resolve the issue. Credit markets froze, driving up sovereign debt yields and nearly shutting off the peripheral economies. Banks, saddled with massive sovereign debt exposures, stumbled to the brink. The ECB refused to lend either to the banks or the battered sovereigns. It stepped in finally only when the situation had worsened considerably.

The contrasting fortunes of both economies, atleast their respective financial sectors, is a clear verdict on the policy courses followed on both sides of the Atlantic. Europe stares at a potential Japan like financial dystopia, whereas American financial institutions have recovered smartly and are back to doing all those things that caused the sub-prime crisis! However, there are a few quick learnings from the situations across both sides,

1. The loudest message from the two different courses of action is that markets do not repair themselves and when faced with such deep financial market crises, governments and central banks have to step in with aggressive policies.This becomes all the more important as the complexity of our banking systems increase and the too-big-to-fail syndrome become entrenched.

2. Related to this is the central and disproportionate importance that financial markets have come to assume in determing the economic fortunes of a country. Despite the fact that the financial sector occupies a far less share of both the economy and the working population, its good health is critical to the fortunes of any modern economy.

3. Similar to the stark contrast between the US and European responses is the difference between the responses by the US Government and the Fed to the condition of over-leveraged financial institutions and debt-ridden individual households. The latter received nothing like the unlimited and cheap liquidity injections, debt rescheduling at very favorable terms, and sweeping credit guarantees offered to the financial institutions. Household foreclosures, even when it happened in a massive scale, became a source of concern only when it threatened to affect an exposed financial institution.

In other words, the disciplining elements of the free-markets are reserved for individual households and small business firms, while the financial sector behemoths, the much trumpeted success stories of deregulated free-market capitalism, face no such constraints. The negative externalities created by financial institutions do not get internalized.

4. All this highlights the increasingly sharp cleavage between the real economy and the financial markets. Are the gains of the financial markets, especially their outsized wins, coming at the expense of the real economy? Is there a recession or even a depression lurking at the end of a sustained period of financial market boom? The financial markets, especially in their current avatar, appear to have become too big a systemic risk to be left as it is.

U.S. Environmental Satellite System ‘Is At Risk Of Collapse’ And Could Decline 75% By 2020

Hat tip to Vinland of Silent Country for alerting me to this story.

Despite spending nearly a trillion and a half dollars more than it has taken it from taxes every year for the past four years, the federal government is still having difficulties maintaining its basic services. Here is Think Progress with the story:

The Nation’s leading scientists have issued a stark warning: America’s ability to monitor the environment is rapidly diminishing. And if we don’t properly fund our satellite capabilities, the country could lose three quarters of its Earth observation systems by 2020.

That alarming conclusion comes from the National Research Council in a new report assessing the progress of the nation’s Earth observation programs. In short: our leading scientific institutions aren’t actually making much progress.

Rather, a lack of funding and infrastructure will result in “a rapid decline” in our ability to monitor extreme weather and changes to the climate.

Like everything else, it all comes back to money...in this case, the lack of money for anything other than entitlement programs and defense war contractors:

There are three major factors contributing to this unprecedented decline in Earth monitoring capabilities: budget cuts, a rapidly aging fleet of satellites, and a lack of launch capabilities.

The budgetary issues have been ongoing. According to the NSA progress report, NASA’s Earth science program still hasn’t been funded to the requested $2 billion to meet future objectives.

And as Climate Progress reported last year, Republican lawmakers proposed slashing $1.2 billion from NOAA’s funding levels, cutting into satellite programs. The satellite programs were eventually funded to requested levels, but future funding is uncertain. Senate lawmakers have proposed moving NOAA’s satellite program over to NASA where operational efficiencies could potentially save money.

Officials at these agencies say that more money is needed to replace the fleet of aging satellites that will inevitably fail in the coming years. According to the NSA report, there’s also a severe lack of launch vehicles for Earth satellites that “directly threatens programmatic robustness.”

After all, satellites aren’t much good without a way to launch them.

If this story doesn't portend a society in the early stages of collapse, I don't know what would.

Joost Hiltermann: Bahrain -- A New Sectarian Conflict

Bahrain: A New Sectarian Conflict?
by Joost Hiltermann
NYR Books (The New York Review of Books)

Until 2011, the tiny island nation of Bahrain was mainly known to the outside world for one thing: an annual Formula One car race, the first of its kind in the Middle East, that signified the country’s arrival among the community of stable advanced nations. But then came last spring’s popular uprising and brutal government crackdown, and a different side of this Gulf monarchy came to light: the longstanding grievances held by many Bahrainis, including above all members of the island’s Shia majority, against its Sunni ruling family, who in turn seem prepared to use force to hold onto power. The regime prevailed, and after inviting an investigation of human rights abuses last fall, it suggested it was bringing the country back to normal; this spring’s Grand Prix would show the world it had succeeded.

But as I discovered during a five-day visit shortly before the race, nothing could be further from the truth. Talking to dozens of people both in Manama and in smaller communities outside the capital, I was told again and again that the situation was becoming worse, not better: police forces have been using large quantities of tear gas against protesters, repeatedly causing deaths; police brutality had not ended but moved from police stations to alleyways and undeclared detention centers; young activists are increasingly resorting to Molotov cocktails, subverting the peaceful nature of the protests; and the government has not opened any dialogue with the opposition or offered hope for political reform. Protests occurred nightly in Shiite villages and neighborhoods during my stay, and a veritable battle of graffiti took place on the walls of shops and houses, with protesters writing slogans calling for the end of the regime, police erasing them with a quick coat of paint, and activists scribbling new ones seemingly before the paint had dried.

And so while the Grand Prix, Bahrain’s single prestige event, did take place in late April, it happened amid clouds of tear gas and wafts of smoke from firebombs, as well as an outcry over the death of a protester apparently as a result of shotgun pellets fired by riot police. On the day of the event, a political activist, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, was into his eleventh week of a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment on allegations of plotting to overthrow the state during last year’s protests. (As of this writing, the hunger strike is now in its ninetieth day.)

Part of what makes the current situation in Bahrain so disturbing is that the regime has succeeded in replacing the narrative of a peaceful movement for reform with an altogether different one: that the country’s majority Shia are intent on driving the Sunnis off the island and handing the country over to Iran. Although last year’s protests were led by predominantly Shia opposition groups, Bahrain’s urban populations have long been mixed and the uprising also drew Sunnis dissatisfied with how the country was run. But now, by mobilizing Sunnis against Shia protesters on the claim the latter are manipulated by a predatory Iran, the regime has made Shia-Sunni hostility the conflict’s overriding theme.

Consider the recent cases of Ali and Omar: two Bahraini boys, one a teenager, the other a pre-schooler. Ali, of course, is one of the more common Shia names while Omar is a common Sunni name. Their stories, much embellished in the retelling, have been wielded by each side in the conflict to attack the other side.

In March, the Bahraini Internet was full of Twitter comments about 4-year-old Omar, who was said to have been forced to kiss his (Shia) teacher’s feet simply because of his name. The historical Omar was one of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions and Islam’s second Caliph. To Shia, he was a usurper, who muscled aside Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law, in the succession crisis that erupted following Muhammad’s death.

The teacher denied the accusation, but when it was leaked to the press that the school had launched an investigation (after a complaint lodged by Omar’s parents), the Ministry of Education became involved, and the matter, quickly amplified by social media, soon became a national controversy. The school was forced to suspend the teacher, and a picture of her husband and his daily route to work were circulated on Twitter in an attempt to intimidate the couple.

To Read the Entire Essay

Bauhaus: In the Flat Field

Joshua Land: Migrating Forms - David Cronenberg and the challenge of the impossible adaptation

Migrating Forms: David Cronenberg and the challenge of the impossible adaptation
by Joshua Land
Moving Image Source





What makes a film a successful literary adaptation? Ask a random literate moviegoer, and they're likely to answer that a good film adaptation should be "like the book" (or play). In other words, a successful adaptation is a faithful adaptation. What then is a faithful adaptation? One that follows the story of the original text, of course. It's this fixation on story that prompts the common contention that most great modernist and postmodernist novels, which often either lack a traditional story or integrate story elements with discursive material, are "unfilmable." One possible strategy of adaptation is to "flatten out" the original by simply discarding everything that doesn't move the story along, as in Philip Kaufman and Jean-Claude Carrière's version of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a conventional 1980s Euro-prestige picture that preserves the novel's plot line while eliding the philosophical digressions and ruminations on love and kitsch that are essential to its meaning. So is it a successful adaptation of Milan Kundera's novel? Well, that depends on what you mean by "successful."

Over the latter half of his career, David Cronenberg has intervened in this tiresome discussion with a series of what have been termed "impossible adaptations." In films like Naked Lunch (1991) and Crash (1996), adaptations of novels once regarded as unfilmable, Cronenberg approaches the problem of adaptation from a different angle. One of these films closely follows the story of its source novel and one does not, but both could be described as successful—and even, after a fashion, faithful—adaptations.

Discussion of adaptations is often haunted by the unresolved question of whether a film should be regarded as merely the extension of a literary work into another form, or as a separate work entirely. Cronenberg's Naked Lunch takes that decision out of the viewer's hands to the extent that it's not really an adaptation of William S. Burroughs's novel at all—at least if adaptation is conceived primarily in terms of story. While most of the movie's major characters and settings (as well as the famous "talking asshole" anecdote) come from the Burroughs novel, it also draws from other Burroughs writings as well as the author's life. Seeing Naked Lunch is in no way a substitute for reading the book, or vice versa—which may be precisely the point.

Talking centipedes and organic typewriters notwithstanding, Naked Lunch is relatively restrained by the standards of Cronenberg's previous work, marking, along with Dead Ringers (1988), a transition between the director's visceral early films and the cooler, more formalist late work. The outré visual effects are played more for laughs than chills. Indeed, Naked Lunch might be Cronenberg's funniest film, beginning with the ironic casting of Robocop himself, Peter Weller, as the alter ego of the outlaw writer. Weller's stone-faced performance positions the film's protagonist, William Lee, as a straight man (pun intended) who takes its bizarre happenings in stride. Recounting a not atypical incident in which his Clark Nova typewriter kills and disembowels a potential rival instrument, Lee deadpans: "I understood writing could be dangerous. I didn't realize the danger came from the machinery."

To Read the Rest of the Essay

Layoffs for Uni-Solar Employees (Michigan)

We've seen this story repeatedly over this past year. Here is a local Michigan television station with the details:

The company that owns Uni-Solar in Greenville says it will lay off 300 people from the solar roofing business. Michigan based Energy Conversion Devices was going to auction off Uni-Solar but Tuesday's auction was canceled because no acceptable bids were placed.

Uni-Solar's parent company filed for bankruptcy in February. The workers in Montcalm County were then placed on furlough.

Company officials blame the over production of solar panels and the end of federal incentives for its downfall.

Sounds to me like without all the corporate welfare subsidies, the American solar panel industry is simply not viable.

The Washington Post's Latest Idea To Boost Revenues--More Slideshows

As a newspaper, the Washington Post has been coasting on its reputation for many years. The Post is now declining even faster than many other papers, and this report from Adweek shows that the paper's "leadership" doesn't have a clue as to what to do about it:

Washington Post staffers are buzzing about a secret meeting between some 10 big-name Post journalists including Dana Priest, David Finkel and Carol Leonnig, and Steve Hills, the president and gm of the newspaper. The April 17 meeting was highly unusual for two reasons—the executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, wasn’t present, and the participants agreed not to talk about it. They approached Bradley Graham, a former Post reporter (no relation to Post Co. chairman Don Graham) and Hills friend, who agreed to host the get-together at his Bethesda, MD, mansion. Graham said the journalists were “just interested in knowing him better. Steve isn’t as known to them as Marcus or other folks in the newsroom.”

Over sandwiches around the dining room table, the journalists expressed concern about the loss of newsroom resources. Accounts of the evening that are making the rounds suggest it was hardly comforting to their journalistic souls. Hills was said to have shocked with remarks that awards “don’t matter,” urged more traffic-driving slideshows over original Post photos, and compared the Post to Ohio’s Dayton Daily News, a paper with one-fifth the circulation of the 508,000-circ Post.

Hills, by email, wouldn’t get into specifics but downplayed the dinner’s import. “I was having a wide-ranging informal conversation at a dinner party with my colleagues, who happen to be some of the best reporters and editors in the business, about the challenges that we face,” he wrote. Graham, however, said that the Dayton comment came up in the context of a discussion about the Post’s future. Hills “made a number of comparisons to other markets with the idea of keeping in mind what a market the size of Washington might realistically support," Graham said of his friend. "That’s where the tension comes from. We’re not New York; we’re not Cincinnati.”

News of the meeting comes at a jittery time. According to the parent Washington Post Co.'s just-released earnings report, the newspaper lost $22.6 million in the first quarter of 2012, with print advertising down 17 percent. The paper's average daily circulation fell nearly 8 percent in the six months ended March 31, more of any of the top 25 U.S. dailies. With circulation and revenue falling, no less than investigative reporting is being scrutinized. The Post, where the legendary duo Woodward and Bernstein made their mark, is defined by its investigations; it was Bob Woodward who in 1982 set up the paper’s permanent investigative unit, now under the highly regarded Jeff Leen. Its members have been known to while away years in the unit, apart from the rest of the newsroom.

But the paper has lost top talent lately, including James Grimaldi, who took a buyout and is heading to The Wall Street Journal. With his departure, the Post will have lost all three reporters who won its 2006 Pulitzer for their coverage of the Jack Abramoff scandal. The paper also shut out of the 2012 Pulitzers and weathered a blogger embarrassment that revealed its BlogPost operation to be a mini sweatshop. As the Post looks to cut costs, there’s been debate over whether the paper should spend more time on shorter projects that bear fruit faster and even speculation that the unit might be disbanded altogether. “There’s been talk in the newsroom that there’s been pressure to report more quickly,” said Patrick Pexton, the newspaper’s ombudsman.

Personally, I cancelled my subscription to the Post years ago after becoming disgusted with the dominance of Iraq War-drumbeating neoconservatives on its op-ed pages. I would say that the paper cutting back on "real reporting" is exactly the opposite of what it should be doing to retain readership, but that likely isn't true. The sad fact is that the vast majority of Americans are not interested in hearing the truth about anything anymore. If the Post really wants to increase its web traffic, it probably ought to just give itself over completely to being a tabloid rag like Britain's Daily Mail and be done with it already.


Bonus: "Your lives are in danger"

The great lending reversal

Historical stereotypes show that the rich owed a great share of their incomes to leverage. They invested borrowed money in remunerative enterprises and leveraged it to raise their incomes. In contrast, the middle-class and poor were seen as debt-averse and relying on debt only when forced into it. However, as this IMF study indicates, the roles, atleast in terms of the debt-aversion of the non-rich, appear to have changed. Sample this evidence from the US,

In 1983, the top 5 percent had 80 cents of debt for every dollar of income, while the remaining 95 percent had 60 cents for every dollar. By 2007, after decades in which an increasing share of income flowed to the top, the situation had reversed. The top 5 percent had 65 cents of debt for every dollar of income, while the remaining 95 percent had $1.40 in debt for every dollar.

The authors use cross-country data and develop models that try to simulate changes in income distribution and household debt to GDP ratios and its impact on the economy. Their DGSE model, where workers income shares decline at the expense of investors, show,

Loans to workers from domestic and foreign investors support aggregate demand and result in current account deficits. Financial liberalization helps workers smooth consumption, but at the cost of higher household debt and larger current account deficits. In emerging markets, workers cannot borrow from investors, who instead deploy their surplus funds abroad, leading to current account surpluses instead of deficits.  

In other words, the only way to sustain high levels of consumption and national aggregate demand growth in the face of stagnant incomes was for poor and middle-class households to borrow. And its result is widening inequality and eventual debt-default which brings down the whole economic edifice. 

They therefore argue that the only sustainable way to reduce this is to address the critical issue of stagnant incomes. It is now well-established that markets do not generate efficient outcomes with income distribution. The prevailing balance of power in the economic structure and its hand-maiden political establishment, are too skewed to generate the desired level of income distribution.

To address the immediate challenge of debt-reduction among households, an "orderly debt reduction" wherein the process takes a few years may be the most appropriate method. In the medium to long-run, given the skewed distribution of incomes between labour and capital, this market failure will have to be addressed through an institutionalized mechanism that restores some element of collective bargaining. 

India's ratings plateau?

The S&P recently put India on the watchlist for a ratings revision downwards from its current investment grade. Without debating the merits of the downgrade, there is a troubling trend from this, especially when comparing our ratings trend to that of other emerging economies.

The graphic below, a composite measure of the ratings of all the three major rating agencies, shows that India moved up to investment grade rating in January 2007. However, unlike all its other partners, in a fairly accurate reflection of the political paralysis that has gripped the country, it has remained there for the past more than five years.
 

Phillips Foods Closing Baltimore Plant, Cutting 100 Jobs

It's a theme I've often repeated here at TDS...while the national media keeps selling the bogus "recovery" narrative, the local outlets haven't received the message. Here is the Baltimore Business Journal with the details:

Phillips Foods Inc. plans to close its Locust Point manufacturing and distribution facility in July, a move that will result in the loss of 100 jobs.

The seafood distributor said the layoffs will impact 13 percent of its Maryland workforce.
As part of the move, Phillips is shifting its warehousing and distribution to Baltimore-based Merchants Terminal Corp. with additional support from Dot Foods.

“We moved into our current plant in 2002 in hopes of growing our company, but given the difficult economic conditions and industry dynamics, we have not grown as we anticipated,” Phillips spokeswoman Caroline Tippett said in a statement. “Our Baltimore plant is simply too big, and we don’t have the capacity to fill the space.”

On a national level, statistics can be used to try and hide the ongoing devastation in the economy. But businesses have to make decisions based upon real world conditions. It's just that simple.

Smashing Pumpkins: Twilight to Starlight

Public Radio International: Survivor tries to make sense of aftermath of Norway attacks as trial continues

Survivor tries to make sense of aftermath of Norway attacks as trial continues
Public Radio International (PRI)

The trial of Anders Breivik has faded from the headlines, but the trial continues.

On Friday, the court heard details of the deaths of the 69 people he massacred on Utoya Island. Breivik appeared unmoved by the testimony.

But the survivors of the shootings have spent a lot of time thinking about the horrific event and what it means for him and for Norway.

Gathered in a hall in downtown Stavanger a small group of Norwegians are still grappling with what happened.

A moderator had brought together four panelists to talk about the how the media have reported on the massacre and the trial and to examine just what it means for Norway’s future. Eventually, it was Arshad Mubarak Ali’s turn to speak.

Ali stands out not only because of the color of his skin. He is also a survivor of the day of horror on Utoya Island. Ali knows while he may not have died, he was, in Breivik’s mind, the enemy simply because he is different from so many other Norwegians.

Ali, who was born in Norway to parents from Sri Lanka, never noticed that difference until Sept. 11, 2001. A teenager at the time, he remembers telling classmates how upset he was about what happened that day.

So he said he was shocked when one of them identified him with the 9/11 assassins.

“A person said to me, ‘I didn’t think that you thought this was terrible; I thought that you supported these people.’ So that experience made me think,” Ali said. “When this classmate said this to me, I started to think who am I? Why am I so different because I am a Muslim.”

Ali spent the following years exploring that question, studying the history of his faith, listening to a national debate that seemed to equate Islam with terrorism. Then, at the suggestion of his politically active father, he ran for city council and won a seat at the age of 20.

Ever since, he’s worked hard for the Labor Party. That’s why he was at the party’s youth meeting on Utoya Island that day.

Ali recounted the terror of the day quietly and deliberately. He went with others to shelter inside a building after they heard gunshots outside. He was standing next to a closed door when a bullet came flying in.

“And then I just saw a shot, a gunshot that went through the wall and hit this person and he fell down and he started to shout,” Ali said. “Then I knew that, OK, this is something serious.”

To Read the Rest of the Report

Ken Butigan: A May to Remember

A May to remember
by Ken Butigan
Waging Nonviolence

April may be the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot once claimed, but May is the month of exuberant mass action. We’re currently in the thick of the latest iteration of May mobilizations for justice and peace, with the worldwide protests that got rolling on May 1 and the actions that will take place later this month in Chicago focused on the NATO summit. May actions are a venerable tradition, reaching back to Emancipation Day in 1886 when — also in Chicago — 340,000 workers went on strike demanding an 8-hour workday. Since then, by design or coincidence, numerous May protests — perhaps egged on by the feisty vitality of spring and its alluring promise of rejuvenation — have been momentous.

In the month of May, one million South Africans demonstrated against apartheid (1986); 1,400 people were arrested protesting the construction of a nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire (1977); the Freedom Riders challenged racial discrimination in interstate travel (1961); hundreds of schoolchildren were arrested during the civil rights movement’s historic Birmingham campaign (1963); the Poor People’s Campaign challenged economic inequality (1968); a general strike spread across France calling for social change, eventually mobilizing ten million people (1968); and millions protested U.S. immigration policy across the nation (2006). These, as the invaluable This Week in History attests, are only a small fraction of the many historic social struggles that have been launched in the month of May.

Here is one of the most notable.

Forty-one years ago today — May 3, 1971 — thousands of people were arrested in Washington D.C. as they clamored for an end to the U.S. war in Vietnam. Though no one could have known it at the time, this event proved to be the movement’s last monumental mobilization. There would be other national and local demonstrations before the war finally ended in 1975, but nothing would match the sheer size and intensity of this powerful drama played out on the streets of the nation’s capital.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

If Mitt Romney Had Given An Honest Answer To The "Treason" Question

There was more sound and fury reported from the presidential campaign yesterday designed to get liberals and progressives all hot and bothered after Romney declined to "correct" a dimwitted audience member who asserted that Obama should be tried for "treason." Here is Gawker with the details:

What do you do when your party's base is made up of scared old white people who believe that the president is a traitor? You never, ever, ever correct them, and you talk a lot about God. Take Mitt Romney's example!

"We have a president right now that is operating outside the structure of our Constitution," the audience member said to applause. "And I want to know — yeah, I do agree he should be tried for treason — but I want to know what you would be able to do to restore balance between the three branches of government and what you are going to be able to do to restore our Constitution in this country."

Romney didn't correct the woman, choosing instead to address the question she posed.

"Well, as I'm sure you do, I happen to believe the Constitution was not just brilliant but probably inspired. I happen to believe the same thing about the Declaration of Independence," said Romney. "I would respect the different branches of government if I am fortunate enough to become president."

Romney later said that "of course" he doesn't believe that Barack Obama is a traitor: "I don't correct all of the questions that get asked of me." No, of course not.

Well, first off, the question is dumb because a president who is "operating outside the structure of the Constitution" is committing an impeachable offense, not treason. BIG difference.

Secondly, here is the answer Romney should have given to the question were he at all honest:

"Well, OF COURSE Obama has been operating outside of the structure of the Constitution, just as his predecessor did for nearly eight full years after 9/11 and just like I intend to do if I get elected this November. That's what the War on Terror is really all about. So sit your tired old ass down and STFU."