The 'Super Rich' - Laurie Taylor presents a special programme on the 1% of the 1%. Rowland Atkinson, Research Chair in Inclusive Society at the University of Sheffield, Roger Burrow, Professor of Cities at Newcastle University and Emma Spence, PhD Researcher at Cardiff University explore the origins of this wealthiest of elites and their impact on our cities and lives.
9 January 2017
Vox: How America's "war on terror" was (unwittingly) designed to last forever
According to this 2014 report by the Nation, US Special Operations forces are currently deployed in more than 100 countries, roughly 60 percent of the nations on the planet. The clandestine war has spread well beyond the Middle East; it’s now fully globalized.
We’re fighting what Mark Danner, author of Spiral, calls a “forever war.” Fifteen years into the “war on terror,” we appear no closer to ending it than when we started. Worse, it’s not even clear what “ending it” would look like. We’re battling a constellation of ideas, not a conventional army, and there are no final victories in metaphysical conflicts. [...]
Even more fundamentally, we have to ask if we’ve compromised our values along the way. We’ve tortured prisoners, assassinated American citizens, circumscribed basic rights and freedoms — all in the name security. Has it worked? Were there more prudent alternatives? Is there an end in sight? These are but a few of the many difficult questions posed by Danner. [...]
I think if you could get people in the Bush administration to talk honestly, they might well argue that if things had turned out the way they thought it would, it would have been a political, not a military, response to terrorism. Condoleezza Rice actually said that what they hoped to do was create a model that would deter young men from driving airplanes into buildings. She was thinking of a new Iraq as a kind of political model that would be a response to jihadist terrorism. [...]
Well, John Kerry's experience in the 2004 election suggests the answer to that question is yes. Recall that he argued terrorism would never be eliminated and simply had to be reduced to the level of a nuisance. He was right, of course, but he was lambasted for saying that, and it cost him dearly. Indeed, one could argue that it was a leaked recording of [Osama] bin Laden that circulated a week or so before the election that ultimately cost him the presidency. In any case, it certainly hurt. [...]
Most importantly, we've increased the threat. I think it's incontestable that the number of jihadists and the number of attacks have only increased. As I said at the beginning, you could argue that we've protected the country, but that's a very shortsighted view. [...]
I think there's very little evidence that we're winning. As I said, the only evidence that you can give is defensive in nature: The number of successful attacks on the homeland has been small since 9/11, and the ones that did succeed were relatively minor. But that's not a very compelling case when you consider how few attacks we endured before 9/11.
Now, have our efforts been worth the cost? That's hard to quantify. How do you quantify the costs of Guantanamo? How do you quantify the reputational costs of Abu Ghraib? The US has lost an enormous amount of prestige when it comes to arguments about human rights and the liberal world order.
BBC4 A Point of View: The Shape Of Our Time
Adam Gopnik revisits a much explored subject - the differences between patriotism and nationalism.
In the light of the events of the past year, he questions why the politics of nationalism appear irresistible today.
He wonders "if we cannot now see that patriotism and nationalism have a more fluid, a more organic, a more connected relationship that we might want to imagine".
Vintage Everyday: 50 Astonishing Color Photographs Captured the Communist Regime in Poland in the Early 1980s
Between 1952 and 1989, Poland was called the Polish People's Republic. During these 37 years, the country was subjected to the USSR. For its inhabitants this meant being watched, censored, and deprived. The socialist system influenced every sphere of life. The socialist food distribution system barely functioned, tanks rolled along the streets. But Poles managed to circumvent rules and restrictions, and Chris Niedenthal's camera captured their attempts.
Niedenthal's life would make for a great film. The London-born Pole was raised and educated in the UK. He decided to come to the land of his forefathers and received citizenship in 1998. He settled in Warsaw in 1973 and photographed the grey reality of communism until 1989.
see the photos
Niedenthal's life would make for a great film. The London-born Pole was raised and educated in the UK. He decided to come to the land of his forefathers and received citizenship in 1998. He settled in Warsaw in 1973 and photographed the grey reality of communism until 1989.
see the photos
The Guardian: The time for protest is over. Now Poles must build the state
When we apply the shorthand label “illiberal democracy” to Poland it is vital to distinguish between two different things. First, there is the ideological, cultural and policy agenda of the nationalist populist party that won both parliamentary and presidential elections in 2015. This agenda might unkindly be described as systematic anti-liberalism with a seasoning of resentment and paranoia. I don’t like most of this PiS package, but a plurality of those who turned out to vote clearly did prefer it to the alternatives then on offer, and a victorious party has a right to implement its policies.
What it has no right to do is to dismantle or neutralise the institutions that allow an informed public to make that free choice, and that place essential checks and balances on the executive. But this is what has been happening over the last year. I quite often watch Polish public television. Almost overnight, it turned from a slightly dull and only mildly pro-government channel into a PiS propaganda organ. The country’s constitutional court has now been brought effectively under the control of justices close to the ruling party, despite popular protests organised by the Committee for the Defence of Democracy and repeated warnings from Brussels that this violates the EU’s rule of law criteria. [...]
Instead of institutional resilience, Poland has fallen back on its traditional habits of extra-parliamentary protest, with society organising itself in spite of and against the state. Some of these demos have been impressive, especially the so-called “black protests” in which tens of thousands of women, dressed mainly in black, turned out to refuse a proposed Catholic conservative narrowing of the abortion law. But for the most part, when I watch these marches on snowy Polish streets, with the familiar cadences of their chants, and when I hear old Lech Wałęsa say that “patriots must unite” to get rid of PiS by unspecified “clever, attractive and peaceful” means, I laugh with one eye and weep with the other.
Jakub Marian: ‘January’ in European languages
The English word “January” comes from Latin ianuarius, which means “of Janus” (Janus was an ancient Roman god of doorways, gates, transitions, beginnings, and endings). The corresponding names for the first month of the year in other European languages are also mostly derived from ianuarius (shown in red in the following map):
Other etymologies are as follows: Polish, Ukrainian, and Croatian words styczeń, січень, and siječanj trace back to Proto-Slavic *sěčьńь, which referred to a time when trees were being cut down. Czech leden is derived from led, “ice”, and Belarusian студзень comes from a Slavic root meaning “cold” (note, however, that Russian is also commonly spoken in Belarus). Lithuanian sausis comes from sausas, “dry”. Scottish Gaelic Faoilleach comes from faol (“wolf”) and teach (“burrow”).
Finally, the Turkish, Finnish, and Basque translations are not related to any word mentioned above, which should not surprising, since they are not Indo-European languages. Turkish ocak literally means “stove, fireplace”, likely referring to the fact that January is a cold month, during which one spends a lot of time at home, in front of a fireplace. Finnish tammikuu comes from tammi (“heart, core”) and kuu (“month”), as January the “centre” of winter. Basque urtarril comes from urte (“year”) and berri (“new”).
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