November 2008
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Month November 2008

Entries 10 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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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A nice big joint

Nov 7, ’08 12:03 AM

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

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Relief, but no illusions

Nov 5, ’08 9:49 AM

I har­bour no illu­sions about the empty slo­gan “change we can believe in” but I can’t help feel a huge sense of relief that the right-wing (Demo­crats) of the Busi­ness Party have seized con­trol off the far-right zealots (Repub­lic­ans), in all three branches of U.S. government.

If you define demo­cracy to be gov­ern­ment by the people then the most gen­er­ous thing you can say about the U.S., after two cen­tur­ies, is that it is still a fledgling demo­cracy. Even with a record turnout the Demo­crats and Obama were elec­ted, roughly, with only 34% sup­port of eli­gible voters.1 And this in a so-called rep­res­ent­at­ive demo­cracy. It’s all light years away from par­ti­cip­at­ory demo­cracy, prob­ably the only form of demo­cracy truly worthy of the name.

There is no mass move­ment in the U.S. to push Obama and the Demo­crats for real social and eco­nomic change. The U.S. is still largely a coun­try of the reac­tion­ar­ies con­trolled by fear, ignor­ance and big busi­ness pro­pa­ganda. Garbage in, garbage out.

The biggest loser on the day: racism.

The biggest win­ner: Obama’s daugh­ters, Sasha and Malia, who have been prom­ised a puppy.

Update: Many reports describe the 65% turnout fig­ure as that of “registered voters,” so the per­cent­age of eli­gible voters in sup­port of the Dems and Obama would be even less than 34%. I’ll post con­crete num­bers when I find them.

Notes:
  1. Based on a piti­ful but record turnout of 65% of eli­gible voters and a pop­u­lar vote of 52% in favour of the Demo­crats and Obama. [↩]
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Testimony from a witness at the scene of De Menezes murder by police

Nov 4, ’08 9:03 AM

De Menezes police ‘were out of control’

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Landshare: linking people who want to grow their own food to space where they can grow it

Nov 3, ’08 1:44 PM

Abso­lutely bril­liant idea intro­duced by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on his UK TV pro­gram River Cot­tage last night: Land­share, link­ing people who want to grow their own food to space where they can grow it.

Check it out at Landshare.net and register your interest.

I have a flat with a small garden — which helps me stay sane liv­ing in the middle of a busy city like Lon­don — but I’d love to be able to grow more than we cur­rently can and while I’ve signed up for an allot­ment in Cam­den I’m over 700th on the list so have an estim­ated wait of more than 10 years!

I see unused land all over Lon­don that could be used for grow­ing food. Now I’ve got my beady eyes on the large dis­used grassed area at the hous­ing estate across the road!

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George Carlin on voting in U.S. elections

Nov 3, ’08 8:58 AM

Warn­ing: some read­ers may find the con­tents offensive

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Describing an alternative economy in 30 minutes

Nov 1, ’08 1:34 AM

This is video is of Michael Albert, an eco­nomic vis­ion­ary and one of my favour­ite people, attempt­ing to describe an altern­at­ive eco­nomy — Par­ti­cip­at­ory Eco­nom­ics — in 30 minutes. I think he does quite well.

There’s more here, includ­ing a Q & A ses­sion and a descrip­tion from Jes­sica Azu­lay on how she and oth­ers put one of the insti­tu­tions of pare­con — bal­anced job com­plexes — into prac­tice as part of their busi­ness (see part 8).

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