New name for Stiff Kitten’s blog: Kenworthy News Media

Today, Stiff Kitten’s blog changes it’s name to Kenworthy News Media. The name-change has been underway for some time, as the previous name was not seen as reflecting the seriousness of the subjects published on the website. I initially started Stiff Kitten’s blog, when I was asked to make websites for several of the organisations that the organisation I worked for, Africa Contact, works with in Swaziland.

I had  never actually made a website before. I therefore made this website and called it Stiff Kitten’s blog for want of a better name – intending to delete it once I had learned how to make a blog. Needing a website to publish the articles I had started writing, I decided to keep the blog, however.

Daginstitutionerne for livet eller for erhvervslivet?

Er de børn som bliver passet i daginstitutionerne mål i sig selv, eller er de midler til at opnå erhvervslivets eller det offentlige systems mål? Søger vi at standardisere vores pædagogik og læring for at nå disse mål? Og er erhvervsmålrettet læring vigtigere end tryghed og selvudfoldelse i vuggestue- og børnehavealderen?

Efter at have arbejdet i lidt over et år i en integreret daginstitution, samt tidligere at have arbejdet som uddannet lærer i flere år, oplever jeg at vi bevæger os hen imod at børnene bliver standardiserede midler i et spil om økonomi og samfundets (læs: erhvervslivet og den politiske elites) ønsker, og i mindre og mindre grad mål i deres egen dannelses- og udviklingsproces.

Stiff Kitten’s blog reaches 50,000 hits!

Today, just before its second anniversary, Stiff Kitten’s blog reached the 50,000 hits-mark proving that developmental issues in Swaziland, Western Sahara and Southern Africa in general are indeed newsworthy. Not bad for a blog that I initially set up as a test run to practice my website-making skills, which is why I rather hastily chose the name “Stiff Kitten”.

“Stiff Kittens” was the first name given to one of my favourite bands, Joy Division.

Demonstranter vil have flere pædagogiske medarbejdere som lovet

Mange pædagoger, pædagogstuderende, forældre og børn var i dag mødt op til en happening og demonstration på Christiansborg Slotsplads under parolen ”3000 pædagogiske medarbejdere tilbage til børnene – er det en and? Hold S-R-SF-regeringen fast på deres løfte”.

De demonstrerende og demonstrationens arrangører – Fagforbundene FOA og BUPL, Pædagogstuderendes Landsforening, Landsforeningen for Socialpædagoger, og Københavns Forældreorganisation – kræver 3000 flere pædagoger og medhjælpere i vuggestuer, børnehaver og fritidsordninger allerede fra næste år.

Madvaner, børnebøger, og moderne filosofi skaber dyremishandling, global opvarmning, og sult

En glad ko, der græsser frit på marken. En gris der boltrer sig i mudderet. Et barn der leger med et kæledyr. Babyværelser, børnehaver, og skoler er fyldt med idealiserede billeder og bøger af dyrenes liv, der slet ikke står mål med hvordan vi egentlig behandler 99% af vores landbrugsdyr, eller fortæller historien om hvordan vores landbrugsproduktionsform skader miljøet og er en medvirkende årsag til den vedvarende sultkatastrofe i verden.

Det er mærkeligt at vores forestilling om dyr kan ændre sig så markant fra barndommen til vores voksne liv, samt fra den ene kategori af dyr – kæledyr, til den anden – de dyr vi spiser. Børn – og voksne for den sags skyld – har to indbyrdes uforenelige syn på dyr der henholdsvis kan, og ikke kan, spises.

Punk: the power of music

When second wave punk-band, the Exploited, one of punk rock’s most loud and ferocious bands, sang “punk’s not dead” on Top of the Pops in the early eighties, punk indeed seemed dead and gone – both musically and as an ideal.

Many of the original punk bands had either split or had become commercialized. And the ones that hadn’t seemed rather stale and dishonest in their insistence on retaining a ‘hollier than thou,’ DIY, inverted snobbism, self-conscious pose.

The youth fashion and music of the New Romantic wave of pop music, excessive glamour and make-up, escapism and self-indulgence was slowly but surely taking over from punk – although youth culture and sub-cultures, like all culture, is obviously porous and interdependent. 

But that punk should be dead is only true if punk is seen in a generalised and superficial way.

Getting the rid of the idea of humankind’s innate selfishness

There is presently a fundamental belief throughout much of the world, especially in the West, in the selfishness of humankind, a belief based on, amongst other things, the theories of leading Western thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, Sigmund Freud, Adam Smith, and Thomas Hobbes. This conviction either tends to make capitalism the sole applicable system for humankind or allegedly necessitates a strong central government, a state capitalism, to counter humankind’s innate selfishness.

Capitalist eco-sustainability is a contradiction in terms

”Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind”, wrote Henry Thoreau in Walden in 1854. What he could not possible have known back then was that these hindrances were to become an actual threat to the ecological sustainability of the planet itself.

Modern economics of practically every persuasion prescribe continuous growth as a necessity for a thriving economy, but the assumed productivity advantage of capitalism is linked to its lack of sustainability. The problem with this view is that it depends on our planet having an infinite amount of resources and capacity to absorb pollution. But the assumption that our consumption can continue to grow while our CO₂ emissions fall is highly improbable to say the least. Especially when capitalism has so clearly not been able to regulate itself to become more eco-friendly and sustainable. As leading climatologist Mark Maslin puts it,  “global warming is one of the few scientific theories that makes us examine the whole basis of modern society.”

Lucien van der Walt: counterpower to neo-liberalism

In neo-liberalism the expansion of the market has become an end in itself. The market must engulf all areas of society. Neo-liberalism is therefore much more of an all-embracing life philosophy than classic liberalism. The economic crisis of the early eighties, the collapse of the communist bloc, and the succession of right-wing governments throughout Europe and elsewhere helped entrench a belief in neo-liberalism as a universal remedy. This belief was epitomized by Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” theory and is only slowly beginning to crumble as people throughout the world slowly come to understand that neo-liberalism and neo-liberal policies have only brought inequality, waste, financial and political instability, and a potential imminent ecological disaster.

Is the Nordic welfare state sustainable?

The Danish Liberal Party, the party of Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, has pledged a “zero growth” policy in the public sector until 2020 – in effect a policy of further cutbacks on the welfare state. Danish Minister of Finance, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, is also intent on cutting back public spending. “It is time to tighten the reins”, he said during a governmental economical review on December 13.

Welfare states throughout the world are facing a continuous onslaught by liberal, conservative and social democrat governments alike, especially after the so-called financial crises of 2008.