Stephan: Everyone is talking about this, you have probably heard several versions. But what struck me about this story is not getting a lot of discussion, did Kushner put his personal interests ahead of the nation's interests, and that is the subject of this essay.
Ask yourself, forget about their differing political policies, can you imagine reading or viewing such a story during the Obama administration? Forget about politics, just consider integrity.
Jared Kushner
Amid the dizzying details of internet trolls, almost a million dollars’ worth of antique rugs and fake bank accounts, the indictments brought by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, in his investigation of Russian tampering in the 2016 election have one thing in common.
Both the indictment of 13 Russians associated with a troll farm called Internet Research Agency and the indictment of President Trump’s onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort accuse the defendants of pretending to engage in American politics in good faith but secretly serving someone else’s interest. In both cases, the charge, “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” is an assertion that they were really serving the interests of Russia or of a Russian-backed Ukrainian politician, and that by hiding their true intent, the defendants prevented the United States government from protecting our politics from undisclosed outside influence.
That precedent, and the guilty plea to the same charge by Rick Gates, Mr. Manafort’s deputy, may pose a real danger to […]
Daniel O’Neill, Lecturer in Ecological Economics - University of Leeds - Priestley International Centre for Climate
Stephan: I am always very happy to read reports like this one, because they represent thinking past economic growth to social wellbeing.
My problem with the analysis is that it does not properly integrate the role and power of consciousness in making the transition. But it does see that we need to start from the premise that the wellbeing of the full matrix of life must be the first priority. A different perspective will produce different technologies, and that also needs to be factored in.
Imagine a country that met the basic needs of its citizens – one where everyone could expect to live a long, healthy, happy and prosperous life. Now imagine that same country was able to do this while using natural resources at a level that would be sustainable even if every other country in the world did the same.
Such a country does not exist. Nowhere in the world even comes close. In fact, if everyone on Earth were to lead a good life within our planet’s sustainability limits, the level of resources used to meet basic needs would have to be reduced by a factor of two to six times.
These are the sobering findings of research that my colleagues and I have carried out, recently published in the journal Nature Sustainability. In our work, we quantified the national resource use associated with meeting basic needs for a large number of countries, and compared this to what is globally sustainable. We analysed the relationships between seven indicators of national environmental pressure (relative to environmental limits) and 11 indicators of social performance (relative to […]
Stephan: Did you know about this trend? I did not. Did you also know that many schools in the U.S. are no longer teaching cursive reading or writing? Do you think any of this is a good idea?
An overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children’s finger muscles from developing sufficiently. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
Children are increasingly finding it hard to hold pens and pencils because of an excessive use of technology, senior paediatric doctors have warned.
An overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children’s finger muscles from developing sufficiently to enable them to hold a pencil correctly, they say.
“Children are not coming into school with the hand strength and dexterity they had 10 years ago,” said Sally Payne, the head paediatric occupational therapist at the Heart of England foundation NHS Trust. “Children coming into school are being given a pencil but are increasingly not be able to hold it because they don’t have the fundamental movement skills.
“To be able to grip a pencil and move it, you need strong control of the fine muscles in your fingers,. Children need lots of opportunity to develop those skills.”
Payne said the nature of play had changed. “It’s easier to give […]
Vanessa Steinmetz and Karl Vandenhole, - Spiegel Online (Germany)
Stephan: What happens when workers in developing countries are hired to exploit the environment of their company to the benefit of a distant corporation is that stopping the depredations means living the workers jobless. Yet another example of making profit the first priority.
It confronts a consumer with a very difficult moral choice. Stop participating in the exploitation of the planet and cause workers to lose their jobs. Or, support workers have job even though it means planetary degradation.
The answer I think is that the planet's meta-systems must come first, and the corporations who did this should be required to expend a negotiated percentage of their profits to restore the environment using those same workers, and assist them to develop a sustainable healthful culture.
In the meantime stop using anything with Palm oil in it. Read labels.
A palm oil plantation cut out of the jungle. Credit: Big Spoon Roasters
A sandy track leads toward the jungle. The workers’ two four-by-four vehicles splash through deep puddles as they pass the long lines of palm trees and the bushes that grow in between.
The men have affixed metal poles to the beds of the pickups, each with a sickle-shaped blade screwed onto the end.
After three-quarters of an hour, the vehicles come to a halt. Pon Churom, who goes by Pot, is the leader of the team, members of which now begin to cut ripe leaves and fruit bunches from the tops of the palm trees. Each time one of the heavy bunches plummets to earth, the ground shakes. The fruits are ready for harvest once they have turned bright red:
The Knife Men
The fields where cutters like Pot and his colleagues […]
Imagine a country that met the basic needs of its citizens – one where everyone could expect to live a long, healthy, happy and prosperous life. Now imagine that same country was able to do this while using natural resources at a level that would be sustainable even if every other country in the world did the same.
