Heads-up for 9 September 2010

London School of Economics: Public lectures and events
The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse
The Case of the Pope delivers a devastating indictment of the way the Vatican has run a secret legal system that has shielded paedophile priests from criminal trial around the world. Is the Pope morally responsible or legally liable under domestic or international law for the negligence that has allowed so many terrible crimes to go unpunished? Should he and his seat of power, the Holy See, continue to enjoy an immunity that places them above the law? To what extent do Vatican dogmas conflict with human rights treatise, and why has the United Nations allowed this church – alone of religions and NGOs – a privileged platform to promote them? Geoffrey Robertson QC demonstrates a deep respect for the good works of Catholics and their church. But, he argues, unless Pope Benedict XVI can divest himself of the beguilements of statehood and devotion to obsolete canon law, the Vatican will remain in grave breach of the convention on the Right of the Child and in some other respects, an enemy of human rights.This event marks the publication of Geoffrey Robertson's new book The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse.
(review, feed)

TED Talks
An independent diplomat - Carne Ross (2009)
After 15 years in the British diplomatic corps, Carne Ross became a "freelance diplomat," running a bold nonprofit that gives small, developing and yet-unrecognized nations a voice in international relations. At the BIF-5 conference, he calls for a new kind of diplomacy that gives voice to small countries, that works with changing boundaries and that welcomes innovation.
(review, feed)


The Economist
The balkanisation of the internet
Still a universal network?
(review, feed)

Amar Bhide in podcast

The economist Amar Bhidé has recently written a book "A call for Judgment" which compares major segments of the economy where imagination and judgment rule the day with the financial sector that is marked by the excessive use of models which are increasingly centralised, distanced, and mechanistic. Bhidé would like to see the same kind of imagination and judgment (or would one have to call this common sense) to be applied in finance as it is elsewhere.

He goes as far as to call it the REAL economy as opposed to some kind of virtual or theoretic economy of the financial sector. Needlessly, this analysis is a response to the disastrous effect the crisis in the financial sector has had on the whole economy.

Bhidé can be heard on Harvard Business IdeaCast in August 2010 "Bringing Judgment Back to Finance" (feed) and on The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show in February 2010, which reran an old phone call with him: "Amar Bhide Break Up The Fed" (feed) And he is also to be found in the 2009 archives of Econtalk, where he spoke aboput his previous book. "Bhide on Outsourcing, Uncertainty, and the Venturesome Economy." (feed, 2009 feed)

He is expected to speak at the London School of Economics in October and I would expect this lecture to appear in the LSE podcast then. (feed)

More EconTalk:
Helprin on Copyright - EconTalk,
Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia,
New Deal and War Economy,
The Depression,
Wildlife, Property and Poverty.

More Harvard Business IdeaCast:
Silver lining in the sky,
Harvard Business IdeaCast review.

More LSE Podcast:
Quest for Meaning,
The plundered planet,
China and India,
The China Hegemony,
The myth of work.