‘It can’t be a good thing for London to be sleepwalking towards Johannesburg’, conference warned London’s schools are “sleepwalking” into segregation, with classrooms in some parts of the capital teaching almost exclusively black or Asian pupils, a leading headteacher has warned. David Levin, vice-chair of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) – an association of 250 public schools and leading private schools – said he was alarmed at the way the capital was dividing into ghettoes and “becoming a silo society”. Levin, who grew up in South Africa under apartheid, said his school, City of London school for boys, collaborated with one school, Stepney Green in east London, where 97% of pupils were of Bangladeshi heritage. Other schools, in south London, took an “overwhelmingly” high proportion of pupils of west African descent, he said. Speaking at the beginning of the HMC annual conference in St Andrews, Scotland, Levin said it “can’t be a good thing for London to be sleepwalking towards Johannesburg”. He added: “They aren’t mixing with people from different faiths and backgrounds. I have lived pre- and post-apartheid and one of the things I have learnt is that your imagination is stronger than the reality. If you know people who are different to you, you don’t fear them.” He said education could bring children together. His school, where fees are £4,350 a term, holds private tutoring sessions for boys from Stepney Green in physics, chemistry, maths and English once a week. He said the state school would “enjoy having pupils from different backgrounds and races”. Meanwhile, Kenneth Durham, chair of the HMC and head of University College school in north London, urged the public to “take the independent sector seriously” and not to dismiss the schools as a “special interest group”. He said: “It is time that, as a nation, we stopped regarding the independent education sector as some peculiar historical aberration, as a repository of outdated social privilege, a sort of irrelevant and slightly embarrassing annex to our national education system and recognised it is something very different to that.” Durham said a quarter of pupils at private schools were from ethnic minorities and 40% of parents had not themselves been privately educated. Race in education Schools Secondary schools Race issues London Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Hasselbeck Smacks Down Behar’s Claim GOP ‘Hasn’t Been Black Friendly’: ‘Should We Begin With Lincoln?’
October 4, 2011 No Comment
Joy Behar once again showed how totally ignorant of history she is. When she absurdly told GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain on Tuesday's “The View,” “The Republican Party hasn't been black friendly over the many centuries in this country,” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck smartly replied, “Should we begin with Lincoln?” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
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Fed chairman blames euro crisis, uncertainty over jobs market and political battles in Washington for gloomy economic outlook Federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has warned that US economic recovery is “close to faltering”, and that a “disorderly” default in the Greek debt would have a serious impact. In testimony to Congress, Bernanke was repeatedly quizzed about the impact of the European crisis on America. He said the US was an “innocent bystander” in the eurozone debt standoff and that US banks were not heavily exposed to Europe’s most troubled economies. But he warned that Europe’s economic woes were already having a negative impact on US stock markets. “Unless the European situation is brought under control, it could be a much more serious situation for the US economy,” he said. Bernanke also warned that political warfare in Washington was a threat to the US economy. He told the Joint Economic committee that the recent row over raising the debt ceiling had been very unhelpful at a time of increasing economic uncertainty. “It’s no way to run a railroad,” he said. In written testimony and during a question-and-answer session, Bernanke told Congress that the Federal reserve has acted forcefully to support growth and was prepared to take further action if necessary. But he warned that political infighting was a risk to the fragile US economic recovery. “Monetary policy can be a powerful tool, but it is not a panacea for the problems currently faced by the US economy,” Bernanke said. “Fostering healthy growth and job creation is a shared responsibility of all economic policymakers.” Bernanke was asked about the Occupy Wall Street protests, now in their third week in New York and spreading across the US. “I would just say that very generally people are quite unhappy about the state of the economy,” said Bernanke, and with “some justification”. “At some level I can’t blame them. Nine percent unemployment and slow growth is not a good situation,” he said. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont asked Bernanke: “In light of the protests, did Wall Street’s greed and recklessness lead to the crisis?” Bernanke said: “Excessive risk-taking had a lot to do with it.” So did the failures of regulators, he said. Bernanke said the US economy had grown more slowly than expected, in part because of unexpected setbacks like the Japanese earthquake and Europe’s debt crisis – but also because of the US’s own problems, especially in the jobs market. “The recovery from the crisis has been much less robust than we hoped.” “Probably the most significant factor depressing consumer confidence, however, has been the poor performance of the job market,” Bernanke said. “Private payrolls rose by only about 100,000 jobs per month on average over the summer — half of the rate posted earlier in the year – and state and local governments have continued to shed jobs,” he said. Moreover, recent indicators, including new claims for unemployment insurance and surveys of hiring plans, point to the likelihood of more sluggish job growth in the period ahead, he said. “We need to make sure that the recovery continues and doesn’t drop back,” Bernanke added. US economy Ben Bernanke US economic growth and recession US unemployment and employment data European debt crisis United States Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Wall Street was an actual wall once. In the 1600s, Dutch occupiers needed to keep out the natives, pirates, and unwanted dregs. You learned the Dutch stole the island for $24, but they really paid 60 guilders, which is over $1,000 in today-money. Still a steal, for Manhattan. In 2011, the rent is too damn high…unless you’re willing to sleep in the park. I boarded a Greyhound in Buffalo on Friday night. Sleep didn’t happen. (It’s my theory that their seats are designed by cheap extraterrestrial laborers who have no knowledge of human anatomy.) Hopped the A train to Fulton St. and found my way, past the brightly lit WTC construction, to a rain-soaked Zuccotti Park by about 4 am. Dubbed “Liberty Square,” the park is home to Occupy Wall Street. And it’s not a park. It’s got a few small trees and a couple flowerbeds, but not one soft blade of grass. The concrete was lined with roughly 150 mummified protesters, rolled up in tarps, ominously looking like a fresh crime scene. Cops in raincoats, walking the perimeter. The gatekeepers. enlarge Credit: Ian Murphy I don’t want to say this, but my first impression – after rolling up in my own tarp and failing to sleep for a few hours – was that the place looked, and smelled, like the parking lot of a Phish concert. Patchouli does not a movement make. And as much as I want to say reports, like this much-derided New York Times piece , have cast an unfair light on these young occupiers, they’re not entirely inaccurate. My first contact was with a woman named Chris. “You want a vitamin? You want a chewable Airborne?” I took them, not having the heart to tell her that Airborne cold “remedy” does absolutely nothing. Was Airborne a perfect metaphor for #OccupyWallStreet? I cynically wondered. Chris was a medic volunteer. The medic station is accompanied by the kitchen, the media area, the comfort area (dedicated to sleeping bags, socks, etc.), and the General Assembly. There are other volunteer duties, such as sanitation and security, which consist of walking around with a garbage bags and walkie-talkies, respectively. You’ve no doubt heard about the General Assembly. It’s how the protesters communicate, organize, and reach something resembling consensus. “Mic check!” someone will call. “Mic check!” the crowd responds. They communicate this way because the police cracked down on the use of sound amplifiers. It’s an elegant, albeit annoying, solution. The press has generally portrayed the protest as disorganized. Some protesters even expressed their frustration over the disorganization to me during the weekend. But without any sort of hierarchical structure, it’s amazing and inspiring that anything gets done at all. People are being fed, clothed, sheltered (as much as the no tent law allows), live-streaming speeches and Tweeting the latest developments, and receiving medical attention if they need it. It’s a real ground up grassroots thing, powered by personal responsibility to participate in the democratic process. “The lack of focus is unfortunate,” a woman named Christine told me, “but I think if we stay here long enough, other groups will be pulled in.” That’s essential, and it’s happening as I type. Hippies thrive in protest environments, and they can even be useful in procuring humus, for instance, but the face of this movement can’t be obscured with dreadlocks. It’s what wonks call “bad optics.” “It would appear to a lot of people that it’s disorganized,” said Mark Jacobs, the head of a nonprofit from Sante Fe, “but it’s not.” The organic nature of the occupation makes traditional reporting nearly impossible. No one’s in charge; there’s no spokesperson; there are no agreed-upon talking points. And a lot of the time, people have no idea what’s happening. “There’s a lot of misinformation,” a guy named Fumaini told me. “I heard that Blackwater was here.” That was probably my fault, as I was wearing a Blackwater baseball hat. Don’t ask. “People are fed up,” Fumaini said. “They don’t know what to do, and they’re looking for an outlet.” *** The crowd grew steadily all day, with less resemblance to a jam band concert every passing hour. The drums beat. The saxophone wailed. Tai Chi circle. Some sort of meditation. Lots of pizza. Too much pizza, really. “Free hugs!” offered by a Justin Bieber doppelganger. Woody Guthrie all over the damn place. The rain. Signs and tourists. The goddamn rain. And still, morale was high. After last weekends’ pepper spraying Bologna, the movement’s gained steam and a steady flow of coverage, but the day’s media presence was minimal – compared to what it would look like in 24 hours. A little after 3 pm, the balloons arrive. A massive bunch of multicolored helium jobbers on a long string. This means the march is imminent. They’re also functional, giving those near the back of the parade an idea where things are headed. Today, the march headed down Broadway toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Several thousand strong. “Occupy Wall Street!” they chant. “All day! All week!” More cowbell. Across the street, I’ve scurried, limped parallel to the front of the procession. Back already in spasms, this clubfooted reporter gives up the chase, letting the dissenting throng pass by. A few minutes later, a sizable contingent of New York’s Finest hurry past, in what looks like an attempt to handle a crowd bottleneck, as the protesters proceed from the wide sidewalk to the narrower bridge walkway. But the cops don’t corral, and they don’t use the walkway. They’re walking on the roadway. Amazing, I think; with many protesters in tow, the cops are leading the march across the bridge proper. Have the gatekeepers opened the gate? enlarge Credit: Ian Murphy So I’m milling around the sprawling sidewalk area directly across from the entrance to the outbound, smoking and wheezing — not necessarily in that order – when I get a text from Trotsky. He’s a mysterious figure, who’s always on the front lines of the revolution. I last saw him in Madison, Wisconsin at the height of their continuing occupation. “I’m at Nazi Bankers,” it reads. “Where are you?” “Nazi Bankers” was a large sign held by a man at Liberty Square – in accordance with Godwin’s Law. A few texts back and forth. More cigarettes. The passing throng. Another large wave of cops casually huddle up, and stroll down the outbound. I don’t think much of it at the time, but I now realize this was the second line in a variation of a pincer movement. It’s a trap! While some 700 people were being arrested on the bridge, I was abdicating my journalistic responsibility, shooting the breeze with Slate reporter and MSNBC contributor Dave Weigel. “You going across?” he asked. “Hell no.” enlarge Credit: Ian Murphy “You’re going to have to move,” a cop told us. We couldn’t see what the hell was going on down the bridge, but the cops were clearing the line-of-sight just the same. Although it was a public sidewalk, we didn’t put up a fight and walked back to Liberty Square, terrible reporters we are. I kid. I sort of talked him out of going because if he went I’d have felt guilty. And fat – more fat. Weigel mentions that he just got tossed a Paul Ryan interview on the side, and I told him to ask Ryan why he’s such a douche. So look out for that #gamechanger. “All these assignments are just killing time until Romney becomes president,” he says, “and the Obama ‘Hope’ poster becomes completely ironic – officially ironic, more so than it already is.” “Jesus,” I say. “You really think he’ll win?” “Yeah,” he deadpans. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was joking. *** The funny thing about reporting, on the ground, from a modern movement is that people all over the world knew what happened on the bridge before I did via Facebook and Twitter. And even if I’d dragged my gimpy ass across the span, I’d of had no way of reporting the event live, anyway. I take the bus; I don’t have an iPhone; I am the 99 percent – the 60 percent, really. I hooked up with Trotsky and his friend Emily. She was in town for the Slut Walk that took place in Union Square, but decided to check out the occupation, too. More goddamn rain. And it’s getting dark. The police presence at the park thickens, and the protesters who’ve stayed behind to hold the fort look skittish. “$h!t’s about to go down, man,” one guy frantically tells me. “You can just feel it!” Tactically, it would have been a good time for the cops to clear the park, but they didn’t. They just stood there, while news of the arrests reached Liberty Square, silent, arms folded. Gatekeepers. Deliriously tired by this point, and up to my eyes with urine (where the hell do people in Manhattan pee?), I engaged in a vicious, diuretic cycle of Starbucks coffee, bathroom, coffee, bathroom. Corporate coffee is definitely not in line with the spirit of the occupation, but sometimes a dude just needs a pee break. The lack of public restrooms surrounding Liberty Square seems to this small-bladder blogger the biggest obstacle to success. I’d been on a de facto fast, despite easy access to free pizza, for a very tangible threat that I might crap my pants. I’m sorry, but those were the facts on the ground. And unlike the Times coverage of the Battle for the Brooklyn Bridge, I’m sticking to the facts. There will be no rewrite, dear readers. enlarge The rain. Damn the damn rain. Damn. Rain. I found the closest thing to dry cement I could, grabbed an empty water bottle (if nature called, yet again), and crawled into my sleeping bag, silently cursing the goddamn hippie jerk who’d lifted my tarp while I was gone. During the night, some anonymous occupier had wrapped me in another tarp – tarp 2, and left several miniature candy bars near my head. A large cheer rang out through the park into my dreams. Why is that field of sunflowers yelling at me!? Oh, their friends who were arrested, by evil squirrels, have been released. Of course. I stubbornly, sorely woke up, ate the candy bars, and discretely filled the water bottle (don’t judge me!) before realizing I was surrounded by hundreds of splayed out signs and even more protest tourists snapping pictures. It was noon. And I’d shamefully entered hobo territory – faux-bo territory. Credit: Ian Murphy And then Geraldo Rivera’s mustache walked by. It may or may not have been attached to Geraldo Rivera. I was too groggy to tell. A CNN van was parked across the street. Press passes dangled. Notebooks were open. Pens writing. Microphones listening. Quotes demonstrating the immoral nature of the American kleptocracy were being taken, soon to be made into news. The press was suddenly interested in Occupy Wall Street, and the oligarchs who’ve been robbing us all blind. And it only took several hundred arrests to get their attention. The crowd was a respectable thousand or so. It wasn’t a Phish concert. It was like Kenny Rogers was in town. I saw flannel and gray beards – and not just on pizza-seeking homeless gentlemen. A group of teachers were occupying the Northwest corner of the park. This was good. I hung around a while, talking to older people from all over the country, sipping coffee, erasing my tired cynicism, singing Woody Guthrie. My work here was done. The Occupy Together movement has spread, organically, spontaneously to a growing 125 cities worldwide, most in the U.S. And it all started with a whimsical Adbusters poster, and a little marketing help from Anonymous. Even about 50 people showed up to Niagara Square in Buffalo while I was busy having back spasms in Manhattan. The last time I was in Niagara Square, I was unlawfully arrested, for filming a gatekeeper. Next Saturday, I’ll be back with my camera – maybe a guitar, too. That machine kills fascists, I hear. The rules of essay structure now dictate that I tell you, Wall Street is still a wall. In a lot of ways. The very structure of our economic system is meant to keep out the poor, and make more of them, so the wealthy can skim all the cream. Our democracy’s been usurped by the ultra-wealthy to serve at the behest of the same – to the point that their risk has been socialized, absorbed by the taxpayer. The widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots has become too large to ignore, and with this comes the slow realization that the have-nots have all the power. If we just stick together, persist, and demand that things change. Frankly, they should have expected us. It won’t happen overnight, and it won’t be easy, but that’s just how it goes. For all the negative press the occupation has gotten, and how sloppy it truly is in some respects, it’s important to remember the wise words of Donald Rumsfeld, “Democracy is messy.” Ian Murphy is the editor of The BEAST . He sometimes uses something called Twitter .
Continue reading …FTSE 100 falls below 5000 to lowest since July 2010, but Tesco bucks trend
October 4, 2011 No CommentAs global markets suffered another rout, with the FTSE 100 flirting with bear market territory and finishing below 5000 for the first time since July 2010, Tesco was one of a handful of risers ahead of its figures on Wednesday. The supermarket, which recently launched a price cutting campaign, is widely expected to record its worst six monthly performance for twenty years. But analysts at UBS raised their rating on the business in the expectation of better things to come. Analysts Mike Tattersal moved his recommendation from neutral to buy and his price target from 410p to 510, saying: Tesco management has become intensely focused on driving higher levels of capital efficiency across the business, in our view. As early actions become more evident over the coming 12 months, we believe this theme will become central to the investment case. In the near term, Tesco’s UK business remains the key determinant of sentiment towards the shares and we believe there are compelling reasons to believe that the freakishly challenging conditions that have prevailed in 2011 in the UK grocery industry will not be repeated next year. Fierce headwinds (VAT and fuel) will annualise, which, together with self-help initiatives, should deliver much healthier like-for-like sales growth from the core business in 2012. Tesco shares closed 9.6p higher at 380.1p making it the biggest riser in the leading index, one of only five companies in positive territory. As EU officials delayed a much needed bailout to Greece, and worries grew about the impact of the country’s financial woes on bank balance sheets, the FTSE 100 suffered another volatile day before finishing 131.06 points lower at 4944.44, a 2.58% decline which wiped £34bn off the value of Britain’s top companies. It is the fifth consecutive fall for the leading index. At its worst the FTSE 100 had fallen to 4868, putting it perilously close to the 4843 level which would mark bear market territory, a 20% fall from its recent peak at the beginning of July. Meanwhile in the US the S&P 500 did record a 20% drop from its recent high, while Germany’s Dax lost 2.9% and France’s CAC fell 2.6%. The prospect of a bailout at Franco-Belgian Dexia and a profit warning from Deutsche Bank sent the whole banking sector lower, with Barclays down 11.9p at 144.35p and Lloyds Banking Group 1.655p lower at 31.8p. Angus Campbell, head of sales at Capital Spreads, said: All across Europe equities were sold off as fears over the eurozone debt crisis mounted. It was a lack of liquidity causing investor concern, [since this] ultimately led to the nationalisation of Northern Rock in the UK and the destruction of Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers in the US at the height of the last crisis. This time it is Dexia which is on the verge of being taken onto the government’s books even after having received a bailout back in 2008. Miners continued to fall on demand concerns, with Credit Suisse cutting its target prices across the sector by 5% to 40%. The bank said: Recent pricing in commodity markets has been driven overwhelmingly by macro sentiment, with fears of an economic implosion in Europe and, to a lesser degree the US, weighing heavily. Although the outlook is even more murky than normal, continued solid Chinese demand should provide “base-load” support for many commodities. However, this is unlikely to be enough to support pricing in the short term, with marginal demand and sentiment likely to continue to be driven primarily by events in the North Atlantic. So Rio Tinto dropped 107p to 2712.5p and Xstrata lost 26.9p to 764p. International Consolidated Airlines Group , the merged British Airways and Iberia, fell 5.2p to 149.3p on worries about the financial position of its US partner American Airlines, while Hargreaves Lansdown lost 35.3p to 412.6p on worries about the effect of the current market volatility on its investment business. Home Retail led the mid-caps higher, up 3.1p to 121.7p on continued bid talk, with Wal-Mart one name mentioned. But Nick Bubb at Arden poured cold water on the idea: These stories pop up every so often with Home Retail, to discomfort the shorts, and then soon die away. The fact is that Wal-Mart have put catalogue showroom chains like Argos out of business in the US and there is no way they would allow Asda to buy it, whilst this is the wrong time in the cycle for a structurally challenged operation like Argos to be attractive to private equity. Sell, while the ducks are quacking. But Rentokil Initial closed 4.15p lower at 66.35p after a sell note from RBS. Analyst Justin Jordan said: RBS hosted a salesdesk meeting with Rentokil management. We fear the City Link recovery is behind schedule and, with an uncertain outlook across other divisions, we reduce our 2012 pretax profit forecast by 7% and downgrade to sell [from hold]. On City Link, the parcels delivery business, in particular he said: Although City Link recently secured Marks & Spencer as a customer, we sense that converting prospects into customers is a frustratingly slow process that may slip into the first quarter of 2012. In addition, the business has not as yet reached 75% employed drivers. Visibility is low, with overall profitability highly dependent upon peak December trading. Tesco Barclays Lloyds Banking Group Rio Tinto Xstrata International Consolidated Airlines Group Hargreaves Lansdown Home Retail Rentokil Initial Nick Fletcher guardian.co.uk
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Full coverage as the Apple chief unveils its latest iPhone – find out what’s new 5.35pm: Welcome: and is your popcorn popping? It’s iPhone 5 launch time. It seems so long since we were last here. We know some details already: there’s going to be an iPhone 5. Given that at WWDC in June, Steve Jobs described the next version of the software powering the iPhone as “iOS 5″, and since every launch of a new number of iOS has seen a new version of the phone (3G, 3GS, 4 – see Wikipedia ), the idea that there won’t be an “iPhone 5″ just doesn’t hold any water. Then there’s the question of whether the crowd has managed to figure this out ahead of time – if you’re reading this before 6pm UK time, then our crowdsourcing experiment is still open (and if you’re reading it later, it’s closed: tick off the results as they come by). We also know that: • the phones will be in the UK from 14 October : reserve your place outside the stores now; • “iTunes in the Cloud” (so you can get your purchased music on any iOS device, without syncing with a PC or Mac) is coming to Europe , and to the UK first. Why no iTunes Match to sync all your music library? Still being negotiated with record labels, we understand. We suspect that the iPod Classic is for the chop, but that’s not certain. Sales of iPods are tailing off at about 5% annually, and iPod Touches (the app-enabled ones) taking more and more share – now up to 50% of iPod sales. There’s a huge amount at stake today. Apple is presently the world’s largest mobile phone company (by revenue; Samsung is expected to be the biggest in terms of shipments). It’s possible that Samsung will have overtaken it in smartphone shipments in the third quarter (July-September) just ended; it will be interesting to see if Cook announces any iPhone shipment numbers for the quarter, because this should be the “quiet period” ahead of the financials. Possibly he’ll announce “iOS shipments”, which would be iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. Being biggest is no guarantee you’ll continue, though: just look at Nokia, which just one year ago could claim the title. Now it’s plunged into loss and we’re still waiting for its first Windows Phone device. Everyone knows that with Steve Jobs having stepped down as chief executive, Cook needs to keep the executive team and the staff weaving the magic that has made Apple the biggest company by value in the world. That’s no small order. Everyone will be looking for the slightest flaw. And now, on with the show… iPhone Apple Smartphones Charles Arthur Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …For all intents and purposes, the movement known as the tea party started in the mainstream media, on a national show. CNBC’s Rick Santelli, fired what cable news would later dub “the shot heard around the world” in 2009, when he lamented paying for the mortgages of the “losers” who couldn’t pay their bills. “President Obama, are you listening?” he bellowed. Well, it was broadcast on national television. By the way they snarl about the mainstream media on Fox News, you’d think they were disseminating their programs via ham radio instead of on the number one cable news network in the country. Fox News is as mainstream a media as any. And they’ve puffed up and promoted their pet protest group called the tea party for the last two and half years. And just like the imaginary death panels in the health care reform act or the fantasy Sharia law threat – the tea party got its legs from Fox News. So when criticism is lobbed at the tea party as being an astroturf re-branding of the Republican Party, sponsored by interest groups and corporate media, it’s because it is. To put this into perspective, look at movement Fox News hasn’t endorsed and Karl Rove’s group, American Crossroads, haven’t chartered busses for: meet Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Wall Street started as a couple thousand protesters marching through lower Manhattan and camping out at the detonator of the economic meltdown. For the first two weeks, the protest was largely ignored by actual mainstream media. Then NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper sprayed a couple of young women peacefully assembling at this public demonstration. The footage landed on YouTube: Then there was attention. A skirmish with police. A Story. Last Saturday, 700 of the protesters were arrested by the NYPD. Another Story. Worthy of a mention even on the venerable Sunday Shows. Who are these people? Are they the anti-tea party? No. In fact they are not in any way like the tea party. If they were the tea party, the media would be giving value to all their political peccadilloes. Yes, “What does the tea party think?” has become a staple in American political discourse. And for what? They’re identical to Republicans. They have a public approval rating, according to some polls of 26 percent. And the tea party-led House suffers a historic low of around 13 percent (more people approve of salmonella). Yet the tea party is given credence and credibility as a swell of a movement to give rich people and corporations more tax breaks. How is that populist, exactly? It’s a protest movement that just so happens to be suspiciously business-friendly. How, as they say in corporate-speak, synergistic. This tea party now has a seat at the table of power. Their corporate sponsors must snicker every time they hear about the “tea party’s take” on whatever issue. I was at an Occupy Wall Street solidarity demonstration over the weekend in Los Angeles. Around 3,000 people were there when I arrived. The first thing apparent is the crowd is young. These are not cantankerous retirees worried about the government getting involved in Medicare. No these are the children of the middle-class’ Lost Decade. These are kids whose American Dream has been eroding while the rich have gotten richer. These are the young people on Facebook and Twitter calling for an “American Autumn” to match the Arab Spring. And the Arab Spring is a far better comparison for this group. Like the Egypt and Tunisia uprisings, Occupy Wall Street are youths worried about their futures’ downgrade. It’s about the lack of prospects in the “land of opportunity.” Their battle cry: “We are the 99 percent and we are too big to fail.” They’ve succinctly stated their goal is “economic justice.” Pandering to the wealthy minority is the disease: Occupy Wall Street is a symptom. What does economic justice mean? Maybe a better question is: How top-heavy can the wealth inequality get before something tumbles? The hurdle for Occupy Wall Street is that it was not birthed on cable news. Cable news doesn’t own it so it can’t show it off like they have the tea party. But the Arab Spring revolution wasn’t televised; it was re-tweeted. Tweet Cross posted at TinaDupuy.com
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I’ve been known to drop the occasional expletive, but the most offensive F word to me is not the one that goes f***. It’s F***** — the famine happening in Somalia. Drought, violence and political instability have invited in the grim reaper on a scale we have not seen in 20 years… more than 30,000 children have died in just three months. The pictures from Dadaab look like a nightmare from centuries past. Yet, this is the 21st century and these pictures are real and, on the whole, unseen. The food crisis in the Horn of Africa is nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe, but it is getting less attention than the latest Hollywood break-ups and make-ups. ONE’s new film The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity isn’t a typical emotional emergency appeal. It’s about focusing the media spotlight on the tragedy unfolding. It’s about building political support in the US and around the world for interventions that will stop the suffering today and break the cycle of famine in the future. Most of all, it’s about taking action — because famine is man-made. Of course it’s complex, and solutions are difficult — especially in Somalia where there has not been a formal government for 20 years. But that is not an excuse for the world to look the other way. Most of us (thankfully) have no experience of starvation, but we do know what it’s like to lose someone you love. Each of those 30,000 children was someone’s daughter or son, someone’s sister or brother. If you look at reports from the Horn, there are stories of mothers having to decide which child to feed and which to let die; women leaving their children’s bodies on the side of the road as they walk for weeks in search of food and water for those still fighting for life. History shows there are ways to prevent drought from becoming famine, even though it’s complicated. So check out the film and sign ONE’s petition to world leaders calling on them to live up to promises already made to invest in things proven to work… early warning systems… irrigation… drought resistant seeds… and of course, peace and security. At ONE.org there’s more explanation and information. And while ONE doesn’t solicit funding, if you want to give money, you can find links to other organizations providing emergency assistance in the Horn who need all the support they can get.
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Andrew Hamilton, Oxford University’s vice chancellor warns that the UK could lose top academics and students overseas unless the government ramps up research funding Cuts to government funding of universities mean the UK is now “treading water” and risks losing top academics and students to its international competitors, the vice chancellor of Oxford University has warned. Professor Andrew Hamilton said that while public expenditure on higher education was growing in China and the US, the share of GDP spent on UK universities dropped from 1.3% to 1.2% in the last year. Other governments are “ramping up investment in higher education, particularly for research”, he told academics at his annual oration on Tuesday. Harvard receives 80% of its research income from the state, while Oxford receives just over 40%. China is investing billions of pounds in creating 100 top universities this century. Hamilton said it often took many years for research to reap rewards and accused ministers of impatience. Funding postgraduate research “doesn’t always sit easily with short-term political imperatives”, he said. But without postgraduates, “many of the roots of our research would soon wither or die”. He also attacked what he saw as over-zealous rules on overseas postgraduates and academics entering the UK. The new restrictions pose “serious risks, both scholarly and academic”, he said. Hamilton said the UK was particularly poor at funding postgraduate students, whohe described as “the engine of ground-breaking experimentation”. A growing number of universities abroad provide “five-star packages” for almost all their doctoral students, he said. But at Oxford, fewer than one in every three postgraduate in a social science or humanities field receives a full scholarship. On average, just half of all the university’s postgraduates do. He said this was forcing many of the finest students to turn down offers for postgraduate work at his institution. “Sadly there are too many examples of Oxford losing bright graduate students to overseas universities because of the funding gap,” he said. In particular, bright doctoral students from low or average income homes could be deprived of the chance to further their research, he warned. This is particularly unfair because in some fields, having a master’s or PhD is now a necessity, he said. “Postgraduate funding is hardly equitable or likely to promote social mobility” at the moment, he said. “It is time for a fresh look at it. “It is striking … that there is nothing in the UK that can compare with the US government’s federal loans scheme, to enable graduate students to finance their study. “It is hard to escape the logic … if this competitive disadvantage in funding is not addressed, the UK higher education sector will increasingly lose out to its international competitors on the recruitment of the best students and academics.” Hamilton was a chemistry professor and provost of Yale University in the US before returning to the UK in 2009. He said he would not yet talk about next autumn’s fees of £9,000 for undergraduates because it was a year away. “There would be time and place aplenty as we get a better handle on the likely consequences, intended and unintended,” he said. University funding Research Higher education University of Oxford Postgraduates Students Tuition fees Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media In his speech to the “Take Back The American Dream” conference Monday, former Obama advisor Van Jones held up the “Occupy Wall Street” movement as an example of what progressives could do to force change. “I’m not mad at [the tea party] for being so loud,” he said. “I’m mad at us for being so quiet the last two years.” “Something just came across the news wire,” Jones announced. “It’s an extraordinary thing. We know we have the young folks and the struggling folks who are down there on Wall Street… They went down there to the scene of the crime against our future. They went down there and they have been camping in the rain. They’ve been beaten. They’ve been pepper-sprayed. They’ve been falsely arrested. And when they police were dragging them away, they said, We’re out here, the 99 percent, we’re fighting the one percent. You, officer, are part of the 99 percent. We’re fighting for your pensions too. We’re fighting for your pensions too.’ This is a new movement.” “And because of their courage and the character they showed, today it was announced that in their dress blues, Marines are going to protect them and stand with them. In their dress blues! The Marines! The veterans!” He added: “This is a movement moment! Something’s happening in America! Something’s happening in America! Don’t you give up on this country! Don’t you give up on this movement!” “They’re going to stand out there with those young people in their dress uniforms. And one of them had a sign and the sign said, ‘This is the second time I fought for my country… It’s the first time I’ve known who my enemy was.’”
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