WinWeb’s Pitch of the Week winner this week is Emily Rogers, the owner of Sarasvati Arts, and designer of the Buddha Wheel . Laura is a mum of two from Totnes, Devon who started her business after realising the amazingly positive effect that meditation had on her epilepsy. Her vision to enabling and empower people to grow their small ideas is inspiring.

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WinWeb Pitch of the Week – Sarasvati Arts

As I wrote last October: Congressmen Brad Sherman and Paul Kanjorski and Senator James Inhofe all say that the government warned of martial law if Tarp wasn’t passed. And Rahm Emanuel famously said : Never let a serious crisis go to waste.

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The Giant Banks, Federal Reserve and Treasury Have All Blackmailed America

As Robert Redford writes this week: Thursday, May 20, 2010, marks one month since BP’s oil rig exploded in the Gulf Coast …. This is the clearest picture we could have of our failed national energy policy — which extends over many decades and administrations

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Now’s The Time To Switch to Alternative Energy

HBO — Tonight’s guests are Nouriel Roubini, author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author, radio host and professor Michael Eric Dyson, columnist John Fund and actor/comedian Patton Oswalt. Click HERE to submit a question to Bill and his roundtable guests on tonight’s “Overtime” on HBO.com  Opinions and comments on RGE EconoMonitors do not necessarily reflect the views of Roubini Global Economics, LLC, which encourages a free-ranging debate among its own analysts and our EconoMonitor community. RGE takes no responsibility for verifying the accuracy of any opinions expressed by outside contributors

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Roubini Tonight on Real Time with Bill Maher

Veaceslav Negruta, Finance Minister of Moldova addressing the audience at the National Business Agenda roll out event in Chisinau, Moldova. (Photo: Institute for Development and Social Initiatives Viitorul) On May 21 a network of 32 business associations and chambers in Moldova rolled out their second National Business Agenda effort supported by CIPE.  In contrast to their first effort, the advocacy environment for Moldova has changed radically with the election of a pro-reform government.  While the doors of government are now open for private sector input – Moldovan President Gripu delivered opening remarks, and the Minister of Finance, the Chair of the Parliamentary Budget and Finance Committee, and the Governor of the Central Bank were all in attendance – it’s clear that many challenges and hurdles remain ahead for both the reform government and the business community.

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Moldova’s National Business Agenda on the march

David Meerman Scott gives an overview of his new book World Wide Rave, which features ideas and case studies about organizations that have done a great job of creating content that spreads. This is the final in a series of videos conducted by Stacy Spognardi of Cisco focused on opening up a discussion about social media within the service provider community (and beyond)

Excerpt from:
Social Media Marketing for Service Providers – David M. Scott: Content Creation, Part 7

Here is live round-the-clock streaming video of the underwater oil gusher, which BP is providing in response to Congressman Edward Markey’s demands to BP: Due to high traffic, the video stream may be intermittent at first. This is not due to technical difficulties at my site, but of the main servers hosted by BP. Check back periodically

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Here is 24/7 Live Streaming Video of the Underwater Oil Gusher

To guarantee access to essential foods amidst price inflation and supply shortages in some items, the Venezuelan government recently nationalized a major flour producer, granted low-interest credits to small and medium-sized producers, opened new subsidized food markets, sanctioned price speculators and hoarders, and is in the process of reforming the Land Law.

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Venezuelan Government Increases Control of Food Production to Guarantee Access

Mosaic, located in Cheverly, Md., is an FSC certified printer. Mosaic uses printing presses that are capable of eco-friendly printing techniques, such as waterless and UV printing

Link:
Mosaic Makes Conservation a Top Priority

Here is a round-up of what is really going on with the Gulf Oil Spill (I will update this page as new stories are posted): Criminal Negligence: Despite Knowing It Had a Damaged Blowout Preventer, BP STILL Cut Corners By Removing the Single Most Important Safety Measure BP Could Have EASILY Contained the Gulf Oil Spill AND the Exxon Valdez Spill … But They Were Too Cheap to Do It Just Like 9/11?

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What’s Really Going On With The BP Gulf Oil Spill?

Advocacy is an interesting concept.  When you first talk to business organizations about it you undoubtedly hear: “of course we do it, there is nothing to it.”  When you unpack the definition of advocacy and explain to people that it is much more than picking up the phone and calling your contact in a government office to resolve an issue, you get a different reaction: “its too complex, how can we do it?” We usually describe advocacy in two ways – what it is and what it is not.  Advocacy is about changing public policies or public opinion.  It is not about obtaining preferential treatment for one company or solving problems concerning day-to-day business activities of an individual member of a business association. One of the best advocacy strategies is to brand your advocacy campaign in a way that people associate with it, remember it, and understand it.  I was reminded of this as I was giving an example of the successful advocacy campaign in Montenegro to lower a series of corporate and employer taxes.  Montenegro Business Alliance put up billboards all over the city with a simple message (10% tax), including right in front of the Parliament building, so that when legislators came into work and left at the end of the day, they saw the same message over and over again: Makes it kind of difficult to resist the reform when you have this billboard in your face all the time.  Do you know of any other examples of effective advocacy campaign branding?

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Branding An Advocacy Campaign

Contributed by Richard Medcalf, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) Global Innovations Practice Buying flowers for your loved one is a great thing to do: it creates goodwill and strengthens the relationship and makes the house look and smell nice. Why would you not want to do that

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Femtocells: Implementing a Better Business Model to Increase SP Profitability

We are pleased to promote this upcoming China event, where we will be represented on the panel… A Joint HBS Alumni Club of London and LBS Alumni Club Event: INTERESTING TIMES – WHITHER CHINA ? “China’s growth continues to fascinate, perplex and trouble western observers

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Event: Interesting Times – Wither China? London 24 June, HBS Alumni Club of London

Now that the dust has settled, we once again take a look at the pick of last week’s news (taken from our ChinaBlogTweets Twitter feed). Our summary is followed by a list of the original tweets and links to the news sources

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Briefly…Top Ten Tweets (From FDI, Gini & Tragedy, To Confidence, Research & Negotiation)

On 6 May , the blog warned that “it would be very nervous indeed about holding a long position ” in crude oil. And as the chart shows, its fears were well-founded

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Crude oil falls as markets reassess economic outlook

The Gulf oil spill and the financial crisis were both caused by excessive risk-taking by industry giants and the “capture” of politicians and regulators by the corporate behemoths. Moreover, the response to the Gulf oil spill and the financial crisis are remarkably similar.

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The Responses to the Gulf Oil Spill and to the Financial Crisis Are Remarkably Similar … And Have Made Both Crises Much Worse

As I wrote on May 2nd: The Gulf oil spill is much worse than originally believed. As the Christian Science Monitor writes : It’s now likely that the actual amount of the oil spill dwarfs the Coast Guard’s figure of 5,000 barrels , or 210,000 gallons, a day

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Professor of Mechanical Engineering Estimates that 4 Million Gallons of Oil are Leaking Every Day

I’ll start by linking to and quoting Rory Carroll’s Guardian article “Cuba suffers exodus of the best and the brightest as economy remains in the doldrums”.Young people, especially well-educated professionals, are fleeing the island. Tens of thousands have emigrated in the past two years. The exodus has alarmed the communist government but remains largely unreported, a taboo topic for state media

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Cuba’s missed opportunities

Last week, I was reading one of Larry Diamond’s articles and came across an interesting point on three paradoxes of modern democracy.  He outlined these paradoxes two decades ago, but they seem as relevant today as they were back then. First: Democracy requires both competition and conflict, but too much conflict leads to instability.  In its original sense, conflict really means disagreement, but the problem if that disagreements can spill over into actual conflicts that lead to instability.  You need to allow conflict, but how do you decide when enough is enough before its too late? Second: Democracy should balance power and governance, making sure that power is not concentrated in one set of hands and is dispersed throughout the system.

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Three Paradoxes of Democracy

The largest finance conference in Ireland returns for its eight year; The INFINITI Conference on International Finance will be held at TCD from 14th-15th June. In addition to the keynote and special sessions, there are over 166 papers being presented

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INFINITI 2010 Conference at TCD: International Credit and Finance Markets: After the Storm?

Floyd Norris in the New York Times last weekend put together some interesting comparative charts for twelve countries including Ireland showing trends in their trade up to the beginning of this year. The relatively small dip in Irish exports during the recession comes through clearly. He draws attention to the welcome rebound in trade globally, but classes Ireland among the four Euro laggards including Greece, Portugal and Spain

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Ireland’s trade performance

BP’s new insertion tube inside the leaking oil pipe – unfortunately – isn’t doing very much. Specifically, the Miami Herald points out that – according to the Coast Guard – the spill is getting worse in spite of the insertion tube: The massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill is growing despite British Petroleum’s effort to siphon some of the spewing crude from its ruptured deepwater well, the U.S

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New BP Insertion Tube Isn’t Working

Fortune: Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini talks about how he became a ‘dismal scientist’ and opens up about his guilty pleasure. (Click for video

Link:
Roubini Interview With Fortune: Pasta and Economic Crises

Jason Netek From April 23 through May 2 a solidarity brigade organized by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network took a tour through Caracas and Puerto Ordaz to learn about the Bolivarian Revolutionary Process from its participants. Brigadistas promised to bring the revolution home to Australia, Canada and the United States because of what they saw. Below is a small photo sample of that experience.

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Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network Brigade

Sam Mcgill On Saturday 10th of April, Frente Unido Socialista de Personas con Discapacidad (FUSPD – United Socialist Front of People with Disabilities) celebrated its first birthday with a friendly basketball game in Municipio Guacara, Carabobo State. In this interview, FUSPD President Jose Rodriguez explains the history behind FUSPD and its aims.

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The History and Mission of the United Socialist Front of People with Disabilities