Climate Marches May Well Promote, Not Prevent, Climate Collapse. .System Change Not Climate Change. banner - United Nations Climate Change Conference - COP15 - Copenhagen, Denmark(image by Kris Krug) click here The largest environmental protest march in history, demanding action against climate change, took place in New York on September 21st. Some 400,000 people marched from Columbus Circle, through Manhattan's West Side, along a route ending on 11th Avenue. The march attracted a very broad range of participants, in part because it made no specific demands but only asserted that people were concerned about climate change and the environment. The march was intended to send a message to participants in the U.N. People are becoming ever-more aware that the future of their children is in jeopardy, along with the possible demise of the entire human project. However, all the concern, protest, and the making of speeches in the world will not save the environment if people do not care to change the root causes of the destruction of our planetary environment.
Voter Turnout. Why do our leaders hate us, we wonder: Hume. As the pendulum swings ever further to the right; the politics of spite are the new normal not just in Toronto, but across Canada. In this city, Mayor Rob Ford now feels free to be up front about his homophobia. Though that was something he and brother Doug were always at pains to deny, these days they barely bother. In an apparent retreat from policy and substantive issues — even the gravy train seems to have been dropped — Ford no longer pretends to offer anything more as mayor than what he is, an acknowledged drunk with a small mind and a big sense of entitlement. In Ottawa, Stephen Harper’s Tories have pretty well abandoned the pretense they’re interested in anything more than settlings scores and attacking the usual conservative suspects. Whether it’s the Fair Elections Act, hounding environmental charities through Canada Revenue Agency audits or “cracking down” on would-be immigrants, Harperites are having a field day sticking it to their enemies, real or imagined.
George Lakoff: 'Conservatives don't follow the polls, they want to change them … Liberals do everything wrong' "The progressive mindset is screwing up the world. The progressive mindset is guaranteeing no progress on global warming. The progressive mindset is saying, 'Yes, fracking is fine.' The progressive mindset is saying, 'Yes, genetically modified organisms are OK', when, in fact, they're horrible, and the progressive mindset doesn't know how to describe how horrible they are. There's a difference between progressive morality, which is great, and the progressive mindset, which is half OK and half awful.
" George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, has been working on moral frames for 50 years. Lakoff is affable and generous. When he talks about the collapse of the left, he clearly doesn't mean that those parties have disintegrated: they could be in government, as the Democrats are in the US. Lakoff predicted all this in Moral Politics, first published in 1996.
If we accept Lakoff's conclusion, what would it mean to accept his prescription? National Security: Going “Up” or “Down?” National Security: Going "Up" or "Down? " Earth From Space: Just a sample of what .they. can see and target? (image by San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives) By Susan C. Strong, for The Metaphor Project In his January State of the Union message, President Obama said two noteworthy things: the first was "America must move off a permanent war footing. " Why the emphasis on "today" or "now? " Of course, both of these documents pre-date the latest explosion of new knowledge about aggressive NSA spying.
On the other hand, peace-building steps help us retreat safely from the brink of conflict, which makes our national security "go up. " Ultimately, that's exactly what it's about: learning to share and build or rebuild trust. Susan C. Notes: l. 2. 3. Alan Tonkin - Different Values: Different Democracy. Differing Values Systems require Differing Types of Democracy byAlan Tonkin29 June 2005 Alan Tonkin was Chairman of the Global Values Network Group whose www.globalvaluesnetwork.com web site was one of the most advanced in the world at using Spiral Dynamics to monitor shifts in societies and assess impacts at both national, international and even global levels.
Alan generously allowed this piece, written for the GVN site, to be published here. In looking at the world with its widely varying values systems it is interesting to see how the word 'democracy' means different things to different people. However, in developing economies constitutional arrangements can vary with the values spread being across the PURPLE/RED/BLUE/ORANGE/GREEN range. How Democratic Systems Vary Across Values SystemsIn order to illustrate the differing types of values at the different levels it is important to make the point that "one democratic system does not fit all" as is so often demanded.
A World in Which Borders Are Irrelevant | Conscious Bridge. Can you imagine that? Does this truly represent the highest vision for humanity? Recently, we highlighted the Global Heart Vision of the United Centers for Spiritual Living which stated in part “we see a world in which borders are irrelevant.” What exactly does that mean? How you feel about it? The other night my wife and I were discussing the purpose and effectiveness of the United Nations. It’s been my experience that most Americans consider the United Nations either ineffective or a threat to American sovereignty. I’ve run across a number of people who were truly fearful that we were headed down a path towards one world government. In our discussion, my wife and I disagreed as to the degree to which the United Nations or any central governing body should make decisions for the entire planet. If every country wanted the best for every other country, then the need for any world governance would shrink to the level of almost nonexistence.
Mark. Joseph Heath on Truth, Lies and Politics | The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright | CBC Radio. Laramie Board Learning Project: Get over it: A few things nonprofit boards must accept so we can move on and govern. (Purchased from Bigstock Photo) If you've read more than one post here, you know that my agenda - for this blog and for boards everywhere - is to present a more fulfilling, expansive, effective vision (and practice) for nonprofit governance.
I advocate as strongly as I can for treating board members with the respect we deserve and for providing us with an environment that allows us to contribute our best to our agencies and the communities we serve. I'm also constantly pounding on the message that boards should have more fun and pride of fulfillment in our service. But as much as I try to stretch our vision beyond a narrow list of roles and responsibilities and the dominance of oversight in those criteria, I also owe it to boards and their members to point out a few realities we don't always like or understand. In most of the points I'm about to make, it's not the fact itself that board members might not like. We're ultimately responsible for the financial health of the agency We must lead. Guess which country does the most good for the planet? The top ten countries in the Good Country Index.
(Click to view at larger size.) Irish people, rejoice! It turns out, your green land is the “goodest” country in the world. That’s right. The “goodest.” At least, that’s according to Simon Anholt, who’s spent the past two years compiling an index to determine which of 125 countries contributes the most to the common, global good. “I wanted to know why people admire Country A and not Country B,” Anholt said in a phone interview before he unveiled the full Index at the TEDSalon in Berlin on Monday, June 23. Good news, then, for Ireland. We caught up with Anholt to find out a little more about the process of compiling the Index, to see why he thinks citizens treat politicians like prostitutes, and to gauge what kind of response he’s seeking now. How does the Index work? “Countries perform better and better but the world and planet and humanity in general are getting worse and worse.”
How did you determine which data sets to use? Dissolving Borders | Ideas with Paul Kennedy | CBC Radio. Spur is a talk series held across Canada organized by the Literary Review of Canada. It features speakers who try to envision what the world will look like in seven years. One of the speakers at this year's festival was Diane Francis, journalist, author and editor-at-large at the National Post. She spoke in Calgary about the shifting sands of geopolitical realities. Later, she joined host Paul Kennedy in studio where they teased out the implications of her predictions. “One day, son, our votes may count” | Without Leukemia. (You can also read this post at the permanent home of my blog, One of the things that distracts me from what I might otherwise be writing is the political situation in Canada. I have always been a politically engaged sort of person. In recent years, however, even I have started to tune out from Federal and, to a lesser extent, Provincial politics.
I have resigned myself to the fact that until there is a change to our electoral system that allows citizens’ real choices to be reflected in parliament, my energy is best spent elsewhere. For the first time, electoral reform is getting some serious attention. The First-Past-the-Post system creates ridiculously distorted electoral results; I don’t think anyone who actually looks at and SEES the numbers can dispute that. Take my riding, for example. The effect of this is that my vote does not count in the federal election, because my vote only counts in the race to elect one MP. Merger of the Century by Diane Francis: Review. Zoom If the creation of the European Union is evidence, trade agreements, common markets and economic unions can lead to political unions. So it’s not so preposterous that 20 years after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, someone has finally crafted a serious proposal for the political integration of Canada and the United States.
Best-selling author, writer and pundit (and dual citizen of both countries) Diane Francis argues that the United States and Canada should unite ASAP. She sets out the economic benefits of joining forces, how the deal could be fairly structured, and the political hurdles to overcome. Once an unrivalled economic superpower, today America is ailing. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that China, India, Japan and the four Asian Tigers — South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong — will be bigger than the G8 (minus Japan) by 2018. Francis concedes that merging would be hard but insists it is worth the pain. Francis is typically blunt. JEP (27,3) p. 103 - Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality? Article Citation Bonica, Adam, Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2013. "Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?
" Journal of Economic Perspectives, 27(3): 103-24. DOI: 10.1257/jep.27.3.103 Abstract During the past two generations, democratic forms have coexisted with massive increases in economic inequality in the United States and many other advanced democracies. Article Full-Text Access Full-text Article (Complimentary) Authors Bonica, Adam (Stanford U) McCarty, Nolan (Princeton U) Poole, Keith T. JEL Classifications D31: Personal Income, Wealth, and Their DistributionsD63: Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and MeasurementD72: Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting BehaviorH23: Taxation and Subsidies: Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies Comments.
How Egypt Killed Political Islam. A supporter of ousted President Mohammed Morsi prays near the Rabaah al-Adawiya mosque in the Nasr City neighborhood in Cairo, July 12, 2013. (Photo: Narciso Contreras / The New York Times)The rebirth of the Egyptian revolution ushered in the death of the first Muslim Brotherhood government. But some near-sighted analysts limit the events of Egypt to a military coup. Yes, the military is desperately trying to stay relevant — given the enormous initiative of the Egyptian masses — but the generals realize their own limitations in this context better than anybody.
This wasn't a mere re-shuffling at the top of society, but a flood from the bottom. In reality the Egyptian people had already destroyed the Morsi regime (for example government buildings had already been occupied or shut down by the people), which is why the generals intervened — the same reason they intervened against Mubarak: better to try to lead than be led by the people. When the rich are born to rule, the results can be fatal | George Monbiot. Those whom the gods love die young: are they trying to tell me something?
Due to an inexplicable discontinuity in space-time, on Sunday I turned 50. I have petitioned the relevant authorities, but there's nothing they can do. So I will use the occasion to try to explain the alien world from which I came. To understand how and why we are now governed as we are, you need to know something of that strange place. I was born into the third tier of the dominant class: those without land or capital, but with salaries high enough to send their children to private schools. A few decades earlier, the role of such schools was clear: they broke boys' attachment to their families and re-attached them to the institutions – the colonial service, the government, the armed forces – through which the British ruling class projected its power. But the old forms and the old thinking persisted.
My second boarding school was a kinder, more liberal place. Inverted totalitarianism. Inverted totalitarianism is a term coined by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin in 2003 to describe the emerging form of government of the United States. Wolin analysed the United States as increasingly turning into a managed democracy (a concept which has similarities to illiberal democracy).
Wolin uses the term "inverted totalitarianism" to draw attention to the totalitarian aspects of the United States governmental system while emphasizing differences between it and proper totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Inverted totalitarianism and managed democracy[edit] Wolin argues that the United States has increasingly adopted totalitarian tendencies as a result of transformations undergone during the military mobilization required to fight the Axis powers in the 1940s, and the subsequent campaign to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and more recently, after 9/11, the war on terror campaign.[2] Inverted totalitarianism reverses things.
Left vs Right (World) Twitter pundit Haque's Starting Point? SimPol - Simultaneous Politics. Of course compulsory voting is a good thing | Van Badham. The Political Thought of Etienne de la Boetie. Restoring the Commons. Big hope/commonopoly. The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin - The Garrett Hardin Society - Articles. With New Constitution, Post-Collapse Iceland Inches Toward Direct Democracy. Democracy's Arc. Governing the Web (and everything else) The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back | Bruce Schneier.
Across the Universe: The Power of Disillusionment and the Politics of Despair. Eight Perspectives On Integral Trans-Partisan Politics.