June 1, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Now, I think the American people are now aware, certainly the folks down in the Gulf are aware, that we’re dealing with a massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster. The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our Gulf states and it could extend for a long time. It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home. And that’s why the federal government has launched and coordinated an all-hands-on-deck, relentless response to this crisis from day one.
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June 1, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
“The minds on the margin are not marginal minds” is the guiding philosophy of the project Anil Gupta discusses in this talk, aimed at highlighting efforts to find indigenous Indian entrepreneurs who might have the best ideas for shaping a better future, though they lack the resources to get their ideas into the mainstream culture or the realm of cutting-edge science.
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May 31, 2010 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
Glen Beck is a menace to the integrity of the American media. His fabrications and falsehoods are a deliberate and immoral attempt to distort the American political mind, to create visceral divisions and to force hostility to undermine productive progressive action to make the country more just and more egalitarian. His lies are shameless and his relentless attempts at character assassination of anyone not in agreement with his fringe politics are an insult to all people everywhere.
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April 23, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Today is the Day of the Book, in part spurred by the urge to recognize two of the great progenitors of modern literature, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, who both died on 23 April 1616, at least according to the official history. Their work and the various arts that go into making books, as such, are celebrated around the world as staples of modern global civilization and the human element of culture. But the book is more than those sweeping historical energies; it is a concrete, observable register of intent and of meaning, which carries evidence of our humanity forward and informs and improves future worlds.
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March 10, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
On the second morning of the 54th Commission on the Status of Women, Gender Links and the African Woman and Child Feature Service —through the Gender and Media Diversity Centre— hosted a roundtable dialogue involving Marren Akatsa-Bukachi of the Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI), Francisco Cos-Montiel of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Revai Makanje of Hivos, Norah Matovu-Winyi of the African Women’s Development and Communication Network, and Jennifer Lewis of Gender Links as facilitator, with Mwendabai Yeta Mkhize and myself providing event support and reporting.
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March 2, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
“From Social Media to Social Action” was the subject of one of the morning sessions on Day 1 of the 12-day 54th annual Commission on the Status of Women, at the UN headquarters in New York. A panel of pioneering and accomplished women, from diverse fields of research, activism, and enterprise, offered a far-reaching exploration of the ways in which new media can help to effect change and improve the situation of women, around the world. Outreach, social networking, and informational access, were integral to the morning session’s discussion.
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February 27, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
The Republican party’s Congressional leadership is participating in a bipartisan healthcare reform summit moderated by Pres. Barack Obama, at Blair House near the White House. The “square-table” discussion includes the leading budgetary and health policy partisans from the House and Senate, as well as Pres. Obama, Vice Pres. Biden and Sec. of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. The president invited Republicans to “show me what you got”, and to lay out constructive alternative ideas for healthcare reform, in the interest of building consensus.
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February 14, 2010 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
Newsmax, the ultra-right-wing political propaganda outfit that calls itself a news service, is once again using its news pages to push financial get-rich-quick schemes on its customers. While railing against any politician who happens to be a Democrat and who is struggling to fix the problems 30 years of Republican de-regulation of wrought on the American economy as anti-American, Newsmax has routinely sought to push its readers into risky foreign currency trading schemes. Now, it’s pitching financial services directly.
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February 1, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Howard Zinn, author of the monumental work, A People’s History of the United States, revolutionized the field of historical research the world over, establishing the principle that true historical narrative must include a genuine reporting of indigenous experience and a more multifaceted factual accounting of events, including the impact of efforts to establish a new civilization on traditional cultures. Zinn died last week of heart failure, aged 87.
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January 30, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama yesterday attended a first-of-its-kind question and answer session, as part of a Republican Congressional caucus conference in Baltimore. The president took some aggressive questions, classed by media analysts as “grandstanding”, from some Republicans who pushed the party line on the refusal of Democrats to deal with them. Obama adroitly and with a [...]
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January 28, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
A recent NBC/WSJ poll shows rising frustration among voters with the failure to move major reforms through Congress. But while the media have repeatedly pushed the notion that Pres. Obama may be losing favor, the NBC/WSJ poll shows 48% of people say Republicans in Congress are to blame for the nation’s unsolved problems, for their relentless obstruction of Democratic proposals, while 41% blame the Democrats in Congress, and only 27% blame Pres. Obama.
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January 27, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Apple’s new tablet computer has finally been unveiled, after years of speculation. The iPad will function as a genuine cross-over between the realm of the iPhone and the laptop computer, in a format smaller than a laptop screen, similar to a netbook, and designed to optimize the experience of reading online or working with files and e-publications. It will be able to run over 140,000 of the apps already made for iPhone and iPod Touch, with a whole new class of iPad-optimized apps to come. Perhaps most important of all, it will retail for a starting price of only $499.
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January 18, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
[R]ecognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.
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January 4, 2010 :: Carmen Visna :: Comments Off
La luna se aleja, no veo el camino; estoy lista, medito, pero el futuro no me pertenece. Por lo tanto, no duermo. Busco en las tinieblas, hacia las cuatro, mi nombre; ya no existe. Esta experiencia desconcertante me gusta, porque ayuda a definir los límites; sé hasta dónde tengo que limitarme en sociedad. Imagino que el yo, en general, es un fenómeno menos comprobado que lo que pensamos.
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January 1, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, we find ourselves part of a global human civilization undergoing major change at an unprecedented rate, and how we adjust to those changes will determine what quality of life and how much real democracy there is, even who lives and who dies, across the global village. For decades, postmodern philosophical theory has examined the problem of atomization of the fabric of human society, but new trends suggest there is concurrent with spreading individualism a swell of interdependence among individuals, communities and nation-states.
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December 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
That too many people, including policy-makers and media figures “are out of their intellectual depth and easily manipulated” by the bewildering complexity of the financial-political feedback-loop is almost irrefutable, and I agree with comments in this debate it’s “a symptom of the limitations of our neural architecture”. But I don’t know if we should take the question of neural architecture in the biological sense. There’s a cultural and practical response that needs to be considered at least as strongly.
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December 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The elections of 2010 will not be about the specter of “socialism”, nor about terrorism, taxation, or gay rights: they will be about which party can present the most far-reaching, most credible pragmatic approach to solving the actual problems the nation is facing. They will be about whether or not Pres. Obama deserves support in his historic efforts to bring the nation out of a range of crises he was elected to resolve, or better put: whether or not the nation could benefit from his having that support.
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December 27, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Apple is reportedly poised to introduce a brand-new device that has the potential to revolutionize not only mobile computing and communication, but also design, workflow and publishing. We’ve written before about the prospective Apple tablet and its capabilities, but as rumor and reporting converge to give us a better picture, we can be a little more certain of the landmark moment in the evolution of computing and communications the device will achieve.
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December 24, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
The pulitzer prize-winning news service PolitiFact.com, a fact-checking operation of the St. Petersburg Times, has awarded Sarah Palin its first ever “Lie of the Year” award, for her patently false claim that healthcare reform legislation would create “death panels”. Properly told, the lie of the year is the “death panels” claim itself, for which Palin is only partly responsible. She appears to have been responsible for the most high profile and most fundamentally false telling of the lie, though other Republican opponents of healthcare reform had falsely asserted that reimbursement for doctors who provide end of life counseling would be devoted to a campaign of euthanasia designed to eliminate the elderly and infirm.
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December 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
As ongoing global climate destabilization builds momentum, and fundamental climate-linked environmental processes come apart, we are hearing time and again that melting ice, whether in glaciers or in the Arctic Ocean, is “the canary in the coal mine”. The metaphor is very tempting, indeed, as coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel in use and a major contributing factor to global warming and climate destabilization, but the problem with the metaphor lies in the meaning of the canary being nothing more than an alarm signal. Glaciers are very much more important to human civilization than that.
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December 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The global food supply is facing major security challenges, as warming global average temperatures and the destabilization of climate patterns and natural services undermine dependable agricultural cycles and threaten resources. The food supply is the most direct and visible connection between the breakdown of global climate systems and human health and wellbeing, but not the only link. The possible collapse of a major part of the human food supply means the collapse of agriculture, i.e. the breakdown of the human habitat.
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December 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
An idea for how to spur investment in new job opportunities has been floating around the world of financial and political analysis: could the money coming in as banks repay their TARP bailout loans be devoted to infrastructure development in a way that creates tens or even hundreds of thousands of jobs?
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November 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States Senate will begin deliberations on comprehensive health insurance reform legislation this week. Already there is intense criticism of the Senate’s health reform bill, from both ends of the ideological spectrum. A number of pro-business conservatives argue it is too costly and will hamper free enterprise and pro-patient progressives argue the bill is already too watered-down and needs a stronger public option, to expand coverage and reduce cost.
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November 22, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
For the first time in decades, the United States Senate has voted to open floor debate on comprehensive healthcare insurance reform legislation. All 58 Democratic members of the Senate, plus the two independents that caucus with them, voted to approve debate. 39 of the 40 Republicans voted against opening debate, except Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), who did not vote. Though not expected to vote with Democrats today, Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were thought to be more conciliatory with regard to passing legislation containing a compromise on the public option, so their no-votes are seen as a further challenge to the Democratic majority.
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November 20, 2009 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
The leadership of the Republican party is relentlessly championing a rhetoric of armed rebellion and hate-speech. Seasoned evangelical leader Frank Schaeffer says those who condone this extremist language are “trawling for assassins”. He called those engaged in such extremism “the American version of the Taliban”. He called on Republican leaders who have refused to denounce [...]
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November 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Obama has reportedly secured Chinese president Hu Jintao’s pledge of cooperation on global economic recovery, efforts to curb emissions and combat climate destabilization, and nuclear non-proliferation, both in Iran and North Korea. The pledge of cooperation came despite Obama’s demand that China honor the “universal” human rights of its people, alongside differences over how strongly to pressure Iran to guarantee its nuclear pursuits are legal and peaceful in nature.
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November 11, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Lou Dobbs’ last broadcast on CNN aired tonight. His resignation, which he announced on the air, was effective immediately. He blamed “partisanship and ideology” in the public sphere for undermining public discourse and said the “winds of change” were blowing across the nation and that he would like to pursue “other opportunities” in order to speak as honestly about the problems the nation faces as he can.
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November 11, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
This report alleges widespread routine abuse of foreign-born domestic workers in Lebanon. Domestic workers are excluded from Lebanese labor regulations and does not monitor treatment in the home. It is reportedly common for employers of foreign domestic workers to illegally seize their passports upon arrival and forbid them to leave the home.
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November 9, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
By Maggie Mzumara She thought she had no choice. She really did not see any. What she saw was a desperate situation which needed a quick, if desperate, choice. Earnest enough! But the law and society thought otherwise. That the choice she made was criminal and not perpetrated in earnest at all. Just, where were [...]
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November 9, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
The progressive organizing group MoveOn.org has announced huge success in collecting funds to mount primary challenges to any Democratic senator who acts to block an up-or-down vote on healthcare reform. In just one week, their Health Reform Accountability Pledge campaign collected $3,578,117 in pledges. The organization’s statement about the fundraising success reads: That’s how much [...]
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November 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Last night, every Republican but one voted against the House of Representatives’ monumental healthcare reform package. Anh Joseph Cao has said he came to understand the need to vote to pass the sweeping healthcare reform program, after listening to the concerns of constituents desperate to find a way to secure reliable, affordable coverage for basic and/or emergency healthcare. A release on his website reads as follows…
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November 8, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The Spanish-language blog Belascoaín y Neptuno is reporting that on 6 November 2009, three bloggers in Havana, Cuba, were summarily detained, beaten and threatened by security forces. Yoani Sánchez, Claudia Cadelo and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and other unnamed individuals were allegedly forced into security agents’ vehicles, detained without charge, beaten and intimidated, in an apparent effort to crack down on political dissent.
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November 8, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi, today told David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press that the president’s decision about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan should not be politicized by Republicans. He said that he’s always been of the mind that domestic politics should “stop at the border” and that the president [...]
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November 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
For the first time in the district’s history, going back to the 19th century, a Democrat has won New York’s 23rd Congressional district, thanks in part to Sarah Palin and other Republican radicals. A move by Palin, Rick Santorum, Fred Thompson and other extremist conservatives to impose their will on the local Republican party, forcing [...]
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November 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The president is being vilified by the Republican opposition for being a “radical”, despite governing so much from the center that his own party is beginning to worry about his presidency being too timid and not breakthrough enough to justify the massive groundswell of support for reform that swept him to power. If we look [...]
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November 2, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
After we published an article detailing the history of Lou Dobbs’ incendiary and distorted rhetoric against immigrants, along with allegations that Dobbs’ angry persecution of Hispanic Americans is inflaming racist sentiment, we received several responses from commenters seeking to defend Dobbs by repeating racist stereotypes in some cases too radical to publish here. Some suggested [...]
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November 1, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
When Rep. John McHugh was named Secretary of the Army, his seat was opened for a special election in an off-year, drawing Democrat, and war veteran, Bill Owens and moderate, and locally accomplished Republican Dierdre “Dede” Scozzafava. But Doug Hoffman, a businessman critical of her positions decided to launch a challenge, despite Scozzafava’s strong support [...]
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October 28, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Intellectual property rights are complicating and expanding at an unprecedented rate. Now, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, lawyers are writing contracts that require artists to sign over all potential distribution and marketing rights for their work, “across the universe” and “in perpetuity”.
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October 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The push to ensure full civil rights equality for gays marked a major milestone last week with the passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Though Republicans opposed the measure so aggressively they voted in large numbers against funding the national defense in order to deny the extension of federal hate crimes status to hate-based violent assaults on gay Americans, the bill passed in both houses of Congress and will be signed into law tomorrow by Pres. Obama.
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October 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Healthcare Reform :: Two Senate Democrats have pledged not to aid Republicans in blocking a full Senate vote in healthcare reform legislation. That moves the Democratic majority closer to the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster and bring the bill to a floor vote that will require only 50 votes plus one. This means the public option is now far mor likely to enter into the final legislation, as majorities in both houses support it.
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October 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
International efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow climate destabilization have been hampered by concerns that developing countries will not reduce their emissions aggressively enough, so leaving industrialized nations at a cost-competitive disadvantage. But evidence suggests a failure by developing nations to curb emissions expansion could pose the most significant threat to their political and economic stability.
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October 13, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
An attractive woman, 34-ish, drives a compact station-wagon, late model, over a still-cobblestone side street in the center of Madrid. She advances slowly, toward a red light, and talks on her cell phone. She seems equally concentrated on both activities. Driving an automobile is a potentially dangerous activity, in which one’s own life or the lives of others may be at risk, while a casual conversation is not so much that. Yet she seemed to give equal weight, her body, her manner, seemed to give equal weight to both activities.
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October 12, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
For nearly 30 years, you’ve advocated on behalf of those without a voice. That’s not easy. For despite the real gains that we’ve made, there’s still laws to change and there’s still hearts to open. There are still fellow citizens, perhaps neighbors, even loved ones — good and decent people — who hold fast to outworn arguments and old attitudes; who fail to see your families like their families; who would deny you the rights most Americans take for granted. And that’s painful and it’s heartbreaking. (Applause.) And yet you continue, leading by the force of the arguments you make, and by the power of the example that you set in your own lives — as parents and friends, as PTA members and church members, as advocates and leaders in your communities. And you’re making a difference.
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October 11, 2009 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
We are watching the national media backslide into the irresponsible primordial ooze of the “culture wars”, where the false caricatures of “family values conservatives” and “promiscuous progressives” (read ‘progressive’ into sexuality, social policy and spending) are pitted against each other in a nostalgic bid to recapture the oversimplified false stereotypes of the 1960s hotbed moment.
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October 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Clean, safe drinking water is scarce for over 3 billion people across the world. At least 1 billion literally never have access to clean, safe drinking water, putting them at constant risk of severe thirst-related ill health effects, infectious diseases or toxic contamination. Over 100 countries face either sporadic or chronic crisis-level problems related to clean water scarcity.
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September 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Apple’s long-awaited tablet computer, likely to run a version of Mac OS X and to merge the touchscreen stylings of the iPhone and iPod Touch with the full functionality of the MacBook line, is expected to be aimed at revolutionizing the way print media deliver text to readers. If true, the device would again put Apple at the cutting edge of a field where Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and others, are trying to set the standards for e-book distribution and licensing.
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September 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
In Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus’ advanced counter-insurgency strategy worked because a large key population, in Anbar province, wanted it to work. Petraeus, the leading counter-insurgency intellectual among the American military brass, was elevated to Iraq operations commander, because there was a need to use his know-how in community-building-linked counter-insurgency. The Anbar Awakening, however, was a grassroots, local movement among clergy, police and communities that wanted to push insurgents out.
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September 26, 2009 :: Mirya Dunaeva :: Comments Off
The government of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has been hard to characterize, seeming one day to be a mouthpiece for the bellicose policies of his predecessor, now PM, Vladimir Putin, and another day to be the first Russian leader ever to express interest in a uniform standard of global governance and cooperation, rooted in democratic principles. Now, Mr. Medvedev’s political stock has gained, as ongoing nuclear negotiations with the US, at Pres. Obama’s urging, have resulted in a unanimous Security Council counter-proliferation vote.
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September 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The UN General Assembly, which brings together every head of government in the world, to offer their country’s position on issues, their country’s demands regarding trade and conflict negotiations, their country’s hopes for a more harmonious world, this year truly grapples with issues of global consensus. Economic recovery, for many parts of the world, will require an unprecedented expansion of women’s rights and sustained attention to responsible environmental stewardship.
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September 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Healthcare costs have doubled over the last ten years. The primary drivers of this unrestrained cost inflation are massive uninsurance and dysfunctional profit-making schemes for private health insurers. The ‘market’, so-called, is not really a market, because instead of lowering costs and increasing quality, it has driven costs up while reducing quality. This is what the currently proposed reforms seek to correct.
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