As the Fall academic semester is coming to an end and as finals are being sweated over, I often remind students that political events don't follow an academic calendar not even a weekly calendar of a five-day work work-week. In fact as 2014 is coming to an end we are certainly at a period of increased uncertainty, as the US Congress is about to have a drastic make-over, Europe is bracing for another Greek political crisis, Russia is reliving the 1980s as a collapsing oil market and rising dollar is testing the mettle of the state. The ethno-religious confrontations of western Asia are matched by the tensions centered around China, Japan and India in the Indian-Pacific region. Meanwhile upcoming elections in Africa and South America will test political stability and continue to test legitimacy gap between the citizenry and the government in many of those societies. Persistent inequality, poverty and hunger, climate change, terrorism, immigration, pandemics and political violence continue to strain government institutions as contagion of failed states is spreading beyond the global south using the same paths of globalization.
The 2015 checkpoint of the Millennium Developmental Goals is fast approaching and from all indications none of the eight goals would have been met, even though progress has been made across the board none of the goals have been met. Nonetheless the realization that gender, education, health, hunger and interconnectedness are essential to global development and consequently less violence is essential. It is essential thus to constantly be engaged beyond the limitations of the calendar as we should become global citizens with all the responsibilities and rights that identification entails. The first step in being engaged is to understand the language of the world affairs and to break down the noise, which inhibits global citizenship and promotes defection. Reading and being informed is the only way to gain the comfort and the confidence necessary to participate.
Mark Bittman's opinion article in The New York Times, "Is it Bad Enough Yet?" encapsulates many of the points and the climate of unease, tension, and pressure that many in the peripheries of state and global economic structure are feeling, a sense of asphyxiation.
The 2015 checkpoint of the Millennium Developmental Goals is fast approaching and from all indications none of the eight goals would have been met, even though progress has been made across the board none of the goals have been met. Nonetheless the realization that gender, education, health, hunger and interconnectedness are essential to global development and consequently less violence is essential. It is essential thus to constantly be engaged beyond the limitations of the calendar as we should become global citizens with all the responsibilities and rights that identification entails. The first step in being engaged is to understand the language of the world affairs and to break down the noise, which inhibits global citizenship and promotes defection. Reading and being informed is the only way to gain the comfort and the confidence necessary to participate.
Mark Bittman's opinion article in The New York Times, "Is it Bad Enough Yet?" encapsulates many of the points and the climate of unease, tension, and pressure that many in the peripheries of state and global economic structure are feeling, a sense of asphyxiation.
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