The U.S. Election and Science and Hope

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The next event of major importance to the United States, and arguably to the world, is the American Presidential Election. My political leanings put me squarely in the Barack Obama camp and have from the beginning of the primaries. The question for us in the States is how will President Obama govern? Here is one possible paradigm.

Lynn Sweet Predicts the Senate Outcome if Obama Wins
Sweet recognizes Obama's allies in the Senate as a strength, but also asserts Obama goes by the numbers and may initially cater to Republican Senators.

The question for this blog is how does that relate to the Millennium Development Goals? The answer is significantly. The inquiry though goes beyond specific political choices to understanding how this affects our world and our ability to make beneficial changes in it. One important pathway for change has been science and one favorite source has been Scientific American. They recently had a special issue on the American Election. I am providing links that they sent me below.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE

In-Depth Report: Science and the U.S. Election

• The Big To-Do List--Scientific Challenges Facing the Next President
• Science Questions for Would-Be Presidents
• Will the Networked Generation Rock the Vote--Or Wreck It?

According to Avaaz, this election will change the globe -- it's as simple as that!It will determine if we see a timed end to the war in Iraq, whether America joins the global community in tackling climate change,how much the nation invests in renewable energy and whether America redoubles its commitment to fighting global poverty.

If you want to see if your views generally match the views espoused by this weblog take the U.S. Presidential Choice Quiz Now.

Other posts:
Barack Obama on Millennium Development Goals
Barack Obama and the Millennium Development Goals featuring a look at the impact of the American elections on Global Health asking "What would Barack do?" from Open Budgets Blog.

Outreach from Uttrakhand

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The reach of the World Wide Web continues to amaze me. I belong to the Orkut group End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA. The membership is primarily from India with a good number from Brazil (which has by far the greatest number of people on Orkut) and a few from Europe and America. I have credited the Orkut End Poverty group with getting me involved online with this cause before. Today I am highlighting another online connection.

PSSP ("Paryavaran Sanrakshan Samiti” Pati) an NGO, in Uttrakhand contacted me.

PSSP:

Hi, We are Uttrakhand (India) based NGO. We have FCRA registration, could you guide us how we can get fund from foreigin organisation.

They have overestimated my connections and influence. This weblog's objective is to educate myself as much as it is to educate and influence anybody else. One point of ignorance, I don't know what FCRA registration means in this context. I also can't vouch for them. I will though put their information out where I can and let the collective intelligence of the web take over.

Others within the Orkut community have said that they should identify themselves better, which they should, but I could see a situation where a NGO in a remote area, with limited resources was able to use the web to leverage connections across the globe. In order to do so, their connection would have to grow like crystals expanding. They would need others to take up their cause.

Reaping from Yesterday's Efforts Planting for the Future

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Both Blog Action Day - Poverty and Stand Up Take Action are now in the past. You can see the results of the Blog Action Day here. Stand Up Take Action will be holding their press conference tomorrow to talk about the results. I already provided input to both the folks at Blog Action Day about an idea for next year's Blog Action Day and my views to the Orkut group I belong to supporting EndPoverty2015.

I had two basic messages to the Orkut group. One was to send in what they had done as stories, pictures or links. This is actually a bit self-serving because I get so many useful and interesting resources this way. The other was to register online as having Stood Up Against Poverty Online if they couldn't make it to an actual event.

The idea of pushing Universal Education as a means of promoting the Millennium Development Goals has been running around my head for awhile. I did see one local event at a near by Long Beach magnet school on Understanding Global Poverty, then I realized that it was 6th to 8th graders. Now I am very happy that they are studying global issues, but it wasn't something I would want to attend unless I still had my own eighth grader. So I participated online with the the Australian Council for International Development Make Poverty History Campaign.

Looking over some of the other posts at Blog Action Day I found Lucy Barrow's EduBlog post on Blog Action Day - What does the world think about poverty? | ICT and TLC. I did not know what an ICT trainer was until now. Lucy's post lead me to a more interesting resources such as Edublogger, and the polling site Ask 500 People. The pertinent question was “Do you believe it is possible to make poverty history?” That led me back to to Make Poverty History.

Another new and interesting find was Blog Action Day posts by "association" bloggers courtesy of Lisa Junker via Acronym by on 10/17/08. I have to admit that I am not familiar with the use of the term Association as a profession, but it seems like they do great work and that there is a great deal to learn from them. The Bamboo Project seems to have a good deal to offer.

I particularly liked the insight from Kristin Clarke the day after October 15th “Blog Action Day”.

Can one day’s worth of blog posts fundamentally shift public discourse on a major social issue? All I can say is that issues definitely won’t be addressed if no one is talking about them.