"Leaked CNN email raises questions over Castro's legacy" - Livenews.com.au

An interesting but disgusting story about the power of the global media outlets such as CNN in today's world. The following story from livenews.com.au about an leaked email sent to CNN news anchors about how to describe Fidel castro's resignation lays beare the independent credentials of CNN. No wonder some critics have called it Castro News Network. Here is a snippet:

 

 

* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.

* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.

 

Read on..here

 

Hair Today, There Tomorrow

A cool stoy in Spiegel Online about "globalisation's personal link".

GLOBALIZATION'S PERSONAL LINK
Hindu Locks Keep Human Hair Trade Humming
By Britta Sandberg

Halle Berry uses hair extensions. So does Angelina Jolie. Much of the hair they end up with comes from women who offer up their locks to Hindu gods in Indian temples. SPIEGEL followed one pilgrim's hair from Bangalore to Munich.

Read on

More about Neoliberalism from Yale Global Policy Forum

A Short History of Neoliberalism by Susan George

In 1945 or 1950, if you had seriously proposed any of the ideas and policies in today's standard neo-liberal toolkit, you would have been laughed off the stage or sent off to the insane asylum. At least in the Western countries, at that time, everyone was a Keynesian, a social democrat or a social-Christian democrat or some shade of Marxist. The idea that the market should be allowed to make major social and political decisions; the idea that the State should voluntarily reduce its role in the economy, or that corporations should be given total freedom, that trade unions should be curbed and citizens given much less rather than more social protection--such ideas were utterly foreign to the spirit of the time. Even if someone actually agreed with these ideas, he or she would have hesitated to take such a position in public and would have had a hard time finding an audience.

Read on......

2008: The Demise of Neoliberal Globalization by Immanuel Wallerstien

A concise introduction to "neoliberal globalisation" by Wallerstein.

Yale Global
February 4, 2008

The Washington Consensus promised renewed economic growth to everyone and a way out of the global profit stagnation. Politically, the proponents of neoliberal globalization were highly successful. Government after government - in the global South, in the socialist bloc, and in the strong Western countries - privatized industries, opened their frontiers to trade and financial transactions, and cut back on the welfare state. Socialist ideas, even Keynesian ideas, were largely discredited in public opinion and renounced by political elites. The most dramatic visible consequence was the fall of the Communist regimes in east-central Europe and the former Soviet Union plus the adoption of a market-friendly policy by still-nominally socialist China.

The only problem with this great political success was that it was not matched by economic success. The profit stagnation in industrial enterprises worldwide continued. The surge upward of the stock markets everywhere was based not on productive profits but largely on speculative financial manipulations. The distribution of income worldwide and within countries became very skewed - a massive increase in the income of the top 10% and especially of the top 1% of the world's populations, but a decline in real income of much of the rest of the world's populations.

Disillusionment with the glories of an unrestrained "market" began to set in by the mid-1990s. This could be seen in many developments: the return to power of more social-welfare-oriented governments in many countries; the turn back to calling for government protectionist policies, especially by labor movements and organizations of rural workers; the worldwide growth of an alterglobalization movement whose slogan was "another world is possible."

..... So what are the policy conclusions that governments and populations are drawing? There seem to be four in the offing. The first is the end of the role of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world, which renders impossible the continuance of the policy of super-indebtedness of both the government of the United States and its consumers. The second is the return to a high degree of protectionism, both in the global North and the global South. The third is the return of state acquisition of failing enterprises and the implementation of Keynesian measures. The last is the return of more social-welfare redistributive policies.

The political balance is swinging back. Neoliberal globalization will be written about ten years from now as a cyclical swing in the history of the capitalist world-economy. The real question is not whether this phase is over but whether the swing back will be able, as in the past, to restore a state of relative equilibrium in the world-system. Or has too much damage been done? And are we now in for more violent chaos in the world-economy and therefore in the world-system as a whole.

read the original piece here.

Shocking Reporting standards of The Tribune, Chandigarh.

Lecture on Herbert Marcuse
Our Correspondent

Doraha, February 6
An extension lecture on "political ideas of Herbert Marcuse" was organised by the postgraduate department of political science, G.N.N.College, Doraha, today.

Bhupinder Singh Brar, Panjab University, Chandigarh, was the resource person. According to Marcuse, the means of exploitation by capitalist have changed in the modern times, he added. Nowadays, the process of exploiting through maximum work at minimum wages has changed. According to him presently, advanced capitalism is exploiting the consumers by increasing their purchasing power. Along with it, it exploits the consumers by controlling their thoughts also by inciting the consumer through various means to purchase a particular product.

Dr Brar further said the only method to escape from this advanced capitalism suggested by Herbert Marcuse was that the consumer should not only understand the means of exploitation of these advanced capitalists but should also oppose it. In his view, Marcuse gave another surprising fact that as exploitation is being done by advanced capitalism, in the same way the desired objective could not attained even in the socialists countries like Soviet Russia. Because there also like Advanced Capitalism, the thinking of the people was narrowed down by providing basic amenities to them.

According the Marcuse, there is not much difference between Capitalism of 19th and 20th century because in both men is one-dimensional. To be multi-dimensional man should broaden his outlook i.e. to accept as it is whatever is happening to him, he should adopt those things only after analyzing them keeping in mind there weaknesses. He also emphasized on the need of radical thinking, which is possible only by the students as they are revolutionary intellectuals.

Dr Brar concluded the lecture by saying that according to Marcuse in order to lead to a successful life man should create balance among freedom, reason and joy.

Dr Narinder Singh Sidhu, principal and retired professor from Panjab University, Chandigarh, especially attended the extension lecture. Gursharan Kaur, head of the department, Dr Kuldeep Singh, Upasana Kaushal, Hardeep Singh, Priya Sharma and Gursharanjit Singh were those present on the occasion