I just finished reading Naomi Klein’s latest book, The Shock Doctrine. Klein is a celebrated critic of multi-national corporatism and neo-liberal economic policies, and the Shock Doctrine reads like a black book of neo-liberalism similar to the Black Book of Communism.
The Black Book of Communism sought to document the history of repressions in Communist states, [...]
Posts under ‘Politics’
Black Book of Neo-liberalism
Design for a sustainable planet
The Story of Stuff is a very clever and well-executed film about our relationship with our planet. You should go watch it now. Come back afterwards and read the rest of this post. It’ll take 20 minutes, but it’ll be worth it. It may come across as a bit preachy at times, but the points [...]
Complacency wins – again
* Double sigh *
The nature of corruption
Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford law professor and founder of the Creative Commons project, which I have mentioned several times on these pages, recently changed his main research and activist focus from copyright law to examining the dynamics of political corruption. As he explains it on his Wiki:
I want to discuss “corruption” in a very particular [...]
Free documentaries online
At the Danish Social Forum, there was a film festival called “This way out” which showcased a collection of the latest political documentaries. I saw Johan Söderberg’s film The Planet a visual feast examining the same issues as “An Inconvenient Truth” – but it does so in a more poetic and somewhat less factual way. [...]
The future of copyright
This weekend, I went to the Danish Social Forum, which is a Danish version of the World Social Forum – a gathering of various grassroots organizations seeking to bring focus to the many alternative ways that the world can develop, all under the heading “another world is possible.”
Mainly, I went to see the the panel [...]
Kasparov uncut
Wednesday, I went to see former Chess World Champion and current Russian Human Rights Champion Garri Kasparov receive the grandly named Herbert Pundik Freedom Prize. Kasparov proved to be a fairly eloquent speaker, and he managed to summarize the enlightenment ideal of Human Rights very precisely, and underline its importance once more.
What surprised me though, [...]
Dropping knowledge
One of the entries for the Index design award was the Dropping Knowledge website. It’s a fun, if somewhat difficult concept which lets anybody ask a question, and gives anybody else the opportunity to offer their answers.
It is an attempt to use the new sort of participatory culture to find or reach contemplative answers to [...]
Making left wing politics work
My recent post on Simplified Politics was inspired by a Thomas Sowell quote sent to me by my friend Kristian:
The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to [...]
Oil addicts
I just came across British comedian and activist Rob Newman’s show “The History of Oil” – it is an enlightening, provoking and funny view on the role of oil in global politics in the past century and what role it’ll be playing in the future, what with the Crisis in the Middle East, Peak Oil [...]
I'm an anthropologist working as an 
