Praying for the Earth

We are living in a time of ecological devastation, in which our materialistic culture has had a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem. Our rivers are toxic, the rainforests slashed and burned, vast tracts of land made a wasteland due to our insatiable desires for oil, gas and minerals. We have raped and pillaged and polluted the earth until it is in a dangerous state of imbalance we call climate…

Elza S. Maalouf

Elza S. Maalouf is an Arab‐American futurist and cultural development specialist whose work is focused on cultural, business and political reform in the Arab world. She lectures widely in the West on the complexities of the Muslim world and widens the horizon of understanding of Western cultures in the East.   Elza is a former attorney and corporate executive. Her innovative approaches to…

Said E. Dawlabani

Said Elias Dawlabani is a cultural economist, public speaker, trainer and writer specializing in the Gravesian approach to value systems and cultural change. He is the author of the 2013 book MEMEnomics, The Next-Generation Economic System. His writings in the field of finance have been compared to those of Peter Lynch, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet. His work has been translated to several…

“Another Peacekeeping” Is Possible

Introduction:  Peacekeeping is a most essential link between peacemaking—that is, all the diplomatic negotiations and mediation work that results in signing peace treaties—and peacebuilding—that is, solving conflicts and addressing their deep causes that often have been missing in peace processes. Peacekeeping involves stopping the war and deterring violence during fragile…

Another Peacekeeping is Possible – Introduction and Footnotes

Over the past 60 years, civil society, together with governments, has played an increasingly important role in human development (e.g., poverty alleviation) and human rights.  Building on a foundation laid by Gandhi, Badshah Khan and their contemporaries, civil society has recently entered the field of human security (in its narrower meaning of safety/physical…

The Changing Nature of Human Security

Editorial The world is in serious trouble and we care. When one billion of us do not have safe water to drink and one billion of us go hungry every day, it is time to ACT.  It is time to act when degraded and eroding soil is destroying 38,610 square miles of productive land every year. Many of us left the solution of such travesties to our governments, only to discover that the political…

Toward a Common Theory of Value | Part One: Common Being

Riddle of the Commons:  Does Property Have Properties? Thus begins an inquiry on the meaning of value in economic philosophy. This series of articles will attempt to reconceptualize the social and natural order of economics through an analysis of the commons—the natural, genetic, physical, social, cultural and intellectual resources which people manage by negotiating their own norms…

Rolf C. Carriere

Rolf Carriere is currently Senior Adviser (pro bono) to Nonviolent Peaceforce, and serves of two boards (Millennium Institute in Arlington, VA, and Union of International Associations in Brussels). He worked from 1971 till 2005 with FAO, UNICEF and World Bank, mostly in Asia, where he focused on challenges of ending hunger and malnutrition, maternal mortality reduction, scaling up primary health…