Shocktherapy is Good! (III)

DEMONSTRATORS DEMAND AN END TO POVERTY IN CHILE
“Ten percent of Chileans live in poverty, and three percent are indigent,” proclaimed David Órdenes, head of the non-profit La Caleta, who led the marchers through the streets of the capital. “These percentages are not merely numbers; they are people.”

JN DN

Shocktherapy is Good IV

Georgians protest against president
VIDEO
"More than 100,000 Georgian opposition supporters protested against President Mikhail Saakashvili for the second consecutive day, Interfax news agency reported.

The mass protest outside parliament began on Thursday evening and was the biggest since the Rose Revolution in 2003. Demonstrators demand early parliamentary and presidential elections in 2008 and the release of imprisoned opposition activists.

"We will not retreat until our demands are met," said opposition lawmaker Gia Tortladse, one of the protest organisers.

The government has refused to resign. Analysts have accused the government of abusing power, suppressing the opposition and a growing divide between rich and poor." The Age

Mikhail Saakashvili, 36, has built himself the reputation of a "crusader against corruption" and an "enemy of poverty".

He received an LLM from Columbia Law School in 1994 and Doctor of Laws degree from The George Washington University Law School the following year. In 1995, he also received a diploma from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

After graduation, while working in the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler

Georgia Arms Spending Rupert Murdoch strays into Georgian politics Georgia to double troops in Iraq Georgia on IRAN border Bush Dictator Friends Pipeline Trouble In Georgia

Shocktherapy is Good!

China’s New Leftist
NY Times October 15, 2006 "Co-editor of China’s leading intellectual journal, Dushu (Reading), and the author of a four-volume history of Chinese thought, Wang, still in his mid-40’s, has emerged as a central figure among a group of writers and academics known collectively as the New Left. New Left intellectuals advocate a “Chinese alternative” to the neoliberal market economy, one that will guarantee the welfare of the country’s 800 million peasants left behind by recent reforms."

"For Wang, the problems associated with China’s uneven development were first identified by the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Wang himself was one of the last protesters to leave the square on the morning of June 4, 1989, as the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army closed in. Normally rather brisk and matter-of-fact, he grew animated as he described in fluent, if occasionally idiosyncratic, English how a “broad social movement” began to grow out of the distress caused by the shock therapy of market reforms."

"When Deng Xiaoping sought to bury the ghosts of Tiananmen for good by calling for speedy market reforms in 1992, he may well have calculated that the prospect of personal wealth — and access to Western brand-name goods — would compensate many newly enriched people for the lack of political democracy."

"More than 150 million people survive on a dollar a day. About 200 million of the rural population are crowding the cities and towns in search of low-paying jobs. More than four million Chinese participated in the 87,000 protests recorded in 2005, and these statistics may not fully convey the rage and discontent of Chinese living with one of the world’s highest income inequalities and deteriorating health and education systems, as well as the arbitrary fees and taxes imposed by local party officials.

Much of this, Wang said, could be laid at the feet of the “right-wing radicals” or neoliberal economists who cite Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek (advocates of unregulated markets who inspired Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 80’s) and who argue for China’s integration into the global economy without taking into account the social price of mass privatization. And it is they, Wang added, who have held favor with the ruling elite and have dominated the state-run media."


Gosh! That was the silliest thing I´ve ever heard!!

Thatcherism in Action

"It would be easy to buy into Mikhail Saakashvili's claims that Russian agents are responsible for the latest crisis in Georgia. The president's strong pro-US and pro-Nato stance intensely irritates Moscow and relations between the two countries are dire. Russia routinely exploits separatist and border tensions, and a key oil pipeline running from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia undermines Kremlin efforts to monopolise energy supplies to the west from the Caspian basin. But leaders of Georgia's recently formed 10-party opposition coalition, and this week's street demonstrators, do not dispute the country's pro-western orientation, which most Georgians, ever wary of Russia, support. They say their focus is domestic: jobs, wealth inequalities, corruption, a weak judicial system, rights abuses, and what is seen as the excitable authoritarianism of Mr Saakashvili himself."

The opposition's slogan - "Georgia without a president" - refers to proposals to hold early elections and change the constitution, possibly by restoring the monarchy. But it also represents a personal rejection of Mr Saakashvili, whose political hero is Margaret Thatcher. (En enastående kvinna!!)

Four years after he helped lead the so-called rose revolution and initiated an era of breakneck social and economic change, many Georgians appear deeply discomfited by the resulting upheavals."

Shocktherapy Georgia

Shocktherapy is Good! (II)