HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Figure 9.1: Percy Bysshe Shelley in a portrait by Alfred Clint (Wikipedia).

A pioneer of non-violent resistance to tyranny

Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Shelley is today considered to be one of the major English-language poets.

Less well known is the fact that he was a pioneer of non-violent resistance to tyranny, whose ideas influenced Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was the eldest legitimate son of Sir Timothy Shelley, Baronet and Whig Member of Parliament. His mother was a wealthy Sussex landowner.

Human Wrongs Watch

Figure 8.1: Thomas Robert Malthus (Wikipedia)!.

A debate between father and son

T.R. Malthus’ “Essay on The Principle of Population”, the first edition of which was published in 1798, was one of the the first systematic studies of the problem of population in relation to resources.

Earlier discussions of the problem had been published by Boterro in Italy, Robert Wallace in England, and Benjamin Franklin in America.

However Malthus’ “Essay” was the first to stress the fact that, in general, powerful checks operate continuously to keep human populations from increasing beyond their available food supply.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Johan Galtung and Malvin Gattinger *

10 July 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service — Let us start with an example.

Johan Galtung

The senior author bought an apartment in a nice housing complex in the little town of Manassas, Prince William County, half an hour from the center of Washington DC.

There was a little center with an office and a small staff always there, and a meeting room that could be let was also used for the annual general assembly of house-owners.

And most importantly, a competent service man who could handle all big and small problems that arise in an apartment on permanent call.

The complex was for all practical purposes a cooperative.

Malvin Gattinger

There was a monthly fee, of course.  But the usual criterion, Q/P, Quality/Price, here Services/Fee, was more than well satisfied.

Enters “modern” business, exactly under that heading, as if “modern” can exonerate business from anything.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram*

KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 13 2017 (IPS) – When we fail to act on lessons from a crisis, we risk exposing ourselves to another one. The 1997-1998 East Asian crises provided major lessons for international financial reform. Two decades later, we appear not to have done much about them. The way the West first responded to the 2008 global financial crisis should have reminded us to do more. But besides accumulating more reserves, Southeast Asia has not done much else.

In Southeast Asia, existing mechanisms and institutions for preventing financial crises remain grossly inadequate. Credit: Sandra Siagian/IPS

Human Wrongs Watch

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 7 2017 (IPS) – The G20 leaders meeting in Hamburg, Germany, on 7-8 July comes almost a decade after the grouping’s elevation to meeting at the heads of state/government level. Previously, the G20 had been an informal forum of finance ministers and central bank governors from advanced and emerging economies created in 1999 following the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

**G20 leaders group photo, 2017 summit in Hamburg. Host nation Germany, with Angela Merkel in red; 20 politicians, representing mayor countries. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.