The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Imagining Attractive Global Governance
Questioning possibilities and constraints of well-boundedness
Introduction
Pattern of governance-related questions
Representing boundaries to governance (constrained by other boundaries)
Refinement through disciplinary perspectives and cognitive preferences
Reframing sets of injunctions through questions
Dynamic representation of proposals for principled global governance
References
See Also:
Huh?
$7.25 an hour is not a living wage
By Richard Trumka and Christine Owens
CNN, December 2, 2013
Editor's note: Richard Trumka is president of the AFL-CIO. Christine Owens is executive director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for lower-wage workers.
(CNN) — For the first time since the Great Depression, the U.S. Census Bureau tells us, middle-class family incomes have lost ground for more than a decade.
The sad truth is that the rewards for productivity and hard work such as health care coverage, retirement security, opportunity — rewards that used to make America's workers “middle class” — are on the rocks.
All the wage increases over the past 15 years have gone to the wealthiest 10%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. All of them. And almost all, 95%, of the income gains from 2009 to 2012, the first three years of recovery from the Great Recession, went to the very richest 1%.
Something else has happened, too. The bottom has fallen out of America's wage floor. And the erosion of the minimum wage has lowered pay and working standards for all of us.
The New Politics of the 21st Century: Global Resistance and Rising Anarchism
A number of occurrences have taken place of the past 13 years since the rise of the new millennium; we have seen and are seeing the rise of popular movements all over the world and a resistance to the forces of imperialism, capitalism, and subjugation, from the most recent Arab Spring to the world’s largest coordinated anti-war protest in history with the global protests against the Iraq War[1], to the rise of the Occupy Movement and the rise of indigenous resistance as can be seen in the Idle No More campaign of Canada’s First Nations population. What we seeing around the world is a global resistance that, in some cases, has anarchist undercurrents. We are witnessing the new politics of the 21st century.
While many movements such as the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring had anarchists and anarchist influences within them, anarchism as a political philosophy is quite misunderstood and some time should be taken to understand it.
Continue reading “4th Media: We Don't Make This Stuff Up! — Occupy as a Form of Rising Anarchism”
BIG IDEAS: China Fixated on the Moon
BIG IDEAS: PhD Should be PSD (Problem-Solving Degree)
ETHICS: Destruction of the US Information Agency — and US Diplomacy
ETHICS: UK Targets Guardian Over Leaks
SURVEY: Risks of State-Led Mass Killings in 2014
THREAT: 10 Guns, Bombs, and Weapons You Can Build at the Airport
THREAT: 10 Top Causes of Death in High Income Countries
THREAT: 1,100 European Fighters Deported from Turkey
THREAT: 1500 European Fighters Deported from Turkey
THREAT: “Five Eyes” (AU CA NZ UK US) Pooling Data on Ordinary Citizens
THREAT: Israeli Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Units Active in Damascus Battles
THREAT: Syria's Islamist Jihaddist Groups
Turn to Circa for News Tidbits
Is the effort to know and understand what is happening in this huge, complex world just too much to squeeze into the day? Lifehacker points us to another concession to the modern reader in, “Circa News Dishes Out Bite-Sized News Bits to Keep You up to Date.” The app, available for both iPhones and Android-based devices, lets users quickly catch up with news stories they are interested in. Well, the broad strokes, anyway. Writer Thorin Klosowski summarizes:
“Circa is a curated list of news on a variety of topics. It has its own editorial team that uses a wide variety of sources, and those sources are collated into very quick, short news bits with just the essential facts, quotes, or photos about each topic. If you find a story interesting, you can click the follow button and Circa will point you to new information when it’s available. It’s by no means enough information for serious news junkies, but if you’re looking to keep up with what’s happening in the world while waiting in line for a cup of coffee, Circa News is a worth a look.”
I see how this can have its uses. I just hope users will, when they have a little more time and attention, turn to the more comprehensive articles on their subjects of interest. After all, most folks realize that there is more to every story than can be absorbed while waiting for a latte to be prepared. Right?
Cynthia Murrell, December 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
With tens of thousands of young men and women suffering from PTSD, I find a story like this completely immoral. It is a trend and, after I read it, I thought how many of these wounded warriors will face an even more painful and complicated future with “Christians” like this.
Right-Wing Evangelicals Claim ‘Good Christians' Can't Get PTSD
ROB SHRYOCK – AlterNet (U.S.)
This story suggests, on good evidence, that there may be another major financial crisis just down the timeline resulting from the fact that the Obama Administration did not choose to prosecute and exercise appropriate oversight over the malfeasance of the financial industry. Click through to see the excellent maps which will aid your understanding of these issues.
How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme-Again
LAURA GOTTESDIENER – Mother Jones
How can a democracy possibly survive when 94 per cent of the citizens of the country have nothing but contempt for the Congress. ‘Only 10 percent of Democrats, 7 percent of Republicans, and 3 percent of independents approve of Congress.”
New Low for Congress: Just 6 Percent Approve, Finally Lower Than Car Salespeople
PAUL BEDARD – The Washington ExaminerPhi Beta Iota: see also 2008 Legitimate Grievances (US Citizens versus US Government) ELECTION 2008 – Lipstick on the Pig (Full Text Online for Google Translate)
A great deal of the misery being caused in the U.S. today traces back to these six people whose exorbitant wealth allows them to project their limitations and pathologies on the entire country.
Six of the Top Ten US Billionaires Are Kochs and Waltons
Truthout
This is part of the growing trend of anti-Americanism for which we have no one but ourselves to blame.
World Fights Back Against the Biggest Brother in History
SONALI KOLHATKAR – TruthdigPhi Beta Iota: see also 2008 Legitimate Grievances (Foreign vs USA) ELECTION 2008 – Lipstick on the Pig (Full Text Online for Google Translate)
The Demonetization Agenda – replacing transactions with social relations
Republished from Stefan Meretz:
“The question of how we deal with and act within the given monetary environment is crucial for the commons movement, since the monetary logic and the commons logic are opposites. Contrary to the claims of mainstream economics, money is not neutral or simply an informational means for mediating transactions. Thus, replacing currencies with alternative currencies of different designs basically does not change the underlying monetary logic. It amounts to changing the tools while keeping the workshop.
The core element of the monetary logic is equivalent exchange and a codified set of social power relationships. It demands that »you get something only if you give something back.« This underlying logic creates relationships of guilt and subordination, as anthropologist David Graeber has convincingly shown in his history of credit over the course of human history.
The demonetization approach aims at reducing the necessity of using money both within our own commons relations and with respect to the outside »normal« market logic. It aims at strengthening social relationships instead of improving transactions, as Silke Helfrich has put it. While transactions always enforce direct reciprocities that link giving with taking, commons is about commoning – a more open, flexible system for freely determining the rules of interaction and distribution of the wealth we produce.
Continue reading “Jean Lievens: Demonetization – Replacing Transactions with Social Relationships”
