Ideas for Change - Because the right idea can change the world » Uncategorized

Don’t let it drop

bethamber — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:08:24 +0000

10 years ago world leaders made a promise to fight world poverty … they’re failing… but I won’t let this drop! Will you?

We need a LEGAL agreement in Copenhagen

Stay Connected

Levis Semakala Ljungkvist — Tue, 04 May 2010 08:46:07 +0000

Since humans first arose , they have been helping eachother to be able to make life easier. Make [...] Related posts:

Today marks an important day in history

2009 in the mirror: Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

jon.brunberg — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:00:47 +0000

One of the events of 2009 that I found to be among the more surprising, was the decision by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to award Barack Obama the Peace Prize. The man had barely been in office for one year when he was awarded and the most he had achieved in the area of peace was to formulate an initiative for nuclear disarmament. Was the state of the world really so awful that there was now only good intentions left to promote?

Some voices were fiercely critical of the decision. The Irish peace campaigner and 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire was quoted in a New York Times article as saying: “They say this is for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples, and yet he continues the policy of militarism and occupation of Afghanistan, instead of dialogue and negotiation with all parties to the conflict. … The Nobel committee has not met the conditions of Alfred Nobel’s will, where he stipulates it is to be awarded to those who work for an end to militarism and war and for disarmament.”

The committee obviously wanted to influence future events, a “preemptive peace strike” if you like, but what they got was instead a decision by their laureate to increase US troops in Afghanistan only weeks after the prize ceremony. It started to smell like a major embarrassment for the people in Oslo.

It is not the first time that the The Nobel Peace Prize Committee is in the eye of the storm, but what seems at first sight to be an institution that has lost its compass, may actually be an institution in perfect sync with its time. A quick look at the list of laureates reveals that it has seldom in recent years awarded individuals or organizations where peace is at the core activity or issue (with the shining exception of the Finnish mediator Martti Ahtisaari in 2008). Undoubtedly Grameen Bank, Al Gore or Wangari Maathai deserve awards for their work, but what the committee actually states between the lines by constantly refraining from giving the prize to peace organizations is that there are none worthy the prize. Or even worse: that it is undesirable to work for peace in an organized manner. I have to go back over twenty years, to 1997 and the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, to find a good example. Surely there must be other similar organizations whose actions have made an impact during the last twenty years? I can think of a few.

I would say that this tendency is quite symptomatic for our time, in which the peace efforts worthy of promotion seem to be such that are handled by armies or police forces, trough “humanitarian intervention”, with ”peace-keeping” and “rapid deployment” as keywords. The Orwellian newspeak classic ”war is peace” has perhaps never seemed more relevant than today where peace is “waged” trough warfare, where peace no longer seems to be synonymous with non-violence, disarmament and peace building.

It was when I visited the Nobel Peace Prize Gallery at Le Mémorial in the French city Caen in August that I was first struck by this ambiguous approach to the issue of peace. Right from the start the Peace Prize Committee awarded military people such as Theodore Roosevelt, who received the prize in 1906, side by side with pacifists and humanitarians, such as Carl von Ossietsky, the German journalist who became a pacifist after the first world war and who subsequently promoted peace relentlessly trough activism and his writing (When he received the prize in 1935 he was incarcerated by the Nazis and could not come to Oslo. He died three years later from the tuberculosis he retrieved in the concentration camps). In reality the Nobel Peace Prize never was a stand for pacifism, even though pacifists were sometimes awarded. But that was quite a long time ago.

Some, as Scott Horton in Harper’s Magazine, sides with the people in Oslo in when it comes to Obama being given the prize. I don’t. Instead I ask myself why it seems so difficult to promote the Ossietsky’s of today.

Photo: Carl von Ossietsky in a concentration camp. Deutsche Bundesarkiv, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.

In the mirror: Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

One of the events of 2009 that I found to be among the more surprising, was the decision by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to award Barack Obama the Peace Prize. The man had barely been in office for one year when he was awarded and the most he had achieved in the area of peace was to formulate an initiative for nuclear disarmament. Was the state of the world really so awful that there was now only good intentions left to promote?

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/10/hbc-90005893

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1935/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Ossietzky

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1935/press.html

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1935/ossietzky-bio.html

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/world-reaction-to-a-nobel-surprise/?hp#bozoanchor

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE5983AM20091009?virtualBrandChannel=11621&sp=true

http://www.war-memorial.net/Le-Mémorial-in-Caen—Narratives-of-War-and-Peace–2.98

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R70579,_Carl_von_Ossietzky_im_KZ.jpg

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en

Computer recyclers – a scam

taboring — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 01:54:01 +0000

So called computer recyclers have been scamming the American business, educational, governmental and individual publics for years. The glut of unwanted and discarded electronics equipment (televisions, computers, monitors/other peripherals, printers, phones) is overwhelming and growing every year. Beleaguerd IT and maintenance departments had this problem dumped into their responsiblities starting early in this century, as it became known that such discards were potentially hazardous waste and questionable for disposal in US landfills.
Because there are little regulations in developing nations (India, China, Nigeria, Ghana, Vietnam), a disgusting pollution engendering scrap industry developed. A CRT monitor, fresh from your donation to a charity but still unwanted, can be sold for several dollars, packaged into a 40′ seagoing container with 999 others, and exported to India. There, it is dumped anywhere accessible. Laborers, earning $2 a day if they are lucky, will dismantle it with crude hand tools. They will take the copper yoke and the low grade circuit board from it. The remainder will be left where it lays. That punctured tube contains 4-8 lbs of lead dust (from a coating that absorbs the heat while it was sitting on your desk). This dust will enter the local atmosphere and cause birth defects and respiratory illnesses. Some lead will seep into the ground as it rains, entering and ruining the water table. There is ample evidence of this all over the Web (see www.ban.org for example).
As this problem has been publicized, it has become a topic to discuss as decision makers, those who have to decide how to dispose of their unwanted scrap, try to weigh the options. Unethical compnies, willing to be vague, spin and outright lie, have convinced the great majority of decision makers that they are ‘recyclers’, that they do not export scrap to developing nations, that they do not landfill it, that they do not use US prison labor to process it. The scam has matured such that these charlatans will issue Certificates to these effects. Most decision makers are more conscious of the bottom line than spoiling to investigate the ‘recyclers’. So, if a company tells the decision maker a good tale, offers low cost or no cost solutions and issues a Certificate, that company earns the business over a legitimate recycler, who must pay to process the equipment in the US, thus driving up the costs. The legitimate recycler will word a proper Certificate to warrant that there was no export of landfilling PERIOD, and will list the serial numbers of the disposed equipment to clarify that the company did indeed handle certain equipment properly, if somewhat more costly.
Recent exposes have publicized the polluters; one on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a situation in Pittsburgh PA concerning an identified scammer, EarthECycle, documented the scam where the polluters brazenly tell a customer a sales pitch, promising not to export or landfill, then violate that agreement at will. The legitimate recycler, had no chance to get the contract, because he had real costs to incorporate into the sale price.
After a long period of these scenarios playing out, more and more decision makers were demanding rigorous documentation and legitmate recyclers, particularly those called ‘e stewards’, affiliated with the Basel Action Network, were in place to legitimately earn the business of these coscientious decision makers. To that end, BAN e stewards began the organization of a rigorous certification process to establish their legitimacy even further. Thsi process is being developed and will bear fruit in the next 6 months.
Faced with the loss of billions of dollars in potential profits, the group of companies that has long depended on shady, unverified procedures, struck back. They organized. They formed a new organization, an outgrowth of several older organizations, entitled the “World Reuse, Repair and Recycle Association” or “WR3A” for short. In the not so old days, one of the scammers precepts that melded nicely into the ‘sales pitch’ was the use of a reference to the ‘reuse’ component of recycling. Any legitimate recycler agrees that reuse is the most desirable way to recyucle. It reduces costs as the equipment is less expensive and thus available to lower income potential users. It removes the need to use new materials. When donated to non profit agencies, there can be positive tax advantages. Reuse is great!
The polluters have woven reuse into the sales pitch, with a touch of charity often the glue. There is a woman in the e waste disposal industry who has for years solicited the equipment from corporations by telling them that it was going to be used in a far eastern nation to train orphans as technicians, and teach them to refurb CRT monitors for resale. Sounds great!
But, the sad truth is that there is such a glut of CRTs that there is no market for them in any real quantity anywhere in the world, even if they still work and need no repair. It is safe to say that they can usually NOT even be given away in any quantity. So, if a company takes them from a client, either for free or a little charge, how can they process them? Who would pay to ship them to the Far East? How about testing them, storing them, arranging for their distribution IF there was an outlet? And, what about the CRTs that do not work? In India, who will verifiably contract to keep them out of the waste stream? (By the way, this problem includes other electronic discards like computers themselves, CRTs are the best example)
Nevertheless, this new organization WR3A, will attempt to create the appearance of legitimacy with a logo, websites, public relations media. Those of us who know better must work to educate the consuming public to the facts that this is simply an attempt at ‘business as usual’, taking US waste, prolonging the squeezing of a profit from it under the ‘reuse’ battle cry that will continue to result in despicable pollution. Beleaguered decision makers will have WR3A literature to stick in the file to play CYA. However, the result will be the same as it has been. Those of us e stewards who have elected to attempt a business model that does not damage the environment will continue to attempt to educate the public

Justifyable?

carllindstrom — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:02:45 +0000

How can justify using 1/3 of our precious drinking water, to mix with feces for an unnecessary transportation??? [...] Related posts:

Great Ideals

Invited Contributor — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:42:45 +0000

Did you know there are some really great ideals waiting out there for the right motivator or creatively assertive advocate? There are ‘parabolic’ solar disk or tidal wave generators that may be worked off-shore to productively support a farmland’s watering filtration system or its energy recycling plants. There are also many places where the usage of natural thermal energy may be applied or trapped as an environmentally friendly resource for electro-planetary consumption that’s constructively channeled to generate more energy efficient monorails or the development of a modern freight and rail transport system. There are also numerous places on the earth that hold the keys to energetically innovated restorative points which should be productively pursued for the recycling of all our volatile wealth or natural energy wastage (such as the bi-products of filtration), as the plentifulness of our inextinguishable wealth or the hazardously abundant wastefulness of ‘live’ mines that need to be filled or may be found to be actively burning or an endangered shoreline’s over-abundant resourcefulness of hydrocarbons that may be viewed as inextinguishable from the resourcefulness of a modern lifestyle that avails itself to the most plentiful demands of our creative needs and everyday fuel consumption. Therefore let’s constructively avail ourselves towards the next step in the evolution of our Universe by allowing for an expansion of the opportunity that’s needed to be met squarely with the needs of all people of everyday learning, and the development of an advancement of knowledge for the creative resources of tomorrow!

Best of luck!

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Pass It Forward

Arlan — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:07:40 +0000

Now you can volunteer from the comfort of your own home, on your own computer, on your own time www.onlinecommunityservice.org Related posts:

Google displays all requests from governments for shutdown

Making simplicity work

jon.brunberg — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:23:10 +0000

The idea behind the Exctractive Industries Transparency Initiative – EITI – is as simple as a model for transparency and accountability can be. One part in a business deal discloses its payments to the public and the receiving part discoses its revenues from the same deal to the same public. These reports are analyzed by parties from the civil society and any discrepancies accounted for.

The EITI deals exclusively with industries that extract natural resources such as oil, natural gas, diamonds or other minerals and the states that have these resources on its soil. The idea is that this process would disclose corruption and unfair deals that are not benificient to the public in these countries and that contracts between companies and states can be re-negotiatiated if necessary. The Guardian now reports that EITI has approved its first two members: Liberia and Azerbaijan and that it already has renegotiated contracts in Liberia:

Liberia, rich in mineral wealth, was until 2005 one of Africa’s most notorious killing fields. The first peace-time president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, decided early on to sign up to the EITI. Its inaugural report reveals that the main contractor, the Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, was asked to renegotiate its initial contract after analysis suggested it had been negotiated with the company rather than the country’s benefit in mind. Now the taxes it pays are the main source of mineral-related revenue for the government.

The report also revealed a payment the company had made but the government had not received. And it exposed other companies that had not reported at all, and other payments that had apparently been made, but not received. This, it said, generated local comment and inquiry.

EITI’s model seem to be one way out for countries that have been bogged down in corrupt practices and plagued by plundering and injustices. It will be very interesting in the coming years to see wheter it will work for other countries as well.

Watch video from EITI

The importance of dialogue

emelie.fagelstedt — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:43:28 +0000

by Emelie Fagelstedt

Saying that dialogue is necessary might not be a new idea, but truth be told no new ideas will ever be heard unless there is a working dialogue. The art of talking and listening to each other is something that we learn as children. Even so it seems that we forget how to talk to each other all too often.

Growing up I spent some years in the state of Connecticut. The American school system is much different from the one in Sweden, a lesson that I learnt very quickly. At the age of ten I learnt never to question a teacher and never to talk unless my hand was raised. If I was to break those simple guidelines I was punished with detention. Therefore I became a quiet, polite and uncertain individual who always thought twice before commenting on something the teachers said or did wrong. At times I came home crying because I thought that the teachers were being unfair and my mother always asked me: “Why didn’t you say anything?” My mother happens to be one of the most diplomatic people I’ve ever meet, not tolerating one bit of injustice. The problem was that I was afraid. I’d learnt to be afraid by the overhanging threat of getting detention. From 4^th grade to 7^th grade I learnt more facts in school than I ever have again in my life. The problem is that it was just facts that I learnt, never to think for myself or to be critical. Without a working dialogue in school there was no need to share your own thoughts, all you had to do was to show the teachers that you knew all the facts about American history, fractions and the solar system. When it came to our own ideas, the teachers had no time nor interest in listening.

When my family returned to Sweden I thought that things would be better, the students would be able to talk to the teachers. Unfortunately I was proven wrong pretty quickly. Well the students did talk, a lot, but not really to the teachers but to each other, during classes, often interrupting the lectures. In high school in Sweden I would like to say that I learnt nothing. While the students in my school in the states had too much respect for the teachers, my Swedish classmates had none what so ever.

Collage proved to be better, and I learned to talk and listen to my classmates and to the teachers. Today I’m a student at the institution of journalism, media and communication at the University of Stockholm. You would think that an institution which partly focuses on communication would be a prime example for a place with a working dialogue. The funny thing is that it’s not at all times. Today a big conflict erupted in my class because we as students cannot communicate with each other, with the teacher or with the school board. And all of a sudden I’m back at the same place where I was in Connecticut and I hardly don’t dare speak my mind because I’m afraid that everything I say will be misinterpreted and used against me. This is a temporary feeling, which I might just have this day, but the feeling is frightening.

I thought everything would get better the older I got. But as simple as the lesson of dialogue is, it is very hard to live up to. Therefore my first idea, which isn’t a new idea but nonetheless an important one, is that we all strive for a working dialogue. That is the first step, according to me, if we want to change the world and make it a better place for everyone.

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Today marks an important day

Daniel Daboczy - Editor in chief — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:27:29 +0000

20 years to the day, we left Romania for freedom. The mythical, western freedom.

At that point the world was, if not opening it’s arms, at least allowing us to come and stay. Today 20 years later, after so much time, with a new generation in charge we look back to a bigger Europe, to an utopia we couldn’t even dream of. As a kid I watched how people stood up and fought for their rights. I saw the start of the first riots, with people that later were punished, abducted or killed. As a kid we spoke in codes, as a kid I found microphones hidden in our apartment and as a kid I dreamt of freedom. A strange thing to dream about, but it was still there. Reachable. Because I knew that someday things would change. And they did. In a big way. But how do you change the mentality of people that are born and raised without daring to dream?

Later on, as an adult, while walking around in a successful suit and enjoying my free life, I froze and saw other Romanians that left after us, after the collapse of the wall, struggle as second and third class citizens. I saw Africans hunted and taunted by police and I saw that the fact that we left just in time gave me other possibilities then others ever had. I realized that luck is sometimes the only real factor. And do you think freedom tastes as good when others don’t have the same right? I can tell you it doesn’t.

Today, on this very same day, this day of reflection for me, I read the papers and they write about a Europe that more and more is closing up. That Africans rather seek refuge in South America and I see that we still have a long way to go.

And I can’t stand by and watch this happen. Not again. Please do whatever you can, whatever you want but please react and let us build something better then this.

/Daniel Daboczy

daniel@ideasforchange.tv