Once again, if you missed the first three in this series they will be linked at the end.  I am reviewing Dorion Sagan's book Notes from the Holocene {A brief History of the Future} with a lot of material thrown in from my own probing into these same issues.  One of the influences behind my world view is the late Robert Rosen whose bibliography is  listed on the VCU Complexity Research Group's Website.  I encourage you to take a minute to click on the "bibliography" link because you will get a jolt from doing so.  Most of you will never have heard of Rosen yet here is this vast amount of very exciting work about biology, life, etc. that began over a half century ago. It seems clear from Sagan's writing that he also was not aware of Rosen's work and that is a shame for he would have benefitted from it greatly.  The best we can have is to look at them side by side and make our own synthesis.  That is what we will do beneath the break

For those who are just joining this discussion of the Earth system, we are using Dorion Sagan's book:Notes from the Holocene  {A Brief History of the Future}  I will add links to the first two installments beneath the fold. The ideas about the Earth system that Sagan puts forward are neither new nor widely accepted (yet?).  I like them because they fit in nicely with the world view I have been developing using modern complexity science as my basis.  I also like them because I am pessimistic about other, well meaning, approaches that are confined to the rules of the scientific narrative which has been totally framed to keep new ideas from entering the discussion.  Under their rules, anyone with scientific "credentials" is to be listened to no matter what their hidden agenda is.  We know what the result of that scenareo has been and it is time to move forward; which brings us to the topic of this installment, the role of us humans in all this.  Come with me below the break and we shall proceed.

This series is stimulated by Dorion Sagan's book Notes from the Holocene {A Brief History of the Future}  The first of the series My first Eco-diary:  The earth is Alive? stirred up some calls for more so here it is.  I've provided the link for those who missed the first installment and I'll also make this as self contained as possible.  For the more rigid scientific types, Sagan has the following warning

WARNING: This book contains wild speculations:
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK*

*This statement has not been verified by the FDA, MDA, USDA, APA, DEA, GSA, CIA, NSA, AA, AAA, or AAAA

 Let us look a little further into this man's very innovative mind.  Again, we are here to try out some ideas not to cull through data.

I am not "officially" an ecologist, but have worked with ecologists for a large portion of my career as a scientist.  My contibution to the projects was usually the computer models of large ecosystems, but I also worked on the theory behind those models.  Right now I am reviewing a book by Dorion Sagan for Chelsea Green Publishing (the politics and practice of sustainable living) entitled: Notes from the Holocene{A Brief History of the Future}.  I was contacted by them after someone on their staff read my diary Who cares about rain forests?  right here on Daily Kos!  I will not be citing lots of statistics about the demise of the planet and most things on it, but rather I'll try to go to the root problem in the center of the collective consiousness that has led us to where we are.  Come along and see if my presentation can really say something new about this much discussed topic.

Garrison Keillor in his daily  Writer's Almanac gave us this today:

On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration to provide jobs for unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. More than 8.5 million people were paid an average monthly salary of $41.57 to build roads, paint murals, and record American folklore. Republicans called the WPA "We Pick Apples" or "We Piddle Around." When people asked why the government would give jobs to artists, Harry Hopkins, the man in charge of the program, said, "Hell! They've got to eat just like other people." Citizens were grateful for the work. A poem sent to Roosevelt read, "I THINK THAT WE SHALL NEVER SEE / A PRESIDENT LIKE UNTO THEE ... POEMS ARE MADE BY FOOLS LIKE ME, / BUT GOD, I THINK, MADE FRANKLIN D."

 It is an interesting coincidence given some of the discussion after Carmin T's diary RAISING the gas tax would SAVE you money.     Let us look below to see how this program worked.

How many of you have ever read Democratic Left the magazine of the Democratic Socialists of America ?  If you haven't, you are missing a vital part of the spectrum of diverse views that go to make up this great Democratic Party.  The history of the  Democratic Party will reveal many significant contributions from DSA .  The founding editor of Democratic Left was Michael Harrington (1928-1989).  My diary Michael Harrington: An American Socialist who influenced the democratic party was well recieved here and had a significant impact.  As we struggle with a situation that seems to have created a consensus for change, the question of what we want that change to be will be a central topic for some time to come.  It is worth having a good source of information to counter the misleading approach the corporate media throw at us without ceasing.  Look below to see what Democratic Left has to offer you.

That's what you get in the special on-line issue of In These Times   a magazine

dedicated to informing and analyzing popular movements for social, environmental and economic justice; to providing a forum for discussing the politics that shape our lives; and to producing a magazine that is read by the broadest and most diverse audience possible.

Just to give you the flavor of the jornal, when I renewed my subscription I got a free tee shirt with a cartoon of Kurt Vonnegut saying:

If it weren't for In These Times I'd be a man without a country.

 I still haven't really figured out what that is supposed to mean, but it is a really nice shirt.  Oh, getting back to Hillary for President, you may be wondering why such a journal would be saying anything like that.  Well look below and I'll explain.

Happy May Day everyone!  See my previous diaries .(1) (2) for more about this important day.  Today's diary takes you to the on-line place for a broad range of labor activists to discuss ideas for the renewal and strengthening of the labor movement.  Since strengthening the labor movement is srengthening the Democratic Party, everyone should want to know about this source of important information.  Today's lead article is the Manifesto of the
International Trade Union Confederation. (ITUC)  I am curious about how serious the Democratic Party is about these goals.  Let us look into this matter more deeply

I'll try again. I wrote a diary two days ago giving some history of the May 1st worker's holiday. Evidently people are so concerned about Senator Obama getting the labor vote that they are not interested in the history of labor, because it received little attention.  Tomorrow countries around the world will be paying tribute to the workers who are the only ones who produce wealth in the world.  American workers are in need of some drastic changes if they are ever to be justly rewarded for their labor.  Harold Meyerson has some things to say about this in today's WaPo column.  Take a few minutes and see how he relates this to the Obama campaign.

From Wikipedia:

May Day is synonymous with International Workers' Day, or Labour Day, which celebrates the social and economic achievements of the labor movement.

 It is a shame that this country has separated itself from the bulk of the world's workers by celebrating "Labor Day" in September.  The spirit of today's reactionaries goes back a long way. It is as if the likes of Bush and his cronies are the reincarnation of the bosses of an earlier time. It has been a joy to be working in Europe and to see countries turn out in huge numbers to celebrate the labor holiday on May first.  I am still capable of shock and surprise when people around me do not comprehend my greetings on this very special day.  Since the origins of this day of international celebration are right here, it is worth remembering what went on in this country many years ago when labor was a force to be reckoned with.  Let's look at some important history.

Harold Meyerson touches a sore nerve in his column  Back to The '60s in yesterday's WaPO.  Here I am, 72 years old, and wondering why so many people over 60 rejected Senator Obama's appeal in the Pennsylvania primary.  To me the choice has become clear if we are to truly take a chance on change rather than vote for the same ol'  same ol' establishment stuff again.  Mr. Meyerson seems to be thinking along the same lines.  Many of you were either very young or not yet born when the 60's we so often hark back to actually happened.  Believe it or not we can learn something from that very different time in American history.  Look below the fold to see why I say that.

The word certainly appears often enough here so at least some people have an idea that there is.  My thesis for this diary is that there is one and that it is at the heart of the primary battle we all wish would go away.  Furthermore, it would be in the vital  interests of that establishment to either defeat Senator Obama before he becomes the official nominee or certainly after he does.  For some strange reason these are goals shared by John McCain and Hillary Clinton.  Is it coincidence or is it part of the big picture?  It pays to look the anatomy and physiology of  the establishment meme.  Just what do we mean by an "establishment" in this context?

From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

a group of social, economic, and political leaders who form a ruling class (as of a nation).

Too often the concept congers up images of some conspiracy pulling the strings on the puppets that make up our society.  Are there real people to flesh out the idea? Look below and explore this with me.

I just recieved notice by e-mail that the Rockridge Nation is shutting down at the end of the month and also see that the same notice is posted at their website.  This is a sad event and raises questions about how seriously the progressive movement (whatever that is) takes the development of the kind of strategies they are noted for.  I don't know the reason for this sudden end to what has been a source of interesting ideas for the way we engage our opponents in trying to win "the hearts and minds" of the voters.  If you look below the fold I'll post their explanation so we can discuss what it means.  I have the feeling it is much more than a trivial event coming at this time.

Here's the Wikipedia definition of "elite":

Elite (also spelled Élite) is taken originally from the Latin, eligere, "to elect". In sociology as in general usage, the élite is a relatively small dominant group within a large society, which enjoys a privileged status envied by individuals of lower social status.

The position of an elite at the top of the social strata almost invariably puts it in a position of leadership and often subjects the holders of elite status to pressure to maintain their position as part of the elite. However, in spite of the pressures, the existence of the elite social stratum is usually unchanged.

 I can't help but think of George Lakoff's teachings about framing when I see the garbage that is being said and written about this word.  The word has been framed by the very elite who wish to use it as a pejorative.  Let us explore the concept further because the frame needs to be dealt with.

As a scientist who has spent a lot of time with chaos theory, I find the notion that chaos would be the result of our letting the people of Iraq settle their differences without us very unlikely.  In his WaPo column today, Harold Meyerson tells us why.  Here's how he approaches the issue:

Why is the Iraq war different from all other American wars? (Passover is upon us, so I've posed the question in correct Passover-ese.)

In each of our other wars, American soldiers fought the same adversaries from start to finish. We fought the British in the Revolution and the War of 1812, Mexico in the Mexican War and so on. Only in the Korean War did we have to engage an additional nation's army (that of China) after the war began -- and if Douglas MacArthur hadn't pushed to the Chinese border, we might have fought only North Korea. In a number of wars, our enemies received aid from other nations (Vietnam from the Soviet Union, for instance), but the actual combat involved fighting only our original adversary.

Not so in Iraq, where we are now fighting our third distinct enemy

 This analysis has merit for future debates about the war.  Read on to see why.

That's what Harold Meyerson thinks in his column Missing: Our Trade Strategy in today's WaPo.  His discussion echos many of the concerns Robert Reich expressed in his book Supercapitalism.  Reich's thesis is that we have moved from democratic capitalism, which at least tried to take the people into account, to supercapitalism that caters only to the consumers and the stock holders.  But wait a minute?  Are not consumers and stockholders simply "the people"?  Here's where framing the discussion properly really matters.  No, "the people" is a much broader category that spans so much more than those two special aspects of what some of the people do.  Not only that, but the way in which the people, in their roles as consumers and stockholders, cause supercapitalism to move beyond democracy is a systematic one.  There are not simple, direct causal relations at work here.  It is a perfect example of a complex system.  Look below to see why.

In his article The Upside of Nationalism in the on-line version of In These Times, Davis Sirota explains how America-first fervor could be the driving force behind economic populism.  Such ideas in the days of global markets need to be scrutinized very carefully.  Is he whistling in the dark or does he have an answer to some of our economic woes?

You don’t need to listen to presidential speeches or watch party attack ads to know that full-throated nationalism is now lodged in the ideological center of American politics. Look at social networking expert Valdis Krebs’ January chart to see what we—the royal We—are reading. Krebs amassed data from Amazon.com, examining what other titles buyers of conservative and liberal political books purchased in 2007. Most of this "also bought" data showed buyers of one liberal book buying other liberal books—and conservatives doing the same on their side.

Come look and see what he is talking about.

That was across the front of the envelope housing the letter I received today from Frank Llewellyn, National Director of the Democratic Socialists of America.  I have diaries explaining the relationship between DSA and the democratic party and will give a link below.  I am a charter member of DSA since it was founded by Michael Harrington in 1982.  Some of you will remember Harrington as the author of The Other America, the book about poverty that opened so many eyes including those of JFK.  The word "socialist" is one whuch is often used to end discussions by the mindless.  In recent years liberals have learned about this in some detail since the word "liberal" has been maneuvered into a similar position.  In fact, much of the progressive democratic program came from the influence of people like Harrington.  Look below to see what Frank Llewellyn has to say.