Who would have thought it would come so soon?
I paused our 2007/8 "Think Long Term" campaign about 1 month ago to look after some pressing projects --- a conference with the MacAthur foundation on "Credibility in the New News", looking after the launch of our Russia project ... and taking a 1 week break.
As I restart the "Think Long Term" campaign, it strikes me that the long term is right now. I started the campaign with the question of whether we are entering a new epoch. The pace and direction of change we have seen this first quarter keeps making this look likely. Consider these 6 factors:
- the Middle East, despite the casualty drop from the surge, is no closer to stability 5 years after Iraq's invasion
- events in Tibet reveal the full difficulty of our dealings with the Chinese super-power, and the huge amount of work that democracy and human rights still have to do around the world
- the financial crisis is as bad as the worst pessimists predicted, and may well lead to large-scale, serious, real repercussions
- the Net continues to offer potential for radical renewal
- climate change hangs over us as a sword of Damocles
- the US is in the throes of its most significant candidate-selection in recent history
The pace of change and scale of challenges demands that we Think Long Term. We have been continuing to do this at openDemocracy---analysing, commenting and connecting all these themes and more.
Please help us to continue with this. Donate in this campaign. We prefer recurrent donations, at whatever level you can afford, so we can continue to have our eye fixed on understanding this Long Term.
For those of you who are openDemocracy Members---that is, those who have made an individual donation to us, or who have written for us, or given your time in our volunteering program---I have now set up a forum, accessible here, where we can discuss the shape and future of openDemocracy. We have exciting plans ahead for oD's growth, so I look forward to discussing it with you on the Member forum.
Best wishes,
Tony Curzon Price
oD Editor-in-Chief
