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tony curzon price

FT.com | Economists' Forum: The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy - 0 views

blogs.ft.com/...the-dangers-of.html

anti-consumerism climate change economy

shared by tony curzon price on 31 Dec 07 - Cached
  • tony curzon price on 31 Dec 07
     
    The big point Mr Davey makes is that we would all be happier if we lived frugal, natural community-bound lives. I agree that some of us would. But many of us most definitely would not (I for one). Among the types of human being are those with fierce ambition and restless desires. If you stick them in closed communities they will soon organise the village to wage war on the next one. Thus rose the feudal estates and territorial despotisms of old. So, no, I do not believe in the return to Eden. It is one of humanity's oldest myths. But it is just that - a myth. Of course, Mr Davey may prove right that the challenge of replacing fossil fuels is one we are unable to meet. If so, at some point, our civilisation will collapse. It will not be fun. Of that I am sure.
anonymous

Up to 5 million in funding for news web sites - 0 views

newschallenge.org/aboutknight.html

challenge gunding knight news newschallenge.org sites web

shared by anonymous on 26 Sep 07 - Cached
  • This is year two of the Knight News Challenge, a contest awarding as much as $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. 
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 26 Sep 07
       
      The Knight Foundation is offering up to 5 million in funding for innovative news web site ideas. Anyone can enter at www.newschallenge.org
Arabica Robusta

Democracy and democracy-support: a new era | open Democracy News Analysis - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...nd-democracy-support-a-new-era

democratization fukuyama david held

shared by Arabica Robusta on 29 Mar 09 - Cached
  • The "end of the end of history" has many architects. Today, several states (an increasingly assertive Russia and China in particular) embody alternative political models that have come to challenge any notion of liberal-democratic hegemony; others (such as Venezuela and Iran) experiment with forms of rule that too take them further away from its orbit. These models and forms face many problems of their own, but they may not be quite as unattractive - either to the people of these countries or to many observers around the world - as lingering triumphalists in the west might assume.
  • There has been a tendency to focus the work of democracy-support in very practical ways: toolkits, implementation, strategy and policy. This was and remains essential; but there is also a need to reflect on the underpinnings of these practices in how democracy itself is understood in this new, testing global environment.
  • The dominance of a liberal-democratic conception with an American accent is reflected in the overwhelming predominance of United States institutions, academics, journals - and ideas - in the democracy-support "industry". Again, this is not in itself a problem: all discourses of democracy are grounded in specific social-political contexts and  power-relations. But the current circumstances of the kind described above - authoritarian challenges, stalled democratic transitions, discontent with democracy, deep and growing economic problems - suggest that an expanded understanding of democracy might be a route towards a healthy redefinition of democracy-support.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • This is not to advocate a simplistic "mix and match" approach, but to suggest that a creative inclusion of new elements from different sources could contribute to democracy's rethinking from within.
  • For most people, at the heart of democracy is toleration of difference combined with an openness to listen to a plurality of voices and opinions. This makes it more than a little strange that there is so little debate over what democracy can and should mean in relation to democracy-support. The logic here is that democracy-support itself needs to be "democratised" - in part by engaging in continuing dialogue, interaction and learning between communities moving to democracy and those seeking to support these processes.
  • Arabica Robusta on 29 Mar 09
     
    This article is good in that it advocates examination of the many models of democratization/democracy. However, it does not adequately question the terms of the debate, in particularly looking more deeply at how the movement is driven and what the role of corporations and other key exploiters (members of the "capital class"?) is.
Henry Jaxx

Learn It From The Expert - 1 views

started by Henry Jaxx on 21 Nov 12 no follow-up yet
Arabica Robusta

Can democracy save the planet? | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...can_democracy_save_the_planet

democracy development international opendemocracy sustainable

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 May 08 - Cached
  • The questions addressed included: can a world of 9-10 billion people vote its way to a sustainable future - or are new forms of leadership (even forms of authoritarian rule) going to be necessary? Are the rising global powers (China, India and Brazil among them) best placed to move towards more sustainable forms of development?
  • What of the link between democracy and sustainable development? Most respondents held that voter pressure meant that democracy was of benefit to sustainable development. Yet consultation with a more specialised group of experts found that only 28% believed that capitalism (often paired with democracy in its liberal variant) aided sustainable development, against 36% who said that capitalism inhibited it. Overall, Doug Miller saw in the figures an activation of people's survival instinct: as the planet "speaks" through extreme weather events, citizens are starting to listen.
  • Many of the issues the roundtable addressed had been highlighted in a keynote paper commissioned ahead of the meeting from Ian Christie. This made four basic propositions about democracy, ecologically sustainable development, and environmental/sustainability campaign organisations (SD-NGOs). He argued that together, these phenomena offer a paradox about the relationship between democracy, civil society and sustainability; and that resolving it is now an urgent and complex task - for the west, for newly industrialised democracies, and for emergent democratic civil society in the global south.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Democracy poses huge problems for sustainable development. In the advanced liberal capitalist states, democracy is tightly coupled to the promise of economic growth, ever-rising consumption and individual freedom. Democracy in such states now entrenches the interests of the affluent majority and well-funded lobbies in the political system (a point analysed by, among others, JK Galbraith and Mancur Olson).
  • Environmental/sustainability campaign organisations (SD-NGOs) are a massive success for civil society worldwide. Without them, we would not have anything like the progress we have seen in the past half-century in protecting the environment, cutting pollution, raising resource efficiency, highlighting linked issues of environmental and social injustice, and saving wildlife and habitats from destruction. Without them, the discourse and practice of sustainable development would not have become established in governments worldwide, and huge issues such as climate disruption would not have been acknowledged or tackled sufficiently by governments and businesses.
  • SD-NGOs are a massive failure by their own standards. For nearly fifty years they have campaigned and educated citizens and governments and businesses worldwide; yet ecological damage continues on a vast scale, environmental injustices abound, and dangerous climate disruption seems to be unavoidable. SD-NGOs have achieved limited gains in specific areas of policy but have failed to mobilise and energise citizens on a large enough scale to put real pressure on politicians and businesses in the west and beyond. Moreover, they lack clear answers to challenges to their own legitimacy and accountability, and have sometimes spoken as though they were representative voices of "civil society", when in fact they constitute a small and highly unrepresentative section of it in many countries.
  • Arabica Robusta on 05 May 08
     
    a Consultation on Democracy and Sustainability was held at the Science Museum in London on 18 March 2008. It was convened by the Environment Foundation, the 21st Century Trust and SustainAbility, and supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The questions addressed included: can a world of 9-10 billion people vote its way to a sustainable future - or are new forms of leadership (even forms of authoritarian rule) going to be necessary? Are the rising global powers (China, India and Brazil among them) best placed to move towards more sustainable forms of development? Democracy has a central role to play in any discussion of the future of the planet. But democracy is in trouble in many parts of the world, and must - if it is to deliver, remain relevant and meet people's needs and aspirations - mutate and evolve (see Larry Diamond, "The Democratic Rollback", Foreign Affairs [March-April 2008]).
tony curzon price

The Click Heard Round the World: Andrew Puddephatt on media reform from a human rights ... - 0 views

www.rikomatic.com/...andrew_puddepha.html

macarthur news

shared by tony curzon price on 13 Oct 07 - Cached
  • Andrew Puddephatt on media reform from a human rights perspective This morning I attended a very broad and interesting side-event on “Global Information and Communication Policy” organized by Consumer’s Union.  The event featured an international panel of speakers including : Luiz Fernando Marrey Moncau, Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor, Brazil Rosemary Okello-Orlale, African Woman and Child Feature Service, Kenya Bjarne Pedersen, Consumers International Andrew Puddephatt, Global Partners UK Jamie Love, CPTech Andrew issued a provocative challenge to the media reform community to show the evidence of their claims. 
  • We are interested in moving toward a curating model of information.  Information needs to be curated in  a way that shows the information that you want similar to how a museum curates a large body of information into discrete exhibits and presentations that people can understand and digest.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 13 Oct 07
       
      is journalism curation? and what does curation do to the messages that are produced?
  • who is doing the curating?  Is it going to be bottom-up or done by Bill Gates and Google.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The problem is not technology or capacity – we have lots of geeks. It’s an organizational issue – we are divided and unable or unwilling to connect with each other across borders.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 13 Oct 07
       
      is internet not being used for transnational network building _becasue_ there is fundamentally no desire for this?
anonymous

Funding for your news web site idea -Worldwide - 0 views

www.hi5.com/...2Byour%2Bnews%2Bwe--topic-html

challenge contests europe funding knight news worldwide

shared by anonymous on 05 Oct 07 - Cached
  • Maggie Tsai on 06 Oct 07
     
    This is interesting... Without this group's bookmark sharing, I'd have never come across this news. Thanks for sharing. Any good idea for Open Democracy and/or Diigo :-) Best, Maggie
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