November 2008
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
« Oct   Dec »
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930

Day 7 November, 2008

Entries 5 Total

Obama mania?

Nov 7, ’08 11:33 PM

Michael Albert on the hope so many hold in Obama:

Some things are obvious.

Elect­ing a first African Amer­ican Pres­id­ent is world historic.

The elect­or­ate bend­ing toward san­ity, elo­quence, and dig­nity, rather than a death spiral into mor­onic deprav­ity is pos­it­ive, too, even if mostly because the altern­at­ive is a con­di­tion of abject horror.

Realign­ment of vari­ous vot­ing sec­tors and under­cut­ting mar­ket mania are very pos­it­ive, too.

My guess is, sadly, that within one week, lit­er­ally one week, Obama’s staff and cab­inet choices will make decis­ively evid­ent that without mass act­iv­ism for­cing new out­comes, change will stop at the sur­face. I hope I am wrong.

Comments (2)

I can vote!

Nov 7, ’08 1:58 PM

I thought I couldn’t vote because I haven’t lived in New Zea­l­and for over three years but I was hav­ing a poke around elections.org.nz and, as a cit­izen, I don’t have to have lived in New Zea­l­and in the past three years but just have passed through.

Can’t believe I nearly missed the chance to vote: you can down­load vot­ing papers here if you’re enrolled over­seas and you can fax them home (before 8th Novem­ber, 7PM NZ time).

Comments (0)

Michael Hanlon’s Eternity a red herring

Nov 7, ’08 1:24 PM

I received a link from Amazon today tout­ing a new book by Michael Hanlon:

Human­kind is not doomed, we may be around for mil­lions of years yet. We have already sur­vived one of the most extraordin­ary planet-wide cata­strophes — the Ice Ages. … The sub­ject of the book is very much in the news at the moment — will we be wiped out by cli­mate change, war or pes­ti­lence? Han­lon is say­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent, that the spe­cies will sur­vive as the planet changes around us. This dif­fer­ent point of view is refresh­ing, and some sec­tions of the book are very con­tro­ver­sial, which should get the atten­tion of the media. Not only is human­kind not doomed, but that we may be around for mil­lions, if not hun­dreds of mil­lions of years. We have already sur­vived one of the most extraordin­ary planet-wide cata­strophes — the great Ice Ages. Equipped with the simplest tech­no­logy, Homo sapi­ens sailed through the great gla­ci­ations, and profited from them.

Except that the “news at the moment” isn’t simply “will we be wiped out by cli­mate change, war or pes­ti­lence.” It is do we want to sur­vive in such a world and what can we do to avoid these things?

The premise of the book is a red herring.

Comments (0)

Please don’t let our democracy slip away NZ

Nov 7, ’08 2:12 AM

There are a myriad of reas­ons I hope you don’t vote National this Sat­urday, such as their record on selling off the coun­try or their keen­ness to send Kiwi kids off to get killed in illegal wars to curry favour, but if there’s just one reason it’s this: our democracy.

National wants to take away one of the things I’m most proud of about our coun­try, our pro­por­tional elect­oral sys­tem, MMP.

“Rep­res­ent­at­ive demo­cracy,” to my eyes, is a con­tra­dic­tion in terms and one day I hope we put this little step­ping stone behind us and move onto the greener pas­tures of par­ti­cip­at­ory demo­cracy, but in the mean time a rep­res­ent­at­ive one is what we have and the move to MMP has made it enorm­ously more effect­ive as a demo­cracy and given many more people a right­ful say in the run­ning of the country.

It’s some­thing to be proud of and some­thing I’ve really missed while liv­ing here in Bri­tain. I have no doubt that if Bri­tain and the U.S. had pro­por­tional vot­ing sys­tems, such as MMP, the Bush/Blair gang would never have been able to launch a war of aggres­sion — the “supreme war crime” — against Iraq. And they may even have avoided the dereg­u­la­tion that led to the credit crunch.

If National gets their way we’ll go back to an undemo­cratic sys­tem where people who man­age to gain power in parties like Labour and National can impose their nar­row agen­das on the rest of us at our expense. All the other really import­ant things such as the eco­nomy, the envir­on­ment and peace will cease to be mat­ters up for debate. This is why the mat­ter of demo­cracy is so important.

You know what to do. Keep New Zea­l­and demo­cracy safe on Sat­urday, vote for some­body else.

Comments (1)

A nice big joint

Nov 7, ’08 12:03 AM

Thought this was rather nice. From Gor­don Ramsay’s Kit­chen Night­mares this evening.

Continue Reading… Comments (0)