At issue: The World Bank as a new global education ministry?
Posted: March 16, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Article, globalization Leave a comment »Proposed education strategy lacks a focus on human rights
AT ISSUE|ZOE GODOLPHIN|21 JANUARY 2011|
In early 2011 the World Bank will approve a new education sector strategy amid trends that mean that international goals on education will not be met. Zoe Godolphin of the University of Bristol argues that the Bank’s proposed approach fails conceptually because it does not accept that education is a human right. It also fails pragmatically because it continues to advocate a template approach instead of supporting genuinely country-driven priorities in education planning.
Since early last year, the World Bank has been working on its “Education Strategy 2010”, which will guide the role of the Bank in education for the next ten years (see Update 70). In a May 2010 consultation on the draft strategy in Washington, the Bank’s director for education Elizabeth King summarised the main points of the strategy for the audience. That she could present clearly defined roles for the Bank in education development, prior to eight months of consultations and board approval, and that these have not changed through the subsequent consultation process, is emblematic of the Bank’s approach.
There may, however, be a clear logic to the Bank’s thinking. The education strategy is, in effect, a global vehicle for the commercialisation of education, which creates tension with the key principles of a right to education. According to the UN these principles are availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability.i Furthermore, the Bank draft strategy is not committed to allowing space for countries to design their own policies. Instead, it appears comfortable with using its financial products and its considerable influence to push policy outcomes, despite the Bank claiming a politically neutral mandate. Read the rest of this entry »
We have your best interests at heart
Posted: March 13, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Article, democracy Leave a comment »http://www.occupiedlondon.org/cairo/?p=389
The streets are emptied, it would seem. After last night, mostly-Coptic Christian protestors in front of the TV Building in Maspero Square demonstrating against sectarianism and unfair treatment of Copts have cleared out. Some of their demands were indeed met, and it appears that the Army High Council met with several representatives of the Church and protests who agreed to disband the sit-in. However, others wanted to stay and many who expressed this intent were beaten by military police and forced to leave (reportedly over 200). Rumors circulating about this say that the Army wanted the protestors out before Hillary Clinton’s visit to Egypt, among other things. Read the rest of this entry »
Greek Myths
Posted: December 18, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Article, Europe, Greek economy facts Leave a comment »Newleftproject.org
by Duncan Weldon
this article is from issue 45 of the journal Soundings written in May 2010.
The stories that we tell about the economy are part of the political battle. In April 2010 the leaders of the Euroland countries agreed an `emergency bailout’ of Greece, lending the fiscally stricken country billions of euros to prevent it defaulting on its debts and reaping untold havoc on the European banking system. The future of the euro itself was questioned. Now Greece is expected to `take its medicine’ by dealing with its deficit through a combination of spending cuts and the liberalisation of its economy. But the medicine suggested by financial markets, other European governments and much of the media may well prove poisonous, and to involve enormous economic and social costs.
There are many questions that must be asked. How did this situation arise? Who is to blame? What should happen now? And on whom should the costs fall? The emerging consensus appears to be to blame a profligate Greek state for overspending in the good years, and to suggest that the only answer is spending cuts and austerity, paid for by the Greek people.
But perhaps a more important question to ask would be how this narrative came to hold sway – and whether or not this widely believed narrative itself has an impact on the developing situation. And here the recent work of George Akerlof and Robert Shiller has much to offer: their recent book Animal Spirits (Princeton 2009) points to the importance of behavioural economics, and the ways in which perception influences reality. Recognising the central importance of stories in macroeconomics is crucial to understanding the drivers of the Greek crisis, and to understanding the route ahead. Read the rest of this entry »
The Greek Tragedy
Posted: December 18, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Article, Costas Douzinas, European Left, eurozone, Greek left, IMF Leave a comment »Author: Costas Douzinas*
Few events in recent European political history have baffled analysts and commentators more than the widespread insurrection or ‘riots’ (according to right-wing commentators) that took place in Greece in December 2008. The catalyst was the unprovoked police killing of the 15-year old Alexis Grigoropoulos on December 6 in the Exarcheia district downtown Athens next to the Polytechnic and the Law School, two Universities associated with student militancy for some 60 years. Within hours of Grigoris’s killing, massive protests, occupations and demonstrations broke out all over Greece. Daily marches to police stations, Parliament and Ministries were accompanied by sit-ins, street happenings, interruption of theatres, the raising of a banner calling for resistance on Acropolis and the burning of the Christmas tree in Syntagma Square. Some early violence against banks and luxury shops was minimised and no casualties. In an unprecedented move, large numbers of secondary school pupils occupied some 800 schools and took to the streets. Half the population supported the protest. Solidarity protests throughout Europe created fears of the protests spreading.
The insurrection led to a plethora of anxious interpretations. Many, often contradictory, causes were put forward: economic (unemployment and neo-liberal economic measures), political (persistent corruption and failure of education), cultural or ideological. But the most prominent reaction of commentators has been incomprehension mixed with incredulity.
http://www.criticallegalthinking.com/?p=514
Read the rest of this entry »
The Stakes in “Punishing” Greece
Posted: August 16, 2010 Filed under: Economy, EU, International, Politics | Tags: Article, Richard Wolff Leave a comment »by Richard Wolff.
PUBLISHED ON FEBRUARY 12, 2010
Global capitalism imploded in 2007. The central causes of capitalism’s crisis include:
the end of real wage increases in the US and the substitution of rising worker debt far beyond what workers could sustain;
the buildup of excess global industrial capacity;
the explosion of speculation and excess risk-taking by banks, other financial and non-financial corporations, and the rich;
the systematic misrepresentation of credit risks by capitalist rating firms;
the failure of supervision and regulation by governments increasingly dependent on corporations and the rich (for campaign contributions, lobbyists’ supports, etc.) over the last quarter century;
the growing indebtedness of governments;
the huge imbalances between trade and capital flows among nations (and, above all, the trade deficits of the US and the trade surpluses of the PRC)
In this list, the role of Greece is minor almost to the vanishing point. But Greek workers loom large among the proposed victims of the capitalist crisis they did not cause. Read the rest of this entry »
Europe or The End of Politics
Posted: August 16, 2010 Filed under: EU | Tags: Article, Costas Douzinas, democracy, Europe, European Left, neoliberalism, social Europe 1 Comment »by Costas Douzinas*
How different does Europe look today from ten years ago. In 2000, influential commentators hailed the dawn of the ‘new European century’ to replace the atrocious ‘American’ 20th century. Europe was on the way to becoming the model polity for the new world. The re-unification of Germany, the successful introduction of the Euro and the expansion eastwards were ushering a new age of prosperity and freedom. Read the rest of this entry »
Greece, Again: Demystifying “National Debt”
Posted: August 16, 2010 Filed under: Economy, EU, Politics, Society | Tags: Article, European Left, Greek economy facts, Richard Wolff 1 Comment »by Richard Wolff.
PUBLISHED ON APRIL 27, 2010
Yet again, business leaders, politicians, academics, and media are blowing smoke around Greece’s efforts to cope with “national debt” problems. Something far more important for the world than this small country’s financial travails is at stake. Indeed, what is at stake affects us all. What is happening in Greece parallels developments everywhere; only details and timing vary.
The struggles in Greece begin with the complex relationship among workers, employers, and the state. Workers and employers are locked into the endless, multi-layered struggles of capitalism (workers vs. employers over wages and working conditions, workers competing for jobs, and capitalists competing against one another for profits). One object of these struggles is the state: varying combinations of workers and employers press the state to (a) serve their interests rather than others’, and (b) shift the cost of doing so onto the others. Read the rest of this entry »
The time to organise resistance is now
Posted: August 6, 2010 Filed under: Activism, Economy, EU, Politics, Society | Tags: Article, Europe, European Left, neoliberalism, Press Article Leave a comment »We reject these cuts as simply malicious ideological vandalism, hitting the most vulnerable the hardest. Join us in the fight
Tony Benn guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 August 2010 15.32 BST
It is time to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government’s budget intentions. They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s, which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services.
The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers’ profligacy.
The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VAT to 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBT people and pensioners.
Women are expected to bear 75% of the burden. The poorest will be hit six times harder than the richest. Internal Treasury documents estimate 1.3 million job losses in public and private sectors.
We reject this malicious vandalism and resolve to campaign for a radical alternative, with the level of determination shown by trade unionists and social movements in Greece and other European countries. Read the rest of this entry »
The potential to shut Greece down
Posted: July 14, 2010 Filed under: Economy, Politics, Society | Tags: Article, Greek economy facts, Greek left, IMF Leave a comment »by Alex Callinicos
The price of the so-called “rescue” of Greece is massive austerity for working people. This is coming up against resistance from the most militant working class in Europe.
The general strike on 5 May was very significant. Greece is a country where general strikes happen quite a lot—but this wasn’t just a good general strike. It had qualities of a real workers’ insurgency.
In Constitution Square in the centre of Athens, massive crowds confronted riot police as they tried to get into the parliament.
The struggle is moving beyond the stage where a one-day general strike, or a succession of one-day general strikes, is sufficient to express workers’ anger. Read the rest of this entry »
Austerity: Why and for Whom?
Posted: July 13, 2010 Filed under: Economy, International, Politics, Society | Tags: Article, European Left, Greek economy facts, Greek left, IMF, neoliberalism, Richard Wolff Leave a comment »by Rick Wolff
Clearly, the global capitalist crisis that started in 2007 will be neither short nor shallow. The government rescue of the US financial industry pumped enough extra money into the economy and sufficiently reduced interest rates to give banks and the stock market the heavily hyped “recovery” that started March 2009 and is now over. What is worse, their recovery never reached much of the rest of the economy. Efforts to broaden the recovery or extend it beyond one limp year have failed. That failure cost Washington trillions in borrowed funds from lenders who now demand guarantees that those loans will be repaid to them with interest. Similar demands now confront many other governments who likewise borrowed heavily to cope with the crisis in their countries. Read the rest of this entry »
