Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

“Star Wars civilization”

Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and the rest of life.

Wilson, Edward O. The Social Conquest of Earth. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012) p.7 (hardcover)

Divestment campaign successes

From an excellent Rolling Stone article by Bill McKibben:

We even had some early victories. Three colleges – Unity in Maine, Hampshire in Massachusetts and Sterling College in Vermont – purged their portfolios of fossil fuel stocks. Three days before Christmas, Seattle mayor Mike McGinn announced city funds would no longer be invested in fossil fuel companies, and asked the heads of the city’s pension fund to follow his lead. Citing the rising sea levels that threatened city’s neighborhoods, he said, “I believe that Seattle ought to discourage these companies from extracting that fossil fuel, and divesting the pension fund from these companies is one way we can do that.”

Toronto350.org is looking for volunteers to help run our divestment campaign.

Toronto350.org photos from the Forward on Climate Rally

I am in the process of uploading my photos from this weekend’s rally in Washington D.C. calling on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.

[Update: 19 FEB 2013] My six favourite photos from the Forward on Climate rally in Washington D.C. on Sunday February 17th, 2013:

Burke on rights and generations

“The political philosopher par excellence of the organic constitution was the Anglo-Irish theorist and statesman Edmund Burke, who wrote a century after Locke. Burke did not share the Age of Enlightenment’s optimism about the capacity for each rational individual to discern fundamental political truths. ‘The individual is foolish, but the species is wise.’ Instead of abstract natural rights, Burke believed in the real rights and obligations which grow out of the social conventions and understandings that hold society together. For Burke, the social contract which formed the foundation of society was not between individuals here and now but from one generation to another, each handing on to the next the product of its collective wisdom. The Burkean notion of an organic constitution has little appeal for those who, unlike the English, have not enjoyed a long and relatively uninterrupted constitutional history. But it was certainly congenial to the Canadian Fathers of Confederation who, though organizing a new country, did not for a moment conceive of themselves as authoring a brand new constitution.”

Russell, Peter. Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become a Sovereign Poeple? Third edition. p.10 (hardcover)