FIDEL NO SE QUEDA CALLADO!

In his article, the 80-year-old revolutionary asserted that President Bush's support for using crops to produce ethanol for cars could deplete corn and other food stocks in developing nations, putting the lives of 3 billion people at risk worldwide.

YOU HOMERS OUTHEHOUSE LISTEN UP!

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ALGUNA SUGERENCIA?

Peak Oil. It's the greatest crisis of the 21st Century.

With a consumption rate of 85 million barrels every day, the world has, at best, only about 30 years left of oil.

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COMO esta La Movida En Mexico?

La Movida En Mexico

tiene que ser particular al Pais, puesto que nos regimos por medio de costumbres y valores.. buenas, malas o ambas

los invito a comparar sus Ideas en este blog para desmitificar "el poder" "el gobierno" "el sistema" y sean analizados y descompuestos en sub-partes y asi conozcamos mejor al que distorciona nuestro sentido comun el"PODER", que se esconde detras de su obscura naturaleza y origen, culpando a las victimas.

EL SISTEMA ES :
EL CAPITALISMO, EL SEXISMO, EL RACISMO, EL IMPERIALISMO, LA HOMOPHOBIA, EL ESTADO BUROCRATICO Y LA DOMINACION DE LA NATURALEZA

EL SISTEMA DOMINA:
GOBIERNO Y ECONOMIAS
FAMILIAS Y CULTURAS
LAS CIENCIAS Y LA PSICOLOGIA DEL INDIVIDUO



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esto no es un proyecto utopico

Que opinas de los "Yes Men"?

Los Yes Men son un grupo de activistas que practican lo que ellos llaman "Corrección de identidad". Pretenden ser personas poderosas y portavoces de organizaciones prominentes, aceptando las invitaciones recibidas en sus páginas web para aparecer en conferencias y programas de televisión; luego usan su autoridad recientemente adquirida para expresar la idea de que las corporaciones y organizaciones gubernamentales a menudo actúan en modos deshumanizantes hacia el público en general.
Su método usualmente es la sátira: haciéndose pasar por portavoces corporativos o del gobierno, suelen hacer comentarios chocantes y denigrantes sobre los trabajadores y consumidores, sólo para descubrir que, en vez de causar sorpresa o enojo, su broma es recibida con entusiasmo o de forma indiferente por su audiencia.
Los Yes Men han pretendido ser portavoces de organizaciones tales como la OMC, McDonald's, Dow Chemical, entre otras.


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What is your take on the yes men?

The Yes Men are a group of culture jamming activists who practice what they call "identity correction". They pretend to be powerful people and spokespersons for prominent organizations, accepting invitations received on their websites to appear at symposiums and TV shows. They use their newfound authority to express the idea that corporations and governmental organizations often act in dehumanizing ways toward the public. Elaborate props are sometimes part of the ruse.

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Indepth Arts News:
"6 Billion Perps Held Hostage: Artists Address Global Warming" 2007-03-11 until 2007-06-17 Andy Warhol Museum Pittsburgh, PA, USA
The exhibition, 6 BILLION PERPS HELD HOSTAGE! Artists Address Global Warming, showcases a diverse collection of art works, including textiles, videos, paintings, drawings, inflatables, photography and music, all directing attention to the topic of global warming. These works serve to raise awareness of our current state of affairs, including U.S. policy, natural disasters, the destructive power of corporations, and the harmful effects of carbon production in the food industry as well as initiate public dialog about the issue. The exhibition is a collection of works by Andy Warhol and contemporary artists, including The Yes Men, Preemptive Media, Jay Critchley, The Institute For Figuring, Hugo Kobayashi, Trevor Paglen, Marjetica Potrc, Cai Guo-Qiang, Greg Kwiatek, Bobby Pickett and Horseback Salad, Steffi Domike-Suzy Meyer-Ann Rosenthal, and Bob Bingham. 6 Billion Perps Held Hostage! will be on view from March 11 – June 17, 2007.
Known for impersonating some of the world’s most powerful corporate executives at conferences, on the web and on TV, The Yes Men, “standard issue revolutionaries,” expose the nastiness of evildoers such as Halliburton and Dow Chemical, targeting large corporations and leaders who put profits ahead of everything else. The Yes Men present SurvivaBalls, inflatable orbs whose communication systems, nutrient gathering capacities and defense mechanisms ensure the safety of corporate managers from Mother Nature.
Artist and activist Jay Critchley’s visual, conceptual, and performance work have traversed the globe, and have included theater, film, and music. Critchley invites us to Martucket Eyeland Resort and Theme Park, his most recent project that surfaced because of Cape Cod’s unrestrained development, traffic congestion, water degradation and air pollution. This vacationer’s paradise features wind and solar energy technology, a new and advanced power plant, an oil drilling installation, the exclusive Traffic Jam Carbon Club, Chapel of Our Lady of Nuclear Options, the Vanishing Oyster Bar & Grill, and the Climate Change Casino & Sweat Lounge. The piece received an award from the Boston Society of Architects and is accompanied by its own theme song, written and performed by the artist.
Also contributing to the exhibition are a local team of artists, Ann Rosenthal, Suzy Meyer, and Steffi Domike, who have created Food, Carbon & the Commons. By emphasizing the detrimental effects of carbon production induced by the transportation of foods, these artists urge viewers to think globally and consume locally grown food. Slovenian artist and architect, Marjetica Potrc, presents Pittsburgh in a Time of Global Warming, a project inspired by her two-month residency in Brazil that draws on her experience with Ashaninka Indians of the Amazon, and which urges Pittsburgh to connect its past and present to a possible future by melding communications technology with sustainable living practices. Potrc was the recipient of the 2000 Hugo Boss Prize. The Institute For Figuring, an educational organization dedicated to enhancing the public understanding of figuring techniques, smash together the worlds of crochet, non-Euclidean geometry, and tropical wonders with its Crochet Hyperbolic Coral Reef. Australian co-directors and twin sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim are crocheting a coral reef to mirror the Great Barrier Reef with which they grew up. Margaret will host a lecture and presentation of their work, as well as a public crochet demonstration. The I.F.F. is among many contemporary discoverers of traditional craft helping to re-establish its hipness, and transforming the relationship between artist and amateur, art and craft.
Complementing the diverse nature of the exhibition is Preemptive Media, a group of artists, activists and technologists who create their own style of beta tests, trial runs and impact assessments based on independent research. Artist, writer, and experimental geographer, Trevor Paglen, blurs the lines between social science, contemporary art, and geography to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched perspectives on the world. Pittsburgh native Greg Kwiatek’s large complex paintings of monstrous faces are derived from his photos of seaweed and other low-tide debris, and Hugo Kobayashi, a former comic strip writer for LA View, invites us to read six of his skinny paintings like unreeling film strips. By merging the graphic techniques of cartoon illustration and commercial design with a painterly brushstroke, Kobayashi crafts paintings that possess both personal and global relevance.
Bob Bingham, Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, creates art that incorporates systems of growth, live plants and natural materials with mechanical and electronic devices. Imagining a future where technology and nature exist in a symbiotic relationship, Bingham proposes architectural layouts that provide a solution to global warming. Known for his literally explosive work, Cai Guo-Qiang draws on a variety of symbols, contemporary narratives, traditions and materials such as feng shui, fireworks, Chinese medicine, dragons, roller coasters, and gunpowder. Having recently held a solo exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cai Guo-Qiang presents two monumental gunpowder drawings, Clear Sky Black Cloud and Black Fireworks: Project for IVAM, as well as three videos of his ephemeral explosion performances. Cai received the Golden Lion Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999. Bobby Pickett and Horseback Salad introduce The Climate Mash, a revised version of Pickett’s 1962 hit “Monster Mash” that reveals the "zombies" and "vampires" of global climate change. Featuring well-known Halloween characters based on photographs of President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, members of Congress and oil industry executives, The Climate Mash highlights the threat of global warming and the lack of response by the White House.
Several of Andy Warhol’s works, such as his Death and Disaster paintings and Endangered Species prints will be displayed along with those of the contemporary artists. Warhol’s Death and Disaster paintings reflect the prominence of images of disaster in the media, and reveal the numbing effect of the mass reproduction of such images. Warhol’s series of ten color screen prints of endangered animals from around the world create a dynamic tension between art and reality, and his paintings of flowers yield respect to that which is alive. Warhol’s Seismograph, created in response to a major earthquake in Italy, will be on view for the very first time, and complements 6 Billion Perps in its recognition of a natural disaster.
“The artists in this exhibition have radically different approaches to global warming, some works are politically charged, and others are purely aesthetic. 6 Billion Perps merges satirical comedy, traditional and non-traditional techniques to create a powerful and dynamic perspective on this very urgent issue. The works will be seen at an important time, as the topic of global warming is now so prominent, as it should be, given that the United States is by far the largest contributor of greenhouse gases in the world, and Pennsylvania ranks 3rd among the 50 states in these emissions…” says Matt Wrbican, Archivist at The Andy Warhol Museum.
Although extremely diverse in nature, all of the works in the show address global warming, the man-made disaster that is changing our planet, and threatening life as climates are transformed.





source


http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2007/03/12/34399.html





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Cow Picture by
Scott Pena

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Al Servicio de la Comunidad

Public Interest

 

Prepared by

 

Erick S. Pena

Environmental Planning Student

 

 

 

 

 

 

"So widely invoked and so ill-defined"

Michel P. Brooks

 

 

 

ENSP 311

Steven C. Orlick, Ph.D

Introduction to Planning

Spring, 2006

 

 

In benefit of the "public interest" I will contribute to this endless technical argument and for the Interest of the planning community I will give my thought on the whole concept behind "Public Interest". In addition I will discuss a controversial "case study" were the "public interest" comes to play. But first I will introduce this term by comparing Michel P. Brooks to Richard E. Klostermans' opinion, which seemed to have done to much analytical thought over these two words, especially the later.

On one side we have Klosterman, who wrote his article in 1985, called "A Public Interest Criterion" It is long and tedious and I don't recommend it to anybody that doesn't enjoy getting very confused while they read. Since I had to read the whole thing, I might as well talk about it, he starts out by giving a history background on the word "Public Interest" and states that even though the word has been around and played an important role in planning, "public interest is often rejected as a vague criterion whose application cannot be rationally defended or empirically verified". His paper "suggests" that --it is empirically verifiable-- just as much as Science. His argument is based in response to three fundamental objections "public Intrest" seems to have:

1. "Public interest can be interpreted in many conflicting ways." He argues that because it is conflicting it , it is "appropriate evaluative criterion, comparable to the criterion of scientific method"
   
2. "Need not been taken seriously because they are only value judgments which cannot be empirically tested or rationally defended." He argues that "not only empirical evidence is required to support value judgment but this evidence is restricted by the evaluation being made"
   
3. "Seems contrary for professional planners to use concepts such as public interest to impose their views on the public at large". He argues that an appropriate criterion whose use in evaluating public policies can be rationally defended.
   

In other words he believes that there is a public interest, "the collective and the individual interests" Nevertheless, after all he acknowledges that that public interest in some location will cause an opposite effect in some other location.

 

Brooks on the other hand, does not think Public Interest is possible. He writes that "Ideally a planner confronted with a difficult professional decision should be able to consult the public interest concept for guidance, using it as a template to differentiate the more public serving outcomes from those that are less so. Alas, such a template doe not exist." Brooks also considers other ideas from other others who have tried to put give a meaning to public interest. He mentions "any change which harms no one and which makes some people better off, must be considered to be an improvement" but he found out this is impossible. Then he analyzed another that says that "change is an improvement if those who gain evaluate their gains at a higher figure than the value which the losers set upon their losses" this idea seemed excellent in theory but when it came to real life it didn't exactly go through since it encountered "usual glitches". I could name more examples of peoples ideas on what public interest is or should be, but I limit going straight to what brooks thought "he suggested that in fact ,that values –those of the planner, and those of the diverse individuals and communities whom the planner serves—constitute the real bedrock of planning. Planners plan, ultimately because they hold values that impelled them to do so."

 

The opposing opinions of these two are actually not that opposing. It might just be that they are stuck with the word and can't seem to find different words to encompass the impossibility of satisfying all public.

 

Klosterman expects people to view public interest from his perspective, based on his complex explanations. If I am the average citizen and I hear the term public interest, I would interpret it from the simplest of all perspectives, –not Klostermans'--, that is to say it should interest all public, then I can either agree or disagree. (and surely, that will always be depending on my individual interest regarding the specific case). Therefore individual interest and public interest is the same thing for the common individual. On the other hand, the individuals that represent the common individuals are groups who make it part of their duty to represent the "public interest", therefore, they should see public interest from alternative perspectives. Brooks says that these people have the right to be part of the ones who make decisions on public interest since they are the ones who care to represent the people, and I agree with that. Also he states that the planner should be the one who makes decisions on public interest since he has values that ultimately led him to become a Planner, thus entailing him to represent "public interest"

 

I want to extend brooks idea, since it is what most fits mine, I think that Planners aren't standing up for themselves as respected professionals for some reason I'm still working on figuring out. It makes perfectly good sense to me that I can compare an architect and a (person) client to a planner and the city (client). If I hire an architect to design my house, it is because I don't know how to design houses and the architect does. Even though the architect has to work around my wants and needs for the design to be successful and fit for me, he is still the one with the expertise on space, function, and form (aesthetics). Nevertheless, I rarely hear of an architect being successful in doing this that is why most people have the idea that architects are only called upon to help the wife decorate the house. In the same manner a planner is a Professional and is called upon by the city for his expertise and interest (values). The planner should come up with the public interest based upon the cities wants and needs, just like an architect designs the house, thus it is permissible and expected that individual planners have a particular style and value some things more than others when making decisions on public interest.

 

I'm not saying that a planner should be omnipotent nor an architect should, especially when they have lost track of their profession and concentrated on their cities or companies revenues. If this was the case then these professionals should be judged, cited and reminded that their job is to do what is "best" for the Earth --then the community-- by a board that maintain the integrity of the profession. But I personally don't think this can ever be achieved in a truly ethical manner, since human representatives are easily blinded by power and common individuals prefer individual comfort to world reality; leaving all the silliness to the interest groups and those rare world conscious professionals battling for a Utopia. It's funny how once we realize that both Planners are a luxury that poor communities don't have, and Architects are usually a luxury for rich people. Nevertheless the fundamentals of both these professions are for the "Public Interest…" this just makes me wonder why there is so much confusion about the "public interest" situation –isn't it obvious that public interest stands for "Power Interest".

 

I am only a student with a naive mind, and currently quite ignorant in the politic system, therefore my opinion is not for you to believe or even to try to process, doing this might not be beneficial for your health; I recommend you to stop reading and check out the sales on your Sunday paper. Nevertheless, I do have to finish with the case study discussion I promised.

 

In this scenario I am the Downtown Development Planner of a City and I have been placed in charge of locating temporary showers and toilets downtown. To solve the problem I arrange for eight port-o-potties and site showers to be placed in alleys and be regularly serviced. –The problem with the homeless was solved. Nevertheless after a while commercial tenants want these removed since its hurting their sales, among other good reasons.

 

I have to write my report where I make a decision on the issue and "draft recommendations to the Task Force on The Homeless". Considering that I have been directed by the City Council to "conclude that the pilot project was a failure and to recommend immediate removal of the facilities" and that my boss just wants the problem to go away.

 

Those are the situations and the positions established to me. So I first go to my ethic code as a planner, but very quickly I eliminate those in order to get my job done (goal) so I look at my job description: the book says I should be concerned for all citizens including homeless, but since that raises an ethical issue again I discard it and proceed to the next (alternatives), now I look at my watch and stop looking for alternatives since I remember that I've been "directed" by the City Council to remove the facilities and It seems like he has the power in this case and there is nothing I can do about it. Thus, I write my report instructing to remove the facilities, and tell the "Task Force for The Homeless" that this project was a failure but we will continue working in future projects to resolve the homeless situation, in the name of public interest. This temporarily concludes this case study and my boss can hand me the next case he would "just like to go away". Later I might get an invitation from the city council to a reunion where I can meet other important, powerful people who need strings pulled in order to grow and generate more revenues and make the economy stronger in the name of Public Interest, and I can feel ethically good about all my actions by believing this.

 

 

En busca de un plan maestro mundial

City of Rohnert Park

General Plan Analysis

 

 

 

 

 

Prepared by

 

Erick S. Pena

Environmental Planning Student

 

ENSP 310

Wayne Goldberg

Introduction to Planning

Fall, 2006

 

 

 

 

Rohnert Park

was founded as a master-planned community on the former site of the Rohnert Seed Farm, located along the Northwestern Pacific railroad right-of-way. The original 1954 master plan was based on the "neighborhood unit" concept of clustering single-family homes around local schools and parks. The master plan featured eight neighborhoods, each with 200 to 250 homes, a 10-acre school, and a five-acre park.

 

A city's general plan has been described as its "constitution" for development – the framework within which decisions on how to grow, provide public services and facilities, and protect and enhance the environment must be made. California's tradition of allowing local authority over land use decisions means that the State's cities have considerable flexibility in preparing their general plans.

 

The Plan I analyzed was adopted in July 2000, it gives a fine capsule of Rohnert Parks History then, it summarizes the purpose of the plan in easily understood every day language, then it goes on to list the objectives of the general plan. I think this approach is good and comprehensible, unlike the previous plan from 1990, which is done in a more classic format, which is not a simple for the average citizen to follow. In any case, this General Plan of Rohnert Park is an revised and updated version of the 1990 Plan, therefore it is not quite clear to me if the new horizon year of the plan is for 10 more years or 20. It is clear in this Plan that General Plans typically look out 20 years in the future, what is not certain to me is if that is what is meant by Horizon Year of the Plan.

 

The most important elements in the plan, Just by looking at the Table of Contents I would think it to be "hosing", simply because it has more sections on this theme. Nevertheless, It is not very far from "health and safety"; "open space, parks and public facilities" and "land use and growth management". Giving "transportation"; "community design" and "noise" issues a lesser value of importance.

But by looking at the "General Plans and Objective list" and assuming that they'd be listed in an importance manner, we have the first three listed relating to Growth:

• Establish a 20-year Urban Growth Boundary
  
• Keep the city's small-town feel
  
• Provide for slow, managed, and predictable growth
  

And by reading the first line in this Chapter 2: Land Use and Growth Management/2.1"Background and context":

"Land use and growth management represent the prime planning concerns of most Rohnert Park residents." I fall out of any doubt on that this is the most important element of the Plan. Therefore concluding that the community especially values the growth problem that Rohnert Park is going through and therefore have a comprehensive and consistent plan for a long term solution.

This chapter as well as the rest of them are not complicated to read nor to understand, as I mentioned earlier, It provides simple non-complex words, it is brief, and gives plenty of facts, data and charts without overdoing it, thus making it actually interesting and also being completely clear on what the community vision is.

Before opening it, I thought I would primarily address Growth issues, since that is the biggest issue in California in general, and the world, for that matter. But I was curios to find out if a little town Rohnert Park) that seemed to me (coming from Mexico City) very rural, comfortably sustained and surrounded by nature and farmlands, to have so extravagant issues that where particular to the area and not only particular, but regarded as most important, for example Increasing and fomenting bicycle use, since it is small and it's a town that has an enormous relationship with the university it hosts. Nevertheless, even though it does mention it as one of the plans objective, it is not primordial. I'd like to compare this plan objectives with any big city ones and see the difference in values. Since personally I am a very skeptical individual, and thus I have a feeling there I won't find much difference.

Although I can't say since I haven't done it yet, but I could imagine myself being the city council of SFO and taking this list of objectives, adding a few objectives that are current issues and characteristic of the city and disregarding the few issues that where only applicable to Rohnert Park, and with this having the community satisfied.

I acknowledge that every General Plan has a lot of technical work put into it. I give these fellow analysts and researchers the credit they deserve, I am not trying to disaccredit anybody, in fact I hope they got their pays worth, for a is a very tedious and at times monotones job, what they do. Nevertheless, given the opportunity to view the world from a students perspective, I am not concerned really for who probably put together about 80 to 90 percent of the pages inside these City General Plans, but for those who decide on what the plan objectives are and how they come up on deciding them.

I have been introduced to the term "Public Interest" and I am not convinced a simple and "subjective" term, like the latter, is convincing enough to me, to give "it" the trust and faith of the city or my city ,if it was the case. Also we have talked in class about how the community is the one that proposes its objectives based on its "wants and needs", nevertheless I quite often found things to not add up right….somewhere in the process of analyzing all this, my reasoning just blurs and the communities' interest become "what the city wants the communities' interests to be". Because this is only my hypothesis waiting for a few brave planners to explore, and because I am in this particular quest, it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to try and suggest an improvement to the current Rohnert Park City General Plan or on any Plan, before I am certain that "Starting from Scratch" isn't the best step to make. After this --focusing on the most important environmental issues is primordial, but not how it affects the particular city, but how the city affects the whole World." Once this is established we can plan our cities based on our limitations.

Since our limitations are real, we have learned ways to hide or overlook them, even though growth is a limitation, and its most valued objective in the analyzed General Plan, what I am proposing is a plan that is not only comprehensive only in terms of "the entire incorporated area" and the "cities it connects" or even what effect it has on California, or the whole United States, but one that ---is geographically comprehensive with the whole world. Taking into account that all humans --even if they aren't Americans-- deserve the same right to have all the General Plans in the world working with each other, "interrelated", —in an equal manner. Therefore, before doing any kind of little community or big city plan –I need to come up with a World Plan.

Hopefully others will join.

 

 

 

 

 

M. p>BRookS

The critical question is: How much freedom con we afford to sacrifice to allow governmental planning function to operate