Dissected Dreams, Deliberative Decisions

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Life and Philosophy with Little Girl Red by Mr. Drinkwater

Common? Oh, no, Common is not so common after all!

By: Granita
Published: December 26, 2011 Progressive Populist Today

Common formerly known as Common Sense has talents that never seem to stop bringing his fans surprises.

The thing about the fella is that he is a not a particularly controversial person. Maybe it's because he is so smart that controversy attaches itself to Common; or maybe because the media doesn't take time to research their subject before they start spouting the Right Wing Fear Line.

Common is a Midwesterner who grew up in Chicago with a grounded childhood. That can be easily understood when watching him at his book signing - a double book signing as his mother, a university professor, was right there next to him signing her book too. His book is titled One Day It'll All Make Sense. The cover carries a recommendation from none other then the Poetess of Black Life herself, the incomparable Maya Angelou.

Maya Angelou premiered one of her new poems at Common's December concert. Woops. Here comes another controversy. She hadn't expected the 'n' word to pop up in her duet with Common. Gotta get the lady listening to some rap! 'Nigger' in the rap context is a nickname between close friends (although their parents still don't approve.)

You will probably remember the big, noisy and overwhelming non-controversy that wasted everybody's time when Michele Obama invited Common to the White House. The supposed rage on the right was caused by a lyric the artist had written years ago - well, teenagers do that kind of thing.

Common's new CD is The Dreamer/The Believer featuring Maya Angelou, John Legend and NAS. Learn more and listen to songs at his web site Think Common.

Blue Sky(lyrics to first verse)

by Common

Top of the class
Black Wall Street so my stock'll never crash
Giving what I ask
Pure religion and cash
For the windows that open I'm raising my glass
Daylight beams
Nightlife schemes
This is my inception
I'm writing my dreams.
A mortal view of a star
Doing what I'm born to do
I see the blue skies
Say the lord's coming through (Common, The Dreamer/The Believer)

I think, therefore . . .

I am dangerous.

Globalisation, Ecological Crisis, and Dark Ages

SING C. CHEW
Explanations of long-term global transformations to date have been based overwhelmingly on socio-economic and political factors. As we increasingly question whether there are physical and environmental limits that would affect the reproduction of the world system, socio-economic and political factors might not necessarily be suf®cient to account for long-term global transformations. What needs to be added to the overall explanation of long-term social change is the inclusion of ecological and climatological changes as important dimensions in our understanding of global transformations. Given these parameters, global
transformations are outcomes not only of political and economic interactions, but are also consequences of the relationship between society (culture) and nature, and climatological changes. Over world history, the relationship between culture and nature has been punctuated with periods of ecological degradation and crisis.

Given these outcomes, the history of human civilisations can therefore also be described as the ``history of ecological degradation and crisis’’.

It is the latter moment, that of ecological crisis commonly known to historians as the Dark Ages, that is of interest to us. For during these periods of Dark Ages or ecological crisis, we ®nd political-economic and ecological patterns and trajectories that are very different from crisis-free periods. In this regard, Dark Ages are times exhibiting ecological degradation, climatic changes, reorganisation of socio-economic and political structures, and hegemonic challenges. On this basis, Dark Ages offer us a window into moments of system crisis and transformations.
cont. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0953732022000016081

Nebraska Democracy and Clean Water

Nebraskans Take the Lead.

Keystone XL, Clean Water and Democracy for Full Article

Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative November 16, 2011

In today’s economy, job creation trumps just about everything. But for Nebraskans, at least one thing ranks higher – and that’s protecting their precious water sources. They know, as we all should, that ample clean water is crucial for economic vitality now and for generations to come.

Nebraska’s citizens and representatives rose up — along with many others across the country — and spoke out against the proposed route for Keystone XL, the $7 billion pipeline that would deliver half a million barrels of dirty crude laden with dangerous carcinogens from the Canadian tar sands to refineries in Oklahoma and along the Gulf Coast.