Ministry Of Foreign Affairs www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ In Chinese and Enlgish. Information about foreign policy, flow charts, statistics about foreign affairs, etc.
Interview mit dem Philosophen Antonio Negri über 1968 als Vorwegnahme von 1989, die politische Kultur in einem Land der Minderheiten und die Parallelen zwischen Globalisierungskritikern und Frühsozialisten
Traditional methods for protecting community from the effects of scale and poor behavior are now manifestly unfeasible. Raising barriers to entry, relying on the assumption that users will maintain only one registered account, and placing faith in the ability of admins and user moderation to reproduce a forum's organic culture are all easily circumvented, gamed, and/or ineffective when faced with the problems of scale. Moreover, they tend to reinforce self-destructive behaviors, by increasing returns to the most persistent rather than the most constructive, reinforcing groupthink, and providing ample targets for trolling and griefing. This article attempts to fundamentally rethink what constitutes community and society on the web, and what possibilities exist for their maintenance and reconstruction in the face of scale and malicious users. The recommendations reached, after analyzing the weaknesses of the web forums we all know and love
In a new interview Klein says that it’s important to question why the big green groups lo have been so unwilling to follow science to its logical conclusions.
Our increasing inability to view globalised higher education from any perspective other than that of competing nation states in a transnational system, and of universities as competing capitals inside that world-view, is highlighted by Matt Lingard’s report on the Universities UK event, Open and online learning: Making the most of Moocs and other models. Critically, Lingard highlights how MOOCs are being utilised to catalyse further marketisation of education in the global North with the on-line space being used less as a socially transformative experience, and more as a space for public/private partnership, in order to lever global labour arbitrage and strengthen the transnational power of specific corporations:
On August 5, 1735, German physician Johann Friedrich Struensee was born. He became royal physician to the mentally ill King Christian VII of Denmark and a minister in the Danish government, where he tried to carry out widespread reforms. His affair with Queen Caroline Matilda caused his downfall and dramatic death.
Can we feed ten billion people? Posed this way, the question presupposes that industrialized society keeps on as it does now. It keeps us searching for technological fixes to a problem caused by technology. For 150 years people have made farms more and more factory-like: improving machinery, developing high-yield hybrids, and finally GMOs. We have long assumed that by industrializing the production and processing of food we had found the secret to progress. This book examines the history of industrialized farming and fishing to raise broader questions about industrial society:
What are the costs to the environment and human health of genetic engineering?
Why are economists trapped in prescribing endless growth as a social goal?
Can democratic politics break out of the quest for jobs and prosperity?
Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos form the culture jamming duo The Yes Men. Through their actions, they try to raise awareness about problematic social issues, in their sense. In order to do this, The Yes Men impersonate people of high economical or political influence to expose lies and injustices.
The new Baffler. Back in the nineties, published out of Chicago and edited by Thomas Frank, The Baffler articulated an anti-cool sort of cool that appealed to young readers and writers on the margins of journalism and academia, subjecting the iconic brands of consumer capitalism to a quasi-Marxist critical scrutiny. During the Bush years it went out of business. Now it’s back, with a table of contents largely devoted to the economic crisis: a perfect moment for The Baffler’s kind of cultural criticism to be revived.
543 years ago today, Florentine civil servant, diplomat, historian, philosopher and author Niccolò Machiavelli was born. Besides his seminal work 'Il Principe' (The Prince) he also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and even poetry.
Erik Gartzke, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of California, San Diego. links to data. United Nations General Assembly Voting Data, The Affinity of Nations: Similarity of State Voting Positions in the UNGA, Disaggregated Military Expenditure, Nuclear Production Capabilities, Intergovernmental Organization, "The Capitalist Peace" Replication Data
David W. Moore -- Providing an independent, non-partisan critique of media polls -- to help understand what they really mean. Author of "The Opinion Makers"