At WEF 2013: Authoritarian Liberalism versus Social Democratic Welfare State

Here's an interesting discussion organized by Aljazeera at Davos during the World Economic Forum....

• Iceland's President offered sensible and credible solutions to Europe's and global economic crises — that is, essentially, dealing with the crisis more for the people than for banks and financial markets.

• Malaysia's Prime Minister was in his usual doublespeak.

• China's banker and (former) economic adviser made us reflect on China's self-proclaimed 'communism'. Listen to the argument of this fellow: glorifying proletarianization, attacking welfare state, disciplining the youth and labour, and all those practices of an exploitative capitalist and authoritarian political economy! Indeed, what does it mean to be 'communist' or 'socialist' in China these days???

• Malaysian PM and the Chinese banker/economic adviser were ganging up on Iceland's and Nordic's welfare tradition and programmes. Authoritarian liberalism critiquing the social democratic welfare state!

Purpose and Priorities, rather than Resolution, for the New Year

At this point, I've somehow given up making "new year's resolutions". I believe it's much better to come up with "purpose" and "priorities" for every new year, for every new day, for every lifetime. Happy New Year everyone! :)

I share with you again my old blog post, dated 31 December 2004, entitled "Closing 2004, Closing A Cycle, Moving On" — which may still apply to some of us.