Uncen's Weblog

What Does It Mean to Be an American Now?

2008-06-24T04:36:00.000-07:00

John Mohawk

Americans see themselves as hard-working, honest people, dedicated to family and community, and they're right. As a nation, Americans are religious, generous, and tolerant of others.

But there is a darker side to the American character, as evidenced by the enslavement of Africans and the abuses of American Indians and expropriation of their lands. Since the end of World War II, the US government has systematically used force and coercion overseas to maintain access to energy and raw materials. In doing so, it has supported brutal dictatorships and the harsh treatment of many peoples in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, Iran, and Iraq. The US has been willing to use its power to insure not only that the oil keeps flowing but also that American and other G-7 companies control production and pipelines. In recent years, the United States has become the primary advocate of economic globalization, a policy that takes advantage of international debt to privatize assets and dismantle local economies, thus impoverishing small farmers and exacerbating world hunger. Yet most Americans know little about the destructive practices carried out in their name.

But there are also examples of positive projections of American power and influence that exemplify a less self-centered and more generous side of America, ranging from flood and earthquake relief efforts to interventions intended to avert genocide and ethnic cleansing. Throughout its history the United States has shown two faces: one that's peaceful, promoting justice and self-determination, and one that's selfish, defining its national interests in ways that promote suffering and brutality abroad.

A culture of grievance

Those who bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon committed criminal acts that are condemned by the world. But their apologists say they were motivated in part by US-led sanctions against Iraq that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children. Those who support the sanctions argue that they are necessary because of the potential for further terrorism by Iraq's Saddam Hussein. America's detractors in the Islamic world point to the injustices that resulted from our history of intervention in Middle Eastern countries. This version of history has become part of a Culture of Grievance, which has supplied the energy for movements such as Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.

The result has been a feeling not only of domination but of humiliation in many parts of the Islamic world, a feeling anthropologist Anthony A.W. Wallace describes as “stress.” When a society cannot manage stress, when feelings of injustice and oppression lead to desperation, people will create movements to relieve the stress. Wallace designated these as “revitalization movements.”

Sometimes the movement adopts highly ethical strategies that reject injustice, oppression, and violence, as did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi. But unfortunately, cultures that experience difficulty coping with stress often rationalize the use of violence, even genocide or ethnocide, as necessary to create the kind of “better” world they envision. When they take this path, extreme enthusiasm for the imagined outcome and belief in the righteousness of their cause can take them, and others, into great danger. The First Crusade at the end of the eleventh century, for example, resulted in the deaths of an estimated two-thirds of the knights who crossed Anatolia on foot and ended up massacring the non-Christian population of Jerusalem. Such movements often continue to inspire violence and destruction long after their authors are dead and the institutions that carried them forward have been destroyed.

The power of fairness

On at least two occasions the United States managed such movements positively and successfully, in ways that suggest strategies to restore justice to everyone involved. On these occasions, the US turned away from using its economic and military might to achieve dominance and adopted strategies with a win-win agenda.

The first occurred shortly after the American Revolution, when American settlers in Shawnee country in Ohio were engaged in continued armed conflict with the Western Confederacy, a military alliance of Indian nations that included the Delaware, Shawnee, Miami, Potowatomi, and other nations. In 1790, President George Washington, hoping to keep Seneca warriors from joining the Western Confederacy forces, initiated conversations with Cornplanter, a Seneca war chief. Cornplanter explained that the Seneca were deeply distrustful of the Americans, especially New York State, because of shady land deals and the fact that murders of Indians by whites were not prosecuted. In response, Washington secured passage of the 1790 Non-Intercourse Act, in which the United States guaranteed that Indian nations would not be cheated by the states in land transactions.

In 1791, the United States suffered a serious defeat at the hands of Miami war chief Little Turtle. Responding to public dismay at this defeat, President George Washington proposed something never tried with Indians: fair treatment. Under the Fair Treatment Policy, Indians would be offered a fair market price for land and guarantees against being swindled by the states. George Washington and the American government asked the Seneca to act as intermediary with the Western Confederacy in spreading word of this policy. War chief Cornplanter and other Seneca leaders, motivated by a belief in the United States' offer of fair treatment to the Western confederacy, decided to help. At considerable danger to themselves, Seneca delegates carried the offer of fair treatment to the Western Confederacy.

But the promise of a rational end to the violence was short-lived. Great Britain had not yet withdrawn from seven military posts in the Northwest Territories (as promised in the treaty of Paris). British intelligence operatives had old scores to settle and little interest in peace on the frontier, so they worked to frustrate negotiations.

The Western Confederacy, emboldened by success on the battlefield, rejected the offers and replaced Little Turtle, who had argued for peace, with Turkey Foot, who was prepared for war. The United States Army under Mad Anthony Wayne, in its first successful campaign, defeated a Western Confederacy force at the battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. This phase of the war ended with the Treaty of Greenville the following year.

Nevertheless, the Fair Treatment Policy had a powerful effect on the Seneca Nation. Shortly after the battle at Fallen Timbers, the Seneca and other member nations of the Six Nations Confederacy signed a peace treaty at Canandaigua. Conditions of change and a sense of loss of a way of life engulfed the Seneca in the years that followed.

In 1799, Handsome Lake, a prophet, led a revitalization movement that ultimately led the Seneca to agriculture and away from the warpath. The Fair Treatment Policy inspired those who wanted peace. Handsome Lake found a special place for George Washington on the road to heaven, and the Six Nations never went to war with the United States. Some years later, during the War of 1812, the Seneca living in New York fought alongside the Americans against the British invaders.

But again, the peace did not last long. In 1823, the US Supreme Court, unable to find a basis for a claim that the United States owned Piankeshaw land, invented the “political question doctrine.” This doctrine promised that the Court would not interfere in what amounted to a land theft perpetrated by the US government. It was the beginning of a very dark chapter in American history. From that time on, raw exercise of power became the primary theme of US–Indian relations.

The power of rebuilding

A second time the United States took positive steps to defuse a revitalization movement came at the end of World War II, the most destructive event in human history.

Hitler came into power during the years following World War I when Germany, under pressure to pay war reparations, felt oppressed by its enemies and betrayed from within, allegedly by the Jews. The Nazis offered a way of dealing with these stresses.

At the end of World War II, the United States "enjoyed a moment of unprecedented popularity. And, with an unusual generosity of spirit and enlightened self-interest, the US launched the Marshall Plan, which offered grants, not loans, to rebuild the industrial countries whose economic base had been devastated during the war. At about the same time, the US championed the principle of decolonization, under which European nations were encouraged to emancipate their overseas possessions. Much of the leadership displayed during the post-war years consisted of attempts to avoid past mistakes like the war reparations that had played a prominent role in the collapse of German banks at the beginning of the Great Depression. The Allies created international banking and monetary institutions that could intervene to halt devastating economic downturns. They also created the United Nations, an institution dedicated, in principle, to peace.

America, defender of justice?

The modern radical Islamic movement can be traced to the discontent of the 1930s over how the European nations had divided up the Ottoman Empire. But its sense of endangerment first surfaced in the 1950s, when some clerics began to write and preach about the immorality rampant in the West and the corrupting effects of western ways on Islamic lands. The West, with its technology and cultural globalism, promised a material utopia on earth; the clerics, by contrast, preached that virtue and morality and devotion to Allah must come first, not hedonism and crass materialism. Their utopian vision centered on the creation of an Islamic state.

Islamic fundamentalism is hostile to sexual liberation, western forms of entertainment, and women's rights. Islamic fundamentalists blame the West for their problems, including the corrupt and repressive regimes in some Islamic countries, and embrace a long list of grievances, real and perceived, from western support of the state of Israel to American troops based in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda movement is but one of a number of radical groups dedicated to the violent expulsion of the West from the lands of Islam and the creation of an Islamic state or states.

The massive US retaliation against Afghanistan destroyed bin Laden's base of operation and his network, but it gave permission to other states, including India, Russia, and Israel, to escalate violence against their enemies, now universally dubbed “terrorists.” The destruction of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan does not ultimately address the future of terrorism because it has not addressed the root causes.

Root causes

US intervention in the internal political affairs of countries over the course of recent decades can't be undone with good intentions. But a number of things can be done. We have already seen how policies like the Marshall Plan and the Fair Treatment Policy decreased stress and promoted self-realization in positive ways. These kinds of actions enabled people to sustain or regain their dignity, embrace hope, and make practical improvements in their lives while avoiding undue cultural coercion. The kind of self-sufficiency that can work must be built on peoples' own cultures, religions, and values under a policy that is an honest effort to help.

No country should be left to the kind of hopelessness and chaos that was and is Afghanistan following more than 20 years of war. Left to a state of anarchy, such countries become breeding grounds for corruption and hate and, as we have seen, traffic in social evils from drugs to weapons of mass destruction. The US and other G-7 countries should take steps to help countries like Afghanistan regain self-sufficiency, especially food self-sufficiency, as quickly as possible. But they should do it in a way that preserves the small farmers that comprise most of the population and builds the strength of the local economy rather than creating dependency on outside loans and corporations. International peacekeepers should be deployed to make roads safe and to intervene in drug trafficking. Emergency food relief must be provided until there are signs of local success. This effort should be international in scope and should involve Moslem and other countries in a demonstration of America's desire to work with other peoples. That demonstration is as important as the humanitarian aid.

Next, there needs to be a sustained effort to de-militarize the country and clean up the land mines, without waiting for a gas or oil pipeline as the incentive. That kind of development can wait until Afghanistan has enough political integrity to make its own decisions.

Most important, the United States must lead a worldwide effort to promote justice and fairness, and to discourage oppression and prejudice. The sense of humiliation and oppression that gives rise to regressive revitalization movements should be replaced by humanitarian aid and honest efforts to promote justice and equality. We might think of it as a kind of worldwide Fair Treatment Policy—something that has not been tried energetically since the Marshall Plan. It would involve increased use of international legal standards that could move toward universal human rights for tribal groups, religious and racial minorities, women, and others, and opportunities for all to create economic foundations that meet their needs.

Americans must urge these principles upon our friends as well as our enemies or they will be meaningless. The United States, as a signal of its role as a responsible member of the world community, should sign international treaties such as the Kyoto Accords, the land mines treaty, and the Treaty on the Rights of the Child, and become a champion not only of democracy but also of justice. Fairness is one of the hardest principles to follow, but an honest effort to treat people justly and fairly would go a long way toward regaining the trust of the world community. If the United States can regain its status as defender of the high-minded principles that gave rise to the United Nations, repressive states, symbolized by Afghanistan under the Taliban, will decline in popularity. Then we might find that peace is not so elusive after all.***

Is Freedom Just Another Word?

2008-06-11T04:27:00.000-07:00

John Mohawk

It is a positive development that Americans are encouraged to revisit, and hopefully revise, an anomaly in the way the culture views its history. It has been said, erroneously, that America does not have, or does not follow, a philosophy of history. This is, regrettably untrue, especially in the case of what has been called the “American consensus.” It goes like this: Long ago, the founding fathers fought for the rights of man: freedom, liberty, equality, and, first among the descendants of Europe's monarchies and oligarchies, democracy. These rights, as they said in the Declaration of Independence, were “self evident,” meaning they were obvious. These rights, which by implication had already existed but were denied the founders, had their origins in, of all places, nature. They were natural rights.

Those who succeeded the founders expanded the claims quite dramatically. Because the founders had pursued such lofty rights, the United States alone of the world's nation states had been designated with the goal of freeing the world's peoples, of spreading democracy, of creating a new and utopian world.

American historians do not challenge this consensus. It is a kind of defining cultural consensus, similar to the way people in the Middle Ages believed there was a physical or physical-like place called heaven and people who died went there. They believed this much as people today believe there are islands in the Pacific, although no one have ever been there (heaven) and returned and plenty of people have been to Pacific islands and returned. The American consensus about not only what the founders were about but what their project meant has enjoyed this kind of immunity from challenge among mainstream American historians. If you were a Medieval European, you would not challenge theories that heaven existed just beyond the clouds and you could be sure that you did you could be subject to punishment for doing so. It is the same here, except the model stretches a modern person's credulity.

Whether or not the founders were to be commended for pursuing lofty ideals, the assertion that they were entitled to special immunities from normal expectations of the limits of human behavior –- that they were immune to the laws of nations – has led to such horrifying peculiarly American inventions as manifest destiny and American exceptionalism. The argument has been that when American commits crimes against humanity, it is excused because its ancestors were engaged in a struggle for freedom and democracy which would eventually free humankind from oppression.

This idea is obviously a very difficult sell among the peoples of the world because it asks them to suspend disbelief about other and possibly less noble motives but to grant that the United States can never be wrong or engage in unacceptable acts as long as it continues to generate rhetoric about its inheritance of goodness from its founding ancestors. The very root of the conversation begs revisitation.

When 9/11 happened, it was said, “They hate our freedoms.” Those would be the freedoms secured by the founders. The word “freedom” is, as many have pointed out, problematic. A condition in which a people are free must be preceded by one in which such freedom is absent. When the American Revolutionaries challenged the British Crown, they were surely seeking relief (freedom) from something. Was it freedom to assemble, freedom to petition against grievances, freedom from taxation, freedom from unjust surveillance, freedom to dissent, freedom against imprisonment without charges and the right to face an accuser? Does the fact (if it is fact) that two centuries ago America's political ancestors fought for such principles give today's American politicians the right to impose their will on other peoples in other cultures? It is not a simple yes or no, up or down, question. A good argument can be made that the United States can find principles within its traditions supporting human rights and opposing genocide and a list of other crimes against humanity, but a question needs to be raised about when and how such a project can change from liberation to oppression. The American consensus, including the idea of our country, right or wrong, is not a conversation about how to achieve the goals of the founders. It is exactly the kind of thing the founders struggled against the British crown over in 1776.***

The Times Interview - West Papuan activist Septer Manufandu

2008-06-09T01:04:00.002-07:00

Howick and Pakuranga Times - Times Newspaper Online

SEPTER Manufandu was born into the Biak tribe on a small island in the north of West Papua, a territory under the control of Indonesia but with a significant native population. They moved to Jayapura, and he grew up in the high mountain areas of central Papua. After studying agriculture the University of Cendrawasih, he moved onto become the secretary of Folker, an umbrella group coordinating West Papuan nongovernmental organisations. Here to campaign against kwila wood the oppression of native Papuans, Septer spoke to the Times about the environment in Papua and its people’s struggle.

What relationship does the tribe have with the forest?

Papuan people consist of 356 tribes and most live close to the forest. Papua has lowlands, highlands, wetland areas and coastal and marine areas. 50 per cent of Papuans live in high mountain areas and 68 per cent live close to the forest.

Were you dependent on the forest growing up?

Yes. My parents went to the forest for food all the time. Cutting down sago palms, making traditional fires, planting sweet potatoes, animal hunting and getting fish from the river.

What changes have you seen there over your lifetime?

Logging companies have come and occupied people’s land and clear cut the forest. Papuan people live in the forest, but forest land is all controlled by government. It is difficult for Papuan people because all their activities in the forest and coast are their main traditional activity.

What have the tribes lost?

They lose food, they lose animals and traditional medicines and they lose culture because in the forest they implement traditional culture. It’s their home. Their perspective is the forest is their mother. The mother can give everything. It can protect, give food and give life. We believe every indigenous people have a perspective and local wisdom. But so far the Indonesian government has not recognised their rights. When we talk about rights it is very difficult because in Papua there is a stigma from the government and military: “You are separatists!”

So you have no voice?

Papuan people already established their organisation to amplify talking about their rights, the forest, and their land. When Papua got the special autonomy law in 2001, it says there is decentralisation of government and talks about rights, how to recognise, protect and empower. But seven years later it’s not effective. Nothing has changed.

What kind of trees are being taken? We lose many kwila because permits were given in 1984 to 68 companies. Now 15 still operate. In 2005 our report showed illegal logging occurs all over Papua. It reaches 600,000 m3 (cubic metres) a month and the logs are exported illegally.

Who are the companies?

Mostly foreign: Malaysian, Chinese and others. They operate outside the concession. The government gives a legal permit, and then they go outside that area. But illegal or legal are both causing destruction and deforestation.

The military is connected with all of this?

Yes. All activity from logging companies comes through the military.

What do you want New Zealand to do? Stop buying kwila. Support indigenous people. Destruction of the forest is like killing people because they lose everything. They cannot have food, they can’t get water. Logging companies pollute the water too. I also met people from the Maori Party and the Green Party in Wellington. We are learning about Maori people’s conditions here for information and how their strategy was established.

How does the Folker (non government organisations forum) work? What are you doing?
We were created to establish advocacy on 6 major issues: human rights abuses, natural resource problems, good governance, women and child health and HIV Aids. We have 64 member groups. Folker functions to establish policy and a voice for Papua outside about our problems.

What progress has been made?

We prepared a legal draft on the special autonomy law. We’ve tried to do research on the ten regencies in Papua.

Are Papuan people involved in NGOs?

Yeah, we have good relationship with them.

It sounds a bit like an alternative government, because they have no relationship with the central government?

Yes, yes.

What about the migration issue (of Indonesians into Papua)? We call it a ‘demographic disaster’ in Papua. In 1971 Papuan people were 96 per cent of the population, but in 2005 they were 59 per cent and non Papuans 49 per cent. We estimate in 2030, Papuans will only be 15.2 per cent of the population. We are becoming a minority in Papua. There is a paper on it by James Elmslie called “Genocide by Demographics”. I want to talk about the social impact. Mortality of women and children is very high in Papua; the health service is very bad. HIV is very high. It’s 2 per cent of the population, comparable to the problem in Papua New Guinea.

Are there signs of progress?

We have groups in Australia, in Jakarta, and in Finland for Europe. They help our situation. Last year the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights visited. Now we are trying to get groups to advocate for the position of Papuan people within Papua. We are trying to describe the Papuan position and work out how to take the next strategy since the special autonomy law. It’s a strategy for us, for NGOs and church organisations. We’re trying to look at all problems. But human rights abuses are very sensitive in West Papua.***

2008-06-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

Oleh : Tengget Digoel - The Boven Digoel Post

Tanah Merah Digoel, Bodipost - Masih ingatkah anda akan aksi pembasmian rakyat Papua melalui Biomiliterisme (Peracunan makanan dan minuman) yang digelar Tentara Nasional Indonesia dan Polisi Republik Indonesia (TNI-Polri) di hampir seantero Papua beberapa waktu lalu? Kejahatan yang sukses mengantar ratusan orang Papua ke liang kubur dan ratusan lainnya mengalami gangguan kesehatan serius itu ternyata belum sepenuhnya dihentikan karena rupanya daya pembasmi dan dampak hukumnya dinilai lebih efektif ketimbang menggunakan senapan mesin. Di Boven Digoel, sebuah wilayah yang rakyat pribuminya pernah menjadi sasaran Operasi Biomiliterisme, sejak tiga bulan terakhir ini beredar sebuah minuman beralkohol dengan nama Aleksander.

Minuman Aleksander dibuat oleh TNI-Polri dan beberapa orang pengusaha non Papua melalui sebuah usaha yang bersifat patungan. Pabrik mereka didirikan secara tersembunyi di Assikie (area HPH Korindo Group). Menurut sebuah sumber BodiPost, bahan dasar minuman Aleksander adalah Air Hujan, Miras Jenis Robinson (RB), Alkohol 100%, Cairan zat tertentu (namanya belum diketahui) dan Teh Celup sebagai pewarna. Cara membuatnya, semua bahan dasar tadi disatukan dalam sebuah baskom atau loyang kemudian diaduk sehingga bahan dasarnya tercampur secara baik dengan rasa dan aroma yang bisa membangkitkan selera para pemabuk.

Masih menurut sumber tadi, label Miras Aleksander dibuat di Jakarta hanya untuk menipu pembeli seolah-olah pabriknya ada di Jakarta. “Para pembeli biasa tertipu, mereka pikir Aleksander dibuat di Jakarta oleh sebuah pabrik tertentu dan dipasarkan di seluruh Indonesia, padahal pabriknya ada di Assikie, dikelola secara bebas oleh TNI-Polri dan Miras jenis ini hanya dikhususkan untuk masyarakat Papua yang ada di kabupaten Boven Digoel,” ujarnya menjelaskan.

Selama tiga bulan terakhir, peredaran minuman Aleksander sangat marak di wilayah ini, terutama di Ibu Kota Tanah Merah dan sangat meresahkan penduduk setempat karena kadang-kadang penjualnya memaksa dan mengintimidasi penduduk agar membeli Miras jenis ini. Di hampir seluruh pelosok kota Tanah Merah, ribuan liter minuman Aleksander dipasarkan secara gelap oleh Intelijen TNI-Polri dari berbagai kesatuan dan benar-benar telah menelan korban jiwa.

Dari penelusuran BodiPost, semua korbannya tidak ada satupun yang non Papua. Semuanya orang Papua, pribumi Boven Digoel. Korban-korban ini langsung meninggal dunia setelah mengkonsumsi Aleksander. Mereka adalah (1) Geradus Omba, asal suku Wambon, warga Kampung Persatuan, Tanah Merah; (2) Fransiskus Kabagaimu, asal suku Yahray (Mappi), warga Kampung Sokanggo, Tanah Merah; (3) Ferdinandus Metemko, asal suku Muyu, warga Kampung Sokanggo, Tanah Merah; (4) Abraham Waken, asal suku Muyu, Kampung Sokanggo, Tanah Merah. Para korban ini meninggal dunia setelah mengkonsumsi minuman Aleksander yang dijual oleh Intelijen TNI-Polri.

Sedangkan ratusan korban lainnya tidak meninggal dunia tetapi mengalami gangguan kesehatan yang cukup serius. Pada umumnya mereka mengalami gangguan pernafasan, gangguan pencernaan, sakit kepala berkepanjangan, gangguan ingatan, disfungsi seksual, gangguan pengelihatan (gejala kebutaan), sakit tulang, nyeri pada lutut (gejala lumpuh) dan berkurangnya nafsu makan. Mereka mengalami gangguan kesehatan setelah mengkonsumsi Alexander dan beberapa jenis Miras lainnya seperti RB dan Cap Tikus.

Mahalnya biaya pengobatan akibat penghisapan Pemerintah Kabupaten atas rakyat setempat lewat sektor kesehatan dan infrastruktur kesehatan yang tidak memadai seperti dijanjikan para pejabat dalam kampanye-kampanye politik mereka turut menambah beban bagi para korban maupun keluarga mereka yang harus putar-otak mencari biaya pengobatan dan pemulihan kesehatan.

Beberapa suster dan mantri asli Papua yang tidak lagi mampu membungkus kejahatan TNI-Polri mengatakan bahwa para korban yang menderita sakit ini (nama-nama mereka masih didata) diperkirakan kondisi mereka tidak akan stabil seperti sebelum terserang racun yang sengaja disebar lewat minuman Aleksander, RB dan Cap Tikus.

Sampai berita ini ditulis, minuman Aleksander masih dijual secara bebas tetapi karena dampaknya yang fatal, para pembeli beralih membidik Miras jenis lain seperti RB dan Cap Tikus. RB dan Cap Tikus diketahui tidak bisa langsung menyebabkan kematian seperti Aleksander. Kedua jenis minuman ini dipasok dari Merauke, Timika dan dari luar Papua oleh TNI-Polri dan pedagang gelap lainnya yang dibeking TNI-Polri. Beberapa saksi mata menyebutkan, untuk memudahkan penyelundupan dan menghindari pemeriksaan di depan publik, Miras selundupan ini selalu diangkut bersama logistik Militer TNI-Polri melalui jalur darat, laut maupun udara sehingga tidak ada satupun petugas yang boleh memeriksa.

Salah satu pedagang gelap yang dibeking TNI-Polri secara berlapis adalah istri bupati Yusak Yaluwo, Ny. Ester Lambey Yaluwo. Ketua Dharma Wanita kabupaten Boven Digoel yang sering dijuluki “Mama Boven Digoel” ini merupakan pemasok terbesar RB dan Cap Tikus yang langsung didatangkan dari Manado. Ia secara diam-diam telah meraup keuntungan yang besar dari bisnis gelap yang bersifat merusak ini.

Dilihat dari peluang bisnis, wilayah pemasaran dan konsumen yang ada, rupanya wanita Manado ini akan terus dengan leluasa mengembangkan bisnisnya untuk meraup keuntungan yang tidak sedikit dari hancurnya mental generasi muda, konflik keluarga, gangguan kesehatan yang serius dan kematian rakyat setempat akibat mengkonsumsi RB dan Cap Tikus yang dipasok secara langsung dari tanah leluhurnya dan dipasarkan secara bebas di tanah leluhur suaminya.

Sejumlah kalangan berprediksi bahwa bisnis Miras yang ditekuninya mempunyai prospek yang sangat cerah. Bisnisnya dipastikan akan meroket dengan omzet yang meningkat dari hari ke hari diiringi dengan jumlah korban yang pasti terus berjatuhan karena dirinya mendapat dukungan modal, jalur bisnis gelap, keamanan, jaminan hukum dan propaganda media massa untuk putar-balik fakta.

Dukungan ini diperoleh dari suaminya sebagai orang nomor satu di kabupaten Boven Digoel, sebuah kabupaten yang mempunyai reputasi jelek karena manajemen pemerintahannya amburadul, korup, rasis dan anti rakyat pribumi.***

Ten Oil Palm Companies to Expand to Papua

2008-06-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

Bisnis Indonesia

JAKARTA: Papua, a region called Dutch New Guinea in the colonial era, has been 'controlled' by 10 big plantation companies in the last two years.

Of the total area size of 352,651 hectares (ha), 85,654 hectares have been seized by several business groups, such as state-owned plantation PTPN II, the Sinarmas Group, the Korindo Group, and the Raja Garuda Mas (RGM) Group, to expand their oil palm businesses.

The big private plantation groups have also controlled some companies in Papua, such as PT Tunas Sawah Erma (the Korindo Group), Sumber Indah Perkasa and Sinar Kencana Inti Perkasa (PT Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology Corporation/ Smart Tbk), and Bumi Irian Perkasa (the RGM Group).

Until 2007, Smart had controlled 125,190 hectares of oil plantation areas in Sumatra (62,410 hectares) and Kalimantan (62,780 hectares).

Asian Agri controls over 160,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, while the Korindo Group, operating in the Asiki district, the Boven Digoel Regency, targets to develop 50,000 hectares of oil palm plantations.

Since 1989, Korindo has been developing oil palm plantations.

Currently, the Korindo group has already had 10,000 hectares of areas and has started production with two plants, each with a capacity of 30,000 tons of oil palm per hour.

Korindo has been allocating its oil palm to meet domestic needs and is still focusing on developing oil palm in Boven Digoel [in the south of Papua, near the PNG border].

In the meantime, the company also develops 50,000 hectares of industrial timber estate in Central Kalimantan and plans to open up an oil palm industry there.

Director General of Plantation at the Department of Agriculture Achmad Mangga Barani claimed the directorate general had mapped out land conditions and statuses.

"The Department of Agriculture' s Research and Development Agency has completed the development map for Papua. The map can show us areas potential for certain commodities, " he said recently.

Based on the map [for Papua], he continued, the Department of Agriculture would give recommendations to the local governments regarding new plantation area developments, especially those made by 10 companies.

Of the ten companies, eight have interests in the oil palm plantation sector, while the two others, PT ANJ Agri Papua and PT Nusa Ethanolasia, have interests in sago plantation.

Achmad added the total size of plantation areas in Papua reached 458,551 hectares consisting of 352,651 hectares of oil palm plantations, 5,900 hectares of cocoa plantation, and 100,000 hectares of sago. Of the total size, 32,571 hectares of areas had been planted.

According to him, the map showed there were 1.72 million hectares of areas potential for plantations, namely for oil palm plantations (885,140 hectares), cocoa plantations (305,855 hectares), coffee plantations (143,658 hectares), rubber plantations (81,098 hectares), and sugar cane plantations(268,782 hectares).

Yapen Islands [West Papua]

Separately, Regency of Yapen Islands [West Papua] Daud S. Betawi Soleman disclosed his regency had 123,596 hectares of areas potential for plantation.

"The Directorate General of Plantation will make our region as a pilot project for the integration of cocoa plantation and cow and pig farms. Regarding the size and the cost, those will depend on the government," said Daud after meeting with Director General of Plantation Achmad Manggabarani in the latter's working room yesterday. (Bisnis/et/arh)

______________

[ Free West Papua Campaign comment: Is TIME magazine's "Hero of the Environment" , Governor of Papua, Barnabas Suebu, protecting West Papua's forests, or helping Indonesia to destroy them? ]

Garis Panduan Mengenai Kritikan Terhadap Ekonomi Politik

2008-04-05T02:19:00.000-07:00

Frederick Engels

Ditulis pada tahun 1844. Dari Marx dan Engels, Collected Works, Jilid 3, muka surat 422-424. Diterjemahkan oleh Muhammad Salleh (Februari 2002)

Akibat terus-menerus daripada harta swasta adalah perdagangan – pertukaran keperluan-keperluan secara bertimbal balik – pembelian dan penjualan. Perdagangan ini, seperti setiap aktiviti lain, mesti di bawah penguasaan harta swasta menjadi sumber keuntungan secara langsung bagi pedagang; iaitu, setiap pedagang mesti menjual dengan harga yang paling tinggi yang dapat dan membeli dengan paling murah yang dapat. Maka, dalam setiap pembelian dan penjualan, dua orang dengan kepentingan yang bertentangan secara diametrik berhadapan dengan satu sama lain.

Penghadapan ini adalah bersifat bertentangan, kerana mereka menyedari hasrat satu sama lain – menyedari bahawa hasrat mereka adalah bertentangan. Maka, akibat pertama adalah rasa ketidak-yakinan bersama, dalam satu tangan, dan kemunasabahan ketidak-yakinan ini – pengamalan cara-cara tanpa moral untuk mencapai hasil tidak bermoral – dalam tangan sebelah. Maka, maksim pertama dalam perdagangan adalah kerahsiaan – penyembunyian segala yang mungkin mengurangkan nilai barangan dalam pertikaian. Hasilnya adalah bahawa perdagangan dibenarkan mengambil kesempatan dari kejahilan, keyakinan, pihak bertentangan, dan sedemikian memasukkan kualiti-kualiti ke dalam komoditi seseorang itu yang sebenarnya tidak dipegang oleh komoditi itu. Pendek kata, perdagangan adalah pemalsuan sah. Mana-mana pedagang yang ingin mengutamakan kebenaran mungkin menjadikan saya saksi bahawa amalan sebenar adalah serupa dengan teori ini.

Sistem merkantil masih mempunyai ciri-ciri Katolik tanpa seni dan sama sekali tidak menyembunyikan sifat perdagangan tanpa moral. Kita telah menyaksikan bagaimana ia mempersembahkan ketamakannya secara terbuka. Sikap bermusuh negara-negara dalam abad kelapan-belas, sikap iri hati ganas dan kecemburuan perdagangan, merupakan akibat-akibat logik perdagangan seperti itu. Pendapat awam belum lagi diberi pandangan keperimanusiaan. Maka, mengapakah menyembunyikan benda-benda yang dihasilkan oleh sifat tidak berperikemanusiaan, ganas, perdagangan sendiri?

Tetapi apabila Luther ekonomi, iaitu Adam Smith, mengkritik ekonomi silam, perihal telah berubah secara mendadak. Abad itu telah diberikan pandangan keperimanusiaan; kewarasan telah menekan dirinya, kemoralan telah menuntut hak abadinya. Perjanjian-perjanjian perdagangan yang diperas, peperangan-peperangan komersil, pemulauan negara-negara dengan tegas, terlalu menyakitkan kesedaran maju. Hipokrasi Protestan menggantikan tempat keanehan Katolik. Smith membuktikan bahawa umat manusia, juga, terbenam dalam sifat perdagangan; bahawa perdagangan mesti menjadi “di antara negara, seperti di kalangan individu, ikatan perpaduan dan persahabatan” dan bukannya menjadi “sumber yang paling subur bagi perselisihan dan permusuhan” (rujuk kepada Kekayaan Negara-Negara, Buku 4, Bab 3, Bahagian 2); bahawa akhirnya ia terletak dalam sifat benda-benda bagi perdagangan, diambil secara menyeluruh, untuk membawa faedah bagi kesemua pihak yang terlibat.

Smith memang betul untuk menyanjung perdagangan sebagai berperikemanusian. Tidak terdapat apa-apa yang tidak bermoral sepenuhnya di dunia. Perdagangan, juga, mempunyai sesuatu aspek di mana ia memberi kehormatan kepada kemoralan dan umat manusia. Tetapi apatah kehormatan! Hukum tangan yang kuat, lebuhraya rompakan terbuka dari Zaman Pertengahan, diberikan pandangan keperimanusiaan apabila ia memasuki perdagangan; dan perdagangan dijadikan berperikemanusiaan apabila tahap pertamanya, yang disifatkan oleh pengharaman pengeksportan duit, memasuki sistem merkantil. Kemudian sistem merkantil sendiri dijadikan berperikemanusiaan. Sememangnya, ia adalah dalam kebaikan pedagang untuk berada dalam hubungan baik dengan orang yang dia membeli dengan murah daripada serta orang yang dia menjual kepada dengan mahal. Maka, sesebuah negara bertindak dengan tidak waras jika ia memupuk perasaan bermusuh di antara pembekal dan pelanggannya. Lebih baik hati, lebih berfaedah. Begitulah keperimanusiaan perdagangan. Dan cara berhipokrasi menggunakan kemoralan untuk matlamat-matlamat tidak bermoral adalah kebanggaan sistem perdagangan bebas. “Bukankah kami telah menumbangkan kezaliman monopoli-monopoli?” menjelaskan pihak hipokrit. “Bukankah kami telah membawa kesaudaraan rakyat, dan mengurangkan jumlah peperangan?” Ya, semua ini anda telah melakukan – tetapi bagaimana! Anda telah menghapuskan monopoli-monopoli kecil agar monopoli asas besar yang tunggal, iaitu harta, dapat berfungsi dengan lebih bebas dan tanpa had. Anda telah menamadunkan setiap pelusuk dunia untuk memenangi kawasan baru demi perkembangan ketamakan menjijik anda. Anda telah membawa kesaudaraan rakyat – tetapi kesaudaraan ini adalah kesaudaraan pencuri. Anda telah mengurangkan jumlah peperangan – untuk meraih keuntungan yang lebih besar dalam kedamaian, untuk meningkatkan sepenuhynya permusuhan di antara individu-individu, iaitu peperangan persaingan keji! Bilakah anda pernah melakukan apa-apa dari keperimanusiaan tulin, dari kesedaran sifat sia-sia tentangan di antara kepentingan umum dan individu? Bilakah anda pernah bersikap bermoral tanpa bersikap mementingkan diri sendiri, tanpa melabuhkan di belakang minda anda motif-motif tidak bermoral lagi egotistik?

Dengan membasmikan kewarganegaraan-kewarganegaraan, sistem ekonomi liberal telah mencuba sedaya upaya untuk meluaskan permusuhan, untuk mengubah umat manusia menjadi sesuatu kumpulan haiwan yang sangat lapar (kerana apatah lagi pesaing-pesaing?) yang memakan satu sama lain hanya kerana setiap satu mempunyai kepentingan yang sama dengan yang lain – selepas usaha persediaan ini, terdapat hanya satu langkah yang perlu diambil sebelum matlamat tersebut dicapai, iaitu pembasmian keluarga. Untuk mencapai ini, penciptaan cantik ekonomi sendiri, sistem perkilangan, datang membantu. Sisa terakhir kepentingan bersama, iaitu masyarakat barangan dalam milik keluarga, telah dilemahkan oleh sistem perkilangan dan – sekurang-kurangnya di sini di England – sudah berada dalam proses pembasmian. Ia adalah amalan biasa bagi kanak-kanak, apabila mereka sudah dapat bekerja (iaitu, apabila mereka mencapai umur sembilan tahun), untuk membelanja gaji mereka dengan sendiri, untuk melihat rumah ibubapa mereka hanyalah sebagai tempat kediaman, dan untuk memberikan kepada ibubapa mereka jumlah tetap bagi makanan dan tempat tinggal. Bagaimanakah ia dapat berlaku sebaliknya? Apakah lagi yang dapat dihasilkan oleh pemisahan kepentingan, seperti yang menjadi dasar bagi sistem perdagangan bebas? Apabila prinsipnya sudah digerakkan, ia berusaha dengan impetusnya sendiri melalui segala akibat-akibatnya, tanpa mengira jika ahli-ahli ekonomi menyukainya atau tidak.

Tetapi ahli ekonomi tidak menyedari sendiri apakah matlamat yang dilayani olehnya. Dia tidak menyedari bahawa dengan segala kewarasan egotistiknya, dia hanya menjadi satu ikatan dalam rantai kemajuan abadi umat manusia. Dia tidak menyedari bahawa dengan pembasmian segala kepentingan kumpulan, dia hanya membuka jalan bagi perubahan termasyhur yang abad ini menuju kepada – pendamaian umat manusia dengan alam dan dengan dirinya sendiri.

________

1. Rujuk kepada Karl Marx, Manuskrip-Manuskrip Ekonomi dan Falsafah Tahun 1844, dan Marx dan Engels, Collected Works, Jilid 3 (Lawrence dan Wishart, London, 1975). [Penerjemah.]

US CONGRESS: Senate Letter on Training Kopassus and Brimob

2008-04-03T02:56:00.000-07:00

United States Senate
WASHINGTON, DC 20510
April 3, 2008

Dr. Condoleezza Rice

Secretary of State

2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Madam Secretary:

Following recent conversations with U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, Cameron Hume and officials at the State Department to discuss the Administration' s intention to re-engage with certain units of Indonesia's military and police forces, we are writing to express our opposition to this initiative.

We recognize the importance of a strong and effective partnership with Indonesia, and have supported various initiatives to re-engage with and provide assistance to the Indonesian military and police, particularly as we seek to combat extremism around the globe.

However, this relationship must not come at the expense of a principled stance on human rights and accountability for past abuses which have yet to be adequately addressed, if at all.

Human rights training for both the military and police is a critical next step to the country's progression, but we are concerned that neither Kopassus, Indonesia's Special Forces, nor Brimob, the paramilitary police, have demonstrated a commitment to the rule of law. We believe that re-engaging with them, absent such a commitment, would undermine the goal of creating a professional military and police force that upholds international human rights norms and contributes to broader efforts by our government to promote governance, accountability, and respect for civilian control.

Although the Ambassador indicated that he would be personally involved in the "vetting" of individuals considered for training, it remains unclear what vetting criteria will be utilized or even how such vetting will occur, particularly given that there are no formal records of those who have committed abuses. Without the appropriate mechanisms in place or an ability to distinguish the perpetrators, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to ensure the reliability of any vetting process. Additionally, given the recent arrests and ongoing detention of protestors in West Papua, we have yet one more reason to believe that the military is not adequately respecting civilian control and is demonstrating troubling signs of regression.

As you know, we have a longstanding interest in these issues and have passed legislation designed to hold the Indonesian military more accountable for past atrocities and to ensure the development of proper mechanisms so such abuses are not repeated. Unfortunately, little progress has been made toward these goals, which continues to undermine the other positive reforms Indonesia has made since the end of the Suharto regime. We strongly urge you take these concerns into account before making a decision to move forward with this training.

Thank you for your attention to these concerns. Sincerely,

Russell D. Feingold (United States Senator)
Patrick Leahy (United States Senator)

CC: Ambassador Cameron Hume, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia
John M. Miller Internet: etan@igc.org
National Coordinator
East Timor & Indonesia Action Network
PO Box 21873, Brooklyn, NY 11202-1873 USA
Phone: (718)596-7668 Mobile: (917)690-4391
Skype: john.m.miller Web: http://www.etan. org

Front Pepera PB Tolak PP No. 77

2008-04-02T23:34:00.000-07:00

Front Pepera PB

Jogyakarta, FrontPeperaPB – Puluhan Masyarakat dan Mahasiswa Papua di Jogyakarta yang bergabung dalam Front Persatuan Perjuangan Rakyat Papua Barat (Front Pepera-PB) melakukan aksi massa, Senin (31/03) kemarin. Mereka menolak Peraturan Pemerintah No. 77 Tentang Pelarangan Pemakaian Atribut Papua Barat.

Aksi dimulai sekitar pukul 10.00 WIB dengan long march dari Stasiun Kereta Tugu (Abu Bakar Ali) dan berakhir di Kantor Pos DIY. Massa Front Pepera PB itu menolak segala bentuk peraturan yang dibuat oleh Pemerintah Pusat maupun pemerintah daerah yang mana salah satunya adalah Peraturan Pemerintah No. 77 Tentang pelarangan Pemakaian atribut Papua Barat. Menurut mereka, PP No. 77 sudah membunuh harapan orang Papua akan kebebasan untuk berekspresi dan menyampaikan pendapat di muka umum.

Mereka dengan tegas mengutuk perlakuan pemerintah, terutama aparat Kepolisian yang dengan sewenang-wenang melakukan sweeping barang-barang seperti atribut bercorak bintang kejora, gambar-gambar tentang Papua dan berbagai atribut lainnya.

Kehadiran PP Nomor 77 ternyata membuat resah masyarakat Papua, terutama mereka yang menggantungkan hidupnya dengan berjualan gelang, kalung dan tas bercorak bendera bintang kejora. Perhiasan tersebut ternyata diminati semua orang, baik Papua dan Non Papua. Ketertarikan ini bukan karena atribut tersebut bernilai politis, tetapi lebih pada seni dan keindahannya.

"PP Nomor 77 hanyalah trik bisnis untuk menyelamatkan pabrik pembuat tas di pulau Jawa dan pasaran tas di Papua yang omzetnya menurun ketika hampir semua orang di Papua memilih memakai tas bercorak bendera bintang kejora," tandas seorang peserta Aksi.***

The Construction of Reality in the Child (Part 5)

2008-03-06T01:58:00.000-08:00

Jean Piaget (1955)

§ 5. Conclusion

The formation of the universe, which seemed accomplished with that of sensorimotor intelligence, is continued throughout the development of thought, which is natural, but is continued while seeming at first to repeat itself, before truly progressing to encompass the data of action in a representative system of the totality. This is the information we have just gained from a comparison of our present observations with the results of examining the representations of the child of three to twelve years of age.

To understand the scope of such a fact we must amplify what we said in §1 of these conclusions about the relations between intellectual assimilation and accommodation, by applying these reflections to the processes of thought itself.

We have tried to show how, on the sensorimotor plane, assimilation and accommodation, at first undifferentiated but pulling behaviour in opposite directions, gradually became differentiated and complementary. From what we have seen with regard to space, object, causality, and time it is clear that on the plane of representative thought, which is at the same time that of social relationships or coordination among individual minds, new assimilations and accommodations become necessary and these in turn begin with a phase of chaotic undifferentiation and later proceed to a complementary differentiation and harmonisation.

During the earliest stages of thought, accommodation remains on the surface of physical as well as social experience. Of course, on the plane of action the child is no longer entirely dominated by the appearance of things, because through sensorimotor intelligence he has managed to construct a coherent practical universe by combining accommodation to objects with assimilation of objects to intercoordinated structures. But when it is a question of transcending action to form an impersonal representation of reality, that is, a communicable image destined to attain truth rather than mere utility, accommodation to things finds itself at grips with new difficulties. It is no longer a matter only of acting but of describing, not only of foreseeing but of explaining, and even if the sensorimotor schemata are already adapted to their own function, which is to insure the equilibrium between individual activity and the perceived environment, thought is obliged to construct a new representation of things to satisfy the common consciousness and the demands of a conception of totality. In this sense the first contact of thought, properly so called, with the material universe constitutes what may be called "immediate experience" in contradistinction to experimentation which is scientific or corrected by the assimilation of things to reason.

Immediate experience, that is, the accommodation of thought to the surface of things, is simply empirical experience which considers, as objective datum, reality as it appears to direct perception. In the numerous cases in which reality coincides with appearance this superficial contact with the object suffices to lead to truth. But the further one departs from the field of immediate action to construct an adequate representation of reality, the more necessary it is, to understand the phenomena, to include them in a network of relations becoming increasingly remote from appearance and to insert appearance in a new reality elaborated by reason. In other words, it becomes more and more necessary to correct appearance and this requires the formation of relationships among, or the reciprocal assimilation of, various points of view. In the example we cited in §3 of the groups of displacements relating to mountains, it is obvious that a whole structuring of experience, that is, a rational assimilation and coordination of many possible points of view, is indispensable to make the child understand that, despite appearance, mountains do not displace themselves when one moves in relation to them and that the various perspectives on them do not exclude the permanence of their form. The same applies to attributing stationary banks to a river or a lake when the boat advances and, in a general way, to organising distant space no longer depending on direct action. Concerning objects let us consider the difference between immediate experience relating to the stars, that is, simple accommodation of perception to their apparent size and movements, from the real experience which the mind acquires when it combines that accommodation with an assimilation of the same data to the activity of reason. From the first of these points of view, the stars are little balls or spots located at the same height as clouds; their movements depend on our own walking and their permanence is impossible to determine (even with respect to the sun, there are children who believe in its identity with the moon when they do not, on the contrary, affirm the existence of several suns and moons). From the second point of view, on the contrary, real dimensions and distances no longer have any relation to appearance, the actual trajectories correspond with the apparent movements only through relationships of increasing complexity, and the identity of celestial bodies becomes the function of this system of totality. What is true on a large scale of the stars is always true, on every scale, of objects on which direct action does not bear. With regard to causality, the first example seen, like that of the floating of boats so suggestive to the child, gives rise to the same considerations. By following the course of immediate experience the child begins by believing that small boats float because they are light; but when he sees a tiny piece of lead or a little pebble gliding along at the bottom of the water, he adds that these bodies are doubtless too light and small to be held back by the water; moreover big boats float because they are heavy and can thus carry themselves. In short, if one remains on the surface of things, explanation is possible only at the price of continuous contradictions, because, if it is to embrace the sinuosity of reality, thought must constantly add apparent connections to one another instead of coordinating them in a coherent system of totality. On the contrary, the contact of the mind with real experience leads to a simple explanation, but on condition of completing this elementary accommodation of thought to the immediate data of perception by a correlative assimilation of these data to a system of relationships (between weight and volume, etc.) which reason succeeds in elaborating only by replacing the appearance of things with a real construction. Let us also be satisfied, in the realm of time and duration, with a single example, that of the dissociation of the concept of speed into relations between the concepts of time and the space traversed. From the point of view of immediate experience, the child succeeds very soon in estimating speeds of which he has direct awareness, the spaces traversed in an identical time or the "before" and "after" in arrival at a goal in cases of trajectories of the same length. But there is a considerable gap between this and a dissociation of the notion of speed to extract a measurement of time, for this would involve replacing the direct intuitions peculiar to the elementary accommodation of thought to things by a system of relations involving a constructive assimilation.

In short, thought in all realms starts from a surface contact with the external realities, that is, a simple accommodation to immediate experience. Why then, does this accommodation remain, in the true sense of the word, superficial, and why does it not at once lead to correcting the sensory impression by rational truth? Because, and this is what we are leading up to, primitive accommodation of thought, as previously that of sensorimotor intelligence, is undifferentiated from a distorting assimilation of reality to the self and is at the same time oriented in the opposite direction.

During this phase of superficial accommodation to physical and social experience, we observe a continuous assimilation of the universe not only to the impersonal structure of the mind - which is not completed except on the sensorimotor plane - but also and primarily to the personal point of view, to individual experience, and even to the desires and affectivity of the subject. Considered in its social aspect, this distorting assimilation consists, as we have seen (§2), in a sort of egocentrism of thought so that thought, still unsubmissive to the norms of intellectual reciprocity and logic, seeks satisfaction rather than truth and transforms reality into a function of personal affectivity. From the point of view of the adaptation of thought to the physical universe this assimilation leads to a series of consequences of interest to us here. In the domain of space, for example, it is evident that, if the child remains dominated by the immediate experience of the mountain which is displaced and by the other superficial accommodations we have discussed, it is because these remain undifferentiated from a continual assimilation of reality to the personal point of view; thus the child believes that his own displacements govern those of the mountains, the sky, etc. The same IS true of objects. To the extent the child has difficulty, for example, in constituting the identity of the moon and the stars in general because he does not transcend the immediate experience of their apparent movements, it is because he still believes he is followed by them and thus assimilates the image of their displacements to his own point of view, exactly like the baby whose universe is ill objectified because it is too closely centred on his own activity. With regard to causality, if the child has difficulty in integrating his explanations into a coherent system of relations, this is again because accommodation to the qualitative diversity of reality remains undifferentiated from an assimilation of phenomena to personal activity. Why, for instance, are boats conceived as heavy or light in themselves, without consideration of the relation of weight and volume, if not because weight is evaluated as the function of the subject’s muscular experience instead of being transformed into an objective relationship? So also, the primacy of internal duration over external time attests to the existence of a distorting assimilation which necessarily accompanies primitive accommodation of the mind to the surface of events.

The superficial accommodation of the beginnings of thought and the distorting assimilation of reality to the self are therefore at first undifferentiated and they operate in opposite directions. They are undifferentiated because the immediate experience which characterises the former always, in the last analysis, consists in considering the personal point of view as the expression of the absolute and thus in subjecting the appearance of things to an egocentric assimilation, just as this assimilation is necessarily on a par with a direct perception that excludes the construction of a rational system of relations. But at the beginning, however undifferentiated may be these accommodative operations and those in which assimilation may be discerned, they work in opposite directions. Precisely because immediate experience is accompanied by an assimilation of perceptions to the schemata of personal activity or modelled after it, accommodation to the inner workings of things is constantly impeded by it. Inversely, assimilation of things to the self is constantly held in check by the resistances necessitating this accommodation, since there is involved at least the appearance of reality, which is not unlimitedly pliant to the subject’s will. So also, on the social plane, the constraint imposed by the opinion of others thwarts egocentrism and vice versa, although the two attitudes of imitation of others and assimilation to the self are constantly coexistent and reveal the same difficulties of adaptation to reciprocity and true cooperation.

On the contrary, gradually, as the child’s thought evolves, assimilation and accommodation are differentiated and become increasingly complementary. In the realm of representation of the world this means, on the one hand, that accommodation, instead of remaining on the surface of experience, penetrates it more and more deeply, that is, under the chaos of appearances it seeks regularities and becomes capable of real experimentations to establish them. On the other hand, assimilation, instead of reducing phenomena to the concepts inspired by personal activity, incorporates them in the system of relationships rising from the more profound activity of intelligence itself. True experience and deductive construction thus become simultaneously separate and correlative, whereas in the social realm the increasingly close adjustment of personal thought to that of others and the reciprocal formation of relationships of perspectives insures the possibility of a cooperation that constitutes precisely the environment that is favourable to this elaboration of reason.

Thus it may be seen that thought in its various aspects reproduces on its own plane the processes of evolution we have observed in the case of sensorimotor intelligence and the structure of the initial practical universe. The development of reason, outlined on the sensorimotor level, follows the same laws, once social life and reflective thought have been formed. Confronted by the obstacles which the advent of those new realities raises, at the beginning of this second period of intellectual evolution assimilation and accommodation again find themselves in a situation through which they had already passed on the lower plane. But in proceeding from the purely individual state characteristic of sensorimotor intelligence to the cooperation which defines the plane on which thought will move henceforth, the child, after having overcome his egocentrism and the other obstacles which impede this cooperation, receives from it the instruments necessary to extend the rational construction prepared during the first two years of life and to expand it into a system of logical relationships and adequate representations.***

The Construction of Reality in the Child (Part 4)

2008-03-05T01:54:00.000-08:00

Jean Piaget (1955)

§ 4. From Sensori-Motor Universe to Representation of the Child’s World

2. . Causality and Time

The development of causality from the first months of life to the eleventh or twelfth year reveals the same graphic curve as that of space or object. The acquisition of causality seems to be completed with the formation of sensorimotor intelligence; in the measure that objectification and spatialisation of relations of cause and effect succeed the magico-phenomenalistic egocentrism of the primitive connections, a whole evolution resumes with the advent of speech and representative thought which seems to reproduce the preceding evolution before really extending it.

But among the displacements to which this history of the concept of cause gives rise, distinction must again be made between the simple temporal displacements in extension due to the repetition of primitive processes on the occasion of new problems analogous to old ones, and the temporal displacements in comprehension due to the transition from one plane of activity to another; that is, from the plane of action to that of representation. It seems useless to us to emphasise the former. Nothing is more natural than the fact that belief in the efficacy of personal activity, a belief encouraged by chance comparisons through immediate or phenomenalistic experience, is again found throughout childhood in those moments of anxiety or of desire which characterise infantile magic. The second type of temporal displacements, however, raises questions which it is useful to mention here.

During the first months of life the child does not dissociate the external world from his own activity. Perceptual images, not yet consolidated into objects or coordinated in a coherent space, seem to him to be governed by his desires and efforts, though these are not attributed to a self which is separate from the universe. Then gradually, as progress is made in the intelligence which elaborates objects and space by spinning a tight web of relations among these images, the child attributes an autonomous causality to things and persons and conceives of the existence of causal relations independent of himself, his own body becoming a source among other sources of effects integrated in this total system. What will happen when, through speech and representative thought, the subject succeeds not only in foreseeing the development of phenomena and in acting upon them but in evoking them apart from any action in order to try to explain them? It is here that the paradox of displacement in comprehension appears.

By virtue of the "why" obsessing the child’s mind, as soon as his representation of the world can be detached without too much risk of error, one perceives that this universe, centred on the self, which seemed abolished because it was eliminated from practical action relating to the immediate environment, reappears on the plane of thought and impresses itself on the little child as the sole understandable conception of totality. Undoubtedly the child no longer behaves, as did the baby, as though he commanded everything and everybody. He knows that adults have their own will, that the rain, wind, clouds, stars, and all things are characterised by movements and effects he undergoes but cannot control. In short, on the practical plane, the objectification and spatialisation of causality remain acquired. But this does not at all prevent the child from representing the universe to himself as a large machine, organised exactly by whom he does not know, but organised with the help of adults and for the sake of the well-being of men and particularly of children. Just as in a house everything is arranged according to a plan, despite imperfections and partial failures, so also the raison d’être for everything in the physical universe is the function of a sort of order in the world, an order both material and moral, of which the child is the center. Adults are there "to take care of us," animals to do us service, the stars to warm us and give us light, plants to nourish us, rain to make the gardens grow, clouds to "make night," mountains to climb on, and lakes for boats, etc. Furthermore, to this more or less explicit and coherent artificialism there corresponds a latent animism which endows everything with the will to play its role and with just the force and awareness needed to act with regularity.

Thus the causal egocentrism, which on the sensorimotor plane disappears gradually under the influence of spatialisation and objectification, reappears from the time of the beginnings of thought in almost as radical a form. Doubtless the child no longer attributes personal causality to others or to things, but while endowing objects with specific activities he centers all these activities on man and above all on himself. It seems clear that in this sense we may speak of temporal displacement from one plane to another and that the phenomenon is thus comparable to the phenomena which characterise the evolution of space and object.

But it is in a still deeper sense that the primitive schemata of causality are again transposed in the child’s first reflective representations. If it is true that from the second year of life the child attributes causality to others and to objects instead of reserving a monopoly on them for his own activity, we have still to discover how he represents to himself the mechanism of these causal relations. We have just recalled that corresponding to the egocentric artificialism which makes the universe gravitate around man and child is an animism capable of explaining the activity of creatures and things in this sort of world. This example is precisely of a kind to help us understand the second kind of temporal displacement of which we now speak: if the child renounces considering his actions as the cause of every event, he nevertheless is unable to represent to himself the action of bodies except by means of schemata drawn from his own activity. An object animated by a "natural" movement like the wind which pushes clouds, or the moon which advances, thus seems endowed with purposefulness and finality, for the child is unable to conceive of an action without a conscious goal. Through lack of awareness, every process involving a relation of energies, such as the rising of the water level in a glass in which a pebble has been dropped, seems due to forces copied from the model of personal activity; the pebble "weighs" on the bottom of the water, it "forces" the water to rise, and if one held the pebble on a string midway of the column of the water the level would not change. In short, even though there is objectivity on the practical plane, causality may remain egocentric from the representative point of view to the extent that the first causal conceptions are drawn from the completely subjective consciousness of the activity of the self. With regard to spatialisation of the causal connection the same temporal displacement between representation and action is observable. Thus the child can acknowledge in practice the necessity for a spatial contact between cause and effect, but that does not make causality geometric or mechanical. For example, the parts of a bicycle all seem necessary to the child long before he thinks of establishing irreversible causal series among them.

However, subsequent to these primitive stages of representation during which one sees reappear on the plane of thought forms of causality relative to those of the first sensorimotor stages and which seem surpassed by the causal structures of the final stages of sensorimotor intelligence, one witnesses a truly reflective objectification and spatialisation, whose progress is parallel to that which we have described on the plane of action. Thus it is that subsequent to the animism and dynamism we have just mentioned, we see a gradual "mechanism" taking form, correlative to the principles of conservation described in § 3 and to the elaboration of a relative space. Causality, like the other categories, therefore evolves on the plane of thought from an initial egocentrism to a combined objectivity and relativity, thus reproducing, in surpassing, its earlier sensorimotor evolution.

With regard to time, concerning which we have tried to describe on the purely practical plane of the first two years of life the transformation from subjective series into objective series, there is no need to emphasise the parallelism of this evolution with that which, on the plane of thought, is characterised by the transition from internal duration, conceived as the sole temporal model, to physical time constituted by quantitative relations between spatial guide-marks and external events. During the first phases of representative thought the child does not succeed in estimating either concrete duration or even rates of speed except ,by referring them to mere psychological time. Subsequently, on the contrary, he constructs in thought, and no longer only in action, objective series connecting internal duration to physical time and to the history of the external universe itself. For instance, if one draws in front of a child two concentric figures one of which describes a big circle and the other a much smaller one, and if one makes two automobiles of the same dimensions cover these two trajectories at the same time, the youngest subjects cannot avoid believing that the automobile following the small circle went "faster" than the other. "Faster" in this case simply means "more easily," "with less effort," etc., but the child does not take into account the relation between time and the space covered. For adults, on the contrary, speed is measured by this relation, and the expression "faster" loses its subjective meaning. So also, the expressions "more time" or "less time" have no objective meaning for little children and acquire it for adults, etc. ***

The Construction of Reality in the Child (Part 3)

2008-03-04T01:50:00.000-08:00

Jean Piaget (1955)

§ 3. From Sensori-motor Universe to Representation of the Child’s World

1. Space and Object

The understanding of spatial relations is a particularly clear first example of the parallelism with temporal displacement between the sensorimotor acquisitions and those of representative thought.

We recall how, starting with purely practical and quasi-physiological groups, the child begins by elaborating subjective groups, then arrives at objective groups, and only then becomes capable of representative groups. But the groups of this last type, if they constitute the culminating point of practical space and thus insert in sensorimotor spatial relations the representation of displacements not occurring within the direct perceptual field, are far from marking the beginning of a complete representation of space, that is, a representation completely detached from action. What will happen when the child is called upon, apart from any current action, to represent to himself a group of displacements or a system of coherent perspectives? It is from this decisive moment that we witness, on the plane of thought properly so called, a repetition of the evolution already accomplished on the sensorimotor plane.

Take, for example, the following problem. The child is presented with a model, about one square meter in size, representing three mountains in relief; he is to reconstruct the different perspectives in which a little doll views them in varying positions that follow a given order. No technical or verbal difficulty impedes the child, for he may simply point with his finger to what the doll sees, or choose from among several pictures showing the possible perspectives, or construct with boxes symbolising mountains the photograph the doll could take from a given point of view. Moreover, the problem posed to the child consists in representing to himself the simplest of all the spatial relations which transcend direct action and perception, that is, to represent to himself what he would see if he were in the successive positions suggested to him. At first it would seem as though the child’s answers would merely extend the acquisitions of the sixth stage of sensorimotor space and arrive immediately at the correct representations.

But interestingly enough the youngest of the children capable of understanding the problem of the mountains and of responding without difficulties of a verbal or technical kind reveal an attitude which, instead of extending the objective and representative groups of our sixth stage, on the contrary, regresses to the integral egocentrism of the subjective groups. Far from representing the various scenes which the doll contemplates from different viewpoints, the child always considers his own perspective as absolute and thus attributes it to the doll without suspecting this confusion. In other words, when he is asked what the doll sees from a particular position the child describes what he himself sees from his own position without taking into account the obstacles which prevent the doll from seeing the same view. When he is shown several pictures from among which he is to choose the one which corresponds to the doll’s perspective, he chooses the one which represents his own. Finally, when he is to reconstruct with boxes the photograph the doll might take from its place, the child again reproduces his own view of things.

Then, when the child disengages himself from this initial egocentrism and masters the relationships involved in these problems, we witness a totality of transitional phases. Either the child who begins to understand that the perspective differs according to the doll’s position effects various mixtures between those perspectives and his own perspective ("pre-relations"), or else he takes into account only one relation at a time (left-right or before-behind, etc.) and does not succeed in multiplying the interrelations. These transitions correspond to the limited groups of displacements belonging to the fourth of the sensorimotor stages. Finally, complete relativity is attained, corresponding to stages V-VI of the same series.

How then can this temporal displacement be explained, as-well as this return to the phases which have already been transcended on the plane of sensorimotor space? To act in space the child is certainly obliged to understand little by little that the things which surround him have a trajectory independent of himself and that their displacements are thus grouped in objective systems. From a purely practical point of view the child is therefore led to emerge from an initial egocentrism, in which things are considered to depend solely on his personal activity, and to master a relativity which is established between displacements successively perceived or even between certain perceived moments and others which have simply been represented. But the egocentrism and objective relativity in question here concern only the relationships between the child and things, and nothing in sensorimotor action forces him to leave this narrow realm. So long as the problem is not to represent to himself reality in itself, but simply to use it or to exert an influence upon it, there is no need to go beyond the system of relations established between objects and self or among objects as such in the field of personal perspective; there is no need to assume the existence of other perspectives and to interconnect them in including his own among them. To be sure, the act by which one confers an objectivity on the displacements of things already implies an enlargement of the initial egocentric perspective and it is in this sense that, apropos of the fifth and sixth sensorimotor stages, we have been able to speak of a change in perspective and the mastery of a universe in which the subject locates himself instead of bringing the universe illusively to him. But this is only the first step, and even in this objective, practical universe, everything is related to a single frame of reference which is that of the subject and not that of other possible subjects. Hence there is objectivity and even relativity, but within the limits of a realm which is always considered absolute, because nothing yet induces the subject to transcend it. If we may be permitted to make a somewhat daring comparison, the completion of the objective practical universe resembles Newton’s achievements as compared to the egocentrism of Aristotelian physics, but the absolute Newtonian time and space themselves remain egocentric from the point of view of Einstein’s relativity because they envisage only one perspective on the universe among many other perspectives which are equally possible and real. On the contrary, from the time when the child seeks no longer merely to act upon things, but to represent them to himself in themselves and independently of the immediate action, this single perspective, in the midst of which he had succeeded in introducing objectivity and relativity, no longer suffices and has to be coordinated with the others.

This is true for two reasons, one relating to the subject’s intention in his attempt at representation, the other to the requirements of representation. Why at a given moment in his mental evolution does the subject try to represent spatial relations to himself instead of simply acting upon them? Obviously in order to communicate to someone else or to obtain from someone else some information on a fact concerning space. Outside of this social relation there is no apparent reason why pure representation should follow action. The existence of multiple perspectives relating to various individuals is therefore already involved in the child’s effort to represent space to himself. Moreover, to represent to himself space or objects in space is necessarily to reconcile in a single act the different possible perspectives on reality and no longer to be satisfied to adopt them successively. Take, for example, a box or some object upon which the child acts. At the end of his sensorimotor evolution he becomes perfectly capable of turning the box over in all directions, of representing to himself its reverse side as well as its visible parts, its contents as well as its exterior. But do these representations connected with practical activity, with the "concrete active behaviour" of which Gelb and Goldstein have spoken in their fine studies on space, suffice to constitute a total representation of the box, a pattern of "formal conceptive behaviour?" Surely not, for to achieve that the box must be seen from all sides at once, that is, it must be located in a system of perspectives in which one can represent it to oneself from any point of view whatever and transfer it from one to the other point of view without recourse to action. Now, if it is possible for the child to imagine himself as occupying several positions at one time, it is obvious that it is rather by representing to himself the perspective of another person and by coordinating it with his own that he will solve such a problem in concrete reality. In this sense one can maintain that pure representation detached from personal activity presupposes adaptation to others and social coordination.

Therefore we understand why, in the problem of the mountains which is typical in this respect, the child four to six years of age still reveals an egocentrism reminiscent of the beginnings of sensorimotor intelligence and the most elementary subjective groups; it is because, on the plane of pure representation to which this experiment pertains, the subject must compare various points of view with his own, and as yet nothing has prepared him for this operation. Besides, the attitudes which have already been transcended in the relations between things and himself reappear when connections are established with other persons. Social egocentrism follows sensorimotor egocentrism and reproduces its phases, but as the social and the representative are interdependent there appears to be regression here, whereas the mind simply wages the same battles on a new plane to make new conquests.

Moreover, this temporal displacement in comprehension, which arises when there is transition of thought from a lower to a higher plane, may combine with the temporal displacements in extension (of which we have spoken earlier), which arise when problems located on the same plane present increasing complexity. Thus, on the occasion of movements near at hand, after having constructed the groups of displacements studied above, the child finds himself confronted by analogous problems raised by the observation of more distant movements: displacements relating to bodies situated on the horizon or to celestial movements. For many years we have observed the child’s attitude toward the moon and often toward clouds, stars, etc.; until he is about seven years old he believes that he is followed by these bodies and considers their apparent movements real. From the point of view of space, this is only an extension of the behaviour patterns relating to nearby objects observed during the first sensorimotor stages. The child, by taking appearance for reality, links all displacements to himself, instead of locating them in an objective system that includes his own body without being centred on it. Similarly, we have observed in our children analogous illustrations relating to mountains, on an excursion in the Alps or in an automobile going up and down the hills. At four or five years of age the mountains still seem to be displaced and actually to change shape in connection with our own movements, exactly like the nearby objects in the subjective groups of the baby.

These last remnants of primitive space in the child of school age lead us to the temporal displacements of processes relating to the object. It is self-evident that in proportion as the groups of displacements require new constructive work on the plane of representation or of conceptual thought to complete them, the object, in its turn, cannot be considered as entirely elaborated once it has been formed on the sensorimotor plane. At the time of displacements in extension, of which we have spoken apropos of the moon and the mountains, the matter is clear. The mountains which move and change shape with our movements are not objects, since they lack permanence of form and mass. So also a moon which follows us is not "the" moon as object of simultaneous or successive perceptions of different possible observers. The proof is that at the period in which the child believes he is being followed by the stars he believes in the existence of several moons rising over and over again and capable of occupying different regions of space simultaneously.

But this difficulty in attributing substantial identity to distant objects is not the most interesting residue of the processes of objectification peculiar to the stages of sensorimotor intelligence. Or rather, it constitutes only a residue explainable by the simple mechanism of temporal displacements in extension, whereas, because of the temporal displacements in comprehension that condition the transition from the sensorimotor plane to the plane of reflective thought, the construction of the object seems to be not only a continuous process unremittingly pursued throughout the evolution of reason and still found in the most elaborate forms of scientific thought, but also a process constantly passing through phases analogous to those of the initial sensorimotor series. Thus the different principles of conservation whose progressive formation occupies the whole development of the child’s physics are only successive aspects of the objectification of the universe. For example, the conservation of matter does not seem necessary to the child three to six years old in cases of changes of state or even changes of form. Sugar melting in water is believed to be returning to the void, only taste (that is, a pure quality) being supposed to subsist and that only for a few days. So also, when one offers the child two pellets of the same weight and mass and then moulds one of them into a long cylinder, this one is considered to have lost both weight and mass. When one empties the contents of a large ,bottle of water into small bottles or tubes, the quantity of liquid is conceived as having been changed, etc. On the contrary, the child subsequently arrives at the concept of a necessary conservation of matter, independently of changes of form or of state. But having arrived at this level, he nevertheless continues to believe that the weight of bodies can change with their form; thus the pellet by becoming elongated loses weight while conserving the same quantity of matter. Around eleven or twelve years of age, on the other hand, the child is so convinced of the conservation of weight that he attributes to the particles of sugar dissolved in water the same total weight as to the initial lump.

Thus we see that, from the point of view of conservation of matter and weight, the child again, this time on the plane of conceptual and reflective thought, passes through stages analogous to those he traverses on the sensorimotor plane from the point of view of conservation of the object itself. Just as the baby begins by believing that objects return to the void when they are no longer perceived and emerge from it when they re-enter the perceptual field, so also the six-year-old child still thinks the quantity of matter augments or diminishes according to the form the object takes, and that a substance which dissolves is completely annihilated. Then, just as numerous intermediate stages exist between the level on which the baby is the victim of appearances and that on which he constructs a permanence sufficient to make him believe in objects, so also the child who talks passes over a series of steps before he is able to postulate, independently of any direct experience, the constancy of weight itself despite changes in form, and before he forms, with this objective in view, a sort of crude atomism which reconciles quantitative invariance with qualitative variations.

How then can we explain this temporal displacement; how can we explain why thought, at the moment it gathers up the work of sensori-motor intelligence and in particular the belief in permanent objects, does not at the outset attribute to objects constancy of matter and of weight? As we have seen, it is because three formative processes are necessary to the elaboration of object concept: the accommodation of the organs which makes it possible to foresee the reappearance of bodies; the coordination of schemata which makes it possible to endow each of these bodies with a multiplicity of interconnected qualities; and the deduction peculiar to sensorimotor reasoning which makes it possible to understand displacements of bodies and to reconcile their permanence with their apparent variations. These three functional factors - foresight, coordination, and deduction - change entirely in structure when they pass from the sensorimotor plane to that of speech and conceptual operations, and when systems of classes and thoughtful relations are substituted for simple practical schemata. Whereas the substantial object is a mere product of action or practical intelligence, the concepts of quantity of matter and conservation of weight presuppose on the contrary a very subtle rational elaboration. In practical object concept there is nothing more than the idea of a permanence of qualities (form, consistency, colour, etc.) independent of immediate perception. There is, however, in the concept of the conservation of matter such as sugar, the clay pellet which changes shape, or the liquid poured from a large receptacle into several small ones, a quantitative relation which as soon as it is perceived seems essential; this is the idea that despite changes of state or of form (real form and no longer merely apparent form) something is conserved. This something is not at the outset weight, but it is volume, occupied space, and only later is it weight, that is, a quality that is quantified in so far as it is considered invariant. But for their construction these qualitative relationships do not solely involve a foresight which remains practical in kind (foresight of the water level when the sugar is dissolved, of the weight of the pellet made into a cylinder, etc.); they involve primarily a coordination of classes and of logical relations as well as true deduction, for on the plane of thought foresight gradually becomes the function of deduction instead of preceding it.

In the case of the sugar which dissolves in water, how does the child succeed in postulating the permanence of matter and even in making the atomic hypothesis of invisible particles of sugar permeating the liquid, particles whose total volume equals that of the initial lump, to the point of explaining that the water level remains above the original level. From all the evidence this is not a simple lesson of experience or, as in the case of the permanence of the practical object, an intelligent structuring of experience, but rather a deduction which is primarily due to thought and in which a complex series of concepts and relations intervenes. So also, the idea that the pellet conserves its weight while becoming a cylinder is a deductive construction which experience does not suffice to explain, for the child has neither the means to perform the delicate weighing that verification of such a hypothesis would necessitate nor, above alt the curiosity to attempt such a verification, because its affirmation seems to him self-evident and because as a general rule the problem does not arise for him. What is most interesting in the child’s reaction is the fact that, having doubtless never thought about the problem, he solves it at once a priori and with such certainty that he is surprised it was raised, whereas a year or two earlier he would have solved it in precisely the opposite direction and would not have had recourse to the idea of conservation!

In short, the development of the principles of conservation can only be explained as the function of an internal progress in the child’s logic in its triple aspect of an elaboration of deductive structures, of relations, and of classes, forming a corporate system. This is the explanation of the temporal displacement under discussion here. Through speech the child arrives on the plane of representative thought, which at the same time is the plane of socialised thought; to the extent that he must now adapt himself to other persons, his spontaneous egocentrism, already overcome on the sensorimotor plane, reappears in the course of this adaptation, as we have shown with the examples concerning space. From this arises a series of consequences with regard to the structure of thought, as we have emphasised in § 2. On the one hand, in proportion as the child does not succeed in coordinating with his own perspective the perspectives peculiar to different individuals, he cannot master the logic of relationships, although he knows how to handle practical relations on the sensorimotor plane. Thus the concepts of heavy and light which directly concern the conservation of weight are conceived as absolute qualities long before they are understood as purely relative ones, because, once they have been detached from any personal frame of reference, they are applied to the egocentric point of view of immediate perception before being transformed into relations among different subjects and different objects and into relations among objects themselves. Moreover, and by virtue of this fact, the child begins by utilising only syncretic pseudo-concepts before elaborating true logical classes, because the operations formative of classes (logical addition and multiplication) require a system of definitions whose stability and generality transcend the personal point of view and its subjective attachments (definitions by usage, syncretic classifications, etc.). From this stems the conclusion that a deductive structure on the plane of reflective thought presupposes a mind freed from the personal point of view by methods of reciprocity inherent in cooperation or intellectual exchange, and that reason, dominated by egocentrism on the verbal and social plane, can only be "transductive," that is. proceeding through the fusion of pre-concepts located midway between particular cases and true generality.

If the conquest of the object on the sensorimotor plane is not at once extended on the conceptual plane through an objectification capable of insuring rational permanence, it is because the egocentrism reappearing on this new plane prevents thought from attaining at the outset the logical structures necessary for this elaboration. Let us try again to define this mechanism by analysing some examples chosen from the periods of the beginning of speech and of reflective thought; these will show us both how difficult it is at first for the child to form true logical classes and how those pseudo-concepts and primitive transductions lead us back to a stage which, from the point of view of the object, seemed to be surpassed by sensorimotor intelligence and which reappears on the conceptual plane.

First of all it is currently observed that the first generic concepts utilised by the child, when they do not designate certain ordinary objects related to daily activity but totalities properly so called, remain midway between the individual and the general. For a long time, for instance, one of my children, to whom I showed slugs on successive walks, called each new specimen encountered "the slug"; I was unable to ascertain whether he meant "the same individual" or "a new individual of the slug species." While it is impossible to furnish definitive proof, in such a case everything seems to indicate that the child himself neither succeeds in answering nor tries to answer the question and that "Slug" is for him a sort of semi-individual and semi-generic type shared by different individuals. It is the same when the child encounters "Lamb," "Dog," etc.; we are confronted by neither the individual nor the generic in the sense of the logical class but by an intermediate state which is precisely comparable on the conceptual plane to the primitive state of the sensorimotor object floating between the unsubstantial perceptual image and permanent substance.

Interpretation may seem hazardous when observations of this kind are involved because one can always attribute them to mere mistakes by the subject, but it becomes more certain when these pseudo-concepts come into operation in transductions properly so called, that is, in the analytical or classificatory reasoning proceeding by fusion of analogous cases. Let us refer, for example, to the explanations given us by the youngest of our subjects concerning the phenomenon of the shadow or the draft: the shadow produced on a table before their eyes comes, according to them, from "under the trees" or other possible sources of darkness, just as the draft from a fan emanates from the north wind which blows outside the room. The child thus likens, as we do ourselves, the shadow from a notebook to that of the trees, the draft to the wind, etc., but instead of simply placing the two analogous phenomena in the same logical class and explaining them by the same physical law, he considers the two compared terms as participants of each other from a distance and without any intelligible physical link. Consequently, here again the child’s thought wavers between the individual and the generic. The shadow of the notebook is not a pure singular object since it emanates from that of the trees, it "is" really that of trees arising in a new context. But an abstract class does not exist either, precisely since the relation between the two shadows compared is not a relation of simple comparison and common appurtenance to the same totality, but of substantial participation. The shadow perceived on the table is therefore no more an isolable object than is, on the sensorimotor plane, the watch which disappears under one cushion and which the child expects to see appear under another. But if there is thus an apparent return to the past it is for an opposite reason to that which obstructs objectification in sensorimotor intelligence; in the latter case the object is difficult to form in proportion as the child has difficulty in intercoordinating perceptual images, whereas on the plane of conceptual thought the object, already elaborated, again loses its identity to the extent that it is coordinated with other objects to construct a class or a relation.

In conclusion, in the case of the object as in that of space, from the very beginnings of verbal reflection there is a return of the difficulties already overcome on the plane of action, and there is repetition, with temporal displacements, of the stages and process of adaptation defined by the transition from egocentrism to objectivity. And in both cases the phenomenon is due to the difficulties experienced by the child, after he has reached the social plane, in inserting his sensorimotor acquisitions in a framework of relationships of logical classes and deductive structures admitting of true generalisation, that is, taking into account the point of view of others and all possible points of view as well as his own. ***

The Construction of Reality in the Child (Part 2)

2008-03-03T01:46:00.000-08:00

Jean Piaget (1955)

§ 2. The Transition from Sensorimotor Intelligence to Conceptual Thought

This last remark leads us to examine briefly, in conclusion, the relations between the practical universe elaborated by the sensorimotor intelligence and the representation of the world brought about by later reflective thought.

In the course of the first two years of childhood the evolution of sensorimotor intelligence, and also the correlative elaboration of the universe, seem, as we have tried to analyse them, to lead to a state of equilibrium bordering on rational thought. Thus, starting with the use of reflexes and the first acquired association, the child succeeds within a few months in constructing a system of schemata capable of unlimited combinations which presages that of logical concepts and relations. During the last stage of their development these schemata even become capable of certain spontaneous and internal regroupings which are equivalent to mental deduction and construction. Moreover, gradually as objects, causality, space, and time are elaborated, a coherent universe follows the chaos of the initial egocentric perceptions. When in the second year of life representation completes action by means of the progressive internalisation of behaviour patterns, one might therefore expect that the totality of sensorimotor operations would merely pass from the plane of action to that of language and thought and that the organisation of schemata would thus be directly extended in a system of rational concepts.

In reality, things are far from being so simple. In the first place, on the plane of practical intelligence alone, the excellent studies of Andre Reyl show that not all the problems are solved by the child by the end of his second year. As soon as the data of problems become complicated and the subjects are obliged to attain their ends by means of complex contacts or displacements, in the solution of these new problems through a sort of temporal displacement in extension we rediscover all the obstacles analysed in this volume apropos of the elementary stages of the first two years of life. Furthermore, and this is valuable to the theory of temporal displacements, these obstacles reappear in the same order despite the gap which separates the ages of birth to 2 years, studied here, from the ages of three to eight years studied by Andre Rey. Thus in Rey’s experiments the child begins by revealing a sort of "dynamic realism," "in the course of which the movement (pulling, pushing, etc.) would possess a quality independent of any adaptation to the particular data of the environment." Then he goes through a phase of "optical realism" analogous to that which we observe among chimpanzees, in which he substitutes for the physical relations of bodies the visual relations corresponding to the apparent data of perception. How is it possible not to compare these two preliminary steps to those which characterise the beginnings of sensorimotor intelligence and of the practical universe resulting from them? Dynamic realism is the residue of the assimilation of things to actions that accounts for practical groups and series, for the magico-phenomenalistic causality and the object-less universe peculiar to our elementary stages. Before being able to structure a complex situation, the child from three to four years of age, like the baby a few months old who is confronted by a situation that is simpler but from his point of view obscure, is limited to assimilating it to the act which should be performed. Because of a residual belief in the power of his personal activity, he still confers upon his gestures a sort of absolute value, which is tantamount to forgetting momentarily that things are permanent substances grouped spatially, seriated temporally, and sustaining among themselves objective causal relations. With regard to optical realism it seems clear that it constitutes a residue of behaviour patterns which are intermediate between the primitive egocentric stages and the stages of objectification, behaviour patterns characterised by subjective groups and series or by transitional behaviour relating to the beginnings of the object and of spatialized causality. Optical realism, too, consists in considering things as being what they appear to be in immediate perception and not what they will become once they have been inserted in a system of rational relations transcending the visual field. Thus the child imagines that a stick can draw an object because it is beside it or touches it, as though optical contact were equivalent to a causal link. It is precisely this confusion of immediate visual perceptions with physical realities that characterises the subjective groups or series, for example, when the baby does not know how to turn over a nursing bottle because he cannot conceive of the object’s reverse side, or when he imagines himself able to rediscover objects where he saw them the first time, regardless of their actual trajectory.

Hence, between the sensorimotor intelligence which precedes the advent of speech and the later practical intelligence which subsists under verbal and conceptual realities, there is not only a linear continuity but also there are temporal displacements in extension, so that in the presence of every truly new problem the same primitive processes of adaptation reappear, although diminishing in importance with age.

But above all, even if these obstacles encountered in action by the two- to seven-year-old child are destined to be overcome finally, through the instruments prepared by the sensorimotor intelligence during the first two years of life, the transition from the merely practical plane to that of speech and conceptual and socialised thought brings with it, by nature, obstacles that singularly complicate the progress of intelligence.

At the outset, two innovations place conceptual thought in opposition to sensorimotor intelligence and explain the difficulty of transition from one of these two forms of intellectual activity to the other. In the first place, sensorimotor intelligence seeks only practical adaptation, that is, it aims only at success or utilisation, whereas conceptual thought leads to knowledge as such and therefore yields to norms of truth. Even when the child explores a new object or studies the displacements he provokes [by a sort of "experiment in order to see," there is always in these kinds of sensorimotor assimilations, however precise the accommodation they evidence, the concept of a practical result to be obtained. By virtue of the very fact that the child cannot translate his observations into a system of verbal judgments and reflexive concepts but can simply register them by means of sensorimotor schemata, that is, by outlining possible actions, there can be no question of attributing to him the capacity of arriving at pure proofs or judgments properly so called, but it must be said that these judgments, if they were expressed in words, would be equivalent to something like, "one can do this with this object," "one could achieve this result," etc. In the behaviour patterns oriented by an actual goal, such as the discovery of new means through active experimentation or the invention of new means through mental combinations, the sole problem is to reach the desired goal, hence the only values involved are success or failure, and to the child it is not a matter of seeking a truth for itself or reflecting upon the relations which made it possible to obtain the desired result. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that sensorimotor intelligence is limited to desiring success or practical adaptation, whereas the function of verbal or conceptual thought is to know and state truths.

There is a second difference between these two types of activity: sensorimotor intelligence is an adaptation of the individual to things or to the body of another person but without socialisation of the intellect as such; whereas conceptual thought is collective thought obeying common laws. Even when the baby imitates an intelligent act performed by someone else or understands, from a smile or an expression of displeasure, the intentions of another person, we still may not call this an exchange of thoughts leading to modification of those intentions. On the contrary, after speech has been acquired the socialisation of thought is revealed by the elaboration of concepts, of relations, and by the formation of rules, that is, there is a structural evolution. It is precisely to the extent that verbal-conceptual thought is transformed by its collective nature that it becomes capable of proof and search for truth, in contradistinction to the practical character of the acts of sensorimotor intelligence and their search for success or satisfaction. It is by cooperation with another person that the mind arrives at verifying judgments, verification implying a presentation or an exchange and having in itself no meaning as regards individual activity. Whether conceptual thought is rational because it is social or vice versa, the interdependence of the search for truth and of socialisation seems to us undeniable.

The adaptation of intelligence to these new realities, when speech and conceptual thought are superimposed on the sensorimotor plane, entails the reappearance of all the obstacles already overcome in the realm of action. That is why, despite the level reached by the intelligence in the fifth and sixth stages of its sensorimotor development, it does not appear to be rational at the outset, when it begins to be organised on the verbal-conceptual plane. On the contrary, it manifests a series of temporal displacements in comprehension and no longer only in extension, since in view of corresponding operations the child of a given age is less advanced on the verbal-conceptual plane than on the plane of action. In simpler terms, the child does not at first succeed in reflecting in words and concepts the procedures that he already knows how to carry out in acts, and if he cannot reflect them it is because, in order to adapt himself to the collective and conceptual plane on which his thought will henceforth move, he is obliged to repeat the work of coordination between assimilation and accommodation already accomplished in his sensorimotor adaptation anterior to the physical and practical universe.

It is easy to prove: (1) that the assimilation and accommodation of the individual from the time of the beginnings of speech present a balance less well developed in relation to the social group than in the realm of sensorimotor intelligence; and ( 2 ) that to make possible the adaptation of the mind to the group these functions must proceed again over the same steps, and in the same order, as during the first months of life. From the social point of view, accommodation is nothing other than imitation and the totality of the operations enabling the individual to subordinate himself to the precepts and the demands of the group. With regard to assimilation it consists as before in incorporating reality into the activity and perspectives of the self. Just as on the plane of adaptation to the sensorimotor universe the subject, while submitting to the constraints of the environment from the very beginning, starts by considering things as dependent on his actions and succeeds only little by little in placing himself as an element in a totality which is coherent and independent of himself, so also on the social plane the child, while at first obeying someone else’s suggestions, for a long time remains enclosed in his personal point of view before placing it among other points of view. The self and the group therefore begin by remaining undissociated in a mixture of egocentrism and submission to environmental constraints, and subsequently are differentiated and give rise to a cooperation between personalities which have become autonomous. In other words, at the time when assimilation and accommodation are already dissociated on the plane of sensorimotor adaptation, they are not yet dissociated on the social plane, and thus they reproduce there an evolution analogous to that which has already occurred on the former plane.

From this arises a series of consequences very important in the structure of the child’s thought at its beginnings. Just as sensorimotor intelligence starts as the assimilation of objects to the schemata of personal activity with necessary accommodation but of inverse tendency to the preceding accommodation, and subsequently arrives at a precise adaptation to reality through the coordination of assimilation with accommodation, so also thought, at its advent, begins by being the assimilation of reality to the self with accommodation to the thought of others but without synthesis of these two tendencies, and only later acquires the rational unity which reconciles personal perspective with reciprocity.

In the first place, just as practical intelligence seeks success before truth, egocentric thought, to the extent that it is assimilation to the self, leads to satisfaction and not to objectivity. The extreme form of this assimilation to personal desires and interests is symbolic or imaginative play in which reality is transformed by the needs of the self to the point where the meanings of thought may remain strictly individual and incommunicable. But between this ultimate region of egocentric thought (a region in which the symbolic imagination makes it possible to increase tenfold the possibilities of satisfaction offered to the action and consequently to reinforce the tendencies of assimilation to personal activity previously manifested by sensorimotor intelligence) and thought adapted to another person is found an important zone of thought which, while presenting no quality of play, presents analogous characteristics of anomia and egocentrism. To account for this it is enough to demonstrate the difficulty experienced by little children from two to six years of age in participating in a conversation or a discussion, in narrating or explaining, in short, in emerging from personal thought to adapt themselves to the thought of others. In all the social behaviour patterns of thought it is easy to see how much more easily the child is led to satisfy his desires and to judge from his own personal point of view than to enter into that of others to arrive at an objective view. But in contrast to this powerful assimilation of reality to the self we witness during the earliest stages of individual thought the child’s astonishing docility with respect to the suggestions and statements of another person; the little child constantly repeats what he hears, imitates the attitudes he observes, and thus yields as readily to training by the group as he resists rational intercourse. In short, assimilation to the self and accommodation to others begins with a compromise without profound synthesis, and at first the subject wavers between these two tendencies without being able to control or organise them.

In the second place, there arises a series of intellectual structures peculiar to these beginnings of infantile thought and which reproduce through temporal displacement the initial sensorimotor structures. Thus the first concepts the child uses are not at the outset logical classes capable of operations of addition, multiplication, subtraction, etc., which characterise the logic of classes in its normal functioning, ,but rather kinds of preconcepts proceeding by syncretic assimilations. So also the child who succeeds in handling relationships on the sensorimotor plane begins on the verbal and reflexive plane by substituting for relationships absolute qualities for lack of ability to coordinate the different perspectives and to emerge from the personal point of view to which he assimilates everything. Thereafter the primitive infantile reasoning seems to return to the sensorimotor coordinations of the fifth and sixth stages: not yet familiar with classes or relations properly so called, it consists in simple fusions, in transductions proceeding by syncretic assimilations. It is only in the course of a laborious development which transforms ego-centric assimilation into true deduction, and accommodation into a real adjustment to experience and to perspectives surpassing the personal point of view, that the child’s reasoning becomes rational and thus extends, on the plane of thought, the acquisitions of sensorimotor intelligence.

Thus we see the extent to which the developmental pattern of assimilation and of accommodation characterising sensorimotor intelligence constitutes a general phenomenon capable of being reproduced on this new plane of conceptual thought before accommodation actually extends assimilation. In order better to understand this evolutionary process and this temporal displacement it is fitting to examine more closely a few concrete examples drawn from the facts analysed in this book. ***

The Construction of Reality in the Child (Part 1)

2008-03-02T01:42:00.000-08:00

Jean Piaget (1955)

In our first study of the beginnings of mental life we analysed the origins of intelligence in children and tried to show how the forms of intellectual activity are constructed on the sensori motor level. In the current work we have tried, on the other hand, to understand how the real categories of sensorimotor intelligence are organised, that is, how the world is constructed by means of this instrument. In conclusion, the time has come to show the unity of these various processes and their relations with those of the child’s thought, envisaged in their most general aspect.

§ I. Assimilation and Accommodation

The successive study of concepts of object, space, causality, and time has led us to the same conclusions: the elaboration of the universe by sensorimotor intelligence constitutes the transition from a state in which objects are centred about a self which believes it directs them, although completely unaware of itself as subject, to a state in which the self is placed, at least practically, in a stable world conceived as independent of personal activity. How is this evolution possible?

It can be explained only by the development of intelligence. Intelligence progresses from a state in which accommodation to the environment is undifferentiated from the assimilation of things to the subject’s schemata to a state in which the accommodation of multiple schemata is distinguished from their respective and reciprocal assimilation. To understand this process, which sums up the whole evolution of sensorimotor intelligence, let us recall its steps, starting with the development of assimilation itself.

In its beginnings, assimilation is essentially the utilisation of the external environment by the subject to nourish his hereditary or acquired schemata. It goes without saying that schemata such as those of sucking, sight, prehension, etc., constantly need to be accommodated to things, and that the necessities of this accommodation often thwart the assimilatory effort. But this accommodation remains so undifferentiated from the assimilatory processes that it does not give rise to any special active behaviour pattern but merely consists in an adjustment of the pattern to the details of the things assimilated. Hence it is natural that at this developmental level the external world does nor seem formed by permanent objects, that neither space nor time is yet organised in groups and objective series, and that causality is not spatialised or located in things. In other words, at first the universe consists in mobile and plastic perceptual images centred about personal activity. But it is self-evident that to the extent that this activity is undifferentiated from the things it constantly assimilates to itself it remains unaware of its own subjectivity; the external world therefore begins by being confused with the sensations of a self unaware of itself, before the two factors become detached from one another and are organised correlatively.

On the other hand, in proportion as the schemata are multiplied and differentiated by their reciprocal assimilations as well as their progressive accommodation to the diversities of reality, the accommodation is dissociated from assimilation little by little and at the same time ensures a gradual delimitation of the external environment and of the subject. Hence assimilation ceases merely to incorporate things in personal activity and establishes, through the progress of that activity, an increasingly tight web of coordinations among the schemata which define it and consequently among the objects to which these schemata are applied. In terms of reflective intelligence this would mean that deduction is organised and applied to an experience conceived as external. From this time on, the universe is built up into an aggregate of permanent objects connected by causal relations that are independent of the subject and are placed in objective space and time. Such a universe, instead of depending on personal activity, is on the contrary imposed upon the self to the extent that it comprises the organism as a part in a whole. The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other objects.

In exact proportion to the progress of intelligence in the direction of differentiation of schemata and their reciprocal assimilation, the universe proceeds from the integral and unconscious egocentrism of the beginnings to an increasing solidification and objectification. During the earliest stages the child perceives things like a solipsist who is unaware of himself as subject and is familiar only with his own actions. But step by step with the coordination of his intellectual instruments he discovers himself in placing himself as an active object among the other active objects in a universe external to himself.

These global transformations of the objects of perception, and of the very intelligence which makes them, gradually denote the existence of a sort of law of evolution which can be phrased as follows: assimilation and accommodation proceed from a state of chaotic undifferentiation to a state of differentiation with correlative coordination.

In their initial directions, assimilation and accommodation are obviously opposed to one another, since assimilation is conservative and tends to subordinate the environment to the organism as it is, whereas accommodation is the source of changes and bends the organism to the successive constraints of the environment. But if in their rudiment these two functions are antagonistic, it is precisely the role of mental life in general and of intelligence in particular to intercoordinate them.

First let us remember that this coordination presupposes no special force of organisation, since from the beginning assimilation and accommodation are indissociable from each other. Accommodation of mental structures to reality implies the existence of assimilatory schemata apart from which any structure would be impossible. Inversely, the formation of schemata through assimilation entails the utilisation of external realities to which the former must accommodate, however crudely. Assimilation and accommodation are therefore the two poles of an interaction between the organism and the environment, which is the condition for all biological and intellectual operation, and such an interaction presupposes from the point of departure an equilibrium between the two tendencies of opposite poles. The question is to ascertain what forms are successively taken by this equilibrium which is being constituted.

If the assimilation of reality to the subject’s schemata involves their continuous accommodation, assimilation is no less opposed to any new accommodation, that is, to any differentiation of schemata by environmental conditions not encountered up to then. On the other hand, if accommodation prevails, that is, if the schema is differentiated, it marks the start of new assimilations. Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new accommodations. It is this situation which explains the diversity of form of equilibrium between the two processes, according to whether one envisages the point of departure or the destiny of their development.

At their point of departure they are relatively undifferentiated in relation to each other, since they are both included in the interaction which unites the organism to the environment and which, in its initial form, is so close and direct that it does not comprise any specialised operation of accommodation, such as the tertiary circular reactions, behaviour patterns of active experimentation, etc., will subsequently be. But they are none the less antagonistic, since, though each assimilatory schema is accommodated to the usual circumstances, it resists every new accommodation, precisely through lack of specialised accommodative technique. It is therefore possible to speak of chaotic undifferentiation. It is at this level that the external world and the self remain undissociated to such a point that neither objects nor spatial, temporal, or causal objectifications are possible.

To the extent that new accommodations multiply because of the demands of the environment on the one hand and of the coordinations between schemata on the other, accommodation is differentiated from assimilation and by virtue of that very fact becomes complementary to it. It is differentiated, because, in addition to the accommodation necessary for the usual circumstances, the subject becomes interested in novelty and pursues it for its own sake. The more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject, becomes a problem and invites searching. Thereafter and to the same extent, assimilation and accommodation enter into relations of mutual dependence. On the one hand, the reciprocal assimilation of the schemata and the multiple accommodations which stem from them favour their differentiation and consequently their accommodation; on the other hand, the accommodation to novelties is extended sooner or later into assimilation, because, interest in the new being simultaneously the function of resemblances and of differences in relation to the familiar, it is a matter of conserving new acquisitions and of reconciling their. with the old ones. An increasingly close interconnection thus tends to be established between the two functions which are constantly being better differentiated, and by extending the lines this interaction ends, as we have seen, on the plane of reflective thought, in the mutual dependency of assimilatory deduction and experimental techniques.

Thus it may be seen that intellectual activity begins with confusion of experience and of awareness of the self, by virtue of the chaotic undifferentiation of accommodation and assimilation. In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact. Hence there is simply interaction between the most superficial zone of external reality and the wholly corporal periphery of the self. On the contrary, gradually as the differentiation and coordination of assimilation and accommodation occur, experimental and accommodative activity penetrates to the interior of things, while assimilatory activity becomes enriched and organised. Hence there is a progressive formation of relationships between zones that are increasingly deep and removed from really and the increasingly intimate operations of personal activity. intelligence thus begins neither with knowledge of the self nor of things as such but with knowledge of their interaction, and it Is by orienting itself simultaneously toward the two poles of that interaction that intelligence organises the world by organising itself.

A diagram will make the thing comprehensible. Let the organism be represented by a small circle inscribed in a large circle which corresponds to the surrounding universe. The meeting between the organism and the environment takes place at point A and at all analogous points, which are simultaneously the most external to the organism and to the environment itself. In other words, the first knowledge of the universe or of himself that the subject can acquire is knowledge relating to the most immediate appearance of things or to the most external and material aspect of his being. From the point of view of consciousness, this primitive relation between subject and object is a relation of undifferentiation, corresponding to the protoplasmic consciousness of the first weeks of life when no distinction is made between the self and the non-self. From the point of view of behaviour this relation constitutes the morphologic-reflex organisation, in so far as it is a necessary condition of primitive consciousness. But from this point of junction and undifferentiation A, knowledge proceeds along two complementary roads. By virtue of the very fact that all knowledge is simultaneously accommodation to the object and assimilation to the subject, the progress of intelligence works in the dual direction of externalisation and internalisation, and its two poles will be the acquisition of physical experience ( ->Y) and the acquisition of consciousness of the intellectual operation itself ( -> X). That is why every great experimental discovery in the realm of exact sciences is accompanied by a reflexive progress of reason on itself (of logico-mathematical deduction), that is, by progress in the formation of reason in so far as it is internal activity, and it is impossible to decide once for all whether the progress of the experiment is due to that of reason or the inverse. From this point of view the morphologic-reflex organisation, that is, the physiological and anatomic aspect of the organism, gradually appears to the mind as external to it, and the intellectual activity which extends it by internalising it presents itself as the essential of our existence as living beings.

In the last analysis, it is this process of forming relationships between a universe constantly becoming more external to the self and an intellectual activity progressing internally which explains the evolution of the real categories, that is, of the concepts of object, space, causality, and time. So long as the interaction between subject and object is revealed in the form of exchanges of slight amplitude in a zone of undifferentiation, the universe has the appearance of depending on the subject’s personal activity, although the latter is not known in its subjective aspect. To the extent, on the contrary, that the interaction increases, the progress of knowledge in the two complementary directions of object and subject enables the subject to place himself among objects as a part in a coherent and permanent whole. Consequently, to the extent that assimilation and accommodation transcend the initial state of "false equilibrium" between the subject’s needs and the resistance of things to attain a true equilibrium, that is, a harmony between internal organisation and external experience, the subject’s perspective of the universe is radically transformed; from integral egocentrism to objectivity is the law of that evolution. The relations of assimilation and accommodation thus constitute, from the time of the sensorimotor !level, a formative process analogous to that which, on the plane of verbal and reflective intelligence, is represented by the relations of individual thought and socialisation. Just as accommodation to the point of view of others enables individual thought to be located in a totality of perspectives that insures its objectivity and reduces its egocentrism, so also the coordination of sensorimotor assimilation and accommodation leads the subject to go outside himself to solidify and objectify his universe to the point where he is able to include himself in it while continuing to assimilate it to himself. ***

ADB Japan Scholarship Program, University of Melbourne

2008-03-01T00:13:00.002-08:00

http://ppw-indonesia.blogspot.com/

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) - Japan Scholarship Program (JSP) was established in April 1988 with financing from the Government of Japan. It aims to provide an opportunity for well-qualified citizens of ADB's developing member countries to pursue postgraduate studies in economics, management, science and technology, and other development-related fields at participating academic institutions in Asian and Pacific Region. The ADB-JSP enrolls about 300 students annually in 20 academic institutions located in 10 countries within the Region.

University of Melbourne is one of institutions participating in this ADB-JSP scholarship program. Below are programs offered (Masters by Coursework):

* Business Administration
* Commerce
* Commerce (specializing in Economics or Finance)
* Engineering
* International Business
* Public Health
* Agribusiness, Agricultural Sciences, and Forest Science

SCHOLARSHIP DESCRIPTION

The ADB-JSP provides full scholarships for one to two years.

* full tuition fees
* a monthly subsistence and housing allowance
* an allowance for books and instructional materials
* medical insurance
* travel expenses

The scholarship is for one year with an extension to the second year of study, as appropriate, which shall be conditional on the scholar maintaining a satisfactory level of performance as determined by the institute. The maximum duration of scholarship award is two years for masters and doctorate programs.

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

* A national of an ADB borrowing member country (applicants from countries that are no longer borrowing from ADB are not eligible for the ADB-JSP Scholarship)
* Gained admission to an approved post graduate course in any of the participating academic institutions (University of Melbourne)
* A bachelor's degree or its equivalent with superior academic record
* At least two (2) years of full-time professional working experience
* Proficiency in oral and written English communication skills to be able to pursue studies
* Not more than 35 years old at the time of application
* In good health
* Should agree to return to his/her home county after completion of studies under the Program
* Staff of participating academic institutions are not eligible for the Scholarship
* Executive Directors, Alternate Directors, management and staff of ADB, consultants, and relatives of the aforementioned are not eligible for the Scholarship.
* Executive Directors, Alternate Directors, management and staff of the other international organizations are not eligible for the Scholarship.
* Applicants living or working in a country other than his/her home country are not eligible for the Scholarship.

DEADLINE MARET 2008

Upon completion of their study programs, scholars are expected to contribute to the economic and social development of their home countries.

MORE INFORMATION

ADB-JSP Coordinators:

Ms. Lydia Firanyi
Postgraduate Scholarships Officer
Melbourne Scholarships Office
E-mail: pg-schols@unimelb. edu.au, l.firanyi@unimelb. edu.au

University of Melbourne
Parkville Victoria, 3010 Australia
(Attn: Melbourne Scholarships Office)
http://www.postgrad schols.unimelb. edu.au/query

About The International Forum On Globalization

2008-02-23T22:04:00.000-08:00

WWW.IFG.ORG

THE INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON GLOBALIZATION (IFG) is a North-South research and educational institution composed of leading activists, economists, scholars, and researchers providing analyses and critiques on the cultural, social, political, and environmental impacts of economic globalization. Formed in 1994, the IFG came together out of shared concern that the world's corporate and political leadership was rapidly restructuring global politics and economics on a level that was as historically significant as any period since the Industrial Revolution. Yet there was almost no discussion or even recognition of this new "free market," or "neoliberal" model, or of the institutions and agreements enforcing this system—the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other such bureaucracies. In response, the IFG began to stimulate new thinking, joint activity and public education about this rapidly rising economic paradigm.

Unique in its diversity, depth, and breadth, the IFG works through an active international board of key citizen movement leaders; a small, dedicated staff; and a network of hundreds of associates representing regions throughout the world on a broad spectrum of issues. Our work is closely linked to social justice and environmental movements, providing them with critical thinking and frameworks that inform campaigns and activities "on the ground."

The IFG produces numerous publications; organizes high-profile, large public events; hosts many issue-specific seminars; coordinates press conferences and media interviews at international events; and participates in many other activities that focus on the myriad consequences of globalization. During the last few years, the IFG has launched a pioneering program that focuses on alternative visions and policies to globalization that are more just, equitable, democratic, accountable, and sustainable for people and the planet.

POSITION STATEMENT

The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) promotes equitable, democratic, and ecologically sustainable economies.We were formed in response to widespread concerns over economic globalization, a process dominated by international institutions and agreements unaccountable to democratic processes or national governments. Speaking the language of "free-trade" and poverty alleviation, organizations like the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank impose a development model which seems designed to benefit transnational corporations over workers; foreign investors over local businesses; and wealthy countries over developing nations. When the IFG first presented its globalization critique a decade ago, the economic globalization model was widely accepted. Today, the institutions of globalization are undergoing a crisis of legitimacy. Corporate scandals such as Enron and Worldcom, the failures of IMF and World Bank policies and programs, the recent break down of WTO negotiations, and other events reveal that the benefits of globalization that were promised by its advocates have not come to fruition.

Even the policy consensus that governed development thinking during most of the past two decades, the so-called Washington Consensus, has broken up with notable "defectors" such as former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz and the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University Jeffrey Sachs. From conservative circles, the Meltzer Commission, along with Walter Wriston, Henry Kissinger, and William Simon also have issued strong critiques against Bretton Woods institutions.

But perhaps the greatest indictment against globalization is the unprecedented global citizen movement that has emerged during the last decade, demonstrating that the benefits of globalization have gone to the few at the exclusion of many. This extraordinary alliance brings together numerous diverse groups and perspectives — union members, farmers, landless peasants, people of faith, women's organizations, youth organizations, environmentalists, AIDS and other health activists, politicians, civil servants, immigrants, peace and human rights organizations, intellectuals, consumer advocates, and many others. While promoters of globalization proclaim that this model is the rising tide that will lift all boats, citizen movements find that it is instead lifting only yachts. In fact, the actual beneficiaries are obvious. In the United States, for example, during the period of the most rapid economic globalization — the 1990s — the top corporate executives of the largest global companies made salaries and gained options in the tens of millions of dollars (often in the hundreds of millions), while real wages of ordinary workers either remained stagnant or rose insignificantly.

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) reports that American CEOs were paid an average of 458 times more than production workers in 2000, up from 104 times in 1991. The degree of wealth concentration of the world's 475 billionaires is now worth the combined income of the bottom half of humanity. Meanwhile, the United Nations Development Program's 1999 Human Development Report revealed that the gap between the wealthy and the poor both within and between countries is growing steadily larger. It notes inequities of the current global trading system as one of the key contributors to this trend. Even the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concurred. In its Global Trends 2015 report, issued in 2000, the CIA maintained that globalization will create "an even wider gap between regional winners and losers than exists today. [Globalization's] evolution will be rocky, marked by chronic volatility and a widening economic divide…deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation. [It] will foster political, ethnic, ideological, and religious extremism, along with the violence that often accompanies it."

All over the world, evidence points to the failure of globalization and the so-called "free trade" policies of the last decade - loss of jobs and livelihoods, displacement of indigenous peoples, massive immigration, rapid environmental devastation and loss of biodiversity, increases in poverty and hunger, and many additional negative effects.

IFG PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES

IFG PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES are dedicated to examining the myriad effects of globalization and to promoting diverse solutions to the current model.We advocate alternative visions and economic policies based on the following principles:

LIVING DEMOCRACY: Democratic and accountable regional and/or international institutions that do not disempower or undermine sovereignty of communities and nation-states.

SUBSIDIARITY—FAVORING THE LOCAL: Rules and structures that consciously favor local control over issues that have local consequences; a model of subsidiarity that recognizes the inherent democratic right to self-determination and self-reliance. In regard to trade agreements and institutions, the IFG supports fair trade based on a framework that favors local production for local consumption, supplemented by long-distance trade for those goods and services that cannot be supplied regionally.

ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY: Environmental protection, sustainability and biodiversity are keystones of any viable economy. The current globalization system contributes to rapid destruction of the environment in a variety of ways: through vast increases in transportation infrastructure and fossil-fuel based transport, excessive resource extraction, harmful industrial agriculture methods, and other myriad problems intrinsic to globalization.

COMMON HERITAGE: Equitable sharing of common resources such as water, air, forests and other natural resources; recognizing that culture and knowledge are collective creations of communities and regions; and promoting the right of everyone to "modern" common resources that address basic needs such as healthcare and education.

DIVERSITY: Cultural, ethnic, religious and economic diversity are key to the vitality, resilience, and innovative capacity of any living system and must be respected.

HUMAN RIGHTS: It is the duty of governments to not only ensure civil and political rights, but also to guarantee economic, social, and cultural rights.

JOBS AND LIVELIHOODS: Sustainable societies must protect the rights of workers in the formal sector and address the livelihood needs of the greater numbers of people who subsist in what has become known as the informal sector.

FOOD SECURITY AND SAFETY: Local self-reliance in food production and assurance of healthful, safe foods should be central to any economic model. Current trade policies undermine local food security by emphasizing an import-export model, making people dependent on food sources thousands of miles away.

EQUITY: Social justice and greater equality—among nations; within nations; between and among ethnic, cultural and religious groups, classes, and men and women—are cornerstones of sustainable societies.

THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE: All economic regulatory activity should abide by the Precautionary Principle which states that when a practice or product raises potentially significant threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary action should be taken to restrict or eliminate it.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says sorry to Indigenous Australians

2008-02-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

Sumane Liyanaarachchi - Asian Tribune

There were emotional tears, sadness and joys across Australia as thousands of people, including some of those forcibly taken from their families, watched the historic, formal apology delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at the Australian National Parliament this morning.

In Canberra hundreds of people packed in the National Parliament, as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologised for the “ laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss” on the stolen generation.

Members of the Stolen Generations listen as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologises in federal Parliament. (Wednesday February 13, 12:55 PM)Members of the Stolen Generations listen as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologises in federal Parliament. (Wednesday February 13, 12:55 PM)

Many people across Australia wept as Rudd deliver his formal apology speech which was supported by the Australian Federal Opposition. People cheered, applauded, hugged and cried.

Federal Parliament applauded the speech given by opposition Leader Dr Brendan Nelson but the hundreds of people who were gathered in the Great Hall and thousands outside of the Parliament House gave him a hostile reception.

Many in the Great Hall began by booing and jeering, and then turned their backs on the big screens carrying Dr Nelson’s speech. Some walked out in protest during the speech of the Opposition Leader.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today promised to halve Aboriginal infant mortality rate by 2018 as part of a new reconciliation plan. As part of this plan, it is expected to close the 17-year life expectancy gap between Aboriginals and other Australians within a generation. He also promised to halve the gap in Aboriginal literacy, mathematic skills and employment opportunities within a decade.

Kevin Rudd announced expanded services to help stolen generation to find their families and a plan to provide housing to remote communities within five years.

“Most old approaches are not working, we need a new beginning.” Prime Minister further added in his speech.

Most of former Prime Ministers, all territory leaders and Aboriginal Leaders participated at this emotional but historic event in the Australian National Parliament.***

Get OpenOffice.Org!

2008-02-21T01:27:00.000-08:00

By OpenOffice.org 2

OpenOffice.org 2 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Great Software requires great people. OpenOffice.org 2 is the result of over twenty years’ continuous high quality software engineering. Designed from the start as a single piece of software, OpenOffice.org 2 has a consistency and a quality that is world class. Its open-source development model means there are no secrets. Roll your mouse over the screenshots for more details of the main components (requires javascript).

Easy-to-use. Easy to choose, easy to install, easy to learn - OpenOffice.org 2 is the easy choice for an office software suite. OpenOffice.org 2 is suitable for complete beginners, but if you have used any other office software, that’s ok too. OpenOffice.org 2 will make full use of what you already know - through familiar screens and menus - and also what you have - by reading existing files with no retyping.

Free software. OpenOffice.org 2 is free software. That means you are free to download it, free to install it on as many PCs as you like, free to pass copies to as many people as you like. You may use OpenOffice.org 2 for any purpose without restriction: private, educational, public administration, commercial… Free, really free.

Download OpenOffice.Org 2 Now!

HTML- A beginers first steps

2008-02-20T20:44:00.000-08:00

William O'Connor

Open up notepad on your computer. This is the only software you will need to begin learning html.

A quick explanation of tags

Due to this article being hosted online I cant actual show you a tag as the webpage you are reading would make it invisible Tags begin with a "<" symbol and end with a ">" symbol. For the purpose of this artical I will replace these with the "[" and "]" symbols. Remember to always use the arrows though as the square brackets WILL NOT WORK.

A tag is a piece of html code used for formatting. You wont need to know much about them for now (they will be covered in another article), for now you just need to know that to add a tag you write

"[tagname] insert what you want formatted here[/tagname]"

The "[/tagname]" part stops all following text/other content from being formatted in the same way.

This, as I said, isnt very important for now.

What comes first?...

Well you cant get much more to the point than that. "[html]" comes first. Every html document starts with it and ends with the tag "[/html]".

Easy right? so what we have so far is a text document that reads;

[html]

[/html]

Now save your document as "index.html" and open it up in a browser. A large blank white page appears.

Now lets fill in that blank space...

Everything that makes up your webpage goes inbetween the "[html][/html]" tags. But the actual text or content goes between two other tags, "[body][/body]". Notice how tags must have a beginning and an end, the end is shown by the / character. Type this new tag into your text document...

[html]

[body]Put your message here[/body]

[/html]

Now type in a message in between the "[body]" tags. It can be whatever you want. Any message you can think of. It should be placed to replace "Put your message here" in the example above.

Save to index.html again like before and open it in your browser. You should now see a white screen with your message displayed in the top left corner.

What to do next...

If you like you can now upload this file to a webhost, many free ones are available if you search the internet. An then you will have a website for yourself... Well... not really. Its just one page after-all. We will cover how to add more pages and better content to your website in another artical. For now, play around with this and be proud that you are on your way to learning html.

Online Education ~ A Brief History

2008-02-19T20:02:00.000-08:00

Keith Londrie

Moving back in the time zone to a couple of decades earlier, how do you see a person who has earned a bachelors degree? He or she may be in their early twenties; staying in a hostel or near the university with parents sending the term fees. All the student had to do was go to the university every morning, attend classes all day, make projects and assignments, come back to their accommodation in the evening and prepare for the next day. Even this was only possible for those who could afford to pay the University dues in time and had some one back at home to do the earning.

In earlier days student who did not have enough financial assistance had to give up school and earn their livelihood. Going to college and acquiring a degree turned out to be a dream that never seemed to be fulfilled. Once stuck into the fulfilling the needs of shelter and food, education never got its turn. Work and education could not walk side by side.

As time sped by, expenses got higher. It has now almost become impossible to run a family with one person working. Almost every member of the family after reaching age of maturity goes out into the practical field of life. Yet education always walks alongside career. The reason behind this great turnover is the evolution of a new concept known as "Online Education". Online education came into the scene after the victorious advent of the internet and technology age. The complicated gadget named as "Personal Computer" had gained so much popularity with time that it had became a necessity in very house. That is when online education came into the scene. Although Online Education is still in its very early stages yet it has attracted a huge number of students.

Online Education can be termed as the most precious gift, the internet as given to a common man. E-learning, began when companies started to educate their employees about the further advancements in their work. Those were the times when computer had begun to popularize and were mostly found in offices of companies and organizations. There were some problems at those times, mostly related to the time co ordination between the instructors and students. However after a few years the multimedia technology came into existence and touched the height of fame in almost an instant. Then e-learning became even more convenient with the use of PowerPoint slides, educative games, and other programs. The process on online education was still quiet slow and restricted to only a few regions.

After the advent of the new millennium, technology came with new horizons which were accessible to all. The internet was streamed with institutions offering online courses and degrees. Students had found a way to continue there studies along with there jobs. Businessmen and professionals had found a way to further polish their skills. Web servers were much faster and could easily bear the load of videos and presentations. Lectures could be recorded and viewed any time the student wished. Solving queries became much easier. Learning had become easier and is still continuing to be.

The very first type of online education can be traced back to the end of 1980s or in the beginning of 1990s. This was when, as mentioned earlier, companies used e techniques to educate their employees. By the end of 1990s it started to spread over to the college students as well but was still restricted to a few regions only. Online education got its biggest boost in the new millennium and just shot to heights of success in almost a leap.

Developing English Listening Skills

2008-02-19T19:51:00.000-08:00

Celia Webb

You may wish to understand spoken English for a variety of reasons. Maybe you plan to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) so you can study abroad or get a good job in an English-speaking country. Perhaps you want to become a translator or a guide for English speakers. Or maybe you just want to enjoy an English movie or song in its original language. Whatever the reason, you will need to practice your English listening skills to improve.

Of course, English classes, preferably taught by a native English speaker are an excellent way to learn to understand the spoken word. However, you can do more to make your understanding more complete and natural. The ideas presented below will help you build your listening skills.

Check out a movie. If you have a DVD or VHS player, check out a British or American movie and turn on both the English sound track and the English subtitles. Often times, English language learners are much further along in their reading skills than their speaking or listening skills. Feel free to watch the movie once for the fun of it, but then get ready to watch it slowly and with more care. Work through the movie scene by scene. Listen carefully to the dialog. If you can not make out what is being said, read the subtitle. Repeat the scene several times until you know you have understood each word. Then ask yourself the following questions. What was the scene about? Who were the main characters? How do these characters feel about each other? What things did they say that support your idea of who they are and how they relate to one another?

Catch the news. Watch an English-speaking newscast. If the broadcast station provides closed-captioning, turn it on. Listen carefully, read if you have to. After the newscast, ask yourself the following questions. What happened? Where did it happen? How many people were affected by the event? When did it happen? You can come up with questions of your own. Try to ask yourself to recall specific details about the stories as well as the general nature of the story. If you do not think you understood some of these points, try to catch the broadcast again at another time during the day or see it on a station that broadcasts it in your own language..

Translation, please. Volunteer to take an English speaker on a tour of your town. Check with local travel or bus companies. They might need someone to assist tourists. Visit museums and other cultural sites which tourist frequent. If you see someone struggling to find something, help them out. However, remember to respect the traveler's wishes. Sometimes English speakers get overwhelmed with people who wish to practice their English.

Keep an English notebook. When you learn new words or phrases, jot them down in your notebook so you can refer back to them later. If you are speaking with a native English speaker and they say something you are not familiar with, ask them to explain. Perhaps they can spell the word for you and tell you the definition they were using. Many English words have multiple meanings and it is helpful to know which meaning was being used. Some English phrases have a meaning that does not translate literally. For example, the phrase - his heart was in his throat - means the person was excited and fearful at the same time. Writing down the words and phrases which are new to you causes your brain to make a better record of these new items and you are more likely to remember them.

Start an "English Speaking" Club. You'll get practice at both speaking and listening to English. The idea of the club is meet with several other English students and spend an hour or so talking only in English. For added interest, perhaps you could invite a native English speaker to join your club for tea or coffee or a meal. Then you have a chance to ask about where they are from and what it is like in their hometown. Another idea for the club is to listen to an English book on tape or CD and discuss what you hear. Listen to short segments, stop the recording and then talk about what is happening in the story. Make sure everybody in the club understands what is happening and then listen to more. Check out my article on "Starting an English Speaking Club" for more ideas at http://www.pilinutpress.com on the Reference Desk page.

Developing English listening skills, although challenging, can be fun. Use the ideas above to improve your skills. Remember - the more you use English in your everyday life, the better your understanding of the English language will be.

Indigenous Power: Indigenous Rights Go Global

2008-02-18T20:59:00.000-08:00

John Mohawk

Indigenous peoples are asserting their moral right to live as distinct communities and reminding us of the power of cooperation with nature. When the Spanish first arrived in the Caribbean over 500 years ago, the idea that indigenous peoples might possess rights was given scant attention.

The conquistadores approached many of the indigenous communities with a priest who read a document called the Requiremento, a demand that the people come forth with their bodies and souls and all their property and offer these to the service of the Spanish crown or the Spanish would attack. It was read in Latin as prelude to an orgy of rape, plunder, and genocide.

It wasn't until the middle of the 16th century that a bishop, Bartolome de Las Casas, championed the idea of some rights of the Indians before the Council of the Indies. Although that body agreed in principle that indigenous peoples should not be abused, the conquest continued unabated.

Fairness and reciprocity

The Europeans who first landed here in the Americas saw their problems very differently than indigenous peoples did and still do. In Europe, the biggest problem was that the people couldn't produce enough food. They were hungry, and there was always the threat of famine. When they got to the Americas they found a first-rate edible landscape. But bring a bunch of sheep and cows and cut down all the trees for a couple of hundred years, and you don't have an edible landscape anymore.

European wanted to battle, to outsmart nature —that's what all their technology is about; that's what biotechnology particularly is about.

But for the Indians, the question was not how to make war on nature, but how to cooperate with nature. When the Europeans came, the Indians were taking care of the land, so there was grass to feed the deer. The deer and the buffalo were our domesticated animals. The Indians had a very sophisticated system of food management based on cooperation with nature.

The Indians asked questions about fairness, not only human to human, but human to land, human to animal, human to everything. And they tried to get Europeans to see that. The thinking in Indian country was one of respect. The Indians were constantly imploring the Europeans to rethink their relationship with nature. “You've got it wrong,” we said. “You've got to be fair.”

Taking it to the global stage

Beginning in the early 1950s, some indigenous peoples began urging the international community to recognize their inherent rights to continue to exist as distinct peoples.

The idea was given a significant boost in 1977 when the non-governmental organizations of the United Nations organized a meeting in Geneva to discuss the creation of indigenous rights under international law. In 1982, indigenous representatives were invited to Geneva to witness the development of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

This was an important step because, until that time, indigenous peoples had been relegated to the most extreme margins of international affairs.

At first, the nation-states were cautious and occasionally hostile to the idea of indigenous rights and to the movement representing it. As recently as 1999 the Organization of American States (OAS) was essentially closed to indigenous peoples, but the OAS was presented with a mandate from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and indigenous peoples insisted on a presence in those proceedings. Today, indigenous representatives attend the annual meetings of the 34 member states of the OAS. They are greeted with dignity, and their issues are extended respectful attention.

In fact, many states have now begun to acknowledge the rights of groups to a continued existence as distinct peoples, and this movement has spread rapidly over the past 15 years to Europe, Australia, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Today there are young Indian lawyers working on protecting indigenous peoples under principles which only a few short years ago were unimaginable. The OAS, the World Bank, the IMF, and other international institutions now have policies to protect indigenous peoples.

Indigenous people bring a unique argument to the world stage. We don't have armies or navies, we don't have national currencies, we don't have many of the attributes that Western nations think make up nationhood.

And yet we propose that we have a moral right to continue to live as a distinct community and in the manner we have for millennia. And in many ways, it is the indigenous cultures' relationship to the earth that represents the only real hope for the long term survival of people on any scale in the world.***

The Day After: An Overview of Bali Results

2008-02-18T16:38:00.000-08:00

By Walden Bello

A day after the dramatic ending of the Bali climate talks, many are wondering if the result was indeed best outcome possible given the circumstances.

The US was brought back to the fold, but at the cost of excising from the final document--the so-called Bali Roadmap--any reference to the need for a 25 to 40 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 to keep the mean global temperature increase to 2.0 to 2.4 degrees Celsius in the 21st century.

Reference to quantitative figures was reduced to a footnote referring readers to some pages in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Report which simply enumerate several climate stabilization scenarios. The alternative scenarios ranged from a 2.0 to 2.4 degree rise in temperature to a 4.9 to 6.1 degree increase. This prompted one civil society participant to remark that the Bali roadmap is a roadmap to anywhere.

Would it have been better to have simply let the US walk out, allowing the rest of the world to forge a strong agreement containing deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions on the part of the developed countries? With a new US president with a new policy on climate change at the beginning of 2009, the US would have rejoined a process that would already be moving along with strong binding targets. As it is now, having been part of the Bali consensus, Bush administration negotiators, say skeptics, will be able to continue their obstructionist tactics to further water down global action throughout the negotiations in 2008.

One wonders what would have happened had Washington remained true to its ideological propensities and decided to stomp out of the room when the delegate from Papua New Guinea, releasing the conference‚s pent up collective frustration, issued his now historic challenge: We ask for your leadership and we seek your leadership. If you are not willing to lead, please get out of the way. As everyone now knows, after last-minute consultations with Washington, the American negotiator backed down from the US‚s hard-line position on an Indian amendment seeking the conference‚s understanding for the different capacities of developing countries to deal with climate change and said Washington will go forward and join the consensus.

The single-minded focus on getting Washington on board resulted in the dearth of hard obligations agreed upon at the meeting except for the deadline for the negotiating body, the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention, to have its work ready for adoption at the Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in 2009 (COP 15).

Many delegates also felt ambivalent about the institutional arrangements that were agreed upon after over a week of hard North-South negotiations.

An Adaptation Fund was set up, but it was put under the administration of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) of the US-dominated World Bank. Moreover, the seed funds from the developed countries are expected to come to only between $18.6 million to US$37.2 million--sums which are deemed severely inadequate to support the emergency efforts to address the ongoing ravages of climate change in the small island states and others on the frontlines of climate change. Oxfam estimates that a minimum of US$50 billion a year will be needed to assist all developing countries adapt to climate change.

A strategic program for technology development and transfer was also approved, again with troubling compromises. The developing countries had initially held out for the mechanism to be a designated a facility but finally had to agree to the watered-down characterization of the initiative as a program on account of US intransigence. Moreover, the program was also placed under the GEF with no firm levels of funding stated for an enterprise that is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

The REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) initiative pushed by host Indonesia and several other developing countries with large forests that are being cut down rapidly was adopted. The idea is to get the developed world to channel money to these countries, via aid or market mechanisms, to maintain these forests as carbon sinks. However, many climate activists fear that indigenous communities will lose be victimized by predatory private interests that will position themselves to become the main recipients of the funds raised.

Still, many felt that the meager and mixed results were better than nothing.

Perhaps the best indication on whether the conference was right to bend over backward almost 180 degrees to accommodate the US will come next month in Honolulu during the Major Economies Meeting, a Washington-initiated conference that was originally designed to subvert the United Nations process. The question on everyone's lips is: Will the Bush adminstration revert to form and use the conference to launch a separate process to derail the Bali Roadmap?
_______________________
Walden Bello, Board Member, International Forum on Globalization, is senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South, a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. He was an NGO participant at the Bali Conference on Climate Change.

The Illusions of Global Capitalism

2008-02-18T08:23:00.000-08:00

By John Mohawk

The project of economic globalization is much more complex than many understand it to be. It is not merely the lowering of tariffs to make a level playing field for international commerce. It is, as practiced by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and U.S. foreign policy, a plan to coerce all nations of the world into behaviors which were once easily identified as markers of colonialism.

For example, "structural adjustment" is a term used to describe the kinds of measures debtor countries are encouraged, or forced, to adopt by the World Bank and the IMF. These amount to shifting resources away from public benefit programs such as food subsidies and health programs to concentrate on debt reduction. In other words, poor countries are encouraged - indeed coerced - into giving up food and medicine so they can use the money to pay debts owed to foreign banks.

Often the foreign debts were incurred when some regime borrowed money to build infrastructure - roads, pipelines, power lines - to facilitate natural resources extraction which was, in turn, being developed by foreign interests. Sometimes that money was diverted - as in embezzled, stolen, appropriated - by people in the regime.

There are many and complex ways countries get into debt, but the ideology behind globalization involves exploiting these debts to advance international capitalism and (mostly) American cultural hegemony. The advice that accompanies the conditions for loan extensions includes such things as encouraging people to speak English, the international language of commerce. The problem is, many poor countries have populations to which English is no advantage.

The debtor countries are encouraged to sell all assets, including natural resources such as gas or oil, forests or mineral rights, to outside investors. This is privatization to the advantage of foreigners.

Defenders of globalization like to point to the fact that in the search for the cheapest labor, corporations sometimes build plants which bring jobs to already desperately poor people who must now labor without unions, environmental protections, or any kind of legal rights. It is said, and in some anecdotal settings it is true, that some individuals are better off. But the costs are usually unemphasized, and the threats to the whole society are ignored in these accounts.

The mythology that surrounds capitalism is that it grew organically as production, demand and wages fluctuated according to the rules of the market. Historical globalization, as distinct from capitalism, was a product of the British Parliament in the 19th century during a period of military expansion and colonization. It was heavily subsidized, even ordered, by the state. This included the use of powers of enclosure at home and military coercion abroad. When those in power wanted something, they found a way to take it. Without the power of the state wielded in the interests of the investor class combined with overseas use of military coercion, the kind of globalization that emerged in the 19th century is quite unimaginable.

One aspect of this ambitious project was then, and is now, the privatization of the commons. The commons in England was rapidly turned over to men of commerce who built sheep ranches on land formerly used by peasants to grow food. The displaced English peasants were recruited to jobs overseas and in factories at home; and ever since then, historians and economic philosophers have asserted that this was a happy ending. (Let’s call this the British consensus on globalization and empire-building.) It also enriched the rich, impoverished the poor, and set into motion ecological transformations the world has come to regret. Workers benefited to the extent labor movements were able to demand better wages and benefits.

We are now seeing how this great contradiction of privileging the few at the expense of the many is played out in democracies. In Latin America, huge movements of the underprivileged are re-exploring versions of socialism that are defined as anything but the Washington consensus on globalization. The neoconservative vision that wealth can be created by reducing and/or eliminating social services while creating profitable investment opportunities for foreign investors - the kind of model imposed on Latin American countries in recent years - has proved both undesirable and impractical. Now that the United States is distracted by the war in Iraq, societies as different as Argentina and Venezuela are in full defiance of the Washington consensus because they understand it doesn’t work for them.

Indigenous peoples have led the way to roll back this war against the poor. The first, in this modern context, were the Zapatistas of Mexico. Mexico has been a particularly abused victim of neoconservative economics, and the Indians are among the most acute sufferers. It is no exaggeration to state that neoconservative economic policy has served to destabilize Mexico politically and the Zapatista movement was explicit in its assertion that globalization was at the root of Mexico’s problems. They were right. And in Bolivia, large grass-roots movements were energized when an American company tried to privatize all the water in a small city there. Since then, the mass movement has continued to be energized, and at the end of 2005 it helped elect an indigenous man, Evo Morales, as president.

American apologists are painting the Bolivia story as one dominated by cocaine, but it is also dominated by a globalization program which is threatening that country’s small farmers, just as it threatens small farmers in other countries and uses the powers of the state to force ”reforms” which will lead to the local farmers’ demise. Whatever its merits, one of the consequences of globalization, especially in democracies, is the rise of grass-roots movements opposing its imposition.

Three books, each from an author with a distinct perspective, can help those interested in the misguided dilemma of neoconservative economic policy and U.S. foreign policy. Richard Douthwaite’s The Growth Illusion: How Economic Growth Has Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet takes issue with the consensus in Western culture that economic growth, as measured by economists, is a desirable thing. Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics, worked in the Carter administration and served as chief economist at the World Bank, explains that the Washington consensus on globalization is not working in a landmark book, Globalization and its Discontents. John Gray, an important political thinker in the Thatcher administration and an intellectual of Britain’s New Right, argues that the globalization project has never worked for the betterment of societies, and won’t work now in an insightful volume, False Dawn : The Delusion of Global Capitalism.

How To Troubleshoot Your Computer Hardware

2008-02-16T01:48:00.000-08:00

Steven Stoddard

There could be many reasons why you’d want to troubleshoot your computer, well, one actually and that’s because something is not working right. The process of troubleshooting is something you learn after working for a long time with computers. Often enough when there’s a problem, nothing is going to explicitly tell you what is causing the problem and how you can fix it.

By taking logical steps and walking through the process of troubleshooting you should be able to solve almost any computer problem, software or hardware related. It involves identifying the problem(s), finding the cause of that problem, determining the solution, executing that solution, and testing and checking that solution to see if it solves your problem.

As an example let’s say one day while using your computer the screen suddenly turns all black and you can’t see anything. We found a problem now what would be the first step to take to fix it? First check to see if the monitor is on and is receiving power, most monitors when they have power, but no connection or connection problems with the computer will display a message that says this monitor is working, but make sure you check your cables. So the next logical step to take would be to check the cable to make sure it is properly connected and secured to the VGA slot behind your computer case and to make sure the monitor cable is plugged into the monitor. Now, here’s where you have to decide what would be the next best course of action to take. you could either swap out your monitor with another monitor that you know is working to see if the problem is the monitor itself and nothing else or you can try to see if the problem is your graphics card. If your replacement monitor works, good, then you know your culprit is a bad monitor and you’ll most likely have to get a new one, because monitors are dangerous and too costly service. If the replacement monitor you used shows up a black screen as well, the next thing you’d do is check to make sure the graphics card is properly seated in the motherboard, if it is and the display is still not showing up, then swap out the graphics card to see if your problem is fixed.

Generally there are only so many steps you can take before you solve the problem and everything is back in order. Make sure that before you start testing and swapping out parts that the problem wasn’t caused by you changing a software setting in Windows or some ambiguous option in the motherboard’s BIOS that causes your problem.

Motherboard

The motherboard is the heart of the computer, every part of the computer relies on the motherboard to function correctly. It maintains connection between every PC component and ensures that things are operating smoothly between them. Many signs of motherboard failure is that the computer won't boot up, not reaching the POST test, erratic system behavior, different combinations of components not working. Because everything is connected to the motherboard certain parts may or may not work correctly if the motherboard is faulty so be sure to test those parts before thinking they're dead and getting new ones.

Be sure to do a visual inspection of the motherboard to make sure all cables are seated properly, the fans are spinning, and that the CMOS battery is in it's proper place.

Also check for any broken or leaking capacitors, those can immediately render a motherboard dead.

Make sure that all of the jumpers are set correctly as well, you should be able to find jumper information in your motherboard's manual, and if you don't have the manual you should be able to find the manual on the Internet at the motherboard manufacturer's website.

Many of the problems caused by a bad motherboard is also similar to problems caused by a faulty or dying power supply, so be sure to check if the power supply is faulty or swap it out for another to see if your problem is fixed. If you have a spare motherboard you can try swapping out the motherboard to see if that solves your problem, if that's the case then the motherboard is most likely faulty. If you think the motherboard is faulty and it is still in warranty you should be able to send it back to the manufacturer for a new one with no hassle, sometimes they might even pay for the shipping & handling if it is a big problem that is happening with a certain line of motherboards. Make sure that when you open a motherboard you keep all of the packaging and the box, and if there are any stickers that will void the warranty if removed make sure you do NOT remove them, so that way it is easier to send back.

Power Supply

If you suspect your power supply is giving you trouble, make sure you check it out fast, because power supplies can make trouble with the rest of your system as well. Irregular voltages sent from the power supply can short circuit and overheat your components thus frying them and making them unusable. Some faulty power supplies have even caught on fire, but if you’re lucky it might just smoke a little and start to smell. A few signals that your power supply is bad or is going bad would be erratic and seemingly random system behavior like system hangs and crashes, and burning smells along with smoke.

If you recently upgraded your system or added new hard drives, disk drives, a graphics card or anything for that matter, be sure to check if your power supply is being overloaded with hardware. A good way to check is to use a power supply calculator. One time when I upgraded my system with a new fancy PCI Express 16x Graphics card, well it was fancy back then, I had problems with the graphics card performing while in 3d games, it was all due to my power supply being unable give it enough juice on the 12v rails so it performed poorly and didn’t act as it should have, I even swapped out the graphics card for another one believing it was bad, after checking the manufacturer’s forums it seemed like a lot of people were having problems with faulty cards, so I figured mine must have been faulty too. After getting the new card it seemed like it performed better for a little bit longer, which could’ve just been some optimizations they did to circuit board. Seeing how they sent me an upgraded version of the same card, but it wasn’t until I checked my power supply wattages that I found the real culprit.

The first thing to do to diagnose your power supply is check the power supply connectors, make sure everything is plugged into the motherboard and the power cable is plugged into the power supply, you wouldn’t believe how many people forget to plug in their computer. Many power supplies also have a power switch on them so check to make sure that no one accidentally or purposefully switched it off maybe for a prank. Check the fan to see if it is spinning at the correct speed and if it’s dusty vacuum it out. Determine if the power supply cables are giving out the right amount of voltage, if you computer will let you boot you should be able to check them in the BIOS menu to see if the correct voltages are being given. Normal power supplies give +3.3 volts DC, +5 volts DC, -5 volts DC, +12 volts DC, and -12 volts DC.

Memory

Faulty RAM can have many adverse effects on your system. Constant lockups, computer rebooting, memory error message (duh), system crashes, and sometimes refusing to boot up are all signs of memory errors. Though, these are also signs for motherboard, hard drive, and power supply problems too. Luckily for you if you think your memory is subject to causing a disruption in your system there are programs that can check the memory for it's performance and to see if it is generating any errors.

Memtest86+ is an amazing memory diagnostic program. It is based off of the original Memtest86 that has been around since 1994 and is used by system-builders, average joes, and professionals in the IT world. It's a standalone memory check test which means it can be easily run without a bootable operating system, that's good if you can't just seem to get your PC started and want to rule out your memory as quickly as possible.

How To Use Memtest86 With Your Floppy Drive To Test Your Memory

First go their website at www.memtest.org and select the most appropriate version to download. You can download the bootable iso or the Pre-compiled floppy drive depending on whether you want burn a CD or use your floppy drive. We're going to go into details on floppy method.

Open up the .zip and extract the files to a folder, then click on install.bat, you will be asked to “Enter target diskette drive:”. Type A and hit enter then it will ask you to insert a formatted diskette into drive A: and press -Enter-: after you hit enter it will write some files to your floppy so you can boot your computer with the floppy to test for errors.

After the floppy has been formatted with Memtest86+, leave the floppy in your floppy drive and reboot your computer. Remember to set your floppy drive as the first boot device in your BIOS menu.

The program will automatically load and perform the memory diagnostic tests on your computer. During the testing if there any errors they will show up and at the end of the test it will tell you how many errors you've had.

After testing your memory if you receive any errors you should make sure that your memory is okay either by swapping it out and seeing the problems still occur or try your memory in another system. If the memory passes the tests then you proceed to troubleshoot something else with good faith that your memory is fine.

Hard Drive

The hard drive is that ultimate safe to everything important on your computer. It keeps all of your information, files and folders, music, videos, favorite websites, and programs. With a bad hard drive there's no reason to have a computer. In terms of fixing a computer if the hard drive isn't salvageable then most people don't even want to bother with the rest, because their computer is probably a piece of junk that has been handed down from time to time. Generally when a hard drive is about to fail it's usually years down the road from first acquiring the computer. So the next best option rather than replacing the drive is to just buy a new computer, or build a new one, because your old one sure is probably not running as fast as it used to.

Luckily before your hard drive kicks the bucket there is usually a few warning signs:

Abnormally slow file transfers

Problems with booting, especially when Windows is being loaded

Corrupted files

Disappearing files or folders

Loud hard drive noise is a good sign that there is a mechanical problem going on inside

If your hard drive exhibits any of these signs be sure to transfer all of your files to another source immediately, and do not continue to do day-to-day activities with that hard drive. If it doesn't show any of these tell-tale signs, however you have a gut feeling that your hard drive is on the brink of destruction you can try using many different drive testing utilities available on the internet. The hard drive manufacturer usually has at least one qualified tool that you can download from their website and run. Other ways to check the health of your hard drive involves running the Windows Error Checking tool by right clicking on your hard drive in 'My Computer' then selecting 'Properties' and going to the 'Tool' and clicking on “Check Now”, or checking the SMART status located in your motherboard's BIOS. SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. Most motherboards nowadays has this technology. It should be automatically enabled in your BIOS, if it's not then your hard drive won't get checked. What it does is on boot up it will perform quick tests on your hard drive to ensure it is running correctly and it will continue to monitor it for any errors or abnormal problems that may occur as long as the computer is turned on.

Monitor

Watching movies, videos, playing games, and looking at NSFW material are all amazing things we can do on our computers. Yet there may come a day where you just want to get on your computer and relax in your computer room looking at all that NSFW material you have bookmarked under the “Special Sites” category, but you can’t because your monitor won’t turn on. No, you don’t frump and punch holes in the walls to look for an outlet for your rage. You troubleshoot it, and hope to god that your monitor isn’t broken!

When diagnosing a screen problem, half the time it’s usually something very easy, like a cable coming loose, or the monitor getting unplugged accidentally; unfortunately the other half the time it’s probably a problem that’s related to your monitor being old, or a problem that’s related to your graphics card instead. So you may have to diagnose both items at the same time to see which solves your problem.

First, check all your cables, I know this is probably getting a little old with the checking connections and everything, but so many computer problems can be avoided if people just remember that their computer isn’t always going to stay the same way they left it. A foot could kick out a cable, a dog or a cat that got to curious, or almost anything can render half your hardware useless.

After checking all your cables, make sure your screen has power, if it has power and shows a message such as “This monitor is working correctly please check your cable” and shows bars of color on the screen, that means that your monitor is not getting a signal from your computer. Try swapping out the monitor for another one to see if it still says that message. If it does then that means the problem is most likely something to do with your graphics card not seated in the motherboard, or just isn’t working properly, you may want to try swapping out another graphics card to see if that solves your problem.

Generally monitors don’t have that many diagnosable problems. Either they work and they work well, or they don’t work and you have to replace them. When working on a monitor you should never open them, they aren’t meant to be serviced and contain high charged capacitors that hold lethal doses of electricity. We wouldn’t want to read about a computer guy in the obituaries now would we?

Graphics Card

The glorious graphics card, it’s an amazing thing really. It makes all those pretty HDR (High Dynamic Range) pictures look just that good, it keeps your games running smoothly, and your videos in HD. Yet these things can be pains when they’re just not working right, because if something is wrong there’s not a strict hardware or software solution, you have to analyze the current situation to see what’s up.

First and foremost if you’re having any problems with your graphics card, probably the best thing to try to do first is see if there an updated driver for it at the manufacturer’s website that may solve the problem, or if there isn’t an update try uninstalling your graphics drivers and reinstalling them this little action can solve so many problems.

If there’s little jaggies or weird colorful mishaps known as artifacts appearing on your screen you may want to check the temperature of your graphics and make sure is getting enough cooling, and that the fan is working properly. If the cooling checks out okay you may also want to check your power supply ratings to see if it is giving enough juice to your graphics card. Nowadays most graphics cards need a lot of power on the 12v rails, make sure your power supply can give you that power that the graphics card needs.

Sound Card

Some of the typical problems people have with sound cards is either A) no sound or B) no sound. Sounds card typically aren't very expensive so having to replace one if the current one isn't working is no big deal. However, if you're one of those audiophile types who expect 100% original recording quality with your $300 sound card replacing one of those is as expected a lot more harder to do.

Sound Card Troubleshooting

Check speaker cables make sure they're all connected and plugged into the right spot on your sound card. Also check the speaker's power cables.

Make sure windows volume is turned up and the volume is not muted, also make sure that you have all the wave and playback volume turned up and not muted. If you have 'Digital Output Only' checked in your Advanced Controls for Playback Controls, try unchecking it to see if that solves your non-sound problem. I found that if I have that checked my sound card won't give me any sound.

Try reinstalling your sound card drivers, also try checking on the internet at the manufacturer's website for any updated drivers that may be available. They increase your sound card's compatibility with your system.

If the previous tips didn't help, then you may just have to replace your sound card, or atleast swap it out for another one to see if it might be a problem related to your sound card's connection to the motherboard instead.

Processor

The processor is the actual thinking part of the brain of the computer. It does all the calculations needed to make a computer run, and does them all in split second timing. It determines how fast your computer generally runs, and most of the time is a bottle neck for systems that have had everything upgraded except the CPU.

If your processor’s not working, it’s not the end of the world, generally most processors that work correctly for a few weeks, should work correctly for the rest of it’s lifespan, which varies from 5-10 years or so. As long as you’re not overclocking the processor or letting it overheat too badly your processor should be fine, and it could just be a BIOS setting that’s messed up, or a jumper setting, but for kicks just check to make the processor is seated properly and the heat sink is attached to the processor and the motherboard. The heat sink should be attached tightly to the motherboard and not have room to move about, you should be able to pick up your motherboard by grabbing onto the heat sink without any problems. Check in your motherboard manual to make sure all the jumpers are set correctly for your type of processor. Any jumpers set incorrectly can cause the processor to not work, or function correctly or at it’s optimal speed. Also check the heat sink to see if it is cooling off the processor, if it’s not doing a very good job you may want to look into investing in a better one that gets the job done.

Five Reasons Why You Can't Be A Writer (And Why None Of Them Are True)

2008-02-14T03:46:00.000-08:00

Laura Backes

I have a very clean house. I vacuum almost daily, regularly dust my silverware drawer for crumbs, and organize my closets at least three times a year. What's my secret? I'm a writer who works from home.
Like many writers, when deadlines loom I circle my laptop, finding excuses not to get started. But because I do consider myself a writer (and my Mexico vacation depends on it), eventually I plant myself in the chair and get to work. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. I hear from a lot of people who long to call themselves writers, but have generated all sorts of reasons never to try. So here's a list of the top five dreamdashers, and why none of them hold any water:

I have no time to write. Every beginning writer is time-challenged, because until you're getting paid for your writing, you're probably spending a chunk of each day doing something else. But consider this: author Claudia Mills, who has two sons and works as a college professor, said at a workshop that she writes every morning while her family is still asleep. Many days, she only gets in 5-15 minutes of writing. But those are actual writing minutes; not minutes spent thinking about writing, or worrying about writer's block, or staring at a blank piece of paper. When she assembles all those little bits of intensive writing over several weeks, she ends up with a book. Check out her results at http://www.claudiamillsauthor.com

I'm too old. Editors won't know how old you are if you don't tell them. Your readers won't know if you don't put your picture on the book cover. If you write well, your voice will be ageless. I know of a woman who promised herself on her 65th birthday that she'd pursue a lifelong dream of writing a children's book. She followed the advice to "write what you know," and at age 69 received her first contract for a middle grade novel based on events from her childhood.

I don't have a college degree. Guess what? Neither do your readers. Sure, it's necessary to know the basic rules of grammar and how to express yourself on paper, but hopefully you mastered that by junior high. The best education you can give yourself as a potential children's book writer is to read children's books--many children's books, especially those similar to the kind of books you want to write. And don't let your lack of knowledge about a nonfiction topic stop you from writing about it. If you're a skilled writer who enjoys research, you can teach yourself enough about many subjects to write about them, or find experts to help you fill in gaps in your knowledge.

Everything's been written about. You're probably right, but next season the shelves will be stocked with brand new books. Why? Because though it feels like we're approaching the saturation point on new ideas, the way those ideas are presented can constantly change. You have a unique way of looking at the world that no one else can duplicate. So play around with those worn out ideas until you hit on something fresh.

Publishers are afraid of controversial topics/ religion/men writing for kids/books that teach a lesson.... The only thing publishers are afraid of is not selling books. Do cutting edge, issue-driven books get attention? Take a look at prestigious awards lists. Does religion sell? Go to any chain bookstore and see that even trade publishers are bringing out fiction and nonfiction with religious themes. Do male writers need to use female pseudonyms? Again, I refer you to prestigious awards lists. Can a children's book contain a moral these days? If you do it in an entertaining way without preaching, parents will snap up your work.

If you're tempted to start a sentence with "Publishers are afraid...," it probably means one of two things: you haven't walked into a bookstore recently, or it's easier to blame a pile of rejection letters on timid editors than to figure out why your manuscript isn't selling. Though editors are under pressure to show a profit (publishing is a business, after all), they're always looking for the next manuscript that will turn children's books in a new direction. If you're going to be that writer, in the end all you really need to do is plant yourself in the chair and get to work.

Optimizing Articles and Press Releases

2008-02-14T01:44:00.000-08:00

Mary Ann Porsuelo

Articles and press releases are two very helpful search engine marketing strategies that a lot of marketers still use today. But unlike in the past wherein the articles and press release can easily be found by the online community, the massive amount of articles and press releases today have made it more difficult for one to be singled out from the rest. It is now close to impossible that a press release about your new product or an article would be read by everyone.

Nevertheless, many companies still send out press releases and articles. Fact of the matter is, there are some articles and some press releases that are read by customers. Despite the heavy competition, there is still a way to reach your customers through the articles and press releases. The key is to create something that will capture their attention and will intrigue them enough to investigate and go to your website, user profile, or information center.

Here are some tips on how to make an article or press release that would stand among the thousands of other articles and press releases:

1. Get to Know Your Target Audience

Press releases and articles also have target audiences. We know that. We don't write and publish something just for ourselves; we do it for the benefit of others, too. When marketing, press release and articles are meant to be read by your target audience and you keep them in mind when creating that press release or article.

Knowing your target audience will enable you to write in a way as if you're “speaking in their language.” you would know ho to communicate to your target market and in the process capture their attention. You'll be able to include facts and information that you know would be beneficial for them and therefore will appeal to them. You will also be able to optimize your press release or article by defining the best keywords, knowing what keywords your target audience would be looking for.

2. Optimize Through Keywords

In knowing who your target audience is, you can research on what keywords to focus on to optimize your article or press release. Once you've found the best keyword for the article or press release, make it as a basis when writing. Optimizing through the keywords will help with your rankings in the search engines as the crawlers can read the press releases and articles. If your article or press release is about a certain subject, and you've honed on it very well, it can rank very high on the search engines.

3. Be Creative And Stand Out!

Stand out. You know there's a very fierce competition out there. Thousands of pres releases and articles are sent across the Web through the sites, emails, directories, and feeds. You need to do more than just write correctly... you need to write creatively! You need to think on how your article or press release can be of better help to the customers than the other articles or press releases. You need to give the audience a reason why they should pick your article or press release among the many thousand others.

4. Optimize On the Title

The title of the article or press release, not just the keywords, also count in optimization. Each article or press release should have a title that revolves around the keywords you chose. This will help in the search engine rankings and for more visibility when the keywords are being searched.

Of course, you should not forget to make the title interesting to hook the readers to read your article or press release. It will help to communicate easily with your customers and can drive traffic to your website.

5. Add an Image To Go With the Article or Press Release

An article or press release with an image or picture is much more enjoyable o read and look at than a plain one. Many readers usually don't read much at their first glance at an article or press release. Adding an image could lead them to read your article when it captures their attention. It's another way for your article or press release to stand out!

You can also offer links to the readers who want to download the image. It will not only help promote your press release or article, it will also help obtain image optimization and traffic.

6. Choosing the Distribution Channels

Submitting your press release or article on big PR distribution sites and article directories may NOT always be the best course to take. While the services will work just fine, you might want to take a course wherein you know you'll get more exposure and quality coverage in your own market.

With the great number of competition among articles and press releases in the press release sites and article directories, it might be hard to get through to your target audience. It is better to focus on exposing yourself in your own market.

Learning how to optimize articles and directories is a little challenging considering how vast the Web is. But with a little push here and there and some creativity and effort, one can find a way to stand out and reach out to his or her target audience.

Psychoanalysis and Educational Practice - A Possible Relation?

2008-02-10T01:36:00.000-08:00

Luiz Gustavo Arruda

Psychology and psychiatry construct models, clinical habits of behavior, pictures, types of personality, reception systems, etc. Objective of these models would be, in the words of Comte, “to know; to be able to foresee”. To find the common traces to all pathology would serve of practical guide for the therapeutical experient. The illusion would be to arrive in port to the moment when everything in the field is explained of beforehand.

To find so many laws, concepts and characteristics where all singular trace is explicable by the generality. Illusion supported from the presumption of the particular individual in this case that of a universal, late or early order for scientific knowing. On the other hand, psychoanalysis operates on the citizen of science. Citizen that is included in this world to be able to consist as such. Science would be the ideology of the suppression of the citizen. And psychoanalysis would operate on what science globe and at the same time leaves to escape, as the interior, the improvisation, the feeling. (COUTINHO, 2000)

The first attempt of an operational joint of Psychoanalysis and Pedagogy can be observed since 1909 from personal texts between the Pedagogical Researcher Oskar Pfister and Freud. The first one produces two scientific texts of Pedagogy where are incorporated ideas inherent to psychoanalysis and requests the adhesion of the psychoanalytical theory to the operational Pedagogy. Freud answers affirmatively and thus a solid interlocution is initiated with an epistolar intercourse during following the thirty years (PATTO, 1996).

The demands of some educators from now on, are of diverse nature in the plan of the joint to know, pedagogy convokes psychoanalysis to a conjunction that tries to restore new fields. The result would be a kind of Psychoanalytical Psychopedagogy. In the level of the empirical problems, school (through its direct and indirect educators), requests the practical and specialized tool that generates solutions to conflicts that burst and interrupt the daily and normative functioning of the institution. For another part, we can find a large number of offers of knowledge and tasks, which, are considered as a fount of deregulation or occultation the same origin of the demand. It has been remembered as the example to the proper Freud in his preface to the book of August Aichhorn where he writes “… the educator must possess psychoanalytical formation” (OLIVEIRA, 2003).

Ana Freud (OLIVEIRA, 2003), is another eloquent example when she speaks to educators in their proper language, and inform them on the infantile development since perspective of the psychoanalysis (psychology of I). She tries to inform the teachers, to make them understand the infantile psychological drives of reproduction in order to understand their learners. She writes a small text recommending psychoanalytical experience as the optimum way to educational preparation.

There are several approaches that try to explain the joint of psychoanalysis e (in, for, with) education. Thus, we see the following intentions among others:

- Psychoanalysis to know the unconscious determination of the pedagogical relation and to be able “to educate in scientific form”.

- Psychoanalysis to decide the problems derived from the presence of the pupils who do not answer adequately to the requirements of the school.

- Psychoanalysis so that the professors “psychoanalyze” themselves.

We can revise the difficulties in the attempt to articulate psychoanalysis, as a discipline that points its ways to know about the “irrationality of the behavior”, with the field of the rationality where is inserted the production and reproduction of the knowledge. In the last years are more and more abundant the works that point Psychoanalysis as a valid way to observe and to work on the delimitation of these fields.

Mezan (2002, P. 214) says:

“… the knowledge of the psychoanalytical theory that acquires the educator will have as barrier that hinders its application the proper sexuality and repression….e what we want to stress,….in all attempt of application of the psychoanalysis to the educative field is that, in the existing difference Unconscious knowing theoretically and clinically, they are played both reach and limits of such aspiration”.

It is obvious for any professional whose object of work is the individual person, the theory of the subject that contributes psychoanalysis must be part of his cultural luggage. Teacher cannot be himself it the edge of the process. We also assume that a professor who has passed through a psychoanalytical process will be more receptive to the aspects of the life of his pupils that in another way would be outside of the pertaining to school work. But in all times, not psychoanalyzed professors had been sensible to the concerns and problems of their pupils. Also we cannot deny that many children or adolescents present hidden problematic individual situations that lead them to answer with effectiveness to school petitions.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
REFERENCES

COUTINHO, Maria Tereza da Cunha e MOREIRA, Mércia. Psicologia da Educação: um estudo dos processos psicológicos de desenvolvimento e aprendizagem humanos. Belo Horizonte-MG: Editora lê, 2000.

LAPLANCHE, J. & Pontalis, J.-B. (1992). Vocabulário da psicanálise. São Paulo: Martins Fontes TCC

PEÑA, J. F. (1986). Platão e Banquete. Letras da Coisa no. 3. Curitiba, PR: Monografia Coisa Freudiana - Transmissão em Psicanálise.

KUPFER, Maria Cristina. Educação para o Futuro: Psicanálise e Educação. SP, Editora Escuta Monografias, 2000.

PATTO, Maria Helena Souza. A Produção do Fracasso Escolar. São Paulo, T. A. Queiroz, Editor, 1996.

HASS,C.(2000). A coordenação pedagógica nuna perspectiva interdisciplinar. In: QUELUZ, A. (org.). Interdisciplinaridade. São Paulo, Monografia Pioneira.

FREUD, Sigmund. O Mal-Estar na Civilização; Vol. XXI (1927-1931); Edição Standard Brasileira: Imago Editora Ltada, RJ. Pg.95.

BERMAN,M. Tudo que é sólido desmancha no ar: a aventura da modernidade(trad. Carlos F. Moisés, Ana Maria L. Ioriatti) . São Paulo: Monografias Cia das Letras,1986)

HERRMANN, F. O que é Psicanálise? São Paulo:Brasiliense,1984

HOBSBAWN, E.. A Era dos Extremos: o breve século XX: 1914-1991(trad. Marcos Santarrita). São Paulo: Monografias Cia das Letras,1995.

MEZAN, R. Freud Pensador da Cultura, São Paulo:Brasiliense, 1985.

MEZAN, R. Interfaces, São Paulo: TCC - Companhia das Letras,2002.

OLIVEIRA, M. L. Por que a Monografia de Psicanálise na Educação : fragmentos. In: revista Perfil, Monografia nº IX, 2003, Departamento de Psicologia Clínica, FCL, UNESP, Assis, SP, pp. 25-35.

The Evolution Of HP and Epson Inkjet Printers

2008-01-24T21:56:00.000-08:00

Niall Roche

When you’re looking for ink for printers, two names rise to the top of the pile: HP inkjet cartridges and Epson ink cartridges. Of course, it really depends on what brand printer you own, but if you’re after high quality prints, HP and Epson will deliver quality both in the printers they make and in the ink they develop for their printers.

Actually, the word "develop" pretty well sums up the difference between HP inkjet cartridges, Epson ink cartridges, and their competitors. Both of these giants in the printing industry continually put your money back to work for you by researching, developing, and implementing the most current innovative technologies to deliver the best print solutions to their customers including the ink for the printers they market.

Hewlett Packard didn’t start out making HP inkjet cartridges. In fact, they didn’t start making ink for printers. HP was started in 1939 by Stanford classmates, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard who made an audio oscillator—an instrument used by sound engineers and then sold eight of them for use in the movie Walt Disney movie Fantasia.

Hewlett Packard’s dedication to providing their customers with new technologies has carried them through the decades. In 1978, HP dove into the field of desktop printing and in 1984 released the “Thinkjet” and later that year, the HP Laserjet Printer. The dependability and affordability of these two HP Printers changed the direction of the entire printing industry. This year, HP’s development and release of Vivera Ink for printers is a new breakthrough in 21st Century photographic imaging.

Epson has long been a household word in both consumer and business printing, simplifying solutions for specialized operations like the first seven-color archival desktop photo printer to offering the home-computer user an Epson ink cartridge that tells you when it’s running dry!

The company is a subsidiary of the Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, which evolved from K. Hattori & Company, a company that was established in 1881 and involved in the importing and exporting of clocks and watches. In 1968, Suwa Seikosha (the parent company of the Seiko Group) developed the first commercially successful printer mechanism, the EP-101. In 1975, the Epson brand was established and since that time Epson has been the forerunner of many innovations in desktop printing and ink for their printers. Epson prides itself in its century-long development of precision solutions for its customers.

An attribute Epson and HP share is their attention to precision detail; both continually deliver the best not only in products such as their printers but also in support products like the ink for the printers they sell. Another characteristics these companies have in common is their dedication to doing business in an environmentally responsible manner in the understanding that preserving their market is as important as broadening it.

Common Gateway Interface - CGI Scripts

2008-01-24T21:50:00.000-08:00

GOARTICLES.COM

CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface, using CGI scripts to add automation to your web site. CGI is the most common type of scripts may have one or a number of files that need to be configed to work. CGI is a server-side solution for your web sites. Some of scripts you can find mostly free like web site management, password protection, shopping carts and many more.

Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is one of the most widely used server applications on the Internet. Many Web servers let you run CGI scripts written in a scripting language called Perl because it's well suited for that kind of thing. Perl is an interpretive language, so the Perl scripts you use don't have to be compiled. You just copy the Perl CGI scripts onto the right part of your server, and they're ready to go.

Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts may be written in any programming language capable of following the specification. Perl is by far the most popular language for CGI programming.

CGI Mechanism

The CGI mechanism has been standardized in the following way. In the normal directory tree that the server considers to be the root, you create a subdirectory named cgi-bin. The server then understands that any file requested from the special cgi-bin directory should not simply be read and sent, but instead should be executed. The output of the executed program is what it actually sent to the browser that requested the page.

Features of CGI

1. CGI Common Gateway Interface, is a protocal script used to make your site dynamic.

2. Common gateway interface is another type of protection that basically compares then matches your login and password to known account fields.

3. Common Gateway Interface, better known as CGI, is one of the most widely used server applications on the Internet.

4. CGI (Common Gateway Interface) can do, such as process form data and auto generate dynamic content.

5. Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripting is often used to access legacy databases from an intranet.

Get Marketing and Sales Education To Enter Global Economy

2008-01-23T21:37:00.000-08:00

Michael Bustamante

If you are serious about entering the global economy with knowledge and skills, then you should get the best marketing and sales education you can find. People with good training in the field can confidently pursue a variety of exciting positions in advertising, marketing, promotions, public relations, retail, and business management.

Many schools offer marketing and sales courses for people looking to get ahead in business and retail. Vocational schools will generally offer a certificate of completion or undergraduate degrees, such as the associate degree with an emphasis on business. Courses in the field can be quite diverse, and can include instruction in areas of business administration, accounting, business law, communications, consumer behavior, economics, finance, foreign language (if applicable), marketing and market research, mathematics, public affairs and speaking, political science, sales, statistics, technical writing, and visual arts.

While many employers appreciate candidates who have achieved their bachelor or master degrees, there are many organizations that are satisfied with entry-level vocational credentials, such as certificates in retail management, or certification in public relations.

If you are interested in preparing for employment in the field, it is important that you have reached a high level of maturity. The best candidates for careers in marketing and sales should be ambitious, creative, adaptable to change, and possess leadership skills.

Though degree programs are primarily focused on the business aspects of the trade, additional courses can help you gain the skills to effectively communicate both verbally and in writing.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, occupational growth in marketing and sales is expected to be faster than the average career. Graduates can anticipate improved opportunities to attain gainful and rewarding employment. While there are a variety of earning potentials, entry-level salaries start out at around $33,000 and may go up to $100,000 or more annually.

If you are ready to enter this diverse and lucrative field, contact schools in your area offering marketing and sales education today!

DISCLAIMER: Above is a GENERAL OVERVIEW and may or may not reflect specific practices, courses and/or services associated with ANY ONE particular school(s) that is or is not advertised on our website.

Copyright 2008 - All rights reserved by Media Positive Communications, Inc.
___________________
Notice: Publishers are free to use this article on an ezine or website, provided the article is reprinted in its entirety, including copyright and disclaimer, and ALL links remain intact and active.

Introduction to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

2008-01-23T20:49:00.000-08:00

Erthy W

A Cascading Style Sheet is a set of rules that specify how a HTML document should be presented. Cascading Style Sheets are used to format HTML. You should have at least a basic understanding of HTML before starting to learn CSS.

There are three types of style sheet: external, internal, and inline. Cascading Style Sheets get their name from the hierarchy assigned to them. The inline style sheet has the highest priority when formatting the HTML, followed by the internal style sheet, and finally the external style sheet. This means that if there are conflicting values in an inline style sheet and an external style sheet for example, only the style defined within the inline style sheet will be applied (the rest of the external style sheet will be applied as normal however).

The only major difference between style sheets is their location in relation to the document. Inline style sheets are contained within the specific element's tags, and will be only be applied to that element. Internal style sheets are included between the head tags of the document, and will only be applied to the elements within that specific document. External style sheets are separate .css documents that are applied to elements in pages that they are linked to. This makes them very useful for applying the same style to different documents. The link to the external style sheet is included in the head tags.

The CSS structure is comprised of 3 components: the selector, the property and the value. The selector defines which HTML element is being formatted. The property defines what aspect of the HTML element needs to be changed. The value specifies how the aspect will be changed.

The selector is defined first, followed by the property and the value contained between curly braces and separated by a colon, like so: Selector{property:value}

For example, if we wanted to define a 2 pixel border for all the tables in a document:

Table{border-width:2px}

Note: the word "attribute" is often used instead of "property".

The structure is slightly different for inline style sheets, as they are specific to the element in which they are contained; there is no need for the selector or the curly braces. If we wanted to define a 2 pixel border for one specific table, the tag would look like this

<'table style="border-width:2px">

(An apostrophe has been included after the starting tag to avoid being recognized as HTML).

Once you know the structure of CSS, all you need to know is the different selectors, properties and values. You define your own selectors using classes and IDs. An ID is unique and can only be used once in a document, whereas you can classify any number of elements in a document using classes. Remember not to start the name of your ID or class by a number as this not supported by some browsers. There is also a 'wildcard' selector: the asterisk *.

If you are interested in learning more about CSS, there are many good resources online.

Protecting your PC from virus and spyware

2008-01-22T20:08:00.000-08:00

Akim

Buying the best computer is not as important as protecting your valuable products. You have to protect your computer from virus and spy ware that can damage your PC for ever. Prevention is better than cure when it comes to your computer. I usually advice people to shield their computers from virus and spy ware. Some viruses are hard to remove from your computer even if you format your drive.

When you purchase a new or use computer make sure you have:

1. Anti Virus
2. Spy Ware stoppers
3. Internet security firewall
4. Pop up blockers for your browser

Note: Make sure you have all the software install before you get on the internet. This will protect your computer from virus, spy ware and others.

At First For Learning Mandarin Chinese Language

2008-01-22T06:39:00.000-08:00

Wang Liguang

In the business world needless to say, speaking and listening are the most important skills in order to share your idea. Let me put my concept straight if you know what you want to converse and you know lots of Chinese words, then you can easily create sentences in Chinese!

Well that's what you will be getting from this website. Free learning more with sound at http://www.easy2chinese.com

You might be asking yourself this question How can I read and learn Chinese without knowing any Chinese's letter? My answer is "You can start by reading PIN YIN language. PIN YIN is the language which is used by people who learn Chinese around the world.

My piece of advice is First of all, you should know about 3 things in Chinese. They are Grammar, Alphabet, and Vowel and Pitch Tone .

Somehow, if you're bored out of your brain with the Grammar, you can just pass the step and get straight to the conversations. By clicking the sound buttons which will show you every word, you can try memorizing them all. This way is the easiest and most enjoyable way to learn Chinese. And at any certain time in the future where you feel that you want to learn it profoundly, you can come back to the Beginning. Make your own choice of learning! learning Mandarin Chinese free at http://www.easy2chinese.com

Protecting Children Online With Internet Parental Controls

2008-01-21T06:30:00.000-08:00

Kelly Hunter

The World Wide Web is a fascinating place. It has obliterated geography in terms of education and business. It facilitates learning by allowing kids to see things and experiences aspects of different places they may never get the chance to see in the non-virtual world. The Internet can bring people together who otherwise would never know each other and create a virtual universe that is totally cohesive, with every kind of information imaginable literally available at your fingertips. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, the Internet has a dark side. It is full of material that is inappropriate for children and all kinds of predators. Leaving your kids alone to fend for themselves on the Web is exactly as dangerous at leaving them in a crowed airport or shopping mall. You don’t know where they’re going or who with. The news is filled with horror stories about kids who have been taken advantage of on the Internet, but you don’t want yours to miss out on all the positive aspects of the technology. The first line of defense in keeping your kids save on the Web is to teach them how to use it safely.

A lot of online dangers can be dodged simply by reminding kids of one of their earliest learned lessons: don’t talk to strangers. The kinds of people who want to harm kids have all kinds of tricks up their sleeves. They may try to lull your child into a false sense of security by pretending to be someone she knows. Make sure your child understands that it isn’t a good idea to give out personal information such as their address, phone number or the name of their school. The less information a potential predator has, the harder it will be for him to actually locate a victim. It might be a good idea to establish a secret password and share it only with friends and family so your kid has a way to identify people who are safe to chat with.

Chat interfaces and instant messaging are great tools for keeping in touch with friends and conduct business, but they are also direct connections between your child and possible pedophiles and other predators. Most instant messengers have settings that will only allow people on a pre-approved list to approach your child. That way you can let the kids chat with family and friends while keeping the bad guys out. You can visit http://www.internet-parental-control.org to find more information on online child safety measures.

You can’t watch your kids every minute they are online, and you can’t always count on them to do what you have taught them to do. Parental control software is a great back up. Most browsers will allow you to customize age-appropriate settings for each child in your house. You can choose what kinds of Web sites you want your kids to access and block them out of the ones you don’t. It’s a great way to provide a virtual safety net for your family. If the parental controls supplied by your Internet Service Provider, check into installing additional software that will evaluate each site your child attempts to access. You set criteria by which the software judges each Web page and assigns a rating, much like a movie rating. Your kids will only be able to look at sites with ratings you have deemed appropriate.

Acquaint Yourself With Computer Printers

2008-01-21T05:46:00.000-08:00

Mack John

A computer printer is a device used for printing text or images on hard copy stored in electronic form, generally on physical print media like paper. Printers are designed to support both local and network connected users simultaneously.
Nowadays, modern printers can directly interface to electronic devices like digital cameras. Some printers that come with non printing features are commonly known as Multi-Functional Printers (MFP) or Multi-Function Devices (MFD). It integrates various functions of multiple devices into one. Such types of printers are extremely useful for small businesses and home offices.

As opposed to a traditional printer, a multi-functional printer is a combination of devices like Printer, Scanner, Photocopier, and Fax Machine. Likewise, there are numerous other types of printers widely available in the market. Let’s take a look at them:

Laser Printer: A laser printer works in a similar fashion as a photocopier does. It has a roller which is charged with electricity. A laser beam is passed to remove the charge from portions of the roller. The parts hit by the laser are powdered by the toner which is then transferred from the roller to the paper. Finally, the ink is baked into the paper with the help of a heater incorporated in the printer. People generally prefer laser printer because of its ability to give high quality output and high speed.

Dot Matrix: It has a print head that moves across the page. A dot matrix printer produces characters using a cluster of pins which press an inked ribbon to the paper, thereby creating a dot. Each character is made in the same way. Dot Matrix printers are relatively cheaper and durable. These qualities still attract businesses which use them as invoice printers.

Ink Jet and Bubble Jet: It works in a manner similar to a Dot Matrix Printer. However, its print head sprays liquid ink onto the page instead of pressing a dry ink against the page. Ink jet and bubble jet printers are better known as predecessors of laser printers. They produce better image quality and run faster.

From inkjets to monochrome and color lasers, different printers are designed to accomplish different tasks. Companies like DELL, CANON, LEXMARK, BROTHER, EPSON, and HP HEWLETT PACKARD are most preferred when it comes to buying a printer. Nowadays, computer printer support is widely available on the Internet which saves you from taking it to any expensive technician for troubleshooting.

The ASEAN Scholarships for Indonesia

2008-01-20T16:32:00.000-08:00

DataBeasiswa.Com

The ASEAN Scholarships for Indonesia is for studies in selected Singapore schools from Secondary Three to Pre-University Two and is renewed annually, subject to the satisfactory performance of the scholar. And the scholarship is tenable for 4 years leading to the award of the Singapore Cambridge General Certificate of Education ‘Advanced’ (GCE ‘A’) Level (or equivalent) certificate.

The ASEAN Scholarships for Indonesia are welcome students from Indonesia to apply to enter Singapore schools at the Secondary Three level.

Criteria:

• Nationals of Indonesia
• Between 14+ to 16+ years old
• Sat for SMP 3 National Final Evaluation Examination (EBTANAS/UAN) and have done consistently well in school

Dates:

• Application period - 2 June to 21 July
• Selection test dates - mid August
• Selection interview dates - late September, Candidates short-listed for the selection test/interview will be notified a week before the selection test/interview dates
• Award of scholarship - early to mid October
• Arrival of scholar in Singapore - late October

Conditions:

• Allowance of S$2,200 (Secondary) / S$2,400 (Pre-University) per annum with hostel accommodation
• S$400 settling-in allowance (once only)
• Economy class air passage to Singapore and back to home country upon completion of course
• Waiver of school fees and donation to the Education Fund
• Waiver of GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level examination fees (once only, if applicable)
• Subsidised medical benefits and accident insurance cover
• Bridging courses (if applicable, in Singapore before start of course)
•There is no bond attached to the scholarship

The selection tests and interviews will be conducted in Medan, Jakarta, Surabaya (if there are sufficient candidates).

Download the application form

Theses On Feuerbach

2008-01-20T08:31:00.001-08:00

By Karl Marx (1845)

1. The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects [Objekte], differentiated from thought-objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity. In The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christenthums], he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance [Erscheinungsform]. Hence he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity.

2. The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

3. The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

4. Feuerbach starts off from the fact of religious self-estrangement [Selbstentfremdung], of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world, and a secular [weltliche] one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. He overlooks the fact that after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done. For the fact that the secular basis lifts off from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm can only be explained by the inner strife and intrinsic contradictoriness of this secular basis. The latter must itself be understood in its contradiction and then, by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionised. Thus, for instance, once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must itself be annihilated [vernichtet] theoretically and practically.

5. Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants sensuous contemplation [Anschauung]; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity.

6. Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliche Wesen = ‘human nature’]. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged: (1) To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated - human individual, (2) The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as ‘species’, as an inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.

7. Feuerbach consequently does not see that the ‘religious sentiment’ is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual that he analyses belongs in reality to a particular social form.

8. All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.

9. The highest point reached by contemplative [anschauende] materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals and of civil society [bürgerlichen Gesellschaft].

10. The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society or social humanity.

11. Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

Indigenous Power: Indigenous Rights Go Global

2008-01-20T01:36:00.001-08:00

By John Mohawk

Indigenous peoples are asserting their moral right to live as distinct communities and reminding us of the power of cooperation with nature. When the Spanish first arrived in the Caribbean over 500 years ago, the idea that indigenous peoples might possess rights was given scant attention. The conquistadores approached many of the indigenous communities with a priest who read a document called the Requiremento, a demand that the people come forth with their bodies and souls and all their property and offer these to the service of the Spanish crown or the Spanish would attack. It was read in Latin as prelude to an orgy of rape, plunder, and genocide.

It wasn’t until the middle of the 16th century that a bishop, Bartolome de Las Casas, championed the idea of some rights of the Indians before the Council of the Indies. Although that body agreed in principle that indigenous peoples should not be abused, the conquest continued unabated.

Fairness and reciprocity

The Europeans who first landed here in the Americas saw their problems very differently than indigenous peoples did and still do. In Europe, the biggest problem was that the people couldn’t produce enough food. They were hungry, and there was always the threat of famine. When they got to the Americas they found a first-rate edible landscape. But bring a bunch of sheep and cows and cut down all the trees for a couple of hundred years, and you don’t have an edible landscape anymore.

European wanted to battle, to outsmart nature —that’s what all their technology is about; that’s what biotechnology particularly is about.

But for the Indians, the question was not how to make war on nature, but how to cooperate with nature. When the Europeans came, the Indians were taking care of the land, so there was grass to feed the deer. The deer and the buffalo were our domesticated animals. The Indians had a very sophisticated system of food management based on cooperation with nature.

The Indians asked questions about fairness, not only human to human, but human to land, human to animal, human to everything. And they tried to get Europeans to see that. The thinking in Indian country was one of respect. The Indians were constantly imploring the Europeans to rethink their relationship with nature. “You’ve got it wrong,” we said. “You’ve got to be fair.”

Taking it to the global stage

Beginning in the early 1950s, some indigenous peoples began urging the international community to recognize their inherent rights to continue to exist as distinct peoples.

The idea was given a significant boost in 1977 when the non-governmental organizations of the United Nations organized a meeting in Geneva to discuss the creation of indigenous rights under international law. In 1982, indigenous representatives were invited to Geneva to witness the development of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

This was an important step because, until that time, indigenous peoples had been relegated to the most extreme margins of international affairs.

At first, the nation-states were cautious and occasionally hostile to the idea of indigenous rights and to the movement representing it. As recently as 1999 the Organization of American States (OAS) was essentially closed to indigenous peoples, but the OAS was presented with a mandate from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and indigenous peoples insisted on a presence in those proceedings. Today, indigenous representatives attend the annual meetings of the 34 member states of the OAS. They are greeted with dignity, and their issues are extended respectful attention.

In fact, many states have now begun to acknowledge the rights of groups to a continued existence as distinct peoples, and this movement has spread rapidly over the past 15 years to Europe, Australia, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Today there are young Indian lawyers working on protecting indigenous peoples under principles which only a few short years ago were unimaginable. The OAS, the World Bank, the IMF, and other international institutions now have policies to protect indigenous peoples.

Indigenous people bring a unique argument to the world stage. We don’t have armies or navies, we don’t have national currencies, we don’t have many of the attributes that Western nations think make up nationhood.

And yet we propose that we have a moral right to continue to live as a distinct community and in the manner we have for millennia. And in many ways, it is the indigenous cultures’ relationship to the earth that represents the only real hope for the long term survival of people on any scale in the world.