Ed Dowding

Category: Geopolitics

Two more quotes from Forty days of Rain

It takes no great skill to decode the world system today. A tiny percentage of the population is immensely wealthy, some are well off, a lot are just getting by, a lot more are suffering. We call it capitalism, but within it lies buried residual patterns of feudalism and older hierarchies, basic injustices framing the ...

A contract with our children.

99% of what follows is from Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is a great book, much like all his others. I have only edited it in places to make it easier to read out of context. I think it makes a magnificent start.   If the scientific community were to propose a ...

Permaculture principles

It seems this list can bring wisdom and insight to pretty much everything we do. Apart from the more specific ones (like ‘keep water high on the land’, but maybe just try to metaphor these as taoist haikus to trigger bewildering insights.) Relative Location Components placed in a system are viewed relatively, not in isolation. ...

A 10% strike by the 99%?

This is a work in progress. I first wrote it after Copenhagen failed to agree anything, and am in the process of updating and amending for the Occupy movement. Please get in touch if interested. Problem Sigh. Where to begin? Broadly speaking, however.. Most of our critical anatomy was never designed for the world we ...

How to make legal documents interesting

http://www.legislation.gov.uk Ok.. maybe it’s not interesting, but it’s certainly a big step towards better.

The glorious future belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up.

Schulz: Speak – it is our only hope. The Jewish Barber (Charlie Chaplin’s character): Hope… I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want ...

Link round up

Find out what the soil is like in your area using the soil database from the National Environmental Research Council Did you know that Henry Ford encouraged soldiers to strike during WW1? He took a ship full of peace protesters to Europe on the Ford peace ship to appeal to the “good sense of the lads” to ...

100 years of unsustaintable fishing

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jun/03/fish-stocks-information-beautiful

Dollar dumped

I’m very pleased to see that the BRIC have agreed to use their own currencies for trade, rather than pushing everything via the dollar. More competition, less hegemony, more resilience. Marvellous.

With great power doesn’t come great responsibility.

I believe that this is an act of premeditated genetic pollution of the gene pool of alfalfa and related plants by Monsanto. They know exactly what they’re doing. What they understand is that if you pollute enough alfalfa across the country to where it becomes impossible to grow organic alfalfa that isn’t contaminated, perhaps then ...

EU organic food push

The European Union (EU) is co-funding a $2.8m (£1.8m) publicity campaign to convince UK residents that organic food is good. According to the industry body, the Organic Trade Board (OTB), the aim is to democratise organic foods and make people aware of their benefits. In other words, the OTB wants people to buy more organic ...

Vision 2050. From here to there.

Zoom.it – Image foTF.

Google Transparency Report

Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products. This map shows the number of requests that we received in six-month blocks Google Transparency Report: Government Requests.

20 get rich quick schemes

Whilst I love seeing headlines like this Leaders at the G20 summit in Canada agree the richest members will halve their budget deficits within three years.  (BBC News) They beg the questions Where is all that money coming from (or not going to)? Are they going to be creating wealth and making savings (“G20 stop ...

World War III – And so it begins…

I remember my geography teacher saying that the next world war would be about water. There have been a few issues already, but as Egypt rejects Nile water agreement I think we can probably see this a key moment in history. Switzerland, which has the largest reserves of fresh water, must be getting nervous. And it ...

FarmSubsidy.org

Interesting little site. See who near you is getting big old farm subsidies from Europe: FarmSubsidy.org Note, of course, that this does not mean they’re minted, just that they get some money from them. See also: http://www.followthemoney.eu/

The UK's renewable energy is a national shame

Here’s some figures for renewable power generation in 2006: 62.9% – Austria 48.7% – Sweden 29.9% – Portugal 17.1% – Slovak Republic 19.2% – Romania 17% – Denmark 12.4% – France 4.6% – UK In November 2009, Spain generated 53% of its demand from wind alone last week (it was a bit windy). So if ...

Borders are bad, mmkay

Imagine how different the world would be if we didn’t have geographic allegiance, and just social / ideological allegiance instead. Oh.. wait.. that’s right – that’s how it is. Well.. imagine how different it would be if the geographic borders aligned with the ideological ones. I’ll bet we could have some really really HUGE wars ...

Good.is' most popular infographics of 2009

http://www.good.is/post/transparency-good-s-most-popular-infographics-of-2009/

Swiss minarets – a defence, not an attack

So the Swiss have voted to ban building of minarets. This is not an architectural decision. They have planning laws and have already used them, which is why there only 4 minarets in Switzerland at the time of writing. Neither is this intrinsically about racism or anti Islam. The religion is perfectly well protected and ...