However, it is culturally accepted that when an innocent Iraqi, Palestinian, Afghan and a Pakistani dies they are not automatically accorded the same human right that Westerners and whites are. They are not viewed as valuable lives, but they are looked down upon as “collateral damage”.
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]]>The problem has left perhaps 75 percent of the longtime participants who traditionally provide the creative spark for displays and activities without a ticket. The event is held annually at a remote site in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada. The crisis resulted from attempts to solve issues from last year, when, in addition to the normal problem of computer servers crashing as thousands of people rush to buy tickets online, the event sold out for the first time.
With the event increasingly becoming a bucket-list activity, organizer Black Rock City LLC set out to create a more egalitarian method for distributing tickets and thwarting scalpers.
Read More:
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/10/4253072/burning-man-festival-faces-ticket.html
]]>An empowering leader holds and serves a vision broad and deep enough to inspire others and allow them to take parts of it and make it their own. When Rob Hopkins founded the Transition Town movement, his vision was to take the insights of permaculture and ecological design and apply them on a local community level. That was a big vision, far too big for any one person to realize alone. Within it, there was room for many people to step up and realize their own creative ideas and pursue their interests—how to transform a vacant lot into a community garden, how to plant forest gardens in city parks, how to influence policy around water resources or investment in renewable energy. Rob’s original vision called many people into their own power and leadership.
An empowering leader helps the group develop a strategy—a plan for getting from here to there, with milestones and goals along the way.
An empowering leader rarely uses Command mode. Most of the time, she leads by example and persuasion. But when command is called for, an empowering leader will step forward and then step back into a more democratic mode once the need has passed.
Read More:
http://www.nationofchange.org/6-ways-empower-others-1328285619
]]>The enigmatic Internet-driven collective Anonymous, thank goodness, has an anthropologist in its midst. For a few years now, Gabriella Coleman [4] has been arduously participant-observing in IRC chat rooms, watching Anonymous turn from a prankster moniker to a herd of vigilantes for global justice. In an extraordinary new essay at Triple Canopy, “Our Weirdness Is Free [5],” she summarizes what Anonymous is all about this way:
Beyond a foundational commitment to anonymity and the free flow of information, Anonymous has no consistent philosophy or political program. Though Anonymous has increasingly devoted its energies to (and become known for) digital dissent and direct action around various “ops,” it has no definite trajectory. Sometimes coy and playful, sometimes macabre and sinister, often all at once, Anonymous is still animated by a collective will toward mischief—toward “lulz,” a plural bastardization of the portmanteau LOL (laugh out loud). Lulz represent an ethos as much as an objective.
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]]>Today marks the 2012 deadline for nominations for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, but as the prize committee meets this year to discuss what individual or group has "done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace," they will be under heightened scrutiny to be sure their choice fulfills the original intent of its founder, Albert Nobel.
The reason for the heightened pressure rests on an investigation by the Stockholm County Administrative Board of the committee's recent choices prompted by 'persistent complaints' by author and peace researcher, Fredrik Heffermehl, and roundly criticized choices by the committee in recent years -- most notably US President Barack Obama, a war commander governing over numerous military conflicts at the time he was awarded the auspicious "peace" prize in 2009.
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]]>I once asked a Native American if he thought whether North America was in any way in a post-colonial period. His response was, “Have they left yet?” Of the New World republics that came about as a result of colonization, the United States is going to have the hardest time dealing with its past. Recently, we’ve see a lot of people willing to strut about with their guns and imagine themselves in some pre-pubescent fantasy of John Wayne’s “unbridled individualism.” Some become so deluded as to be willing to use these guns on perceived “enemies.” But this is symptomatic only; it is useful to remember how the actual land of North America came to be claimed by European and Euro-American colonists. More importantly, the causes of these neuroses can be better understood when one realizes what separating people from their resource base means.
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]]>We just beat back SOPA and PIPA with the web blackout.
Now everyone is talking about ACTA. But – because ACTA is complicated, and is just starting to receive coverage – most are not sure exactly what ACTA really is, or why we should be concerned about it.
We’ll give you an executive summary of what you need to know.
Instead of giving you the specifics about what’s actually in the bill (we provide links at the end for those who want to know), we’ll explain why the procedure used is a recipe for disaster.
Why are we stressing procedure over substance?
Because, as awful as ACTA is, there are other horrible bills such as the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement waiting in the wings … which may be even worse than ACTA.
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]]>Six hours southeast of Atlanta off the Georgia coast on Sapelo Island, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an ancient walled city which predates the construction of Egypt's pyramids. Known as the Sapelo Shell Ring Complex, this ancient city was constructed around 2300 B.C. and featured three neighborhoods each surrounded by circular walls twenty feet in height constructed from tons of seashells. Some of the earliest pottery in North America was also found buried in the remains of this lost city.
The site is quite an enigma because at the time of its construction the Native Americans living in the area were simple hunters and gatherers who had yet to invent agriculture. Many scholars believe agriculture is a prerequisite for civilization. Did these simple tribal people somehow make the leap from hunting-and-gathering to civilization in a single bound producing not only a walled city but also the new technology of pottery without the benefit of agriculture? Or did an already civilized people arrive on the coast of Georgia from elsewhere and, if so, where did they come from and why?
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]]>While Mexico grabs the headlines of soaring murder rates and rampaging drug gangs, the really heavy bloodshed is taking place to the south. The much smaller nations of Guatemala and El Salvador are seeing their worst violence since the civil wars of the 1980s, while Honduras is currently the murder capital of the world with 86 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants; a murder rate nearly five times higher than Mexico’s.
Even relatively peaceful Costa Rica, which boasts the highest standard of living in Central America, has seen its murder rate double since 2004 in a wave of violence that authorities largely attribute to drug-trafficking. As a result, Washington is encouraging its mostly right-wing allies in the region to pursue the same policies of militarization that have devastated Colombia and Mexico.
Central America was originally included in the Merida Initiative security package signed by the Bush administration in 2008, which pledged $1.6 billion of funds to the region over two years; the vast majority of which went to Mexico. Since 2010, aid to the region has been cranked up under the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), an offshoot of the System for Central American Integration (SICA).
Read More:
HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/01/27/VIOLENCE-SWEEPS-CENTRAL-AMERICA/
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