felony convictions among sex workers increased by 68% between 2008 and 2011.
It's interesting how felony convictions and sex work are interconnected. This spike in felony convictions suggests that there might have been a significant shift in law enforcement priorities or policies during these years.
Thus, Russian president Vladimir Putin has talked about the tragedy of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and how Europe and the United States took advantage of Russia's weakness during the 1990s to drive NATO up to its borders. He despises the attitude of moral superiority shown by Western politicians and wants to see Russia treated not, as former U.S. president Barack Obama once said, as a weak regional player, but as a great power. Similarly, the Chinese government of Xi Jinping has talked at length about China's "one-hundred years of humiliation," and how the United States Japan, and other countries were trying to prevent its return to the great-power status it had enjoyed over millennia of history.
The first world country obsession over power is truly alive and well. And it never seems to be over the way the world currently is and the position of power that these countries are in. It's always more so some history to it. In both of these country's examples, Russia claims that the current first world powers have overlooked them and pushed back their borders over years, and same with China, being overlooked over the last 100 or so years. It's fascinating how it's always a historical aspect to it and never a current situational aspect though I feel sometimes it could be jealousy.
A long tradition dating back at least as far as Karl Marx sees political struggles as a reflection of economic conflicts, essentially as fights over shares of the pie. Indeed, this is part of the story of the second decade of the twenty-first century, with globalization producing significant numbers of people left behind by the overall growth that occurred around the world.
This statement reminds me of the 2008 financial crisis or the 2020 pandemic. Higher ups were blaming each others political affiliations on why the situation was happening and how there needed to be change in the system in order to move past the issue. In connection to Adinesh's response, I also find it fascinating how the Karl Marx reference can be used to date back events for comparison so long ago and very recent too.
Third, print-capitalism created languages-of-power of a kind different fromthe older administrative vernaculars. Certain dialects inevitably were 'closer' toeach print-language and dominated their final forms. Their disadvantagedcousins, still assimilable to the emerging print:language, lost caste, above allbecause they were unsuccessful (or only relatively successful) in insisting ontheir own print-form. 'Northwestern German' became Platt Deutsch, a largelyspoken,thus sub-standard, German, because it was assimilable to print-Germanin a way that Bohemian spoken-Czech was not. High German, the King'sEnglish, and, later, Central Thai, were correspondingly elevated to a newpolitico-cultural eminence. (Hence the struggles in late-twentieth-century Eur-ope by certain 'sub-'nationalities to change their subordinate status by breakingfirmly into print - and radio.)
This concept highlights how the politics influence a language. Most people will only recall this on a larger scale when countries use political policy to delegate what their official language will be. Countries such as Switzerland have 4 official languages and similarly to this they gained this by having influence in certain regions, but none strong enough to designate one singular official language. Countries such as the United States still technically don't have an official language but in areas such as Louisiana, they speak much French over there and even have French only towns, and even some natives there went as trying to make the entire state French only. Words such as "Deja-vu", "Chauffeur", "Critique", and "En route" all made their way into American english with French influence.
Theorists ofnationalism have often been perplexed, not to say irritated, by these threeparadoxes: (1) The objective modernity of nations to the historians' eye vs. theirsubjective antiquity in the eyes of nationalists. (2) The formal universality ofBenedict Anderson (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread ofNationalism, London: Verso.48BENEDICTANDERSON~.nationality as a socio-cultural concept - in the modern world everyone can,should, will 'have' a nationality, as he or she 'has' a gender - vs. the irremediableparticularity of its concrete manifestations, such that, by definition, 'Greek'nationality is sui generis. (3) The 'political' power of nationalisms vs. theirphilosophical poverty and even incoherence. In other words, unlike most otherisms, nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers: no Hobbeses,Tocquevilles, Marxes, or Webers. This 'emptiness' easily gives rise, amongcosmopolitan and polylingual intellectuals, to a certain condescension.
These 3 paradoxes greatly resemble an identity based spectrum where one's nationalism is directly tied to their identity and much of who they are as a human, but not as a person. Most particularly the second paradox; This comparison here between a nationality and gender is an incredibly interesting idea. It signifies that your nationality is a permanent identifier of you, by comparing it to gender. Also the third paradox also shows how global political affiliation is part of our identities which is demonstrated in our current international political scenes and the conflicts that go on in our world today with Russia and Ukraine for example.