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Ozymandias in Rio. In Copenhagen in 2009, when Brazil's successful bid for this year's Olympics was announced, Lula, then the country's president, leapt in the air and danced. So did most Brazilians back home. He said, extraordinarily, "I confess to you if I die right now my life would have been worth it."
Would whoever makes these decisions please stop treating refugees who drown in the Mediterranean as if they're another earthquake or tsunami? This isn't a natural disaster, it's a hands-on human one. Anyway, even natural disasters like global warming aren't merely natural now.
Chrystia Freedland, the prominent Reuters editor just recruited by the Liberals to contest the nomination in the Toronto Centre riding vacated by Bob Rae, remarks how capitalism deserves credit as "the best prosperity-creating system humanity has come up with so far." True enough, it has done better than feudalism, slavery, hunting, fishing and food gathering. The issue is whether it is time to move past profit seeking as the answer, and on to a better economic system, or whether capitalism just needs to evolve.
Many progressives, unlike neoliberals, believe that labourers, not investors, are the fundamental source of economic productivity, innovation and wealth. Implicit in this line of argument is the view that business's capacity to accumulate profit therefore depends to some degree on its capacity to diminish labour's ability to bargain over control of the gains from rising productivity. Many social movements and unions contend that the neoliberal rules -- initially propelled by the United States --- of the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank and many governments, were not established to protect labour but instead to foster the well-being of those who invest for a living at the expense of those who must work.
Where is Henry Ford when you need him? You may remember Henry -- the ruthless industrialist who nonetheless refused to be hobbled by suicidal ideology when it came to doing business. He realized as his workers cranked thousands of new cars off the assembly line that none of those workers would likely ever own one because he didn't pay them enough. So he dramatically increased their wages. It was such a good idea that most industrialists followed suit and his practical approach was dubbed Fordism. It was the foundation of a high-wage economy, it lasted a very long time and produced incredible real wealth for decades.
"Nihilistic and feral teenagers" London's Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced around the streets mindlessly and desperately hurling bricks, stones and bottles at the cops while looting here and setting bonfires there, leading the authorities on a merry chase of catch-as-catch-can as they tweeted their way from one strategic target to another.
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