Tag Archives: Culture

In North Korea, Black Markets Are Saving Lives

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“Initially, these markets consisted of disorganized traders meeting in fields, facing seizure from police if they did not come up with a bribe.  Today, the jangmadang practice has led to fully-fledged markets, complete with stalls selling street food, smuggled electronics, ingredients, and clothes; certain markets allegedly grew to encompass upwards of a thousand stalls.  Today, the markets remain a crucial element of survival for many North Koreans, with some reports estimating that around 5 million (around a fifth of the overall population) are ‘directly or indirectly dependent on the markets’.”

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/in-north-korea-black-markets-are-saving-lives/

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FBI built 1800-page file on singer Pete Seeger over 20-year period

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“The bureau’s spies first took an interest in the singer in 1943. Seeger, a 23-year-old army private at the time, had written denouncing a plan for mass deportation drafted by the California chapter of the American Legion, a veterans’ association.  His angry letter prompted close scrutiny of his political views and associations by the bureau that ran on into the early 1970s. The suspicion was that Seeger, who died in early 2014, was a security risk with close connections to the Communist party.  The FBI file on him has nearly 1,800 pages – 90 of them are still withheld for security reasons.  An agent sent out to his Connecticut high school found evidence that he had worn ‘bohemian’ clothes.”

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/20/fbi-spied-on-pete-seeger-20-years-communist-links

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The Real Story Behind the 1914 Christmas Truce in World War I

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“Moving forward, politicians and military leaders could no longer tolerate such fraternizing in consideration of mass armies existing in an age of revolutionary fervor. It suddenly became an issue of control.  Many of them saw themselves as pawns in a game they didn’t understand, fighting against an enemy for reasons that weren’t immediately obvious.  Unlike the Second World War, in which ideological motivations were evident to nearly everyone, the Great War was for many a strange, wasteful, and senseless conflict.”

http://gizmodo.com/the-real-story-behind-the-1914-christmas-truce-in-world-1749590742

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I, Thanksgiving Dinner

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“Millions upon millions of people work together — often unwittingly — to bring Thanksgiving dinner to the table. It’s a vast web of interrelated choices and actions. In the end, no single person knows — or could know — how to make dinner.  Thankfully, that lack of knowledge stops no one. They act without the foggiest of idea of the final destination or the ultimate purpose of the fruits of their labor. More importantly, each member of the chain is necessary; not a single step could be dispensed with, or else Thanksgiving dinner would never exist. While no one knows how to make it, every contributor adds an essential, specialized piece.”

http://fee.org/freeman/i-thanksgiving-dinner/

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Jeffrey Tucker: Let’s Talk About…The Plague

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“The situation in the developed world is incredible: poverty and hunger at historic lows, mostly nonexistent in most people’s life experience. Even a full Thanksgiving dinner only costs about 2 hours and 22 minutes of work. Indeed, the ‘problem’ is the opposite. An estimated 45 million people are trying hard to eat less and spend $33 billion annually on products to help them do so.  To fully appreciate the material blessing of the holidays — access to food and good health care and the absence of widespread material privation and death — you have to throw yourself back in time.”

https://tucker.liberty.me/lets-talk-about-the-plague/

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How Life Finds a Way in the Regulatory State

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“Instead of calling it the sharing economy, perhaps a better name for these phenomena might be the ‘gap economy’ — the economy that grows like a weed in the interstices of regulated markets and incumbent cartels. In an interventionist, mixed economy, it’s not hard to find examples of both ‘differentiation from generality’ and ‘life finds a way.’ It’s in the spaces left free from arbitrary government constraint and meddling where the ingenuity and resourcefulness of ordinary people are comparatively free to do extraordinary things.”

http://fee.org/freeman/detail/how-life-finds-a-way-in-the-regulatory-state

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Morgan Spurlock Presents Freedom! The Movie

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“From executive producer Morgan Spurlock and director Matthew Testa comes this comedic and irreverent road trip with host Billy Wayne Davis who’s on a quest to discover what freedom really means to contemporary Americans. See the full show.”

http://www.cmt.com/shows/morgan-spurlock-presents-freedom-the-movie/morgan-spurlock-presents-freedom-the-movie/1736748/playlist/#id=1736748

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Another side of Iran and its beautiful people

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Another side of Iran and its beautiful people

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Living with Venezuela’s high inflation

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“As the world watches the Greek debt crisis unfold, the economy of a country in another corner of the planet is also struggling, and some experts are even trying to draw similarities.  Venezuela has the world’s highest inflation, leaving many facing shortages and soaring prices.  While the government of president Nicolas Maduro says this is the result of an ‘economic war by capitalists and the United States against the country’s socialist revolution’, critics say the high inflation rate is simply showing the government’s economic incompetence.  The BBC’s Daniel Pardo explains how inflation affects what Venezuelans buy every day, like the popular snack called Arepa.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33427761

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Call Them Hippies, But the Grateful Dead Were Tech Pioneers

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“The Grateful Dead remains one of the most innovative and tech-savvy bands in pop history. Long before it became necessary (or cool) to do so, the band embraced a DIY ethos in everything from manufacturing its own gear to publishing its own music to fostering a decentralized music distribution system. The Dead’s obsession with technology was almost inseparable from the band’s psychedelic ambition and artistic independence.  More genuinely progressive than most prog rock, the Grateful Dead and its legion of fans embraced a spirit of innovation that could be called entrepreneurial if the pursuit of profit didn’t so often seem secondary.”

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/grateful-dead-fare-thee-well-tech-pioneers/

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