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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]).
Susan Thur

Demography is Destiny | Mother Jones - 0 views

motherjones.com/...demography-destiny

GOP Voters

shared by Susan Thur on 13 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Susan Thur on 13 Jul 10
     
    Research suggests that a socialization process occurs that leads young adults to hold onto the party identification and opinions that they developed in their formative years. This is especially true with partisan identification. Party identification is the single strongest predictor of how people vote and tends to stick with individuals once they form an attachment early in their political lives. Even if the Republican Party eventually softens its views on social issues, it won't make much difference once the Millennials have reached age 30 and their party identification has hardened. If Teixeira is right, by the time this process is over an entire cohort of voters will be heavily pro-Democratic for the rest of their lives. As it happens, 2010, like 2002, might not be such a great year to make this prediction: a brutal recession and the usual midterm blues are likely to produce big Republican gains this November. In the long term, though, the longer the Republican Party continues to rely on its intolerant, ultraconservative base for support, the more likely they are to write their own obituary for 2020 and beyond.
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.
Arabica Robusta

Embedding Evidence on Conservation Interventions Within a Context of Multilevel Governa... - 0 views

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/...full

conservation policy

shared by Arabica Robusta on 25 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • An effective response to the wide variety in governance and ecological systems therefore calls for the creation of new decision-making forums that engage diverse constellations of actors and knowledge across spatial and temporal scales, in ways relevant to specific decisions (Paavola et al. 2009). This in turn raises issues of democratic legitimacy and accountability, because for citizens it may become difficult to assume democratic responsibilities when being part of overlapping sites of decision-making (Peters & Pierre 2005).
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 25 Feb 17
       
      Conservation governance and democratic accountability
  • The second step will be to ensure that scientists, policy makers, and practitioners participate in the cocreation of policy-relevant science, going beyond identifying stakeholder-relevant questions for systematic reviews. From the outset, scientists and decision-makers should jointly consider how administrative and ecological scales fit in order to balance democratic legitimacy and ecological efficacy.
  • By being clear as to the types and scales of knowledge needed, and the limitations of existing knowledge to inform policy, decision-makers will also play a role in highlighting knowledge gaps. We thus frame decision-makers as actively participating stakeholders in shaping what evidence base is needed for conservation, rather than framing conservation policy as something that must respond to the agenda of scientists who produce evidence. As a consequence, there is a strong need to develop practical solutions, based on a joint effort by researchers, decision-makers and land-use planners, on how to integrate evidence-based practices and general ecological principles within a multilevel governance framework. Through embedding locally implemented conservation interventions within a broader context, we are confident they would gain both in legitimacy and effectiveness.
tony curzon price

House of Commons - Home Affairs - Appendices to Minutes of Evidence (Volume II) - 0 views

www.publications.parliament.uk/...768ap24.htm

e-voting

shared by tony curzon price on 28 Nov 07 - Cached
  • In this second respect, there is and never has been a secret ballot in Britain, because the way in which individual citizens vote can be traced from each ballot paper used. Every ballot paper given to the citizen who is voting contains a serial number on it, which is also printed on the counterfoil retained by electoral officials. Before a ballot paper is handed to the citizen, he is asked for his name and address (or preferably to show the clerk his official poll card which shows his name, address and electoral registration number on it). The polling clerk then traces the person in the copy of the electoral register that he has on the table in from of him, and ticks the voter's name off the list. The clerk then tears one of the ballot papers out of the book of papers printed for the purpose, hands it to the voter and directs him or her to the private booth. And then the clerk writes the electoral registration number of the voter on the counterfoil to the ballot paper just issued.
tony curzon price

Zygmunt Bauman: globalisation, politics and Europe Ian Varcoe - openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...zygmunt_Bauman_4488.jsp

intellectuals self-knowledge

shared by tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07 - Cached
  • Reading Bauman helps people to insulate themselves from these false solutions to their difficulties.
  • might say that the problem for people today is how to resist consumer society, to find ways of caring for others, and to find a new politics that is above the nation-state. The globalisation phenomenon requires this if it is to be encountered by humanity in a more balanced form than at present when its negative side predominates over its positive side. The European integration project may offer some guidance.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
       
      The european project as a hope for a better globalisation ... but does it have the right bottom-up legitimacy to be that? is it not too much of an elitist project?
  • The political institutions of this are parliamentary democracy and the public sphere; the former has been eroded and the latter hollowed out.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
       
      This makes me think of Simon Zadek at AccounAbility, who believes that the future of democracy will be found in the accountability of non-state instituions, like business and NGOs. Davos and CSR, not EU and UN.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Bauman is a declared European
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
       
      a good description of the Scylla and Charibdys of the EU alternative - dialogue that paves the way between relativism and fundamentalisms
  • tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
     
    How, I wonder ...
tony curzon price

Impact of Blogging: Ezines & Blogs: New Forms of Journalism - 0 views

vincent-t.blogspot.com/...s-new-forms-of-journalism.html

credibility news

shared by tony curzon price on 23 Sep 07 - Cached
  • Both opendemocracy.net and bloggossip.com were very easy to find on the Google search engine. I had no trouble at all finding these two useful sights and thought bloggossip.com was the easiest to read. Blogggossip.com had many bright pictures on the home page which attracted me to the web sight. The sight was very well formated and easy to navigate. Opendemocracy.net appeared to be a bit more credible. All of the stories on this sight were headline stories. One difference between the ezine headline stories and the blog headline stories were that the blog headline stories were geared toward entertainment. It seems as though entertainment is a classic form of headlining here in America, whereas in the global market, headlining is focused on serious issues, such as global warming.Surprisingly enough both web sights, including the blog sight, seemed to be quite credible.
  • tony curzon price on 23 Sep 07
     
    right out of the survey results
tony curzon price

Revue ESPRIT - 0 views

www.esprit.presse.fr/...details.php

europe islam religion

shared by tony curzon price on 09 Sep 07 - Cached
  • mars/avril 2007 Effervescences religieuses dans le monde
  • tony curzon price on 09 Sep 07
     
    Esprit devotes an issue to post-secularism
tony curzon price

A Righter Shade of Green - 0 views

www.amconmag.com/...cover.html

environment scruton

shared by tony curzon price on 29 Jul 07 - Cached
  • While the Left pursues environmentalism to advance its global agenda, conservation is best entrusted to local stewardship.
  • tony curzon price on 29 Jul 07
     
    Roger on how ecology translates into politics. Is there right and left greenery?

    And what of a _global_ issue like climate change - can it really be reduced to its local impact?

tony curzon price

NOEMA > IDEAS - 0 views

www.noemalab.org/...erry_parliament_of_things.html

culture philosophy

shared by tony curzon price on 17 Jun 07 - Cached
  • A hi-tech eco-friendly office on common land in the east of Europe. Together the office community is drawn together to discuss the recent problems and issues besetting the community. They have all worked during the day and the weather is cool and bright as it is nearing the end of the year. They sit around waiting for the start of the meeting.
  • tony curzon price on 17 Jun 07
     
    David comments that this is Latour-based, with object talking
tony curzon price

Britain's future: Labour candidates respond | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/ture_labour_candidates_respond

shared by tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Britain’s future: Labour candidates’s view
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      Anthony - nice to see this was picked up by the observer - see: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/constitution/story/0,,2099735,00.html
    • Anthony Barnett
      Anthony Barnett on 10 Jun 07
       
      Yes, they wanted exclusive first right and I gave it them. What you can see in the paper edition but not on the web, it that they put the story at the top of the page on the right hand column. Positioning is much more than half the story in a newspaper. Its layout tells people what to read. Is it the same onthe web?
  • I am agnostic on the need for a written constitution, because of the power it hands to the judges.
  • so I let's have a national debate.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      "let's have a national debate" ... this seems to be a today-program, motherhood-apple-pie mantra. what is this national debate? where is it to be had? on radio4?
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      see Cruddas below - getting a bit more specific on what a "national debate" might mean
    • Anthony Barnett
      Anthony Barnett on 10 Jun 07
       
      Benn's remark is rhetoric. Harmann above has thought about the need for mechanisms for ensuring public respect. The issue is a defining one. A wonderful constitution produced from Brown's inside pocket will be scorned as the gimmick of a 'Scot'. A less well worded one that emerges from a South African style process which people feel they 'own' could initiate a democratic process. What matters is not that it is written but how it is written!
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It needs to be relevant to the man or woman in the street as a way of restoring trust in politics.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      is the constitution being asked to do too much. the mistrust of politics has many sources; the real powerlessness of national governments over many of the areas they pretend to rule is one. there is a whole process of resetting expectations that a consittuional convention is unlikely to do. in fact, there is the risk that a constitution will raise hopes that _it_ cannot fulfill, and contribute to the mistrust.
  • Gordon Brown has spoken of the need to empower communities at a local level. Should the decentralization of power and money to local authorities form part of any new ‘constitutional settlement’?
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      not one of the candidates raises the BIG RED FLAG of localism: how do you continue to operate redistributive policies when income, wealth and opportunity differences are geographical?
  • evise but not block
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      I wonder what "revise but not block" actually means ... if you can revise a piece of legislation out of all shape, that is tantamount to blocking, no? and once the body is elected, does equal legitimacy not entail equal power?
  • We need a public debate
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      another public debate ... see above. again - who with? how? and what is the outcome of a "public debate" worth looking at this article: http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-edemocracy/idcard_2537.jsp by sara forsstrom, about the Swedish database ... that goes back to the 17th century. Trustworthy states can have databases; so how do we make the state trustworthy? maybe exchanging access to our personal information with access to its private information?
James Camry

The Lesser of Two Evils & Mid Term Elections - 0 views

ithp.org/...midtermelections.html

new world order business news conspiracy alternative obama barack president elections mid term

shared by James Camry on 20 May 10 - Cached
  • Here’s the real question we need to ask these people. We live in America, so why do we have to vote for evil, period? Why is evil the only option on the ballot? What’s the point of democracy if it means rule by the people, represented by evil. The reason evil is the only option is because somewhere in our country’s history, the political elite decided that the masses are holistically retarded, and all voting issues should be limited to a color-coded choice between red and blue.
  • James Camry on 20 May 10
     
    This article really rang true with me
Peter Neis

Record Voters in Canada's Advanced Polls - 0 views

www.politicolnews.com/s-hits-record-number-in-canada

Rick Mercer Vote Mob Elections Canada Swamped at Advanced Polls Poll Line Ups in April 23 2011 Election issues 5 7 Years-Canada Votes Again Advance Hits Canada.

shared by Peter Neis on 23 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Peter Neis on 23 Apr 11
     
    Only 6 days to go, for Canada's General Election and the Advanced Polls swamped with voters, like never before. Election Canada had to increase staffing for the 3 days of Advanced Polls this year. Rick Mercer's Get out the Vote-campaign was successful to bring out the youth vote called Vote Mob across the country.....
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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