CORPORATE google vs. CREATIVE google
Shame on Corporate Google for BLOCKING access to my gmail mailbox.
Millions of mailboxes have been similarly blocked. Millions of users have complied as if they were sheep.
My gmail inbox continues to be BLOCKED for the 4th day.
That's corporate dictatorship!
Hey Corporate Google, Learn a lesson from Yahoo! Yahoo! has never coerced its users into viewing Yahoo! product promos as a pre-condition for using their email.
I know. I have had a Yahoo! mailbox for over 10 years.
i say Shame on ugly CORPORATE Google, while admiring the innovative CREATIVE side of Google operations example your search and research engines.
you have blocked access to my inbox until i watch your stupid video claiming your "new look' . Guess you have to try to impress your shareholders.
As someone who thinks deeply and ACTS proactively about democracy I maintain there is a significant difference between shareholders and STAKEHOLDERS in a democracy.
For those in your corporate operations who might argue that I have a choice -- either comply with corporate google or lose access to my mailbox -- my Q is: Is that a legitimate choice?
I am a STAKEHOLDER in civil society in democracy, NOT a shareholder in your corporate operations.
1. CORPORATE google, You have no legal or moral right to block access to my gmail inbox
2. CORPORATE google, You have no legal or moral right to coerce me into watching some corporate video about how new and improved your product is, as a prerequisite to having access to my gmail inbox.
I REFUSE to WATCH YOUR VIDEO about your self-proclaimed 'new look'
A Corporation is NOT a person! Therefore -- what 'new look'?!
Are you less totalitarian than China? They've been kicking your butt. You deserve each other! That's what totalitarianism looks like, boardroom mirror anyone?
If my mailbox continues to be BLOCKED by Corporate Google, I will take recourse.
Professor Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York [CUNY]
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/Chithra.KarunaKaran
================================================
Google's alleged "new look"
Here's my point:
Even the most forward looking corporates attempt to control individual action. In other words, they think they can tell you what you want and what you need.
Example:
Today I found Google blocking access to my gmail inbox
Why?
Google wanted me to view the 'new look' they supposedly have imparted to their email services.
Google does not provide a simple "No thanks, I'm happy with my service just the way it is",
Instead, Google BLOCKED access to my Inbox.
You are required to watch their dumb video telling you about their "new look"
For now. I am refusing to comply with Google's dictatorial approach.
Hey Google, I don't watch to watch your enforced video about how great your 'new look' is.
Corporate Google,Allow me to say "No thanks" to your new look and stop BLOCKING my inbox.
What Corporate google policy is this? Sanctions? Embargo?
================================================================================
Showing posts with label ethical democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethical democracy. Show all posts
Friday, January 6, 2012
Thursday, September 17, 2009
No Star Wars in Czech Republic or Poland
My expanded NYTimes Comment #60.
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 17th, 2009
9:45 am
My expanded NYTimes Comment #
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 17th, 2009
9:48 am
Excellent -- the Poles and the Czechs got lucky. No Star Wars planned there.
Hope the President, whom I and the majority of the US electorate voted for, will re-think any attempt to tilt at windmills in Iran. Iran has a right to go nuclear and nobody can stop them. The US govt's Iran policy has a powerful lobby-backed pro-Zionist subtext. Give Peace and the Palestinians a chance.
Now can we do the entire South Asia region a favor and get the US and US-led NATO, the hell out of there too?
If history is any guide, the Afghans, can do that on their own, with no help from anyone.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
---------------------------------------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/world/europe/18shield.html?_r=1
White House to Scrap Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield
By PETER BAKER and NICHOLAS KULISH
The Obama administration plans to announce a reconfigured system that won’t be based in Poland or the Czech Republic, and will be aimed at intercepting Iranian missiles.
------------------------------
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 17th, 2009
9:45 am
My expanded NYTimes Comment #
EthicalDemocracy
New York City
September 17th, 2009
9:48 am
Excellent -- the Poles and the Czechs got lucky. No Star Wars planned there.
Hope the President, whom I and the majority of the US electorate voted for, will re-think any attempt to tilt at windmills in Iran. Iran has a right to go nuclear and nobody can stop them. The US govt's Iran policy has a powerful lobby-backed pro-Zionist subtext. Give Peace and the Palestinians a chance.
Now can we do the entire South Asia region a favor and get the US and US-led NATO, the hell out of there too?
If history is any guide, the Afghans, can do that on their own, with no help from anyone.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
---------------------------------------
NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/world/europe/18shield.html?_r=1
White House to Scrap Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield
By PETER BAKER and NICHOLAS KULISH
The Obama administration plans to announce a reconfigured system that won’t be based in Poland or the Czech Republic, and will be aimed at intercepting Iranian missiles.
------------------------------
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Multipolar Iran vs. Unipolar US
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/02/19/opinion/19cohen.html
Reading Khamenei in Iran by Roger Cohen
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/opinion/19cohen.html
New York Times copyright
--------------
Comment # 48.
February 19, 2009 10:34 am
Link
The Zionists on the staff of The New York Times (of which Cohen is one) are at it again! Seriously, why don't you at the NYT (even if only occasionally) 'deploy' a Global South or Scandinavian journalist to cover the so-called Middle East (Middle of what? East of where?). That area is both West Asia and North East Africa. You cannot truncate either of these huge continents by taking a chunk out of each of them and call that area the Middle East, a Brit colonial-imperial fiction, continued by the US, the prevailing neo-imperial power. Though Cohen does not specifically use the term "Middle East" it is the suspect terrain of his analyses.
Does IRAN's Right to Exist (yes I mean Iran, I am not talking about Israel) depend on Iran's relationship to Israel and the US? Iran has never threatened the US, whereas the US has deposed its popularly elected leaders (Mossadegh), propped up straw monarchs (Reza Shah Pehlavi), stoked the Iran-Iraq war, and sanctioned Iran for attempting to become a nuclear power (which Israel already is, and the US is the only user of nuclear weapons).
Finally, let me inform Cohen Iran is well on the way to strategic multipolarity like many sovereign nation-states struggling out of the colonial era, with dialogue and economic arrangements with South America, Africa and South Asia. Therefore, "only engagement with the West" as Cohen mistakenly asserts is not Iran's only or preferred option.
Iran is undoubtedly a deeply flawed sovereign nation-state with an abysmal human rights record. This human rights record is correctly a terrain for engagement by the US and all UN member states, with Iran, no less than with Saudi Arabia, whose human rights record the US conveniently winks at, while guzzling Saudi oil.
Let it also be noted that Iran is an emerging regional power despite severe geo-political provocation from the US and its satellite, Israel.
My sense is Iran will prevail, despite Cohen's "pious" prescriptions to deal with Iran's alleged "independence obsession."
My comments do not in any way mean I do not read Cohen and others on the op-ed staff of the NYT with the greatest critical interest. I thank the NYT for that opportunity, because it is most instructive.
Such discussion is the stuff of US democracy on its way to developing an ethical spine.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
====================================================================================
Reading Khamenei in Iran by Roger Cohen
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/opinion/19cohen.html
New York Times copyright
--------------
Comment # 48.
February 19, 2009 10:34 am
Link
The Zionists on the staff of The New York Times (of which Cohen is one) are at it again! Seriously, why don't you at the NYT (even if only occasionally) 'deploy' a Global South or Scandinavian journalist to cover the so-called Middle East (Middle of what? East of where?). That area is both West Asia and North East Africa. You cannot truncate either of these huge continents by taking a chunk out of each of them and call that area the Middle East, a Brit colonial-imperial fiction, continued by the US, the prevailing neo-imperial power. Though Cohen does not specifically use the term "Middle East" it is the suspect terrain of his analyses.
Does IRAN's Right to Exist (yes I mean Iran, I am not talking about Israel) depend on Iran's relationship to Israel and the US? Iran has never threatened the US, whereas the US has deposed its popularly elected leaders (Mossadegh), propped up straw monarchs (Reza Shah Pehlavi), stoked the Iran-Iraq war, and sanctioned Iran for attempting to become a nuclear power (which Israel already is, and the US is the only user of nuclear weapons).
Finally, let me inform Cohen Iran is well on the way to strategic multipolarity like many sovereign nation-states struggling out of the colonial era, with dialogue and economic arrangements with South America, Africa and South Asia. Therefore, "only engagement with the West" as Cohen mistakenly asserts is not Iran's only or preferred option.
Iran is undoubtedly a deeply flawed sovereign nation-state with an abysmal human rights record. This human rights record is correctly a terrain for engagement by the US and all UN member states, with Iran, no less than with Saudi Arabia, whose human rights record the US conveniently winks at, while guzzling Saudi oil.
Let it also be noted that Iran is an emerging regional power despite severe geo-political provocation from the US and its satellite, Israel.
My sense is Iran will prevail, despite Cohen's "pious" prescriptions to deal with Iran's alleged "independence obsession."
My comments do not in any way mean I do not read Cohen and others on the op-ed staff of the NYT with the greatest critical interest. I thank the NYT for that opportunity, because it is most instructive.
Such discussion is the stuff of US democracy on its way to developing an ethical spine.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
====================================================================================
Friday, February 13, 2009
2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return
2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return
We urgently need a World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return in 2010.
We know no people without a land to call home.
We know no people who do not share a land with others.
We know no people who have prospered by rejecting the land of their ancestors.
We, all of us, know of no people who are content to be deprived of the option to live their lives in a land of their ancestors' birth, as well as have the option to live elsewhere.
No one is exempt from Hope. No one is exempt from Hope, whether bowed or defiant in Despair.
Hope lives in the human heart, that "thing with feathers."
Is a year of the RIGHT to RETURN possible?
During the 2010 Year of Return Palestinians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Tamils, Kurds, indigenous Peoples, dislocated Peoples, victims of ethnic cleansing, dispossessed Peoples, de-recognized or unrecognized Peoples, ecological refugees, climate refugees, farmers, refugee growers and displaced gatherers of food, refugee practitioners of traditional forest and bush medicine, refugee craftspeople, ALL will have the unfettered opportunity to return peacefully and without hindrance, they will have the Right to Return.
This has to be a Refugees Without Borders Peoples' Movement.
No government of a sovereign state can hope to succeed, nor does any government or intergovernmental agency have the ethical courage and political will to either order or block the universal human Right to Return. Governments, liberation groups like Hamas, ALL groups that stake a claim for the right to return, member-states of the UN, the agencies and organizations of the UN, need the driving force of borderless civil society, people like you and me, to help them focus an entire year on The Right to Return of ALL refugee Peoples. Only then can the refugee movement succeed.
It will not be easy. But such a world movement is fraught with ethical, civilizational possibility.
Can we collectively plan and implement a 2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return? It is an ethical responsibility of borderless civil society everywhere.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
---------------
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/THOU-77K58G?OpenDocument
We urgently need a World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return in 2010.
We know no people without a land to call home.
We know no people who do not share a land with others.
We know no people who have prospered by rejecting the land of their ancestors.
We, all of us, know of no people who are content to be deprived of the option to live their lives in a land of their ancestors' birth, as well as have the option to live elsewhere.
No one is exempt from Hope. No one is exempt from Hope, whether bowed or defiant in Despair.
Hope lives in the human heart, that "thing with feathers."
Is a year of the RIGHT to RETURN possible?
During the 2010 Year of Return Palestinians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Tamils, Kurds, indigenous Peoples, dislocated Peoples, victims of ethnic cleansing, dispossessed Peoples, de-recognized or unrecognized Peoples, ecological refugees, climate refugees, farmers, refugee growers and displaced gatherers of food, refugee practitioners of traditional forest and bush medicine, refugee craftspeople, ALL will have the unfettered opportunity to return peacefully and without hindrance, they will have the Right to Return.
This has to be a Refugees Without Borders Peoples' Movement.
No government of a sovereign state can hope to succeed, nor does any government or intergovernmental agency have the ethical courage and political will to either order or block the universal human Right to Return. Governments, liberation groups like Hamas, ALL groups that stake a claim for the right to return, member-states of the UN, the agencies and organizations of the UN, need the driving force of borderless civil society, people like you and me, to help them focus an entire year on The Right to Return of ALL refugee Peoples. Only then can the refugee movement succeed.
It will not be easy. But such a world movement is fraught with ethical, civilizational possibility.
Can we collectively plan and implement a 2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return? It is an ethical responsibility of borderless civil society everywhere.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
---------------
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/THOU-77K58G?OpenDocument
Self in Society: Ethical Possibility As Lived Practice
Not Self and Society but Self in Society.
The non-duality (advaita) of Self and Universe of the Upanishad (800 BCE) meets neuroscience with Damasio's "somatic marker hypothesis."(1994).
What an engagement across eons of awareness. I am conceptually locating that momentous engagement in the study of the PSYCHOSOCIAL, which sits at the crossroads intersection of sociology, psychology, quantum physics and cognitive neuroscience but which cannot be collapsed or subsumed within any of them.
First and foremost as an ordinary and reflective person, then and only secondarily as a postcolonial sociologist who teaches foundational theories in Psychology, I am fortunate to have developed for myself, in spaces of academic institutional resistance, and in digital spaces such as this blog, the opportunity to conceptually bring the individual "I" and situate that i within the collective "We", an examined union of the natural and the social-cultural.
There is no lived distance between Self & Society. Such a constructed divide lacks temporal possibility because in real time there is no Self without Society. There is no Society without Selves. It is Society that makes Self human. Though we arrive, at infancy, in Society equipped to be human, to BECOME human, we need Society. Those very few selves who were unfortunate enough to be placed outside of the human social context failed to become human.
Though we are free to mentally manipulate the two, Self and Society, as distinct conceptual categories, in order to further our thought about Self and Society, Self in Society, each necessarily constitutes the other. That symbolic manipulation is a necessary intellectual scientific endeavor in order to contemplate, affirm and establish the interweaving and inseparability of Self & Society, Society & Self.
It has become my life's work and such work is not dependent on the US academy which pays me meagerly but sufficiently for my own frugality, but continually attempts to limit the ethical intellectual scope of what I may do. Therefore most of my work must be unpaid and conducted outside of the US academy. Neither the US academy nor its macro-context, the US nation-state nor its surrogate institutions, define who I am or who I am becoming as Self in Society.
In my own lived practice, I accept full responsibility for my thoughts and actions. Therefore, I cannot ascribe my thoughts and actions (which I concurrently experience or perform in real time), to others OR to magical forces (religion vs. ethics) or fictitious circumstances or fabricated representations, outside of myself.
I am responsible for my thoughts and actions, I am fully accountable for my own thoughts and actions, which may be shaped and influenced by the above, but I still am responsible.
It is my responsibility to myself, my family, my ancestors, my universal civil society to develop my intrinsic motivation and limit the influence of extrinsic motivation in the ethical pursuit of my own lived possibility.
Others are not responsible or accountable for what I myself think and do. I must importantly accept the responsibility that my thoughts and actions may influence and impact others, sometimes to their detriment, therefore I have an ethical responsibility to anticipate how I may affect these selves, these others who are also equally human and have the same ethical potential as I. This is the goal of the Self in joining with other selves in the pursuit of establishing the Greater Collective Good, an indispensable constituting force of Society.
By the same token I cannot accept responsibility for the thoughts and actions of others, including the thoughts and actions of individuals, financial institutions or governments. These I feel absolutely free to examine, challenge and oppose or support, according to my evolving understanding of my own ethical possibility as a moment-by-moment, daily, seasonal and lifelong lived practice.
It is fortuitous for me to have an opportunity for reflection on Self in Society, on this anniversary of Gandhi's assassination.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Self & Society: Ethical Possibility as Lived Practice
01/30/09 Gandhi was assassinated on Jan 30, 1948
The non-duality (advaita) of Self and Universe of the Upanishad (800 BCE) meets neuroscience with Damasio's "somatic marker hypothesis."(1994).
What an engagement across eons of awareness. I am conceptually locating that momentous engagement in the study of the PSYCHOSOCIAL, which sits at the crossroads intersection of sociology, psychology, quantum physics and cognitive neuroscience but which cannot be collapsed or subsumed within any of them.
First and foremost as an ordinary and reflective person, then and only secondarily as a postcolonial sociologist who teaches foundational theories in Psychology, I am fortunate to have developed for myself, in spaces of academic institutional resistance, and in digital spaces such as this blog, the opportunity to conceptually bring the individual "I" and situate that i within the collective "We", an examined union of the natural and the social-cultural.
There is no lived distance between Self & Society. Such a constructed divide lacks temporal possibility because in real time there is no Self without Society. There is no Society without Selves. It is Society that makes Self human. Though we arrive, at infancy, in Society equipped to be human, to BECOME human, we need Society. Those very few selves who were unfortunate enough to be placed outside of the human social context failed to become human.
Though we are free to mentally manipulate the two, Self and Society, as distinct conceptual categories, in order to further our thought about Self and Society, Self in Society, each necessarily constitutes the other. That symbolic manipulation is a necessary intellectual scientific endeavor in order to contemplate, affirm and establish the interweaving and inseparability of Self & Society, Society & Self.
It has become my life's work and such work is not dependent on the US academy which pays me meagerly but sufficiently for my own frugality, but continually attempts to limit the ethical intellectual scope of what I may do. Therefore most of my work must be unpaid and conducted outside of the US academy. Neither the US academy nor its macro-context, the US nation-state nor its surrogate institutions, define who I am or who I am becoming as Self in Society.
In my own lived practice, I accept full responsibility for my thoughts and actions. Therefore, I cannot ascribe my thoughts and actions (which I concurrently experience or perform in real time), to others OR to magical forces (religion vs. ethics) or fictitious circumstances or fabricated representations, outside of myself.
I am responsible for my thoughts and actions, I am fully accountable for my own thoughts and actions, which may be shaped and influenced by the above, but I still am responsible.
It is my responsibility to myself, my family, my ancestors, my universal civil society to develop my intrinsic motivation and limit the influence of extrinsic motivation in the ethical pursuit of my own lived possibility.
Others are not responsible or accountable for what I myself think and do. I must importantly accept the responsibility that my thoughts and actions may influence and impact others, sometimes to their detriment, therefore I have an ethical responsibility to anticipate how I may affect these selves, these others who are also equally human and have the same ethical potential as I. This is the goal of the Self in joining with other selves in the pursuit of establishing the Greater Collective Good, an indispensable constituting force of Society.
By the same token I cannot accept responsibility for the thoughts and actions of others, including the thoughts and actions of individuals, financial institutions or governments. These I feel absolutely free to examine, challenge and oppose or support, according to my evolving understanding of my own ethical possibility as a moment-by-moment, daily, seasonal and lifelong lived practice.
It is fortuitous for me to have an opportunity for reflection on Self in Society, on this anniversary of Gandhi's assassination.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Self & Society: Ethical Possibility as Lived Practice
01/30/09 Gandhi was assassinated on Jan 30, 1948
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Heim: Sociopath, Nazi War Criminal & the Challenge for Ethical Democracy
February 5th, 2009 4:38 am
Heim -- A consummate criminal, a genocider, a sociopath and psychopath who, most regrettably, was not brought to justice. Heim died peacefully in Cairo in 1992, a citizen of Egypt, but apparently his hiding place was only revealed recently.
This whole sequence of a life lived becomes a topic of concern in my empirical investigation of Self in Society in my "Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice" Blog.
It's ironic that the article mentions Heim planned to appeal to Kurt Waldheim -- yet another Nazi silent accomplice (see link below) who was honored with UN service and went unpunished.
Did Heim become less of a criminal because he became a Muslim? Yet another instance of religion being deployed for criminal, pathological uses, by individuals and the state.
Egypt aided and abetted this criminal by offering him political sanctuary and citizenship under an assumed,in this case, changed, name. So the Egyptian nation-state bears criminal responsibility and should pay reparation to the families of his victims. Unfortunately that may not happen until we make progress as ethical societies. That day may yet come. Heim's numerous victims who were rendered speechless in death, cry out for justice.
Justice is deathless. Ethical democracy to secure justice takes time and sincere, sustained effort.
The Arc of Justice........
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
------
Uncovering Lost Path of the Most Wanted Nazi
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/world/africa/05nazi.html?pagewanted=1&hp
New York Times copyright
-----
by Jonathan Kandell,IHT article June 14, 2007 obit on Waldheim
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/14/europe/waldheim.php
International Herald Tribune copyright
==============================================================================
Heim -- A consummate criminal, a genocider, a sociopath and psychopath who, most regrettably, was not brought to justice. Heim died peacefully in Cairo in 1992, a citizen of Egypt, but apparently his hiding place was only revealed recently.
This whole sequence of a life lived becomes a topic of concern in my empirical investigation of Self in Society in my "Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice" Blog.
It's ironic that the article mentions Heim planned to appeal to Kurt Waldheim -- yet another Nazi silent accomplice (see link below) who was honored with UN service and went unpunished.
Did Heim become less of a criminal because he became a Muslim? Yet another instance of religion being deployed for criminal, pathological uses, by individuals and the state.
Egypt aided and abetted this criminal by offering him political sanctuary and citizenship under an assumed,in this case, changed, name. So the Egyptian nation-state bears criminal responsibility and should pay reparation to the families of his victims. Unfortunately that may not happen until we make progress as ethical societies. That day may yet come. Heim's numerous victims who were rendered speechless in death, cry out for justice.
Justice is deathless. Ethical democracy to secure justice takes time and sincere, sustained effort.
The Arc of Justice........
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, New York, NY
------
Uncovering Lost Path of the Most Wanted Nazi
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/world/africa/05nazi.html?pagewanted=1&hp
New York Times copyright
-----
by Jonathan Kandell,IHT article June 14, 2007 obit on Waldheim
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/14/europe/waldheim.php
International Herald Tribune copyright
==============================================================================
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Science & Ethical Democracy
A recent article on Science (see link below) prompted some thoughts I have about Science & Ethical Democracy. I would like to tentatively assert that Ethical Democracy is the proper context for the pursuit of multiple truths, both scientific and religious.
Religion and Science are and always have been central preoccupations of Self, Society, Technology, Progress and Civilization, no matter whether such society is arbitrarily defined as "primitive" or "modern", "simple" or "complex".
Religion has its origin in the feeling of AWE in the presence of Nature. Science has its Origin in activities of INQUIRY about Nature.
Science demands EVIDENCE and PROOF. Religion on the other hand depends on FAITH and BELIEF.
Without EVIDENCE and PROOF there is no SCIENCE.
Without FAITH and BELIEF there is no RELIGION.
That admirable multidimensional scientist and probably religious believer, the late great Stephen Jay Gould observed that science and religion are "non-overlapping magisteria." How aptly grand his choice of words to describe humynkind's two overriding preoccupations.
Contrary to the assertion in the article linked below, Science is NOT engaged in the pursuit of TRUTH, whatever that may be. Instead Science is engaged in the examination of EVIDENCE and evolving (not fixed) conclusions (PROOF) based upon that specific evidence. Similarly, RELIGION is also not engaged in the search for TRUTH, whatever that may be. Those who consider themselves religious or spiritual or who subscribe to the belief of a Supreme Agency, are not interested in TRUTH but on keeping FAITH and maintaining BELIEF that such Supreme Agency exists.
But by placing TRUTH outside of the purview of both Science and Religion, I have given myself the task of trying to identify TRUTH in its location in lived practices of the SELF in SOCIETY.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------
New York Times article
by Dennis Oberbye
Elevating Science Elevating Democracy
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/27essa.html?emc=eta1
----
Stephen Jay Gould on Science and Religion
Nonoverlapping Magisteria
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html
=====================================================================================
Religion and Science are and always have been central preoccupations of Self, Society, Technology, Progress and Civilization, no matter whether such society is arbitrarily defined as "primitive" or "modern", "simple" or "complex".
Religion has its origin in the feeling of AWE in the presence of Nature. Science has its Origin in activities of INQUIRY about Nature.
Science demands EVIDENCE and PROOF. Religion on the other hand depends on FAITH and BELIEF.
Without EVIDENCE and PROOF there is no SCIENCE.
Without FAITH and BELIEF there is no RELIGION.
That admirable multidimensional scientist and probably religious believer, the late great Stephen Jay Gould observed that science and religion are "non-overlapping magisteria." How aptly grand his choice of words to describe humynkind's two overriding preoccupations.
Contrary to the assertion in the article linked below, Science is NOT engaged in the pursuit of TRUTH, whatever that may be. Instead Science is engaged in the examination of EVIDENCE and evolving (not fixed) conclusions (PROOF) based upon that specific evidence. Similarly, RELIGION is also not engaged in the search for TRUTH, whatever that may be. Those who consider themselves religious or spiritual or who subscribe to the belief of a Supreme Agency, are not interested in TRUTH but on keeping FAITH and maintaining BELIEF that such Supreme Agency exists.
But by placing TRUTH outside of the purview of both Science and Religion, I have given myself the task of trying to identify TRUTH in its location in lived practices of the SELF in SOCIETY.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
------------------
New York Times article
by Dennis Oberbye
Elevating Science Elevating Democracy
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/27essa.html?emc=eta1
----
Stephen Jay Gould on Science and Religion
Nonoverlapping Magisteria
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html
=====================================================================================
Friday, January 30, 2009
2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return
2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return
2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return
We urgently need a World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return in 2010.
During the 2010 Year of Return Palestinians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Tamils, Kurds, indigenous Peoples, dislocated Peoples, dispossessed Peoples, de-recognized or unrecognized Peoples,ecological refugees, climate refugees, farmers, refugee growers and displaced gatherers of food, refugee practitioners of traditional forest and bush medicine, refugee craftspeople, ALL will have the unfettered opportunity to return peacefully and without hindrance, they will have the Right to Return.
This has to be a Regugees Without Borders Peoples' Movement.
No government of a sovereign state can hope to succeed, nor does any government or intergovernmental agency have the ethical courage and political will to either order or block the universal human Right to Return. Governments, liberation groups like Hamas, ALL groups that stake a claim for return, member-states of the UN, the agencies and organizations of the UN, need the driving force of borderless civil society to help them focus an entire year on The Right to Return of ALL refugeee Peoples. Only then can the refugee movement succeed. It will not be easy. But such a world movement is fraught with ethical, civilizational possibility.
We, all of us, know of no people who are content to be deprived of the opportunity to live lives in a land of their ancestors' birth. No one is exempt from hope. Is such a year of the RIGHT to RETURN possible?
Can we plan and implement a 2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return? It is an ethical responsibility of borderless civil society everywhere.
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return
====================================================================================
2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return
We urgently need a World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return in 2010.
During the 2010 Year of Return Palestinians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Tamils, Kurds, indigenous Peoples, dislocated Peoples, dispossessed Peoples, de-recognized or unrecognized Peoples,ecological refugees, climate refugees, farmers, refugee growers and displaced gatherers of food, refugee practitioners of traditional forest and bush medicine, refugee craftspeople, ALL will have the unfettered opportunity to return peacefully and without hindrance, they will have the Right to Return.
This has to be a Regugees Without Borders Peoples' Movement.
No government of a sovereign state can hope to succeed, nor does any government or intergovernmental agency have the ethical courage and political will to either order or block the universal human Right to Return. Governments, liberation groups like Hamas, ALL groups that stake a claim for return, member-states of the UN, the agencies and organizations of the UN, need the driving force of borderless civil society to help them focus an entire year on The Right to Return of ALL refugeee Peoples. Only then can the refugee movement succeed. It will not be easy. But such a world movement is fraught with ethical, civilizational possibility.
We, all of us, know of no people who are content to be deprived of the opportunity to live lives in a land of their ancestors' birth. No one is exempt from hope. Is such a year of the RIGHT to RETURN possible?
Can we plan and implement a 2010 World Rally for Refugees' Right to Return? It is an ethical responsibility of borderless civil society everywhere.
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
Ethical Democracy as Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
2010 World Rally For Refugees' Right to Return
====================================================================================
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Corporate Greed and the Challenge for Ethical Democracy
January 28th, 2009 4:14 am
Maureen I relish your inimitable wordsmithing.
And the anger you express is what many of us probably feel, not righteous Old Testament wrath as you claim at the beginning of your article, but secular, justifiable, socially responsible anger, given the appalling factual evidence of serial corporate greed accompanied by a total lack of remorse for the sufferings of the polity. Psychiatric evaluation, jail time and extended community service seem in order.
US exceptionalist overreach in practically every area of civil society both at home and overseas, at the same time as pulling off an historic election, are object lessons for all of us, about the limits of unregulated democracy, especially for evolving democracies trying to develop responsible corporate institutions in South Asia and other parts of the world. Unfortunately our homegrown elites (the Satyam India case) in the Global South are just as mendacious and rapacious as Madoff, Thain and crew.
For We the People, Democracy's work is never done.
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
====================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/opinion/28dowd.html?hp
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 27, 2009
Maureen Dowd
As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.
Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet?
Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his antique commode?
How could Citigroup be so dumb as to go ahead with plans to get a new $50 million corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees?
(Now I get why a $400 payment I recently sent to pay off my Citibank Visa was mistakenly applied to my sister-in-law’s Citibank Mastercard account.)
The “Citiboobs” — as The New York Post, which broke the news, calls them — watched as the car chieftains got in trouble for flying their private jets to Washington to ask for bailouts, and the A.I.G. moguls got dragged before Congress for spending their bailout on California spa treatments. But the boobs still didn’t get the message.
The former masters of the universe don’t seem to fully comprehend that their universe has crumbled and, thanks to them, so has ours. Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.
Prodded by an appalled Senator Carl Levin, Tim Geithner — even as he was being confirmed as Treasury secretary — directed Treasury officials to call the Citiboobs and tell them the new jet would not fly.
“They woke up pretty quickly,” says a Treasury official, adding that they protested for a bit. “Six months ago, they would have kept the plane and flown it to Washington.”
Senator Levin said that the financiers will not be able to change their warped mentality, but will have to be reined in by Geithner’s new leashes. “I have no confidence that they intend or desire to change,” Levin told me. “These bankers got away with murder, and it’s obscene that close to nothing is being asked of financial institutions. I get incensed at the thought that a bank that’s getting billions of dollars in taxpayer money is out there buying fancy new airplanes.”
New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, always gratifying on the issue of clawing back money from the greedy creeps on Wall Street, on Tuesday subpoenaed Thain, the former Merrill Lynch chief executive, over $4 billion in bonuses he handed out as the failing firm was bought by Bank of America.
In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, Thain used the specious, contemptible reasoning that other executives use to rationalize why they’re keeping their bonuses as profits are plunging.
“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise” and they’ll go elsewhere, he said.
Hello? They destroyed the franchise. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s see what a great job market it is for the geniuses of capitalism who lost $15 billion in three months and helped usher in socialism.
Bartiromo also asked Thain to explain, when jobs and salaries were being cut at his firm, how he could justify spending $1 million to renovate his office. As The Daily Beast and CNBC reported, big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a “Roman Shade” for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a “custom coffee table” for $16,000, an antique commode “on legs” for $35,000, and a $1,400 “parchment waste can.”
Does that mean you can only throw used parchment in it or is it made of parchment? It’s psychopathic to spend a million redoing your office when the folks outside it are losing jobs, homes, pensions and savings.
Thain should never rise above the level of stocking the money in A.T.M.’s again. Just think: This guy could well have been Treasury secretary if John McCain had won.
Bartiromo pressed: What was wrong with the office of his predecessor, Stanley O’Neal?
“Well — his office was very different — than — the — the general décor of — Merrill’s offices,” Thain replied. “It really would have been — very difficult — for — me to use it in the form that it was in.”
Did it have a desk and a phone?
How are these ruthless, careless ghouls who murdered the economy still walking around (not to mention that sociopathic sadist Bernie Madoff?) — and not as perps?
Bring on the shackles. Let the show trials begin.
=====================================================================================
Maureen I relish your inimitable wordsmithing.
And the anger you express is what many of us probably feel, not righteous Old Testament wrath as you claim at the beginning of your article, but secular, justifiable, socially responsible anger, given the appalling factual evidence of serial corporate greed accompanied by a total lack of remorse for the sufferings of the polity. Psychiatric evaluation, jail time and extended community service seem in order.
US exceptionalist overreach in practically every area of civil society both at home and overseas, at the same time as pulling off an historic election, are object lessons for all of us, about the limits of unregulated democracy, especially for evolving democracies trying to develop responsible corporate institutions in South Asia and other parts of the world. Unfortunately our homegrown elites (the Satyam India case) in the Global South are just as mendacious and rapacious as Madoff, Thain and crew.
For We the People, Democracy's work is never done.
Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
====================================================================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/opinion/28dowd.html?hp
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 27, 2009
Maureen Dowd
As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.
Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet?
Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his antique commode?
How could Citigroup be so dumb as to go ahead with plans to get a new $50 million corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees?
(Now I get why a $400 payment I recently sent to pay off my Citibank Visa was mistakenly applied to my sister-in-law’s Citibank Mastercard account.)
The “Citiboobs” — as The New York Post, which broke the news, calls them — watched as the car chieftains got in trouble for flying their private jets to Washington to ask for bailouts, and the A.I.G. moguls got dragged before Congress for spending their bailout on California spa treatments. But the boobs still didn’t get the message.
The former masters of the universe don’t seem to fully comprehend that their universe has crumbled and, thanks to them, so has ours. Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.
Prodded by an appalled Senator Carl Levin, Tim Geithner — even as he was being confirmed as Treasury secretary — directed Treasury officials to call the Citiboobs and tell them the new jet would not fly.
“They woke up pretty quickly,” says a Treasury official, adding that they protested for a bit. “Six months ago, they would have kept the plane and flown it to Washington.”
Senator Levin said that the financiers will not be able to change their warped mentality, but will have to be reined in by Geithner’s new leashes. “I have no confidence that they intend or desire to change,” Levin told me. “These bankers got away with murder, and it’s obscene that close to nothing is being asked of financial institutions. I get incensed at the thought that a bank that’s getting billions of dollars in taxpayer money is out there buying fancy new airplanes.”
New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, always gratifying on the issue of clawing back money from the greedy creeps on Wall Street, on Tuesday subpoenaed Thain, the former Merrill Lynch chief executive, over $4 billion in bonuses he handed out as the failing firm was bought by Bank of America.
In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, Thain used the specious, contemptible reasoning that other executives use to rationalize why they’re keeping their bonuses as profits are plunging.
“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise” and they’ll go elsewhere, he said.
Hello? They destroyed the franchise. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s see what a great job market it is for the geniuses of capitalism who lost $15 billion in three months and helped usher in socialism.
Bartiromo also asked Thain to explain, when jobs and salaries were being cut at his firm, how he could justify spending $1 million to renovate his office. As The Daily Beast and CNBC reported, big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a “Roman Shade” for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a “custom coffee table” for $16,000, an antique commode “on legs” for $35,000, and a $1,400 “parchment waste can.”
Does that mean you can only throw used parchment in it or is it made of parchment? It’s psychopathic to spend a million redoing your office when the folks outside it are losing jobs, homes, pensions and savings.
Thain should never rise above the level of stocking the money in A.T.M.’s again. Just think: This guy could well have been Treasury secretary if John McCain had won.
Bartiromo pressed: What was wrong with the office of his predecessor, Stanley O’Neal?
“Well — his office was very different — than — the — the general décor of — Merrill’s offices,” Thain replied. “It really would have been — very difficult — for — me to use it in the form that it was in.”
Did it have a desk and a phone?
How are these ruthless, careless ghouls who murdered the economy still walking around (not to mention that sociopathic sadist Bernie Madoff?) — and not as perps?
Bring on the shackles. Let the show trials begin.
=====================================================================================
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Dynastic Politics & the Challenge to Ethical Democracy
In Tamil Nadu Nadu and at the Center dynastic politics is especially tenacious, with Karunanidhi asserting family ties over state governance (sons Azhagiri, Stalin) as well as at the national level(daughter Kanimozhi as member of parliament). At the centre, the Congress is attempting to bring Rahul Gandhi into line as the next prime miniserial candidate.
Dynastic politics poses an ethical problem for the optimal development of democracy. More on this later...
Dynastic politics poses an ethical problem for the optimal development of democracy. More on this later...
Friday, November 28, 2008
A People's Democracy in a Time of Terror
129. November 28, 2008 3:15 pm Link November 28, 2008 9:32 am Link
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/eyewitness-updates-nariman-house/?apage=2#comments
Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah Holtzberg, paid with their precious lives because they loved their Chabad Lubavitch religious beliefs and exercised their right to practice their religion freely in Mumbai India, with their peaceful co-adherents. The youthful and courageous Holtzbergs had lived in India since 2003, according to news reports.
Can anyone imagine Rabbi Holtzberg and his family and community living and practicing their religion -- in PAKISTAN?
Does anyone ever hear anything about Pakistan's minorities? Who are they? Where do they live? For that matter, what about Saudi Arabia's religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities, why are they made invisible?
Remember what happened to Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose throat was slit by terrorists in Pakistan?
Democracy is always imperfect and always in need of continual work by The People.
In India our democracy is most certainly imperfect and we in India must make tireless efforts in the spirit of Gandhi, a democracy that is an outgrowth of our own history and civilization.
A start towards democracy, ETHICAL DEMOCRACY, built upon her own unique and complex history is essential, in Pakistan.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
==================================
Chithra Karunakaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
I was interested in two sets of comments sent by Bradsher of the NYTimes The Lede blog. My own comments are followed by his:
My Comment #1.
Even though there is no clear evidence and there probably will not be, of exactly who is behind the attacks, the Indian Prime Minister has already claimed without hard evidence there are “external linkages.” This causes people to distrust their popularly elected govt. The Indian leadership, not just the government but also the numerous regional parties and alliances, have to face up to the strong possibility that this is a homegrown terror event with multiple homegrown causes. Such an admission would force the current coalition govt and opposition leaders at the federal regional and local levels to work together to address and resolve major social, economic and political inequities on the ground, including ending Indian army atrocities in Kashmir as well as attempt to quell cross-border incursions from Pakistan.
India is an unprecedented democracy, therefore shemust reach into her own particular extraordinary history of revolutionary liberatory dissent led by Gandhi and others,and it cannot merely imitate the West’s response to terror attacks, which have complex underlying causes that need to be understood before we can act on them.
Bradsher wrote;
There is still great uncertainty about who was responsible for the attacks and why it has taken so long for the Indian Army to overcome the attackers.
============================================
Comment #2
This is Indian democracy in action. This is a country of enormous numbers of people. We the People get a ringside seat! I see numerous examples of the Indian “way of democratic process” every time I return ‘home.’ Of course the safety of the public is important but can it be allowed to overrule the people’s right to know. first hand?
Bradsher wrote:
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:10
The Indian army has not tried to clear residents from more than a radius of a block or two around combat sites. That radius might be adequate to protect spectators from grenade blasts, but it won’t save them from bullets fired by high-powered rifles, which can be deadly over distance of a couple miles.
The roads, rooftops and balconies around Nariman House are now crowded with over a thousand local gawkers. It is not clear if any have been injured.
==============================================
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/eyewitness-updates-nariman-house/?apage=2#comments
Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah Holtzberg, paid with their precious lives because they loved their Chabad Lubavitch religious beliefs and exercised their right to practice their religion freely in Mumbai India, with their peaceful co-adherents. The youthful and courageous Holtzbergs had lived in India since 2003, according to news reports.
Can anyone imagine Rabbi Holtzberg and his family and community living and practicing their religion -- in PAKISTAN?
Does anyone ever hear anything about Pakistan's minorities? Who are they? Where do they live? For that matter, what about Saudi Arabia's religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities, why are they made invisible?
Remember what happened to Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose throat was slit by terrorists in Pakistan?
Democracy is always imperfect and always in need of continual work by The People.
In India our democracy is most certainly imperfect and we in India must make tireless efforts in the spirit of Gandhi, a democracy that is an outgrowth of our own history and civilization.
A start towards democracy, ETHICAL DEMOCRACY, built upon her own unique and complex history is essential, in Pakistan.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
==================================
Chithra Karunakaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
I was interested in two sets of comments sent by Bradsher of the NYTimes The Lede blog. My own comments are followed by his:
My Comment #1.
Even though there is no clear evidence and there probably will not be, of exactly who is behind the attacks, the Indian Prime Minister has already claimed without hard evidence there are “external linkages.” This causes people to distrust their popularly elected govt. The Indian leadership, not just the government but also the numerous regional parties and alliances, have to face up to the strong possibility that this is a homegrown terror event with multiple homegrown causes. Such an admission would force the current coalition govt and opposition leaders at the federal regional and local levels to work together to address and resolve major social, economic and political inequities on the ground, including ending Indian army atrocities in Kashmir as well as attempt to quell cross-border incursions from Pakistan.
India is an unprecedented democracy, therefore shemust reach into her own particular extraordinary history of revolutionary liberatory dissent led by Gandhi and others,and it cannot merely imitate the West’s response to terror attacks, which have complex underlying causes that need to be understood before we can act on them.
Bradsher wrote;
There is still great uncertainty about who was responsible for the attacks and why it has taken so long for the Indian Army to overcome the attackers.
============================================
Comment #2
This is Indian democracy in action. This is a country of enormous numbers of people. We the People get a ringside seat! I see numerous examples of the Indian “way of democratic process” every time I return ‘home.’ Of course the safety of the public is important but can it be allowed to overrule the people’s right to know. first hand?
Bradsher wrote:
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:10
The Indian army has not tried to clear residents from more than a radius of a block or two around combat sites. That radius might be adequate to protect spectators from grenade blasts, but it won’t save them from bullets fired by high-powered rifles, which can be deadly over distance of a couple miles.
The roads, rooftops and balconies around Nariman House are now crowded with over a thousand local gawkers. It is not clear if any have been injured.
==============================================
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
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