posted May 03, 2007 05:58 PM            

Economics, Technology, Ecology, Politics, War and Peace are
all to be found here.

quote:

---

Most importantly for us on this crowded planet, facing
the challenges of living side by side as never before,
and facing a common ecological challenge, has never been
upon us in human history until now. The way of solving
problems requires one fundamental change, a big one,
and that is learning that the challenges of our generation
are not us versus them, they are not us versus Islam, us
versus the terrorists, us versus Iran, they are us, all
of us together on this planet against a set of shared and
increasingly urgent problems. By understanding those problems,
understanding them at their depth, understanding what we share
with every part of this world in the need to face these challenges,
we can find peace. But we are living in a cloud of confusion, where
we have been told that the greatest challenge on the planet is
us versus them, a throwback to a tribalism that we must escape
for our own survival.

---

Jeffrey Sachs. Reith Lectures 2007

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2007/lecture1.shtml

posted May 03, 2007 07:41 PM            

Probably grew up smoking grass with black lights, bell-bottom jeans, and a peace sign hanging around his neck.

So lets all sit around the camp fire and sing "koom-bi-ya", shall we?

posted May 03, 2007 08:57 PM            

quote:

---

“We have met the enemy and he is us”
Pogo...

---

posted May 03, 2007 10:57 PM            

quote:

---

...they are us, all of us together on this planet against a set of shared and increasingly urgent problems...

---

Reminds me of a speech JFK gave, where he said it's one world and we have to learn to live together or die together.

quote:

---

Probably grew up smoking grass with black lights, bell-bottom jeans, and a peace sign hanging around his neck.

---

You say that like it is a bad thing.

quote:

---

So lets all sit around the camp fire and sing "koom-bi-ya", shall we?

---

I'm in! Let me know when and where!!

Thanks,
Flick
www.globalheavyindustries.com

posted May 04, 2007 04:16 AM            

Only Sith deal in absolutes.. to

Only Zealots deal in absolutes....

------------------
Warped by the rain, Driven by the snow...

posted May 04, 2007 04:20 AM            

quote:

---

...choices, and we actually have some terrific choices. We have the
ability to do things at much lower cost, and much greater efficacy,
than almost any of us can know, unless we are lucky enough to be
engaged in epistemic communities that allow us to hear the wonderful
news. I'm a partisan, for example, of anti-malaria bed nets, and
I'll just give you one fact. There are three hundred million sleeping
sites in Africa that need protection from malaria. Anti-malaria
bed nets last five years, and cost a mere five dollars -
one dollar per year. Often more than one child sleeps under a
net. Economists are reasonably good at multiplication, so for
three hundred million sleeping sites at five dollars per net,
I calculate $1.5 billion. I also am acceptably good at long division.
$620 billion of military budget, divided by 365 days, tells me that
we are now spending $1.7 billion per day on the Pentagon. John
Kennedy said in his world changing speech, "for we are both
devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better
devoted to combat ignorance, poverty and disease," and my little
calculation has shown you that one day's Pentagon spending could
cover every sleeping site in Africa for five years with anti-malaria
bed nets. And yet we have not found our way to that bargain,
the most amazing one of our time. We do have choices -- they are
good ones if we take them.

---

Afterwards, from the audience:

quote:

---

SUE BLACKMORE:
Sue Blackmore, psychologist from Bristol. I too wish your
optimism were infectious, but I have not been infected with it.
In fact I feel more depressed, really at… (LAUGHTER) a deep
disjunct in your argument, which seems to be this. You've
described the poverty, the deprivation, the people who are
struggling, which shame us all, of course, and I'm sure like
everyone else I feel bad about it, but you've also identified
what is the root problem, which is over-population on this
planet - too many people. Now if we all buy these mosquito
nets, and those children live, what are they going to
live for? They're going to live for not enough water, not
enough food, not enough to go round. That's not a solution. We
need something better than that don't we?

JEFFREY SACHS:
The evidence is overwhelming that it's possible and necessary
to have a rapid demographic transition on a voluntary basis to
greatly reduce fertility rates in poor countries, and that by
far one of the most powerful ways to achieve that is through
child survival. Child survival is correlated and causally
related to reduced fertility rates among poor households. You
want poor households to cut their fertility and to have fewer
children - assure them that the fewer children that they have
will survive, they won't be carried off by a mosquito bite. So
it is fundamentally the opposite that saving children somehow
over-populates the world. This is a basic misunderstanding. But
it's a, it's a big misunderstanding… (APPLAUSE) It's a big
misunderstanding to think that you leave children to die as
a solution to that.

---

------------------
www.pegge.net

posted May 04, 2007 05:49 AM            

> Probably grew up smoking grass with black lights,
> bell-bottom jeans, and a peace sign hanging around his neck.

Ad hominem (from the Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument by attacking the person making the argument, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument.

It's especially unfair when you leap to an uninformed assumption about the man.

Here is the man:

Jeffrey David Sachs (born November 5, 1954 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American economist known for his work as an economic advisor to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, Asia, and Africa. He is currently a professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Director of the UN Millennium Project. He proposed shock therapy (though he himself hates the term) as a solution to the economic crises of Bolivia, Poland, and Russia. He is also known for his work with international agencies on problems of poverty reduction, debt cancellation, and disease control, especially HIV/AIDS, for the developing world. He is the only academic to have been repeatedly ranked among the world's most influential people by Time magazine.

(...) received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Harvard University in 1976, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in 1978 and 1980 respectively (...) Lots more.

If that's what comes from smoking grass and wearing jeans, please pass the pipe.

-- Eric

posted May 04, 2007 12:06 PM            

He should spend his time convincing the homicide bombers,
guerrillas, air line hijackers, terrorists and general Islamic malcontents.

Let him run up to a homicide bomber and say: "Can't we all just get along!"
we have bigger problems to solve.

posted May 04, 2007 01:21 PM            

Education <> wisdom.

posted May 04, 2007 02:00 PM            

How can you know that a man is not wise if you refuse to listen to what he has to say?

-- Eric

posted May 04, 2007 02:09 PM            

quote:

---

Our challenge is to understand these common problems, to see that
the whole world is arrayed on the same side of them; to
understand that a leader in Iran, or in Korea, or in Sudan, or
in other places where we've made it a point not even to have a
conversation, much less a negotiation or an attempt at peaceful
solution, is facing problems of water supply, climate change,
food production, poverty, and disease burden, many of which
impinge directly on us. Can it be true incidentally that
because we don't want to talk to Iran, H5N1 won't pass through
Iran, that we won't have to deal with avian 'flu in places we
don't want to speak to, where we have put pre-conditions to
negotiations, because we can't see the commonality of our
problems? Can it really be, ladies and gentlemen, that the
solution to Darfur, one of the most urgent crises on the
planet, is all about peacekeepers and troops and sanctions,
when we know that in Western Darfur the rebellion started
because this is just about the poorest place on the whole
planet, because there is not enough water to keep people
alive, the livestock have no veterinary care, there's no
basic infrastructure, and the electricity grid is hundreds of
miles away? Can we really think that peacekeeping troops and
sanctions will solve this problem? I do think we have a
fundamental re-thinking to do in each of these areas.

---

posted May 04, 2007 02:17 PM            

quote:

---

How can you know that a man is not wise if you refuse to listen to what he has to say?

---

• "Most importantly for us on this crowded planet, facing the challenges of living side by side as never before": The entire population of the world can fit in the smallest state in our union and have room enough to grow what they'd need to live on. Hence, he isn't very wise about the world's population, a fact easily obtainable.
  
• "facing a common ecological challenge, has never been upon us in human history until now. A statement made to instill fear with no real substance. Each generation has face enormous threats --- and overcame them.
  
• "they are not us versus Islam, us versus the terrorists, us versus Iran" This ridiculous comment needs no analysis. Only it demonstrates his total lack of reality and wisdom of the world.
  
• "we can find peace" Kumbia my Lord, kumbia. Obviously there is no understanding about history nor the nature of man. He refuses to listen to what the enemy says.
  

------------------
* Americans: Time for the right party
-------------------------
Read my Blog