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Richard Wilkinson, Professor Emeritus of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, explains in a TED session how inequality harms society, not just the poor but also the rich. Not a moment too soon, in order to add to the discussion taking place globally by the Occupy/Indignados/ArabSpring movement about setting the basis of a new society.

The winds of change are blowing across the globe. What triggers such change, and when it will strike, is something that no one can predict.

Last Jan. 18, a courageous young woman in Egypt took a dangerous step. Asmaa Mahfouz was 25 years old, part of the April 6 Youth Movement, with thousands of young people engaging online in debate on the future of their country.

Lunchtime at the HSBC building Central Hong Kong – gone was its strangely grimy sterility once only broken by smoothly ascending escalators that carry what appear to be robotised humans into its underbelly; the grey flagstone base now replete with a growing tent city, tables of foodstuff, sofas, gaudy banners, quietly disposed youngies at laptops or in small bands, talking.

The often violent response to the Occupy Wall Street campaign that is growing in the United States and elsewhere is affecting the freedom to inform. Reporters Without Borders [campaigning for press freedom] condemns the arrests of reporters in recent weeks, especially in New York where the police assume the right to decide who are journalists.

As Occupy London Stock Exchange celebrated a week of protest thousands gathered for a public assembly in the heart of London’s financial centre. The General Secretary of Britain’s largest trade union added his support. A second occupation was born in nearby Finsbury Sq. St Paul’s Cathedral closed its doors claiming health and safety issues and asking the camp to leave.

In 1967, a year before his assessination, Martin Luther King gave a speech called “Beyond Vietnam” in which he proclaimed: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.”

The cultivation in Afghanistan of opium poppies – the crop used to make heroin and other drugs – has increased by seven per cent this year because of continued insecurity and higher prices, a United Nations-backed survey reveals.

The United Nations human rights office called on Israel to stop attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, citing a spike in violence in recent weeks resulting in serious physical injury, property loss and damage.

‘By some measures, Bangladesh is modernizing rapidly – one in two residents now owns a cell phone. However, when it comes to basic sanitation, progress is clogged.’
While some point to obstacles of funding and a lack of political leadership, others say toilets, despite their long-established health benefits, have an image problem, adds IRIN,

We interviewed Yordos, a young Greek who came in these days to Madrid to participate in the 15O, and to strengthen ties with the Spanish indignant. He sayd to us: “…We don’t have to wait for others to decide for our lives and how those should be. The squares are waiting for us and I am sure that we people, through debate and dialogue, can find the ways to improve our lives.”