Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Gene Logsdon I don’t hear anyone explicitly suggesting that the culprit in our economic woes is money interest even though all of our major religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, insisted for centuries that interest on money was immoral. ALL interest on money was usury. And supporting that view, philosophers and writers from every culture and era cautioned over and over again the folly of borrowing money.
It happens that just hours before, Adbusters magazine—which originally called for the occupation—promulgated “Tactical Briefing #18: Occupy the High Ground.” It suggested that perhaps the time has passed for the movement to be so focused on encampments, and that it might move on to bigger and better things instead. This is a notion that has come up repeatedly in my recent conversations with early organizers; after almost three months, they feel, the movement is starting to outgrow the occupation.
In my earlier post a few days ago, I wrote about the background to the widespread privatisation of public space. In this second part I look at some of the activist and political responses.
In an epoch when going to extremes has become one of the most popular habits in American culture, the very idea that a middle ground might be a more sensible place to stand is about as popular as garlic aioli at a vampire convention. Still, the obsession with binary thinking that’s done so much to back America and the industrial world into its present corner is unlikely to get us back out of it. With the help of a Greek philosopher, an Austrian mystic, and two famous California cities, the Archdruid explores some of the alternative territory.
If we adopt solar and wind as major components of our energy infrastructure as we are weaned from fossil fuels, we have to solve the energy storage problem in a big way. An earlier post demonstrated that we do not likely possess enough materials in the world to simply build giant lead-acid (or nickel-based or lithium-based) batteries to do the job. Comments frequently pointed to pumped hydro storage as a far more sensible answer. Indeed, pumped storage is currently the dominant—and nearly only—grid-scale storage solution out there. Here, we will take a peek at pumped hydro and evaluate what it can do for us.
The financial meltdown of 2008 highlighted the role that banking systems play in the world economy, bringing financial and monetary instability into focus as a driver of collapse. Not since the Great Depression of the 1930s have so many people been aware of how banks make the system work—or don’t.
As the credit noose tightens, it is not surprising that commentators are seeking examples of countries who found their way out of unrepayable debts – and lived to tell the tale. In the case of Argentina, whose debts at the time of its default in 2001 were $81bn. – a record for the time although dwarfed by current debts – life after debt has proved to be a very positive experience.
Last week, the flashbulb explosion met the population explosion, as news cameras clicked at several newborns identified as the seventh billion humans in the world. Now that the global birthday party is over, it’s time for new thinking about preparing food for a party of seven billion.
The GA, and the break-out groups that meet in the Atrium at 60 Wall Street are blessed with the Quaker tools now refined by waves of protest movements: the Suffragettes, Satyagraha, Lunch Counter Sit-Ins, No-nukes Affinity Groups, and Battle in Seattle. What doesn’t work? Violence. Power Trips. Hierarchies. What works? Good facilitation, timekeeping, note-taking, hand-signs, open agenda, global café, conflict transformation, consensus. What came out of the conventions at the turn of the 18th to 19th Century was protection of slavery, disenfranchisement of women, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and the preservation of an elite ruling class, especially the banksters. What will emerge from this process may also be flawed when seen in hindsight centuries hence, but it will be progressively less so.
– Police Clear Zuccotti Park of Protesters
– Court Order: City Can’t Keep Protesters Out of Zuccotti Park
– Did Bloomberg do Occupy Wall Street a favor?
– Press Suppression at Occupy Wall Street Raid
I love everything about food, from fork to fork, and I adore eating from my terrain. So I recently spent a week trying to eat and drink only from within Sussex as a personal experiment and also to test the boundaries of what’s possible.
US production of crude oil peaked in 1970 at 9.637 mbpd (million barrels per day) and has been in a downtrend for 40 years. Recently, however, there’s been a tremendous amount of excitement at the prospect of a “new era” in domestic oil production. The narratives currently being offered come in the following three forms: 1) the US has more oil than Saudi Arabia; 2) the US need only to remove regulatory barriers to significantly increase production; and 3) the US can once again become self-sufficient in oil production, dropping all imported oil to zero.
