October 2010

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Sir Ken Robinson: Changing Paradigms in Education

Video Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources, and author of a range of books on the subject. In this hugely entertaining and funny talk about changing paradigms in education, Robinson argues that we need a revolution in education. The great challenge for education is the tyranny of common sense. Many of our ideas have been formed not to meet the circumstances of this century, but to meet the...

France Erupts: Sarkozy Under Siege

Picture: Tito Slack Philippe Marliere - When he entered the Elysée palace in 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy dreamed of a glorious destiny. Enthusiastic commentators predicted that his casual populism would revamp the Bonapartist right, and that his Gallic brand of neoliberal policies would sell the “American dream” to a mistrustful population. Things have not gone according to plan. Sarkozy wanted to be the French JFK; today he looks more like Louis XVI awaiting trial in 1793. He may escape the guillotine, but his...

On Violence

Picture: looking4poetry Richard Pithouse - The fear of violence, like the fear of monsters, is primal and universal. But the sensitive middle class soul who professes a deep revulsion at all forms of violence is quite likely to call the police or a private security company if he wakes to the sound of breaking glass. Violence is seldom renounced in the absolute. It is more usually outsourced. In the global public sphere horror at violence is far from equitable. Four and a half million people died in the war in the Congo with a small...

Joseph Stiglitz on the State of the US and Global Economy

Picture: Democracy Now Democracy Now - As the Obama administration rejects a foreclosure moratorium and austerity protests grip Europe, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now assesses the state of the US and global economy with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, author of Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. Stiglitz backs calls for a foreclosure moratorium and says opponents of a new government stimulus "don’t understand basic economics." On war, Stiglitz says Iraq and...

Slavoj Zizek: Far Right and Anti-Immigrant Politicians on the Rise in Europe

Video German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a gathering of young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union party this weekend that multiculturalism has utterly failed. A recent German poll found 13 percent of Germans would welcome the arrival of a new "Führer," and more than a third of Germans feel the country is "overrun by foreigners." Amy Goodman of Democracy Now speaks to the world-renowned Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Slavoj...

How Green is Your Revolution?

Picture: World Economic Forum Glenn Ashton - Conventional wisdom insists that our burgeoning global population requires ever increasing quantities of food to feed its numbers. We need to ask two questions of this received wisdom. Firstly, is it true that we need to produce more food? Secondly, are the proposed methods of increasing food production suitable, adequate or acceptable? In order to provide improved food security for the significant proportion (anywhere between 1 and 3 billion people, depending on whose figures you believe)...