Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
"No one knows how many children are sleeping in manholes, or basements, under bridges, or on top of hot water pipes around Ukraine, but the figure is likely to be in the tens of thousands." Theroux seeks some of them out
In Canada, rich and poor sit side by side waiting for treatment in the local public clinic. A good thing. "The health care system constitutes a point of forced solidarity." What's the US equivalent? The courtroom, perhaps?
"My wife and I have been living in France for the past nine months in a city near the Mediterranean coast. But it’s not quite what you think." Welcome to Montpellier, where the worst side of French society is on display
"Sure. Lovely. Let's reward success. But Romney seems to think that success is self-defining. Anyone who has done well deserves what he or she has got. Let’s add up just a few of the ways in which this is not necessarily true"
Tour d'horizon of recent books on American inequality and "Superclass" including those by Timothy Noah, Charles Murray, David Rothkopf. Key relationship in society today is no longer church and state, but state and market
Empathy periodically collapses on a grand scale – think the Holocaust or colonialism. Less appreciated is that it occasionally flowers on a collective scale. For example in the WW2 evacuations of children from British cities
It was not until 2007 that owning another person became a criminal offence in Mauritania. Even now an estimated 20% of the population are in "real slavery". Here is an astonishing, at times upsetting, report from the African state
"Might not the history of the Roma, a group marginalised like none other, reveal a less auspicious aspect of Europe's grand narrative of modernity?" Good question to kick off this historical analysis of European attitudes to gypsies
US society now divided more between rich and poor, than black and white. "This year seems to mark a historic tipping point: The year that our primary concerns about inequality went from being about race to being about class"
America's image of itself has been that it has unequal economic outcomes, but a lot more equality of economic opportunity than elsewhere. It might have been true once, but how true is it today? (Free access for Browser readers)
On the importance of tribalism in the Arab Gulf states. Usually used by those in power to create bonds of loyalty; occasionally used by tribal alliances against rulers. Either way it's antithetical to a civil, democratic state
Compelling tour d'horizon of political, social, economic turmoil. Is this a "50-year moment" where crisis leads to protectionism, economic nationalism, de-globalisation? Or could it be something much bigger – a 500-year event?
Image by concoction on Flickr
"The central human right in late-capitalist society is a right to remain at a safe distance from others"
