Interview with the authors:A New Way to Think About Solving the World’s Biggest Problems How to build global cooperation. It’s SIMPOL! Excepts The book at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/SIMPOL-Solution-Solving-Biggest-Problems/dp/1633883930
Monday, July 23, 2018
Saturday, July 21, 2018
John Lanchester on ten years after 2008
After the fall The early parts are familiar. Towards the end, he talks of the missing wealth:
"The frustrating thing is that the policy implications of this idea are pretty clear. In the developed world, we need policies that reduce the inequality at the top. It is sometimes said these are very difficult policies to devise. I’m not sure that’s true. What we’re really talking about is a degree of redistribution similar to that experienced in the decades after the Second World War, combined with policies that prevent the international rich person’s sport of hiding assets from taxation. This was one of the focuses of Thomas Piketty’s Capital, and with good reason. I mentioned earlier that assets and liabilities always balance – that’s the way they are designed, as accounting equalities. But when we come to global wealth, this isn’t true. Studies of the global balance sheet consistently show more liabilities than assets. The only way that would make sense is if the world were in debt to some external agency, such as Venusians or the Emperor Palpatine. Since it isn’t, a simple question arises: where’s all the fucking money? Piketty’s student Gabriel Zucman wrote a powerful book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations (2015), which supplies the answer: it’s hidden by rich people in tax havens. According to calculations that Zucman himself says are conservative, the missing money amounts to $8.7 trillion, a significant fraction of all planetary wealth. It is as if, when it comes to the question of paying their taxes, the rich have seceded from the rest of humanity."
"The frustrating thing is that the policy implications of this idea are pretty clear. In the developed world, we need policies that reduce the inequality at the top. It is sometimes said these are very difficult policies to devise. I’m not sure that’s true. What we’re really talking about is a degree of redistribution similar to that experienced in the decades after the Second World War, combined with policies that prevent the international rich person’s sport of hiding assets from taxation. This was one of the focuses of Thomas Piketty’s Capital, and with good reason. I mentioned earlier that assets and liabilities always balance – that’s the way they are designed, as accounting equalities. But when we come to global wealth, this isn’t true. Studies of the global balance sheet consistently show more liabilities than assets. The only way that would make sense is if the world were in debt to some external agency, such as Venusians or the Emperor Palpatine. Since it isn’t, a simple question arises: where’s all the fucking money? Piketty’s student Gabriel Zucman wrote a powerful book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations (2015), which supplies the answer: it’s hidden by rich people in tax havens. According to calculations that Zucman himself says are conservative, the missing money amounts to $8.7 trillion, a significant fraction of all planetary wealth. It is as if, when it comes to the question of paying their taxes, the rich have seceded from the rest of humanity."
Pay it forward
the Wikipedia article Pay it forward. I came across this in Second shot coffee. Possibly one unconsciously knew it and practiced it off and on.
Eric Weinstein on inequality
Excerpts and comments via Arnold King who says “I would describe the interview as a set of very interesting threads, which to my frustration are left dangling. I don’t know whether the fault lies with Eric, the interviewer, or the editor.” one of the comments says that there are some podcasts which are more satisfactory.
On Khemchand Prakash
KHEMCHAND PRAKASH : DIL NE PHIR YAAD KIYA by Sushrut Vaidya, a comprehensive article on his life and work.
Friday, July 20, 2018
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Three books in one review
By John Lanchester : Can economists and humanists be ever friends? Very nice article like some other things he has written.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Assignment
Barefoot: worlds apart by Harsh Mander
"I accepted an invitation three years ago to teach a semester course every year on poverty and governance to the MBA students in this business school. The challenge of speaking about hunger, homelessness, want and discrimination to a classroom of some of the brightest achievers in the country — who, within months of my course, would be recruited to jobs which would easily place them in the top one per cent income bracket in the country — was daunting. But I found my students intelligent, engaged and caring, as young people anywhere are.
"I accepted an invitation three years ago to teach a semester course every year on poverty and governance to the MBA students in this business school. The challenge of speaking about hunger, homelessness, want and discrimination to a classroom of some of the brightest achievers in the country — who, within months of my course, would be recruited to jobs which would easily place them in the top one per cent income bracket in the country — was daunting. But I found my students intelligent, engaged and caring, as young people anywhere are.
A different exercise
Instead of an examination at the end of the course, I asked my students every year to each find one impoverished person, in Ahmedabad or elsewhere, and try to learn about their lives, write their stories, and share these with their classmates. Their first reaction was usually one of understandable panic: how could they cross distances imposed by history, class, power, language and so much else; they were convinced that these were insurmountable. I assured them that what was required was no more than one human being reaching out to another, and if they could approach them with true respect and empathy, the people they were trying to learn from would, in all probability, reciprocate."
More about Harsh Mander. He is the author of Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India.
More about Harsh Mander. He is the author of Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Interview with Cornel West
Cornel West: 'Obama was never the revolutionary Mandela was'
“Now, Barack Obama - you have a neo-liberal black president of the most powerful empire in the world; he was never a revolutionary figure in the way Nelson Mandela was.
“Now, Barack Obama - you have a neo-liberal black president of the most powerful empire in the world; he was never a revolutionary figure in the way Nelson Mandela was.
He has always been a neo-liberal politician. He was a black face of the American empire and he [has], in my view, commit[ted] war crimes with his drones in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and Libya.
So, I think the people have the right to protest because you don't want Obama to come in and act as if somehow he is connected to the revolutionary Mandela. Now, on the other hand, it is also true that you want a variety of voices to be heard in these lectures."......."
Sure, there is a big difference. Barack Obama was the brilliant, poised, neo-liberal face of the American empire. Donald Trump is the know-nothing, xenophobic, white neo-fascist face of the American empire.
There are some continuities between Obama and Trump in terms of foreign policy and in terms of Wall Street friendliness, but there are some discontinuities ... Obama was never the explicit xenophobe that Trump has been since he took office.
And there is a difference between a neo-liberal and a neo-fascist. Both of them, for me, require serious critique.
But there is a difference between a neo-liberal who has some kind of concern about spectacle, some kind of concern about style, and some kind of concern about the rule of law - even if the rule of law is very tilted against the poor.
But with neo-fascists, its just his raw, crude, gangster to the core and xenophobic, and has no concern for the rule of law. That is what you get with Donald Trump.“
P.S. an exhaustive article on the topic by Paul Street:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/02/obama-a-hollow-man-filled-with-ruling-class-ideas/
P.S. an exhaustive article on the topic by Paul Street:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/02/obama-a-hollow-man-filled-with-ruling-class-ideas/
Monday, July 16, 2018
The need for religion
What Religion Gives Us (That Science Can’t) By Stephen T.Asma . There have also been life long non-religious people like Bertrand Russell. It would have been interesting to compare with that group and check for any common elements that kept them going.
Survival in future
Survival of the richest : The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind by Dougla Rushkoff
“Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.”
“Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.”
Saturday, July 14, 2018
SriSri influence on an IAS officer
https://www.clipzui.com/video/l3q4b5g3q3o4f3q4c41553.html starts around 36:27
Meet Pallavi Akurathi – The Daring IAS Officer Who Is An Inspiration To All The Telugu Medium Students! also A battle I didn’t need
“Ironically, all that effort to learn English, and the humiliation faced along the way, seems ridiculous now. A majority of our daily transactions are in Kannada. I would be a miserable administrator if I were proficient in English but didn’t speak Kannada. While one’s comprehension of English is already tested in the mains, what sense does it make to exclusively ensure the English proficiency of administrators? she wonders. “Even today I cannot understand the poetry that a 6th standard ICSE student writes. How can a government school student, who studies all through only in a regional language, be asked to compete in English comprehension with those from English-medium schools? Can you imagine how unequal the battle is?”
Meet Pallavi Akurathi – The Daring IAS Officer Who Is An Inspiration To All The Telugu Medium Students! also A battle I didn’t need
“Ironically, all that effort to learn English, and the humiliation faced along the way, seems ridiculous now. A majority of our daily transactions are in Kannada. I would be a miserable administrator if I were proficient in English but didn’t speak Kannada. While one’s comprehension of English is already tested in the mains, what sense does it make to exclusively ensure the English proficiency of administrators? she wonders. “Even today I cannot understand the poetry that a 6th standard ICSE student writes. How can a government school student, who studies all through only in a regional language, be asked to compete in English comprehension with those from English-medium schools? Can you imagine how unequal the battle is?”
Friday, July 13, 2018
Exposing modern slavery
The hidden face of modern slavery by Jean Allain
“The Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines state, in part: “To determine, in law, a case of slavery, one must look for possession. While the exact form of possession might vary, in essence it supposes control over a person by another such as a person might control a thing.” The control may involve physical constraint, but control may also “be evident in attempts to withhold identity documents [as in the case of the Thai prostitutes]; or to otherwise restrict free movement or access to state authorities or legal processes; or equally in attempts to forge a new identity through compelling a new religion, language, place of residence, or forcing marriage”.
“The Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines state, in part: “To determine, in law, a case of slavery, one must look for possession. While the exact form of possession might vary, in essence it supposes control over a person by another such as a person might control a thing.” The control may involve physical constraint, but control may also “be evident in attempts to withhold identity documents [as in the case of the Thai prostitutes]; or to otherwise restrict free movement or access to state authorities or legal processes; or equally in attempts to forge a new identity through compelling a new religion, language, place of residence, or forcing marriage”.
Professor Allain says that “this is the essence of slavery: that one person controls another as if they owned them. So the slave no longer has a say over their life, and is forced to do the bidding of the person who controls them.””
More on Mahesh Kathi
It seems that what was used is Telangana Prevention of Anti-Social and Hazardous Activities Act, 1930.: “Among those who are targeted specifically in these laws include “bootleggers, dacoits, drug-offenders, goondas, immoral traffic offenders, land grabbers, gamblers,” as listed by these Acts." ” The same law law was later used to stern Swami Paripoornananda who wanted to organise a march against a Mahesh Kathi. From https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/what-externment-law-telangana-cops-used-ban-mahesh-kathi-hyd-84500
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Inter caste marriages in India on the increase says The Guardian
Intercaste marriages and grooms who pay their way: welcome to the new India :
“Hitesh Dhingra, co-founder of dating app TrulyMadly, believes there are two reasons for the enlightened views expressed in the survey. One is that young Indians, as users of the internet and social media, are exposed to new ideas that challenge traditional social mores.
“Hitesh Dhingra, co-founder of dating app TrulyMadly, believes there are two reasons for the enlightened views expressed in the survey. One is that young Indians, as users of the internet and social media, are exposed to new ideas that challenge traditional social mores.
The other is that, as more millennials choose their partners using dating apps and websites, they are more likely to focus on personality and compatibility than caste and religion.”
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Sheila Dhar on Bhimsen Joshi
From Raga’n Josh
The following video may give some indication of his performances:
A longer version here
The following video may give some indication of his performances:
Pankaj Mishra reviews ‘Ants among elephants’
God’s oppressed children “The result is a book that combines many different genres—memoir, history, ethnography, and literature—and is outstanding in the intensity and scale of its revelations......At such moments, Gidla’s book achieves the emotional power of V.S. Naipaul’s great novel A House for Mr. Biswas, which describes the solitary struggles of a descendant of indentured laborers.....Rather, “it is a battle for freedom…for the reclamation of the human personality”—an arduous, never-ending battle in which Gidla’s book represents an all too rare victory.”
I have repeatedly mentioned and quoted from the book. There has been very little response from the upper caste bloggers so far. There are lots of posts about Trump or Vedas but this book has eenstudiously ignored by the Indian netizens. Even among the Dalits, there is resentment among ambedkarites. She seems a difficult personality if her internet comments on all kinds of issues is any indication. But the book is excellent.
I have repeatedly mentioned and quoted from the book. There has been very little response from the upper caste bloggers so far. There are lots of posts about Trump or Vedas but this book has eenstudiously ignored by the Indian netizens. Even among the Dalits, there is resentment among ambedkarites. She seems a difficult personality if her internet comments on all kinds of issues is any indication. But the book is excellent.
Miracle in Thailand
All out of the cave
How Buddhist meditation kept the Thai boys calm in the cave
“When the 12 Thai boys who’ve been trapped in a cave and are being rescued one by one were first discovered by British divers a week ago, they were reportedly meditating.
How Buddhist meditation kept the Thai boys calm in the cave
“When the 12 Thai boys who’ve been trapped in a cave and are being rescued one by one were first discovered by British divers a week ago, they were reportedly meditating.
“Look at how calm they were sitting there waiting. No one was crying or anything. It was astonishing,” the mother of one of the boys told the AP, referring to a widely shared video of the moment the boys were found.
Turns out that their coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, who led them on a hike into the cave when it flooded on June 23, trained in meditation as a Buddhist monk for a decade before becoming a soccer coach. According to multiple news sources, he taught the boys, ages 11 to 16, to meditate in the cave to keep them calm and preserve their energy through their two-week ordeal.”
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