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Capital Controls and 21st Century Financial Crises: Evidence from Colombia and Thailand - 0 views

www.peri.umass.edu/...394
shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 26 Jun 10 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 26 Jun 10
     
    Coelho, Bruno | Gallagher, Kevin Capital Controls and 21st Century Financial Crises: Evidence from Colombia and Thailand Publication Date: 1/8/2010
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Think Again: God - By Karen Armstrong | Foreign Policy - 1 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...god_0 ReadItLater
shared by ken meece on 19 Oct 09 - Cached
  • An inadequate understanding of God that reduces “him” to an idol in our own image who gives our likes and dislikes sacred sanction is the worst form of spiritual tyranny. Such arrogance has led to atrocities like the Crusades. The rise of secularism in government was meant to check this tendency, but secularism itself has created new demons now inflicting themselves on the world.
  • In the West, secularism has been a success, essential to the modern economy and political system, but it was achieved gradually over the course of nearly 300 years, allowing new ideas of governance time to filter down to all levels of society. But in other parts of the world, secularization has occurred far too rapidly and has been resented by large sectors of the population,
  • Shiism had for centuries separated religion from politics as a matter of sacred principle, and Khomeini’s insistence that a cleric should become head of state was an extraordinary innovation.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • In the same spirit, Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his movement by translating the social message of the Koran into a modern idiom, founding clinics, hospitals, trade unions, schools, and factories that gave workers insurance, holidays, and good working conditions. In other words, he aimed to bring the masses to modernity in an Islamic setting. The Brotherhood’s resulting popularity was threatening to Egypt’s secular government, which could not provide these services.
  • John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama have invoked faith as a shared experience that binds the country together -- an approach that recognizes the communal power of spirituality without making any pretense to divine right.
  • it is not God or religion but violence itself -- inherent in human nature -- that breeds violence. As a species, we survived by killing and eating other animals; we also murder our own kind. So pervasive is this violence that it leaks into most scriptures, though these aggressive passages have always been balanced and held in check by other texts that promote a compassionate ethic based on the Golden Rule
  • "religious" wars, no matter how modern the tools, always begin as political ones.
  • In recent Gallup polling conducted in 35 Muslim countries, only 7 percent of those questioned thought that the September 11 attacks were justified. Their reasons were entirely political.
  • Fundamentalism is not conservative. Rather, it is highly innovative -- even heretical -- because it always develops in response to a perceived crisis. In their anxiety, some fundamentalists distort the tradition they are trying to defend.
  • All fundamentalism -- whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim -- is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation.
  • The Bible and the Koran may have prohibited usury, but over the centuries Jews, Christians, and Muslims all found ways of getting around this restriction and produced thriving economies. It is one of the great ironies of religious history that Christianity, whose founder taught that it was impossible to serve both God and mammon, should have produced the cultural environment that, as Max Weber suggested in his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was integral to modern capitalism.
  • the religious critique of excessive greed is far from irrelevant. Although not opposed to business, the major faith traditions have tried to counterbalance some of the abuses of capitalism. Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, by means of yoga and other disciplines, try to moderate the aggressive acquisitiveness of the human psyche. The three monotheistic faiths have inveighed against the injustice of unevenly distributed wealth
  • Religion is not simply a matter of subscribing to a set of obligatory beliefs; it is hard work, requiring a ceaseless effort to get beyond the selfishness that prevents us from achieving a more humane humanity.
  • in their rebellion against the modern ethos, fundamentalists tend to overemphasize traditional gender roles. Unfortunately, frontal assaults on this patriarchal trend have often proven counterproductive.
  • But their reading of scripture is unprecedentedly literal. Before the modern period, few understood the first chapter of Genesis as an exact account of the origins of life; until the 17th century, theologians insisted that if a biblical text contradicted science, it must be interpreted allegorically.
  • Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism.
  • What has alienated many Muslims from the democratic ideal is not their religion but Western governments’ support of autocratic rulers, such as the Iranian shahs, Saddam Hussein, and Hosni Mubarak, who have denied people basic human and democratic rights.
  • a 2006 Gallup poll revealed that 46 percent of Americans believe that God should be the source of legislation.
  • A fatwa is not universally binding like a papal edict; rather, it simply expresses the opinion of the mufti who issues it. Muslims can choose which fatwas they adopt and thus participate in a flexible free market of religious thought, just as Americans can choose which church they attend.
  • Religion should be studied with the same academic impartiality and accuracy as the economy, politics, and social customs of a region, so that we learn how religion interacts with political tension, what is counterproductive, and how to avoid giving unnecessary offense.
  • In the Middle East, overly aggressive secularization has sometimes backfired, making the religious establishment more conservative, or even radical.
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Shake your fists, then get real | @Karoli on the "death" of healthcare reform, and my r... - 0 views

www.drumsnwhistles.com/...shake-your-fists-then-get-real healthcare reform HCR #HCR @karoli @avivao disqus comments blogs politics
shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Dec 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Dec 09
     
    Lots of good points, @Karoli; much to meditate on. Would love clarification on the following comment, though: "Can anyone familiar with history point to any time where a bill has made it this far, been pulled back by proponents, and lived as a stronger version of itself?" How is it a "stronger version of itself?" I don't follow Congressional maneuvers with the same background knowledge or attention to detail that you do; I'm probably missing some key information that would clarify your meaning. Really like your myth-busting data. It's refreshing to see a recap of details that can easily escape us. In some cases, your data gives me a point of departure for further research, so I can come to my own conclusions. Without your article, sorting out the key questions to investigate would be much harder for me. Also, I agree that waiting for a better bill, with so many "people hanging by a thread," is a luxury that only the well-heeled can afford. For many legislators, insulated from financial woes, much of this healthcare debate is about anything and everything except healthcare reform. All that said, I'm obviously an idealist who yearns for global, systemic change. I would want to change the fundamental nature of dance competition's culture, if my daughter were involved. It would be hard for me to keep my eye on the pragmatic truths: deep, systemic change of any cultural institution (socioeconomic, sociocultural, or sociopolitical) is a project for centuries, for eons. It's evolutionary. For today, how does your daughter keep following her passion in a system that's unfair? For today, how do we facilitate efforts to get as many health insurance benefits for the most people in a system that's unjust? I'm not sure I entirely buy your solution―but overall, it's a hell of a lot more practical than the one I was about to employ: sinking into helplessness, hopelessness, and depression... In fact, it's a hell of a lot more idealistic than sinking into despair, too! I fe
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Twitter / Glenn Greenwald: Four minority Law Professo ... - 0 views

twitter.com/...13554165181 kagan scotus obama twitter
shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 10 May 10 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 10 May 10
     
    "Four minority Law Professors call Kagan's diversity record "shocking" and "indefensible for the 21st Century": http://is.gd/bYHXV"
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Obama didn't cave ... Presidential Power: A Middlebury College Professor's Blog - 0 views

www.salon.com/...index.html obama cave debt-ceiling debt-deal re-election presidential-power presidential power strong weak cagey mighty mightymouse mouse debtdeal debtceiling budget deficit budgetdeficit economy economics agenda electoral strategy
shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 01 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 01 Aug 11
     
    Maybe some of you can tell me why so many very smart people have, since the day Obama was inaugurated, deluded themselves into thinking that this admittedly very smart man, albeit one with limited political experience at the national level, was somehow going to step into office and proceed to rewrite the political laws that have governed presidential politics for the last two centuries? I'm listening.
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Nature: Introduction - 0 views

www.rwe.org/?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=42
shared by Anne Hulthen on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes.
    • Anne Hulthen
      Anne Hulthen on 25 Oct 13
       
      This is the same argument that we have all been having for centuries. What is originality? Are we just reusing the same ideas as our forefathers? Honestly I think the society goes through these perpetual cycles of reuse, even as we progress. Its simply a part of human life. But perhaps that's why we need thinkers like the transcendentalists. To challenge our reliance on the ideas of the previous generation.
  • He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.
  • But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Nature and the Soul
  • essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf.
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Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law | WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...SB125314088285517643.html corporate law corporations rights sotamayor
shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 18 Sep 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 18 Sep 09
     
    Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics." Heritage Foundation: it "doesn't give me a lot of confidence that she respects the corporate form and the type of rights that it should be afforded."
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A Centuries-Old Principle: Keep Corporate Money Out of Elections - 0 views

www.greenchange.org/article.php campaign finance reform elections corporations aristocracy plutocracy oligarchy campaign finance reform supreme court sotamayor lobbyists lobbies influence capitalism democracy jefferson politics economics kleptocracy
shared by avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • avivajazz jazzaviva on 16 Sep 09
     
    Thomas Jefferson declared his hope to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
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