Vincent van Gogh, Image of Self-Portrait with Bandaged
Ear.
Oil on canvas, 60 x 49 cm.
Painted at the Yellow House in Arles, 1889. Courtauld
Institute of Art, London
FINS World News
Perspectives van Gogh
Integrative Political Channels of Planetary Mind -- Clickable
Dinner parties are not normally considered the diplomatic medium of choice of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But last night the
regime's swanky ambassadorial residence on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue became the focal point of the ongoing crisis over Tehran's
nuclear programme.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, left, and Secretary of
Defense Robert M. Gates, at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Tuesday that Russia and China had agreed to the deal, a day after Iran
made an offer to ship nuclear fuel.
The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had been at the signing of the agreement in Tehran on Monday,
rejected the skepticism about the Iranian offer and pointedly criticized the continued moves toward sanctions by the United
States.
"This is the time to discuss whether we believe in the supremacy of law or the law of the supremes and superiors," he told a
news briefing in Madrid. "While they still have nuclear weapons, where do they get the credibility to ask other countries not to
have them?"
Educators and systems scientists know that knowing "does not lead to doing." People need outside assistance to break through
outdated values handed down by their dead ancestors or learned through socialization in early life in their places of work and
play. The popular program -- Giving Voice to Values -- is exactly what is need to help our
students and savvy business entrepreneurs
The U.S. Senate approved a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulation that would create a consumer protection agency,
strengthen oversight of derivative trading and ban proprietary trading at banks.
The Senate's 59-39 vote yesterday sends the legislation into negotiations designed to reconcile differences with the House bill
approved in December.
"When this bill becomes law, the joyride on Wall Street will come to a screeching halt," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a
Nevada Democrat, said after the vote.
House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, walked to the Capitol on Sunday before the vote on the health care overhaul
Congress gave final approval to legislation that would provide medical coverage to tens of millions of Americans and
remake the U.S. health care system along the lines proposed by President Obama.
(THE HUFFINGTON POST, Arianna Huffington and Ron Johnson, Dec. 29, 2009)
Take the pledge to Move Your Money!
Too-big-to-fail banks are profiting from bailout dollars and government guarantees, and growing bigger. Tell us which community
bank you use, and why.
Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene
Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes
of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a
better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank
analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.
The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record
profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the
face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was
one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America,
and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money -- have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.
Meanwhile, America's Main Street community banks -- the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption
that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of -- are struggling. Many of them have closed
down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically
Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace.
As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.
(COUNTERCURRENTS.ORG, Bill Willers, 20 April 2010)
In 1983, the National Film Board of Canada produced a 57-minute film, "Anybody's Son Will Do". Arguably the best anti-war film
ever made, and tailored for public television, it scared the hell out of the U.S. military machine, which has done its best to
"disappear" it. For years it has been nearly impossible to find a copy, but some kind soul has posted it on YouTube where it can
be seen in six segments.
AP / Ben Margot
University of California at Berkeley student Natalia Garcia protests on campus during a day of demonstrations, marches, teach-ins
and walkouts planned nationwide. Events are being held at most of California's public colleges and universities to protest
budget cuts that have led to canceled classes, faculty furloughs and steep fee hikes.
The power structure and its liberal apologists dismiss the rebel as impractical and see the rebel's outsider stance as
counterproductive. They condemn the rebel for expressing anger at injustice. The elites and their apologists call for calm and
patience. They use the hypocritical language of spirituality, compromise, generosity and compassion to argue that the only
alternative is to accept and work with the systems of power. The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it
impossible to stand with the power elite. The rebel refuses to be bought off with foundation grants, invitations to the White
House, television appearances, book contracts, academic appointments or empty rhetoric. The rebel is not concerned with
self-promotion or public opinion. The rebel knows that, as Augustine wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and
courage-anger at the way things are and the courage to see that they do not remain the way they are. The rebel is aware that
virtue is not rewarded. The act of rebellion defines itself.
(post carbon institute, Tod Brilliant, 25 March 2010)
Earlier this week, Greenpeace did the rational world a huge favor by compiling a great overview of the denial industry.
"Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science" is a brief but critical summary of the attacks on climate
science, scientists and, most notably, the IPCC.
President Evo Morales has called for an international environmental court
"It is not that it wasn't important what governments were discussing in Copenhagen but the problem is that it was discussed
from a corporate perspective and here we are discussing it from an indigenous perspective we have a great deal of respect for
Mother Earth, we have a direct accountability to her, something that developed nations seem not to have", says Vanessa Inarunekia,
a Taino indigenous woman from Puerto Rico. "Human beings cannot survive without Mother Earth; Mother Earth can survive without
us," she said.
(COUNTERCURRENTS.ORG, Nicholas C. Arguimbau, 23 April 2010)
Look at this graph and be afraid. It does not come from Earth First. It does not come from the Sierra Club. It was not drawn by
Socialists or Nazis or Osama Bin Laden or anyone from Goldman-Sachs. If you are a Republican Tea-Partier, rest assured it does
not come from a progressive Democrat. And vice versa. It was drawn by the United States Department of Energy, and the United States
military's Joint Forces Command concurs with the overall picture.
Digital image of Time Magazine portrait of the first and foremost Hispanic-American philosopher George Santayana, courtesy Wikimedia commons, source: images.google.com.
"Of life madness is an inseparable and sometimes a predominant
part," wrote George Santayana, "every living body is mad in so far as
it is inwardly disposed to permanence when things about it are
unstable, or is inwardly disposed to change when, the circumstances
being stable, there is no occasion for changing. That which is virtue
in season is madness out of season, as when an old man makes love ..." (G. Santayana,
Dialogues in Limbo, III. Normal Madness 41 (1925)
Jackson Lowen for The New York Times
Fan Bi, 22, with workers in a Shanghai factory. He is chief executive of Blank Label, a start-up that lets customers design their
own shirts on its Web site.
Four business partners, all between 19 and 30, have joined the Internet movement toward allowing shoppers to design their
own products - in this case, men's shirts.
The commercial for the Citroen DS-3, which is being promoted with the slogan "Anti Retro," includes
footage of Mr. John Lennon criticizing people's nostalgia for the 1960s and '70s. In the ad, which began showing in Britain in
February, that former Beatle says, "Once a thing's been done it's been done." He adds: "Looking backwards for inspiration,
copying the past - how is that rock 'n' roll? Do something of your own. Start something new."
"Language is the dress of thought," said Samuel Johnson 200 years ago. The way we talk colors the way we think, and the way we
think shapes the way we act. We are the unconscious prisoners of our language. While most of the time this constraint matters
little, at times of momentous change in culture or society, when things are unstable, and inwardly disposed to change, it is
madness to maintain the fossilized permanence of language and the status quo of social institutions, when our use of old words and
old institutional structures to describe new things can hide the emerging future from our eyes.
The old language of corporate property and ownership, is now supported by the constitutional right of free speech. However,
this is not broad speech open to all, but the narrow speech of "big money" granted dangerously high priority for exercise of
power in election campaigns, without community wisdom, to bolster investor driven politics!
This is speech of the same elite
social class that plundered the global economy in the financial disaster of 2008, guided by their self-destructive philosophy of
greed with the goals of disaster capitalism! This moral insensitivity was at the root of the US Supreme Court decision to limit
corporate political speech, to prevent corruption and its appearance, in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission,
540 U.S. 93, 129-130, 224 (2003), that was overturned, in CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION,
No. 08-205. slip op. (U.S., January 21, 2010) 558 U. S. ____ (2010)
after Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor left the Court, and were replaced by the two new Bush Court plutocrats,
Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.
Members of the US Supreme Court pose for a group photograph at the Supreme Court building on September 29, 2009 in Washington, DC. Front row (L-R): Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Back Row (L-R), Associate Justice Samuel Alito Jr., Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
(September 28, 2009 - Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images North America)
Constitutional Crisis Looming
Alarming Fascist Merger of Corporations and the State Overwhelmingly Opposed by Americans
The concern about corporate influence extends as far back as our Founding Fathers. In 1816
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to
challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Click image to learn the meaning of the Marine Corps motto "Semper Fidelis"
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, January 21, 2010.
At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people,
who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining
self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate
electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While
American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a
dearth of corporate money in politics.
The new Supreme Court majority brings their mad libertarian interpretation of the First Amendment into violent conflict
with the democratic purpose of the U.S. Constitution, "to form a more perfect Union" of the whole people. This conflict is
logically impossible to sustain. The necessary consequence of the First Amendment prohibition of any reasonable regulation of
political speech based on the speakers wealth must give way to the necessary consequence of the paramount purpose of the
Constitution explicitly established in the Preamble "to form a more perfect Union" of the whole people. The Constitutional
Convention explicitly rejected elections based on wealth. Money is expressive but it is not speech, indeed, money governed by
the philosophy of greed to which it is dedicated is absolutely contrary to speech governed by the paramount value of democracy
to which "We the People" are dedicated.
Political leaders are making plans to respond with an amendment to the Constitution and other statutory and executive remedies.
However, the flaws in the law are not in the text, but in the driving radical right wing values and ideologies of those at the US
Supreme Court who interpret the law. Those flaws cannot simply be amended, they must be exorcised.
(Democracy21.org, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), 10 March 2010)
Elections are the lifeblood of democracy. The U.S. Constitution is established by and for "We the People of the United States."
Humans are clearly different from artificial corporations. And nothing in the Constitution gives CEOs the right to amplify their
voices over all of ours through the corporations they control.
John Paul Stevens (born April 20, 1920) is currently the most senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
He joined the Court in 1975 and is the oldest and longest-serving incumbent member of the Court. He was appointed to the court by
Republican President Gerald Ford. Although Stevens is widely considered to be on the liberal side of the court, Ford praised
Stevens in 2005: "He is serving his nation well, with dignity, intellect and without partisan political concerns." He is also the
only current Justice to have served under three Chief Justices (Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts).
Mr. Obama's progressive admirers will insist he use the "stature" gained from passing health care to press leftward on the
Court. Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice interpreted the Stevens retirement as "an opportunity to name a worthy successor who
will stand up for equal justice for all, not just the wealthy or powerful."
The Supreme Court has handed the American electoral process to corporations, lock, stock and barrel... five conservatives on
the Supreme Court... five Republican appointed conservatives on the Supreme Court, have handed to corporations, the right to
money-bomb on an unlimited basis any politician. This happened two hours ago. Benito Mussolini invented a new form of government.
It was the merger of corporations and state. He called it fascism. Welcome my friends to the Fascist States of America.
(groups.google.com/ Newsgroups: alt.politics.economics, sci.econ, alt.politics.usa.republican, David A. Kaplan, a contributing editor for Fortune, 22 January 2010)
Retired U.S. Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor delivers the keynote speech during a conference at the Georgetown
University Law Center in Washington January 26, 2010.
(Kevin Lamarque /Reuters)
Today's Supreme Court Decision all but ends democracy in America. Corporations and the wealthy will now be able to control all
forms of political discourse. It will start by the complete purchase of politicians followed by rules that will restrict the free
flow of truthful information by controlling the methods of dissemination. America, we are on the brink. I have seen this, I have
lived this. It is the story of the Latin American Oligarchy.
Well, we need a movement for a constitutional amendment to declare that corporations are not persons entitled to the rights of
political expression. And that's what the President should be calling for at this point, because no legislation is really going to
do the trick.
(Slate, David Kairys, a law professor at Temple University and a leading civil rights lawyer, 22 January 2010)
The money-is-speech theory turns out to be a rhetorical device used exclusively to provide First Amendment protection for all
money that wealthy people and businesses want to give to, or to spend, on campaigns. It also doesn't make sense under long
established free-speech law. Spending or donating money to support or facilitate speech is expressive and deserves some protection.
But money simply doesn't make it into the category of things that are and embody speech, such as books, films, or blogs.
Traditional speech-law analysis would separate the speech from the conduct (or "nonspeech") elements of campaign spending and
donation and allow considerable leeway to regulate the latter. Even as to "pure" speech, "compelling" government interests are
overriding. And spending and donating money seem, among the traditional speech-law categories, a "manner" of speaking that the
court has said usually can be "reasonably regulated."
(T)he conservative justices who had emphatically embraced the money-is-speech principle didn't apply it to money solicited by
speakers of ordinary means... In other words, in the court's view, some people's money is speech; others' money is annoying
This new case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, presents the best opportunity for the Roberts Court to use its
five vote majority to totally re-write the face of politics in America, rolling us back to the pre-1907 era of the Robber Barons.
As Jeffrey Toobin wrote in The New Yorker ("No More Mr. Nice Guy"): "In every major case since he became the nation's seventeenth
Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over
the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial
conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of
the contemporary Republican Party."
And the only way the modern Republican Party can recover their power over the next decade is to immediately clear away all
impediments to unrestrained corporate participation in electoral politics. If a corporation likes a politician, they can make
sure he or she is elected every time; if they become upset with a politician, they can carpet-bomb her district with a few million
dollars worth of ads and politically destroy her.
Nobel winner Elinor Ostrom has built her career on the science of cooperation. Photo by Chris Meyer / Indiana University
We need institutions that enable people to carry out their management roles. For example, if there's conflict, you need
an open, fair court system at a higher level than the people's resource management unit. You also need institutions that provide
accurate knowledge. The United States Geological Survey is one that I point to repeatedly. They don't come in and try to make
proposals as to what you should do. They just do a really good job of providing accurate scientific knowledge, particularly for
groundwater basins such as where I did my Ph.D. research years ago. I'm not against government. I'm just against the idea that
it's got to be some bureaucracy that figures everything out for people.
Ostrom, a professor of political science at Indiana University, was praised "for her analysis of economic governance,
especially the commons."
Ostrom's work shows that local communities often manage common resources -- such as woods, lakes and fish stocks -- better on
their own than when outside authorities impose rules, the committee said.
"Bureaucrats sometimes do not have the correct information, while citizens and users of resources do," she said to explain the
significance of her work.
Old fables die hard. That's surely been the history of the so-called "tragedy of the commons," one of the most durable myths
of the past generation. In a famous 1968 essay, biologist Garrett Hardin alleged that it is nearly impossible for people to
manage shared resources as a commons. Invariably someone will let his sheep over-graze a shared pasture, and the commons will
collapse. Or so goes the fable.
In fact, as Professor Elinor Ostrom's pioneering scholarship over the past three decades has demonstrated, self-organized
communities of "commoners" are quite capable of managing forests, fisheries and other finite resources without destroying them.
On Monday, Ostrom won a Nobel Prize in Economics for explaining how real-life commons work, especially in managing natural
resources.
(Amazon.com, Jacqueline Wasilewski "Intercultural Consultant" 19 January 2010)
This is a Practitioner's Review. I have worked, since 1985, with the U.S. national Native American advocacy organization,
Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO), talked about on pages 182-183 of this book, an organization that has "internalized'
computer-assisted, Structured Dialogic Design (SDD) as a "core capacity" in its operations. The computer-assistance has enabled
Native Americans to bring their preferred consensus-based decision-making into the 21st century.
I also used SDD to design and implement a four year North East Asian Dialogue Project funded by the Japanese Ministry of
Education that brought together Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Russian students and civil society members to discuss the history
and future of intercultural relations in the region. (Please see Wasilewski J. [March, 2005]. The Boundary-spanning Dialogue
Approach (BDA) Project; background and previous outcomes. International Christian University Social Science Research Institute
Journal of Social Science 55, 69-94 and Wasilewski, Jacqueline [2006]. "The ICU-COE Boundary-spanning Dialogue Approach (BDA)
Northeast Asian Forum." International Christian University Social Science Research Institute Journal of Social Science 57,
409-435.)
It is my opinion that this computer-assisted, "social technology," SDD, should be in the figurative "toolbox" of every 21st
century leader as a "core capacity," not only, as listed on pages 187-197 of the book, in the "toolboxes" of project managers,
organizational change agents, civic activists, educators and visionaries, but, in fact, in the "toolbox" of anyone working in the
political and/or public sector. SDD enables us to be cultural change agents, transforming the way we collectively address
so-called "wicked" problems ... that is, problems that are so complex, that require the integration of so many perceptions from
such diverse stakeholders across such diverse domains of human expertise, that we are overcome by cognitive overload. In other
words, the complexity of the problem usually trumps our ability to pool our knowledge and understanding and to learn from each
other.
THE STATE OF THE NATION -- JANUARY 2010
President Barack Obama with Economic Recovery Advisory Board Chairman Paul Volcker in the Oval Office last March.
Finally President Barack Obama has come to his senses on financial regulation. His endorsement of what he calls the
"Volcker Rule" for once puts him squarely on the side of ordinary Americans as opposed to the banking bandits who have so
thoroughly fleeced the public.
(The New York Times, Op-Ed Columnist Paul Krugman, April 23, 2009)
President Obama has to do what's right for the country when it comes to financial reform. If that hurts the bankers, so be it.
This year is the bicentennial of the birth of Charles Darwin, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species --
Out of Darwin's expressions came Robert Assagioli's articulation of the action within us of the morally driven "superconscious,"
and the drive of "the will" in moral agency.
"When danger threatens us," he tells us in a passage evoking the horror and outrage Darwin expressed regarding the treatment of slaves,
as well as moral agency ranging from Darwin's monkey who rescues his keeper to Assagioii's own controntation with the fascists,
"suddenly, from the mysterious depths of our being, surges an unsuspected strength ... Before the threatening attitude of an unfair
superior or when facing an excited mob, when personal reasons would induce us to yield, the will gives us the power to say resolutely:
'No! At all costs I stand by my convictions, I will perform what I take to be right.'" D. Loye, Darwin's Lost Theory 298 (2007),
quoting R. Assagioli, The Act of Will 8 (1973).
Unbreakable resistance of the Palestinioan people and protest against Israli genecide sweeping the world, reported here,
is this not another expression of the morally driven "superconscious," and the drive of "the will" in moral agency that Darwin
predicted?
All attempts to colonize the global people through a materialistic world-view associated with modern science, enforced
by a philosophy of fear and weapons of mass destruction, are self-destructive. Capitalism, itself,
the materialist religion, has fallen on the rocks of the Chaos Monster. Revival of this failed scheme is doomed. No
amount of subsidy of such a narrow and destructive organization of human civilization can ever again gain credibility
or viability. We must look to the
Global Noosphere, and the
Global Sounding Moral Code to guide the evolution of the mind of humankind, relying upon our innate moral
sensitivity and love, as Darwin envisioned, to inspire a better future. A new model of social organization is needed for that purpose,
to employ citizens in an enterprise scheme that is focused on the liberating action of doing good in the world, a basic human motivation, and
not merely making profit guided by a self-destructive ethic of greed. Call it
The Darwin School.
(Common Dreams.org, Essay by David Loye, Feb 12, 2009)
What might the ghosts of Darwin and Abraham Lincoln have to say if called on for a few words in the midst of this their great birthday party
year?
The majesty of their lives, works, and actions plainly tell us that paramount for both of them were the love, moral sensitivity, and
education that Darwin-very much alive, no ghost yet-insisted were the prime drivers for human evolution in the long ignored completion
for his theory.
Isn't it about time that here in America and worldwide we hear them-and do something drastic about it?
Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Photograph: The Bridgeman art library/Getty
Vincent van Gogh, Young Girl Standing
Against a Background of Wheat.
Oil on canvas (66.0 x 45.0 cm.).
Painted in Auvers-sur-Oise late June, 1890 National
Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Vincent van Gogh, The Sower.
Oil on jute, mounted on canvas. 73.5 x 93 cm.
Painted in Arles, 1888. E.G.
Bührle Collection, Zurich.
THE WORLD DOMAIN
Live coverage of anticapitalism, antiglobalization
protests
by the multitudes from everywhere around the world.
Monitors corporate activity, particularly the Third World,
with a focus on the export of hazardous substances,
workers health and safety, labor issues and the
environment.
Concise guide to human rights on the Internet.
Coverage of events and global processes affecting the
economic,
social and political development of peoples and nations.
The Climate Crisis Coalition seeks to broaden the circle of individuals,
organizations and constituencies engaged in the global warming issue, to link it
with other issues and to provide a structure to forge a common agenda and advance
action plans with a united front.
Green Cross International, was originally founded by Mikhail Gorbachev in
Kyoto, Japan, on 18-19 April 1993. It promotes legal, ethical and behavioral norms that ensure
basic changes in the values, actions and attitudes of government, the private
sector and civil society, necessary to build a sustainable global community.
A grassroots online community dedicated to providing
comprehensive, up-to-date environmental information resources
from around the world.
An independent non-profit international network of
organizations and individuals involved in issues related to
development, the Third World and North-South concerns.
An independent radio communications medium, which explores
quietly and intimately what humanity and the universe are all
about.
Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field Under
Threatening Skies
Oil on canvas. 50.5 x 100.5 cm.
Painted in Ouvers-sur-Oise, 1890. Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
THE FORWARD, is a legendary name in American journalism and a revered
institution in American Jewish life. It was launched as a Yiddish-language daily
newspaper on April 22, 1897.
Online resource for public affairs, providing access to
proceedings of the US Senate and House of Representatives, and
other forums.
Guy Dauncey's news and commentary serving Vancouver Island's
Environmental Community.
Radio show with Jerry Brown; School of Sustainability;
The 'We The People' Community; Library.
Magazines
The Green Cross Optimist, affiliated with Green Cross International founded by
Mikhail Gorbachev, is a visionary new magazine dedicated to presenting avenues of cooperation and innovation to break through the deadlocks currently preventing us from achieving truly sustainable and equitable development.
Mother Jones is an independent nonprofit whose roots lie in a commitment to social justice implemented through first rate investigative reporting.
The progressive voices, facts, information and commitment that
have all but disappeared from the mainstream press.
Featuring Noam Chomsky and other independent thinkers and writers pursuing
ideas about democracy, anarchy, and progressive causes.
SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN, Online edition of local alternative weekly;
arts, entertainment, policies, interactive forums.
Think tanks
Free Press is a nonpartisan organization working to involve the public
in media policymaking and to craft policies for more democratic media.
American Free Press is right here on Capitol Hill taking up the
challenge against Big Media.
Specializes in the study of Congress and particularly
the role that money plays in its elections and actions.
CIVIC PRACTICES NETWORK - CIVIC COMMUNICATION, An overview of civic
communication including the public journalism movement and the development of
electronic networking as a tool for community problem solving.
FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY IN REPORTING (FAIR), National media watch group
offering criticism designed to correct media bias and lack of balance.
EPIC is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C. It was
established in 1994 by Mark Rotenberg, President of the Board of Directors, and
Executive Director, to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues
and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values.
A voluntary organization whose mission is to defend and enhance
the quality and quantity of Canadian programming in the
audio-visual system.
Interest groups
AFL-CIO home page, to improve the lives of working families and
to bring economic justice to the workplace and social justice to
the nation.
FIGHTING FOR WORKERS RIGHTS
Documents the global struggle of telecommunications workers.
UnitedforPeace.org is a nonpartisan resource for anti-war and social change activists
INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO BAN LANDMINES
A spectacular success story in the role of NGOs and the e-mail
mode of communications to bring about beneficial global
change.
Group interaction strategies
TECHNOLOGY OF DEMOCRACY
State-of-the-art Structured Design Dialogue Process (SDDP) for competent knowledge
management of interest groups that are committed to democratic sustainability.
MoveOn.org Political Action Forum. With over 3.3 million members across
America, concerned citizens find their political voice in a system dominated by
big money and big media.
THE VIRTUAL ACTIVIST
A training course presented by: Audrie Krause, NetAction; Michael
Stein, Children Now; and Judi Clark, WomensWork.
ALA WASHINGTON OFFICE LEGISLATIVE ACTION CENTER
Guidance and directories to support legislative action by
citizens.
Vincent van Gogh, Memory of the Garden at
Etten (Ladies of Arles)
Oil on canvas. 29 x 36 ½ (73 x 92 cm.)
Pained in Arles, November 1888. Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
A library of online news resources spanning Asia-in-general,
Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India,
Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines,
Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Online Newspapers.com.
"SPARROR" server was a scrap PC donated to the Cube Microplex Cinema.
The computer was mis-spelt during naming and [they] now run 11
linux machines all using mis-spelt bird names. Live Social Cinema (that's
cocktails served in front of flickering 35mm, ushers that tear tickets and smile,
ice-creams, live scores to new movies, music n visuals, talks on how to build
your own house, BYO films, lots of event - plenty of character) is the Cube's
unofficial style.
The BBC exists to enrich people's lives with great programmes and services
that inform, educate and entertain. Its vision is to be the most creative, trusted
organisation in the world.
Online edition of the British daily and sunday newspaper
featuring Robert Fisk who really knows how to "Speak Truth to
Power"!
Best daily newspaper on the world wide web.
The premier online source for the analysis of world business and
current affairs.
Cuban online news agency headquarters in Havana, Cuba, founded in 1959 shortly
after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
BRAZILIAN NEWSPAPERS ONLINE
CHILEAN NEWSPAPERS ONLINE
Central America
Vincent van Gogh, Pollard Willows With
Setting Sun
Oil on canvas. 31.5 x. 34.5 cm.
Painted in Arles, Autumn 1888. Kroller-Muller
Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
COMPREHENSIVE MEDIA SEARCH TOOLS
Newspapers
THE INTERNET PUBLIC LIBRARY
Online newspaper collection, including a comprehensive North
American and Global list.
The World Wide Media Guide
Radio
BRS WEB RADIO
More radio .. less talk! International directory of 1500 radio
stations broadcasting on the web.
Television
TELEVISION ON THE WEB
Gebbie Press listing of US television stations.
Community Networks
COMMUNITY COMPUTER NETWORKS & FREE-NETS
Multinational list of websites, organizations, and information
about interactive community computer networks and free-nets.
World Wide Web
Outstanding Search Service.
Google Blog Search.
All the best search engines piled into one.
This page is maintained by Vigdor Schreibman.
Substantive correspondence should be send by US Postal Service
to:
18 - 9th Street NE Apt. #206, Washington, DC 20002-6042.
Urgent messages may be transmitted by voice mail or fax to:
(202) 547-8715.
Brief questions, comments, and/or suggestions should be
directed by email to: omnicapital@verizon.net
Cornelia P. Atchley,
artist, Portrait of Vigdor in blue 2001.
Freedom of the press via Internet is protected by the First Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States.
Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S, 844, 896-97 (1997);
John Doe v. Patrick Cahill (SC DE, 2005). Copy of a digital photo of any art work may not be subject
to copyright. An attempt to obtain perpetual copyright by use of photo or
digital images, which can be made without end, may not give rise to a work of
sufficient originality to claim copyright under the Copyright Clause of the
Constitution and Copyright Act. USCA Const, Art. I, § 8, cl. 8;
17 USCA. § 102(a)
Bridgeman v. Corel (DC SDNY, 1999). Fair use is also claimed, herein, of
any digital reproduction of such items produced by any museums, archives,
photographers, and by any other rights holders known and unknown, for purposes
of non-profit education, criticism, comment, and news reporting, as provided by
17 United States Code § 106(1).
