Word: socialism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...most convincing writers on this subject was the American political scientist Barrington Moore. In his work on the social origins of dictatorships, Moore coined the phrase "No bourgeois, no democracy." It may be true that a middle class is necessary for the establishment of basic democratic rights, such as the vote. But the events of the past two decades have laid to rest any notion that the enrichment of a country provides an automatic impulse toward greater liberty. Remember the talk, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, about democracy arriving hand in hand with free markets? As people became...
...secret that Twitter can be a tremendous time-suck. But imagine getting paid for wasting those precious minutes of your day. With companies desperate to reach consumers in the social-media crowd, it's now possible to make a buck or two--or much more--on Twitter. A company called Izea, which made its name connecting bloggers with firms willing to compensate them for plugs on their blogs, has set up a similar service for the Twittersphere. At a site called Sponsored Tweets, Twitter users can sign in, set the price they want companies to pay them for tweeting...
...survey last year of 179 Fair Trade coffee farmers in Central America and Mexico, a copy of which TIME obtained, more than half said their families have still been going hungry for several months a year. "When I got the results, I was shocked," says Rick Peyser, director of social advocacy for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Vermont, the Fair Trade company that commissioned the survey. "I was ready to quit." Massachusetts Fair Trade firm Equal Exchange spokesman Rodney North admits, "There is a potential disconnect between what the buyer thinks Fair Trade is accomplishing and the situation...
...most coffee growers, Fair Trade is still slightly more lucrative than the open market. Two years ago, the Germany-based Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), which sets worldwide prices and standards, raised the minimum per-pound price of nonorganic coffee 9¢, to $1.35 (a dime of which goes to social programs like scholarships for growers' children). That's 15¢ higher than the current market rate. And yet, according to Fair Trade researcher Christopher Bacon of the University of California, Berkeley, the per-pound price that's needed for farmers to rise above subsistence is really more than $2. Farmer advocates...
...usage. And Yemen has very little water to begin with; almost all of it comes from underground aquifers filled thousands of years ago and replenished only very slowly. Experts predict that Sana'a, a city of almost 2 million, could run dry in as few as 10 years. The social upheaval from such an environmental catastrophe and the refugees it could produce might create an even more perfect breeding ground for al-Qaeda. "I tell [the U.N. refugee agency] that they should start buying tents" for drought-displaced families, says Michael Klingler, a hydrologist and the local director...