Yanis Varoufakis: The Future of Capitalism | The New School

Published on Apr 27, 2016

Sponsored by the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org) at The New School for Social Research (http://www.newschool.edu/nssr), Yanis Varoufakis will deliver SCEPA's annual Robert Heilbroner Memorial Lecture, "The Future of Capitalism."

We all know Varoufakis as the former Greek Finance Minister and media sensation who stood up to Europe in the fight against austerity. His lecture will discuss themes from his new book, "And The Weak Suffer What They Must?," including the origins of a crisis that has affected not only Greece, but all of Europe.

The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion featuring New School Professor of Economics Mark Setterfield and economics student Ebba Boye.

Department of Economics | http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/economics

Varoufakis’ career has spanned academia, public service, and the private sector. After three decades in academia, he was elected to the Hellenic Parliament in 2015 as a member of the Syriza Party and became Minister of Finance in Alexis Tsipras’ government. He currently serves as professor of economics at the University of Athens and as a consultant for the Valve Corporation.

The Robert Heilbroner Memorial Lecture on the Future of Capitalism: The Heilbroner lecture honors the work of Robert Heilbroner, who was both a student and a professor in the economics department of The New School for Social Research. This event is dedicated to understanding questions of economic justice and how the profit-seeking activities of private firms might also serve broader social goals. To use Heilbroner’s words, “capitalism’s uniqueness in history lies in its continuously self-generated change, but it is this very dynamism that is the system’s chief enemy.”

THE NEW SCHOOL | http://www.newschool.edu

Location: John L. Tishman Auditorium, University Center
Monday, April 25, 2016 at 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

The Right To Privacy > If You Don't Stand Up For It, Who Will??

Published on Apr 28, 2016

Music video by Jean-Michel Jarre, Edward Snowden performing Exit. (C) 2016 Music Affair Entertainment Limited under exclusive license to Sony Music Entertainment Germany GmbH

Edward Snowden releases techno song with Jean-Michel Jarre

Swapping the NSA for BPM, the whistlebower’s song with the electronic music legend has hit the web, including a Bourne-style video
In 2013 Edward Snowden rocked the world of government surveillance when he dropped bombshell revelations about the National Surveillance Agency.
Yoday it was the music world Snowden rocked, when he dropped a red-hot techno track co-recorded with French music icon Jean-Michel Jarre.
The song, called Exit, mixes clips of Snowden warning of the dangers of privacy interference with what a colleague here at the Guardian described as “haunting, discordant synths”.
Exit was posted to Jarre’s YouTube channel on Thursday afternoon. The collaboration came about after Jarre gave an interview to the Guardian last year, and asked our music critic Alexis Petridis to put him in touch with Snowden. Jarre described his music, over which Snowden performs, as a “hectic, obsessive techno track, trying to illustrate the idea of this crazy quest for big data on one side and the manhunt for this one young guy by the CIA, NSA and FBI on the other”.

Jean-Michel Jarre records with Edward Snowden – after the Guardian brings them together

When we interviewed him last year, the French electronic pioneer asked for our help in putting together a track with the NSA whistleblower
             

Read more

Continuing this theme, the music video has been contrived as a Matrix/Bourne Identity/Wikileaks drone footage mash-up. There’s video of green numbers scrolling down a black screen, interspersed with quick-zoom aerial reconnaissance images. There’s a disorientating car chase, cutting to a fairly shoddy special effect of a satellite circling the Earth. This is a interspersed with shots of Jarre hopping around a studio playing the keyboard.
The rave-style track represents a different type of whistleblowing for Snowden, who appears in the middle of the video, discussing privacy in front of a grey curtain. His contribution sits firmly in the spoken-word category, having been taken from an old interview about the dangers of a government spying on its citizens.
“Technology can actually increase privacy,” Snowden says. “The question is: ‘Why are our private details that are transmitted online... why are private details that are stored on our personal devices, any different than the details and private records of our lives that are stored in our private journals?’”
And now it’s an inquiry you can dance to.

Mesa Channel 11 > WE DEVELOP HUGE CONTENT // 28-Page Strategic Priority Place Making

With only a salaried staff of three, Mesa Channel 11 with operation facilities inside City Hall provides and develops content for  Mesa residents, visitors, employers, educators and more, from Public Service Announcements to News Magazine shows, Mesa 11 produces and broadcasts news and events in and around the City of Mesa.
Link >> Mesa Channel 11 
In the interest of keeping citizens, residents [and voters] informed about what our elected representatives to the Mesa City Council actually do on-the-job and how meetings are conducted it's a good thing to see in-person and first-hand the Mayor, City Manager, and the six councilmembers.

Oftentimes very few members of the public show up at City Council meetings and study sessions [or make comments] for one reason or another.
Having taken the time to attend some meetings, it's rare to see other members of the media being there physically. Nonetheless, reports and articles about what your government does do get written and published.
[ all images in this post from mesaaz.gov ]
There's an important City Council Study Session this morning starting at 07:30 a.m. with one of the items on the agenda
Hear a presentation, discuss and provide direction on the City Council Strategic Priority "Placemaking" and the related departmental proposed budgets.
Readers can access and download the 28-page presentation by hooking up with this link
http://mesa.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=2703119&GUID=9FA99E81-1663-44E3-AB14-37D8E58DAAA4

We stream and archive all of our City Council, Study Sessions and Planning and Zoning Meetings. Plus you can find all of our original programming On Demand through YouTube.

Our program guide lists all the rebroadcasts of the Mesa City Council Meetings, news magazine shows, Mesa Morning Live and more. Check out what’s playing locally on your cable box.

Watch our station Live now through streaming.

The AZ GOP Circus Is Coming Here > 2 days @ The Mesa Convention Center

58 Delegates to get  selected on Friday and Saturday to attend RNC National Convention.
. . . stay tuned

What is The Living Wage In Arizona?

MIT Proves That No Minimum Wage Earner Can Support a Family

A new tool crunches data that yield startling results.

Living Wage Calculation for Arizona

Hourly Wages	1 Adult	1 Adult 1 Child
Living Wage	$10.47	$22.37
Poverty Wage	$5.00	$7.00
Minimum Wage	$7.90	$7.90.

The minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.54 per hour, after adjusting for inflation. The current $7.25 is far too low for the 3 million hourly workers who earn at or below that threshold, and certainly not at par with the wage hikes instituted by other countries with similar economic trajectories.
Here’s The Economist on the United States' embarrassingly low minimum wage:
Given the pattern across the rest of the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries, one would expect the U.S., where GDP per person is $53,000, to pay a minimum wage around $12 an hour. That would mean a raise of about 65 percent for Americans earning the minimum pay rate.

But while several states have higher local minimums (and some cities plan to raise them further), the U.S. as a whole is not where it needs to be.
http://www.theatlantic.com/author/tanvi-misra-city-lab/ 
Sept 18, 2015
The entire map is fiery red; there isn’t a single county in which a minimum wage can match the local cost of living.
To visualize the problem, MIT has released the Living Wage Calculator, which maps the difference between minimum wage and basic costs of living in cities and counties across America. The map shows that for most minimum-wage earners, supporting their families is an enormous struggle.
Read more >> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/mit-proves-that-no-minimum-wage-earner-can-support-a-family/432852/ 

Take a look at a different version of this map for Phoenix and Maricopa County

		

 

 

The Seven Deadly Sins Using Geographic Information Science GIS

MesaZona blog viewers might be curious about why post this now?
Just happened to engage with someone scouting locations downtown for a movie about "The Seven Deadly Sins" by a certain faith-based group. Admittedly, yours truly could not even remember what those so-called sins were and wondered why they selected downtown, with filming scheduled to start in June . . . something about promoting a pledge with role-playing?
Like that Unity Pledge promoted here in Mesa,mebbe?
As oftentimes happens, as shown in the accompanying GIS map-image, those with a tradition of faith have the largest amount of sin per capita while calling themselves "saints", Latter Day or not

Pieter Breugel The Elder

[Notice the counties in Arizona with high density]
A set of United States maps showing the counties that have the highest concentrations of sin, based on the "Seven Deadly Sins," has caused a stir . . . In each of the maps the southeast, an area often referred to as the "Bible Belt" for its tradition of faith, has the largest amount of sin per capita . . .
"We compiled those maps from the standpoint of geographic information science," Mitch Stimers, who worked on the study as a graduate student at Kansas State University in 2009, told The Christian Post in an interview on Friday.
Now a director of institutional research and instructor of geography and geosciences at Cloud County Community College, Stimers insisted - with your MesaZona blogger in total agreement -  "we weren't attempting to interject any moral interpretation into them."
Source: Christian Post

What Are The Seven Deadly Sins?

[ according to http://www.deadlysins.com/ ]

People have always been immoral, shiftless, and self-gratifying.
For ages, humankind struggled to find a conceptual system to operationalize their spiritual shortcomings.


Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God.
It has been called the sin from which all others arise.
Pride is also known as Vanity.
Envy is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury.
It is also known as Wrath.
Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual.
It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.

Able Aerospace & MD Helicopters Gain Contracts for Repair/Alteration, Malaysian Army Training



From an announcement yesterday
Able Aerospace receives certification from Japan Civil Aviation Bureau

By Mark Banham April 26, 2016 11:22

The Textron subsidiary Able Aerospace Services has achieved certification from the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau (JCAB) as an approved maintenance organisation (AMO). The JCAB-AMO certification, which is issued by Japan’s minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, allows the service centre to perform repair or alteration of aircraft components including rotors, transmissions, mechanical/ electric accessories and major parts for JCAB-licensed operators.

From its headquarters and maintenance facilities on the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Arizona, Able offers FAA approved component repair, overhaul and approved replacement parts solutions to commercial and military aviation fleets in more than 60 countries worldwide.

Since its inception, Able has grown to more than 500 employees providing thousands of approved repairs and some of the world’s largest exchange inventories.

ABLE EARNS CERTIFICATION AS JCAB APPROVED MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION

April 25, 2016 by Able Engineering

Recognition from Japan Civil Aviation Bureau extends company’s broad global certification

http://www.ableengineering.com/blog.

Military Capabilities  

DSA 2016: MD Helicopters, Brunner Aerospace in discussions with Malaysian Army for MD-530G training

Dzirhan Mahadzir, Kuala Lumpur - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly   

20 April 2016

MD Helicopters Inc (MDHI) and its pilot training provider, Brunner Aerospace, are in discussions with the Malaysian Army on the scope of the training programme for the MD-530G helicopters. Malaysia has purchased six MD-530G helicopters that will be used by the Malaysian Army Air Corps for security operations in the state of Sabah in east Malaysia.
Andrew Pillado, MDHI's vice-president of business development, told IHS Jane's that the exact number of pilots and technical personnel to be trained to instructor level had yet to be finalised.
Christopher Myers, senior vice-president of Brunner Aerospace, said initial training, which will be conducted at MDHI's facilities in Mesa, Arizona, will consist of basic aircraft qualification and weapon system familiarisation to safely release ordnance.
Source: IHS Jane's Defense

EU combats dirty money with new directive

The EU's 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive came into effect in 2015. Andrew Bowen studies its provisions and the challenges member states will face in implementing