Showing posts with label Third World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Third World. Show all posts

Wednesday, 31 August 2011

Is this big enough for you?

Is The Economist becoming radicalised? Or was J.F. just stating the obvious yesterday when, wondering why conservative Americans "lament the loss of the America they grew up in," they tagged conservatismǂ and racism as currently inseparable

I tend to agree with the sentiments in the above article. Conservatives can readily be viewed as a group who are "loss[ing] of their own social privilege" and trying to claw it back.

This idea ties in very nicely with a post today, by W.W., and shows just how this idea of social privilege is perpetuating World problems.

In summary W.W. is replying to an an article by the USC's Neal Gabler (seemingly the sociologists' everyman) which claims that: "Big ideas are almost passé."

In a wonderful rebuff W.W. quotes an article by NYU economist Michael Clemens which argues that "barriers to emigration place one of the fattest of all wedges between humankind’s current welfare and its potential welfare."

Thursday, 2 September 2010

The Constant Gardener

The Constant Gardener is a film and book, by acclaimed author John le Carré. Le Carré is better known for his Cold War spy novels, including The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The Constant Gardener departs from this background, it is set in modern-day Kenya, dealing with issues of corruption, international aid and corporate evil. Without spoiling the ending, le Carré has written a wonderfully evocative critique of the western medical activities in Africa.