Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Challenges To The Nation State
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| European Union (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
One major challenge is coming from technology. The individual is greatly empowered through technology, and so the nation state's space needs to shrink. But the nation state is refusing to be a happy, willing partner.
Another challenge is coming from globalization and the redrawing of national boundaries. Europe is a fine example. Europe has the ultimate in infrastructure. It has the roads and the trains and the communications technology. But old cultural identities have not gone away. There are identity movements threatening to break up several countries in Europe right now. I am not sure that is bad news. That is the nation state feeling the pressure.
Scotland is a good example. If Scotland breaks away, I think that will be a vote for the European Union. Defense and monetary policies are best served through larger structures like the European Union, India and the United States. But cultural identities need bigger expressions. That is only healthy.
I don't agree with the methods of the ISIS (at all), but maybe the World War I political boundaries in the Arab world are not sacrosanct after all. Maybe it is good if the Kurds break away. Iraq's boundaries perhaps need to be reimagined.
Sri Lanka is the most literate nation in South Asia. But it has the most complex ethnic problem of anywhere in the world. There has to be peaceful options where an oppressed minority can get justice when a unitary state's majoritarian government is not willing to act fair.
China is another challenge to the nation state. This nation state has lifted more people out of poverty than any other in world history. Give them some credit. Fundamental political reforms are long overdue. I envision a future for China where it has become a multi-party democracy, where it is federal, and Tibet and Taiwan are both part of it. But I feel China can teach America a thing or two about campaign finance reform. When you don't take money out of politics, your democracy is more than a little bit screwed.
Immigration reform failure in America is another challenge to the nation state. America is not keeping up. That is bad news.
Scotland peacefully separating has to become a model for many other parts of the world. If Scotland should move away from London and closer to Brussels, that will be an exercise in deeper, larger political integration. I am all for that.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
London Has Become Cairo (2)
Image via WikipediaWall Street Journal: Repressing the Internet, Western-Style: As the British police, armed with the latest facial-recognition technology, go through the footage captured by their numerous closed-circuit TV cameras and study chat transcripts and geolocation data, they are likely to identify many of the culprits. ..... Authoritarian states are monitoring these developments closely. .... They hope for at least partial vindication of their own repressive policies. ..... Prime Minister David Cameron said that the government should consider blocking access to social media for people who plot violence or disorder. ...... After the recent massacre in Norway, many European politicians voiced their concern that anonymous anti-immigrant comments on the Web were inciting extremism. They are now debating ways to limit online anonymity. ....... acts of terror briefly deprive us of the ability to think straight. We are also distracted by the universal tendency to imagine technology as a liberating force; it keeps us from noticing that governments already have more power than is healthy. ...... After violent riots in 2009, Chinese officials had no qualms about cutting off the Xinjiang region's Internet access for 10 months. ...... In their concern to stop not just mob violence but commercial crimes like piracy and file-sharing, Western politicians have proposed new tools for examining Web traffic and changes in the basic architecture of the Internet to simplify surveillance. ..... Should America and Europe abandon any pretense of even wanting to promote democracy abroad? Or should they try to figure out how to increase the resilience of their political institutions in the face of the Internet?I have never believed in political violence. I don't today. But I do believe in mass action. I don't believe in rioting. But then I don't see the London riots as simply a law and order problem.
The economic roadmap that the Conservative government in Britain has in place as the solution to the recession is precisely the wrong move to make. This is a time for massive rethink on the part of governments and also massive spending to make up for lost private expenditures. Britain is going the wrong way.
If America were to go down that cut the spending route, the recession would deepen, and there would be riots in America.
What is happening in London is less a failure of the British police to control mobs and more the failure of the Conservative government. It is primarily a policy level failure.
There is a need for a massive rethink of the nation state also in long established democracies. Instead of protesting Wikileaks (Learning The Wrong Lessons From Wikileaks) government departments and agencies should be embracing social media like tech startups.
The Internet And The Emperors
There should be talk of one gigabit per second kind of internet access for all and the resultant universal lifelong education. The goal should be universal health care. The goal ought be a Global Marshall Plan.
When it is time to think big, Cameron has thought small. And he has problems on his hands. Tea Party, take note.
London Riots: Debate
The Stimulus Bill Was Messed Up
Three Million Jobs
Global New Deal Needed
London Has Become Cairo
A Second Stimulus Bill Needed
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Three Million Jobs
Image via WikipediaSend one million mentors into all the low performing schools across the country. Pay them. Send one million people to white wash roofs across America. Pay them.
Get a million people to do the netroots thing on behalf of democracy movements across the globe. Pay them. Send 50,000 netroots activists to go out into the world to help those democracy movements from nearby countries.
My point being what America needs is a massive jobs program. And I say start with people who you can pay $10 per hour, $20 per hour.
These are people you should be able to put to work with a week or two of training.
Global New Deal Needed
London Has Become Cairo
A Second Stimulus Bill Needed
London Has Become Cairo
Image via WikipediaPeople in America who seek to cut government spending in ways that will send the world economy hurtling down into a grand recession should look to London now. And you thought only Third World dictators needed to face street power. This is not the time for austerity measures. This is the time for a Global Marshall Plan.
No black person before Barack Obama ever became President Of The United States. That was racism. Blaming Obama for what Bush did is racism. Blaming Obama for not having brought forth some kind of a leftist utopia is also racism.
When you disagree with Tea Party fiscal insanity and blatant racism, you support the other guy. That other guy is Barack Obama. There are too many liberals in America who neither oppose the Tea Party nor support Barack Obama and simply sit back and complain. These are people who only get energized whey they are completely thrown out of power. These are people addicted to powerlessness.
You have to learn to be in power. The liberal crowd has much to learn.
Monday, August 08, 2011
A Second Stimulus Bill Needed
Image via WikipediaNew York Times: Second Recession in U.S. Could Be Worse Than First: the economy is much weaker than it was at the outset of the last recession in December 2007, with most major measures of economic health — including jobs, incomes, output and industrial production — worse today than they were back then. And growth has been so weak that almost no ground has been recouped, even though a recovery technically started in June 2009. ..... When the last downturn hit, the credit bubble left Americans with lots of fat to cut, but a new one would force families to cut from the bone. Making things worse, policy makers used most of the economic tools at their disposal to combat the last recession, and have few options available. ....... the four years since the recession began ...... Today the economy has 5 percent fewer jobs — or 6.8 million — than it had before the last recession began. The unemployment rate was 5 percent then, compared with 9.1 percent today..... the typical private sector worker has a shorter workweek today than four years ago...... Income levels are low, and moving in the wrong direction ...... with construction nearly nonexistent and home prices down 24 percent since December 2007, the country does not have a buffer in housing to fall back on. ..... the economy is smaller today than it was when the recession began ....... Unlike during the first downturn, there would be few policy remedies available if the economy were to revert back into recession. ....... Interest rates cannot be pushed down further — they are already at zero. The Fed has already flooded the financial markets with money by buying billions in mortgage securities and Treasury bonds, and economists do not even agree on whether those purchases substantially helped the economy. So the Fed may not see much upside to going through another politically controversial round of buying. ...... at the end of 2007, the federal debt was 64.4 percent of the economy. Today, it is estimated at around 100 percent of gross domestic product, a share not seen since the aftermath of World War II, and there is little chance of lawmakers reaching consensus on additional stimulus that would increase the debt. ...... “There is no approachable precedent, at least in the postwar era, for what happens when an economy with 9 percent unemployment falls back into recession” ...... 1937, when there was also a premature withdrawal of fiscal stimulus, and the economy fell into another recession more painful than the first ..... Corporate profits are at record highsEven before this recession hit in 2007 China was on schedule to become the number one economy in the world by 2016. Continued policy mistakes in America might only hasten that process. There has been much self destructive behavior.
The stimulus bill was not big enough. The stimulus money was not spent fast like it needed to be to have any effect. One third of the stimulus bill was tax cuts. That was a mistake. Obama did that to get Republican votes, and no Republican voted for the bill anyway. That instead was seen as a sign of weakness and might have hastened the Republican takeover of the House.
The biggest chunk of the stimulus bill needed to go to taking all of America to one gigabit per second kind of broadband. Instead the biggest chunk of the money went to old economy stuff and to humdrum payments. Paying the unemployed is important, but paying the unemployed is not what creates the next generation of jobs.
The threat of a double dip is very real. And the one thing that can save the country is a stimulus bill.
The biggest mistake perhaps has been to apply Great Depression lessons to the Great Recession. The Great Recession is America reeling from a lack of global institutions that globalization asks for. Capital wants to go global at breakneck speeds, but the global infrastructure to make that happen is not there. The Great Depression gave us macroeconomics. The Great Recession needs to give us globoeconomics.
What is needed is massive jobs programs, massive public works programs. Send a million mentors into the inner city schools, and pay them. Send another million to whitewash the roofs across America, and pay them.
Extending the Bush tax cuts was nothing less than criminal.
New York Times: London Sees Twin Perils Converging to Fuel Riot: Frustration in this impoverished neighborhood, as in many others in Britain, has mounted as the government’s austerity budget has forced deep cuts in social services. At the same time, a widely held disdain for law enforcement here, where a large Afro-Caribbean population has felt singled out by the police for abuse, has only intensified through the drumbeat of scandal that has racked Scotland Yard in recent weeks and led to the resignation of the force’s two top commanders...... there was not long to wait until a new one erupted: across London, skirmishes broke out on Sunday between groups of young people and large numbers of riot police officers, which one officer said were drawn from forces around London. ...... In Enfield, a usually calm suburb, shop windows were smashed and debris lay in the street. In nearby Edmonton, groups of young people gathered near damaged storefronts. In Tottenham itself, roads were closed, a helicopter hovered overhead and squads of police vans swooped in to make arrests in side streets. ....... The march turned into a pitched battle between hundreds of officers, some on horses, and equal numbers of rioters, wearing bandannas and armed with makeshift weapons that included table legs and an aluminum crutch. Looting throughout northern London continued past dawn, leaving streets littered with glass. In daylight, residents emerged to survey buildings, many considered landmarks, that had been left gutted and smoldering. ........ unless endemic youth unemployment in Tottenham was curbed, “this will happen again. These kids don’t care. They don’t have to pay for this damage, we do. Working people do. What do they have to lose?” ...... many voiced concern that looters in other areas of London had been allowed to smash and steal for several hours before officers arrived. ....... Economic malaise and cuts in spending and services instituted by the Conservative-led government have been recurring flashpoints for months. ....... Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, were attacked in their Rolls-Royce as protesters — some of whom were subsequently jailed — shouted “Tory scum,” a reference to the Conservative Party’s traditional links with the aristocracy, and “off with their heads!” In March, a reported 500,000 people marched against the cuts, with some protesters occupying the exclusive food store Fortnum & Mason — Prince Charles’s grocer. ...... one man shouted, “This is our battle!” When asked what he meant, the man, Paul Rook, 47, explained that he felt the rioters were taking on “the ruling class.” ....... As the budget cuts take hold, risk of unemployment increases and social measures like youth projects are sacrificed, Mr. Beech said, and “all logic says there will be an increase in antisocial behavior.” “Boredom, alienation and isolation are going to be factors”
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