The mesas técnicas del agua (Technical Water Forum, MTAs) are a unique experiment in radical urban planning, whereby beneficiary communities map their own water and sanitation needs and help to plan infrastructure development, which is financed by the state. Thanks to heavy state investment in water and sanitation infrastructure and this participatory methodology, Venezuela now has 96% coverage in potable water, one of the highest rates in the region. Victor Díaz was part of a team of reformers who were working in HIDROCAPITAL (the state-owned and operated water and sanitation that serves the federal district of Caracas) under the mayorship of Aristóbulo Istúriz (1993-1996). Many of the original team members have since gone on to hold major positions in the Chávez government.
Our idea of human freedom, with its origins in Roman law, is permeated through and through with the institution of slavery. But its links to slavery twisted the meaning of "freedom" from an empowering notion of what it is to live with dignity in a society of equals to one of mastery and control. Understanding the history of the concept should help us to regain the first and fight the second of those notions.
Dr. Michael Parenti is an internationally-renowned lecturer and author, most recently of ‘The Face of Imperialism’. In this interview, he discusses the use of entertainment media as propaganda, and the relationship between government agencies and the production of such content. Later on in the talk, Dr. Parenti also provides his take on the media’s coverage of the Obama Administration’s escalating use of drones, and the recent death of Margaret Thatcher. A great listen as always so enjoy, spread the word, and peace!
John Carpenter’s They Live (1988), one of the neglected masterpieces of the Hollywood Left, is a true lesson in critique of ideology. It is the story of John Nada – Spanish for “nothing”! -, a homeless laborer who finds work on a Los Angeles construction site, but has no place to stay. One of the workers, Frank Armitage, takes him to spend the night at a local shantytown. While being shown around that night, he notices some odd behavior at a small church across the street. Investigating it the next day, he accidentally stumbles on several more boxes hidden in a secret compartment in a wall, full of sunglasses. When he later puts on a pair of the glasses for the first time, he notices that a publicity billboard now simply displays the word “OBEY,” while another billboard urges the viewer to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” He also sees that paper money bears the words “THIS IS YOUR GOD.” Additionally he soon discovers that many people are actually aliens who, when they realize he can see them for what they are, the police suddenly arrive. Nada escapes and returns to the construction site to talk over what he has discovered with Armitage, who is initially uninterested in his story. The two fight as Nada attempts to convince and then force him to put on the sunglasses. When he does, Armitage joins Nada and they get in contact with the group from the church, organizing resistance. At the group’s meeting they learn that the alien’s primary method of control is a signal being sent out on television, which is why the general public cannot see the aliens for what they are. In the final battle, after destroying the broadcasting antenna, Nada is mortally wounded; as his last dying act, he gives the aliens the finger. With the signal now missing, people are startled to find the aliens in their midst.
If there were an easy way to share your apartment or house with unknown but credible strangers while you were out of town, would you? How about sharing your office space, or your car? Your power tools, your printer?
http://www.ted.com Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.
Beyond Green Economy Conference - Copenhagen 2013 (RT @OccupyDenmark: Og så er vi igang med dagens første oplæg, Ole Bjerg & Charles Eisenstein "On the Origin of Money"
Guerrilla farmers planted thousands of veggie seedlings over the weekend, only to see them plowed over Monday by the University of California. Within hours, the activists returned.
Today the value of Bitcoin and other digital currencies is more volatile than Americans are used to. But with Amazon and eBay looking at accepting them, that could change.
We can’t see the future, yet we’re forced keep up with change at an ever-increasing rate. To guide their decisions, businesses develop visions about the world as it will be, or atheories of a believable future.
Humans see the world through largely unconscious frames that determine what we believe our nature to be and therefore what we believe to be possible. To address our biggest global challenges, we can shed this non-ecological mental map—what the author calls “scarcity-mind”—based in lack and fear. Locked in scarcity-mind, we remain blind to our own power and end up creating together a world that none of us, as individuals, would choose. But humans can actually change how we see, moving from a frame of lack and limits to one of alignment with nature. Based on research in neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology, this article explores a world seen with the emergent “eco-mind” in which possibility is all around us. Thinking like an ecosystem, no one is bereft of power. (Abstract from the Journal website)
Christians are increasingly criticized in America for their backward views. On all things fromsame-sex marriage to contraception, major Christian factions seem to be trapped just a few decades behind the rest of America. While odd social positions may make Christians seem clueless and out of touch, claims that Christians ignore science are even more damning. How can intelligent, successful people subscribe so heavily to a value system based on superstition and myth?
An essay describing the crisis for global society brought about by the information revolution and proposing a possible solution through a carefully drafted constitution of information.
In case you haven’t noticed…. the world as we once knew it has changed… We are now capable of viewing the world through others eyes from sharing information/videos/pictures etc… online…. What we call a Social Revolution!
Chomsky has been known to vigorously defend and debate his views and opinions, in philosophy, linguistics, and politics. He has had notable debates with Jean Piaget, Michel Foucault, William F. Buckley, Jr., Christopher Hitchens, George Lakoff, Richard Perle, Hilary Putnam, Willard Quine, and Alan Dershowitz, to name a few. In response to his speaking style being criticized as boring, Chomsky said that "I'm a boring speaker and I like it that way.... I doubt that people are attracted to whatever the persona is.... People are interested in the issues, and they're interested in the issues because they are important." "We don't want to be swayed by superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on."
Catalonia has adopted a declaration of sovereignty. To those of us who lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union, this is very much deja vu. Everything here began exactly the same way.
http://www.ted.com Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.
http://www.ted.com Why do societies fail? With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond talks about the signs that collapse is near, and how -- if we see it in time -- we can prevent it.
The 19th-century thinker identified exploitation and questioned the automatic self-regulation of a capitalist economy. And, says Marx biographer Jonathan Sperber, there's mo
We do not only think with our brain, but with our whole body. Thinking must be seen, not as an isolated activity (“the ghost in the machine”) but as part of the whole human experience, of human sensuous activity and interaction with the world and with other people. It must be seen as part of this complex process of permanent interaction, not as an isolated activity that is mechanically juxtaposed to it.
When Coal Is Stupid activists blockaded a coal shipment in New England, some commenters immediately leveled accusations of hypocrisy based on the tenuous notion that these environmentalists' own reliance on fossil fuels meant that their protest at the excesses of Big Coal were simply a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
One of the most significant impediments to positive social change is the entrenched power of market-fundamentalism as an economic and political paradigm. The prevailing dogma is that only a scheme of individual self-interest, expansive individual property rights, market exchange and globalized free trade can advance human well-being. This view has increasingly been called into question as the predatory dynamics of the market economy became clear and as its threats to the biosphere have become more acute.
ROMAN Catholic priest-cum-politician Frank Bwalya has been roundly condemned for announcing that he would allow homosexuality if voted as Republican President in 2016.
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