Public Street Harassment

From The Age today The private struggle with public street harassment:
" A survey released last month by the Australia Institute found almost 50 per cent of women polled said they had been followed, while 40 per cent said they had had their paths blocked. 

More than 40 per cent had also experienced unwanted sexual touching by a stranger, while 36 per cent had been flashed. Almost 80 per cent had been honked at, 75 per cent had been leered at, while more than 60 per cent had experienced lewd or sexist comments. 

La Trobe University sexual violence researcher Bianca Fileborn calls street harassment one of the "most pervasive forms of sexualised violence". As with rape and domestic violence, it is likely that the figures are even higher than suggested by surveys. Many women do not report their experiences. Some don't even tell their friends or family.

It's simply part of being a lady in 2015 in Australia. Or the United States, Britain or Canada, where similar figures are recorded. 

.......

There is not much research about the perpetrators of street harassment, but overwhelmingly they are understood to be men, who are more likely to harass strangers when in a group. This is not to suggest that most men drive around in cars scaring the bejesus out of women. The point is, enough of them do it to enough women – and the result is a culture that is unnervingly everyday in its violence against females. 

There is also an unnerving lack of action to stop it.

.....

What happens to women on the streets is not seen as a critical issue – it is certainly not taken with the same level of seriousness as the safety of young men at risk of coward punches (where laws were changed, new terms coined). "Street harassment" is not even specifically referred to in the federal government's much trumpeted national plan to reduce violence against women. 

Perhaps this is why many of the responses have been informal ones: encouraging bystanders and friends to intervene if it's safe, as well as websites like Hollaback that collect and publicise examples. 

But until street harassment is seen as a mainstream issue, worthy of tackling rather than ignoring or tolerating, the onus will remain on individual women to handle it. Women, who like Rachel are not only scared by what is happening, but in her own words, "pissed off". 

"I'm just so angry. You should be able to walk in your local area at night." "

Another round on Piketty

around Deciphering the fall and raise in net capital share by Matt Rognlie. I will just mention one response from a Marxist(?) Michael Roberts. More links and discussion in the article.

Piketty Update from Michael Roberts:

"So what are the great revelations of this economics prodigy? Well, Piketty argues that inequality of wealth has risen in the last 30 years because the returns to capital were increasing or at least rising faster than national income.  However, Rognlie found the trend to be almost entirely isolated to the housing sector. Yes, some investments with a high level of intellectual property, like computer software, had become extremely valuable in the hands of the wealthy. But some of those assets were unlikely to remain valuable for very long, like a software program that needs to be replaced in a few years with a new version. When adjusting for that depreciation, most of the rest of the increase in capital came in housing, a single sector that, while important, might not shape the entire future of inequality as Piketty assumed.
The second finding was that Piketty overestimates how high the returns to capital would be in the future. For his fears to come true, wealthy people who amass more and more capital would need to keep earning a high return on that capital. But Rognlie’s research suggests that the returns to capital will decline over. “Piketty’s story has multiple steps to it. I’m sort of showing that one of the steps does the reverse of what he says it does,” Rognlie said in an interview. Those findings, he added, suggest “there doesn’t seem to be a big need for panic” over Piketty’s predictions.  In other words, forget worsening inequality – it ain’t going to happen. This conclusion is music to the ears of mainstream economics, especially its neoclassical wing.
......
By reducing corporate profits by the amount of depreciation of capital, it appears that capital is not really extracting any value from labour.

But that is putting the cart before horse. The first process in the capitalist mode of production is the extraction of surplus value from labour. The second process is the investment of that surplus value in the stock of fixed assets to compete and raise or maintain profitability. As Marx explained, this is where an important contradiction arises; between a rising rate of surplus value and a falling rate of profit. Both Piketty and Rognlie ignore or deny this contradiction. For Piketty, there is a rising share of income going to capital (a rising rate of surplus value) and so no falling rate of profit. For Rognlie, there is no rising rate of surplus value, so there is a falling rate of profit). Both are wrong.

Actually, whether net of depreciation or not, the share of income going to capital (the rate of surplus value if you like) in the G7 economies has been rising, if you include housing. On a net basis it has risen since the mid-1970s, even if the share is not much higher than in the mid-1960s. And yet the rate of profit on productive capital has fallen in G7 economies since 1950.

So the Rognlie papers have not really brought up anything new in the debate about Piketty’s work and his conclusions. There is no dispute that the inequality of wealth and income in the main capitalist economies had risen to 19th century heights by the end of the 20th century. Rognlie merely follows previous work by heterodox and Marxist economists to show that this is mainly due to the explosion in the value of housing in the last 30 years. So Piketty’s ‘fundamental laws of capitalism’ that Piketty contrasts to that of Marx, namely that the rate of return on capital is and will be higher than the growth of income; and that savings rates will rise to benefit the owners of ‘wealth’, are not correct explanations of rising inequality."

Aziz Mian Sings Qawwali- Mira Bhajan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHaNItWKt2g#t=199

It is difficult to keep politics out of economic matters

Illargi in Recovery, Geopolitics and Detergents "... I find myself not just stating the usual ‘I write about finance and energy’, but adding: ‘it seems to become more and more about geopolitics too’. And it’s by no means just me: a large part of the ‘alternative finance blogosphere’, or whatever you wish to call it, is shifting towards that same orientation."
Analysis of Leaked Trans-Pacific Investment Text from Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch via Lambert Strether Who has more links.
Make no mistake- the United States is at war in Yemen from FP
Pakistani delegation in Saudi Arabia from Dawn

Suhasini Mistry

Anita Pratap in Humanity Hospital was built by a woman whose husband died for want of medical help: "Through her tears and fears, Subhashini made an oath that fateful day. No one should suffer her fate. Basic medical attention could easily have saved her husband who had nothing more than a bout of gastro enteritis.

But poverty and callous hospital staff had killed her husband. She vowed she would do what it takes to spare people of this nightmare. She would build a hospital for the poor......

But Subhashini did not have the luxury to indulge in either her dream or her despair. She had four hungry mouths to feed. She only knew housework, so she started working as a maid servant in five houses nearby, earning a total of Rs. 100 a month.

She recalls: “There is no work my hands have not done. I have cooked, mopped floors, washed utensils, cleaned gardens, polished shoes, concreted roofs.” Her son Ajoy was a good student. She sent him to an orphanage in Kolkata so he could get a decent education. The other three children helped with housework."

About us from the hospital website and on Facebook.

Links March 30, 2015

Robert .McNamara and the evolution of modern management:"In filmmaker Errol Morris’s Academy Award–winning documentary The Fog of War, McNamara summarized his approach with two principles: “Maximize efficiency” and “Get the data.”

Yet McNamara’s great strength had a dark side, which was exposed when the American involvement in Vietnam escalated. The single-minded emphasis on rational analysis based on quantifiable data led to grave errors. The problem was, data that were hard to quantify tended to be overlooked, and there was no way to measure intangibles like motivation, hope, resentment, or courage. ....Equally serious was a failure to insist that data be impartial. "

Distorting Putin's favorite philosophers:"For all the United States’ vaunted freedom, it exhibits surprisingly little freedom of maneuver when it comes to its foreign policy. Far from taking into consideration Russia’s vital security needs, to say nothing of Russia’s identity, U.S. ideologues have behaved as if both are either non-existent or fundamentally illegitimate. Such compulsive political behavior is the sure sign of ideological infection.

Brooks, Snegovaya and Galeotti apparently have all made use of the same basic logic when they examined the philosophical sources of Putin’s thinking. That logic went something like this: a) Washington considers Russia a problem, therefore, b) Vladimir Putin is a thug; and therefore, c) the Nineteen Century philosopher Vladimir Solovyov dreamed of restoring the Soviet Union to its former Christian glory and might.

Such sloppy thinking would not have happened were these three otherwise intelligent people not (one hopes temporarily) previously incapacitated by ideological blinders. Unfortunately, the same ideological thinking dominates nearly all of U.S. discourse vis-à-vis Russia, making a political settlement impossible."

How a bee sting saved my life: poison as medicine (via Ed Yong)

Stanford study: how to encourage men to give money to the poor

The brain's empathy gap

My meeting with a dalit boy

from my Facebook wall :
"About two years ago, I visited a few villages in Guntur area (Veluru, Palaparru?, and along the way, we saw from a distance the famous Sowpadu) on a motorcycle. The final lap was a nearly 70 kilometre journey to Pedavadlapudi.One dalit boy rode a borrowed vehicle and after a while, the travel was tough for me and I started asking for rest breaks. During the breaks, we would chat. He just finished his B.Tech. He was looking for jobs and meanwhile doing day labor in the fields along with his parents. I suggested that it would not be so easy to find jobs and that he should inquire about specializations where the jobs are and take some coaching classes and courses in a place like Hyderabad. At another stop, he took me to a leafy campus where he studied and started telling me about the best time of his life there where he could study peacefully , learn and develop some interests. Then he suddenly told me about a brahmin girl that he met at the end of his studies. She said that she observed him during those four years, liked his ways and was wanted to marry him. But he felt that he should first alleviate the poverty of his parents before he settled down. She was one of the top students in the class and got a job immediately whereas he got the admission through reservations, struggled, just made it and found it hard to find a job. I tried to tell him that such girls are hard to find and he should keep in touch with her. He did not seem averse to the idea but seemed more concerned about his parents who were still laborers. I am still in touch with him, talk to him once in a while on the phone. He finally got a small job and now wants to pursue in spare time some of the topics he found interesting during his student days. I hope that there are relatively cheap information and advisory sites for such youngsters."

P.S. I contacted three face book friends with contacts in Bangalore where the boy is going to work from April 6. There were also enquiries about his skills. My response " His English is poor. He mumbles etc. and does not express himself very clearly. But he is sincere and will work hard. Probably too nice. He comes from a group of dalits I have been funding a bit. If he comes up he is likely to help others."
P.P.S.http://social.yourstory.com/2015/03/venkat-maroju/ "I had a rural background, I lacked English communication skills (I could not speak one full sentence in English properly when I joined college) and I was a‘reservation candidate’.” 

Two pieces from Keynes

Is the economic system self-adjusting?
Euthanasia of the rentier

From 'Broadway melody of 1940'

And news from an empire that declined

How corrupt is Britain? by George Monbiot: " The UK, Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg and Germany are all ranked by Transparency International as among the least corrupt nations on earth. They are also listed by the Tax Justice Network as among the worst secrecy regimes and tax havens⁸. For some reason though, that doesn't count."

And may be some positive news: "Comedian Russell Brand has revealed his plans for a new chain of non-profit businesses which would boast their own currency."

There seem to have been some encouraging efforts in Marinaleda in Spain and Anarva in Greece.

Final stand of a declining Empire?

From Financial Times (some internet search if one does not have a subscription): "The participation of countries in the TPP has less to do with enthusiasm for importing the US economic model than a grudging acceptance that yet more tribute has to be paid in order to retain access to the US market. "
"Australia, for example, seems to have been rather bruised by its experience during the negotiation of the US-Australia trade deal. It conceded a fair amount and was asked to give up more – witness the pressure to rewrite the country’s public healthdrugs purchasing scheme at the behest of American Big Pharma. But it had few of its own demands met, including more access to the ludicrously-rigged US sugar and dairy markets. Australia has been surly about the TPP from the beginning, owing something to its previous experience."
(via Lambert Strether who has more links)
More by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

Cool manual tiller

Check also for comments https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=818624161508241&pnref=story

Links 26th March 2015

Beans breakthrough bodes well for climate change challenge
But beware of the so-called philanthropic foundations and aid agencies
Stop making us guinea pigs from New York Times

Anavra, Greece: Sustainable local development for peace and prosperity

Not even Paul Krugman is a real Keynesian from Boston Globe about the work of Lance Taylor and Duncan Foley
(most via Naked Capitalism Links and Water Cooler)

CRISPR revolution links

Tyler Cowen has many in The CRISPR revolution seems to be here, is this the coming of eugenics?
One of the links: Scientists seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

The semi final

New Zealand vs South Africa

New Horizons in agriculture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=151&v=e0Le4NKTZ_o
"The South Australian Agriculture Minister says the "amazing" results of a soil improvement program prove grain producers do not need genetic modification technology."

Links, 23 March 2015

Shakespeare in Teheran by Stephen Greenblatt: "He seems to have folded his most subversive perceptions about his particular time and place into a much larger vision of what his characters repeatedly and urgently term their life stories. We are assigned the task of keeping these stories alive, and in doing so we might a find a way, even in difficult circumstances, to be free, honest, and open in talking about our own lives."
Israel: The Stark Truth by David Shulman
Ahmedabad lesson for: RTE success story city at IIM resource cetnre (via Madhukar Shkla)
Philip Holden on Lee Kuan Yew "There is a sense of history about his passing. He was one of the last of the generation of political leaders at the time of decolonization. People are comparing him to Mandela, Nehru, and Nkrumah. In terms of experience, if not of age, he is of the same generation as them, part of a turning point in history.

But in another sense he was not like them at all...............

Paradoxically, LKY and his team delivered the goods of development as none of the other leaders were able to. For me, this is the paradox that we live with in Singapore: we, and others throughout the "developed" world, are variously privileged by a model of economic development that has succeeded through an almost willed inhumanity, lack of humility, and lack of empathy for others."

Extraordinary stuff

according to Rahul Siddharthan.
Biologists devise invasion plan for mutations:
"In the study, published online this week (http://scim.ag/VMGantz), Gantz and Bier report that the introduced mutation disabled both normal copies of a pigmentation gene on the fruit fly chromosomes, transmitting itself to the next generation with 97% efficiency—a near-complete invasion of the genome. The secret of its success: an increasingly popular gene-editing toolkit called CRISPR (Science, 23 August 2013, p.833), which Gantz and Bier adapted to give the mutation an overwhelming advantage. The technique is the latest—and some say, most impressive—example of gene drive: biasing inheritance to spread a gene rapidly through a population, or even an entire species. At this level of efficiency, a single mosquito equipped with a parasite-blocking gene could in theory spread malaria resistance through an entire breeding population in a single season "
More at ScinceDaily "The two biologists note in their paper that while applications of MCR offer potential solutions to important problems in health and human welfare, it could also pose serious potential risks in the wrong hands."

Jogan 1950

A review of the film: "The film's aesthetics, as we said, were hard to pin down. There were some cute, blunt symbols: such as when Nargis, after first meeting her admirer, escapes to her room and the picture of a fluttering, caged bird is superimposed over her. The director also favored incredibly tight close-ups coupled with minimalist composition, all contributing to the Zen look. Another really interesting thing: this might be the shortest Hindi film ever, clocking in at a mere 1hr 45min! Canst it be POSSible?! Just another thing to add to the list of Why Jogan Is So Unique."

Lecture by Henrietta Moore

The end of development The lecture lasts about 22 minutes.