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March 18, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Great Recession has begun to push through to basic public services that affect us all. Education funding has dried up and across the country, cities facing major budget shortfalls are taking the radical step of shutting down schools in order to address the budget crisis.
March 2, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
“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.
February 28, 2010 :: Riga Listin :: No Comment Yet
The media are exploding with reports that explicitly declare that “the public opposes the current healthcare reform bills” passed by both houses of Congress. In fact, this is patently false, and any of the major polls on the subject bear this out, if one devotes the time necessary to understand the numbers. It is inaccurate to say “the public opposes”, because there is not one uniform majority of Americans opposing a specific set of initiatives in the pending reforms.
February 28, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Republican House minority whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) said today on Meet the Press that Republicans want healthcare reform, but they favor a “common-sense, modest, incremental approach”. The statement is sly and problematic: Cantor wants to imply that incremental is responsible, playing on the emotional fetish that brings many to conservative politics, but he is simply fudging the facts and reframing an historically irresponsible approach in order to attack the president. Incremental fixes to the pervasive healthcare crisis have so far failed to reverse the trend toward ever-higher costs and ever-less-competent insurers.
February 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
‘Psychic numbing’ is a relatively new term, assigned to the phenomenon which shows people tend to feel less urgent compassion, and tend to give less, when the suffering in question is shown to be more systemic and more pervasive, or affecting larger numbers of people. Some psychologists believe it is linked to our intuitive sense that if one suffers alone, the suffering is worse, but if one is accompanied, there might be some security in numbers, not just emotionally, but practically.
February 20, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In response to a recent article, explaining that record snowfall in certain places does not equate to a proof that global warming is not happening, but rather, that global warming is an apt explanation for why the record snowfalls would occur there, a number of climate skeptics chose to attack certain points in the piece, using what they take to be established science. In some cases, the evidence cited was simply misrepresented or misinterpreted, according to the wishes of the skeptics themselves.
February 16, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 7 Comments
Climate-science skeptics have been gleeful in their assault on climate change theory, the hard research and tens of thousands of scientists behind it and the very concept of human responsibility to the environment, because there has been snowfall. In a stunning display of ignorance, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) openly claimed the record snows that hit Washington, DC, were evidence there was in fact no climate change, that the whole idea is just a myth.
February 15, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 6.9 million people in 12 years. No war has cost more innocent lives since World War II, and the level of extreme violence, brutality against women, and even the enslavement of families and villages, appears to be escalating. The world’s attention has yet to fully focus on the plight of the Congolese civilians living in a state of perpetual extreme crisis day after day.
February 14, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There were three individuals convicted by the Bush-Cheney administration in military courts, and two of them are currently free and walking the street. There have been hundreds of individuals convicted on terrorism charges in civilian criminal courts, over the last three administrations, the current one included, and every one of those convictions has been upheld, and every one of those terrorists is behind bars today.
February 14, 2010 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
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.
February 12, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC / DR Congo) has claimed an estimated 6.9 million lives since 1998. The International Rescue Committee has estimated, through a peer-reviewed study, that an average of 45,000 people are dying every month as a result of the ongoing conflict in the eastern DRC. This makes the Congo war by far the deadliest war since World War II, though there is shockingly little energy in the international community to act to stop it.
February 12, 2010 :: Webb Tisch :: No Comment Yet
NBC’s chief Pentagon corresondent Jim Miklaszewski told MSNBC this morning that in his opinion military trials are “more reliable” in terms of the outcomes they produce. The comment was perhaps an unwelcome introduction of Constitutional questions into the debate over whether to try accused 9/11 terrorist conspirators in a civilian criminal court or before a military tribunal.
February 12, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: No Comment Yet
Let down your guard for five seconds, and you will likely find some emanation of the pseudo-conservative hostility market explaining that Pres. Obama is deliberately plotting the destruction of the United States of America, that his administration is lazy and incompetent, and that terrorists are about to seize control of the homeland. Those propagandists, who expect you will not notice their absurd claims are in fact lies, are the ones who are, very deliberately, trying to ruin America.
February 6, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 6 Comments
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has been revealed to be placing a “blanket hold” on 70 of Pres. Obama’s nominees, while demanding an estimated $40 billion in earmarks for his state. The revelation, published yesterday in CongressDaily, is being called one of the most flagrant examples of political corruption in recent memory. According to CongressDaily’s reporting, “While holds are frequent, Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal.”
February 2, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There is talk in the House of Representatives that a “reconciliation patch” could allow the US Senate to pass a small amendment to the Senate healthcare bill, in connection with a budget reconciliation measure, could allow the Senate to provide the House with an overall bill that could pass the House of Representatives. If the Senate is able to make those necessary adjustments, there could be a comprehensive healthcare reform package passed and signed into law in the coming weeks.
February 1, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
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.
January 29, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Democratic party’s biggest communicational deficit is not about the virtues of its policies, but the nature of its founding ideal: “democrat” means one who favors government of, by, and for the people. The absurd and puerile experiment in linguistic brainwashing in which the Republican party is now uniformly engaged —calling the Democratic party (the party of the Democrats) the “Democrat party” in hopes of making the word sound alien and remote— is nothing more than an attempt to rob ordinary Americans of their access to a government that answers to them: Democrats need to be out there saying so every day.
January 28, 2010 :: Denver Lessing :: 4 Comments
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito last night revealed how deeply unfit he is to serve on the nation’s highest court. When Pres. Obama made the entirely factual statements that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC reversed a century of precedent on campaign finance regulation and would allow foreign corporations to spend money to influence US elections, Alito was seen shaking his head, grimmacing and mouthing something like “simply not true”. While it’s well documented how widely Obama —a Constitutional law scholar— and Alito differ on legal philosophy, Alito crossed a line with his reaction.
January 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama’s first official State of the Union address was an impassioned call to action, and something of a civics lesson. He reprimanded both parties in Congress, admonishing Democrats not to “run for the hills” and reminding Republicans that if they claim a leadership role by obstructing legislation, then they have an obligation to the public to participate in the process. The address artfully positioned Obama’s agenda astride the political center, leaving the Republicans little room in the center from which to attack his policies.
January 26, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Apple tablet should be an intensely user-friendly device that achieves a paradigm shift in the way we deal with information. That sounds big, but Apple is well-equipped to do this, even by just making a few key upgrades to what it has already made possible with its laptops and touch-sensitive handhelds.
January 24, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The credit crisis of 2008, and the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and may or may not still be operational, were both set in motion by a series of risky misrepresentations of value and earning potential that led the world’s wealthiest banks into shoddy investments. By October 2008, George W. Bush’s own “Red October”, the financial system was paralyzed, and only massive government investment would save Wall Street’s most powerful institutions from collapse. The big banks were said to be “too big to fail” (TBTF).
January 23, 2010 :: Webb Tisch :: One Comment
The Republican party is jubilant about the victory of state Senator Scott Brown, in the race to take over the United States Senate seat held for nearly half a century by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA). And they should be jubilant. Kennedy was in many ways the de facto leader of the Democratic party for much of that time, and his untiring defense of liberal principles of social justice and economic fairness were a thorn in the side of Republicans throughout. But the odd thing is that suddenly, the Republicans are arguing that where goes Massachusetts, so goes the nation. Are they kidding?
January 22, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The ONLY way to make any argument of the kind that alleges the economic difficulties of 2009 are Obama’s fault is to operate absolutely and without exception on the premise that George W. Bush left Obama with a perfectly healthy, well-oiled functioning economy and zero debt. In fact, not only is that rosy picture not the case; the polar opposite is true: Barack Obama took office while the United States was experiencing its worst economic decline since the Great Depression, including near total paralysis of the banking system, unprecedented government debt, and an ethically deficient backlog of hidden borrowing that would cause deficits to escalate by as much as 1,000% in just one decade.
January 22, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The Supreme Court of the United States has taken a special interest in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which regards the claim that campaign finance regulations limiting the amount an entity can donate to a political party are an infringement on freedom of speech. Yesterday, the Court issued a 5-4 ruling against those campaign funding limits that is now expected to unleash a wave of virtually unlimited corporate funding for political campaigns. Numerous observers have claimed the integrity of American elections would be threatened.
January 20, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
We are hearing some of the most long-faced, long-winded, wet-blanket commentary about American politics, the prospects for far-reaching and much-needed reform, and the charisma and talent of Barack Obama. We are hearing so much of it, in fact, it seems to be the latest fashion trend, with conservatives, liberals, moderates and extremists, all apparently gleeful about having a trend to latch onto, if about nothing else. People are reportedly “weary” and “worried”; polls are showing, or claim to show, that “Americans” —we should remember to ask if polls really are able to define the zeitgeist for us all, or if they only pretend to— think Pres. Obama has “tried to do too much”.
January 18, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The bottleneck problem is center stage, as the volume of aid appears to outpace the remaining transport infrastructure for getting it where it needs to go. Today, Haitian authorities have complained there may be too exclusive a focus on the capital Port-au-Prince, causing some heavily devastated population centers to be left unattended, by comparison.
January 14, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The disaster response for the Haitian earthquake has been swift and coordinated, channeling massive international resources to the affected area. But the logistics of deploying the resources, personnel and technology needed to deliver comprehensive disaster assistance, are beyond complicated, with roads and transport overwhelmed, and means of contacting the wounded almost non-existent.
January 11, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Despite the widespread debate in the US, China and other heavily coal-burning countries, about the degree to which “clean coal” can be a solution to the daunting challenge of how to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming and climate destabilization, the technology does not yet exist. There are no clean coal plants in the US.
January 9, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
It is a serious question whether distance learning holds virtues that are ignored due to a prejudice that holds that physical presence of the instructor is necessary for learning. Clearly, in some cases, this is entirely untrue, and there may be an over-emphasis in some circles on the idea of physical presence as the metaphysical prerequisite to consider that learning is occurring. However, it is not clear that physical presence and phonocentrism —emphasis on the spoken word as the more effective mode of instruction— amount to the same “fixation”, when it comes to the question of how best to communicate knowledge.
January 9, 2010 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been a relentless defender of the most aggressive tacts used during the Bush era to combat terrorism. The word aggressive applies to the attitude, of course, not the thoroughgoing nature or effectiveness of those policies. He is now attacking Pres. Obama for his response to the alleged terror plot that involved a Christmas Day bombing over Detroit, which was foiled. Yet Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, has called Cheney’s criticism unfair, and says Obama’s response has been “strong” and “decisive”.
January 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
After decades of environmental scientists seeking to raise awareness about the detrimental impacts of burning ever more carbon-based fuels, the Copenhagen Accord shows a global willingness to recognize the gravity of the issue and to take concrete —if as yet unnamed— policy actions to address the challenges of coming decades.
January 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There is a fundamental difference between the logic of military tribunals for battlefield captures and the Constitutional order of criminal prosecution and due process: the Constitutional criminal justice system is designed to deal with people who violate laws; military tribunals are meant to be an ad-hoc legal variation of that standard, reserved for representatives of enemy states that violate the laws of war in a battlefield setting. By inveighing against the US criminal justice system’s ability to handle terror prosecutions, the Republican party is not only actively promoting lies, but working to elevate Al Qaeda to the status of a legitimate, sovereign government.
January 7, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In a year when political and economic reporting has focused on ideology, obstruction, recession and unemployment, the administration of Pres. Barack Obama has been hard at work on major reforms that are designed to not only speed recovery but to secure the economy against future threats. One of the most vital areas of policy reform, as noted by Obama himself just yesterday, is the focus on promoting and expanding opportunity in education. The president’s proposal to reform the system for organizing and distributing student loans may be one of the most significant pro-education policy reforms in a generation.
January 6, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Democratic senators Chris Dodd (CT) and Byron Dorgan (ND) have announced they will not run for re-election after their current term is up, later this year. The Democratic governor of Colorado, Bill Ritter, Jr., has also announced he will not seek a second term, opening up the Democratic field in the race for the party’s 2010 nomination. The lieutenant governor of Michigan, John Cherry, has also withdrawn from the race to replace Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm.
January 5, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
At the end of Barack Obama’s first year in office, there is controversy over the nature and extent of his accomplishments, and even some allies and supporters appear to have forgotten the atmosphere of multidirectional crisis in which Obama took office. What’s more, the steady decline in Obama’s approval ratings appears to follow very closely a shift in media reporting away from reporting facts and back to the hyper-commentary style of the run-up to the Iraq war, an atmosphere in which conservative political propaganda fares better than the facts of deliberative action.
January 4, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
En mesa redonda, en el programa 59 segundos de la TVE, un panel de periodistas y analistas políticos debaten los méritos y desafíos del primer año del mandato de Barack Obama, presidente de Estados Unidos. Entre las complicaciones, debaten las expectativas, tal vez más globales y desafiantes que las que encontró ningún otro presidente al llegar al poder, y la agresiva resistencia de sus contrincantes políticos a la ética del diálogo y de la política colaborativa.
January 4, 2010 :: Carmen Visna :: No Comment Yet
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.
January 3, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Continuing our series on the evolutions that can be expected over the coming decade, we look at new directions in particle physics, media technologies that are enabling not only greater freedom, but a new communicative paradigm which will, in part, help steer us to the great discoveries of this moment in history, and a vital new understanding of global economic patterns, which will revolutionize the way governments around the world plan for domestic spending and trade policy.
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.
December 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
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.
December 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
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.
December 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
China may be fast moving toward global superpower status, with rates of industrialization and wealth-creation nearly unprecedented in human history. But the ancient imperial state still faces pervasive problems of regional and ethnic disharmony and multiple separatist movements intent on breaking up the map of the modern political state. To hold together, Beijing will have to democratize public and private institutions at a rapid pace and in a credible way.
December 29, 2009 :: Anjika Sridhar :: One Comment
Aung San Suu Kyi, the jailed Burmese pro-democracy opposition leader, was recently granted visitation rights to meet with three aging leaders of her National League for Democracy. The meeting marked the highest-level contact she has had with her party in years, even as the Burmese junta prepares to clamp down on pro-democracy elements ahead of the first nationwide election since her victory —never realized by taking office— in 1990. Suu Kyi has instead spent most of the last two decades under house arrest.
December 28, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Sandia National Laboratories have achieved a landmark breakthrough in solar-voltaic power-generation technology. The snowflake-like “solar glitter” uses 100 times less material to produce the same amount of electricity as today’s standard 6-inch square solar cells. This achievement of ultra-miniaturization now has the potential to move solar-voltaic power generation to the forefront of the clean energy revolution, and help speed the transition away from carbon-based combustible fuels.
December 24, 2009 :: Evelyn Winston Perez :: No Comment Yet
The Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri died this past weekend, opening a period of seven days of mourning for one of the nation’s most influential clerics. The seventh day of mourning happens to coincide with the Shi’a holy day of atonement, Ashura. Ashura marks the killing of Hossein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed, by the Caliph Yazid, in the year 680. Yazid is often portrayed as a tyrannical ruler in Shi’a tradition, and the festival lends itself to an expression of the very anti-dictatorship language used by the reformist opposition.
December 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
China has outraged political and diplomatic leaders around the world by aggressively blocking agreement on hard targets for binding emissions cuts, refusing even to agree to any accord that would include mention of other nations’ specific cuts. One observer told the BBC that he observed China, India and Saudi Arabia as the key powers working to prevent binding targets from being adopted, but China was the most immovable opponent to a binding agreement.
December 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama took office in the midst of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with two wars in Asia and skyrocketing unemployment, record numbers of bankruptcies, a financial services industry in a state of near total paralysis and/or collapse, and declining federal revenues with which to alleviate the fast-rising federal budget deficit. Not one of those aspects of life in 2009 America was caused by anything Barack Obama did before or after assuming the presidency. Yet the new game in Washington, DC, is blaming Obama for everything everyone else failed to do, both before and after he assumed the presidency.
December 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
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.
December 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party is now taking a political position radically opposed to their entire philosophical and strategic posture during the healthcare debate. Upset to learn that Sen. Ben Nelson may have won special funding guarantees to help his state provide funding for Medicaid in an economic climate where the state is facing record budget shortfalls and may have to cut funding, Sen. Lindsey Graham is now demanding full federal funding for his state’s Medicaid program. Republicans have jumped on the bandwagon and are now demanding that Medicaid funding for their states be expanded as well.
December 22, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is alleging “back-room dealmaking” and what he believes to be a misuse of office in Sen. Ben Nelson’s securing additional federal funding for his state’s Medicaid program, which is facing a severe budget shortfall. He wants the attorney general of his state to investigate whether anything unconstitutional was done in the dealmaking process. But Graham was part of numerous “dealmaking” sessions in the Bush-era Senate, in which corruption was not only alleged but was more or less publicly demonstrable.
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