Here’s this week’s news from the NSA. Yes, when it comes to international espionage and snooping, in less than a century we’ve gone from a US Secretary of State declaring, “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail” to a former French foreign…
Pope Francis is a pontiff who has constructively broken all the rules of popery – so far to widespread acclaim. He's faulted the Catholic church for its negative obsession with gays and birth control, and now he has expanded his mandate to economics with a groundbreaking screed denouncing "the new idolatry of money".
As the Pope wrote in his "apostolic exhortation":
The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings.
His thoughts on income inequality are searing:
How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality.
The pope's screed on "the economy of exclusion and inequality" will disappoint those who considers themselves free-market capitalists, but they would do well to listen to the message. Francis gives form to the emotion and injustice of post-financial-crisis outrage in a way that has been rare since Occupy Wall Street disbanded. There has been a growing chorus of financial insiders – from the late Merrill Lynch executive Herb Allison to organizations like Better Markets – it's time for a change in how we approach capitalism. It's not about discarding capitalism, or hating money or profit; it's about pursuing profits ethically, and rejecting the premise that exploitation is at the center of profit. When 53% of financial executives say they can't get ahead without some cheating, even though they want to work for ethical organizations, there's a real problem.
Unlike Occupy, which turned its rage outward, Pope Francis bolstered his anger with two inward-facing emotions familiar to any Catholic-school graduate: shame and guilt, to make the economy a matter of personal responsibility.
This is important. Income inequality is not someone else's problem. Nearly all of us are likely to experience it. Inequality has been growing in the US since the 1970s. Economist Emmanuel Saez found that the incomes of the top 1% grew by 31.4% in the three years after the financial crisis, while the majority of people struggled with a disappointing economy. The other 99% of the population grew their incomes 0.4% during the same period.
As a result, federal and state spending on social welfare programs has been forced to grow to $1tn just to handle the volume of US households in trouble. Yet income inequality has been locked out of of the mainstream economic conversation, where it is seen largely as a sideshow for progressive bleeding hearts.
In the discussions of why the US is not recovering, economists often mention metrics like economic growth and housing. They rarely mention the metrics that directly tell us we are failing our economic goals, like poverty and starvation. Those metrics of income inequality tell an accurate story of the depth of our economic malaise that new-home sales can't. One-fifth of Americans, or 47 million people, are on food stamps; 50% of children born to single mothers live in poverty; and over 13 million people are out of work. Children are now not likely to do as well as their parents did as downward mobility takes hold for the first time in generations.
The bottom line, which Pope Francis correctly identifies, is that inequality is the biggest economic issue of our time – for everyone, not just the poor. Nearly any major economic metric – unemployment, growth, consumer confidence – comes down to the fact that the vast majority of Americans are struggling in some way. You don't have to begrudge the rich their fortunes or ask for redistribution. It's just hard to justify ignoring the financial problems of 47 million people who don't have enough to eat. Until they have enough money to fill their pantries, we won't have a widespread economic recovery. You can't have a recovery if one-sixth of the world's economically leading country is eating on $1.50 a day.
It's only surprising that it took so long for anyone – in this case, Pope Francis – to become the first globally prominent figure to figure this out and bring attention to income inequality.
Income inequality is the issue that will govern whether we ever emerge from the struggling economy recovery and it determine elections in 2014. The support for Elizabeth Warren to rise above her seat in the US Senate, for instance, largely centers on her crusade against inequality. The White House's chirpy protestations that the economy is improving are not fooling anyone.
Into this morass of economic confusion steps Francis with clarifying force:
Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.
It's a historic and bold statement, mainly because it's rarely heard from clergy. Money has always been at odds with religion, going back to the times when God had a fighting chance against Mammon. Moses grew enraged by the golden calf, Jesus by moneychangers in the temple, Muhammad by lending money at interest, or usury. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven, the Bible tells us.
There have been criticisms from prominent men of religion before, but they didn't stick. In 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury endorsed Marx against the forces of "unbridled capitalism", and the Archbishop of York disdained traders as "bank robbers and asset strippers", but those cries went unheeded in the subsequent flood of corporate profits.
At the time, those criticisms seemed extreme, throwing pitchforks into frozen ground. Francis is speaking at a when the ground has been thawed. Outrage against the financial sector is lurking so close to the surface that the US government can extract a $13bn fine from the nation's largest bank, throwing it into its first financial loss in nine years, and find significant approval.
Still, popes have been largely content to leave these particular issues of economic inequality behind in favor of focusing on social issues. There was, after all, a problem of throwing stones. The church's rich trappings and vast wealth, as well as its scandal-plagued Vatican bank, made an ill fit to preach too loudly about austerity.
Pope Francis, in his simple black shoes and unassuming car and house, is the first pontiff in a long time to reject flashy shows of power and live by the principle of simplicity. That makes him uniquely qualified to make the Vatican an outpost of Occupy Wall Street. His message about spiritual salvation applies mainly to Catholics but it would be sensible for economists and lawmakers to recognize his core message about the importance of income inequality applies to those even those who have no belief in religion.
Capitalism has always seen itself as an amoral pursuit, where the guiding stars were not "good" or "bad", but only "profit" and "loss". It's going to be harder to sustain that belief over the next few years.
By David Sirota On November 26, 2013The national conservative movement is waging a war… in SeaTac. That’s a weird sentence. Out of all the places to wage a political fight, why would conservatives and the infamous Koch Brothers choose a Pacific…
Slate thinks readers aren't interested in unfamiliar stories that will burden them, but journalism's about discovery
This article will take you 3 minutes 45 seconds to read. (2 minutes 30 seconds celsius.) You will expend 60 calories and learn two new vocabulary words, including a synonym for "rebellious". Approximately 30m of your cells will die. Enjoy!
Those helpful journometrics are brought to you by – or at least suggested by – the folks at slate.com, which has taken to including time estimates for consumption of its pieces. On Slate's right rail recently were these items:
•What Would Happen if Ocean Water Was replaced With Deuterium Oxide? 6M TO READ
•How Do Female Republican Strategists Plan to Reach Women Voters? We Asked Them. 8M TO READ •It's Time to Bring Back the Guillotine. 4M TO READ
•How Being in Grad School is Like Being in a Frat. 4M TO READ
The idea is to give a reader, before undertaking the effort and risk of clicking on a story, some notion of the burden he or she will have to endure. It's like those disclaimers on the pharma commercials. If you want relief from depression's pain, ask your doctor about Cymbalta, but be advised that your liver will probably explode. You wish to learn about the GOP's "women strategy"? Fine, but prepare for the chrono-consequences.
Now, obviously, not every story clocks in at a ponderous eight minutes. Every now and then, when the executive-summary gods are with you, the right rail is a "reduced for quick sale" bin. Last Wednesday night was one such cornucopia of conciseness. Look at all these fantastic stories costing you only one minute each:
•Norway's Army Goes Vegetarian to Combat Climate Change. 1M TO READ
•Lance Armstrong Settles $3M Lawsuit, Avoids Testifying Under Oath About Doping. 1M TO READ
•Newt Gingrich Knows How to Fix Obamacare. 1M TO READ
•The Death of Winamp Says a Lot About the Tech World's Vicious Utilitarianism. 1M TO READ
God, I feel like such a sucker. I'd already read the Associated Press version of the Lance Armstrong story, where I spent, like, 3 minutes. I wonder if the AP offers something like Best Buy … a time-matching guaranty. If I take the Slate item to the AP customer service desk, shouldn't I get a 2 minute refund? Just sayin', is all.
Slate's understanding and support of reader needs is not limited to the husbanding of the world's strategic minute stockpile. Exploiting Big Data in exactly the way you'd expect from a high-toned news-and-culture publication, it is also employing algorithms to offer some content based on the individual's own demonstrated consumption patterns. Why, thank you!
The reason I stopped reading the New York Times is that it persists in printing stories whose subjects I have not previously familiarized myself with. I'd be turning to page A8 and suddenly see an article about Myanmar or coulrophobia or North Carolina voter suppression, and I'm all "Whoa there! Since when have I ever shown any interest in Myanmar? Why would I want to be confronted with that?" The tech geniuses at Slate, by contrast, can fill me to bursting with what I'm already interested in.
I mean, come on, you presumptuous MSM editors, I don't consume media for "discovery" or "scope". The last thing I need is your intellectual breadth or judgment. I consume media to stay in my comfort zone and validate my worldview on everything I already know, duh.
Now there are those who stubbornly cling to the idea that mankind is not best served by merely getting what we want. Leo Tolstoy, for instance, wrote:
He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.
That's from Anna Karenina (21.5 MONTHS TO READ).
No disrespect to Tolstoy, but I think if he had to wade through truth and reconciliation in Burma, he'd be singing a different tune.
As a matter of full disclosure, I should admit that I am on Slate's payroll as co-host of the sprightly language podcast Lexicon Valley. In a way, Slate's sensitivity to consumers was foreshadowed with our own show! A year ago – prompted by people who didn't want to squander valuable time listening to a radio program – Slate began providing text transcriptions of the audio.
My first instinct was to be a bit contumacious, but now I see that this was an excellent adaptation to market demand. Personally, I think Pandora should offer the same service.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
As Doctor Who celebrates its 50th, it's time to study the numbers and settle this once and for all. Well, maybe
For the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, I thought I'd take a look at which doctors were associated with the highest rated episodes, and which season has been rated the most highly by viewers.
Since people have already ranked all the episodes by actual viewing figures and polled people for their favourite doctor, I tried something different. Using IMDb, I compiled a list of every episode (excluding telemovies and prequels), along with user ratings, which doctor appeared in it, and the director. I wanted to include writers as well, but this was difficult due to the way writers are credited on IMDb.
I then grouped the episodes by doctor, season, and director to get the mean user rating of each. As the old series has far fewer user ratings overall per episode (the mean is 76 reviews per episode, compared with 1,659 for the new series), I've separated the two from direct comparison. Because of the higher number of ratings, the figures for the newer series are probably more reliable.
For the old series, the doctor appearing in the highest-rated episodes was the fourth: Tom Baker.
The new series was topped by Matt Smith, the newest Doctor.
As for seasons, in the newest series, season four, starring David Tennant, had the highest mean rating. Season 13 was the highest in the older series, with Tom Baker.
Here are the top 10 for user ratings grouped by directors:
This table is, unfortunately, vulnerable to skewing by low numbers – a director who has directed a single, well-received show is more likely to be placed higher than someone who has directed more.
David Maloney stands out in the older series, having directed the second-highest number of episodes and yet maintaining the highest average rating.
Hettie Macdonald's top position was due to directing the highest-rated episode overall: Blink, which introduced the memorable new Doctor Who enemy the Weeping Angels.
Here are the top episodes by mean rating:
Please keep in mind this is based only on the sample of IMDb users, and in the case of the older series the average number of ratings is rather low, so it should all be taken with a grain of salt. It's still a bit of fun. Who do you think was the best Doctor? Which are your favourite episodes?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
Men already dominate political and corporate hierachies, but feminism, currently healthier than ever, is doing solid work to support fathers who choose to stay at home with their children.
Do men face discrimination? I don't mean gay men or black men or poor, uneducated men or even short men. Or, come to think of it, the many judged "typical boys" every day, but just men? All men.
In a world wherethe male sex make up just under half of the global population but 83% of all those in power, I would say, probably not. Indeed, in a world where not all countries guarantee women's equal property rights and 70% of the population living in absolute poverty are female, I'd go so far as to say the suggestion that men face discrimination as a sex is a bit ludicrous.
Which should mean that today's International Men's Day, partly designed to end discrimination, is a bit of a joke, a campaign from people whose response to any statistic about women being physically abused or dominated or belitted is to say, "but what about the menz?"
Yet I'm all for International Men's Day. As a supporter of the idea that men and women should be treated equally, why shouldn't men have their own day to match the one set aside to promote women and their causes in March? And there are really important issues when it comes to men's rights. I'd just like to know what causes this day is actually for.
There doesn't seem to be much of a global consensus. In Australia they give red roses because they are symbol of strength of character and courage. Elsewhere, they focus on battlefield prowess or men's health, although in China, apparently, they add fashion to the mix.
International Women's Day took off in the early part of the last century as women in Europe and the US campaigned for the right to vote. According to Wikipedia it seems that IMD was "inaugurated" in 1999 in Trinidad and Tobago by a Dr Jerome Teelucksingh, from the Families in Action headquarters, who chose 19 November mainly because it was his father's birthday, saying: "Some have said that there is Father's Day, but what about young boys, teenagers and men who are not fathers?" The day is now celebrated in 60 countries.
The idea for a day to celebrate men's achievement first emerged in the late 60s when the so-called second wave of feminists dared to ask for more than the right to vote and a group that became the men's rights movement was telling them they'd never had it so good. It is perhaps unsurprising that a renewed interest in a day of action for men comes as feminism itself enjoys a resurgence.
In the past year a website has been set up explaining what an international men's day should do in the UK. The campaign's objectives include promoting male role models, celebrating the contribution that men make, highlighting discrimination against men and the inequalities that men and boys face and thus improving gender relations and gender equality.
When these objectives are set against political power, they make no sense. Men at the top of politics, business and the media are male role models, whatever you think of them individually.
So the argument must be when it comes to the sphere typically known as "domestic" and indeed organisations that fight for men's rights as fathers are among the site's supporters. The last of this year's five challenges to "keep men and boys safe" is to promote fathers and male role models.
There is inequality when it comes to parenting in the UK and much of the developed world. Reams of research suggest that women still do the lion's share of household duties even as more and more of them carry out paid work. So entrenched is the idea that women look after children that only recently has shared parental leave become law in the UK. Women still take the vast majority of this leave as maternity leave.
This dominance can mean a belittling of men at home and an uneasiness, often unverbalised, about their presence in the playground, for example. This same attitude starts with boys, who quickly learn that it's never OK to cry and nurturing is a bit "girly". I'm all for changing attitudes like this but there's already a movement that supports dads in the playground and in the kitchen. That movement is called feminism.
Over the past few years I've been asked, "Why do we need an International Women's Day?" so many times that I fear my answer has become a bit pat. "Because it's men's day every other day of the year," is my standard reply.
Yet renewed interest in International Men's Day has made me think of the many things that could change to make men and women more equal in all spheres of our daily lives. This doesn't belittle the deep injustice many women suffer around the world or the casual everyday sexism that defeats them at every hurdle. If anything, pointing out the discrimination against men simply underlines how much worse it is for women.
Happy International Men's Day.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
One of the biggest political stories today centers on whether Elizabeth Warren — who has shown absolutely no interest in running for the Democratic nomination in 2016 — will challenge Hillary Clinton, who has made it clear that she has no interest…
A so-called godless church wants to establish more US congregations. These 'places of worship' come across as a joke
It's not easy being an atheist. In a world that for centuries has been dominated (and divided by) religious affiliations, it's sort of inevitable that the minority group who can't get down with the God thing or who don't subscribe to any particular belief system would find themselves marginalized. As children of no God, it seems that atheists are somehow seen as lesser – less charitable, that is, and more selfish, nihilistic, closed minded, negative and just generally unworthy. Now, however, a group of atheists are fighting back.
Determined to show that those who believe in nothing are just as good as those who believe in something, the faithless are establishing a church of their own, and a mega-church at that. On the surface it seems like a rather brilliant idea. What's not to like about beating the faithful at their own game? Apart from the one small caveat that establishing a place of worship for the faithless, even a godless one, rather negates what atheism is supposed to be all about.
The godless church concept is the brainchild of Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones, two British comedians, who identified a gap in the faith market that so far non-believers are flocking to fill. The first Sunday Assembly (as the gatherings are being called) took place in a dilapidated church in London on a cold morning this past January. It went down a treat, apparently, and the movement has gained enough momentum in Britain that the comic duo have since embarked on a "40 dates, 40 nights" tour of the United States raising money to build US congregations so godless Americans can become churchgoers too.
This past Sunday, the groups' inaugural assembly in Los Angeles attracted some 400 people. Similar gatherings across the states have also drawn big crowds, bursting to do all the good stuff religious people do, just without the God stuff. As one of those non-believing types – the kind who'd be inclined to tick off the "spiritual but not religious" checkbox on a dating profile – I should fall right into the Sunday Assembly movement's target demographic. If only the central idea of dragging atheists into a church so they can prove they are just as worthy as traditional churchgoers didn't strike me as a bit of joke.
I'm sure Evans and Jones mean well. Although they might want to tone down the "shiny happy people" routine they have going on in their promotional video. It's a little too reminiscent of the bearded, guitar playing priest that used to pay regular visits to the convent school I attended as a child in Ireland, who tried a little too hard to convince us skeptical kids that Catholicism is cool. I don't mean to downplay the human need to find like-minded communities either or to explore the deeper purpose of our existence. I just can't quite embrace the notion that atheists should be under any obligation to prove their worthiness to religious types, or that to do so they should mimic the long established religious practices that non-believers have typically eschewed.
I would have thought the message of atheism (if there needs to be one) is that churches and ritualized worship (whatever the focus of that worship might be) are best left to the people who feel the need to have a God figure in their lives. I say this as someone who has done plenty of Elizabeth Gilbert ("Eat, Pray, Love") style dabbling in various philosophies to find life's bigger meaning, albeit on a lower budget and so far with less satisfying results – no mega movie deals or hot Brazilian husbands have materialized to date, but the journey continues.
Like a lot of people who don't subscribe to any particular faith or belief system, I'm all for exploring the many spiritual adventures that are out there, and there are already plenty of inspirational (and godless) paths to choose from. The thing is, rewarding as these ventures into the spiritual realm often are, be they Buddhist retreats, Hindu meditation sessions or just a good old-fashioned yoga class with some "Om" chanting built in, I know that my true self is an atheist one. No philosophy, full on religion or Sunday Assembly – no matter how enticing, inviting or full of wisdom it may be – is going to win me over in the long term. I'm just not in the market for any man-made belief system – and they are all man-made – because I already have the one I am comfortable with: atheism.
That is why I have a fundamental problem with the so called atheist mega-church movement that Jones and Evans are spearheading. While they have every right to form congregations and get together with like-minded people and to share hugs and plan good deeds, they don't have the right to co-opt atheism for their cause. I'm sure the Sunday Assemblies have the potential to benefit many people and will fill a void for anyone who likes the idea of being part of a community. But if faithlessness ends up becoming a quasi-religion with its very own church, where are the true atheists – the ones who don't feel the need to join a congregation or to sing and hold hands to show the world we're good and worthy – supposed to call home?
Even in 2013, many people still prefer men in charge. It's a bias problem that doesn't have any objective reality
Who would you rather work for: a man or a woman?
According to a recent Gallup poll, just over half of Americans say they don't have a preference, but those who do strongly lean towards men. Forty percent of women and 29% of men say they prefer a male boss to a female one, and the results are even more skewed when broken down by political affiliation – Republicans, unsurprisingly given their socially conservative views, strongly prefer male bosses, while Democrats are about evenly split. That political divide helps to shed some light on why, in 2013, so many people still prefer to have men in charge. It's a problem of worldview and stereotypes, not of inherent characteristics or lady-boss bitchiness.
The good news is that the preference for female bosses is the highest it's been since Gallup started polling on this question in the 1950s. Back then, only 5% of respondents preferred a female boss, while 66% wanted to work for a man. But while the radical increase of women in the workforce has shifted views, we're still not living in a society that sees women and men as equally competent, likeable and authoritative. Americans don't prefer male bosses because men carry some sort of boss-gene on their Y chromosome; Americans prefer male bosses because male authority is respected while female authority is unbecoming, and because the expectations are set so high for women in power that it's nearly impossible for any mere mortal to meet them.
Even among ostensibly liberal, equality-supporting people, "that one horrible female boss I had" is a staple story in the work-and-gender debates. It's an anecdote that gets trotted out for little discernible reason other than as a suffix to an "I'm-not-sexist-but" grimace; a way to demonstrate the speaker's supposed honesty about the real problems with women in charge. And it's not a story that people are just making up – lots of us have, in fact, had female bosses who are less than stellar. The complaints vary, but are usually some combination of: she was bitchy; she was demanding; she wasn't nice or understanding; she didn't engage in enough mentorship of younger women; she worked unreasonable hours and expected everyone else to; she cut out too early to be with her kids; she was scary.
The problem isn't the fact that some female bosses suck, it's that if you have a crappy boss and he's a man, the conclusion is "I had a crappy boss". If you have a crappy boss and she's a woman, the conclusion is "I had a crappy female boss, so female bosses are crappy." No one sees a bad male boss as a reflection on all men everywhere, or emblematic of male leadership capabilities. But bring up women at the head of the table and every bad female co-worker or supervisor suddenly becomes Exhibit A for what's wrong with female bosses.
I saw this too often when I worked at a large corporate law firm. Younger female associates felt put out when the small number of female partners weren't there to adequately mentor and guide them, feeling it was the responsibility of the more senior women to take the younger ones under their wings in female solidarity and sisterhood. Of course, many of the female partners and senior associates did mentor the younger women, but women in law firms become fewer as you move up the ranks – we vastly outnumber men in the secretarial staff, are about even with them in the junior associate classes, and then become fewer and fewer up the seniority chain. By the time you reach the tippy-top, fewer than 1 in 6 are women. It's a gendered seniority structure – pyramidal for women, tower-like for men.
Men, of course, can mentor young women, and many do. But they're more likely to mentor junior male associates, not out of intentional bias but because they simply see themselves reflected in those young men, and can interact without any hint of impropriety. And the many men in power who don't offer mentorship aren't really noticed. But if women aren't actively helping out other women every step of the way, we're selfish and failing our gender.
When we do succeed, we're also considered less likeable, while the inverse is true for men – successful men gain in likability. In one study, students evaluated the story of a successful entrepreneur, half the time described as "Heidi" and the other half as "Howard". Even though the stories were identical, Howard was perceived as effective and likeable, while Heidi was deemed selfish and a less desirable colleague. In another, the simple change of a name from female to male on application materials led evaluators to judge the male candidate as more competent and hireable; male candidates were also offered higher starting salaries and more mentorship opportunities than female candidates with identical credentials.
From the time we're little, girls are taught to play nicely, and the opinionated or determined ones are derisively called "bossy" – when was the last time you heard the word "bossy" applied to a little boy?
And even – especially – the most ardently feminist among us pin our hopes on the very few women at the top, and are even more spectacularly disappointed and angry when they don't meet all of our ideals.
Those facts, widely publicized by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in her book Lean In, were ironically illustrated in the response to Sandberg's book. When male CEOs write best-selling books on how to succeed in business, they're roundly lauded. When Sandberg does it, she's not adequately representing all women everywhere, and she's an out-of-touch rich lady telling the less privileged what to do. She's a know-it-all goody two-shoes and she doesn't know my life. She's bossy.
The take-away from the weight of the social science research on gender and power is that while you might truly believe your female boss was a real bitch or that your male boss was just better at his job, your views are colored by your boss's gender. Your assessment of him or her might say more about your own unrecognized biases than it does about any objective reality.
In the course of my career, the majority of my most committed mentors, champions and door-openers have been women. I've had great female bosses, as well as great male bosses. I've also worked for total jerks, and the jerks have been fairly apportioned by gender – I've worked for more male jerks than female jerks, but I've also worked for more men generally. But even as a professional promoter of gender equality, I've caught myself making unfair and gender-influenced assessments of my superiors – the tone of her email was bitchy while his was just direct.
That's the trouble with battling these forms of insidious, unintentional bias: most of us think we're fair-minded people who don't let things like gender, skin color, age or other factors influence our assessment of others' skills or character, but that's simply not the case. For the overwhelming majority of us who are not as fair-minded as we think we are, standard anti-discrimination policies and laws aren't going to get to the root of the problem. What needs to shift is awareness – individual commitments to checking in and taking a step back to assess your own thoughts. It also takes institutional commitments to countering unintentional bias, both by ensuring diversity in hiring and promotion and by effective education about how bias actually works.
It's heartening to see that more Americans than ever before state no preference for the gender of their boss. Now, we've just got to make sure that those stated preferences actually translate into the workplace.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
The devastation in the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan is a terrifying reminder that developing nations are hit hardest by severe weather brought on by climate change, which leads to even greater global inequality and suffering. Typhoon Haiyan…
Among the many betrayals of the Obama administration is its overall treatment of what many people refer to as "intellectual property" – the idea that ideas themselves and digital goods and services are exactly like physical property, and that therefore the law should treat them the same way. This corporatist stance defies both reality and the American Constitution, which expressly called for creators to have rights for limited periods, the goal of which was to promote inventive progress and the arts.
In the years 2007 and 2008, candidate Obama indicated that he'd take a more nuanced view than the absolutist one from Hollywood and other interests that work relentlessly for total control over this increasingly vital part of our economy and lives. But no clearer demonstration of the real White House view is offered than a just-leaked draft of an international treaty that would, as many had feared, create draconian new rights for corporate "owners" and mean vastly fewer rights for the rest of us.
I'm talking about the appalling Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a partial draft of which WikiLeaks has just released. This treaty has been negotiated in secret meetings dominated by governments and corporations. You and I have been systematically excluded, and once you learn what they're doing, you can see why.
The outsiders who understand TPP best aren't surprised. That is, the draft "confirms fears that the negotiating parties are prepared to expand the reach of intellectual property rights, and shrink consumer rights and safeguards," writes James Love a longtime watcher of this process.
Needless to say, copyright is a key part of this draft. And the negotiators would further stiffen copyright holders' control while upping the ante on civil and criminal penalties for infringers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says TPP has "extensive negative ramifications for users' freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and hinder peoples' abilities to innovate". It's Hollywood's wish list.
Canadian intellectual property expert Michael Geist examined the latest draft of the intellectual property chapter. He writes that the document, which includes various nations' proposals, shows the US government, in particular, taking a vastly different stance than the other nations. Geist notes:
[Other nations have argued for] balance, promotion of the public domain, protection of public health, and measures to ensure that IP rights themselves do not become barriers to trade. The opposition to these objective[s] by the US and Japan (Australia has not taken a position) speaks volumes about their goals for the TPP.
The medical industry has a stake in the outcome, too, with credible critics saying it would raise drug prices and, according to Love's analysis, give surgeons patent protection for their procedures.
Congress has shown little appetite for restraining the overweening power of the corporate interests promoting this expansion. With few exceptions, lawmakers have repeatedly given copyright, patent and trademark interests more control over the years. So we shouldn't be too optimistic about the mini-flurry of Capitol Hill opposition to the treaty that emerged this week. It's based much more on Congress protecting its prerogatives – worries about the treaty's so-called "fast track" authorities, giving the president power to act without congressional approval – than on substantive objections to the document's contents.
That said, some members of Congress have become more aware of the deeper issues. The public revolt against the odious "Stop Online Piracy Act" two years ago was a taste of what happens when people become more widely aware of what they can lose when governments and corporate interests collude.
If they become aware – that's the key. One of TPP's most odious elements has been the secrecy under which it's been negotiated. The Obama administration's fondness for secret laws, policies and methods has a lot to do with a basic reality: the public would say no to much of which is done in our names and with our money if we knew what was going on. As Senator Elizabeth Warren pointed out, in a letter to the White House:
I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the administration's policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States. I believe in transparency and democracy and I think the US Trade Representative should too.
Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have at least partial transparency today. The more you know about the odious TPP, the less you'll like it – and that's why the administration and its corporate allies don't want you to know.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
Across the United States, 2,693 people have received a letter in the last few months, which identified a debt and read: "You are no longer under any obligation to settle this account with the original creditor, the bill collector, or anyone else." This is the work of the Rolling Jubilee project – a non-profit initiative which buys personal debt for pennies on the dollar in the secondary market (where debt is sold to companies who then resell it to collection agencies) but then simply cancels it.
When the Occupy movement came into being in the summer of 2011, its critics said that a lack of identifiable objectives and strategy for achieving them meant it was doomed to fail. This was a monumental underestimation of its potential impact. Two years on, the debate about the ethics of corporate capitalism in its current form, the fairness of the remuneration of those at the top, the widening wealth gap and the morality of tax avoidance is alive and well. The concept of the "99%" is now part of the collective consciousness. All this is, in no small part, down to the fuse lit by the Occupy movement.
However, another significant aspect of the movement – dismissed as being woolly – was that it brought like-minded people together and allowed a dialogue which identified common strands. This appears to have evolved into several focused and practical initiatives. One of the most significant, and perhaps the most threatening to the status quo, is the Strike Debt group, of which the Rolling Jubilee project forms part.
The idea is that, those freed from debt and those sympathetic to the movement, then donate into the fund to keep it "rolling" forward; hence the name. The fund has already raised $600,000 and has used $400,000 of this to purchase and cancel an astonishing $14.7m of debt, primarily focusing on medical bills. This strikes at the very heart of the system, not only by using its own perverse rules against it, but critically by revealing the illusory and circular nature of debt.
Capitalism requires a layer of cheap, flexible labour to operate optimally. It is not a coincidence that the most successful global economy, by any traditional capitalist measure, is an authoritarian quasi-communist state. Many, myself included, have been arguing that our current predicament is not crisis-consequent austerity, but a permanent adjustment. David Cameron on Monday confirmed as much. The great lie, peddled by Thatcher and Reagan, was the idea that we could all be middle class, white-collar professionals within a neoliberal economy. It was simply not true.
David Graeber, one of the original members of Occupy Wall Street writes: "[A]lmost immediately we noticed a pattern. The overwhelming majority of Occupiers were, in one way or another, refugees of the American debt system … The rise of OWS allowed us to start seeing the system for what it is: an enormous engine of debt extraction. Debt is how the rich extract wealth from the rest of us, at home and abroad." Western capitalism is running out of serfs, slaves, colonies, immigrants, child labour and women as chattels. A new underclass must be created. Debt is the weapon of choice. Medical bills underlie more than 60% of bankruptcies in the US. The level of student debt has reached an eye-watering $1.2tn.
This is why the debate on the back-door privatisation of medical and education services in this country matters so much. The extraction of profit from these two key areas changes the social contract in a fundamental way. The idea is no longer that the state will educate you and keep you healthy, so that you may continue to contribute with both your work and your taxes. It has mutated instead into "you will borrow money from the state's private partners in order to become educated and stay healthy, so that you may continue to contribute to their bottom line". All of the 99%, in a very real way, work in part for an assortment of financial institutions, largely invisible and certainly unaccountable.
Iceland's – strangely unreported – decision to write down mortgage debt for its citizens, undermines that notion. A rejection of traditional systems of credit and money as a response to austerity, such as in the barter markets of Volos in Greece and Turin in Italy undermines that notion. The Rolling Jubilee project undermines that notion in a significant way, by asking the sizzling question: "If a corporation is prepared to accept five cents on the dollar in exchange for our debts, if that is our debt's open market value, how much do we really owe?"
And if your instinct is to point out that $15m is so small a drop in the ocean as to be insignificant, my response would be: not to the 2,693 people who received that letter. The sparkle of a lit fuse is, by its nature, humble.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
[Image via David Shankbone, Creative Commons licensed.]
Coming soon to a theater near you: famine! The second film in The Hunger Games trilogy, “Catching Fire,” opens wide on November 22, based on the hugely popular novels of a post-apocalyptic world in which poverty and starvation force young people…
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