Simon Wiesenthal Center

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO has expressed its shock and dismay over the appearance of the Japanese rock group Kishidan on a recent MTV-J program,"Megavector".

Members of the band were wearing SS-like uniforms during an interview on the February 23rd prime time broadcast. “There is no excuse for such an outrage”, said rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. In protests to MTV-J, SONY Music Artists, and the Avex Group, Cooper wrote in part, “As someone who has visited Japan over 30 times, I am fully aware that many young Japanese are woefully uneducated about the crimes against humanity committed during World War II by Imperial Japan in occupied-Asia, let alone about Nazi Germany’s genocidal “Final Solution” against the Jews in Europe. But global entities like MTV and Sony Music should know better.”

“Such garb like the uniform worn by Kishidan is never tolerated in the mainstream of any civilized country outside of Japan. In spite of all the efforts made by democracies to combat bigotry, racism and hate crimes, there are young people who are attracted to a racist ideology and the symbols of Nazism like those that inspired the uniforms worn by Kishidan. It is wrong for anyone, including people in Japan to dismiss such marketing as mere “faux-rebellion,” rabbi Cooper explained.

The Wiesenthal Center is also urging that the group drop its Nazi attire and apologize to its fans and to the victims of Nazism. In addition, “the Simon Wiesenthal Center is prepared to bring an aging survivor of the Nazi Holocaust to Japan so that MTV Japan can interview someone who spent their teen years suffering starvation, depravation and torture and seeing their families being murdered for the “crime” of being born Jewish”, Cooper concluded.

Michael Calderone

CNN host Rick Sanchez came under fire Friday after making controversial remarks the previous day on a satellite radio show.

Sanchez called out Comedy Central host Jon Stewart as a "bigot" for mocking him, and complained that Jews — like Stewart — don't face discrimination. He also suggested that CNN, and perhaps the media industry more broadly, is run by Jews and elitists who look down on Hispanics like himself.

Clearly, those comments didn't sit well with the network, which put out a terse statement around 6 p.m. Friday.

"Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company," the CNN statement read. "We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well."

Martin Hilbert, Priscila López

Humankind’s capacity for unidirectional information diffusion through broadcasting channels has experienced comparatively modest annual growth (6%). Telecommunication has been dominated by digital technologies since 1990 (99.9% in digital format in 2007) and the majority of our technological memory has been in digital format since the early 2000s (94% digital in 2007).

Machines’ applicationspecific capacity to compute information per capita has roughly doubled every 14 months over the past decades in our sample, while the per capita capacity of the world’s generalpurpose computers has doubled every 18 months. The global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled every 34 months, while the world’s storage capacity per capita required roughly 40 months. Per capita broadcast information has doubled roughly every 12.3 years. Of course, such averages disguise the varying nature of technological innovation avenues.

Hillary Clinton

The United States will continue to press China on issues such as Tibet, Taiwan and human rights, ...

... Successive administrations and Chinese governments have been poised back and forth on these issues, and we have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.

Tokyo Marathon 2011

The King's Speech

フェアトレード情報室

何が公正なのでしょうか？

それは生産者に支払われるお金です。

安全な方法で作られた農産物を都会の消費者に届ける日本の産直運動でも、 野菜などを作る生産者に支払われる代金は、「再生産可能な価格」、 つまり安全で安心な作物を継続的に安心して作ってもらえる価格を保障しています。

フェアトレードも同じ考え方です。

安全で安心できる物を継続的に生産することができ、生産者が十分暮らしていける価格や賃金を保障しています。

こうして生産者を経済的に支援して彼らが安心して働ける場を作り出し、貧困から抜け出す手助けをすること。

それがフェアトレードの目的なのです。

Starbucks

Fair Trade is an alternative way of doing business - one that builds equitable, long-term partnerships between consumers and producers. There are many definitions of precisely what Fair Trade is, but one that is often agreed upon is the FINE definition:

Fair trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, which seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers - especially in the South. Fair trade organizations (backed by consumers) are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade.

Many coffee farmers receive prices for their harvest that can be less than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt. They are often forced to sell to intermediaries who pay them a fraction of the market price, generally between 10-50 cents per pound.

Fair trade coffee currently sells for a minimum of $1.26 per pound.

This money goes directly to coffee farmers, not to predatory intermediaries.

何首烏

ツルドクダミ（Polygonum multiflorum）は中国原産のタデ科のつる性多年草。葉は心臓形でドクダミに似る。花は単性、白く円錐花序をなして秋に咲く。地下に塊根があり、漢方薬で何首烏（カシュウ）と称される。

もともと漢方薬として栽培されたものが一部で野生化している。東京都心部でも見られるが、これも大名屋敷などで栽培されたのが逸出したものといわれている。

Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International

Fairtrade is an alternative approach to conventional trade and is based on a partnership between producers and consumers. Fairtrade offers producers a better deal and improved terms of trade. This allows them the opportunity to improve their lives and plan for their future. Fairtrade offers consumers a powerful way to reduce poverty through their every day shopping.

There are two distinct sets of Fairtrade standards, which acknowledge different types of disadvantaged producers. One set of standards applies to smallholders that are working together in co-operatives or other organizations with a democratic structure. The other set applies to workers, whose employers pay decent wages, guarantee the right to join trade unions, ensure health and safety standards and provide adequate housing where relevant.

The minimum price paid to Fairtrade producers is determined by the Fairtrade standards. It applies to most Fairtrade certified products. This price aims to ensure that producers can cover their average costs of sustainable production. It acts as a safety net for farmers at times when world markets fall below a sustainable level. Without this, farmers are completely at the mercy of the market.

When the market price is higher than the Fairtrade minimum, the buyer must pay the higher price. Producers and traders can also negotiate higher prices on the basis of quality and other attributes.

門倉貴史

ＢＲＩＣｓと一括りに呼んではいるものの、実は４カ国の間には非常に大きな相違点があります。しかし、まずは共通点を理解してほしいと思います。

①国土が広い

②資源が豊富

③人口が多い

④比較的、政情が安定している

⑤外国企業の誘致に積極的

以上のポイントは、文化的背景や経済状況の違いはあれども４カ国共通です。これらの条件が揃っていたからこそ、４カ国は急速に発展を遂げたわけです。では今後、ＢＲＩＣｓはどうなるのか？私は、着実に成長を続け、欧米や日本にとって今以上に重要な地域となっていくことを確信しています。

なかでも特にＢＲＩＣｓの今後の強みとなるのが「豊かな人が続々と生まれて、消費市場として盛り上がってきた」点でしょう。これまで安い労賃で豊富な労働力を駆使できることから、生産市場としての注目度が高かったわけですが、そうして経済成長を実現した成果として消費市場としての魅力が際だってきています。

LETA

Konfliktā bija iesaistīti divi - 1968. un 1983.gadā dzimuši - vīrieši, kuri agrāk nav bijuši pazīstami. Filmas "Melnais gulbis" seansa sākumā abi vīrieši sākuši konfliktēt par pārāk skaļu popkorna ēšanu, tad konflikts it kā pierimis, bet seansa beigās atkal atsācies, līdz jaunākais vīrietis nāvējoši sašāvis vecāko.

aicezuki

安部公房

終った所から始めた旅に、終りはない。墓の中の誕生のことを語らねばならぬ。何故に人間はかく在らねばならぬのか？

Tina Turner

Sometimes you've got to let everything go - purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything . . . whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.

釈徹宗

仏教は因果律に基づいています。いかに仏教にバリエーション多しといえども、これだけははずすわけにはいかない、というほどの仏教における基本的立脚点です。ご存知のように、因果律とは、あらゆる現象や存在には原因がある、原因があれば必ず結果があるという原則です。この法則に例外はない、ということで仏教は成り立っています。因果律の立場もいろいろあるんですが、仏教の因果律は縁起という相互依存性を強調するところに特徴があります。

さて、仏教で縁という概念は事象成立の条件です。また、原因と結果という主要因に関わる、二次的要因と考える場合もあります。いずれにしても、あらゆる事象は、さまざまな要因が複雑に絡み合い、一時的に成立したり存在したりしている、と認識します。言ってみれば、認識するための仮説モデルなんですね。この認識モデルによって、さまざまな現象や存在を分析すれば、生きて行く上での苦は克服される、とシャカは考えました。

ところで「親の因果が子に報い…」というフレーズがありますが、間違っています。正確には「親の因が、子に果…」といわねばなりません。でも親の因が、子に結果として出るというのはねじれた仏教思想です。本来、自因自果といって、自分のまいた種が自分にふりかかるのが因果律ですから。つまり、自らの行為や思考が、自らの未来を形成していくわけです。

このように、仏教では宿命論や神の意思による決定論ははっきりと否定されます。

Charles Bukowski

What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death. They don’t honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can’t hear it. Most people’s deaths are a sham. There’s nothing left to die.

チャールズ・ブコウスキー

俺たちはさんざん待った。俺たちみんな。待つことが人を狂わせる大きな原因だってことくらい、医者は知らんのか？

人はみな一生を待って過ごす。生きるために待ち、死ぬために待つ。トイレットペーパーを買うために並んで待つ。金をもらうために並んで待つ。金がなけりゃ、並ぶ列はもっと長くなる。眠るために待ち、目ざめるために待つ、結婚するために待ち、離婚するために待つ。雨が降るのを待ち雨が止むのを待つ。食べるために待ち、それからまた、食べるために待つ。頭のおかしい奴らと一緒に精神科の待合室で待ち、自分もやっぱりおかしいんだろうかと思案する。

Iain Watt

The myth of the scientific Member and decision making based on unbounded rationality sustained the parliamentary library and supported the legitimacy of parliamentary decisions. The myth has been undermined because libraries have lost their near monopoly on quality information, because the image of rational decision making has lost power as a legitimating symbol for parliaments, and because it does not reflect the reality of how Members work. The myth now seems more of a liability — it fails to convince, and it consigns services to a role in which they must fail. Bounded rationality is more plausible as a model of Members’ work, and it suggests a different approach to parliamentary library service. To retain relevance, parliamentary libraries must understand and connect with their clients real use of information. They are not in a growth industry any longer. Parliamentary libraries risk irrelevance and decline if they rest on their myth and on their historical value as symbols of a modern informed parliament, just as much as if they rely only on their physical assets, collections, or academic research capacity.

Parliamentary libraries face a challenging prospect with few certainties. However, the usefulness of library competences also extends beyond library walls, and their potential value to the institution may never have been higher. There is a future to be made, beyond the myth.

Anna Galluzzi

Today, parliamentary libraries are at a turning point in their history. All over the world they

are deeply changing their nature and experimenting new possibilities.

The internal fragmentation of parliamentary administration, the multiplication of search

possibilities, the amount of topics debated every day and the need for information processed

and immediately available for use are some of the reasons why the traditional parliamentary

libraries are lagging behind in everyday parliamentary activities.

Analyzing and comparing the trends pertaining parliaments and those referred to

libraries, the need for second thoughts about the role of parliamentary libraries seems

necessary.

... are parliamentary libraries as traditionally conceived disappearing? Maybe.

For sure, they are deeply changing. Is that good or not? I think it is not a matter of goodness.

As Ranganathan wrote as long ago as 1931 “libraries are living organisms”. If true, this means

that they are expected to adapt themselves to the context in which they work, without giving

up their inner mission and role in the society, and to give up a barren protection of theoretical

prerogatives.

Flynt Leverett

中東における各国の力関係が今、急速に変化してきていると私は見ています。その中でアメリカの影響力は後退しアメリカは同盟国も失いつつあるのです。中東におけるアメリカの地位が低下しているとも言えます。一方でイランやイランに支援されている国や組織の影響力がいろいろな面で大きくなっているのです。

これは今後の中東を占ううえで非常に象徴的な出来事です。アラブ諸国の政府が国民の声を代弁するものに変わっていくとしたらアメリカは、こうした事態を受け入れなければなりません。新しいエジプト政府が国民の声を聞けばイスラエルによるパレスチナ・ガザ地区の封鎖を支援しなくなるでしょう。またイランの船が、スエズ運河を利用することも認めるでしょう。私はアラブ世界に生まれる新たな政権が必ずしもアメリカの敵になるとは思いませんがこれまでのようにアメリカはアラブ諸国に期待することはできなくなると考えています。各国の政府や国民に対してアメリカとの協力関係が利益になると説得しなければならなくなるのです。

これまでアメリカが行ってきた中東政策に対して中東の住民の多くは嫌悪感を持っています。これは紛れもない事実です。パレスチナ問題やイラク戦争テロとの戦いなど一連の政策が中東の人々に嫌悪感を与えてきました。さらにアメリカが同盟関係を結んできた国々は中東でも国民の支持を集めていない政権ばかりだったのです。世論調査をしてみれば一目瞭然です。中東で国民の支持が高い指導者は例えばイランのアフマディネジャド大統領のような人々です。今後、中東の民主化が進みエジプトやバーレーンあるいはそのほかの国々にも国民の声をもっと反映するような新たな政府が生まれたとします。その場合、その政府はこれまでとは違ってアメリカとの戦略的協力を積極的には進めなくなると思います。

イスラエルとアメリカを除けば世界のすべての国が、このような入植地を違法と考えています。アメリカはイスラエルの安全保障とイスラエルによる占領は全く別問題であるという線引きをはっきりさせるよう方針の転換を迫られているのです。アメリカが十分に機能してこなかったこれまでの中東政策にこだわり政策の見直しを行わなければアメリカが中東地域から締め出されるという悪夢のシナリオが現実味を帯びてくるでしょう。もちろん現時点でそこまで行く可能性は薄いですし中東における地位を安定させるためにアメリカができることはたくさんあります。しかし、それを実行しようとした場合アメリカの国内で理解を得ることは非常に難しいことだと思います。

Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett

... now, the Obama administration stands by helplessly as new openings for Tehran to reset the regional balance in its favor emerge in Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and perhaps elsewhere. If these "pro-American" Arab political orders currently being challenged or upended by significant protest movements become at all more representative of their populations, they will no doubt become less enthusiastic about strategic cooperation with the United States. And, if these "pro-American" regimes are not replaced by salafi-dominated Islamist orders, the Arab governments that emerge from the present turmoil are likely to be at least somewhat receptive to Iran's message of "resistance" and independence from Israel and the West.

Certainly, any government in Cairo that is even mildly more representative than Hosni Mubarak's regime will not be willing to keep collaborating with Israel to enforce the siege of Gaza or to continue participating in the CIA's rendition program to bring Egyptians back to Egypt to be tortured. Likewise, any political order in Bahrain that respected the reality of that country's Shiite-majority population would be firmly opposed to the use of its territory as a platform for U.S. military action against Iranian interests.

Over the next year, all these developments will shift the regional balance even more against the United States and in favor of Iran. If Jordan -- a loyal U.S. client state -- were to come into play during this period, that would tilt things even further in Iran's direction.

Against this, Soros, other American elites, the media, and the Obama administration all assert that the wave of popular unrest that is taking down one U.S. ally in the Middle East after another will now bring down the Islamic Republic -- and perhaps the Assad government in Syria, too. This is truly a triumph of wishful thinking over thoughtful analysis.

Jerry Haber

Thank you, Mr. President, for vetoing the UN Security Counsel Resolution condemning the Israeli settlements as illegal.

Thank you for making America the only country in the world to support Israel on this matter.

Thank you for contradicting long-standing US policy on the settlements.

Thank you for not abstaining on this vote – which is what the US has done in the past.

Thank you for talking the talk on settlements but not walking the walk.

Thank you for allowing Israel to say, as it always does, “We and the US have disagreements on various items, but our bond is strong.”

Thank you for doing nothing about the biggest settlement activity within East Jerusalem in over forty-three years.

Thank you for undermining the PA and Abu Mazen.

Thank you for showing the Palestinian people how much – or how little – you can be relied upon.

Thank you for holding the Palestinians hostage to a non-existent (fortunately) peace process.

Thank you for allowing Israel to kill any chance of a two-state solution.

Thank you for making the United States irrelevant in the Middle East.

And Shabbat Shalom from your neighbor up 16th Street.

Pete McCloskey

One of the great disappointments of the Obama presidency came from the White House instructing our representative to the United Nations to veto the Security Council resolution Friday that would have condemned Israel's West Bank settlements as illegal.

Those settlements have been condemned by every U.S. president, Democrat and Republican, since Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 War. The settlements are recognized as illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which the United States took the lead in creating and signing.

Worse, the settlements remain a continuing insult to Arabs and Muslims, and their governments, who might otherwise be friendly to America. Since 9/11, the settlements have represented perhaps the major incentive to suicide bombers and fueled hatred of Americans throughout much of the world.

Sylvain Allemand, Jean-Claude Ruano-Borbalan

... la mondialisation n’affecte pas seulement la sphère économique et financière. Même si l’essor du commerce mondial, la cotation en continu des cours des actions et des devises, les multinationales et les méga fusions-acquisitions en constituent encore tout à la fois les facettes les plus spectaculaires et les principaux moteurs, la mondialisation revêt des dimensions politiques, sociales, culturelles sinon idéologiques, toutes imbriquées même si l'une peut dominer dans une courte période de temps la dynamique du « système monde ».

...

Parce qu’elle engendre plus d’incertitude, plus de complexité, la mondialisation inquiète, dit-on. Ne menacerait-elle pas l’identité nationale, de la culture aux services publics en passant par la gastronomie? ...

Françoise Sagan

      L'oncle voyageur attendait Bertrand à la terrasse d'un café. Quand je l'aperçus, je dis à Bertrand qu'il n'avait pas l'air mal du tout. Déjà nous étions près de lui, il se levait.
      «Luc, dit Bertrand, je suis venu avec une amie, Dominique. C'est mon oncle Luc, le voyageur.»
      J' étais agréablement surprise. Je me disais: «Tout à fait possible, l'oncle voyageur.»
Il avait les yeux gris, l'air fatigué, presque triste. D'une certaine manière il était beau.

Barbe de Miriam

Certainement, le voyage est plus que voir des vues ; c'est un changement qui continue, profondément et permanent, des idées de la vie.

Forum for a new World Governance

Today, it is commonplace to say there is a crisis in world governance. As citizens all over the world are fully aware, tensions, conflicts, and wars are persisting, and national, regional, and international institutions are powerless, even when limiting their role to avoiding the permanent deterioration of people’s living conditions and means of subsistence. The conceptual and ideological foundations of existing global institutions are based on international relations among nation-states, referring to an idea of the state that emerged in seventeenth-century Europe. This model makes no sense today unless nation-states themselves are built on new foundations, and their role, operational structures, and methods of interaction with other political structures are redefined.

...

Throughout the history of humankind, tensions between countries have generated conflicts and wars. In the early twenty-first century, however, the spread of tensions to many areas of the planet and the difficulties in solving them, as well as the unprecedented ecological deterioration due to the interaction of human activities with the biosphere have reached levels that are threatening the very survival of humankind. We do not mean to be Apocalyptic, but, in the catalog of wars launched by states and of examples of dysfunctional management of our global ecology, we should also include the social wars that have broken out more or less openly, revealing an almost permanent demonstration of exclusion and of economic and social inequalities in the low-income districts of towns, both large and small, in every continent. Nor can we ignore the rising power of the networks of organized crime, trafficking drugs and human beings and taking advantage of the absence of strong institutions at every level.

Victor Hugo

Une invasion des armées peut être résistée, mais pas une idée dont le moment est venu.

Arnaud Blin, Gustavo Marin

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, there are some who believe that the future of architecture of global politics will require setting up a global-governance system. The global-governance issue is characterized by the shift from a scenario where the power of the states is regulated to avoid disequilibrium and maintain the status quo, to one where international law and the role of international institutions need to be redefined in terms of their real arbitration potential in the management of global problems. To achieve this shift, ... rather than dreaming of a hypothetical global democracy or global government, it would be more reasonable to move gradually through the definition of the problems and objectives, in an approach similar to that adopted to build the European Union.

René Passet

Contrairement à ce que l'on entend souvent, ce n'est pas une crise de l'économie que nous vivons aujourd'hui. Mais une crise du système néolibéral. Ce n'est pas un phénomène extérieur qui a provoqué la crise des subprimes en 2008, mais la logique propre à ce système, lancé dans une course en avant de plus en plus folle, qui a conduit à proposer des crédits à des populations de plus en plus vulnérables, malgré les avertissements répétés contre les risques de formation de bulles immobilières. Le dépérissement de ce système demandera du temps. Trop d'intérêts sont en jeu, et vous avez pu constater qu'après quelques ajustements tout a repris comme avant. Les crises, de plus en plus violentes, se reproduiront. Et ceux qui ont pâti du système seront les principales victimes de son effondrement. Mais celui-ci ne se produira que si un nouveau système est en mesure de prendre la place.

Paul Valéry

Toute la terre habitable a été de nos jours reconnue, relevée, partagée entre des nations. L’ère des terrains vagues, des territoires libres, des lieux qui ne sont à personne, donc l’èr e de libre expansion, est close. Plus de roc qui ne porte un drapeau ; plus de vides sur la carte ; plus de région hors des douanes et hors des lois ; plus une tribu dont les affaires n’engen drent quelque dossier et ne dépendent, par les maléfices de l’é criture, de divers humanistes lointains dans leurs bureaux. Le temps du monde fini commence. Le recensement général des ressources, la statistique de la main-d’ oeuvre, le développement des organes de relation se poursuit. Quoi de plus remarquable et de plus important que cet inventaire, cette distribution et cet enchaînement des parties du globe ? Leurs effets sont déjà immenses. Une solidarité toute nouvelle, excessive et instantanée, entre les régions et les événements est la conséquence déjà très sensible de ce grand fait. Nous devons désormais rapporter tous les phénomènes politiques à cette condition universelle récente ; chacun d’eux représentant une obéissance ou une résistance aux effets de ce bornage définitif et de cette dépendance de plus en plus étroite des agissements humains. Les habitudes, les ambitions, les affections contractées au cours de l’histoire antérieure ne cessent point d’exister. — mais insensiblement transportées dans un milieu de structure très différente, elles y perdent leur sens et deviennent causes d’efforts infructueux et d’erreurs.

司馬遼太郎

右にせよ左にせよ、六十年以上もこの世に生きていますと、イデオロギーというものにはうんざりしました。イデオロギーを、日本訳すれば、 “正義の体系” といってよいでしょう。イデオロギーにおける正義というのは、必ずその中心の核にあたるところに 「絶対のうそ」 があります。

キリスト教では唯一神のことを大文字で God と書きます。絶対であるところの God 。絶対だから大文字であるとすれば、イデオロギーにおける正義も、絶対であるが為に大文字で書かねばなりません。頭文字を大文字で Fiction と書かねばなりません。

ここで、ついでながら、 「絶対」 というのは 「在ル」 とか 「無イ」 とかを超越したある種の観念ということです。極楽はあるか。地理的にどこにある、アフリカにあるのか、それとも火星か水星のあたりにあるのか。これは相対的な考え方です。

「在ル」 とか 「無イ」 とかを超えたものが “絶対” というものですが、そんなものがこの世にあるでしょうか。ありもしない絶対を、論理と修辞でもって糸巻きのようにグルグル巻にしたものがイデオロギー、つまり “正義の体系” というものです。

イデオロギーは、それが過ぎると、古新聞よりも無価値になります。ウソである証拠です。

いま戦争中の新聞を、朝の食卓でコーヒーを飲みながらやすらかに読めますか。

あるいは毛沢東さんの晩年のプロレタリア文化大革命のときの人民日報をアタリマエの顔つきで読めるものではありません。

ヒトラーの 『わが闘争』 を、研究以外に、平和な日曜日の読者として読めますか。

すべては時代が過ぎると、古いわらじのように意味をなさなくなるものらしいですね。

Patricia Steinhoff

森は連合赤軍に新しい方法を導入したが、これはアメリカではグループ心理療法としてよく行われるもので、さまざまな自己開発グループに広がっている。この療法の目的はより強い自己の形成を助けることにあるが、最初の段階では集団による批判、追及を行って、むだな防衛心を強く自覚させ、それを取り除かせようとする。通常、グループを率いるのは熟練した指導者で、集中批判というものが非常に残酷になっていきがちなことをよくわかっていて、行きすぎにならないように議論の方向をうまくコントロールする。

グループの指導者がはっきりしていれば、その人間が行きすぎに歯止めをかけることができる。しかし、明確な指導者なしで意識高揚法、グループ批判会がはじめられた場合でも、アメリカでは、グループは普通、平等主義の意識が強いので、そのプロセス自体に異議や不安を表明することができ、過度に批判的になるのを抑えることができる。しかしそれでも、素人がこの療法を用いるのは危険で、行きすぎが見られる場合が多い。ドラッグ中毒者のリハビリや、自己改善セラピーなどは、この療法を誤用しているとして非難されている。

連合赤軍は、行きすぎの傾向に歯止めをかける手段を二つとももっていなかった。熟練した指導者もいなかったし、グループの平等主義もなかったのである。

HIJK

Ａ主義とは、Ａについて、それ以上考えるのをやめて、 信じるという事ではないだろうか。

つまり、思考停止ポイントの表明なのではないだろうか。

楼主

イデオロギーというものがある。こいつにとりつかれると、。。人間なら誰でも暴走し始める。。。共産主義だけがイデオロギーではない。民主主義もその一つだ。しかしなぜかこれを絶対の正義だと勘違いしている人がいる。そして民主化運動を神聖なる戦いか何かのように思いこんでいる。

そもそも民主主義でいう平等というのは、神という絶対存在があり、それを軸にした平等だということのはずだ。我が国の伝統とは相いれない借り物の思想を、顔を真っ赤にして、これが正義なのだと叫びつつ、中国に無理やり押し付ける意図がわからない。余計なお世話とはまさにこのことだ。

岡本公三

三島由紀夫、北一輝、西郷隆盛

これら三人の男たちは、主義に殉じた日本の英雄で

ぼくは非常に敬愛している

福島敏雄

イデオロギーは、一般的には「観念の体系」と訳される政治用語である。大のイデオロギー嫌いだった作家の司馬遼太郎は、このコトバを「正義の体系」と訳した。

イデオロギーが恐ろしい側面を持つのは、この「正義」のためなら、何をしてもよいという方向に転倒していくからである。

Captain Grace M. Hopper

In 1945, while working in a World War I vintage non-air-conditioned building on a hot, humid summer day, the computer stopped. We searched for the problem and found a failing relay — one of the big signal relays. Inside, we found a moth that had been beaten to death. We pulled it out with tweezers and taped it to the log book. From then on, when the officer came in to ask if we were accomplishing anything, we told him we were 'debugging' the computer.

----

Right now we're in the business of collecting information. No one has really analyzed the total flow of information. What is most important? Is it Joe's two hours of overtime, or is it a nuclear power plant that might blow up if we don't change a valve setting? We have not correctly addressed that.

We haven't researched the value of information or the cost of incorrect information—or even which information gets priority. It is my experience that the senior squeaking wheel gets the top priority.

Edsger W. Dijkstra

In the IBM/360, which appeared a year later, such queueing was done by "command chaining": in the chain of queued commands, the last one carried an end marker, and attaching a new command was done by overwriting that end marker by a pointer to the command to be attached. But the design contained two serious flaws.

If at the moment of attachment the channel was still active, the new command would be executed in due time, otherwise the channel had to be reactivated. To establish whether this obligation was present, the instruction code contained test instructions testing whether channels were active or not, but the trouble with such a test instruction is that when a channel is reported to be still active, that information can be obsolete a microsecond later. In the IBM/360 the result was that, when a new command had been attached while before the attachment the channel was observed to be active and after the attachment it was passive, this information was insufficient to determine whether the channel had deactivated itself before or after the attachment, i.e. whether the last command had been executed or not.

Reporting completions was similarly defective. Command chaining had introduced channels that in due time would report a sequence of completions, but instead of a counter there was only the binary interrupt flipflop to record a next completion. If an interrupt signal came before the previous one for that channel had been honored, it would just get lost! They had traded the minor evil of moral urgency for the major one of essential urgency.

At the time I was shocked by the fact that the major product of the world's largest and most powerful computer manufacturer could contain such a serious blunder. Later I realized that to a certain extent I myself was to be blamed, for when I invented the semaphores and the synchronizing primitives, I did not publish my invention.

---

The other vivid memory is of what I heard about IBM's mechanical debugging aid. In order to make errors reproducible they equipped the IBM/360 with a special hardware monitor; in the recording mode it would capture precisely where in the computation each interrupt took place, in the controlling mode it would force the computer to replay exactly the recorded computation, thus making intermediate results available for inspection. It struck me as a crude and silly way of proceeding, and I remember being grateful that lack of money had protected me from making that methodological mistake. I felt grateful and superior, and when a few years later it became clear that IBM couldn't get its OS/360 right, I was not amazed.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.

Cambridge Books Online

Cambridge Books Online (Cambridge University Press) offers predefined or bespoke collections of content within a richly functional, fully searchable online environment.

Access to Cambridge Books Online content is via institutional purchase, allowing unlimited concurrent users, meaning anyone who wants to may access the resource 24 hours a day.

With online access to unique, indispensable and extensive scholarly content, Cambridge Books Online will offer all levels of user a new dimension of access and usability to support and enhance research.

Key Features:

• Thousands of front & backlist titles
• Dynamic content and feature set, with frequent addition of new titles being and regular functionality enhancements
• Titles from across all Cambridge world renowned subject areas
• Flexible purchase plans and custom packages
• Powerful quick search, advanced search and browse capabilities
• Comprehensive library support tools including downloadable MARC records, usage reports and access & authentication methods
• Compliance with all major industry standards and initiatives
• Extensive user functionality including hyperlinked references & personalisation features
• Dedicated customer support teams
• Enhanced discoverability tools

Scribd

Scribd is the world’s largest social reading and publishing company. We've made it easy to share and discover entertaining, informative and original written content across the web and mobile devices. Our vision is to liberate the written word, to connect people with the information and ideas that matter most to them.

Think of Scribd (pronounced “skribbed”) as the largest book club on the planet -- except that anyone can join the conversation on any topic imaginable: vampire fan fiction, European travel, the latest research in neuroscience, even crossword puzzles.

...

Scribd’s patent-pending conversion technology has democratized the publishing process. Now, anyone can instantly upload and transform any file -- including PDF, Word and PowerPoint -- into a web document that’s discoverable through search engines, shared on social networks and read on billions of mobile devices.

Scribd is where your content finds an audience. Millions of people come to Scribd every day to read and discuss business presentations, poetry, magazines and the latest best-sellers. Scribd’s content publishers include the biggest names in book publishing, media, government and entertainment. Many more are people just like you.

Peter L. Shillingsburg

Another way to dissect ignorance is to note that it comes in two majorforms with infinite, it seems, sub-variations: The first consists of absenceof knowledge. It is the condition felt when one is confronted with a question the answer to which is "I do not know." The second form is farmore pernicious because it frequently goes undetected. It is the condition that arises when we are confronted with a question for which we have ananswer we believe to be applicable but that in fact is not applicable or isflawed by undetected misinformation. "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge." But the illusion of knowledge IS ignorance, too.

René Descartes

Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum, sive existo.

Richard Flanagan

I should have known why I was there, but in truth I didn't. To be frank, although I have painted all I know, it's clear that what I know is two parts of bugger-all. All that I don't know, on the other hand, is truly impressive & the library of Alexandria would be too small to contain the details of all my ignorance.

W. N. Herbert

      Humanity, technology,
is never merely good or bad — or worse:
   authentic or unnatural,
but somewhere in the greys our habits spread
   as the brain's best stab at rainbow.
 

Marshall Lee

Type faces — like people's faces — have distinctive features indicating aspects of character beyond just strength and delicacy. Some features are quite pronounced, some are very subtle and more subject to personal interpretation. Here are some text faces with capsule character analyses:

   Baskerville — Classical and elegant
   Jason — Round and warm
   Granjon — Round, warm and graceful
   Caledonia — Clean, firm, business-like
   Times Roman — Stiff, cold, formal
   Electra — Light, cool, efficient
   Fairfield — Fussy
   Bodoni — Dramatic
   Waverley — Round and cool
In choosing type, it's better to consider these characteristics than to follow historical or conventional rules. It's the type's character, not its history, that affects the reader.

WorldMeets.US

Mexican gangs get the weapons they need to enforce their rule over several Mexican cities South of the US border. US weapons traffickers get money for their "goods" and the drugs flow across the border.

Kathryn Farr

One million people are trafficked into the sex industry each year.

Christine Monnier

Organized criminal organizations have the following traits:

• They are profit-oriented: Their goal is to make money by supplying illegal goods (such as drugs, weapons, human organs, prostitutes or sex slaves) through criminal means (such extortion, protection, corruption, murder or money-laundering).

• Most have high longevity: Some criminal organizations have existed for decades if not for centuries.

• They are organized so as to facilitate criminal activities, such as non-hierarchical and flexible networks.

• They all use violence at every level of their trade: against competitors, customers, suppliers, officials and even their own member as a form of social control.

• They engage in corruption of government and corporate officials as well as law enforcement agents

In the context of globalization, not only have traditional criminal networks, such as the Italian Mafia or the Japanese Yakuza adapted to the new political and economic conditions, but new criminal organizations have emerged precisely as a product of globalization capitalizing on the profitability and high demands for new illegal commodities on a global scale.

Manuel Castells

There are three stages involved in money laundering:

(1) The first stage is the placement of the illegal proceeds into the financial system through banks or other financial institutions. Often, criminal organizations use banks located in countries that exercise banking secrecy (they do not disclose financial information to investigators), such as Aruba, the Cayman Islands or Luxemburg.

(2) The second stage is called “layering,” that is, to detach the funds from their illegal source. This can be done by swapping currency (illegal proceeds in US dollars are converted into Euros) or by investing the money into stocks. Thanks to the liberalization of global financial markets, it is easy to transfer vast sums of money all over the world, several times over within seconds.

(3) The third stage is call “integration,” that is, the introduction of the laundered money back into the legitimate economy through various investments. The majority of criminal organizations described above engages directly in money laundering or hire the services of other criminal syndicates to do it.

Alessandra Dino

The globalization and internationalization of mafia-style organized crime represents a key point for scholars and experts in organized crime. The increase of relations between criminal organizations and terrorist international network, the growth and rise of markets, the simplification of transactions, the opportunity to hide money and financial movements in the international area characterize actual criminal scenario. This paper tries to analyse the effects of globalization on mafia criminal activities and their possible connections with international terrorism. An objective of the present work is to pick out new social actors and technological instruments of transnational and national criminal organizations, new border lines between lawful and unlawful conducts and to describe the shifty “grey area” that links markets and interests apart in the past. The aims of this paper are to explore effects of globalization on criminal organization at the local and international level, to identify if and how tradition is combined with innovation in more structured and traditional criminal organizations, and to investigate the effects of the new legislation against transnational crime on the strategy and structure of mafia organizations. At last, this research also reviews possible tools those scholars and justice operators could use to understand and to decode a phenomenon that appears more evasive and invasive than in the past.

Christian Caryl

... the Japanese mob is still very much alive, and parts of it are thriving. But years of recession, forced restructuring and global competition haven't just changed the way Japan Inc. does business; they've also forced Japan's criminals to adapt. Back when the country's economy was booming, a hood's work was fairly predictable: gambling, protection rackets, and maybe a little drug dealing could ensure a comfortable life. But nowadays, in an age of tougher laws, greater competition and a shrinking, aging domestic market, only those gangsters who can change with the times are flourishing; others are growing poor or dropping out entirely. ... "They've had to write off bad loans. They've had to globalize."

... savvier gangsters were already focusing on growth industries like the bankruptcy business. ... gangsters in Japan function like attorneys and arbitrators in the West, settling creditor claims and recovering assets. They've also become big investors. After the bubble, American investment companies like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch came in and bought up distressed assets like golf courses. So did the Yamaguchi-gumi.

And the Yamaguchi have proven the most inventive at coming up with new scams. ... an affiliated gangster had taken over a tech company that, among other things, was running one of Japan's leading Web sites for college alumni. ... he was planning to sell off the company after hyping its shares. ... police arrested two Yamaguchi members over a con involving the abuse of government credit guarantees for small businesses.

Of course, financial manipulation takes a lot of sophistication, but Yakuza 2.0 has become adept at recruiting the necessary talent. ...

Then there's the matter of foreign competition. ... media reports about local gangs being squeezed out by rapacious Chinese and Russians. In reality, Japan's mobsters have usually managed to co-opt outsiders. ...

It's helped the Yamaguchi-gumi that it has more experience operating globally than many Japanese corporations. Indeed, the yakuza were early pioneers of the internationalization of organized crime. The process started when the Japanese tourist industry exploded in the 1960s and '70s, with the yakuza organizing sex tours and drug deals across Southeast Asia. Nowadays they're known to work closely with the Russian mafia, buying seafood spirited illegally out of Russian waters and selling it for huge markups in Japan. One new sphere of operations is Uzbekistan, from which the Yamaguchi-gumi has been known to charter direct flights—perhaps to transport Uzbek women for prostitution.

INHOPE

INHOPE is the International Association of Internet Hotlines.

The mission of the INHOPE Association is to support and enhance the performance of Internet Hotlines around the World, ensuring swift action is taken in responding to reports of illegal content making the internet a safer place.

The key functions of the Association are:

• Exchange expertise
• Support new hotlines
• Exchange reports
• Interface with relevant initiatives outside the EU
• Educate and inform policy makers, particularly at the international level.

Values

• Freedom of the Internet.
• A commitment to positive uses of the Internet
• Shared responsibility for protection of young people by government, educators, parents and the Internet industry

Goals

• To establish and support effective national hotlines.
• To train and support new hotlines
• To foster ongoing Internet safety awareness and education throughout Europe
• The establishment of effective common procedures for receiving and processing reports

警察庁

世界的規模で活動する犯罪組織は、世界各地にネットワークやインフラを構築する過程で新たな犯行手口を取り込んでいる。こうした犯罪組織の我が国への浸透は、国内の伝統的な犯罪集団に対して、これらのネットワークやインフラを提供し、新たな犯行手口を知らしめることとなり、「犯罪ビジネスモデル」を再構築させ、新手の犯罪を敢行させかねない。このように、国際犯罪組織の我が国への浸透にとどまらず、国内の犯罪組織の変質をももたらす犯罪のグローバル化は、国内治安の「正面の脅威」となる危険性がある。したがって、この新たな脅威である犯罪のグローバル化に対して、今後、組織の総力を挙げて、的確に取り組んでいくことが求められる。

尾崎豊

生きている奴らは みなイカサマな賭博師さ

五木寛之

　日本がいちばんに目指すべきは経済の復活ではなく、思想や学問や文化を成熟させることでしょう。日本人は明治期に西欧をお手本とした近代化を始めて以来、二つのコンプレックスを持ち続けてきました。ひとつは明治の神仏分離令以来続く神仏習合、もうひとつは自然崇拝です。

　自然を崇拝する神道があり、仏教にも「山川草木悉有仏性」という思想があります。山にも川にも草にも木にも仏性がある、心がある、命があるという考え方。日本ではこの神と仏が同居してきた歴史と、自然を尊ぶ思想があるわけです。西欧的な価値観からは蔑視されてきたテーマですが、しかしこれこそをしっかりと思想化し、磨き上げる必要があると私は思っています。

　いまは原理主義的な一神教の対立が、世界中に大きな緊張感をもたらしている時代です。だからこそ日本人の精神に深く根付いている多神教的な世界、八百万の神々という考え方は重要です。クリスマスを祝い、正月に神社へ行き、葬式は寺で行う。私たちが自然に続けているこうした共存の思想は、実は大きな遺産だといえるでしょう。これらを何となく日々の中で行うのではなく、はっきりと思想化し、世界に紹介すること―。私はこれからの日本に対して、敢えて「ギリシャになれ」と言いたい。

　ギリシャは経済という価値観から見れば、デフォルトした国だとされています。しかし、それでもギリシャ文明が今もヨーロッパ文明の基礎であり、その中からさまざまな文芸作品や思想・哲学が生まれたことは揺るぎません。日本も同じように、世界にとっての文化や思想の発信地となっていく方向性を持つべきだと私は考えています。

　産業や資源がなく、経済的には苦しくとも、世界をリードする思想の多くが日本から生まれていく。そのような日本に多くの人々が憧れ、世界中から学びに来る―。それは裏返しの希望です。しかし内面的な成熟が求められる下山の時代にこそ、ふさわしい国のあり方なのではないかと思うのです。

Richard March Hoe

The steam powered rotary printing press, invented in 1843 in the United States by Richard M. Hoe (perfected in 1846, patented in 1847), allowed millions of copies of a page in a single day. Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper, as continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace.

Friedrich Gottlob Koenig, Andreas Friedrich Bauer

High-Speed Printing Press by Friedrich Gottlob Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer (1812)

Philip B. Meggs

Johannes Gutenberg's work on the printing press began in approximately 1436 when he partnered with Andreas Dritzehn—a man he had previously instructed in gem-cutting—and Andreas Heilmann, owner of a paper mill. However, it was not until a 1439 lawsuit against Gutenberg that an official record exists; witnesses' testimony discussed Gutenberg's types, an inventory of metals (including lead), and his type molds.

Having previously worked as a professional goldsmith, Gutenberg made skillful use of the knowledge of metals he had learned as a craftsman. He was the first to make type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, which was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality printed books and proved to be much better suited for printing than all other known materials. To create these lead types, Gutenberg used what is considered one of his most ingenious inventions, a special matrix enabling the quick and precise molding of new type blocks from a uniform template.

William Addison Dwiggins

Theodore Levitt

A powerful force drives the world toward a converging commonality, and that force is technology. It has proletarianized communication, transport and travel. It has made isolated places and impoverished peoples eager for modernity's allurements. Almost everyone everywhere wants all the things they have heard about, seen, or experienced via the new technologies.

The result is a new commercial reality - the emergence of global markets for standardized consumer products on a previously unimagined scale. Corporations geared to this new reality benefit from enormous economies of scale in production, distribution, marketing and management. By translating these benefits into reduced world prices, they can decimate competitors that still live in the disabling grip of old assumptions about how the world works.

Gone are accustomed differences in national or regional preference. Gone are the days when a company could sell last year's models - or lesser versions of advanced products — in the less developed world. And gone are the days when prices, margins and profits abroad were generally higher than at home. The globalization of markets is at hand. With that, the multinational commercial world nears its end, and so does the multinational corporation.

The multinational and the global corporation are not the same thing. The multinational corporation operates in a number of countries, and adjusts its products and practices in each - at high relative costs. The global corporation operates with resolute constancy - at low relative cost - as if the entire world (or major regions of it) were a single entity; it sells the same things in the same way everywhere.

---

Given what is everywhere the purpose of commerce, the global company will shape the vectors of technology and globalization into its great strategic fecundity. It will systematically push these vectors toward their own convergence, offering everyone simultaneously high-quality, more or less standardized products at optimally low prices, thereby achieving for itself vastly expanded markets and proflts. Companies that do not adapt to the new global realities will become victims of those that do.

Jeremy Page

A year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a cash-strapped Kremlin began selling China a chunk of its vast military arsenal, including the pride of the Russian air force, the Sukhoi-27 fighter jet.

For the next 15 years, Russia was China's biggest arms supplier, providing $20 billion to $30 billion of fighters, destroyers, submarines, tanks and missiles. It even sold Beijing a license to make the Su-27 fighter jet—with imported Russian parts.

Today, Russia's military bonanza is over, and China's is just beginning.

After decades of importing and reverse-engineering Russian arms, China has reached a tipping point: It now can produce many of its own advanced weapons—including high-tech fighter jets like the Su-27—and is on the verge of building an aircraft carrier.

Not only have Chinese engineers cloned the prized Su-27's avionics and radar but they are fitting it with the last piece in the technological puzzle, a Chinese jet engine.

In the past two years, Beijing hasn't placed a major order from Moscow.

Now, China is starting to export much of this weaponry, undercutting Russia in the developing world, and potentially altering the military balance in several of the world's flash points.

This epochal turnaround was palpable in the Russian pavilion at November's Airshow China in the southern city of Zhuhai. Russia used to be the star of this show, wowing visitors with its "Russian Knights" aerobatic team, showing off fighters, helicopters and cargo planes, and sealing multibillion dollar deals on the sidelines.

This year, it didn't bring a single real aircraft—only a handful of plastic miniatures, tended by a few dozen bored sales staff.

China, by contrast, laid on its biggest commercial display of military technology—almost all based on Russian know-how.

David Rapp

Queens Library (QL), the 2009 Gale/LJ Library of the Year and the highest-circulating library in the United States, will go live next month with its new daVinci Open Library Platform—a customizable, multi-purpose integrated library system (ILS) and other components the library has developed with ILS company VTLS.

QL and VTLS have been working on daVinci since 2008. Its architecture includes a heavily customized version of VTLS's Virtua ILS and other VTLS components, as well as a QL-created, Drupal-based content management system that will host staff and customer websites, and many open-source elements, such as an Apache Solr search platform, a MySQL database, and Fedora Commons digital asset management.

After the launch of QL's new website in January, many new features are slated for development, including a mobile website and mobile app, a recommendation engine which would give QL patrons the option to save their own search histories, revamped econtent delivery, and enhanced community-oriented news and information on each of its 62 branch library sites. (A preview version of the new site is available on the current QL website.)

ScienceDaily

Digital objects -- documents, images, databases -- require specific software to open and read them, which in turn requires specific operating systems, device drivers, and hardware to run them depending on the format in which they're stored, whether magnetic, optical or some other system. The pace of change in the world of technology is so rapid that applications as well as media technology have only short life spans and archived data has to be migrated at frequent intervals on to new data carriers and into new file formats to maintain its integrity. For instance, data that once might have been held on magnetic tape or floppy disks is unreadable on today's equipment and CD-ROMs and other media will go the same route in the future.

If the 0s and 1s of digitised information can succumb to the vagaries of technological change, one thing is certain, analogue archives will always be readable to future generations provided they retain language skills. After all, we can read the works of modern authors almost as readily as the words of Shakespeare and Chaucer and ancient hieroglyphics bear close scrutiny once we cracked the code.

Peter Jackson

With more than 400 public libraries under threat of closure, the campaign to save them is gathering pace. But in an age of downloads, cheap books and easy online shopping, can this great British institution survive?

Some of the UK's best-selling authors have joined the fight against "cultural vandalism" by backing a national day of protest read-ins against library closures on Saturday.

But no matter how eloquently Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy or author Colin Dexter extol their virtues, the fact is library visitor numbers - like their budgets - are falling.

Campaigners say they are irreplaceable doors to learning more relevant now than ever before, but for others the speed and breadth of the web has rendered them obsolete dinosaurs.

So what can the internet provide that a library can't, and when is there simply no online substitute for a trip to your local library? Here are five examples on either side:

• (Only at a library) 1. Specialist research; 2. Environment to learn; 3. Expert staff;
  4. Free internet access; 5. Engage in local democracy
• (Only online) 1. Searchability; 2. Digital books; 3. Comfort in numbers;
  4. Brings niches together; 5. Self-publishing

Map Marketing

年収１，０００万円以上世帯比率

Stephen Leahy

Famine-hollowed farmers watch trucks loaded with grain grown on their ancestral lands heading for the nearest port, destined to fill richer bellies in foreign lands. This scene has become all too common since the 2008 food crisis.

Food prices are even higher now in many countries, sparking another cycle of hunger riots in the Middle East and South Asia last weekend. While bad weather gets the blame for rising prices, the instant price hikes of recent times are largely due to market speculation in a corrupt global food system.

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When South Korea's Daewoo Logistics tried to buy 1.3 million hectares, or one-third, of Madagascar's farmland in 2008, violent protests erupted and the government was toppled. South Korea still has at least a million hectares in long-term leases elsewhere and China 2.1 million ha, mainly in Southeast Asia.

Some of the leases are for 99 years at a one dollar a hectare, but local people are not eligible for the deals being promoted in countries where millions of people remain dependent on food aid.

Ben Bernanke

Clearly what's happening is not a dollar effect, it's a growth effect.

It’s entirely unfair to attribute excess demand issues in emering markets to US monetary policy.

Michael Pento

From all accounts, it appears the world is in the early stages of a major leg up in food prices. The major macroeconomic trend will likely drive economic policy and the investment outlook for years to come. Although mainstream pundits like to focus on such cyclical drivers as the weather, the real force behind the move is secular. The U.S. is leading the world in a pandemic of monetary inflation that is helping to cause commodity prices, food in particular, to skyrocket across the globe.

Ian Bremmer, David Gordon

In the G-Zero, the world's major powers set aside aspirations for global leadership—alone, coordinated, or otherwise—and look primarily inward for their policy priorities. Key institutions that provide global governance become arenas not for collaboration but for confrontation. Global economic growth and efficiency is reduced as a result.

It's a new phenomenon in the post-industrial world. For a brief period following the financial crisis, governance of the global economy looked to be handed over to the G20. It was a decidedly messier group than the G7, with a broader agenda and less room for agreement. Still, at least in principle, members shared an overriding interest in the stability of the international system. However much the national interests of members may have differed, G20 leaders shared a willingness to work in concert (or at least to talk the talk) until the world economy stabilized. This was the "rise of the rest" model—a post-American world to be sure, but one where the United States continued to play a guiding role.

G20 cooperation proved a short-lived collective reaction to panic; safety in numbers in the face of imminent disaster. The first indication it wouldn't last came in Copenhagen a year ago, following a climate summit marked by such disunity that the outcome was worse than if no meeting had taken place. Climate proved a sufficiently low-grade priority in the middle of a hard-fought global economic recovery that the frictions were quickly forgotten. That's less the case with last fall's IMF meeting in Washington and G20 meeting in Seoul, which ended with warnings of a global currency war and a return to the national economic barriers of the 1930s. During both summits, the economic strategies of the world's leading economies were set in opposition to one another.

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No new global alignment sits over the horizon. ... there's no near-term Beijing consensus; no development of the BRICs as an effective bloc; and no effective coordination of the "West."

Pranab Mukherjee

Just yesterday I said that these types of fluctuations take place, sometimes weekly fluctuations, sometimes monthly fluctuations. Price rise is always, particularly of the essential commodities and food, a matter of grave concern.

Счастье

- А что это у тебя в руке?
- Счастье...
- А почему такое маленькое?
- Оно только моё. Зато какое лучистое и красивое...
- Да, восхитительно!
- Хочешь кусочек?
- Наверное...
- Давай ладошку, я поделюсь с тобой.
- Ой, оно такое тёплое!
- Нравится?
- Очень...Спасибо! Знаешь, мне намного лучше, когда счастье в руке...
- Так всегда бывает.
- А если я с кем-то поделюсь?
- Тогда у тебя прибавится своего!
- Почему?
- Сам не знаю. Только потом оно станет ещё более тёплым.
- А руки об него обжечь можно?
- Руки обжигает боль...Счастье не может обжечь...

Paul Krugman

While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we'd expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.

English mother

Just because everyone is jumping off the bridge, doesn't mean you have to.

日本のおばあさん

世の中に

寝るほど楽は

なかりけり

浮世の馬鹿は

起きて働く

Bob Perks

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.

森鷗外

南山の　たたかひの日に

袖口の　こがねのぼたん

ひとつおとしつ

その扣鈕惜し

べるりんの　都大路の

ぱつさあじゆ　電燈あをき

店にて買ひぬ

はたとせまへに

えぽれつと　かがやきし友

こがね髪　ゆらぎし少女

はや老いにけん

死にもやしけん

はたとせの　身のうきしづみ

よろこびも　かなしびも知る

袖のぼたんよ

かたはとなりぬ

ますらをの　玉と碎けし

ももちたり　それも惜しけど

こも惜し扣鈕

身に添ふ扣鈕

Clare Kipps

This is a biography of a little sparrow, from the cradle to the grave. A fascinating story of love for a little bird.

Steven D. Levitt

I can’t say that I am surprised by the latest sumo headline from The Associated Press:

Japan’s scandal-tainted sport of sumo wrestling is facing new allegations that senior wrestlers used cell phones to plan how to fix matches.

Japanese media reported Wednesday that police have found suspicious text messages on several wrestlers’ phones suggesting they were planning to fix bouts and going so far as to detail how one would attack and how he wanted his opponent to fall.

The text messages were found on the phones of wrestlers in sumo’s second-highest division. Japan’s Kyodo news service says the texts indicate that the wrestlers routinely fixed bouts and charged hundreds of thousands of yen (thousands of dollars) per match to do so.

I wonder why the police were looking at the cell phones of the wrestlers? Is it illegal to throw a match in sumo? I wouldn’t think so. They must have been after something else.