Saturday, October 22, 2011

What I'm learning from social networking

I signed up for facebook a couple years ago after an 18 year old started a group there called the Anti Communitarian League. He designed the group page himself. He filled it with quotes from people like Margaret Meade and Ayn Rand, both of whom I think were players in the dialectical games, and their purpose was to lead us into the ultimate communitarian solution.

Even though I could see young Nick C. didn't quite understand all of the pieces and players who make up the communitarian scam, I didn't challenge him for quoting questionable sources to define his anti communitarian stand. I figured everyone grasps this new concept within the confines of their own understanding. His was clouded with a modern American Marxist education (the same one Nordica received). My perception is clouded with my American Zionist military patriot upbringing. Others use their religious beliefs to define it, and just as many others use their anti religious beliefs to condemn it. I've found there are as many different reactions to the communitarian theory as there are different variations on the theory. And up to this time, I've held to the assumption that it's best to allow people to figure it out on their own.

It didn't seem right for me to push my anti communitarian stand on anyone else, and while I often cajoled the American "patriot right" into looking at the law, I didn't hammer away at what I think we ALL need to think about communitarianism. I thought it was much more meaningful and important for everyone to determine for themselves where they stand on the most powerful social and political platform in the world. (And I didn't fully realize all this hammering at the Right made many people assume I am a rightwingnut too!)

What I had to finally face and admit is that it is impossible to grasp the pure evil of the communitarian ideology without letting go of every attachment we have to the bankers' economic and social theories. We cannot let go of the theories while clinging to the favored authors who taught us to join in the conflicts between all these theories.

As long as we adhere to a portion of the thesis or antithesis, we cannot see the final synthesis as the culmination of a whole process. I've spent 2 years on fb posting things that I thought would help people to explore the unnatural nature of communitarian thinking, and I've had some amazing conversations with insightful and thoughtful people.

I began calling the Occupy Wall Street movement communitarian months ago. Since then there have been members who self-describe the protests as "communitarian" and a few other mainstream writers have picked up the term. Still, I'd guess close to half my fb friends support the "Occupy" protests because they cannot see how they lead to a communitarian "solution."

"Is there a solution? Well, that depends on us. Can we live with less? Can we learn to use available resources — neighbors, vacant public spaces, social networks, community organizations — to maintain or enhance our health? Can we accept that overconsumption never really was the route to happiness anyway?"
http://rachelsigner.com/2011/10/13/how-it-all-went-down-why-we-have-the-99-percent/

It should have come as no surprise last month when the same kid who started the fb ACL page told me he doesn't see eye to eye with me politically and unfriended me.

The advantage of having a vague theory that combines all others is there's something in it for everyone. Something to hate and something to love.

2020/TACM update: We've got the pages laid out and are filling them in, shouldn't be too much longer now. While it's been a terribly embarassing long time trying to get it finished, it's been necessary time as well. There are a lot of new communitarian developments that will be part of this revised edition, and hopefully it's written with a better understanding of our readers. Again, thank you all for your continued paitence.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Contemporary Communitarianism - Yale University Lectures

Part I


Part II



Alasdair MacIntyre: On Having Survived Academic Moral Philosophy (1 of 4)



Bernard Williams on the Spell of Linguistic Philosophy: Section 3

Friday, July 29, 2011

LANGUAGE OF SUSTAINABILITY class in Anchorage, August 2, 2011

The Post Sustainability Institute of Alaska presents

LANGUAGE OF SUSTAINABILITY

An introduction to buzzwords and legal terminology used in community development planning. Explore pop culture, etymology, history, social science and economic implications of sustainable development worldwide.

Instructors: Niki Raapana & Nordica Friedrich

Date: Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Time: 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Location: A Street Event Hall Ballroom
637 A Street, Anchorage, AK 99501
Located at 7th and A street very near downtown.
Across from The Anchorage Museum of History and Art.

Fee: $40, includes class materials

Please rsvp with Nordica Friedrich
Phone: (907) 433-9381
Email: nfriedrich@gmail.com

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

What happened to the ACL website?

This has turned into such a busy year for us and, as some of you have noticed, I haven't had much time to blog lately. Hopefully that caused a few readers to browse my archives. :)

The revision of 2020 is hanging heavily over me like a huge cloud, I had no idea how difficult the rewrite would become. It's also a challenge to write (and think) in a 12 foot Gertee with another adult and two children. We're building new Gertees later this summer but for now we're doing "real" camping, and I'm feeling the pains associated with sleeping on the ground for 2 weeks.

I wrote Etzioni, in case him or his staff have been able to form a rational rebuttal to our thesis.
Dear Dr. Etzioni,

We are about to republish "What is the Hegelian dialectic?" & "The Historical Evolution of Communitarian Thinking," with "2020: Our Common Destiny" in one volume.

We sent our thesis to you and your network when they were originally published online in 2003. Ericn riska and others on your staff responded, but we've never receieved any kind of a legitimate rebuttal. More than 500,000 visitors have accessed our argument since then, and thousands of those visitors came from universities and government agencies around the world.

I don't know if you are aware that our work was introduced alongside your books in a Vassar College "Quality of Life Seminar" last spring. Maybe it has escaped your attention but the Anti Communitarian League has an entire section in the National Association of Scholars' Bibliography of the Communitarian Residence Life Movement.

As our work continues to gain favorable recognition in the international community, we would like to offer you and your staff one more opportunity to rebut our arguments against the validity of the Communitarian Network's Platform and mission. We will publish any response you have, regardless of its content.

Fire away!

Niki Raapana
co-founder, Anti Communitarian League
All the typos were in the original letter. I figured it didn't matter much since Etzioni's English is so bad other people have to write all his US books and articles for him. So far he hasn't responded. We're still soliciting rebuttals from any communitarian who wishes to prove our thesis and conclusion about communitarianism is unsound.

Here's where Nordica archived the old ACL website pages:
http://nord.twu.net/acl/research/


Here's a sample of the kinds of current things that we needed to add to 2020:

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/time-ratify-law-sea

Friday, June 24, 2011

Behind the Green Mask - August 6, 2011

On Saturday, August 6, 2011, the Post Sustainability Institute in collaboration with the Santa Rosa Neighborhood Coalition and Democrats Against UN Agenda 21 dot com will be hosting the Behind the Green Mask Conference in Santa Rosa, CA
FEATURED SPEAKER: MICHAEL SHAW, Freedom Advocates
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: NIKI RAAPANA, author of The Anti-Communitarian Manifesto, and the world's foremost critic of Communitarianism.

With leaders and activists speaking on topics ranging from UN Agenda 21 to Redevelopment Reform, to Exposing New Urbanism, to SMART METERS, to Recognizing Communitarianism, the conference will be a forum for those in Northern California and beyond to share information and learn more. This is a non-partisan event.

http://www.postsustainabilityinstitute.org

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

EU wins new powers at UN, transforming global body

EU wins new powers at UN, transforming global body

LEIGH PHILLIPS

03.05.2011 @ 22:03 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy will now be able to address the United Nations no differently from US President Barack Obama, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez or Russia's Dimitri Medvedev.

In order to win the vote, the EU had to agree to changes to the global organisation that transforms the UN from an assembly of nation states into a body that also offers representation rights to regional blocs as well, including potentially the African Union, the Arab League and the South American Union.

The EU on Tuesday was given almost all the rights in the global chamber that fully-fledged states enjoy after the General Assembly backed 180 to two a resolution giving the bloc, which until this week only maintained observer status at the UN, the union the right to speak, the right to make proposals and submit amendments, the right of reply, the right to raise points of order and the right to circulate documents.

There will also be additional seats put in the chamber for the EU's foreign policy chief, High Representative Catherine Ashton and her officials.

Ashton and her team have lobbied heavily over the last six months, according to her representatives, with a major offensive in the last 48 hours by the high representative herself in New York, to push through the changes after the EU was dealt a surprise defeat last September when other regional blocs voted against a similar resolution.

She declared herself "delighted" at the win, which, she said: "will in future enable EU representatives to present and promote the EU's positions in the UN."

Last year, two groups in the chamber resisted the move. The first, some of Brussels' closest allies in the world, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, consulted with each other and agreed to abstain on the original motion, according to one Commonwealth diplomat, as they were annoyed by the "presumption" of the EU, who had delivered the resolution for consideration the night before the vote.

After half a year of consultations, the Commonwealth allies appear to have had their procedural concerns dealt with.

But the second group, led by Caricom, the Carribean's regional integration bloc inspired by the EU, felt that it was unfair that Brussels should win additional rights but not themselves or other similar bodies, from the Gulf Co-operation Council to the Pacific Islands Forum.

In order to win over these refuseniks, the EU had to back an amendment to the resolution, put forward by Hungary - currently at the helm of the bloc's six-month rotating presidency - that gives these other blocs the same rights Brussels has won, should they ask for them.

"Following the request on behalf of a regional organisation which has observer status in the general assembly and whose member states have agreed arrangements that allow that organisation's representatives to speak on behalf of the organisation and its member states, then the general assembly may adopt modalities for the participation of that regional organisation's representatives," read the amendment.

http://euobserver.com/9/32262