Your mum

2005-12-26T08:20:00.000-08:00

"The Chainsaws, the Chainsaws - they cut down all the trees. The Pixies, the Pixies, trashed their JCBs." 1

1. Do or Die, Issue Ten

2005-12-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

"To attempt to seriously change the world is to put realismin the attic" 1

1. Do or Die, Issue Ten

2005-12-24T13:23:00.000-08:00

"God save our yobs, we've demonised our future. Hoodies, yob, youth" 1

1. ???

2005-12-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

"Everything that lives is holy but most of us are trying to escape our beautiful world." 1

1. William Blake

2005-11-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger; it works the same in any country" 1

1. Hermann Goering.

2005-11-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

"A nation that oppresses anther cannot itself be free" 1

1. Karl Marx

2005-10-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

"There is no Wealth but Life" 1

1. John Ruskin.

Peak Oil

2005-10-03T04:52:00.000-07:00

"The 1970s saw the first and second world oil crises. What we are talking about now is the third and final, crisis." 1

1. Chris Skrebowski, ???

We're animals ina zoo

2005-10-03T04:47:00.000-07:00

"It's like we're animals in a zoo...It's not that we're not surviving. You kow animals in a zoo often adapt and they live long lives. And, suprisingly, if you open the gates they often prefer the zoo, because that's where they've been born. But that doesn't mean you have a full accopunt of what an animal's life can be like, if it's fully thriving as the species can." 1

1. Peter Kahn, ???

2005-10-03T04:24:00.000-07:00

"Correlation ain't causation" 1

1. Unknown.

2005-08-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

"Follow the money: A scientific consensus should be treated with scepticism if the consensus happens to suit interestes of the rich and powerful."

2005-08-01T09:32:00.000-07:00

"Thw collapse of the global market place would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime." 1

1. George Soros.

2005-07-20T14:57:00.000-07:00

"It's not about how much more we can give, so much as how much less we can take." 1

1. Vandana Shiva, July 2005. Ecologist.

As good as it gets?

2005-07-14T03:19:00.000-07:00

No man "comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted or spurred to ride him" 1

"Under capitalism the strong are booted and spurred to ride the weak" 2

"In truth, the capitalist democracies of the 21st centuary perpetrate a double fraud...partly because the inequalities that are inseperable from capitalism are bound to spill over from the economy into the polity, and partly because the citizenry does not, in any serious sense, control the political class that is supposed to be its agent."

1. Richard Rumbold.

2. David Marquand, 27th June 2005. As good as it gets? New Statesman.

Social Justice - Equality of opportunity and personal responsibility

2005-07-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

"If we are serious about equality of opportunity, he contends, we need to be serious about eradicating, all the influences that social class, race and family background have on life chances...Taking equality of opportunity seriously actually invloves keeping outcomes within a narrow range...In policy terms this would entail a huge expansio of schemes such as Sure Start...childcare...education...public health initiatives...food...capital grants to young people and a universal basic income." 1

1. Martin O'Neill, 11 July 2005. Only fair, New Statesman.

2005-07-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

"Debt, unfair terms of trade and poverty are not causes of Africa’s problems but symptoms. The cause is power: the ability of the G8 nations and their corporations to run other people’s lives." 1

1. Monbiot, 09/07/2005.

2005-06-30T01:41:00.000-07:00

Opposition unites, proposition divides.

2005-06-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

"Be quick to learn and slow to judge" 1

1. Unknown

2005-06-24T01:12:00.000-07:00

"It's ok to take a step backward when you'er standing on the edge of a cliff" 1

1. Unknown.

2005-06-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

"what sort of world is it, he asks, where we are told to believe that 'bombing is security', tht 'racism is crime fighting', that 'sweatshops are efficiency'? 'When things are this absurd' he says, 'we forget what evil is'. 1

1. Reverent Billy, June 2005. The Ecologist.

2005-06-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

"We subsidise every cow in the EU by $2.50 a day and force the vast majority of peasants in Africa and Asia off their land to live on less than $1 a day." 1

1. Ziauddin Sardar, December 2005. Terrorists R US, Adbusters.

2005-06-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

"the ledger is not complete until all the externalities are published" 1

1. Todd Boyle Deceber 2005, Adbusters.

2005-06-23T09:41:00.000-07:00

"One day, I went fishing with Dad. As I was walking along behind him I was dragging my spear on the beach which was leaving a long line behind me. HE told me to stop doing that. HE continued telling me that if I made a mark, or dig, with no reason at all, I've been hurting the bones of the traditional people of tht land. We must only dig and make marks on the ground when we perform or gather food." 1

1. Galarrwuy Yunupingu, son of the Austrailian Aboriginal artist Mungurrawuy

2005-06-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

"We the people must win control f society's most powerful means of expression. Without the ability to share our ideas and opinions, we cannot debate issues of make informed decisions." 1

1. Adbusters, Let's fight for a new human right

2005-06-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

"[For the] Zapatistas...solidarity meant people making their own revlutions in ways which were relevant to their own lives. They argued that the fight for a new world, which would embrace the dignity of all, would need to be plural and diverse. Indeed was a fight for a world in which many worlds were possible." 1

1. Days of Dissent, The emergence of a global movement.

2005-06-23T09:31:00.000-07:00

"False common interests weaken us, blur things and benefit the opponent - this is why they should be separated by space time and form of action." 1

1. Days of Dissent, We will disrupt this conference.

John Gray - ideas

2005-06-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

"What does economic development mean at a time when the way of affluent societies is ceasing to be sustainable? IF scarcity of energy is going to shape our future, should we not be reinventing our cities as places of high-density living, where people can live o nfoot? Does a middle-ranking country such as Britain need a new generation of nuclear weapons?" 1

1. John Gray, 6 June 2005. NS, Essay.

Millennium Assessment

2005-05-16T01:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/Article.aspx?id=60

Ecological Politics

2005-05-16T01:46:00.000-07:00

"...questioning the desirability of continuous economic growth, and the idea that nature is a resource that can be "conquered". Ecological ethics invovle the reduction of human impact on the planet and its resources, a balanced economy instead of a growth based economy, and support for individual creativity, craftsmanship, local cultures and cooperation in place of conformity, homogenity, mass production and competition. A new Ecology Party would work for a change in value...to work with the grain of the natural world, instead of against it as at present." 1

1. Aidan Ranking, May 2005, The Ecologist.

Can't eat money

2005-04-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

"Only when the last tree has died and
The last river has been poisoned and
The last fish has been caught,
Will we realise that
We cannot eat money" 1

1. 19th Century Cree Indian

2005-04-18T05:57:00.000-07:00

Work less, live more.

Politics

2005-04-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

"Science has become politisised and politics have become comercialised" 1

1. Unknown.

Work play balance

2005-04-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

"legislate to put employees family lives on a par with their health and safety." 1

1. Peter Wilby, 4 April 2005. Maternity leave: an employer writes, New Stateswoman.

Green Belt Movement in Kenya

2005-03-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

"I used to say to the women, "If we say we are too poor to take care of the environment then it will only get worse. We have to turn it around and push poverty back. Planting trees breaks the cycle:when we can give ourselves food, firewood, and help to nurture soil for planting and clean water, then we begin to roll poverty back.""

The World Bank and International Monetry Fund may insist that internaional trade is the exclusive route to prosperity, but [Wangari] Maathai has proven that it's self-sufficiency on a micro level that is more efficient and sustainable." 1

1. Nicola Graydon, March 2005. From Tiny Seeds, The Ecologist.

To save Africa we must listen to it

2005-03-16T09:03:00.000-08:00

"Two opposing narratives inform our understanding of Africa. The first tells of a continent undeveloped and underpopulated until Europeans discovered it and opened it up to trade and the benefits of science and civilisation. Until outsiders came, sub-Saharan Africa had no writing and no wheel. Its inhabitants belonged to thousands of ethnic groups which, outside the West African Islamic kingdoms, ruled themselves according to custom. Once colonial rule had been established, Africa's population leapt from 120 million in 1880 to 165 million in 1935. With the benefits of peace, stability, western education and science, it rose to 330 million by the 1960s. The colonialists left Africa's economies in reasonable shape, but after independence they sank back into anarchy and poverty. The cause: tribalism and corruption.

The other narrative goes like this: the continent flourished until Europeans started prowling around its coasts in the 16th century looking for loot. The loot they found was human - slaves - and over the next two and a half centuries, millions of Africans were ripped from their land and shipped across to the Americas to labour in mines and on plantations. That impoverished Africa and made Europe wealthy. The slave-trade wealth was invested in Europe, creating the industrial revolution. This in turn gave Europe a further advantage over Africa and a sense of superiority which Europeans interpreted as racial. That gave the impetus for imperialism and colonialism. Europe carved up Africa so it could more easily exploit Africa's mineral wealth and cheap labour.

Then, after most of Africa won political independence in the 1950s and 1960s, Europe kept its former colonies dependent and continued to manage the international trading system to its own advantage and against Africa's. As part of the cold-war divide, appalling dictators were propped up because they were "our" dictators. Furthermore, the western powers bound Africa's economies to them through loans that in time became unpayable, at the same time giving a pittance in aid to individual African countries. Those loans, this narrative says, are modern slavery. The thread in the cord that binds Africa in poverty and weakness is made in Europe and it is strong and long-lasting." 1

1. Richard Dowden, Monday 14th March 2005. To save Africa we must listen to it, New Statesman

Polititions

2005-02-22T08:34:00.000-08:00

"Polititians can use laws, institutions, example and persuasion." 1

1. Richard Reeves, 21 February 2005. NS Essay.

Capitalism and greed

2005-02-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

To papaphrase Michael Moore (badly), "one of the flaws in capitalism is greed. The greedy man will sell you enough ropre to hang himself."

Progress

2005-02-18T13:44:00.000-08:00

"The past decade has brought the lowest inflation, interest rates and unemployment for 40 years and an unprecedented preiod of uninterupted growth. Yet mental health has declined sharpely. More than two million Britons are on antidepressants, half a million on Class A drugs. Binge drinking, and what Fromm called "acts of destruction" - violence, self-abuse and vandalism - have reached record levels." 1

1. Neil Clark, 14 February 2005. How we forgot the art of loving, New Statesman.

Torture

2005-02-15T07:38:00.000-08:00

"We could introduce torture trading within the torturing community. Thus we could give a country with high torture requirements the opportunity to buy torture credits from a country with low torture rates." 1

1. Mark Thomas, 31 January 2005. New Statesman.

Immigrants

2005-02-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

"What I would really love is for there to be a general strike of all first, and second-generation immigrants. The whole country would close down"

Testing Sensitivity

2005-01-23T10:13:00.000-08:00

To illustrate how sensitive we can be in certain areas try exchanging words. Finding an article on women and try replacing the word woman with the word Jew or black. Would this article be acceptable now?

Thanks to Marina for that one.

Ecological Debt

2005-01-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

"Ecological Debt is the debt accumulated by Northern, industrialised countries on account of resource plundering, unfair trade, environmental damage, and the free occupation of environmental space to deposit waste. A particular and interesting aspect of it is carbon debt, as a consequence of greehouse gas emissions." 1

1. Alier, Simms, Rijnhout. Poverty Developement and Ecological Debt.

Luck

2005-01-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

"The IRA's warning, after the bombing of the Conservative Party conference in Brighton 1984, that "we only have to be lucky one; you will have to be lucky always" has a new and more acute meaning in the age of new-style global terrorism." 1

1. Anthony Giddens, 10 Jan, 2004. New Statesman.

Bad Taste

2005-01-16T14:28:00.000-08:00

"People buy "bad taste" because they are insecure about there own preferences." 1

1. Stacey.

Work

2005-01-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

"I don't know how people find the time to work full time" 1

1. Nick.

Gardening

2004-12-28T13:24:00.000-08:00

"Every person needs to have a piece of garden, however small, to keep them in touch with the earth and therefore with something deeper in themselves..." 1

"The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which joins one family." 2

"There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor a heart so sick,
But it can find some needful job, that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth everyone." 3

1. Carl Jung.
2. Chief Seattle.
3. Rudyard Kipling, 1911. the Glory of the Garden.

2004-12-28T10:53:00.000-08:00

Why are you here? To be with friends.

2004-12-28T10:51:00.000-08:00

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" 1

1. Freud.

Consumerism

2004-12-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

Anything can be consumed; religon, protests etc.

2004-12-21T07:01:00.000-08:00

Talking about conflict between economy and environment in Tasmania, "this issue will only be resolved once both sides stop looking at it as a battle, and treat it instead as a shared campaign for a shared future." 1

1. Paul Kingsnorth, December 2004. The Ecologist, Global Rescue.

2004-12-21T06:57:00.000-08:00

"The one resource the developing world has in abundance is people. So why are we promoting systems of agriculture that negate this advantage and which seem bound to contribute directly to further human misery and indignity" 1

"Globalisation of responsibility" 1

"Industry without art is brutality" 2

1. Prince of Wales, 23 October 2004.

2. John Ruskin, ???

2004-12-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

"Your hammer will always find nails to hit." 1

1. BENOIT MANDELBROT, 20 December. The Edge.

The Worlds First Multinational

2004-12-16T10:39:00.000-08:00

"Corporate greed, the ruination of traditional way of life, share-price bubbles, western imperialism: all these complaints were made against the British East India Company in the 18th centuary." 1

1. Nick Robins, 13 December 2004. New Statesman.

Short Term Profit

2004-12-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

"Edward Goldsmith of the International Forum on Globalization provides an instructive apocryphal story of two friends who both inherit a 10,000 acre tract of forest. Friend one leaves his 10,000 acres in its pristine state, friend two sells the trees to McMillan Bloedel Corporation who cut them all down. He then sells the mineral rights and the topsoil, he fills the resulting dank hole with toxic waste. He then constructs a shopping mall and theme park. Friend one is labelled as a waster, friend two boosts GNP by $1,000,000s runs for office and becomes a senator" 1

1. Goldsmith and Mander 1996:15.

FOE Founder David Brower

2004-12-14T13:11:00.000-08:00

"Think globally, act locally" 1

"We do not inherit the earth from our fathers, we are borrowing it from our children [and]...we're not just borrowing from our children, we're stealing from them - and it's not even considered to be a crime" 1

1. David Brower

Value of Nature

2004-12-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

The value of the services that nature provides to humanity for free has been put at £18 trillion per year, nearly twice global economic activity measured by GNP. 1

1. Costanza et al in Nature. 1997, Vol. 387 pp253-260.

Development

2004-12-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

The developing world and the over-developed world.

EDO and War

2004-12-10T04:01:00.000-08:00

"EDO are proud sponsors of war and oppression all over the place. They might argue, as others have, that if they don't do it someone else will. This logic has yet to save a heroin dealer from being convicted." 1

1. SchNEWS 477, Friday 10th December, 2004.

IF

2004-12-07T01:57:00.000-08:00

If you can keep your head when everyone around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you... if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you and make allowances for their doubting too... if you can wait and not be tired of waiting or being lied about don't deal in lies, or being hated dont give way to hating- and yet dont look too good nor talk to wise... If you can dream and not make dreams your master... if you can think and not make thoughts your aim... if you can meet with triump and disaster and treat them just the same... if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools and watch everything you gave your life to broken and stoop and build it up with worn out tools... If you can take one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss... if you can force your heart nerve and sinew to serve its turn long after you're gone and then hold on when there's nothing in you except the will which says to them " hold on"... If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with kings nor lose the common touch... if neither foe nor loving friend can hurt you... if all men count with you but none too much... If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distant run, Yours is the earth and every thing in it and which is more...

YOU'LL BECOME A MAN MY SON!

by Rudyard Kipling

Compensation Culture

2004-11-29T04:10:00.000-08:00

"In opposing our mythical compensation culture, Sunderland and Letwin are creating something much uglier: a risk culture. They are glorifying the risks which the powerful impose on the weak." 1

1. George Monbiot, 16/11/2004. The Myth of Compensation Culture, www.monbiot.com.

Planning

2004-11-29T02:55:00.000-08:00

Plan monitor and manage or predict and provide?

Against Progress and other Illusions

2004-11-22T02:37:00.000-08:00

"In the minds of believers we can overcome the laws of nature; science can make us gods. Nothing that humans do however, can prevent the earth returning to equilibrium." 1

"The human animal may yearn for peace and freedom, but it is no less fond of war and tyranny. No scientific advance can alter the contradictions of human needs. On the contrary, they can only be intensified as sciense increases human power." 1

1. John Gray, Heresies: Against Progress and other Illusions.

Phychoanalysing Polititians

2004-11-07T13:50:00.000-08:00

"Adopting a ready-made political role, one that all but crowds out any other aspect of yourself, provides identity, company and a pastiche emotional life. Because you expose your artifice only it feels phychologically safe." 1

1. Derek Draper, November 2004. My Generation, New Statesman.

2004-10-29T07:33:00.000-07:00

"The system which governs our economic lives, which we call capitalism, is itself is a limited resource. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme. Let me try to explain this.

It is a built on a system called fractional reserve banking. Almost the entire money supply – generally, depending on where you live, between 90 and 95% of it – is issued not by the state, but the commercial banks. It is issued not in the form of notes and coins, but in the form of loans. Between 90 and 95% of the money supply, in other words, is debt.

To pay off the debt that is issued today, the banks must issue more debt tomorrow, and so on and so forth. In a world which is not based on material realities, the world which might exist, for an example, in a computer model, it could expand for ever. But in the real world, the supply of money is linked to material realities called collateral: the real wealth which gives the loans meaning, and without which the whole scheme would be exposed as a fraud. Eventually the amount of lending must inevitably exceed the availability of meaningful collateral, for the simple reason that the material world is finite while the possible issue of credit is not. That is the point at which the whole structure comes tumbling down." 1

1. George Monbiot, 06/10/2004. No Longer Obeying Orders.

Myths and facts

2004-10-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Myths

"there is no limit to human potential" 1

"the assumption that industrial and post-industrial development will automatically distribute wealth, rather than concentrating it" 1

"the resources required to bring this utopia about are infinite" 1

Facts

"At any rate of use, non-renewable resoures are, by definition, depleted" 1

"Beyond a certain rate of use, renewable resources are depleted." 1

"Beyond a certain rate of exploitation, renewable resources become non-renewable resources." 1

"The earth’s capacity to absorb pollution is limited." 1

"The system which governs our economic lives, which we call capitalism, is itself is a limited resource." 1

"The people who get hit first and hit hardest by any one of these realities are not the rich but the poor." 1

1. George Monbiot, 06/10/2004. No Longer Obeying Orders.

Europe and the US

2004-10-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

"Rather than whinge about how horrid Bush and his cohort are, Europeans should accept US ideology and power and forge a real European identity and foreign policy as a counterbalance." 1

1. Lellouche, ???

Church of Satan

2004-10-25T01:33:00.000-07:00

"Nine Satanic Statements, which include "Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence", "Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek" and "Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification"." 1

1.. BBC News, October 2004.

Speed, Time and Experience

2004-10-05T09:49:00.000-07:00

"The machine city is pre-occupied with output; a future state. Speed is an attempt to beat time and bring the future forward. It reinforces our future-oriented 'mode of becoming' because the focus of the jorney is the activity (which we are rushing to. Speed also destroys the opportunity to experience the immediate environment at the immediate moment and divorces us from place." 1

1. David Engwicht, 1992. Towards an Eco-City.

Monoculture

2004-10-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

"Mono-cultures, for example single crop farms, are inherently unstable. They must be sustained from the outside with massive supplies of fertiliser, water and pesticides. Ironically the farmer is fighting against nature's attempt to reassert its diveristy." 1

1. David Engwicht, 1992. Towards an Eco-City.

Forum Theatre

2004-10-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Theatre should bring about social transformation, and it should be "a theatre as politics rather than political theatre" 1

1. Liza Ann Acosta, 2001. Review of Augusto Boal's Legislative Theatre.

Planet Under Pressure

2004-10-04T04:12:00.000-07:00

"Food: An estimated 1 in 6 people suffer from hunger and malnutrition while attempts to grow food are damaging swathes of productive land.

Water: By 2025, two thirds of the world's people are likely to be living in areas of acute water stress.

Energy: Oil production could peak and supplies start to decline by 2010

Climate change: The world's greatest environmental challenge, according to the UK prime minister Tony Blair, with increased storms, floods, drought and species losses predicted.

Biodiversity: Many scientists think the Earth is now entering its sixth great extinction phase.

Pollution: Hazardous chemicals are now found in the bodies of all new-born babies, and an estimated one in four people worldwide are exposed to unhealthy concentrations of air pollutants.

And underlying all these pressures is a seventh - human population." 1

" How many of us can live at northern consumption levels, and what level should everyone else be expected to settle for?" 1

"How can we expect poor people to respect the environment when they need to use it to survive?" 1

"And how can we act when sizeable and sincere parts of society say we are already overcoming the problems, not being overwhelmed by them?"

"The challenge we face is not about feeling guilty for our consumption or virtuous for being "green" - it's about the growing recognition that, as the human race, we stand or fall together." 1

"Living within the planet's means need not condemn us to giving up what we now assume we need for a full life, just to sharing it." 1

1. Alex Kirby, 01/10/2004. Planet Under Pressure, BBC News Online.

Corporate Free Press

2004-09-21T02:25:00.000-07:00

"Power without responsibility, influence without accountability: 'the corporate free press' is an oxymoronic disaster for justice and freedom" 1

1. David Cromwell and David Edwards, 20 September, 2004. The editors are unrepentant, New Statesman.

Ideas

2004-09-18T14:54:00.000-07:00

"Ideas are far morepowerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?" 1

1. Stalin, ???

Economic Equality

2004-09-15T06:18:00.000-07:00

"No citizen shall be rich enough to buy anothr and none shall be so poor as to be forced to sell himself." 1

1. Rousseau, 1762.

Freedom

2004-09-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

"The English people believes itself to be free, it is gravely mistaken; it is only free when it elects its member of parliment; as soon as they are elected, the people are enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such use of its freedom that it deserves to lose it." 1

1. Rousseau, 1762. The Social Contract.

Frozen Food

2004-09-14T08:32:00.000-07:00

When you factor in the cost of freezing food, is frozen food the most expensive?

2004-09-14T01:25:00.000-07:00

"the more powerful the government is, the less people take the personal responsibility" 1

1. Pat Murphy, 11 September, 2004. Locus Online, Global to Local.

2004-09-14T01:20:00.000-07:00

"When you're a net importer or IP, there's no good economic reason to treat foreign ideas as sacrosanct property. Indeed, piracy and successful induustrialisation go hand in hand." 1

1. Cory Doctorow, 10 September, 2004. Global to Local, Locus Online.

Permenant

2004-09-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

"Nothing is permenant" 1

1. Unknown

House of Commons

2004-09-05T10:49:00.000-07:00

The house of commons is a house of "representatives". There are a lot of people representing middle aged men, who is representing everyone else?

Management Structure

2004-09-04T23:53:00.000-07:00

In a pyramidical organisation, there's only so muc people can focus on.

2004-08-24T03:25:00.000-07:00

"It [money] has value only as long as we collectively believe it does...the 70s raised the same doubts about money that the eighteenth centuary raised about religon." 1

1. Slater P, ???

2004-08-24T03:23:00.000-07:00

"If we hurt what we take to be outside us, we hurt ourselves." 1

1. Derek Wall, 1990. Getting There, GreenPrint.

Philisophical Guerrilla

2004-08-24T03:11:00.000-07:00

"The philisophical guerrilla should identify contradictions and push them into their opposites. Capitalism promises prosperity yet millions particualry in the developing world live in poverty. Despite wealth millions of others feel their lives to be pointless and boring. Despite freedom of choice we have little say in decision making. Despite the 'free market', multinationals call the tune. To achieve short term economic 'security', we are destorying life. Contradictions can be made more obvious and the owners of 'the mental means of production' put on the defensive." 1

1. Derek Wall, 1990. Getting There, GreenPrint.

Vote Green

2004-08-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

"Vote Green, but don't just vote..." 1

1. Derek Wall, 1990. Getting There, GreenPrint.

Power

2004-08-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

"We had better aim not at seizing power but at eroding, undermining, democratizing, decenteralizing and distributing" 1

1. Dave Dellinger, ???

Protection of Democracy

2004-08-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

"Contradiction of how an institution as profoundly undemocratic and heirachical as our present army is supposed to defend a democratic system." 1

1. Derek Wall, 1990. Getting There, GreenPrint. Talking about Peter Tatchell's book.

Women

2004-08-18T06:25:00.000-07:00

"Women constitute half of the worlds population, perform two thirds of its work, receive one tenth of the worlds income and own less than one hundredth of the worlds property." 1

1. Cynthia Cockburn.

Education

2004-08-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

"The education system looks more like a grand and pointless intelligence test to separate the managed from the managers."

1. Derek Wall, 1990. Getting There, GreenPrint.

Community

2004-08-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

"Soap operas about neighbours and community are billion viewer substitutes for real communities and real contact with ones neighbours." 1

1. Derek Wall, 1990. Getting There, GreenPrint.

Environment

2004-08-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

"The environment is the base of all economic activity, and if we destroy it we destroy ourselves." 1

1. Derek Wall, 1990. Getting There, Green Print.

Freedom

2004-08-18T06:08:00.000-07:00

"The kindest slave owners were really the most cruel because there slaves were less likely to seek freedom" 1

1. Oscar Wilde

You become what you hate

2004-08-16T04:13:00.000-07:00

"You become - if only in part - that which you fought against. It is not inevitable, but only progressive and radical thinking protects you against peril." 1

1. Darcus Howe, 16 August. The hierarchy of skin colour presumes that Caribbean folk are at the bottom of the pile, New Statesman.

To Quotation or not to quote

2004-08-16T04:08:00.000-07:00

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." 1

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, ???

Me or you

2004-08-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

"For the last 200 years philoposhers and poets and men of letters have said, 'Look inside yourself, understand yourself, focus on your memories,' I am saying 'No, look at other people. Find out what other poeple are like, they ar emore interesting than you. Try and help them. Inspire others and you will feel inspired yourself.' 1

1. Dr Theodore Zeldin, July 2004. Richer not happier: a 21st-century search for the good life, RSA Journal.

Money

2004-08-14T02:42:00.000-07:00

"How you spend your money is how you vote on what exists in the world" 1

1. Vicki Robin, ???. ???.

New Curriculum

2004-08-11T23:54:00.000-07:00

"Topics would include serving others; understanding and managing your feelings; maintaining your health; the appreciation of beauty; love, family and parenting; money and housing keeping; work; mental illness; political activity; and philosophical and religous ideas." 1

1. Richard Layard, July 2004. Have we solved the economic problem.

Boundaries

2004-08-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

"Boundaries are always to an extent arbitary, but that does not make them any the less necessary in the maintenance of a civilised society." 1

1. Theodore Dalrymple, 9 August 2004. A nation of paedophiles, New Statesman.

Action

2004-08-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

"The best way to inspire people to act is to provide them with the visible results of their actions." 1

1. Alex Greenwood, 26th July 2004. A subculture in the cybersalons, New Stateman.

Language

2004-08-09T02:05:00.000-07:00

"When a language becomes extinct, a whole way of seeing the world dies" 1

1. Germaine Greer, 2004. Whitefella Jump up, Profile Books.