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Arabica Robusta

Tibet, Palestine and the politics of failure | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...ne-and-the-politics-of-failure

independence opendemocracy palestine postcolonial sovereignty tibet

shared by Arabica Robusta on 12 May 08 - Cached
  • The victims of "post-colonial sequestration", by contrast, failed to make it past the barrier of independence and international recognition. Instead they fell into a state of half-recognised, but contested, existence. After the war of 1948-49 the "Palestine question" disappeared almost entirely from the international scene, only to re-emerge with the defeat of the Arab armies in the six-day war of 1967. Tibet too has undergone long years of neglect in the international arena, punctuated by periodic (and notably near-half-century) reincarnations of interest: the bloody British occupation of Lhasa in 1904-05, the insurrection against Chinese rule and flight of the Dalai Lama in 1959, and now the uprising of March 2008 (see Gabriel Lafitte, "Tibet: revolt with memories", 18 March 2008).
  • Arabica Robusta on 12 May 08
     
    The victims of "post-colonial sequestration", by contrast, failed to make it past the barrier of independence and international recognition. Instead they fell into a state of half-recognised, but contested, existence. After the war of 1948-49 the "Palestine question" disappeared almost entirely from the international scene, only to re-emerge with the defeat of the Arab armies in the six-day war of 1967. Tibet too has undergone long years of neglect in the international arena, punctuated by periodic (and notably near-half-century) reincarnations of interest: the bloody British occupation of Lhasa in 1904-05, the insurrection against Chinese rule and flight of the Dalai Lama in 1959, and now the uprising of March 2008 (see Gabriel Lafitte, "Tibet: revolt with memories", 18 March 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?
Arabica Robusta

The time of the nation: negotiating global modernity | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...n-negotiating-global-modernity

neoliberalism globalization corporate-led foucault postmodernism social movements

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • This depoliticised nature of the contemporary, seen as the conceptual and experiential embodiment of globalised capitalism, consequently poses problems far more significant than the mere survival of the nation-state.
  • Undoubtedly, since the demise of the postmodern epoch in the popular and academic imagination, the acceleration of technological forces in commerce and communication - that have paved the way for increased capital accumulation, exchange and crisis - have only heightened what Foucault and Jameson gesture towards as a lived sensation of pure simultaneity.
  • In opposition to the crisis of the political generated by the false amalgamation of coeval living experiences, we might propose the concept of modernity; a concept that the nation-state might be perfectly situated to help elucidate. On this model, I would argue, modernity can be seen as linked to a increased self-consciousness of a secular conception of one's individual finitude (in the form of mortality but also one's personal and societal limits), and the collective negotiation of this issue via a democratic politics.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Undoubtedly some of the impotence of movements such as Occupy can be attributed to the same false utopianism of a borderless world of cyber-communities and multinational companies, whose liberating effects have been a far cry from lived reality.
  • However, the heterotopian potential of the nation-state is vividly problematised through the realisation that twentieth or twenty-first century globalisation, divorced and independent of the influence of varying nation-states, is in fact a fallacy.
  • The question then becomes: how to conceive of the self-determining impulse of modernity - here encapsulated in nationalism - in the form of a  socio-political body that would be capable of maintaining that impulse through preserving the logic of democracy, and foster the requisite representative power in opposition to the power of transnational capitalism?
  • Borders are no longer simply dotted lines between nation-states, but often manifest themselves as ‘spontaneous’ entities such as security and health check zones all over major social and transit spaces, particularly in Europe and the West.
  • But how to conceive of a democratic entity powerful enough to appropriate the multiplicity and heterogeneity of globalised borders, that would also be able to withstand, what Balibar outlines as "the risk of being a mere arena for the unfettered domination of the private centres of power, which monopolise capital, communications and, perhaps also, arms"?
  • If this modern or modernist kernel is latent within the nation-state, then a significant reconfiguration is required since the language of nationhood and nationalism is certainly not one of contingent universality. Rather it is one of mythology: mythologies of ethnicity, of genealogy, of autochthony.
  • If we cannot do away with borders, then they must remain out of necessity. This necessity is discrimination. As Nairn rightly argues, "cultures...depend upon conflicts unsustainable without borders". Contrasts and distinctions are internal to any logic of identity, as Balibar similarly suggests; "the very representation of the border is the precondition for any definition". Once identity is philosophically understood as differential and not self-sufficient, globalisation raises a very modernist dilemma. How to make the very diversity (of choices, cultures, of the new) that modernisation and globalisation make possible, resist the paralysing repetitive logic of what Walter Benjamin terms the 'ever-same' (i.e. the temporality of the contemporary)?
  • The mythological language of nationalism asserts an enduring order, paradoxically so inasmuch as the precise origin or origins of any nationalist discourse remain a shrouded mystery. Myth, as structurally detached from historical or circumstantial origin, becomes a vehicle of interpretation and pathos, splitting into a potentially infinite number of manifestations in each 'national' subject (where each standardised narrative is appropriated as a personal one).
  • By arguing the case for global modernity in the form of the nation-state, however, one faces the immediate problem that modernity is almost unthinkable without capitalism (despite any such attempt to render modernity as a democratising force tied to a conception and experience of time).
  • Although the European tradition has established laws and institutions (including the nation-state) that remain significantly flawed, these still provide a democratic logic that guarantees the possibility of revision, of perfectibility, of the future. If the nation-state can embody a heterotopic space that permits identification through processes of willed negotiation and division, guaranteeing the possibility of the present to always be changed, then it might still serve as a tool for resistance.
Dripa B

An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?" | Immanuel Kant (1784) - 0 views

sap.ereau.de/...what_is_enlightenment

Kant enlightenment ***** HumanRights democracy global international politics

shared by Dripa B on 03 Jan 09 - Cached
  • Dripa B on 03 Jan 09
     
    This remains one of the best texts of the permanent struggle for Enlightenment -- values that assert universal human freedom, dignity and equality. Values that include internationalism, participatory and representative democracy based. These values inform our struggleto end of political and social domination of persons and societies globally. - Zackie Achmat
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]).
Arabica Robusta

Philanthrocapitalism: after the goldrush | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...ocapitalism_after_the_goldrush

business development international nongovernmental philanthrocapitalism philanthropy

shared by Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 08
     
    "Wealth is like an orchard", says the Mexican philanthrocapitalist Carlos Slim, "you have to distribute the fruit, not the branch", presumably because the branch, tree and forest all belong to him.
Arabica Robusta

ZNet |Activism | Online Activism 2.0: Movement Building - 0 views

www.zmag.org/...showarticle.cfm

shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Another successful story was my experience organizing against sweatshops with the Notre Dame Progressive Student Alliance as part of the United Students Against Sweatshops network. We were adequately connected to the network to model our local campaign on those of other groups – and we won.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 16 Apr 08
       
      It is critical, in the context of sweatshops, petroleum corporations and so on, to concentrate movement strategies on the global level. In this case, the connections (or lack of connections) with international sweatshop organizations should be more explicit.
tony curzon price

Global Financial Integrity Project - The Ugliest Chapter in Global Economic Affairs Sin... - 0 views

www.gfip.org/index.php

economics

shared by tony curzon price on 11 Sep 07 - Cached
  • Ten years ago I stepped out of international business and into the think-tank community with a primary goal of getting reality on the table. I had seen more corruption, more money laundering, more financial crime than any one person should see in a lifetime, and I resolved to say what I wanted to say about this overarching reality. Why wasn’t reality already on the table? What is it about this subject matter that is so mysterious or so frightening that we hesitate to go there? Basically is it that we can’t see it or don’t want to see it?
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 11 Sep 07
       
      money laundering / tax evasion .... for an interview
  • This is the reality that we seek to get on the table. Illicit outflows from developing and transitional economies vastly exceed overseas development assistance going into developing and transitional economies. In my estimates, which I and others think are conservative, by a factor of ten to one. More analysis, better analysis in the future may make this a narrower picture or make it a wider picture. But no analysis will make this a pretty picture.
tony curzon price

Debtor Nation  (July-August 2007) - 0 views

www.harvardmagazine.com/...p2-debtor-nation.html

economy free-trade us

shared by tony curzon price on 14 Aug 07 - Cached
  • All of the countries that do this are better off than they would be without international trade. But even though it is possible to prove mathematically that this is true for nations, it is not true for every group of people within nations.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 14 Aug 07
       
      only under the right assumptions of competition is this true
tony curzon price

Debtor Nation  (July-August 2007) - 0 views

www.harvardmagazine.com/...debtor-nation.html

consumerism debt economics us

shared by tony curzon price on 14 Aug 07 - Cached
  • The global imbalances created by this dynamic of American borrowing and foreign lending appear stable for now, but if they slip suddenly, that could pose serious dangers for middle- and working-class Americans through soaring interest rates, a crash in the housing market, and sharply higher prices for anything no longer made domestically.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 14 Aug 07
       
      the disaster scenario for the US - and world - economies
  • was a run on the pound sterling and he blocked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from stabilizing the currency. With sterling on the verge of collapse, says Frankel, “Eisenhower told them, ‘We are not going to bail out the pound unless you pull out of Suez.’” Facing bankruptcy, the British withdrew. This incident, notes Frankel, “marked the end of Great Britain’s ability to conduct an independent foreign policy.”
tony curzon price

'Maoist rebels' target goods train in India | openDemocracy - 0 views

terrorism.opendemocracy.net/...security_briefs_260607

macarthur news od

shared by tony curzon price on 26 Jun 07 - Cached
  • US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have said that Web-based propaganda from Iraq is far more complex and sophisticated than Western media give insurgents credit for. Very "fast-paced and clearly aimed at the video game generation", there is a vast myriad - primarily Sunni - of perspectives from the other side of the Iraq War available on the Web, catering to a wide variety of media consumption habits.   
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 26 Jun 07
       
      international perspectives on the news
tony curzon price

ePolitix.com - Gordon Brown: Conference speech in full - 0 views

www.epolitix.com/...278-4909-8484-30d61536f02d.htm

brown

shared by tony curzon price on 24 Jun 07 - Cached
  • And let me say that commitment to international action on justice means today to prevent genocide, the world must through the U.N, urgently act in Darfur.
  • Most of all my parents taught me that each of us should live by a moral compass.It was a simple faith with a fundamental optimism.That each and every one of us has a talent.Each of us a duty to use that talent.And each of us should have the chance to develop that talent. And my parents thought we should use whatever talent we had to help people least able to help themselves. And as I grew up surrounded by books, sports, music and encouragement, I saw at school and beyond how some flourished and others, denied these opportunities, fell behind. They had talent, they had ability. But they did not have the chance to fulfil their promise. They needed someone to champion them. They needed the support of people on their side. And is not our history the story of yes, progress through the fulfilled talents, even genius, of some but, yes, also of the wasted potential of millions for too many, their talents lost and forever unfulfilled?
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 24 Jun 07
       
      Brown's parable of the talents
  • Strip away the rhetoric about globalisation and it comes down to one essential truth: You can buy raw materials from anywhere,You can borrow capital form anywhere,You can engage with technology half way across the world,But you cannot buy from elsewhere what in the global economy you need most; the skills and the creativity of all our people – and that means that in education we must aim to be number one.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 24 Jun 07
       
      Brown's globalisation - this has the slight sense of "the last thing that still remains..." And what of physical capital ... no mention
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • As Alan Johnson proposes, give vocational qualifications parity of esteem with academic qualifications.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 24 Jun 07
       
      in whose gift is "parity of esteem" ... are _these_ the policies that come out of the respect agenda? surely respect comes from a complex social whole, with mixtures of truth and appearance ...
  • I believe the answer is that we the British people must be far more explicit about the common ground on which we stand, the shared values which bring us together, the habits of citizenship around which we can and must unite. Expect all who are in our country to play by our rules. 
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 24 Jun 07
       
      multiculturalism's limits
  • the active citizen, the empowered community, open enabling government.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 24 Jun 07
       
      just as power had to be taken from special interests - code word for capital - so now it must be taken from the state
  • I want a radical shift of power from the centre.
Arabica Robusta

Beyond armistice: women searching for an enduring peace | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...n-searching-for-enduring-peace

war versailles germany human rights women social movements

shared by Arabica Robusta on 01 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The 1919 Zurich gathering is where the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom first took its name. You could say the League was born out of profound dismay at the unjust outcome of Versailles. A worn old volume is our one extant copy of the report of that conference. Holding it in our hands as we prepared this article, we saw anew just how central had been the women's preoccupation with economic issues.
  • This demoralizing sense of 'no alternative' has impacted on the thinking of the peace and women's movements too. Yet, we are resourced today with factual evidence of the economic oppression and inequality at the root of war, data of a scope and accuracy that the women of 1919 sorely lacked. The UN’s Human Development Report provides us annually with a clear picture of who profits and who lives in poverty.  The recent scandal of the so-called Global Financial Crisis has brought to view hard evidence of the subsidy made available to the financial institutions and individuals responsible, while a hyper-capitalism is imposed upon populations through austerity measures that attack public services, and on labour standards and conditions hard won over decades. Today, given the palpable rivalry of corporate interests and their national backers for control of resources and markets, peace activism can scarcely afford to ignore the causality of capitalism in militarization and war.
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