Y0 Rolling Stone, Leonardo, read on.... AS THE WORLD BURNS.....

1. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns
2. As the World Burns

How Big Oil and Big Coal mounted one of the most aggressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming

JEFF GOODELL Posted Jan 06, 2010 8:15 AM

Join Leonardo DiCaprioand stand up for clean energy. This is Our Moment! Watch and Share now www.nrdcactionfund.org

This was supposed to be the transformative moment on global warming, the tipping point when America proved to the world that capitalism has a conscience, that we take the fate of the planet seriously. According to the script, Congress would pass a landmark bill committing the U.S. to deep cuts in carbon emissions. President Obama would then arrive in Copenhagen for the international climate summit, armed with the moral and political capital he needed to challenge the rest of the world to do the same. After all, wasn't this the kind of bold move the Norwegians were anticipating when they awarded Obama the Nobel Peace Prize?

As we now know, it didn't work out that way. Obama arrived in Copenhagen last month without any legislation committing the U.S. to reduce carbon pollution. Instead of reaching agreement on how to stop cooking the planet, the summit devolved into bickering over who bears the most blame for turning up the heat. The world once again missed an opportunity to avert disaster — and the delay is likely to have deadly consequence......for the rest, read on: 

1. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31633532/as_the_world_burns

REFLECTIONS on our Western World: Tweets + other Gleanings from Davos courtesy of the BBC this morning

MayorOfLondon tweets: Told the financial elite in Davos last night that the masters of the universe must become the servants of society

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QueenRania tweets: Was nice to see P[resident].Clinton. Heard abt his tireless effort & concern 4 people of Haiti. Stories of survival, hope the world must never forget 

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Development economist Jeffrey Sachs tells the Millennium Development Goals forum that business is better at getting things done than government when it comes to carrying out pledges

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The BBC's Tim Weber says: The sun is shining over Davos and the first breakfast briefings are under way. The millionaires were stomping on the dance floor at last night's party hosted by US consultancy McKinsey. On the way, one man said to me: "Seems there's still a bubble economy." Not sure whether he meant the party, or the bubble machine at the entrance.

THE ECONOMY?

John Kenneth Galbraith once said: "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."
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Here's a telling snippet from Armando Ianucci's lead story in the UK's Independent about the Chilcot panel currently investing the legitimacy of the US and UK going to "war' in Iraq:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/armando-iannucci-its-time-for-chilcots-team-to-flex-their-ageing-muscles-1882560.html

Talk to anyone who worked in Whitehall at the time and you hear far, far worse than anything that's emerged in an official inquiry. Researching my film In The Loop, a comedy about a British prime minister and a US president in the lead-up to an invasion of a Middle Eastern country, I talked to civil servants, advisers and diplomats in London and Washington. They told me tummy-churning stuff. Of Blair being so excited at being in the Oval Office he nearly hyperventilated. I heard of how doubts about the legality of invasion were the closest the British military had come to mutiny. Of how the Pentagon tried to freeze out the State Department by speaking at joint meetings entirely in acronyms that only Pentagon staff would understand. And of how Donald Rumsfeld weeded out from those going to help the reconstruction of Iraq anyone who could speak Arabic, on the grounds they would be pro-Arab. As a result, it took the Americans 18 months to realise that when marines held up the flat of their hand to oncoming cars to signal them to stop, they were actually using the Iraqi hand-signal for "come forward". That's why so many families in cars were shot.

Did someone say masters of the universe?

Connecting the Dots: The Tyranny of the Left Brain -- Master of Language

Connecting the dots between. . .the home page of the Media Education Foundation today pays tribute to the honorable, eloquent life of Howard Zinn.

http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?display=home

This quote came from there, too:

“When Confucius was asked what would be the first thing he would do if he were to lead the state, he said, ‘rectify the language.’ Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action. Words are used to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. Words must be so twisted as to justify an empire that has now ceased to exist, much less make sense. Is rectification of our system possible for us?”

– Gore Vidal

Their home-page added: “Rectification of the system,” in Gore Vidal’s prophetic words, has never seemed so urgent. The specters of global climate change, dwindling resources, and endless war now haunt the very future of the planet and human civilization. Our ability to transform these current realities will depend on whether we are willing and able to imagine other possible futures.

AND, the following excerpt from http://www.afsc.org - -the website of the American Friends Service Committee -- Quaker Values in Action:

In last night’s State of the Union, President Barack Obama proposed a three-year spending freeze on non-security discretionary spending beginning in 2011. Yet in just a week or two, when President Obama releases his FY11 budget, it is also expected that he will announce the need for a $33 billion war supplemental to pay for the troop escalation in Afghanistan.

Why is our president not only exempting military spending from the freeze, but also increasing the Pentagon’s budget? The military budget already roughly equals the rest of the world’s combined military spending, and our domestic programs and services are already vulnerable.

AND ASKING, WHY IS HE, INDEED?

The left-brain is master of language and 'logic'. Without more balance from the right -- brain that is -- (see Iain McGilchrist's The Master and the Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World) the rationale behind its voice of authority perpetuates war -- a subject always brilliantly articulated by Howard Zinn -- while it lulls us into the numbing, dumbing, comfort that for many is the relative ease of the Western World.

Meantime, thanks for the work of Quaker Values in Action: http://www.afsc.org...

Over and out on this day of more snow and the comfort of many blessings: a sleeping Scottie on the sofa, good soup heating on the stove where the boots are drying and the birds busy at the feeder, A case in point! I can't get rid of this underline. Oh well.

Prayers for peace and more power to Greg Mortensen and others of that ilk

Time to "Change the way we think about things....."

www.garalperovitz.com/

From press release for Gar Alperovitz'S

AMERICA BEYOND CAPITALISM

Myth #4: If we don’t like capitalism, our only other choice is socialism.

Reality: Capitalism and socialism are academic ideas that have never existed in their purest forms anywhere. A more useful way to think of it that we currently have a haphazard, corporate-run system, but it could just as easily be a democratic, community-run system. Citizens can have a role in which stores open up nearby, what incentives new factories get to move in, what kinds of new housing developments get built, and much much more, without limiting innovation or profits. There are thousands of employee-owned firms, neighborhood corporations, municipal enterprises, state investment strategies exploding at the grass roots level all over the nation.

Myth #5: We need to get there through incremental change.

Reality: We need to take a step back, and make major changes to the system. We need to alter the way we think about the size of our politics, the size of our bank accounts, and the size of our dreams. Many of the most successful new ideas discussed in America Beyond Capitalism are changing things one small step at time, but turning the many existing innovative pilot programs into a brighter future for all Americans will require wholesale changes in the way we think about things.

http://www.uvm.edu/giee/beyondenvironmentalism/alperovitz.htm

http://www.garalperovitz.com/UnjustDeserts.html

The solely profit-driven culture of the dominant left-brain -- as Alperovitz calls it, the "haphazard corporate-run system" -- doesn't cut it.

Thinking, acting, prioritizing, different is vital if humanity and most life on this Planet Earth is to survive, let alone to thrive. It's time for the more supple, contextual, big picture, proclivities of the right hemisphere of the brain (see Iain McGilchrist's The Master and the Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World) to be acknowledged and integrated into our understanding and actions, before it's too late. Neuroscience and developmental psychology show that LOVE, caring and empathy are not unquantifiable any more. These most human of qualities must be heeded by our left-brain institutions, and also by us. The many ways in which the best of humanity's inclinations are quantifiable is visible right now in our individual, collective, and international response to the tragedy in Haiti.

Remember "There but for the grace of god, go I." Donating to Partners in Health is one of the most effective ways to show that we care:

http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti

Thank you, Nan!

Symptoms of Our Lesser Angels

Save the elephant: ivory trading is set to resume

from Michael McCarthy, January 26, 2010

The Independent’s Environment Editor

.... there has been a notable upsurge in worldwide seizures of illegal ivory, and of elephant poaching. It is thought that the resumption of any trading creates a market into which illegal poached ivory can be laundered, thus boosting demand for it.

In some Central and West African countries this is now pushing elephant populations to extinction. Chad is thought to have only a few hundred elephants and Senegal and Liberia may have fewer than 10; Sierra Leone's last elephants were wiped out by poachers in November.

A Mindboggling Case in Point -- money trumping People and Planet

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/how-corporate-money-will-reshape-politics/

Simple and succinct, one of 500 plus comments from today's Room for Debate blog in the NYTimes

dee takemoto

kansas

January 21st, 2010

2:04 pm

This is, of course, catastrophic to our country. One wonders what the supreme court was thinking. History has proven that allowing rich and private individuals or corporations to control government has resulted in loss of democracy. It costs a great deal of money to run for office and this one Supreme Court Ruling has eliminated all those who do not have money or alignment with those who do from being in office. This in effect and reality gives those with money control and power over our country.

Applying Our Brains.....as if People and the Planet Mattered

from NEF: Economics as if People and the Planet Mattered

http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/great-transition

Humanity appears caught in a trap with no way out. ‘Business as usual’ is no longer

an option. However, halting and reversing our consumption of more and more

‘stuff’ appears likely to trigger a massive depression with serious unemployment and

poverty. This is certainly true if all we do is ‘apply the brakes’ without fundamentally

redesigning the whole economic system. We are facing a series of interlinked systemic

problems – consuming beyond our planetary limits; untenable inequality; growing

economic instability and a breakdown in the relationship between ‘more’ and ‘better’.

The only way to overcome these systemic problems is through a set of solutions which

themselves address the whole.

As NEF says, applying the brakes isn't enough. I say applying our brains, could be enough.

OUR BRAINS ARE US: SYMPTOMS OF AN OFF-KILTER, LEFT-BRAIN, CULTURE

We are OUR TRILLIONS OF INTERCONNECTED NEURONS 

500 trillion according to Dr Suzanne Zeedyk, Professor of Developmental Psychology, University of Dundee, Scotland --

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The need for professionals who understand the links between climate and society is acute, and grows ever more so as human activity alters the global atmosphere. The Columbia M.A. in Climate and Society gives you the knowledge and skills to meet this need.

Columbia Earth Institute

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Jelly fish used to be food for some salmon, and marine turtles too -- jelly fish dont have enemies any more-- proliferation of jelly fish can dominate food web and they can eat eggs of fish so prevent reestablishment of fishwill we be eating jelly fish? certain species are being eaten i sushi -- jelly fish salad -- it will become in processed form, probably DANIEL PAULI--CONSEQUENCES OF OVERFISHING,

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A countervailing thought: There is no remedy for love, but to love more. Henry Thoreau 1817 - 1862

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It is part of the merging of the social sciences,” Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, said of Monday’s awards. “Economics has been too isolated and these awards today are a sign of the greater enlightenment going around. We were too stuck on efficient markets and it was derailing our thinking.”

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HEALTH CARE, OR HEALTH INSURANCE BILL?
from Health Reform Watch -- 2009 salaries of CEO's

http://www.healthreformwatch.com/2009/05/20/health-insurance-ceos-total-compensation-in-2008/

• Aetna, Ronald A. Williams: $24,300,112
• Cigna, H. Edward Hanway: $12,236,740

• Coventry, Dale Wolf: $9,047,469
• Health Net, Jay Gellert: $4,425,355

• Humana, Michael McCallister: $4,764,309

• U. Health Group, Stephen J. Hemsley: $3,241,042
• Wellpoint, Angela Braly: $9,844,212

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Part of the wisdom of the Elders is to remind the world that we actually have universal values that are accepted by every government in the world and yet they are not being implemented.” Mary Robinson

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 The treacherous, unexplored areas of the world are not in continents or the seas; they are in the minds and hearts of men. ALLEN E CLAXTON

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“Good or bad, moral or immoral, people are going to make markets and trade via computers, and this is a natural area of financial engineers,” says Emanuel Derman, a professor at Columbia University and a former Wall Street quant. -- NYTimes

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