Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays. In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.
I haven't made much progress on the items I promised to write about last week, but I will get around to them.
What I'm thinking about this week: How politics is becoming less and less important, and more impotent
to deal with matters that are really important. Our political systems
are really incapable of dealing with complex issues, and I'm not sure
they even want to -- there is more political capital in 'dumbing down'
issues to absurd, overly simple sound bites and slogans. Specifically,
I don't think the change in control of the US Congress will change
anything, other than slowing the rate at which it is getting worse. The
Democrats have neither the will nor the ability to start to grapple
with global warming, nor to get the US quickly out of Iraq as the civil
war deepens. The social and environmental issues that we need to
address on a massive, coordinated scale will not be addressed by them,
or any traditional political entity.
In Canada the political
situation continues to deteriorate: The right-wing Conservative
minority government is prostituting itself to the Quebec separatists to
get their continued support for its ideologically extreme platform. The
separatists don't care what wingnut policies the government imposes on
Canada -- their conditions for support are to enable them to
successfully launch a new separatist initiative, so they won't be bound
by any of those policies anyway. The government is publicly reneging on
Kyoto, undermining that feeble first step to dealing with global
warming and holding Canada up to international public ridicule. It is
supporting the expansion of Canada's Afghanistan role from futile
peacemaking to waging a devastating and unwinnable full-scale war with
the Taliban and local warlords. And now it is proposing some Bushian
social and economic policies, including tax cuts for the rich. One step
forward, two steps back.
If you wonder why I rarely write about
politics any more, that's why. It's just a distraction, a diversion
from matters that are really important, and from what the people, not
governments, can and must do.
This
week's lineup illustrates why the media need to do a better job of
making what's important interesting. Each of these items is, in my
opinion, very important, but none of them gets any attention in the
legacy media.
The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving: This week's New Yorker Online has four Thanksgiving-theme magazine covers
(subscribers, like me, only get one of them in hard copy -- excerpt
above) and one comic strip by the inimitable Chris Ware. If you want to
know why I listed 'cartoons' as one of the most effective means of
adding meaning to information, go read Chris' stuff. His work packs an
enormous emotional punch, as I've reported before.
Why Bush and Israel Won't Tolerate a Nuclear Iran: Also in this week's New Yorker is the latest salvo from Sy Hersh, describing why a cornered and hurt George Bush is even more dangerous than a 'popular' one.
Key messages: Israel considers a nuclear Iran a threat to its existence
even if that threat is never exercised -- it will discourage Jews from
living in Israel. And: Bush and his cabal see a nuclear Iran as a
threat to its power and an affront to its US-dominated world order.
Both will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it happening,
even if it requires rushed, covert, or possibly even illegal action.
Madison Avenue, Making the World Dissatisfied with What's Real and Possible: On YouTube, an explanation of how the beauty that you see in contemporary ads is entirely illusory, literally larger and better than real life. And an impossible standard for real people to live up to. Thanks to Rob Paterson for the link.
When 'Poor' and 'Sick' are Synonyms:
I've reported before on research that suggests that violence -- in a
country, region or city -- is directly proportionate to the wealth
disparity between rich and poor in that area. When everyone in poor,
there is little violence (no one to be angry at, envious of, or steal
from). Now a Canadian study says that this wealth disparity maps closely to a health disparity,
even in communities where rich and poor supposedly share the same
hospitals. If it's this bad in Canada, imagine what it's like in
countries like the US with much higher disparity indices.
The Father of Firefox Seeks to Bridge the Digital Divide: Blake Ross, one of the founders of Firefox, is creating a web-based meta-operating system that would allow users to navigate and manage their computer (all its content and applications) from a single 'web page'. This is along the lines of what I proposed a year ago as the means to allow people who are intimidated or just too busy to learn to use and share stuff on a PC to do so.
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
