G20: a photo essay

Britain’s policing problem, Guy Aitchison

Britain was once famous for its unarmed and relatively restrained police force, but the death of a man at last week’s G20 protests in London has brought into focus serious concerns with a new aggressive form of policing. Former police chief Andy Hayman today warned that “If left unchecked, we have a more violent crowd in uniform than the one demonstrating.”

An older group of interesting links follow..

PR People Must Heed Digital Reality as Newspapers Fold

In walter issacson

Last Wednesday morning, as the sun rose over the West Coast, newspaper delivery people in Seattle dropped off the final edition of the Post Intelligencer, one of Seattle’s two daily newspapers. The struggling P-I was 145 years old and, by coincidence, 145 newsroom employees were left without jobs. Hearst, which owns the news organization, announced that it will retain 20 employees to keep the paper’s website, SeattlePI.com, operational while it hunts for a viable business model.

When did anti-globalization become anti-capitalism?

At previous international summits, the unruly protesters tended to be widely referred to as “anti-globalization.” This time around, however, the media seems to have settled on “anticapitalist” as an umbrella term for the marchers currently bringing London to a standstill and forcing bankers to wear sneakers to work.

World Forum Looks to Replenish Ideas BY: Mark Hilpert | The Washington Diplomat As climate change creates geographic shifts in water availability and growing populations consume more food and energy ? at the same time that freshwater stocks required to meet that demand remain fixed or decline due to pollution ? ordinarily mundane issues like what we eat and drink may alter the entire geopolitical landscape, potentially driving conflicts and making the poor even poorer.

The Politics of Liberty in the Age of ?Liquid Democracy?, Gerry Hassan

By Gerry Hassan on ourkingdom

“It wasn?t, I realised after all, that the world had run out of ideas. It was simply that the world had forgotten how good ideas were created in the first place.”

Gordon Torr, Managing Creative People (1)

The world has been turned upside down. Assumptions long held as unquestioned beliefs are now looking threadbare, while increasingly across the globe politicians and government act and think in contradictory ways, clinging to the wreckage of the neo-liberal era, while behaving in ways which bring it into question.

In the UK, the ferment that was brewing at the margins of mainstream politics has gained increasing voice, energy and attention. This can be seen across the board from the interest in ?red Toryism’, to the work of Compass in the Labour party, to the recent gathering of the Convention on Modern Liberty, to the preparations to greet the G20 summit on the streets, to numerous other campaigns and initiatives.

Capitalism Beyond the Crisis

By Reflection Cafe

2008 was a year of crises. First, we had a food crisis, particularly threatening to poor consumers, especially in Africa. Along with that came a record increase in oil prices, threatening all oil-importing countries. Finally, rather suddenly in the fall, came the global economic downturn, and it is now gathering speed at a frightening rate. The year 2009 seems likely to offer a sharp intensification of the downturn, and many economists are anticipating a full-scale depression, perhaps even one as large as in the 1930s. While substantial fortunes have suffered steep declines, the people most affected are those who were already worst off.