Racism

                                              Racism

Racism refers to the belief that some individuals or even religions have that there are different races in the world, and some are above others. 

During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews, Arabs and Berbers, were targeted the most. Even if they converted to christianity, Spanish society during that time viewed these Conversos as a threat.

After the "Reconquista", many Mudéjars (Berbers permitted to remain in Spain for economic reasons), and the Jews, were expelled out of Spain, Spain was very racist at that times.

Points of view on education

Functionalists argue that schools and colleges teach the skills neccessary for keeping afloat in a modern, industrial, technical society, so education prepares young people for their future occupational roles. 
In the other hand, Marxists see education as a form of reinforcing the social class system. In other words, the children in working classes learn the skills neccessary for lower-status occupations, while the children middle and upper classes gain the qualifications needed for higher-status occupations.
To sum up, functionalists see the role of education as positive and of benefit to the whole society. Marxists see education as having a beneficial role for privileged groups in society and reinforcing existing inequalities.

Martina de Miquel

Communism works!

A communist utopia that deserves our attention. Its founder warns that we in the West are living off tomorrow's wealth, which he considers a big mistake.

Women drivers...

Do we live in a democracy?

Eurosceptic MEP Nigel Farage believes we don't:

Sorry, your suffering is not newsworthy...

It looks as if we are happy to hear stories of people in Africa killing eachother or dying from 'natural causes' such as famine, but that we don't want to know about any suffering, illness and death that we cause ourselves.

The video is from Amnesty International and there's also a short TV news report (from a channel not usually seen in Europe).

It seems that Shell has been extacting oil in Nigeria for years... at extreme environmental and human cost: entire ecosystems emptied of life; fishermen reluctantly turning to mopping up spilt crude oil; and Shell even paying armed men to allegedly 'silence' any voice of protest.

The thing is - when is the last time you heard about any of this?

• Last year Shell faced a compensation settlement of 100 million dollars.
• This year a UN report stated that it will cost up to 1 billion US dollars to clean up.

Why don't we hear anything? Who carefully choses what we information we consume? And what does our news say about our society's values and priorities?

The big debate...

Well... is he?