1 Poverty bigger challenge than HIV (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) The World Bank president has warned that ending the worst of global poverty within a generation would prove a tougher challenge than tackling Aids, as he urged direct action to help more than a billion people benefit from growth. Jim Yong Kim, the former health activist chosen by Barack Obama to lead the Washington-based institution, said the goal of reducing the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day from 21% to 3% by 2030 was achievable but "extraordinarily difficult".
Kim said that rapid growth in China had been the most important factor in lifting people above the global breadline in recent years. "Most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked," Kim said, following suggestions that the World Bank had set itself too easy a target. The proportion of people living in extreme poverty would fall to 6% if the recent trend continued, but Kim, who spearheaded a global campaign to provide blanket treatment for Aids, said this was not realistic. He added: "This is the hardest goal I have ever tackled, harder than Aids. The curve is going to flatten out."
Kim said the target would only be met if there was progress in India, sub-Saharan Africa and states torn apart by conflict. "I hope those who say it is going to be easy are right. But everything I have seen tells me that it is not going to be easy." He said the fact that 1.2 billion people were on less than $1.25 a day was "a stain on our conscience", and said he wanted to restore the anti-poverty focus the institution had under the presidency of Jim Wolfensohn, who ended his term in 2005.
2 Who’s left? What’s right? (Jonathan Power in Khaleej Times) Are political views, whether left or right, influenced by different personality constellations? Karl Marx and V I Lenin were natural authoritarians. Menshevik leader Julius Martov (and we could have added Frederick Engels) were not. So this effort at political classification doesn’t work.
But how does one describe the political leanings of Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, who has presided over both a big build up of anti-poverty programs but also of a big increase in the acquisition of expensive armaments, or the president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari or Goodluck Jonathan, president of Nigeria?
Thinkers can also have their problems of identity. As Harvard sociologist, Daniel Bell once pointed out, Noam Chomsky has been hoisted by the Marxist petard. “Some years ago he was accused by a Canadian Maoist revolutionary periodical of being an “agent of American imperialism”. It stood to reason. Chomsky’s theories that language capacities are innate, and that mankind generates rules through the properties of mind, were characterised, quite correctly, as philosophical idealism.
As every Marxist knows, idealism is the reactionary philosophy of the bourgeoisie, as opposed to revolutionary materialism. More than that Chomsky had mentioned that the publication of his early research had been financed by the Office of Naval Research. Why should the American military finance such research if it did not realise that idealistic philosophy would serve to confuse the masses?!” Who’s left? What’s right?
3 Nikkei at highest level since 2008 (BBC) Japan's stock market has hit its highest level in almost five years, after a central bank stimulus plan raised hope of economic revival. The main Nikkei 225 stock index climbed as much as 4.7% to 13,225.62, its highest since August 2008.
The Bank of Japan said it would double the country's money supply to spur growth and halt falling prices. The step was much bigger than expected and signalled a more aggressive approach towards driving growth. Analysts said that the moves by the central bank had got the attention of investors both at home and abroad.
No comments:
Post a Comment