FW BIEN News Flash n°1 January 2000 (fwd)

[S. Lerner]

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>Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 20:50:40 -0300
>Subject: BIEN News Flash n°1 January 2000
>From: philippe van parijs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: BIEN NEWS 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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> BASIC INCOME EUROPEAN NETWORK
>
>
>NEWS FLASH N°1   JANUARY 2000
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> http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/bien.html
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> BASIC INCOME
> is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis,
> without means test or work requirement.
> BIEN
> aims to serve as a link between individuals and groups committed to or
>interested in basic income,
> and to foster informed discussion on this topic throughout Europe.
>
>
>
>
> CONTENTS
>
> EDITORIAL
>
> ANNOUNCEMENTS
> Berlin, 6-7 October 2000 : BIEN's 8th Congress: "Economic citizenship
>rights for the XXIst century"
> Milan, 8 March 2000: "Il reddito di cittadinanza"
> London, 7-10 July 2000: SASE Conference "Citizenship and Exclusion"
> Bogota, 17-22 July 2000: "La justicia social y la propuesta de un ingreso
>basico incondicional"
>
> BITS OF NEWS
> European Union: The Portuguese Presidency organises a major seminar on
>the future of guaranteed incomes
> Belgium: Founding member of BIEN becomes green party leader.
> France: Castel, Bresson, Godino and others in debate at the Sorbonne
> France: A workshop on basic income in Marseille
> France: A green web site on BI.
> Italy: Thousands of signatures for a guaranteed minimum income
> Netherlands: Tax reform, key step towards a basic income?
> United Kingdom: Citizenship Income Online
> United States: First seeds of a Basic Income North American Network?
> United States: Robert Theobald died
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> BIEN MEMBERSHIP
> How to become a member of BIEN
> BIEN's first life members
>
>
> EDITORIAL
>
> As previously announced to most of you, this is the first of the "News
>flashes" which BIEN will be sending six times a year to a list of over
>half a thousand interested people throughout Europe and beyond.
> If you want your address removed from this list, just send the message
>"unsuscribe BIEN" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you would like other people
>to be included, simply send their full names and e-mails to the same
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> As a complement to the news flashes, a printed newsletter will keep being
>sent twice a year to all paid-up members of BIEN. Both previous news
>flashes and previous newsletters can be downloaded from BIEN's web site
>(http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/bien.html).
> If you wish to express your support by becoming a member of BIEN, just
>follow the instructions at the end of this document, which also features
>the list of BIEN's first life members.
> In order not to overload this first (and therefore experimental) news
>flash, we are keeping for the next issue our brief reviews of recent
>publications - including new books by Bourguignon, Bresson, Lerner, Lo
>Vuolo and Raventos - and historical notes on two nineteenth-century
>forerunners.
> We hope you will find this new way of communicating congenial.
>
> BIEN's Executive Committee :
> Ilona Ostner (Göttingen) and Guy Standing (Geneva), co-chair
> Claus Offe (Berlin), conference organiser
> Alexander de Roo (Amsterdam), treasurer
> Steve Quilley (Dublin), recruitment officer
> Philippe Van Parijs (Louvain), secretary
>
>
> ANNOUNCEMENTS
>
> Berlin, 6-7 October 2000
> BIEN's 8th CONGRESS: "Economic citizenship rights for the XXIst century"
> The 8th International Congress of the Basic Income European Network will
>be held at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin on 6-7 October 2000, with the
>financial support of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the Hans Böckler Stiftung
>and the International Labour Organization. As usual, it will combine
>plenary sessions and parallel workshops.
> The advisory Kongressbeirat consists of Professor Anthony B. Atkinson,
>Lord Ralf Dahrendorf, Lord Maghnad Desai, André Gorz, France, Michel
>Hansenne MEP, Professor Ruth Lister, Lord Raymond Plant, Michel Rocard
>MEP, Professor Fritz W. Scharpf, Professor Herbert A. Simon, Senator
>Eduardo Suplicy, Professor James Tobin, and Professor Salvatore Veca.
> The organising committee is chaired by Professor Claus Offe, of Humboldt
>University. Detailed information, a call for papers and a registration
>form can be obtained from the secretariat of the organising committee
>([EMAIL PROTECTED]) or from BIEN's web site :
>http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/bien.html.
> The deadline for paper proposals is March 3st. The deadline for
>registration is July 15th, with a reduced fee for those registering before
>July 1st.
>
> Milan, 8 March 2000
> "Il reddito di cittadinanza"
> A debate on the proposal of a universal basic income at Milan's "Casa
>della Cultura", with the participation of Michele Salvati, professor of
>political economy at Milan University, member of parliament for Prime
>Minister D'Alema's party DS, author of La sinistra, il governo, l'Europa
>(1997), Daniele Checchi, professor of labo

Re: Fw: One Country Two worlds [more than 2...]

[Ray E. Harrell]

 
"Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote:
(snip)
.) Robert Musil's vision of a world in which "mystical experience"
would be rescued from the muddled hocus-pocus of fuzzy feelings
and [what *would* Musil have thought of these folks?!]
new-Age-ers, et al., etc. -- and "the mystical"
realized by each of us at the center
of the most exact technological work (which thereby would
at last discover its *heart*) is only one of the great "dreams"
(I am referring here esp. to Husserl's sad statement
from the late "30s"...) of the 20th century, which is
"over" only in the sense that we have not yet
even begun to take it up, and, in trying to realize it,
to *test it out*. (snip)
The most advanced sectors of
"The West" still, in my estimation, remain largely
in the thralldon of unreflected ethnicity.  The Egyptean
elevator operator says his traditional prayer to
Allah the merciful.  A Harvard or Wharton Tech.
diplomate investment banker says his equally
traditional prayers to "commercial paper" and
Professional Football.
 
And then there is the following article about the rest of
we ethnics whose practicality is buried so deep that the
rest of the world considers it superstition and screws it up in
the argument about the future without understanding the
past.    Might the elevator operator and the banker
be
both  "Johnny Come Latelys" in the world praying to
an image of their own reflection.   To bad Freud didn't
really have the guts to get it beyond his own Viennese
prejudice.  Narcissism and Idolatry are sisters except
he was too embarrassed by his tradition and desire to
be accepted in a racist society, to say so.   Don't
throw away the old until you understand it and have
something better to put in its place.
Meanwhile I'm listening to someone who didn't blow
it but understood the Viennese better than they did
themselves.  Gustav Mahler and his Resurrection
Symphony conducted by another Jewish fellow
who was also Gay.  Leonard Bernstein.  But the
fundamentalists of every ilk would put him in jail
and some would have never had him be born.
Bernstein said that Tchaikovsky was forced to
drink the poison water by an aristocrat who was
insulted by his making a pass at him.  Well the
Mahler is great and it took him one afternoon to
do his analysis with Freud.   Today it takes people
years.   Don't give up chromatic harmony for
rock and roll, it can cost you millions in psycho-
analysis.   Know the old before you dream the
future.
I have a wonderful mezzo Darcy Dunn who is going
to perform the Mahler alto solos here in NYCity.
(4th movement Urlicht)
O Roeschen rot!
Der Mensch liegt in Groesster Not!
Der Mensch liegt in groesster Pein!
Je lieber Moecht ich im Himmel sein!
Da kam ich aug einen breiten Weg;
Da kam ein Engelein und wollt mich abweisen.
Ach nein! ich liess mich nicht abweisen!
Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott!
Der liebe Gott wird mir ein Lichtchen geben,
Wird leuchten mir bis in das ewig selig Leben!
What a pity that so many mistake their own teachers
and arrogance for Der liebe Gott.  If it works, it all
fits together.  If not then someone is wrong somewhere.
The mirror is a pretty good place to begin.
 
   
January 30, 2000  NYTimes Week in Review
  

Now the Ancient Ways Are Less Mysterious
   
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
   
Each June for at least the last four centuries, farmers in 12 mountain
   
villages in Peru and Bolivia follow a ritual that Westerners might think
   
odd, if not crazy. Late each night for about a week, the farmers
   
observe the stars in the Pleiades constellation, which is low on the horizon
   
to the northeast. If they appear big and bright, the farmers know to plant
   
their potato crop at the usual time four months later. But if the stars
are dim,
   
the usual planting will be delayed for several weeks.
   
Now Western researchers have applied the scientific method to
   
this seeming madness. Poring over reams of satellite data on
   
cloud cover and water vapor,  Professor Benjamin Orlove, an
   
anthropologist at the University of California at Davis, and
   
colleagues have discovered that these star-gazing farmers are
   
accurate long-range weather forecasters. High wisps of cirrus
   
clouds dim the stars in El Nino years, which brings reduced
   
rainfall to that part of the Andes.   In such drought conditions,
it
   
makes sense to plant potatoes as late as possible.
   
Orlove's work, which was reported in January in the British journal Nature,
is
   
just the latest example of indigenous or traditional knowledge that has
been
   
found to have a sound scientific basis. In agriculture, nutrition, medicine
and
   
other fields, modern research is showing why people maintain their
   
traditio