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.

---

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.

---

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.

織田信長

小泉淳作

- 昭和16年、17歳で大学の文学部予科仏文科に通いました。文学へ憧れですよ。。。僕なんか相手にされないし、第一仲間にも入れてもらえませんでした。

- 昭和18年、19歳で東京藝術大学に入学しました。。。戦争真っ只中で絵描きには不幸な時代でした。国家の非常時に絵なぞ描く奴は国賊だ、なんていわれて。

- 昭和23年に復学。でもまた胸をやって、今度は別な所が悪くなりました。。。結局卒業したのは昭和27年28歳の時でした。

- 昭和29年、30歳の時に結婚。家族を養わなければなりませんから、デザインの仕事をしたのです。デザインは人のため、絵は自分のためと思っていました。

- 湯呑みを買いにいったら気に入った物がなくて、自分で作れないかなと思いました。昭和37年頃、38歳くらいの時でした。。。作品展を開いたら何とか一年間食えるくらいの収入になりました。

- やっとデザイナーをやめられたのは、昭和50年頃、50歳を過ぎていました。。。楽しいしね。その一方で、やきものは芸術ではない。実用品だという思いがあった。

- （孤高の画家と呼ばれるのは）好きではないね。20年以上も公募展に出品していて、認められず会員にもなれなかった。団体に属さずにきたから、そう呼ばれるのでしょう。そんな格好良いことじゃない。49歳を最後に公募展への出品をやめました。

- 定期的に個展を開いていたら、昭和52年に描いた『奥伊豆風景』が山種美術館優秀賞に選ばれました。53歳の時です。受賞したのは、後にも先にもその１回だけです。

- 水墨画を描くようになったのは還暦になった頃。。。今の日本画よりよっぽど新しいと感じた。そこには哲学のようなものがあった。いつかは水墨画をと思っていました。なかなか難しくてね。

- 不思議ですよ。絵を描き続けてきましたが、画家で生活出来るとは思わなかったもの。画家としてやっていけるようになったら、70歳を過ぎていた。それから２ヶ所の天井画を手がけられるなんて、ありがたいことだと思っています。

Dyckman Farmhouse Museum

N. J. Lindquist, W. E. Nelles

山木秀夫

Clay Shirky

Since the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, the world's networked population has grown from the low millions to the low billions. Over the same period, social media have become a fact of life for civil society worldwide, involving many actors -- regular citizens, activists, nongovernmental organizations, telecommunications firms, software providers, governments. This raises an obvious question for the U.S. government: How does the ubiquity of social media affect U.S. interests, and how should U.S. policy respond to it?

As the communications landscape gets denser, more complex, and more participatory, the networked population is gaining greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action.

Umberto Eco

A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.

Christophe Chabouté

Randy Newman

Something in your eyes

Makes me want to lose myself

Makes me want to lose myself

In your arms

There's something in your voice

Makes my heart beat fast

Hope this feeling lasts

The rest of my life

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Growth of Muslim populations

by country

(projected change 2010-2030)

Rachel Sterne

RT @NYCTSubwayScoop: Track Workers prepare to ride Sweeper Train to clean ice, snow from tracks & signals along A Line.http://ow.ly/i/7zxw

The City of New York

Georges-Pierre Seurat

Michael Scherer

The third question went to another U.S. reporter, Hans Nichols of Bloomberg, who took the opportunity to first ask Hu to address the first question. Hu's answer, while far from satisfying for the U.S. media, which prizes freedom of expression as a fundamental right, nonetheless did offer some explanation for the repression that continues in China today. Rather than defending his country's record outright, he offered a qualified explanation, admitting significant room for improvement. According to the transcript, as translated, he said:

China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights. And at the same time, we do believe that we also need to take into account the different national circumstances when it comes to the universal value of human rights. China is a developing country with a huge population and also a developing country in a crucial stage of reform. In this context, China still faces many challenges in economic and social development, and a lot still needs to be done in China in terms of human rights.

NGO Monitor

NGO Monitor's objective is to end the practice used by certain self-declared 'humanitarian NGOs' of exploiting the label 'universal human rights values' to promote politically and ideologically motivated agendas.

Jonathan Foreman

At the headquarters of Human Rights Watch, more than 30 storeys above the noise and bustle of Manhattan, there is so much high-mindedness hanging in the air you can almost taste it. This is the epicentre of a certain type of socially smart, progressive activism — the kind that persuades Hollywood grandees, power lawyers and liberal financiers to dig deeply into their pockets.

When the story broke that one of the organisation’s most prominent and vocal members of staff might be a collector of Nazi-era military memorabilia it felt like some sort of sexual scandal had erupted in the Victorian church. For a lobbying group accustomed to adulatory coverage in the media, it was a public-relations catastrophe.

Human Rights Watch is one of two global superpowers among the world’s myriad humanitarian pressure groups. It is relatively young — established in its current form in 1988 — but it has grown so quickly in size, wealth and influence that it has all but eclipsed its older, London-based rival, Amnesty International.

Unlike Amnesty, HRW, as it is known, gets its money from charitable foundations and wealthy individuals — such as the financier George Soros — rather than a mass membership. And, also unlike Amnesty, it seeks to make an impact, not through extensive letter-writing campaigns, but by talking to governments and the media, urging openness and candour and backing up its advocacy with research reports. It is an association that is all about influence — an influence that depends on a carefully honed image of objectivity, expertise and high moral tone. So it was perhaps a little awkward that a key member of staff was found to have such a treasure trove of Nazi regalia.

By day, Marc Garlasco was HRW’s only military expert, the person that its Emergencies Division would send to conflict zones to investigate alleged war crimes. He wrote reports condemning the dropping of cluster bombs in the Russia-Georgia war, the alleged illegal use of white phosphorus by the Israeli army in Gaza and coalition tactics that he said “unnecessarily” put Iraqi or Afghan civilians at risk. An enthusiastic source of quotes for the media, he was incessantly on the phone to journalists.

But by night, Garlasco was “Flak88”, an obsessive contributor to internet forums on Third Reich memorabilia and an avid collector of badges and medals emblazoned with swastikas and eagles.

Human Rights Watch

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been notably reluctant to put pressure on abusive governments. As secretary-general, he has two main tools at his disposal to promote human rights–private diplomacy and his public voice. He can nudge governments to change through his good offices, or he can use the stature of his office to expose those who are unwilling to change. Ban’s disinclination to speak out about serious human rights violators means he is often choosing to fight with one hand tied behind his back. He did make strong public comments on human rights when visiting Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but he was much more reticent when visiting a powerful country like China. And he has placed undue faith in his professed ability to convince by private persuasion the likes of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, Burmese military leader Than Shwe, and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Worse, far from condemning repression, Ban sometimes went out of his way to portray oppressive governments in a positive light. For example, in the days before Burma’s sham elections in November, Ban contended that it was “not too late” to “make this election more inclusive and participatory” by releasing political detainees–an unlikely eventuality that, even if realized, would not have leveled the severely uneven electoral playing field. Even after the travesty was complete, Ban said only that the elections had been “insufficiently inclusive, participatory and transparent”–a serious understatement.

When he visited China the same month, Ban made no mention of human rights in his meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, leaving the topic for lesser officials. That omission left the impression that, for the secretary-general, human rights were at best a second-tier priority. In commenting on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Chinese human rights activist, Ban never congratulated Liu or called for his release from prison but instead praised Beijing by saying: “China has achieved remarkable economic advances, lifted millions out of poverty, broadened political participation and steadily joined the international mainstream in its adherence to recognized human rights instruments and practices.”

Bernie Siegel

The inexplicable happens all the time. It makes more sense to simply accept things we observe but cannot understand. It is really more scientific to keep an open mind. Until we can understand and explain the things we now label miracles, let us accept them and try to create more of them.

Ralph Waldo Trine

A miracle is nothing more or less than this. Anyone who has come into a knowledge of his true identity, of his oneness with the all-pervading wisdom and power, this makes it possible for laws higher than the ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to him or her.

Marianne Williamson

In asking for miracles, we are seeking a practical goal: a return to inner peace. We're not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change.

William Blake

The person who does not believe in miracles surely makes it certain that he or she will never take part in one.

Augustine of Hippo

When people truly open their minds, and contemplate the way in which the universe is ordered and governed, they are amazed--overwhelmed by a sense of the miraculous. When people contemplate with open minds the germination of a single seed, they are equally overwhelmed--yet numerous babies are born every day, and no-one marvels. If only people opened their minds, they would see that the birth of a baby, in which a new life is created, is a greater miracle than restoring life.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith.

Philip Jason

To love someone is to always see them as the miracle that they are; as the miracle that they exist, the miracle that makes your own simultaneous existence seem fortunately improbable and therefore defiantly miraculous; is to show them, in your eyes and through the way in which you look at them, the limitless beauty of their true miraculous selves; is to say to them in every glance: "I believe in miracles because I believe in you."

Paulo Coelho

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

Henry David Thoreau

All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every second.

Boyd K. Packer

Some people think a miracle is only a miracle if it happens instantaneously, but miracles can grow slowly and patience and faith can compel things to happen that otherwise never would have come to pass.

Kelley Vicstrom

Each of my days are miracles. I won't waste my day; I won't throw away miracle.

Wayne Dyer

I am realistic--I expect miracles.

Libbie Fudim

Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none had ever happened.

G.K. Chesterson

The most wonderful thing about miracles is that they sometimes happen.

Willa Cather

Where there is great love there are always miracles. Miracles rest upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for the moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what has been there around us always.

St. Augustine

Miracles are not in contradiction to nature. They are only in contradiction with what we know of nature.

George Bernard Shaw

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

Bernard Berenson

Miracles happen to those who believe in them.

つげ義春

貧困旅行記

藤澤清造

ExchangeRate.com

Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are international foreign exchange reserve assets. Allocated to nations by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a SDR represents a claim to foreign currencies for which it may be exchanged in times of need.

Today, the US Dollar is the world's primary foreign exchange reserve asset, and SDRs may be little used. Some nations, notably China and Russia (as well as the UN), favor increasing the substance and function of the SDR.

Although denominated in US dollars, the nominal value of an SDR is derived from a basket of currencies; specifically, a fixed amount of Japanese Yen, US Dollars, British Pounds and Euros.

During its creation, it was debated if the Special Drawing Right should be a form of money or a type of credit. Nations, when asked to do so by the IMF, are supposed to purchase SDRs from other nations with weak foreign exchange reserves. As this means that SDR allotments may need to be repaid (although not to the IMF itself), the SDR could be considered a form of debt security. And like debt securities, SDR holdings do accrue interest. However, the SDR is used as a unit of account and is sometimes referred to as a "quasi currency".

Jean Baudrillard

L'information peut tout nous dire. Elle a toutes les réponses. Mais ce sont des réponses à des questions que nous n'avons pas posées, et qui ne se posent sans doute même pas.

La neige n'est plus un don du ciel. Elle tombe exactement aux endroits marqués par les stations d'hiver.

Le simulacre n’est jamais ce qui cache la vérité – c’est la vérité qui cache qu’il n’y en a pas.

Le simulacre est vrai.

Aujourd’hui l’abstraction n’est plus celle de la carte, du double, du miroir ou du concept. La simulation n’est plus celle d’un territoire, d’un être référentiel, d’une substance. Elle est la génération par les modèles d’un réel sans origine ni réalité: hyperréel.

C’est le réel, et non la carte, dont des vestiges subsistent ça et là, dans les déserts qui ne sont plus ceux de l’Empire, mais le nôtre. Le désert du réel lui-même.

United Nations

The dollar has proved not to be a stable store of value, which is a requisite for a stable reserve currency. ...

Developing countries have been hit by the U.S. dollar's loss of value in recent years. ...

Motivated in part by needs for self-insurance against volatility in commodity markets and capital flows, many developing countries accumulated vast amounts of such (U.S. dollar) reserves during the 2000s. ...

(... replacing the dollar with the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights (SDRs), an international reserve asset that is used as a unit of payment on IMF loans and is made up of a basket of currencies.) ...

A new global reserve system could be created, one that no longer relies on the United States dollar as the single major reserve currency. ...

A new reserve system must not be based on a single currency or even multiple national currencies but instead, should permit the emission of international liquidity -- such as SDRs -- to create a more stable global financial system. ...

Such emissions of international liquidity could also underpin the financing of investment in long-term sustainable development.

IMF

With effect from January 1, 2011, the IMF has determined that the four currencies that meet the selection criterion for inclusion in the SDR valuation basket will be assigned the following weights based on their roles in international trade and finance:

U.S. dollar 41.9 percent (compared with 44 percent at the 2005 review)

Euro 37.4 percent (compared with 34 percent at the 2005 review)

Pound sterling 11.3 percent (compared with 11 percent at the 2005 review)

Japanese yen 9.4 percent (compared with 11 percent at the 2005 review)

Albert Camus

... ceux qu'un grand amour détourne de toute vie personnelle s'enrichissent peut-être, mais appauvrissent à coup sûr ceux que leur amour a choisis.

Zemanta

Zemanta is a revolutionary new platform for accelerating on-line content production for any web user. Any user-created text (a blog post, article or web page) is directly “read” by Zemanta, which recognizes all contextual content. Zemanta then combs the web for the most relevant images, smart links,keywords and text, instantly serving these results to the user to enrich and inform their content. What’s more, Zemanta can be deployed on all major content publishing platforms and web browsers through a simple plug-in.

Online Publishers Association

Web users now spend half their time visiting content, far outpacing time spent with search, communications and commerce.

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A more accessible, and much faster, Internet is driving increased overall time spent online.

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The improvement in search allows consumers to more easily and quickly find the exact content they are looking for, increasing the likelihood they will engage more deeply with that content.

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The Web simply offers far more content than it did, increasing content's share of time.

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The Online Publishers Association's Internet Activity Index has identified a very significant and sustained trend in where consumers are spending their online time. The index indicates that ... the primary role of the Internet has shifted from communications to content.

Paul Waak

When we defend the future of reference work in libraries, we say that ready reference is no longer needed, but research (“real”) reference will remain important. Ready reference has been replaced by Internet search engines that provide fast access to factual data that used to be hidden in volumes of indexed books. But digging up material relevant to a subject is a specialized skill that requires human intervention. So reference is safe. Or so we say.

In a February 2010, article draft by Evan D. Brown titled Copyright on the Semantic Web: Divergence of Author and Work, Evan gives the following example of the semantic web:

Perhaps one can best understand the Semantic Web by looking at particular instances of the technology at work. Take for example the free service calledZemanta. This service offers a Firefox plugin that assists bloggers in gathering content to assemble into posts. As the blog author writes, Zemanta “reads” the content and in real time suggests images to embed, links to insert, and lists of related articles to include. It does this automatically, looking to a number of sources of data such as Wikipedia and Flickr that are encoded in a way to make the data contained within them “broadcast” their meaning and relevance to Zemanta. The technology relegates the drudgery of finding related content to the machines, freeing up the creative attention of the blogger to focus on content.

This is automated research-style reference. As more of our dusty tomes are digitized, services like Zemanta will be able to find and offer increasingly obscure yet relevant and fully cited information. I call this the death of reference as we know it. The days when reference librarians are primarily the golden retrievers of information are numbered. The future of the library reference desk is one of consulting. The primary duties of librarians will revolve around verifying the quality of the results generated by services like Zemanta and teaching our customers how to verify information themselves.

Hisham

The Tunisian revolution seems to bring an endless daily dose of surprises. Yesterday, the Tunisian Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, announced the formation of an interim unity government. The transitional government will include members of the opposition but also figures of the old regime. Some key portfolios remain in the hands of ministers who served under ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, including Foreign Affairs, the Interior, Defense and Finance. But perhaps the biggest surprise, especially for netizens, was the announcement of Slim Amamou, blogger, activist and Global Voices contributor, as Secretary of State for Sports and Youth Affairs.

Slim (@Slim404) broke the news on Twitter:

“ Je suis secrétaire d'état a la Jeunesse et aux sports :)

In an interview with French Radio, Slim explained that he was approached hours before the new government was announced and that his choice was a natural decision for someone who wants to participate in the building of his country, adding that “it will take Tunisia a least 10 years for a stable democracy to establish itself.”

As soon as the appointment of Slim was made public, reactions on Twitter started pouring in. Along side warm congratulations, reactions were mixed. Some wanted Slim out of the government, others were prepared to grant him the benefit of the doubt.

Mark Dunley

We couldn't get an extra USD 4 billion dollars a year for essential child nutrition programs, but the government just passed a USD 900 billion tax cut - 85% to 90% of that goes to the wealthiest of New Yorkers.

One thing America leads the world in income inequality.

When people are out of work that's when people go hungry and the US is at very high levels of unemployment.

Stephen Leahy

Investors from Saudi Arabia have leased large tracts in land in Ethiopia, Senegal, Mali and other African countries amounting to several hundred thousand hectares. "How can African countries hope to have food security by signing long-term leases to foreign interests?" Kuyek told IPS.
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", said Howard Buffett, a U.S. farmer and philanthropist whose father is Warren Buffett, the well- known billionaire investor.
Howard Buffet reports being offered land deals where African governments promise to provide 70 percent of the financing, all utilities, and a 98-year lease requiring no payments for four years.

theTrumpet.com

Russia and China were the primary sellers of U.S. treasuries in November 2010 as bond yields soared higher that month, according to U.S. government data released on Tuesday. China remains the world’s largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, but it dropped $11.2 billion in November, bringing its total holdings to $895.6 billion. Some analysts see these fluctuations as evidence of profit-taking because China increased its U.S. debt in the months leading up to the Federal Reserve’s announcement of its new bond-buying program. In the same month, Moscow cut its treasury holdings from $131.6 billion to $122.5 billion, Russia’s lowest level since April 2010. “I worry that we could be at a tipping point,” said Eswar Prasad, former International Monetary Fund official. “If the Chinese say ‘We’re not buying any more treasuries,’ this could act as a trigger around which nervous market sentiment coalesces. People could start wondering how the U.S. is going to finance its deficit.”

Islamization Watch

	Girls from the Red Mosque madrassa, Islamabad.
	Christian devotees raise hands while singing during a Christmas mass at a stadium in Jakarta December 5, 2009. Approximately a hundred thousand Christians gathered for the celebration in Jakarta's biggest stadium.
	A girl wearing a Turkish flag holds a Palestinian flag during a protest against Israel, in Istanbul, Turkey, Wednesday, June 2, 2010.

Sahil Kapur

As a presidential candidate, Obama promised to close Guantánamo, arguing in part that it had become a worldwide symbol of a United States gone morally awry. He appeared to be making good on his pledge when he ordered the detention facility shut during his first week in office, explicitly banning its use for more suspects.

But, facing a defiant Congress and a public that's skittish about trying terror detainees in civilian courts, Obama's plan stalled. Several months into office, Obama accepted the use of military tribunals for some suspects. Two years later, it appears the administration has accepted the use of Guantánamo.

Critics have argued that shutting Guantánamo is necessary to restore respect for the rule of law, as the facility has been used to imprison suspects indefinitely without due process, casting a dark shadow over America's outspoken advocacy for human rights.

Guardian

Human Rights Abuses by country

The number in each column indicates the relative intensity of different rights abuses in that country (see the key below). These have been totalled to give a score in the right-hand column; the countries are ranked from the worst abuser down.
(For the rest of the list follow the link at the bottom of the screen)

COUNTRY	EJE	DIS	T/IT	DIC	POC	UFT	DWCT	EXEC	SOD	AOG	TOTAL
Congo, DR	3		3		3	3	3	3	3	3	24.0
Rwanda	3	3	3	2		2	3	2	3	3	24.0
Burundi	3	2	3	3		3	3		3	3	23.0
Algeria	3	2	3		2	3	3		3	3	22.0
Sierra Leone	3		3	2	1	2	3	2	3	3	22.0
Egypt		1	3	2	2	3	3	2	3	2	21.0
North Korea	1	2	3	1	2	3	3	3	3		21.0
Sudan	3	3	3	1	2	2	2	1	1	3	21.0
Indonesia	3	3	3		3	2	2.5		2	2	20.5
Yugoslavia	3	3	2.5	1	1	3	3		1	3	20.5
Pakistan	2	1	2.5	3	3		1.5	1	3	2	19.0
China			2.5	2	3	2	3	3	3		18.5
Libya	2	2	2		2	3	3		2	2	18.0
Burma	2	2	3	2		2	3			3	17.0
Iraq	2	2	3		2		3	3	2		17.0
Afghanistan	3		3				3	2	1.5	3	16.5
Iran	1	1	2		2	2	2	2	2	2.5	16.5
Yemen	1	2	2	1	1	2	2	2	2	1.5	16.5
Chad	3		2	1	2	2	2	2		2	16.0
Congo, R	3	2	3	2	2		2			2	16.0
Uganda	2	1	3	1	1		3		2	3	16.0

KEY
EJE=Extrajudicial executions, DIS=Disappearances, T/IT=Torture/inhuman treatment, DIC=Deaths in custody,POC=Prisoners of conscience, UFT=Unfair trials, DWC=Detention without charge or trial, EXE=Executions (death penalty), SOD=Sentence of death, AOG=Abuses by armed opposition groups