Creative Communications With Soluble Ink

Link Loving 02.06.11

• The fight for gay rights is playing an important part in the general democratisation of Russia. Augusto Come.
• Be memorable by telling good stories about yourself. Penelope Trunk.
• My dear friend Anna Rose is travelling through the USA researching progressive infrastructure as part of her Churchill Fellowship.
• How to make meetings meaningful.
• A resurgent Italian protest movement. Emanuelle Degli Esposti.
• It’s not who you know, it’s who you don’t know. Jonathan Schifferes.
• Seven tips on how to handle negative people. Celastine Chua.
• The cutest thing you’ve ever seen.
• James Plunkett reveals some telling data. Since 2003;

1. Median wages flat-lined and disposable incomes fell in every English region outside of London, despite economic growth of 11%
2. Housing costs continued to hit hard as 30% of low to middle income first time buyers relied on a 100% mortgage in 2009, and the proportion renting trebled from 1988 to 2008 as house prices moved out of reach.
3. Since 2006, those on low to middle incomes also faced as much as a 1% higher inflation rate on their cost of living than higher earners.

In Conversation With History: Robert Reich

A wonderful interview with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

What’s Actually Happening In Yemen?

Cross-posted from Global Dashboard.

Watching news reports like the one below, it’s easy to get confused about what’s happening in Yemen – peaceful protest for democracy? Tribal uprising? Civil war?

Broadly – the peaceful pro-democracy movement and the recent armed conflict are two separate issues. The armed clashes are between government forces and armed tribesmen loyal to Sheik Sadeq al-Ahmar. They’ve managed to take government buildings in Sana’a with deadly street battles after the collapse of the most recent ceasefire.

Peaceful pro-democracy protests have been running since January, and tent cities are still visible in major cities. President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s forces have killed over 250 protestors, using tear gas, bulldozers and live ammunition. Talks of a transition of power continue, with Obama’s emissary John Brennan pushing for a deal this week.

What is keeping the situation from becoming a civil war is the military’s lack of decisive intervention, despite government efforts to involve them.

Looks likely that Yemen will be moving up this list before long.

h/t Atiaf Alwazir.

Link Loving 01.06.11

• Adam Ramsay looks for practical things we can do to saw through the bars on our imagination. Wonderful.
• India’s emissions in a climate constrained world. Kartikeya Singh. (Email me for access.)
• How television and radio shows can improve behaviour. The Economist.
• Pendulum waves.
• Memo to Westminster: UK “independent nuclear deterrent” not actually independent. Kate Hudson.
• Cancer is now the leading cause of death in China. Janet Larsen.
• Witness account from the besieged Syrian city of Dara’a.
• Making sense of Maurice Glasman. Alan Finlayson.

Reaction

Chief Raoni cries when he learns that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff released the beginning of construction of the hydroelectric plant of Belo Monte, even after tens of thousands of letters and emails addressed to her and which were ignored as the more than 600,000 signatures. Belo Monte will inundate at least 400,000 hectares of forest, an area bigger than the Panama Canal, thus expelling 40,000 indigenous and local populations and destroying habitat valuable for many species – all to produce electricity at a high social, economic and environmental cost, which could easily be generated with greater investments in energy efficiency.

Meet The Grassroots

“We’ve never done this kind of thing before, but we’ve basically been committed to our children’s health and environment, and also they’re future.”

Great work from SMK.