- Written by: Kamran Mofid
- Hits: 6088
Wikipedia founder to help in government's research scheme
Academic spring campaign aims to make all taxpayer-funded academic research available for free online
…”The move will embolden what has been dubbed the "academic spring" – a growing campaign among academics and research funders for open access in academic publishing. They want to unlock the results of research from behind the lucrative paywalls of journals controlled by publishing companies. Almost 11,000 researchers have signed up to a boycott of journals owned by the huge academic publisher Elsevier. Subscriptions to the thousands of research journals can cost a big university library millions of pounds each year – costs that have started to bite as budgets are squeezed. Harvard University, frustrated by the rising costs of journal subscriptions, recently encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls.”…
Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/01/wikipedia-research-jimmy-wales-online
- Written by: Kamran Mofid
- Hits: 5118
Wealth for the Common Good is a network of business leaders, high-income individuals and partners working together to promote shared prosperity and fair taxation. We are “the 1 percent” that wants an economy that works for everyone. Our membership includes entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, school teachers, engineers and elected officials of all backgrounds and from all over the country. Learn more about the individuals in our network.
http://wealthforcommongood.org/about/
Stephen King: I'm rich, tax me
In an expletive-filled condemnation of America's tax system, the bestselling novelist, who donates $4m a year to charity, says wealthy Americans have a 'moral imperative' to pay higher taxes
“Bestselling novelist Stephen King, who gives away $4m (£2.5m) a year in charitable donations, has issued an expletive-filled call to America to increase the rate of tax paid by the country's rich…King says it is a "practical necessity and a moral imperative" that "those who have received much must be obligated to pay ... in the same proportion", or the "first real ripples of discontent" seen in the Occupy protests "will just be the beginning".
Read the article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/01/stephen-king-tax-the-rich
- Written by: Kamran Mofid
- Hits: 5015
"Valuing only work that generates profit is not just wrong, it's inhuman"
Money is just a cargo cult, one that has been wrongly and wilfully elevated to the status of a pseudo-science
What is going on in this supposedly Western democracy? Whose values are the political and economic elites promoting?
…“Workers from abroad are recruited to care for the elderly, because our wealthy democracy "works" under the assumption that patience, care and kindness are not economically valuable activities. It is not only that this work is poorly paid. It is also that taking time out from one's own work to care for a child, or a sick relative, can result in a lifetime of economic punishment, too…The real trouble is that everything has been monetised and any other currency is systematically belittled. If labour is not specifically valuable in a financial marketplace – ie profitable – then it is labour without "real" value.
How did we get here? How did we get to the point where the most precious thing in life, our ability to look after each other, nurture our families, protect our vulnerable, came to be governed by a system that affords it so little worth, that treats it, actually, with contempt? One sees the ghastly consequences of this inversion of human value everywhere. Take education, where "cleverness" is valued, and academic success, with the career opportunities it brings, is the only real goal.
Ghastly. But what if you were to suggest schools should be on the look-out for kids whose gifts lie in being empathetic and kind, then nurture those wonderful qualities and reward them with respected qualifications that promised well-paid, secure careers? You'd be scorned by the left for besmirching the egalitarian principles of comprehensive education, and by the right for filling people's heads with nonsense about the financial viability of rewarding people for such plainly unprofitable skills as decency. In this important respect, the so-called "right" and the "so-called" left sustain each other…Humans have allowed money and its acquisition to over-run and conquer them. The rule of money is itself a dependency culture. Like all dependency cultures, it's an ever-tightening trap, and a con. All you need to do with money is give it velocity – keep it circulating though as many hands as possible, as quickly as possible, going round and round. All people really need to know is that there's more where it came from. Which there always will be, as long as no one breaks the circle by sitting on their profit instead of spending it.”…
Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/27/deborah-orr-only-profitable-work
- Prof. Mofid to speak at the Spiritual Heritage Education Network (SHEN) Annual Conference at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
- Prof. Mofid to speak at the Awakened World 2012: Engaged Spirituality for the 21st Century, Rome-Florence, October 13-21, 2012
- The Modern Olympics and the Fundamental Principles of Olympism
- The Destruction of our World and the lies of Milton Friedman
- On the Myth of British Democracy, Market Economy, and We are All in It Together!