I hope this message finds you
in good health and at ease. Allow me to inform you that we have publicly
launched the ANTI VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT (AVAWA) campaign. We hope you will
support the Bill by signing the petition. We also hope that you will
encourage your network to sign the petition as well and support our goal to
reach 1,000,000 signatures. Volume of people signing on behalf of an
organization will be shared openly and merited as co-signees of the petition
and recognized partners.
As you may agree, we need all
the support we can get to have the Anti Violence Against Women Act (AVAWA) adopted
as an imperative component of sustainable legislative strategy for peace and
security in Africa. The AVAWA initiative is a non-intrusive diplomatic strategy
to mitigate as well as make ending violence against women and girls a top
priority for African States. AVAWA suggests that the African States’
governments honor the existing provision for women as stated in their
constitutions with a comprehensive, multi-sectorial strategic national plan for
reducing and ending violence against women. Adopting AVAWA may encourage
countries that do not have gender sensitive legislation in their constitution
to recognize the need for such inclusion. Your endorsement will make the
AVAWA annual report a legal tender of nations’ accountability act on the issue of
women and human rights. Failure to make effective use of the opportunity that
AVAWA presents may subject African countries to a perpetual cycle of
interventionist agenda that has no real effect.
Making AVAWA a priority gives
Africa a great boost on its cause for self-determination with extensive benefit
from the value of advancing the status for women around the world. It will also
empower the Anti Violence Against Women Associations to create a global network
and set stage for the PINK Africa Summit. Detail information about AVAWA is
provided to guide you through the full understanding of the detriments of
Violence Against Women and the all-encompassing benefit of AVAWA at this link: http://bit.ly/AVAWA-petition
Hurricanes, tornadoes and solar eruptions can have profound effects on America's economy, public safety and well-being.
A noon lunch briefing next Tuesday at the Senate Visitor's Center on Capitol Hill, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, will provide an overview of the current state of storm research.
In particular, panelists will discuss work to improve risk assessment and hazard preparedness in order to mitigate vulnerability to storm impacts.
What:
A briefing about severe storms
Featuring:
Roger Wakimoto, assistant director for Geosciences, National Science Foundation
Jenni L. Evans, acting director, Institutes of Energy and the Environment, Penn State
Howard B. Bluestein, professor, School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma
Harlan E. Spence, director, Institute for Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire.
Where:
Senate Visitor's Center, Room 212-10
When:
Tuesday, March 24, 2015, 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Lunch will be provided.
RSVP: Please contact lisajoy@nsf.gov for more information and/or to reserve a spot.
NOTE: This is a closed event and reservations are required, and must be received by 9 a.m. on Monday, March 23, 2015.
CSFI is looking for
15 volunteers to help with basic tasks during the DCOI event being held in DC
on April 27-28, 2015: http://www.dcoi.org.il
We need volunteers to help with the following:
Admissions
Seating/Escort if needed
Hand out Agendas
Hold Microphones - Field questions
Advance the slides for speakers (If needed)
Advantages of volunteering:
Free Conference Pass
CSFI Certificate of Appreciation
Experience working at international cyber defense event
Opportunity to support CSFI mission
Lunch included
If interested, send your resume and contact information to: contact@csfi.us
David Korten began his professional life as a professor at the Harvard Business School on a mission to lift struggling people in Third World nations out of poverty by sharing the secrets of U.S. business success. Yet, after a couple of decades in which he applied his organizational development strategies in places as far-flung as Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and the Philippines, Korten underwent a change of heart. In 1995, he wrote the bestseller When Corporations Rule the World, followed by a series of books that helped birth the movement known as the New Economy, a call to replace transnational corporate domination with local economies, control, ownership, and self-reliance.
This month, Korten, who is also the co-founder and board chair of YES!, publishes a new book challenging readers to rethink their relationship with Earth—indeed, with all creation, from the smallest quantum particle to the whole of the universe. The world needs “a new story,” he says. “If most species, including Homo sapiens, are to survive, we must recognize Earth as a living being.” Korten talked about his ongoing metamorphosis with YES! Executive Editor Dean Paton.
Dean Paton: Tell me how somebody who was an organizational management specialist, and then a new-economy thought leader, made this leap into what is as much a spiritual proposition as it is a political one—that Earth is a living organism, that we all are essentially a part of this one big life form.
“It comes back to this: Are we a part of nature? Or apart from nature?”
David Korten: It’s not that hard, actually—once you get into the living-Earth frame—to see that Earth is essentially this organization of living organisms creating and maintaining the conditions essential to life. If you’re an organizational expert, or theorist, that raises a really fascinating question: How do these millions of organisms work in concert to maintain life?
Paton: As if everything has an intelligence and everything has a purpose? How is that relevant to your new book, Change the Story, Change the Future?
Korten: The new book sets up the juxtaposition between the old “Sacred Money and Markets” story and an emerging “Sacred Life and Living Earth” story. They’re two totally different frames that lead to two totally different ways of thinking about organizing society. You either see life as a means to make money, or you see money as simply a number useful for keeping accounts in service to life, but of no value in itself. Buying into the “Sacred Money and Markets” story that money is wealth and the key to happiness locks us into indentured servitude to corporate rule.
Paton: You’re saying it’s the traditional development model, or transnational capitalism, that damages Earth as a living community, including not just humans but all life forms. Yet we all depend on money, on the market economy. Do you really think we can just stop that dependence?
Korten: We will still use money and markets, but strip away Wall Street’s control of money’s creation and allocation. There was a time in the United States when most of our financial institutions were local. Which essentially meant that local communities were able to create their own credit, or their own money, in response to their own needs. We still depended on banks, but it was a much more democratic process.
Paton: Like George Bailey’s building and loan in It’s a Wonderful Life.
“We humans live by stories.”
Korten: Exactly. If more of our money circulated in our communities rather than the Wall Street casino, it would facilitate people organizing locally to meet more of their economic needs with local resources. Control of money is the ultimate mechanism of social control in a society in which most every person depends on money for the basic means of living—food, water, shelter, heat, transportation, entertainment. This leads us into the voluntary simplicity movement: The less I’m dependent on money, the freer I am. Realize that the only legitimate purpose of the economy is to serve life, is to serve us as living beings making our living in co-productive partnership with living Earth.
Paton: How does that translate into actions? If we get a thousand people to say, “I’m a living being born of and nurtured by a living Earth,” how does that stop fracking? How does that stop the Russians from pumping all the oil out of Kazakhstan and selling it around the world?
Korten: It makes very clear that destroying the natural living systems on which our existence depends, in order to get a quick energy fix or a quick profit, is literally insane.
Paton: So if we’re all living beings “born of a living Earth,” as you say, where does that start to show up in our lives?
Korten: A big piece of it has to do with recognizing the implications of our dependence on money. This goes back to development as a process of separating people from their means of subsistence production. The more people become alienated from their self-production, the more they become dependent on money—and the more they become dependent on the people who control the creation and allocation of money.
Paton: You mean when I’m dependent, I accept fracking.
Korten: Yeah, you say, “I need that money. They’re going to pay me to frack my property.”
Paton: Do you really think Americans are going to be able to cast off the belief that money is king?
Korten: I’d say a lot of people are casting it off.
Paton: Most of us respond to a 10-dollar bill. Or a bonus at work. Or a new car.
Korten: But we respond to that because we accept the “Sacred Money and Markets” story that money is wealth, a fabrication that is literally killing us.
Paton: So you say that our choice is between working with Earth and working against her?
Korten: It comes back to this: Are we a part of nature? Or apart from nature?
Paton: Why do you insist we adopt this “Living Earth” story?
Korten: Because we humans live by stories.
Paton: And that means…?
Korten: It means that to organize as ordered societies, we need a shared framework—basic values and assumptions—so that when I relate to you, I’ve got some idea of how you’re going to respond, because we share our basic story.
Paton: Do we have a choice?
Korten: Yeah, change or die. Quite literally. You really can’t grasp the new story—as a society—and continue to live the way we live. First you begin to move toward more voluntary simplicity, which is, literally, reducing your dependence on money. You start doing more things yourself. You pay much more attention to your relationships, to the gift economy. You perhaps get a deeper sense of being part of and a contributor to a living universe evolving toward ever greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility. What would that mean for society, and then what does it mean for how I live? What is my contribution to the change society needs? I have a responsibility to be part of this change—which begins by changing the story.
Despite the aggression and abuse she has suffered at the
University of El Salvador because she is a trans woman, Daniela Alfaro is
determined to graduate with a degree in health education. “There is very
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It is a hot, steamy day in Sri Lanka’s northwestern Mannar
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Food security has become a key issue of the U.N. climate
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In the movie “A Day Without a Mexican“, the mysterious
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As the Iranian nuclear talks hurtle towards a Mar. 24
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Right now, the United Nations is negotiating one of the
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On the night of Aug. 14, 2014, 10-year-old Hari Karki woke up
to his grandfather’s loud yelling in the family’s home in Paagma, a small
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Hidden by the struggles to defeat Ebola, malaria and
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World leaders from government, finance, business, science and
civil society are attempting to negotiate a legally binding and universal
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A week of climate negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland Feb.
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