"These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. "
"Earlier this week, a rival consortium composed of Northrop Grumman Corp. and European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co. withdrew from the competition, in part because it said the terms favored Boeing. "Such methods by the United States are not good for its European allies, and such methods are not good for the United States, a great, leading nation with which we are on close and friendly terms," Mr. Sarkozy said. "If they want to be heard in the fight against protectionism, they should not set the example of protectionism." In addition, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told the Wall Street Journal Friday that "avoiding protectionism, avoiding exclusion and restrictions is something we should all be very keen to do."
US preparations for the next-generation of war; cyber-war in this article on Common Dreams adapted from BBC news
"Summer of 2008, Beijing Olympics. As the world settles down to watch the Games, war erupts deep in the Caucasus Mountains. Georgian rockets fly, Russian tanks roll, - and Russian hackers storm Georgian websites.
AFRICA Obama pledged this week to extend economic sanctions on Zimbabwe by one year following a similar extension by the EU despite the south African nation's inflation topping 321 million percent. That bears repeating. 321 million percent. The sanctions, including an arms embargo by the EU ,were imposed in response to human rights abuses by President Mugabe and his government, as well as suspected election fraud . A coalition government is present, partly Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Prime Minister Tsvangira's MDC, and although British Foreign Secretary David Milliband has expressed interest in cooperating with the MDC party, the sanctions are likely to stay in place, as international leaders struggle to differentiate Mugabe's abusive influence from that of the new coalition government. Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara goes so far as to call the sanctions illegal
Ministers, assistant ministers, MPs and others allegedly associated with the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya are to be named during a continuing investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The list if left unsealed, will reveal those alleged to have planned and even financed the violence that occurred after President Mwai Kibaki emerged victorious in a heated competition between Kibaki's (Party of National Unity) PNU and RailA Odinga's (Orange Democratic Movement) ODM in which tribalism was a dividing factor.
ANTARCTICA China has joined the list of nations clamoring to claim some access to Arctic waters, in response to retreating Arctic sea ice. A report by the Stockholm International Peace Institute inds the Acting Programme Director Linda Jakobson relaying that, "To date China has adopted a wait-and-see approach to Arctic developments, wary that active overtures would cause alarm in other countries due to China's size and status as a rising global power". The report, titled China Prepares For an Ice-Free Arctic can be found here.
Inspire Antarctic Expedition, a program by the 2041 organization will be taking an Antarctic expedition between March 5-18 with group of corporate leaders, environmentalists, entrepreneurs and others in tow. Ok, perhaps that sentence will make less sense upon the extrapolation that 2041 is an organization dedicated to preserving the continent Antarctica, especially with the impending expiration in 2012 of the Kyoto Protocol for the Environment program. In 2041 specifically, the Protocol for Environmental Protection is open for amendment, hence the name of the program. Upon visiting the sponsors page, one discovers Coca Cola and BP among others. I am puzzled as to why the polar explorer and environmentalist who founded 2041 believes an oil company,a socially irresponsible corporation and a team of corporate leaders will take genuine interest in preserving the fondly described "last wilderness in the world".
Indonesia's Vice President and Finance Minister were the subject of an impeachment debate on Tuesday March 2 amid criticism of the $700 million bailout of private Bank Century.
AUSTRALIA Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's proposal of a federal takeover of the nations state-run hospital system has been challenged by some, being viewed as a diversion tactic to distract critics of his home insulation program and other controversial programs. {Search queries for the definition and purpose of the program only yield statements of the programs closing as of Feb,19 2010 in addition to criticisms.}
Drought policies in Australia are under amendment as Agriculture minister Tony Burke claims that "Government support and assistance is conditional upon how much debt you are in. If, for whatever reason, you've made some really hard decisions during the good times and are not in debt, your reward for that is to get no government assistance."
EUROPE French president Nicolas Sarkozy admitted last week that France had made "grave errors' in its judgment on Rwanda's 1994 genocide, although refrained from an official apology. Several days later, Rwandan authorities have commended the arrest by French police of Agathe Habyarimana , the widow of former president Juvenal Habyarimana whose death is said to have triggered the genocide. French police have not declared the national interest in arresting the widow, and although it is assumed they would extradite her, French officials deny an official request of extradition while Rwandan officials confirm it. After the 2006 accusation by a Paris judge that the current government is responsible for Habyarimana's assassination in 1994, relations between the two nations soured, leaving one to wonder why the French police bothered with an arrest if there is no intention to honor extradition requests.
In response to the use of fake Irish passports in the assassination of a Hamas leader attributed to Israeli agency Mossad, as well as "a wholesale disregard for international law", the Irish town council of Carrickmacross has torn from its guest book, the signature of Israel's ambassador to Ireland. I seriosuly doubt the effectiveness of this measure, although I am almost certain more public displays of Israeli disapproval will follow from the other nations whose passports were faked.
LATIN AMERICA Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Raul Castro are the most vocal national proponents of an organization to represent political consensus in the Americas. The organization is to be called the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and is expected to consolidate the international interests of those states, especially as a separation from North American interest.
NORTH AMERICA A trick is a trick and that is it. Or is it? Pennsylvania State University professor and climatologist Michael Mann has been cleared after an investigation of emails between himself and a climatologist at the British University of East Anglia. Emails hacked from the Climate Research Institute at the UEA showed a graph publicly used by Mann to profess global warming as having being created using a "trick". The word trick raised suspicions surrounding the accuracy of the data, however, Mann has been cleared after describing the 'trick' as a statistical method of displaying various ranges of data. So when is a trick really a trick?
A prominent advocate of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 ,a standards-based educational program enacted by George Bush II has recalled her advocacy of the program, joining myriad critics of the controversial program. Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch has authored a book titled The Death and Life of the Great American School System in which she disapproves of the emphasis of standardized testing and other measures which detract from the real subject, which is successfully educating students.NPR's Steven Inskeep interviews her here
It has been obvious to me for quite awhile that my book review topics and other postings may not always be closely relevant to current events. {By the time I finish reading a book and reviewing it, the material may not be quite as 'hot off the presses}.While certain issues can almost always be considered current events, I have been wanting to incorporate current events,preferably in keeping with my blog's main topics; globalization, international relations, global economics/finance and international politics.
Enter: My new bi-weekly series titled " All The World's Estranged'. Eighty seconds is the amount of time it should take you to catch up on current events from around the world. The posts will be concise but will contain links for further information for those long Sundays for which spending hours catching up to the world simply seems appropriate. I will not designate specific days of the week for posting the series, although Tuesdays and Fridays seem best for keeping in the definition of the term 'current' :)
What will be different about this series from other news blogs and sites you ask? I aim to gather my information from a wide range of sources, from private and public, to independent sources in order to let you decide what is news and what isnt. In order to ensure comprehensive coverage, the news will be divided by continent- yes, even Antarctica!
Oh yes- the title. The title 'All The World's Estranged' is a play on words on the famous Shakespeare quote "all the world's a stage" from his play As You Like It. Jacques, a malcontent Lord from the Exiled Court of Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden opines;
Act II Scene VII
All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances
And one man in his time plays many parts
His acts being seven ages
I do not concur with Thomas Friedman's view that the world is flat, nevertheless I find it a futile effort to deny that globalization has smoothed out some curves on the international relations landscape. The global interconnectivity of goods, services, ideologies and cultures has significantly contracted the conceptual distance between physically distant supply and demand marriages. As borders come down , the saying 'it's a small world' seems more relevant and simultaneouly, current events of one country are regurgiated by popular news media world wide, feeding into the idea that globalization = homogeneity.
All the world's a stage, indeed, but the monologue and dialogue of the players differ. Globalization brings the world to our fingertips, and the task at hand {pun intendend} is to determine the associations and correlations relayed by the information we have access to. In lieu of dealing with the seven stages of a man's life pronounced byShakespeare's Jacques, I will attempt to provide snippets of associations in current events, from the seven grand theatres -Asia,Africa, Antarctica,Australia, Europe, North America and South America.
The WTO was formed in 1995 as the successor of the GATT and it its nineteen years of existence has built itself to be a global institution to be reckoned with. Nation-states developed and developing, big and small, all know the importance of belonging to the WTO, for the benefits of forming trade agreements that can help nations grow out of poverty, expand their economies, and better the standards of well being for their citizens. Trade agreements are supposedly forged in the WTO through a democratic, consensus decision-making process. On its website, the organization names among 4 qualities that a trading system should have, two of which I will address in this paper; the lack of discrimination, and more beneficial provisions for less developed countries. Despite the rapid growth in size of the organization, the WTO has been increasingly questioned in recent years on issues such the legitimacy of its affairs, the fairness of its central processes, and its overall credibility as affected by the former two factors.
One of the criticisms of the WTO is that it is a platform for hegemonic trade manipulation in favor of the large, developed, western nation-states and ignorant of the less developed ones. In proving this, my research will first establish the importance of reviewing this organization and the criticism it faces, and then define the meaning of legitimacy and fairness as they apply. Subsequently, this paper will stipulate the specific areas in which the WTO is lacking by reviewing recent and current developments as well as permanent characteristics of the organization..The thesis of this paper is that international trade agreements are skewed in favor of western nation-states and the WTO, the organization charged with multilateral, democratic negotiation falls short of accomplishing the purpose for which it was created. The ultimate goal is to propose reforms that can restore credibility to the organization in hopes of better reaching the goals for which it was created.
The self-stated purpose of the WTO is to liberalize trade, facilitate the negotiation of trade agreements, and help settle trade disputes between member countries. Based on this, a comparison can be made between the expected and realized outcomes of membership. Developing countries especially have much to gain from the WTO, and after gaining membership, have visibly attempted to implement the advice given them by the WTO. African countries for example, have heeded the advice of others to increase production of horticulture and to increase exports, but at the same time, as other developing countries have done the same, the result has been a backfire. Carol Thompson states that the simultaneous expansion of exports has led to increased quantities in the world economy and thus reduced prices for the products of developing countries, culminating in reduces revenues. This is an example of generalized advice that has been successful for developed nations and that is being given to developing nations without regard for the intricate variances respective to their economies.
A wealthier nation with a developed economy can handle a decrease in export revenues due to an influx of product on the global market, much more effectively than a poor, developing nation. The economy of a developed nation is already integrated with the global economy and has the flexibility to counter a loss of export revenues with foreign investments or the export of services, Kapoor points that that the TRIP (Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) and TRIM (Trade Related Investment Measures) programs which are endorsed by the WTO for global investments, assume that developing countries are on the same playing field as western developed countries. It is common knowledge that western developed nations dominate the global finance and technology arena's, so there should be provisions that level the field for developing countries(535).Developing countries do not have diverse economies, so if significant efforts are directed toward manufacture and agriculture for export,, a loss of export revenue is a disastrous blow. These are the kinds of variances between WTO member nations that must be considered, before guidance is issued.
TBC..
Works Cited
Albin, Cecilia. "Using Negotiation to promote legitimacy; an assessment of proposals for reforming the WTO." International Affairs 84.4 (2008): 757-75. Print.
Drope, Jeffrey M. "The Political Econmy of Nontariff Barriers in Emerging Economies." Political Research Quarterly 60.3 (2007): 401-14. Print.
Kapoor, Ilan. "Deliberative Democracy and the WTO." Review of International Political Economy 11.3 (2004): 522-41. Print.
Rose, Andrew K. "Do we Really Know that the WTO Increases Trade?" The American Economic Review 94.1 (2004): 98-114. Print.
Satapathy, C. "Trade Sanctions and Other Barriers to Free Trade." Economic and Political Weekly 34.51 (1999): 3583-585. Print.
Thompson, Carol. "Decade of "Trade Not Aid"" Review of African Political Econonomy 30.96 (2003): 321-23. Print.
In a sociology course I am enrolled in, we are discussing the family through a global perspective, which got me thinking about family in the micro-perspective. I set out to answer these questions:
Why is the family so important for people and societies? What do we learn in families? What forms to families take? What about the alternative family forms, such as same sex marriage? What are the social and political implications for society of legalizing same sex marriages?
A family is the smallest unit of society in which we arrange ourselves. We are born into families , we live our lives influenced by the cultural values we learn from our families, and when we depart, we are mourned by our families. As human beings, we connect to other humans during the course of our lives through alliances known as relationships. The first relationships that we build in life however are relationships with our families whom we live with and interact with every day. It is often found in psychology that our adults lives are immensely affected by both relevant and seemingly irrelevant experiences from our childhood. During our childhood, we learn from and in our families, how we will live our lives 'outside'. Based on the relationships that we create within our families, we seek out either similar or dissimilar ones with other members of other families to whom we have something different{from their familial relationships} to offer and vice versa. These families and the relationships between them, be they economic or social band together to form societies. Without our families to serve as the 'base camp' for cultural values and human relationship, integration with other members of society would be difficult, and perhaps even impossible.
Family forms have taken different patterns over time, although all the present ones have existed before in historic times. The nuclear family is perhaps the most common, and is defined by a mother, father and their children. The nuclear family sometimes is defined by a single parent, and in the modern world, perhaps by two parents of the same sex. While there is resistance to consider a family with same-sex parents a nuclear family, I believe that a nuclear family is structurally characterized by the presence of two parents, regardless of gender. The principal characteristic is that the group is united by parenthood. By default of the definition of two parents, nuclear families are characterized by polygamy, which is the marriage ot only one spouse. The extended family is still common in many traditional societies today, and is defined by a grouping of additional relatives such as aunts and grandparents with the nuclear family.
Polygamy, the marriage of more than one spouse is a cultural aspect that has become less socially acceptable in the modern world, especially with the progress made on women's rights. This is because polygamous marriages were often found to be patriarchal and ignorant of the right of a woman to choose. The polygamous family does not easily fall into the category of either nuclear or extended family.
With the creation of new families over times, rules for descent are usually established in families and societies. In patrilineal descent, inheritance is transferred between father and son. In matrilineal descent, inheritance is transferred from a mother's brother to the children of that brother's sister. According to Dr. Nelson's Sociology in the Global Perspective, both systems of decent have disadvantages to the members of the family .The patrilineal descent risks the end of the line of descent if there are no male heirs, and the matrilineal descent places too much pressure on fathers.
Democratic movements such as gay rights movements and increasing individualism across the world have led to alternative forms of family organization. Those who no longer view marriage as a necessary event to signify their long-standing relationship are choosing more and more to cohabitate. Those in homosexual relationships choose to cohabitate anyway because the law does not allow them to officially pronounce their relationship with a marriage. The increase in divorce rates over the past two decades may also have led some to simply cohabitate, perhaps because it gives them a sense of more personal freedom.
The subject of same-sex marriage is the most popular in today's discussion of family life. The proponents believe that two parents of the same sex can provide the same quality of child-rearing that two heterosexual parents can. Opponents counter that this is untrue, that two parents of different sexes have different and important values to offer to child-rearing. I believe that good parents, regardless of sex will provide the quality child-rearing that the child needs. It is the personality of the parent, not their sex, that determines whether they will provide their child a well-rounded and healthy childhood. Legalizing same-sex marriage would reduce the tension and resulting violence against brought about by the same-sex relationships debates, It is also likely to increase social tolerance of individuals towards those who may not agree with their ideals which can make for more harmonious social relations. This harmony could also translate to the political area, where once legalized{same-sex marriage} , the focus on same-sex debates could be shifted to issues that are more pertinent to the basic needs of every member of society. The basic needs of a person have been brought under threat by the economic crisis, and it is important that this issue be resolved because the livelihood of many is at stake.
Sociology in Global Perspective, Lynn Nelson ISBN: 0-9663792-0-9
Isobel Coleman, a Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations attributes many aspects of society wealth to women and their role in society. Reducing gender disparity is correlated to fighting poverty, economic progress and a generally better quality of life. While these are grand results from simply reducing gender disparity, Coleman focuses mostly on the democratizing effect of educating women . In the article, increasing girls' and women's education lowers birth rates & infant mortality rates provides for better birth outcomes (higher birth weights) and leads to better child nutrition. These are just some of the health benefits, while economic ones include more family-focused investments of household income , higher per capita income and even better outcomes from microfinance loans. Female education increases their civil liberties and Coleman assumes, would lead to other democratic reforms such as giving women a political voice as well as more control over economic resources. The current status of society in nations that have implemented policies to reduce gender disparity versus those that have not, is compared to show the differences. Turkey and Tunisia fall into the former category, boasting higher literacy rates for women, and women in positions of national political power. Nigeria, Indonesia, and some nations in the Middle East are not close to achieving either of the two progresses and encounter high tension whenever the advancement of women is brought into question. Coleman states that "women are critical to development, good governance, and stable civil life" (82).
A key strength of this article, is that Coleman provides a full-circle illustration of the possible positive outcomes of reducing gender disparity. The most obvious issues that come to mind on the subject of women's civil liberties is their political voice. While it is important that they voice their political opinions, it makes more sense to first educate women, so that they can voice well-thought, academically diverse opinions which may have a greater impact on improving their lives and those of their families. I believe that education is the foundation for a better quality of life, because the material factors that improve our lives all begin as ideas. Education serves many purposes, the two most important being; first stimulating the mind so that it is perpetually in a state of creation, and then exposing it to spheres of information and experience which combine to build a knowledge base. Politicians of non-democratic governments who are in the position to create policies which increase women's education may be more concerned with the ignorant idea of repressing women so as maintain their stereotypical position as housewives and inferiors to men. Simultaneously, they may be facing the issue of rocketing birth rates without the economic resources to attend to a rising population. The correlation between supporting better primary education for women, and reducing birth rates in poverty-stricken parts of society, is not instantaneously obvious for many political leaders. The correlation however, at a large scale in India and other developing countries. A thought that comes to mind, is that education that affects the life cycle (birth rates, infant mortality rates etc) does not necessarily mean education focused on these subjects. For example, a women can be educated on the benefits of having fewer children, and make the same educated decision as a woman who simply attended secondary school. What I mean is, even the opportunity to be more educated in any area can be inspiring to a young woman, who might otherwise find herself restricted to the role of caretaking. The first woman, who learned about the danger of having more children than she can care for may decide not to have more than two children, because her economic and emotional resources cannot allow it. The second woman, who may not have had the same lesson, but who graduated from primary school, may choose to have only two children, because she would like to continue on to secondary school as soon as the children begin attending school. In both cases, education has reduced the birth of children into homes where they may not have received adequate care. It is important to recognize this, because there are developing countries where there is a presence of reproductive education that is not complemented by an even higher level of general education.
The conflict paradigm of sociology can be used to analyze the issue of gender disparity, because it associates social inequities with systemic flaws, rather than accepting them as part of society. The conflict theory focuses on the inequality of power in a society, which allows some to rise into dominant positions, and others to be dominated. When applied to gender disparity, it is revealed that the gender gap disallows women from even having the opportunity to escape the realm of those who are dominated. Lack of education, lack of control over economic resources, and repression of the female political opinion leaves women unequipped to compete with men for dominating positions. While dominance can be viewed in both positive and negative lights, there is no doubt that having women in dominant political and economic positions has more documented positive benefits over stereotypical chauvinist-engineered disadvantages.
This article has reminded me about the wealth of possibilities that women in developing can surpass and taught me about the rarely mentioned fortes of women in aspects such as money management. According to the article, Lawrence Summers, a former chief economist at the World Bank once stated that educating girls may be the investment that yields the highest returns in the developing world. Considering that women comprise a larger population than men in the world and in most societies, I agree with Summers, that focusing on this part of the population could manifest in tremendous ways globally.
This weekend and the next one and a half weeks will be incredibly busy- I have several exams next week in addition to two papers I have to write. I have been working on a paper I have due in my Asian Government & Politics course. Its a Comparative Politics course, and for the term paper, I chose to write about civil liberties in East Asia, specifically about internet access freedoms in China and Singapore. Believe it or not I was having a hard time finding sources even with the notorious internet access issued in many parts of China. Anyway I doubt I will be able to update for about a week but as soon as I can, I will. I have an article written by Francis Fukuyama on the conundrum of foreign aid and corrupt politics in Africa, that I have been wanting to read and review.
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