The Indian novelist writes a cogent counternarrative to the effect of globalization on developing nations, particularly India.  Well worth reading, IMO.  In PDF format.  Quotes follow

…the system of representative democracy—too much representation, too little democracy—needs some structural adjustment.

 …all of us know that just like global capital, political systems are interconnected too. More often than not it is the great democratic nations— masquerading as the gatekeepers of morality and the saviors of humanity— that support, fund and reinforce military dictatorships and totalitarian regimes.

What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit?

As the globalized corporate economy strengthens its grip on our lives and our imaginations, its beneficiaries have united and seceded into outer space.  From there they look down at the forests and river valleys where the poor live and see superfluous people sitting on precious resources. They are puzzled. They wonder: What’s our water doing in their rivers, what’s our bauxite doing in their mountains? What’s our iron-ore doing in their forests? The Nazis had a phrase for superfluous people überzaÅNhligen Essern, superfluous eaters.

Today, words like ‘Progress’ and ‘Development’ have become interchangeable with economic ‘Reforms’, Deregulation and Privatization. ‘Freedom’ has come to mean ‘choice’. It has less to do with the human spirit than it does with different brands of deodorant. ‘Market’ no longer means a place where you go to buy provisions. The ‘Market’ is a de-territorialized space where faceless corporations do business, including buying and selling ‘futures’. ‘Justice’ has come to mean ‘human rights’ (and of those, as they say, ‘a few will do’). This theft of language, this technique of usurping words and deploying them like weapons, of using them to mask intent and to mean exactly the opposite of what they have traditionally meant, has been one of the most brilliant strategic victories of the new dispensation. It has allowed them to marginalize their detractors, deprive them of a language in which to voice their critique and dismiss them as being ‘anti-progress’, ‘anti-development’, ‘anti-reform’ and of course ‘antinational’— negativists of the worst sort.

http://www.literaturfestival.com/intern/reden/arundhati_roy_engl

Gee! I never saw it coming!

In response to the collapse of the housing bubble, didn't we approve hundreds of billions of dollars to be spent dealing with these "Troubled Assets" to keep this kind of disaster from crippling the economy?

I think what we've seen is called "Theft in broad daylight." It's kinda like those home improvement scam artists who will offer to seal your driveway and then abscond with your money to buy liquor instead. Only these scam artists wear italian custom made suits and bear titles like "Secretary of the Treasury" when they aren't on the payroll for Goldman Sachs.

"Web Words That Lure Readers"

By Claire Cain Miller, New York Times, February 10, 2011

The Huffington Post has hired veteran journalists to beef up its news coverage. But a significant chunk of its readers come instead for articles like one published this week: “Chelsy Davy & Prince Harry: So Happy Together?"....

It was an example of an art and science at which The Huffington Post excels: search engine optimization, or S.E.O. The term covers a wide range of behind-the-scenes tactics for getting search engine users to visit a Web site, like choosing story topics based on popular searches.....

Models like these could pave the route toward profitable journalism in a postprint world, some analysts say — or, others worry, drive online media to publish low-quality articles that are written to appeal to search engines instead of people.

S.E.O. is “absolutely essential,” said Rich Skrenta, chief executive of the search engine Blekko. Still, he said, it can turn into a “heroin drip” for publishers: “They had this really good content at the beginning, but they realize the more S.E.O. they do, the more money they make, and the pressure really pushes down the quality on their sites.”....

On search engine optimization and the role of spam, also see:

The Dirty Little Secrets of Search

By David Seagal, New York Times, February 12, 2011

....the digital age’s most mundane act, the Google search, often represents layer upon layer of intrigue. And the intrigue starts in the sprawling, subterranean world of “black hat” optimization, the dark art of raising the profile of a Web site with methods that Google considers tantamount to cheating....

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  Does anybody care?  (It looks purty, have to say.)

"Like any news channel there’s lot of room for non-news content," the former employee continued. "The content that wasn't 'news,' they didn't care what we did with as long as it was amusing or quirky or entertaining; as along as it brought in eyeballs. But anything - anything - that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it."

"If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is."

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times, February 10, 2011

....Under Mr. Obama’s proposal, which the White House maintains would also raise enough revenue to cut the deficit by $9.6 billion over the next decade, the government would nearly double the wireless spectrum available for mobile broadband. That would be achieved in part through “voluntary incentive auctions” in which broadcasters, who license the spectrum through the Federal Communications Commission, would release some of it back to the government, which would in turn sell it to wireless companies....

Mr. Obama is also asking Congress to make a one-time investment of $5 billion to bring wireless coverage to rural areas, and is proposing to spend $3 billion of the spectrum proceeds on research and development into new wireless technologies. And the president is calling for a $10.7 billion commitment to support what the administration describes as a “nationwide wireless broadband network” for public safety....

The plan, which will be included in the budget Mr. Obama releases next week, requires Congressional approval at a time when Republicans have said they are interested in cutting federal spending....

Reuters, February 11, 2011

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has declared multiculturalism a failure, echoing British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and confusing some French who say it was never tried anyway....

6-year-old Jack Dorman was placed on a psychiatric hold after he drew what school officials say was a "disturbing picture" that expressed a wish to die, according to NBCLA. The student at the LAUSD's Taper Avenue Elementary in San Pedro was evaluated by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Psychiatric Mobile Response Team, who determined the child was at risk of harming himself, and placed him on a 72-hour psych hold.

Dorman's mother, Syndi, is outraged at the school's response to her child's drawing. She explains that Jack had not wanted to go to school that day because his father was being deployed to Iraq, and wanted to spend time with his parents. She also adds that the drawing was an image from one of the video games her son plays. Jack suffers from separation anxiety, and had been seeing a therapist.

also: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/Military-Moms-Latest-Worry-...

Dorman said her son suffers from separation anxiety and has seen a therapist in the past. On the day he drew the disturbing picture, he was upset that he couldn't stay home with his family.

"I explained to them what was happening, that my husband was being deployed to Iraq, that he was upset when he came to school today, that he wanted to be home."
[...]
"I'm saying, 'I will deal with it, that we have a therapist, we'll make sure he's seen today.' "They said it was out of my hands. They said they were in control and they could do this and had already called an ambulance."

Dorman said the ambulance ride was traumatizing for her son.

"I was trying to reassure him it would be OK and he asked if I'd come back for him, and I said of course I'm going to come back for you."

[...]Jack was released after 48 hours, but his mother says the experience will have lasting effects.

"My son doesn't want to go back to school. He's afraid they're going to take him away again."

By Paul Amar, Al Jazeera Opinion, February 10, 2011

Suleiman considers the business fraternity friendly, but it is the nation's women and youth who are driving the unrest.

Highly, highly, recommended analysis of who makes up the "revolution" in Egypt, who doesn't, and why. Well worth the time. Not the same-old-same-old that you've already read. That is all.

Jerusalem Post, February 10, 2011, 13:26

Abdullah speaks with Obama, tells him not to humiliate Mubarak, will prop up his regime if Washington withdraws its support, 'Times' reports.

Might have something to do with a news story from this afternoon?

The original Times of London article can only be viewed by subscription. Here's the summary and link from their search engine:

Saudis told Obama not to humiliate Mubarak

Hugh Tomlinson

    * The Times
    * Published: 10 February 2011

Saudi Arabia has threatened to prop...senior source in the Saudi capital told The Times...streets. The revelation of Saudi concerns sheds new light...the Arab world and the Saudis want the Americans to remember...not only remove a key Saudi and American ally in the...Aramco) 1960 Saudi Arabia becomes a founding member...

If interested in more, if you search google news on topic, you'll find other papers that are reporting other bits and pieces from the Times' article.

Apply this to energy and you’ve basically got the history of the modern world. Until our species broke into the Earth’s store of fossil fuels and started going through it like a lottery winner on a spree, we lived from paycheck to paycheck on the incoming flows from the sun, and we got fairly clever at it. Growing food crops, raising livestock, building windmills and waterwheels, designing houses to soak up heat from the sun in winter and shed it in the summer, and a good many other ingenious tricks gave us the annual paycheck of energy we used to support ourselves and cover the costs of such luxury goods as art, literature, philosophy, science, and the occasional Great Pyramid.

With the transformation of coal from ugly black rock to energy resource over the course of the eighteenth century, that changed radically. Simply put, our species won the lottery, and it wasn’t a paltry little million-dollar prize, either – it was the great-grandmother of all jackpots, unimaginably vast enough that for most of three hundred years, the major constraint on how fast we used fossil fuels was the struggle to figure out enough clever ways to use it all. What nobody noticed at the time, or for a long time thereafter, was that we’d switched from a flow to a fund, and the faster our fossil fuel use accelerated, the faster the bank balance depleted.