Category: David Tubthump

I am glad to have been among the 1.5 billion people who today watched
the inauguration of President Barack Obama and to have both exulted at
this historic moment and felt the steel of grim resolve in his tone. As
his motto says, Yes We Can, and I hope that We – all of us, around the
world, not just in the US – can step up to the plate and address the
collective failure to take responsibility for our world. We must ‘roll
back’ the threat of climate change, and with this leadership, I hope, We
will.

Let us hope this is the day America, and the world in general, grows up

.

Continue reading “Homophobic Christian Nutjob LOSES”

Is it possible that it may be to a growing extent the Chinese who are the ones lending large amounts of money to help the Western Central banks prop up our failing banking system?

See the US Treasury website, for example – http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt,
showing Japan as the biggest foreign owner of US treasury bonds, on a
declining scale, and China as the second biggest, rapidly catching up
and very soon to overtake Japan. (We in the UK are a distant – but
rapidly and massively growing – 3rd after these two giants, with the
rest of the world trailing behind.)

See recent analysis for China of the current crisis – “In the first
half of 2008 China’s GDP continued to grow at a double-digit
rate (10.4%), despite a few severe natural disasters that hit many parts
of the country really hard, including the snow­storms in south
China in January and the Sichuan earthquake in May. Therefore,
irrespective of the economic slowdown in the rest of the world,
China is still likely to propel its own economic growth and trade
at a rather ambitious pace. Thanks to limited exposure to US
sub­prime mortgages, most Chinese commercial banks will not be
critically impaired by the current crisis. ” [pdf]

See the journalistic reports that China is indeed so economically strong that its large investments in the West can nonetheless be comfortably written off…

Maybe they waited till after the Olympics before they really started to squeeze…?
STOP PRESS – Will Hutton’s comments are revealing and longer term. A relief?

Obama wants an 80% cut in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. He
wants the US to lead the global effort to combat climate change. He
says he would invest $150bn over 10 years in clean energy.

Let us pray he manages to persuade the American people to vote for him.

Whatever else may be unsavoury about him, about US politics, about
liberal America in general, at least this man sounds like a decent step
in the right direction! If the election goes in the other direction,
the world will truly go to the dogs…..

Unfortunately, of course, US politics is so corrupt, it is very much touch and go. George Monbiot’s acerbic analysis of missle defence
is a good description of how things work over there, and I fear how the
election may go. It is truly unfortunate, and very difficult to even
contemplate, but the urgency of climate change suggests at times that
our democratic governance is failing us – that it is simply not up to
the job. The alternatives are unfortunately almost certainly no better.
There is much debate over large scale – even international – democracy, and in these days of public relations manipulation one needs a lot of hope that things will turn out right in the end.

Continue reading “15 minutes”

Population of China :
=================
1,330,869,743

The West?
========
Population of EU:491,018,677
US-304,089,248
Canada-31,612,897
Austrasia-20,325,926+4,116,900
South Africa-46,586,607
Japan-127,756,815

TOTAL: 978,920,463

in short-hand:
China : 1.3bn
The West: 0.9bn

Stats from http://www.geohive.com/

So, China outnumbers us.

So… why should we expect them to do anything but live up to the style
of personal one-to-one interaction that they understand? All they ask
is that we respect their cultural ‘thang’ about FACE. We (especially
Bush, have been blowing off in their FACE) and they are begging us,
‘don’t give us any more trouble – we are in China’.

But, on the other hand, the Last Great Police State, already
economically conquered, is finally beginning to waver politically in the
swirl of the information society. This is a phenomenon that knows no
geographical limits – and perhaps needs only to complete its global
ubiquitous-ness before it begins to expand its cloak of satellites
beyond the orbit of the earth and out into the inky blackness, perhaps
with a more culturally integrated voice… ..albeit that that cultural
integration may hide many unique flavours behind its standard salt &
vinegar…

It seems the choice for all of us has been made. Globally, we live in a
transnational capitalist economy, and pray that the survival of the
planet will be profitable. Global integrity sufficient to create a
globally interoperable ubiquitous computing environment will require
that we continue along cultural lines already in play for decades,
centuries, even millenia of tradition, as the legs upon which new heads
stand. On the other hand, large scale systems, after all, set
parameters for cultural expression and identity. So the truly
ubiquitous computing environment in which transnational capitalism can
maximise eCommerce will be both globally immersive, leaving no virtual
pioneering territory without flag or brand, and inclusive, ensuring soy
and ginger flavoured crisps, too…..

The Olympics brought the eye of global infotainment to China, and 1.1billion people will never be the same.

 

I like the new Orange advert http://www.i-am-everyone.co.uk/. There are
others in this vein – The Sunday Times for example. It is about
personalisation. It aims to speak directly to ‘real’ people.
Advertisers, it seems, are beginning to realise – no doubt through the
reports of sociologists – that there is no ‘Public’…. …to realise
that there are many diverse groups of people who all need variously to
be catered for in targeted and unique ways. This is in contrast to the
formerly popular general attempt to rationalise and generalise for ‘the
Public’ from a ‘sample’ of a few, which many have begun now to see is
fraught with a sociomyopia that oversimplifies and alienates badly
enough to work counter to its primary, if piecemeal, aims. We are more
complex than we used to think, and efficiency requires less bluntness in
our implementation strategies – whatever project it may be that we
pursue. Fundamentally, the efficiency of today’s socio-micromanagement
is something we must all grasp – across all disciplines and walks of
life – as we stand up to the collective social task of environmental
behaviour change. This seems to be one story in the multiple narratives
we are exposed to that really does seem to carry weight. This is an
eco-social, collective responsibility moment for the species, in that it
is global, and requires consensus on a geographical and population
scale unprecedented in human history –at a moment when we realise how
diverse we truly are. The Orange advert speaks to an understanding
(within the arts community that informs these marketing tactics) of the
unfolding zeitgeist of a humanity at a crisis moment in both its
self-realisation and its survival potential, and how the answer to that
crisis seems to us all to lie somehow within our understanding of the
self, of who each one of us is, and how each one of us in our moment by
moment unfolding as persons can contribute, through our self awareness
and our actions, to the eco-social behaviour change required of us all
to prevent the destruction of our planet.

 

Buried in the half hour victory speech Barack Obama made in St Paul,
Minnsota in which he expertly moves his ecstatic crowd, are some VERY
potent promises about energy policy and addressing climate change. I
confess I am quite excited about the possibility that this man might
really make a change, not just to America, but thereby the whole world.
After the failed years of the Bush administration and its backward
looking policies the world so desperately needs the change this man
seems to promise. I only hope he can deliver – and that he lives to do
so….

—

Continue reading “Sync Hell”

OK, I’ve been watching this, because the UK media has been full of it,
and considering how much global impact the result is likely to have it
is rather captivating at times – like when you slow down on the motorway
to gawp at the accident on the other carriageway, something in you
really wants to look, despite how distasteful it all is.

So I have been a Hillary supporter for a while, because I quite liked
Bill and thought it would be good to see a Clinton dynasty to rival the
Bush dynasty. I had even felt that although Obama was saying some quite
interesting things, Americans probably weren’t ready for a black
president, but might be ready for a woman.

Tonight I have changed my mind. Tonight I think Americans ARE more ready
for a black president than I thought – SO LONG AS HE”S A MALE – and SO
LONG AS IT ISN”T HILLARY CLINTON. Tonight I changed my mind – and the
thing that changed my mind was this: 90% of Obama’s fundraising is made
up of individual donations of under $100.

This is what a Democratic strategist interviewed on Channel 4 News said.
I’ll repeat it if you like. 90% of Obama’s fundraising is made up of
individual donations of under $100. He has raised more millions of
dollars than McCain, more even than the most formidable fundraising
machine in Democratic history (until now) – Bill Clinton. 90% of Obama’s
fundraising is made up of individual donations of under $100.

This is completely unprecedented. This means, I think, that the US really IS ready for change.

Roll on Obama. I can’t vote for you, but I sincerely hope you win – more
importantly – I sincerely hope you really do make a change, and that
you don’t get yourself shot.