Opinion (Valentina Matvienko, Russian Federation Council Speaker): “The EU countries’ closer cooperation with Russia could help resuscitate the economy of Europe, Valentina Matviyenko said during the 14th session of the Association of European Senates in Paris.

“Delivering her speech at the Luxemburg Palace, Matvienko called the current global economic crisis ‘a completely new phenomenon’ which she said could be resolved with the help of fresh ideas and approaches. She signaled Moscow’s readiness to help Europe grapple with the economic crisis.”

My Comment: It is encouraging to hear about the insights of decision makers, but the problem is that they do not know what decisions they need to make.
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Opinion (Jason Palmer, Science and technology reporter, BBC News): “A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers. The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation….

“The team’s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one. The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

“The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

“’In a large number of modern secular democracies, there’s been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion’…The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the ‘non-religious’ category.

“They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.

And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction….

“Obviously we don’t really believe this is the network structure of a modern society, where each person is influenced equally by all the other people in society,” Dr Wiener said.

“However, he told BBC News that he thought it was ‘a suggestive result.’

“’It’s interesting that a fairly simple model captures the data, and if those simple ideas are correct, it suggests where this might be going.’

“’Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.’”

My Comment: Since we are in a dynamic process of the continuous growth of egoism in us, a person constantly asks himself how this or that behavior is profitable for him, and if his egoism finds no benefit for itself, then this behavior is rejected. Thus, we always choose (sort) new actions, goals, environment, etc.

Once, our egoism brought us into religion, but today it has outgrown it and takes us from beliefs not supported by reality. It requires proof, and if there is none, it cannot hold itself in obedience without an apparent benefit for itself. That is why all religions will die out and will be replaced by cultures. In essence, even today, every religion is mostly the culture of this or that nation, its customs, but not faith.
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In the News (Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s Deputy Director of Education, from OECD Education Today):  “OECD’s PISA [Project for International Students Assessment] study shows that there is also a significant negative relationship between the money countries extract from national resources and the knowledge and skills of their school population (see figure)…this is a global pattern that generally across 65 countries that took part in the latest PISA assessment. Exceptions such as Canada, Australia and Norway, that are rich of natural resources but still score well on PISA, have all established deliberate policies of saving these resource rents, and not just consuming them. Today’s learning outcomes at school, in turn, are a powerful predictor for the wealth and social outcomes that countries will reap in the long run.

“One interpretation is that in countries with little in the way of natural resources – other examples are Finland, Singapore or Japan – education has strong outcomes and a high status at least in part because the public at large has understood that the country must live by its knowledge and skills and that these depend on the quality of education. So the value that a country places on education seems to depend at least in part on a country’s view of how knowledge and skills fit into the way it makes its living. Placing a high value on education may be an underlying condition for building a world-class education system and a world class economy, and it may be that most countries that have not had to live by their wits in the past will not succeed economically and socially unless their political leaders explain why, though they might not have had to live by their wits in the past, they must do so now.

“The most troubling implications of these data relate to the developing world. Many of the countries with below-average GDP succeeded to convert their national resources into physical capital and consumption today, but failed to convert these into the human capital that can generate the economic and social outcomes to sustain their future.

“In short, knowledge and skills have become the global currency of 21st century economies. But there is no central bank that prints this currency, you cannot inherit this currency and you cannot produce it through speculation, you can only develop it through sustained effort and investment by people and for people.”

My Comment: Kabbalah states that the desire is at the heart of nature, and all of life is its development, realization and correction. And if the desire is prevented from developing, it feels its sufficiency and a person does not develop. He who increases knowledge, increases sorrow, but he who does not feel sorrow, does not multiply knowledge.
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In the News (from Yahoo News): “Climate-related disasters have displaced more than 42 million people in Asia over the past two years… “Asia and the Pacific is the global area most prone to natural disasters…

“About 31.8 million people in the region were displaced by climate-related disasters and extreme weather in 2010 — a particularly bad year — including more than 10 million in Pakistan owing to massive flooding.

“A further 10.7 million were forced to flee their homes last year, it said, warning that such events will become more frequent with climate change…

“Asia has six of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change, with Bangladesh and India in the top two places on a list that also includes Nepal, the Philippines, Afghanistan and Myanmar.”

My Comment: Due to the crisis, it is doubtful that these countries can overcome the problems we are facing because of the coming climate catastrophes. By the way, it is barely indicated anywhere what climate changes are threatening the USA and Europe, and especially France and England!
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On March 19, 2012 at 6:30 P.M. Jerusalem time the Mutual Guarantee movement is holding a round table discussion in Iksal village, the Arab local council in northern Israel. The topic of the discussion is “Education: for the Sake of Achievement or Values.”

Among the participants are Mr. Abed El-Salam Darawshe, head of a local council, Dr. Orna Simchon, the Director of the Ministry of Education in northern Israel, and others. As usual, the discussion will be broadcast live on the Internet.
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Opinion (from AgoraVox): The crisis, which the world is experiencing today, is not financial, but a system crisis; it undermines the whole system of capitalism as an ideology, which espouses the notion that the sum of individual interests matches the collective interests.

“This system no longer works. That is why all the economists of the world cannot do anything about it. And that is why it is absolutely in vain to expect the return of economic growth, jobs, and profitability.

“What can follow capitalism? We need to build a new ideology and solve other problems, concerning the social life of human beings: Is money so necessary, what is democracy, what are the real needs of people, and so on?

“Nations do not need economists with their empty calculations, but a new ideology that will be able to create all conditions for a dignified life, regardless of the birthplace or social status. A life free from poverty is what all people need. And capitalism is simply unable to give that to them.
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In the News (from Time): “The most important economic story of the first half of the 21^st century is how China is changing the global economy. There are a lot of benefits to this change – hundreds of millions of new consumers to drive global growth, fresh opportunities for entrepreneurship and job creation and heightened demand for everything from American corn to Australian iron ore. But not all of the impact is seen as positive. Low-skilled workers in the West have already felt the pain of competition from China’s manufacturing machine. As Chinese industry advances, it will present an even stiffer challenge to the competitiveness of the US, Europe and Japan. And as the Chinese economy continues to develop, new threats to the world’s established economic order will emerge. …

“Simply put, China’s SOEs [state-owned enterprises] are potentially poised to alter the rules of global economic competition. …

“As China remains wedded to its version of ‘state capitalism,’ Beijing’s support for large SOEs, and the impact that has on global economic competition, is likely to become an even bigger issue in the years to come.”

My Comment: Thus, they will gradually realize that not competition, but only a self-complementing system and solidarity, is possible in the world community.
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Opinion (Sylvie Brunel, writer, geographer, Liberation, France): “For five centuries, the world has lived under the domination of Europe, which imposed its ‘universal’ values, democracy, human rights, human equality, right to development.

Today the world looks at the decline of the West and claims the right to rewrite history of subordination to the West. Through violence (colonization, slave trade), Europe has imposed its supposedly universal values to prove its supremacy, but begot only beggars and outcasts.

“The homeless are beggars, single-parent families, all those who struggle to find their place in an individualistic and materialistic world. Outcasts are foreigners, old people, condemned to loneliness.

“What is civilization in which one finds his place only as if he is in the prime of life, physically attractive, fit, well off, and male?

“Africans consider it unacceptable the way we treat the elderly. Muslims make fun of our criticism of polygamy, but our men make polygamy a norm de facto.

“Asians are stunned by how the individual can put greed above the interests of the group.

“There is more solidarity between slum dwellers than between developed states, drowning in bureaucracy.

“Inequality has exploded. The work has been devalued against the omnipotence of money and return on capital.

“Barbarism is bursting from us when we fight against those who practice neither our language nor our religion, conduct ‘just’ wars, which cause only chaos and violence, wars for oil and access to the sources of energy in Africa.

“The West, sure of its success, is everywhere, with impunity trampling on the value of those people whom supposedly it came to civilize.

“How dare we say that one civilization is superior to others if it is built on arrogance, xenophobia, conquest, domination and exclusion?”

My Comment: Of course, Western civilization, as the most egoistically advanced and developed, has conquered the whole world and imposed its own values. But the rest of the world is not a good example to follow. It is time for the development of a new civilization: universal and integral, when all nations, while remaining in their own cultures, for the sake of survival unite above all the differences in order to be similar to Nature.
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In the News (from ScienceDaily): “A neuro-imaging study shows that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered cash to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold.

“‘[The] experiment found that the realm of the sacred — whether it’s a strong religious belief, a national identity or a code of ethics — is a distinct cognitive process’…The results were published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

“Sacred values prompt greater activation of an area of the brain associated with rules-based, right-or-wrong thought processes, the study showed, as opposed to the regions linked to processing of costs-versus-benefits. …

“Research participants who reported more active affiliations with organizations, such as churches, sports teams, musical groups and environmental clubs, had stronger brain activity in the same brain regions that correlated to sacred values.”

Comment: Decisions regarding what is correct and incorrect are established by the environment and have a greater weight than individual decisions regarding pleasure and reward. That is why the only way to change oneself is to choose an appropriate environment.
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In the News (from The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer): “The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer sees an unprecedented nine-point global decline in trust in government. In twelve countries, it trails business, media, and non-governmental organizations as the least trusted institution. …

“Throughout the world, people blamed their governments – more than any other institution – for the financial and political crises they endured in 2011. In seventeen of the 25 countries surveyed, government is now trusted by less than half to do what is right. In Europe, trust in government dropped by more than ten points in France, Spain, and Italy.

“Driven by steep drops in countries in the heart of the eurozone economic crisis, trust in business fell three points globally to 53 percent. …

“The 2012 Trust Barometer’s deep dive into the 16 attributes of trust finds that the factors responsible for shaping current business trust levels (47 percent) are largely tied to business competence – and that those that will build future trust are more societally focused. Listening to customer needs, treating employees well, placing customers ahead of profits, and having ethical business practices are all considered more important than delivering consistent financial returns – and indicate that the path forward entails continuing to do the basics well while also adopting shared values.”

My Comment: People are becoming increasingly aware that the ongoing crisis is a “crisis from above,” a crisis of the entire world of the past. This is indicated by the absence of clear plans about how to resolve it. This is primarily a crisis of development, the death of a consumer society, the race after the percentage of annual growth, deliberate accelerated depreciation of goods, production of unnecessary things and pressure to consume more.

While people are concerned about the economic crisis, there are crises of education and upbringing, and government and family. That is why this is a crisis of the entire system of our civilization.
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