Questions about early childhood education

Busy parents put baby’s nose to the grindstone

Michelle Epstein
Sydney Morning Herald

Are we a nation obsessed with educating our children? Do we really believe that a child should be subjected to formal learning during as many waking hours as possible? Everything these days is about learning. It is squeezed into messages, games, songs, TV programs and cereal boxes. We just want to provide our children with the very best … or do we?

I’m beginning to wonder if there is an unconscious motive at play. Are we increasingly finding new ways to obviate our responsibility as parents – and feel good about it?

I recently saw the Wiggles on TV. There was Dorothy and Wags playing giddy-up horsies in the backyard. This content was clearly aimed at toddlers and preschool children. Suddenly, Dorothy talked about seeing a plane soar and poor Wags wondered why the plane was sore. Had the plane been hurt? Next thing you know, Dorothy was giving an intensive seminar on homophones. Does anyone really think that children under four need to know about homophones? My daughter tells me she learnt about them in year 6.

Perhaps the Wiggles have sensed that what parents want is educational content. Clearly there are other shows that have traditionally provided quality TV for this genre. Take Play School - age-appropriate learning in among a lot of fun. But what I was seeing here was age-inappropriate learning that was barely concealed as an interruption to the fun. This clumsy attempt at what is now known as “early learning” was patronising, contrived and annoying. What ever happened to Hot Potato Hot Potato?

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame the Wiggles. They are such nice boys; who could blame them for anything. They are just responding to the message out there. They are just trying to give parents what they want. The question is: what is this thing parents want? More importantly, why do they want it?

I’m not suggesting parents are actually asking for anything. However, something has evolved without us noticing. The zeal to provide quality education for our children in those formative years has combined with the ever-increasing need for parents, and especially mothers, to come up with more creative ways of being superwomen.

The demands of being wife, mother, housekeeper, P&C activist and career woman have become the all-time mother of necessity. How can we find time for all these roles? Parents find themselves increasingly dumping kids in front of the TV or farming them out. We end up with a seething mass of guilt-ridden parents with a real dilemma on their hands. Magically, research starts to surface telling us that getting a good education in the early years optimises the chances that children will reach their full potential. Politicians, parents and educators start to take note and there are efforts to improve early learning opportunities. This is good, but somehow the idea has run amok.

At my local shopping centre, I often pass by an early learning centre. As I watch mothers wheel their tiny infants though the front door, I can’t help thinking: what can a newborn possibly learn? Not much. And certainly not for so many hours. It cannot be denied that it feels better dropping your infant off at a place called “early learning centre” than a place called “long day care”.

Kate Ellis, the Minister for Early Childhood Education and Childcare, recently announced initiatives that recognise early child care as part of a child’s formal education. High quality national education programs are to be rolled out. Just as “quality time” can be a euphemism for not spending enough time with your child, the National Quality Agenda seeks to set less parental involvement in stone with legislation. Don’t stay at home with your baby. Send them to early child care for a better education. Of major concern is that even so-called “play-based learning” is the slippery slope. Where there is formal learning there is also formal testing. Now homework and preparation for the HSC can start at birth.

Whatever happened to kids having fun? Why must play be so purposeful? Why must fun even have an agenda? I don’t think this is what Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd had in mind when they spoke of an education revolution.

Dr Michelle Epstein is a clinical psychologist.

What ethics? Julia Gillard’s unquestioning love for Israel

There’s nothing clean about the business of politics, and certainly ethics play no part part in it – unless they can be exploited for personal gain. Julia Gillard, this slow-speaking nasty piece of Labor conservatism, camouflaging as deputy prime minister of Australia (hard to believe she’s been a student activist once representing the political left), presented yet another example for political sanctimoniousness with her phony stance on Palestine and her fervent defence of Israel’s fascist practices against the Palestinian people.

It always amazes me how the politicians of the West are able to manage to twist their thoughts and mangle their speech in face of overwhelming evidence of Israel’s blatant violations of international law and acts of barbarism against unarmed civilians – from cold blooded murder to depriving their victims of such basics as a roof over their heads, food on their table (if they still have one left) or medicines for their hospitals. Not speaking out against such brutal savagery leave alone defending it makes people like Gillard undoubtedly an accomplice of the Israeli regime and its crimes against humanity.

The following op-ed puts Gillards politics and values in the context of Israel’s war crimes and recent acts of piracy on the high seas.

Politicide or politic: Gillard and the Gaza muzzle

Jake Lynch
Sydney Morning Herald

Days after the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was greeted in Israel and thanked for having been “alone in sticking by us” during Operation Cast Lead, the attack on the Gaza Strip in December and January, the Jewish state added piracy to its list of recent crimes against international law. The two developments are connected, and not just by coincidence of timing.

Israel sent six military vessels to seize a ship, the Spirit of Humanity, sailing from Cyprus with relief supplies for the people of Gaza, and arrested – no, make that abducted – 21 people on board, including the Nobel laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire. After a week in detention, they were released and deported.

At no time did the Spirit enter Israeli waters, so Israel’s action could be deemed piracy under the definition of the International Maritime Bureau: “The act of boarding any vessel with an intent to commit theft or any other crime, and with an intent or capacity to use force in furtherance of that act”. At least it amounts to an infringement of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which reserves the high seas for “peaceful purposes”.

The Spirit’s three-tonne cargo included medical and reconstruction supplies, and children’s toys. Greece, whose flag the ship was flying, has asked for its return, and Israel says some of the goods on board may be passed on to Gazans for whom they were intended, “subject to security clearance”. For now, it is forcibly keeping them from their rightful owners.

The international jurist Richard Falk, who has served as UN Human Rights Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, points out that this compounds an existing and ongoing violation of international law. The boat set sail in response to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which, Falk says, contravenes Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits any form of collective punishment of an occupied people.

A study of the transcripts of Ms Gillard’s speeches and interviews, from her recent trip to Israel and Ramallah, reveals that the word “Gaza” did not once pass her lips. Challenged by a reporter to say whether she believed Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians was “fair and just”, she avoided the question and retreated into platitudes: “We are concerned about the humanitarian situation of the Palestinian people”.

This amounts to connivance with what the late Israeli political scientist Baruch Kimmerling called “politicide”: Israel’s desire to have the outside world forget Palestinian political aspirations to self-determination, and regard their struggle in purely humanitarian terms.

Gillard’s don’t-mention-Gaza stance puts Australia further into Israel’s camp than any other country, including the United States. Cynthia McKinney, the former US congresswoman who was on the ship, points out that President Barack Obama called the blockade “unjust” and urged its lifting, so she, as an American citizen, was attempting to carry out his wishes.

The European Union responded to Cast Lead by shelving plans to upgrade its trading relations with Israel, and even ASEAN, through the Heads Statement of its 14th summit, identified Israel’s attack as the cause of a humanitarian crisis, and called for an immediate ceasefire.

Gillard, standing in for the Prime Minister at New Year, characterised the onslaught as no more than Israel exercising its “right to defend itself” against Hamas. Hamas, she told her questioners in the Middle East, would first have to “renounce violence” if it wanted to qualify as a partner in any peace process sponsored by the “quartet” of the UN, EU, US and Russia.

The home-made rockets that Hamas militiamen fired into Israel were indiscriminate weapons, and the 20 or so deaths they caused over several years are war crimes, but all independent observers have pointed out the obvious – that pales into insignificance when compared with the impact of Israel’s high-tech weaponry, which claimed 1300 lives, mostly civilians and including 400 children, and injured thousands. No stipulation from Australia, then, that Israel must also renounce violence as a precondition to have its views heard at the top table.

Israel is aware of acting within the scope allowed by international political opinion: it does what it believes it can get away with. The unexpected firmness of the White House on settlement-building had constrained its room for manoeuvre. Gillard paid lip service to a settlement freeze and a two-state solution – but her visit as the leader of a large delegation, her demeanour and above all her refusal to condemn Israeli lawlessness or call for it to cease, all conspired to send the opposite signal.

Thousands of people whose homes Israel destroyed are still without shelter, says the International Committee of the Red Cross, because Israel refuses to allow cement and other building material into the Gaza Strip. The report also notes that hospitals are struggling to meet the needs of their patients due to Israel’s disruption of medical supplies.

It is this situation that the passengers and crew of the illegally seized vessel were trying to remedy. They have vowed to send more boats. Israel should let them pass, and Australia should say so.

Associate Professor Jake Lynch is director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney.

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• Activists Held by Israel for Trying to Break Gaza Blockade (nytimes.com)
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• Israelis intercept Gaza aid ship (news.bbc.co.uk)
• McKinney held in Israel, to be returned to U.S. (cnn.com)

Another geo-engineering gimmick: dumping lime into oceans

The following Guardian article talks about another one of those half-cocked geo-engineering fixes: liming the world’s oceans. The guy who promotes the idea is a former management consultant, which immediately raises the question: what makes him qualified to design climate change solutions?

Apart from that minor detail, this band aid, like all the other ones, makes no attempt to determine any possible consequences of lime dumping for the complex web of interactions within the oceanic environment as well as between it and weather patterns.

Sometimes I feel these self-proclaimed geo-engineers are the modern equivalent of snake oil peddlers …

Just add lime (to the sea) – the latest plan to cut CO2 emissions

• Project ‘could turn back clock’ on carbon dioxide
• Guardian conference will select top 10 climate ideas

Duncan Clark
The Guardian

Putting lime into the oceans could stop or even reverse the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, according to proposals unveiled at a conference on climate change solutions in Manchester today.

According to its advocates, the same technique could help fix one of the most dangerous side effects of man-made CO2 emissions: rising ocean acidity.

The project, known as Cquestrate, is the brainchild of Tim Kruger, a former management consultant. “This is an idea that can not only stop the clock on carbon dioxide, it can turn it back,” he said, although he conceded that tipping large quantities of lime into the sea would currently be illegal.

The oceans are a key part of the natural carbon cycle, in which carbon dioxide is circulated between the land, seas and atmosphere. About one-third of the CO2 released into the air by humans each year is soaked up by the oceans. This helps slow the rate of global warming but increases ocean acidity, posing a potentially disastrous threat to marine ecosystems.

Kruger’s scheme aims to boost the ability of the oceans to absorb CO2 but to do so in a way that helps reduce rather than increase ocean acidity. This is achieved by converting limestone into lime, in a process similar to those used in the cement industry, and adding the lime to seawater.

The lime reacts with CO2 dissolved in the water, converting it into bicarbonate ions, thereby decreasing the acidity of the water and enabling the oceans to absorb more CO2 from the air, so reducing global warming.

Kruger said: “It’s essential that we reduce our emissions, but that may not be enough. We need a plan B to actually reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to research such concepts now – not just the science but also the legal, ethical and governance considerations.”

Kruger’s plan was one of 20 innovative schemes proposed at the Manchester Report, a two-day search for the best ideas to tackle climate change staged by the Guardian as part of the Manchester International Festival.

A panel of experts chaired by Lord Bingham, formerly Britain’s most senior judge, will select the 10 most promising ideas. These will be featured in a report that will be published in the Guardian next week and circulated to policymakers around the world.

Climate change secretary Ed Miliband told the conference the biggest danger faced by campaigners was creating a sense of defeatism. “We need to show people how they can aggregate their individual actions and be part of a bigger whole,” he said.

Cquestrate is one of a number of so-called “geo-engineering schemes” that have been proposed to intervene in the Earth’s systems in order to tackle climate change.

Kruger admits there are challenges to overcome: the world would need to mine and process about 10 cubic kilometres of limestone each year to soak up all the emissions the world produces, and the plan would only make sense if the CO2 resulting from lime production could be captured and buried at source.

Chris Goodall, one of the experts assessing the schemes, said of Cquestrate: “The basic concept looks good, though further research is needed into the feasibility.”

Another marine geo-engineering scheme was presented by Professor Stephen Salter, of Edinburgh University.

His proposal is to build a fleet of remote-controlled, energy-self-sufficient ships that would spray minuscule droplets of seawater into the air. The droplets would whiten and expand clouds, reflecting sunlight away from the Earth and into space.

Salter said 300 ships would increase cloud reflectivity enough to cancel out the temperature rise caused by man-made climate change so far, but 1,800 would be needed to offset a doubling of CO2, something expected within a few decades.

Further Reading

New Geoengineering Scheme Tackles Ocean Acidification, Too (Wired Science)

Programmed for the Pleistocene Age, our brains don’t grasp the dangers of climate change

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.

Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.

If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light up with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you
that carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only the small part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of the prefrontal cortex — will glimmer.

“We humans do strange things, perhaps because vestiges of our ancient brain still guide us in the modern world,” notes Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and author of a book on how our minds assess risks.

Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:

1. President Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to supermax prisons from which no one has ever escaped. This is the “enemy with club” threat that we have evolved to be alert to, so Democrats and Republicans alike erupt in outrage and kill the plan.
2. The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House scrounges a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.

“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary history,” notes Daniel Gilbert , a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.

Professor Gilbert argues that the threats that get our attention tend to have four features.

First, they are personalized and intentional. The human brain is highly evolved for social behavior (“that’s why we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces,” says Mr. Gilbert), and, like gazelles, we are instinctively and obsessively on the lookout for predators and enemies.

Second, we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry. “That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”

Third, threats get our attention when they are imminent, while our brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future. That’s why we are so bad at saving for retirement. Economists tear their hair out at a puzzlingly irrational behavior called hyperbolic discounting: people’s preference for money now rather than much larger payments later. For example, in studies, most Americans prefer $50 now to $100 in six months, even though that represents a 100 percent return.

Fourth, we’re far more sensitive to changes that are instantaneous than those that are gradual. We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, while if they shrank overnight we might take to the streets.

In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century challenges.

At the University of Virginia, Professor Jonathan Haidt shows his Psychology 101 students how evolution has prepared us to fear some things: He asks how many students would be afraid to stand within 10 feet of a friend carrying a pet boa constrictor. Many hands go up, although almost none of the students have been bitten by a snake.

“The objects of our phobias, and the things that are actually dangerous to us, are almost unrelated in the modern world, but they were related in our ancient environment,” Mr. Haidt said. “We have no ‘preparedness’ to fear a gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.”

This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy priorities. We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the military and less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though food-poisoning kills more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists. We’re just lucky we don’t have a cabinet-level Department of Snake Extermination.

Still, all is not lost, particularly if we understand and acknowledge our neurological shortcomings — and try to compensate with rational analysis. When we work at it, we are indeed capable of foresight: If we can floss today to prevent tooth decay in later years, then perhaps we can also drive less to save the planet.

[Original article published in the New York Times under the title "When our brains short-circuit"]

Ship Carrying Humanitarian Aid for Gaza Seized by Israel

Interview with Caoimhe Butterly, an Irish solidarity activist, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

RealAudio

MP3

On June 30, an unarmed boat, named “Spirit of Humanity,” carrying 21 international peace activists was seized in international waters by the Israeli Navy, as it attempted to sail from Cypress to Gaza with relief supplies and messages of solidarity for Palestinians living in Gaza. Israel says the boat had been boarded for security reasons in the area of the blockade, after it had entered into Gaza’s coastal waters. According to an International Committee of the Red Cross report released June 29, the Palestinians living in Gaza are “trapped in despair.” Thousands of Gazans whose homes were destroyed during Israel’s December/January invasion and air attacks are still without shelter despite pledges of almost $4.5 billion in international aid, because Israel refuses to allow cement and other building materials into Gaza. The report also notes that hospitals are struggling to meet the needs of their patients due to Israel’s disruption of medical supplies.

Since August 2008, the Free Gaza Movement has organized eight sea missions, successfully landing in Gaza on five separate occasions. On two earlier voyages, Israeli Occupation Forces used violence to stop the ships, physically ramming and almost sinking the boat named “Dignity,” in December 2008, and threatening to fire on and kill unarmed passengers in January.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Caoimhe Butterly, an Irish solidarity activist who was on board one of the boats last fall that arrived successfully in Gaza. She spent most of the next several months there, and was in Gaza during part of the Israeli winter offensive and served on the support team from Cypress for this most recent voyage of the Spirit of Humanity, whose passengers included former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire. Butterly explains exactly what happened in the June 30 seizure.

CAOIMHE BUTTERLY: Probably at 12 today it was clear that what had been sort of quite general threats made by the Israeli navy over the course of the whole morning were becoming much more serious. At about 3 o’clock, the boat was boarded by Israeli navy commandos. They took possession of the boat, looks like confiscated the phones of those on board, and proceeded to tow the boat to Ashdod, and the activists who were on the boat were split off into different groups and taken on navy vessels to Ashdod as well.

The boarding of the boat was done in international waters. The boat was blocked in international waters and the navigation system — radios, etc. — of the Spirit of Humanity had been jammed for hours, which is extremely dangerous, to jam the navigation system of a boat obviously places it in a very vulnerable position. But the activists — we got a text from them — are okay, they’re safe. They’re obviously very frustrated, but they’re okay and they’re presently being interrogated in four different police stations around Ashdod and Ashkelon, and it looks like they’ll be deported tonight or in coming days, some of them out through Allenby Bridge out across Jordan and others through Ben Gurion airport.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And what about the boat?

CAOIMHE BUTTERLY: The boat — it looks like there’s a possibility the captain and crew might be able to sail it, probably with military — I’m not sure if escort is the right word – but yes, out to Cypress. The activists will be deported, it looks like, back to their home countries. And we’re hoping we’ll manage to get the boat back quite quickly. The Lebanese boat that was attacked in January is still being impounded by the Israelis, so we’re hopeful we can get the boat back sooner rather than later, and obviously that everybody who was on board from the 11 different countries who came to participate in this siege-breaking initiative, returned safely to their families. Among those participating was quite a large delegation from Bahrain of different women from different humanitarian organizations. There were folks from the States, Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Jamaica, Palestine, etc., so it was quite a diverse group of people from diverse backgrounds, but completely united in the mission and the belief that the time for demonstrations and petitions and perhaps the more traditional ways we have to resist this occupation, they’re not over, but it’s really necessary to up the ante. And we feel that taking direct action in resisting these policies of collective punishment and the hermetic closure of the Gaza Strip — these sort of actions and activities need to spread and more people need to get involved. I know there’s a North American initiative coming up in a few days –Viva Palestina — U.S. convoy, and, again, that’s a great embodiment and symbol, I think, of the outrage and solidarity and dissent that so many people in the world feel, watching the daily oppression and brutalization of the Palestinian people.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Caoimhe Butterly, the Israeli military seized the boat in international waters, but did they give any explanation? Did they claim the boat was in their territorial waters?

CAOIMHE BUTTERLY: All three attacks that happened on a variety of boats — the Lebanese boat, the Dignity in January, and now the Spirit of Humanity — have happened in international waters. Generally, the Israelis only pretext for this is either that we were told we were entering a closed military zone. They said they had a duty and a responsibility to stop us, that we had given them false information, that we were going somewhere else and then tried to enter Gaza, etc. Regardless of the very well publicized pullout of settlers from the Gaza Strip, the Gaza Strip remains — and I think it’s a semantic question of whether it’s occupation or siege — but whatever it is, it results in the collective punishment and humiliation and degradation of a captive population, so the Israelis control not only the sea, but the air space, the borders, etc. And Gaza is completely locked down, and it’s in that context that the responsibility we have to act is pretty big. I think a lot of us feel as Westerners that we come from countries that finance this occupation. We come from countries where multinationals and our own governments profit off of the blood of the Palestinian people. In that context, it’s so important, I think, that we embody an alternative face of the West — one of compassion and solidarity and humanity. And one of action. It’s really, really time to act.

Interview with Caoimhe Butterly, an Irish solidarity activist, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

For more information, and ways to contact Israeli officials responsible for the boat seizure, visit the group’s website at www.freegaza.org.

=====================================

Melinda Tuhus is a producer of Between The Lines, which can be heard on more than 45 radio stations and in RealAudio and MP3 on our website at http://www.btlonline.org. This interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines for the week ending July 10, 2009. This Between The Lines Q&A was compiled by Anna Manzo and Scott Harris.

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Canada issues an Canadian Index of Wellbeing

The Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) is the signature product of the Institute of Wellbeing. The CIW is a new way of measuring wellbeing that goes beyond narrow economic measures like GDP. It will provide unique insights into the quality of life of Canadians – overall, and in specific areas that matter: our standard of living, our health, the quality of our environment, our education and skill levels, the way we use our time, the vitality of our communities, our participation in the democratic process, and the state of our arts, culture and recreation. In short, the CIW is the only national index that measures wellbeing in Canada across a wide spectrum of domains.

The CIW goes beyond conventional silos and shines a spotlight on the interconnections among these important areas: for example, how changes in income and education are linked to changes in health.

The CIW is a robust information tool, one that policy shapers, decision makers, media, community organizations and the person on the street will be able to use to get the latest trend information in an easily understandable format.

The CIW currently provides:

• Three detailed research reports on different, but interconnected, categories of wellbeing: Living Standards, Healthy Populations, and Community Vitality.
• A first report (PDF 4MB) that connects the dots in the first three research reports and includes highlights and summaries of these reports.

Going forward, the CIW will provide:

• A special report connecting the main CIW findings to other current reports and research.
• Detailed research reports on findings on the remaining categories of wellbeing: Education, Civic Engagement, Arts, Culture & Recreation, Time Use, and Environment. These reports will be released when they are completed.
• Periodic reports on the wellbeing of specific population sub-groups, e.g. women, children.
• And, once the CIW framework has been fully developed, it will also include a composite index – with a single number that moves up or down like the TSX or Dow Jones Industrial, giving a quick snapshot of whether the overall quality of life of Canadians is getting better or worse.

The following articles report on the launch.

• Experts develop measure that looks beyond GDP to gage quality of life and spur policy change.
• Editorial – An Index of wellbeing.
• Article by Roy Romanow, Chair of the Institute of Wellbeing, which is developing the CIW.

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• Announcing the New “Canadian Index of Wellbeing” (openmedicine.ca)

Circulation charge: a new way of looking at a global currency

Natural Money – A New Book – “New Currency – How Money Changes the World as we know it”

[Reposted from Robert Paterson's Weblog]

Why can’t we fix what we know is wrong?

The gap between rich and poor widens – today a billion people starve – in 1800 there were only a billion people on Earth. Starvation increases. No amount of rock concerts has made a difference. On the other side, the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands continues but there is no idea other than complaining about what to do.

The wave of the boom/bust continues. If we recover soon from this blow, when will the next one come and how bad will that be? Also how can the solution be to get credit going again so that we can start buying more stuff from China and lay off more workers at home?

Where does the idea of limitless growth go in a planet that has real boundaries?

Key natural resources get scarcer – fish, wood, water! No one has any confidence that we can halt this degradation. What will happen we we run out? Worse, no one is thinking about the reality of Peak Oil. The very underpinning of our world today is easy to get cheap oil.  Why can’t we even get ready for this?

Is our economy unsustainable by design? it sure looks that way.

Who will make the changes that we all need? Corruption and cynicism at the elite level seems to be the new normal. Few if any who run institutions seem to care about the real mission – they seem to care only about themselves.

But simply explaining this as greed does not help.

Simply complaining does not help. While all of this has been going on for decades, people have pushed back. But all this push back has failed. Why? Why is there no progress? Why would only trying harder get us a result?

What are we missing?

Support GetUp’s campaign against internet censorship by the Australian government

(Click on the above image to watch the ad and put it on air)

Good, clean internet censorship? Help get this advert on the air and in the air – on every Qantas flight in the country during the next sitting week of Parliament.

The Government’s test trials on internet censorship are about to end, the results are nearly in and they’re looking to announce their plans to filter all internet activity.

We know exactly where every politician will be – on a Qantas flight to Canberra as Parliament resumes. Your contribution will allow us to show this ad directly to them, and their staff, making it an issue they can’t avoid.

Can you contribute $25, $50, $100 or more to make sure this ad gets on the air?

To accompany the launch of this ad, we’ve teamed up with a host of organisations – from children’s welfare groups to human rights organisations, who have united with us to oppose the Government’s internet filter that will do little to protect children online, other than diverting resources away from where they’re really needed.

Watch the Censordyne video, chip in to take it sky high, and read our joint statement here.

Questions & answers on the Iran crisis

July 08, 2009
By Stephen Shalom, Thomas Harrison, Joanne Landy, and Jesse Lemisch
Source: Campaign for Peace and Democracy
View online here

(July 7, 2009) — Right after the June 12 elections in Iran, the Campaign for Peace and Democracy issued a statement expressing our strong support for the masses of Iranians protesting electoral fraud and our horror at the ferocious response of the government. Our statement concluded: “We express our deep concern for their well-being in the face of brutal repression and our fervent wishes for the strengthening and deepening of the movement for justice and democracy in Iran.” Since the elections, some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need for solidarity with the anti-Ahmadinejad movement. The Campaign’s position of solidarity with the Iranian protesters has not changed, but we think those questions need to be squarely addressed.

Below are the questions we take up. Questions three, four and five deal with the issue of electoral fraud; readers who are not interested in this rather technical discussion are invited to go on to question six. And we should say at the outset that our support for the protest movement is not determined by the technicalities of electoral manipulation, as important as they are. What is decisive is that huge masses of Iranians are convinced that the election was rigged and that they went into the streets, at great personal risk, to demand democracy and an end to theocratic repression.

1. Was the June 12, 2009 election fair?
2. Isn’t it true that the Guardian Council is indirectly elected by the Iranian people?
3. Was there fraud, and was it on a scale to alter the outcome?
4. Didn’t a poll conducted by U.S.-based organizations conclude that Ahmadinejad won the election?
5. Didn’t Ahmadinejad get lots of votes from conservative religious Iranians among the rural population and the urban poor? Might not these votes have been enough to overwhelm his opponents?
6. Hasn’t the U.S. (and Israel) been interfering in Iran and promoting regime change, including by means of supporting all sorts of “pro-democracy” groups?
7. Has the Western media been biased against the Iranian government?
8. Is Mousavi a leftist? A neoliberal? What is the relation between Mousavi and the demonstrators in the streets?
9. Is Ahmadinejad good for world anti-imperialism?
10. Is Ahmadinejad more progressive than his opponents in terms of social and economic policy? Is he a champion of the Iranian poor?
11. What do we want the U.S. government to do about the current situation in Iran?
12. What should we do about the current situation in Iran?
13. Is it right to advocate a different form of government in Iran?

Ban bullfighting

Every year 250,000 bulls die slow and torturous deaths as a result of the bullfighting industry. Spain’s annual bullfighting season got underway just this week. Help end the inhumane treatment of bulls by banning bullfighting today. » While many of us imagine the matador piercing the heart of the bull with one quick movement, in reality, the bull is repeatedly stabbed, skewered and slowly weakened as it bleeds to death. In today’s modern society, bullfighting is no longer an acceptable form of entertainment. In fact, there are millions of Spaniards and people around the world who strongly condemn bullfighting and are actively working to stop the brutality against the animals. Help stop the gruesome killing of hundred of thousands of bulls each year. Sign the petition urging Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to abolish the cruel and barbaric sport of bullfighting.» Thanks for taking action! Samer ThePetitionSite

The Time Has Come to Recognize Bullfighting as an Inhumane Form of Entertainment. Prior to every event, bulls are intentionally debilitated by having sand bags dropped on their backs, their horns shaved to throw off their balance and are drugged to reduce their strength. Forward to a friend >> Read the petition >>

On psychotherapy and the potential and limits of personal power

I don’t wanna raise the spectre of NLP here, but there could definitely be some poignancy in this hilarious “MadTV Bob Newhart/Mo Collins STOP IT” skit in regards to the relationship between clients and therapists: both sides for their own reasons very often depend on prolonging the journey. The latter for the money to be made and status to be gained from other people’s suffering, and the former from not wanting to give up the ingrained attachments to their mind’s habits.

Of course: it’s not always that easy. There are lots of justified questions marks behind therapeutic approaches like CBT, NLP and the like that are aimed at the behavioural or functional level but don’t attempt to address the underlying root causes for dysfunction. On the other hand, psychotherapies, which do claim to go deep, are often not very successful either, with people spending decades with their therapists without much to show for (and let’s not even talk about drug dependent psychiatry or the unregulated counselling industry).

What I take from this humourous skit is to first learn to become self-aware and to trust oneself with developing ways of relating differently to the world and, even more important, oneself – after all: the world happens in our minds. If the most sincere and disciplined self-directed efforts don’t work, then think of seeing a professional – while remembering though that even in these situations it us who need to do the work. Therapists are facilitators – we are the healers.

Chuck D & DJ Johnny Juice on the myths used to create hip hop

more about “The Real News Network – Chuck D & Joh…“, posted with vodpod

The REAL News Network in its series of Chuck D interviewing political activist DJs is following up its first part by having Chuck D talking to another forming member of Public Enemy, Johnny Juice, on Hip Hop creating myths – from the elevation of rappers over DJs to glorifying hate as a sign of strength. And the big question they pose: is rap getting less and less relevant in today’s world?

The militarisation of America’s schools

The Military Invades U.S. Schools: How Military Academies Are Being Used to Destroy Public Education

by Brian Roa, Global Research Institute

For the past four years, I have observed the military occupation of the high school where I teach science. Currently, Chicago’s Senn High School houses Rickover Naval Academy (RNA). I use the term “occupation” because part of our building was taken away despite student, parent, teacher and community opposition to RNA’s opening.

Senn students are made to feel like second-class citizens inside their own school, due to inequalities. The facilities and resources are better on the RNA side. RNA students are allowed to walk on the Senn side, while Senn students cannot walk on the RNA side. RNA “disenrolls” students and we accept those students who get kicked out if they live within our attendance boundaries. This practice is against Chicago policy, but goes unchecked. All of these things maintain a two-tiered system within the same school building.

This phenomenon is not restricted to Senn. Chicago has more military academies and more students in JROTC than any other city in the US. As the tentacles of school militarization reach beyond Chicago, the process used in this city seems to serve as a model of expansion. There was a Marine Academy planned for Georgia’s Dekalb County, which includes 10 percent of Atlanta. Fortunately, due to protest, the school has been postponed until 2010. Despite it being postponed, it is still useful to analyze the rhetoric used to rationalize the Marine Academy. Many of the lies and excuses used to justify school militarization in Chicago and Georgia may well be used in other cities as militarism grows.

Millions face hunger in absence of immediate climate change action

Three days ago, Oxfam released a 60-page briefing paper under the title: “Suffering the Science – Climate change, people, and poverty”. The report reveals that seasons which were once distinct are shifting, destroying harvests and causing widespread hunger – which is just one of many impacts taking their toll on the world’s poorest people.

The report’s release came ahead of the G8 Summit in Italy (which starts Wednesday) and the Major Economies Forum (Thursday). Combining the latest scientific observations on climate change with evidence from the communities Oxfam works with in almost 100 countries around the world, the report reveals how the burden of climate change is already hitting poor people hard.

The report warns that, without immediate action, 50 years of development gains in poor countries will be permanently lost. It predicts that climate-related hunger could be the defining human tragedy of this century. Suffering the Science outlines evidence of how climate change is affecting every issue linked to poverty and development today, including:

• Hunger: Rice and maize, two of the world’s most important crops on which hundreds of millions depend, particularly in Asia, the Americas and Africa, face significant drops in yields even under mild climate change scenarios. Maize yields are forecast to drop by 15 per cent or more by 2020, in much of sub-Saharan Africa and in most of India. One estimate puts the loss to Africa at US $2bn a year.
• Agriculture: New research based on interviews with farmers in 15 countries across the world reveals how once distinct seasons are shifting and rains are disappearing. Farmers from countries including Bangladesh, Uganda and Nicaragua, who are no longer able to rely on generations of farming experience, are facing failed harvest after failed harvest.
• Health: Diseases such as malaria and dengue fever that were once geographically bound are creeping to new areas where populations lack immunity or the knowledge and healthcare infrastructure to cope with them. It is estimated that climate change has contributed to an average of 150,000 more deaths from disease per year since the 1970s, with over half of those happening in Asia. In Singapore, Bangkok and the cities of Indonesia, dengue fever rates have risen continually over the past 20 years.
• Disasters: Disasters including mega fires and storms are on the rise and could triple by 2030. Hurricanes and cyclones throughout the world in 2005 cost a record US $165 billion, and the insurance industry says that climate change will make the situation worse, particularly for poor people who have no access to insurance. Meanwhile, research shows that for every $1 spent on hazard reduction or disaster preparedness, an estimated $4 is saved.
• Water: Water supplies are becoming so acutely challenged that several cities including Kathmandu and La Paz, which are dependent on the Himalayan and Andes glaciers, may soon be unable to function.
• Displacement: An estimated 26 million people have been displaced as a direct result of climate change and each year a million more are displaced by weather related events. Island communities from Vanuatu, Tuvalu and the Bay of Bengal have already been forced to move because of sea level rise.
• Labour: Rising temperatures will make it impossible for people to work at the same rate on hot summer days without serious health impacts, with huge ramifications for labourers paid by the hour and the wider economy. Tropical cities such as Delhi could see a drop in worker productivity of as much as 30 per cent.

A survey of top climate scientists, also published by Oxfam today, said poor people living in low-lying coastal areas, island atolls in the Pacific, mega deltas and farmers throughout the world, are most at risk from climate change because of flooding and prolonged drought. The scientists, all contributors to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), named South Asia and Africa as climate change hotspots.

Many scientists are now sceptical as to whether the world can limit global warming to 2°C because they do not believe politicians are willing to agree the necessary cuts in carbon emissions, the report says. Two degrees of warming is considered to be “economically acceptable” to rich countries, however whilst all countries, including Australia, would suffer, it would mean a devastating future for 660 million people throughout the developing world.

Professor Diana Liverman, a leading contributor to three IPCC Assessment Reports and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee, which advises the US Government on climate change, said if countries did not make deep cuts in emissions now, the changing climate would bring heat stress, sea level rise and more extreme drought and floods.

“Organisations like Oxfam can try and help people adapt to climate change but without a serious effort to reduce warming, and in the absence of international funds for adaptation, the food, water, health and livelihoods of millions of people will be at risk,” Ms Liverman said.

Read the Oxfam report here

[Reposted from Climate and Capitalism]

Mainstream economists replace the role of climate skeptics to ensure inaction on climate change

Reposted from Climate and Capitalism

A new book by economist Frank Ackerman, Can We Afford the Future?: The Economics of a Warming World (Zed, 2009), presents an important and startling thesis:

“As the climate science debate is reaching closure, the climate economics debate is heating up. The controversial issue now is the fear that overly ambitious climate initiatives could hurt the economy”(6).

With climate-change skeptics losing influence, mainstream economists—always the ultimate ideological defenders of the capitalist system—are stepping into the breach to ensure inaction on global warming. Armed with cost-benefit analyses, they report that saving the planet for its inhabitants may be all very well and good … but it is simply too expensive for the capitalist economy to afford.

A prime example is William Nordhaus at Yale, the doyen of climate economics in the United States, who argues for an “optimal” climate policy ramp that could eventually lead, according to Nordhaus himself, to levels of carbon concentration in the atmosphere of 700 ppm CO2. This is a level that most climate scientists would characterize as absolutely catastrophic, since it is associated with a jump in average global temperatures approaching 6°C (10.8°F). Nordhaus builds into his conservative cost-benefit model such notions as a subjective preference for warmer weather in Northern countries, automatic technological progress, and a high discount rate that drastically reduces the present value of future lives. On economic grounds, he recommends reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 25 percent by mid-century—less than a third of what most climate scientists see as necessary. Nordhaus seems oblivious of the magnitude of the planetary ecological disaster that such weak efforts to reduce emissions would generate (see Richard York, Brett Clark, and John Bellamy Foster, “Capitalism in Wonderland,” Monthly Review, May 2009).

Nordhaus’s chief rival within mainstream climate economics is Nicholas Stern. Stern was the author of the British government’s 2007 Stern Review, often characterized as a “radical” approach to climate economics. In his new book, The Global Deal (2009), Stern has retreated from the 550 ppm CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) target he advocated in The Stern Review. Instead, he argues for stabilizing greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at 500 ppm CO2e—associated with a rise in global average temperature rise of 3°C (5.4°F). Nevertheless, he openly acknowledges that the 500 ppm target could potentially prove cataclysmic. As he states in The Global Deal:

There are a number of scientists, the most prominent being Jim Hansen, who have raised strong and serious arguments to suggest that the target should be no larger than 350 ppm CO2 (or around 400 ppm CO2e) given that would bring concentrations back much closer to those in which humankind evolved. The evolutionary processes and the ways in which the physical and human geography have developed give rise to living and settlement patterns for humans and other species which are governed by a particular climate. They point also to the possibility of tipping points such as the collapse of ice sheets, the dying of the Amazon forest, or the release of methane from the permafrost, which could lead to an accelerated process of climate change. (150-51)

In addition to such “serious scientific concerns” raised by climatologists, Stern is clearly aware of human and natural costs of climate change already becoming apparent. Thus, he points to increased flooding in Bangladesh, presumably partly induced by climate change. According to a report in the May 16, 2009, issue of the Lancet, a sea level rise of 0.5 meters would engulf 10 percent of the complex delta region in Bangladesh, which is home to 120 million people.

Indeed, the dire effects of climate change will hit populations in the global South—those with the lowest carbon footprints—the hardest. More than a sixth of the world’s population lives in glacial-fed water catchments. The Bihar flood in India in August 2008, which affected over 4 million people, was partly due to glacial melting. Impending loss of healthy life years due to global environmental change, the Lancet tells us, is predicted to be 500 times higher in poor nations of Africa than among European populations.

Still, despite the growing warnings of scientists and clear signs of impending catastrophe, Stern insists on a climate stabilization target of 500 ppm CO2e. His reason: to push for a lower target that would fully protect the earth and its inhabitants would be to call for more than the capitalist economy with its pursuit of accumulation and profits could possibly deliver. Indeed, a deeper cut in emissions would suggest, “an abandonment or reversal of growth and development” (The Global Deal, 150).

Stern thus opts for an altogether inadequate 50 percent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century (far below what climatologists are recommending), consistent with his 500 ppm CO2e target.

In contrast, Ackerman urges us to adopt a genuinely radical stance to climate economics, based on four slogans:

• Your grandchildren’s lives are important
• We need to buy insurance for the planet
• Climate damages are too valuable to have prices
• Some costs are better than others.

American Economic Triumphalism Is Over

Not that I would call European governments like those of France, Italy or or Germany ’socialists’, but this piece of American self-reflection the bygone era of US capitalist hubris by Ruth Conniff in The Progressive sounds quite refreshing.

Oh, those silly French. Remember how much fun we used to have at their expense? Back in the days when American capitalism seemed destined to rule the world, scorn for everything from wine snobbery to slow food to lengthy summer vacations to national health insurance was a cultural touchstone in the United States.

Europe, along with the rest of the world, was bound to come around to our cowboy-capitalist, profit-maximizing ways sooner or later, Americans seemed to believe.

An arch-Republican corporate lawyer I know used to travel to Paris and roll his eyes at the seasonal white asparagus his hosts served at business luncheons. He was more of a coke-and-a-hamburger, 60-billable-hours-a-week kind of a guy. In other words, a stereotypical American.

Another acquaintance of mine, an investment banker classmate, fresh out of college, worked on a hostile takeover of MTV Europe. He and his twenty-something buddies showed up for a meeting hung over and barfed in a trashcan.

Ah, to be young, brash, and American in the early 1990s.

When did it all end?

The front page of the business section of Tuesday’s New York Times showcases a story about France passing us by in at least one economic arena: “France, Unlike U.S., Is Deep Into Economic Stimulus Projects.”

It seems the French are doing a better job marshaling government resources to keep people employed, and to keep French culture alive and thriving, even in a down economy. Restoring cathedrals, building museums, funding the arts, and running a wide array of other WPA-style projects, the French are deploying, and reaping the benefits of, stimulus money, as the United States fritters away time getting going on its own “shovel-ready projects.”

As stimulus projects in the United States get off to a slow start, and unemployment soars, the French are putting on steam. “All told, Paris has set aside 100 million Euros in stimulus funds earmarked for what the French like to call their cultural patrimony,” the Times reports. While France is deploying most of its money this year, the Unites States won’t start spending the bulk of its stimulus cash (that is, where Republican governors don’t reject the funds) until late in 2010.

The article quotes Patrick Devedjian, the minister in charge of the French stimulus, dissing the Yankee approach: “America is six months behind; it has wasted a lot of time,” he says. “By the time Washington gets around to doling out most of its money, Mr. Devedjian sniffed, ‘the crisis could be over.’”

“As it turns out,” the Times story concedes, “France’s more centralized, state-directed economy — so often criticized in good times for smothering entrepreneurship and holding back growth — is proving remarkably effective at deploying funds quickly and efficiently in bad times.”

This is more than a temporary setback for the old U.S.-led regime, though. In good times or bad, the Western European, humane approach to preserving culture and protecting jobs is making a comeback that challenges the whole religion of Washington-style global capitalism.

All the United States had going for it was the guarantee of ever-expanding markets and ever-growing prosperity. The virtual certainty that quaint customs like the siesta, universal, high-quality preschool, and a strong labor movement would crumble in the face of the sheer volume of wealth generated by unfettered capital has been permanently undone. Instead, as the current downturn makes clear, the harsher aspects of the global free trade–ingrained poverty, an exploited workforce, a race to the bottom as multinationals seek lower wages and looser environmental regulations, and the outright corruption and meltdown in the casino economy that replaced an economy based on manufacturing real goods in the first world–don’t add up to a very appealing picture.

Just as rightwing pundits and politicians used to sneer at any idea that sounded vaguely socialist, pointing to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the grand communist experiment, so the bromides of triumphant global capitalism now seem like a bad joke.

It turns out that, in Europe and Asia, many countries never entirely climbed on the U.S. bandwagon–despite American hubris about being “Number One.” As a result, in France, as in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere, ordinary citizens are not suffering the same stomach-dropping collapse that we are feeling here in the United States. Not only have these countries declined to dismantle their welfare states and privatize public services, as the U.S.-led IMF and World Bank urge Third World nations to do, they have retained some highly paid manufacturing jobs and state-supported industries, even in the era of outsourcing.

It turns out those stodgy, old socialists have something to teach American hotshots, after all–if we can listen. First, we have to pull our heads out of the garbage can.

UFO sightings?

I have to admit, I would never put much effort into finding out a reasonable amount on UFOs, but others do of course. I found this clip on PakAlert, who has another 11 or 12 links to other so-called UFO sightings. While I certainly wouldn’t dispute the high probability of the existence of plenty of ‘intelligent’ life forms in our universe and beyond, including the possibility of some visiting this planet, I’ve got little to get excited about by simply seeing glowing lights either on film or moving about in the sky. Even if these things are extraterrestrial spaceships – unless one lands beside me and some entity invites me in, i’m afraid their presence means little to me .

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Was the recent uprising in Iran a “colored revolution,” a genuine movement for democracy – or both? (Full Spectrum Dominance and Iran Part 2)

It’s hard to know what’s going on behind the scenes of governments; given Seymor Hersh’s 2008 New Yorker article though on US$400 billion put aside by the US to destabilise the Eurasian region, I would not be surprised if the CIA had some influence of significance in the recent events in Iran. It would be wrong though to call the Iran uprising one of those CIA inspired colour revolutions – given the complexity of political infighting amongst the Iranian political and economic elite and the various grievances of parts of the Iranian population. Those destabilising internal factors are of course fertile ground for CIA strategies, which is what William Engdahl points out.

F William Engdahl is an economist and author and the writer of the best selling book “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.” Mr Engdhahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively. He is based in Germany.

Full Spectrum Dominance (Part 1)

Full Spectrum Dominance, is Pentagonese for the basic military doctrine in the era of the post-Cold War, since 1990. The idea is that the United States’ military power projection will control the oceans, control the land areas of this planet, will control space, outer space and cyberspace—in other words, control everything on the face of the earth. And the idea of totalitarian democracy, one of the weapons in the Pentagon arsenal has been and is very much so today the idea of fomenting various RAND Corporation techniques for internal destabilization and regime change. Some people call them the “color revolutions”.

Uighurs’ struggle to retain cultural identity

The Chinese government has accused Uighur exiles of inciting violent protests in Urumqi in the western province of Xinjiang. But many ethnic Uighurs blame Beijing for systematically destroying their culture and identity. Al Jazeera’s Nazanine Moshiri explores the tense relationship between Uighurs and China’s leaders.

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