Domain: harpers.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to harpers.org.
Comments · 160
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Re:Morally?
First off: globalization is pretty inevitable.
Globalism isn't inevitable. The only thing that is inenitable is that people supporting Globalism will use this argument when the flaws of Globalism are shown, rather than try to produce some valid counter-argument.
In the long run, it's good for everyone
Err, where's the data on that? We've tried unfettered capitalism. It failed, and led to the Great Depression. There are indicators when capitalism is getting out of control. These include wage stagnation, from lower tier employess having to compete for crumbs, huge profit growth, from the great profits companys make from exploiting job competition. If you haven't noticed, the pay of CEOs and such has been skyrocketing for the last 30 years, but the middle class has seen very little growth.
Anyway, there was a pretty good article about the "inevitability argument" and the state of global capitalism in Harpers in March. They didn't put the article on their site, but I think the full text can be found here.
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Today's secret theocracy is much more interesting
Who cares about a bunch of dead cold warriors when you can read about the theocrats who run the government right now?
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Re:US Flag hoisted by AmericanWhats about this 'The Family' thing?
It is the conspiracy theory du jour. Only this one is actually true. It is pretty well known that Ashcroft is a member of a cultish extreemist 'Christian' sect. Well it is called the Fellowship Foundation and they think Hitler, Suharto and Pinochet are ideal role models for leadership. Other members of the sect include Ed Messe and a number of (unspecified) Senators. At least according to this month's copy of harpers
For three weeks Jeffrey Sharlet lived at Ivanwald, home of the Fellowship Foundation or "the Family," as they call themselves--a secretive religious organization, based in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., whose membership is teeming with United States senators and congressman. In JESUS PLUS NOTHING: Undercover among America's secret theocrats (p. 53), Sharlet huddles with the "brothers" in prayer, competes with them in "bump," a basketball game meant to "sharpen both body and soul," and reveals the Foundation's goals which are as political as they are spiritual. "We recognize the place and responsibility of national secular leaders in the work of advancing His kingdom," states the Family's literature. Since the group was founded in 1935 it has influenced administrations and financed anti-Communist regimes (many less than democratic and even murderous). Through the National Prayer Breakfast, held annually in the capital, the Family recruits the powerful to meet Jesus "man to man." "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't," remarks the Family's leader Doug Coe, a man who admires the unifying tactics of Hitler and the Mafia and is considered by the Family to be "Christ's closest disciple."
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Not to mention The Nation and Harpers
>Utne Reader (uck) and Mother Jones (yeah).
Or on The Nation or Harpers. They come in dead tree format so no more wireless laptops in the bathroom. There's a decent essay out there of how Salon spends its money (giant office spaces, high living, etc) that makes me not want to help them, especially when some very decent papers like MaJones or The Nation do what salon does a lot better.
What bothers me most is the assumption that there is no room for liberal media and people using salon as proof. Salon is just a badly run company ready to join its dot com brethrens at fuckedcompany. They simply failed to compete against more established and better left-leaning news outlets. -
Re:One problem, though...Awareness helps the environment.
It's perfectly reasonable to question how many people will ever read these blogs (aside from those who are already fully on board the movement). It may be preaching to the choir, but it could also be used as an effective alert system to get "the choir" quickly to the site of illegal action.
I'm sure their will also be a couple members of the more mainstream alternative media (folks like Willamette Week, or even Harper's) who will spread some of the better stuff to the general public.
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Thanks to Homeland Security
This is now old news, it was a part of the Homeland Security bill which just passed.
In the past two weeks there has been talk of this in the New York Times (registration blah blah blah), The Washington Post and
Harper's weekly review, to name a few. NPR's All Things Considered had a commentary on this (RealAudio) the other night.
Last week was the time to prevent it, now it's probably too late -- it's law. -
This is interesting.....I find the judge's decision pretty interesting considering the following excerpt was leaked last December from Eric Harris', and Dylan Klebold's Journal following their suicide at Columbine:
..god damnit do not blame anyone else besides me and V [Klebold] for this. don't blame my family, they had no clue and there is nothing they could have done, they brought me up just fucking fine. don't blame the school, don't fucking put cops all over the place... i don't know who will be left after we kill but damnit don't change any policies just because of us. it would be stupid....You can read the full excerpt in this month's issue of Harpers Magazine (the above which I gleefully paraphrased...)
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Always ways aroundI have lived in China for 6 months now. If you want to get the news, there is always ways around the "great firewall". The easiest is looking at cached Google pages. Then comes Safeweb and the like. And my personal favorite, SSH'ing into a US server and browsing news with lynx.
What amazes me, is that the censorship is very content selective and seems to ease over time. For example, in the October releaase of Harpers Index there is one statement about China. The article was blocked the instant it was published, and for the full month Harpers was blocked in China. When the November index came out, one could access the October index and Harpers!
During the APEC meetings here late last year, when all President Bush and other big wigs were in town, CNN, BBC, and other news sites all became miraculasly available! Of course, they were all immediately blocked after APEC had ended.
Will
/. get blocked while running this subject? -
beyond the golden parachutethese guys and gals, the yes men, do some seriously, seriously cool stuff. in the november issue of harper's, they print a transcript of a talk that these folks were invited to give at a textiles conference in Tampere, Finland, from folks that thought that they really were the WTO. A few snippets:
and some more: ... How do we at the WTO fit in? Well, that's easy: We want to help you acieve those dollar results. We want to help make sure that nothing - protectionism, worry, even violence against physical property - stands in the way of your dollar results.
it goes on, about how the market would have stopped slavery ("Involuntarily Imported Workforce") given time, moving production to the third world where things are cheaper, then it gets wack: ... CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR: PROTECTIONISM
[Slide: Freedom]
Why did people fight and die and lose money? It comes down to one word: FREEDOM.
[Slide: Southern Happiness]
By the 1860s, the South was utterly flush with cash. It had recently benefited from the cotton gin, an invention that took the seeds out of cotton and the South out of its preindustrial past. Hundreds of thousands of workers, previously unemployed in their countries of origin, were given useful jobs in textiles. Into this rosy picture of freedom and boom stepped ... you guessed it: the NORTH.Now, we all known that not even the best workplace design can help even the most astute manage keep track odf hstaff. But our solution inables a lot more rapport with remote workers.
And it goes on.
Mike, would you please?
[Unruh steps out from behind the podium to a drum roll. An assistant grabs him by the tie and belt and rips off his suit to reveal a golden spandex unitard underneath.]
Ah! That's better! This is the Management Leisure suit. This is the WTO's answer to the problems of maintaining rapport with distant workers and maintaining one's own mental health as a manager with the proper amount of leisure. How does the MLS work, besides being comfortable? Allow me to describe the suit's core features.
[Unruh unzips the from of the suit, then pulls on a rip cord that inflates a three-foot-long golden phallus. The audience claps.]The presentation, which Harper's describes as "well-received", was subsequently praised by the MC on three seperate occasions that day.
(I want to be a yes man
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Naked Newscasters also help drive addiction rates
Yeah, really easy to get addicted when watching Naked News!
Harpers July Index says they have 6 million visitors per month. And apparently, the are the first net cast to go cable cast as well! Now, I finally have a reason to watch the news.....