Activism

Alternative finance radicals: Infusing rebellion with entrepreneurial creativity

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The Left has traditionally been a thought-leader in alternative economics. Many individuals who self-identify as ‘left-wing’ are at their best when providing cutting and insightful macro-level critiques of structural flaws in economic systems, often from a justice perspective.

At their worst though, these critiques can break down into moralistic martyr-complexes underpinned by a chronic sense of jaded victimhood. A side-effect of this can be a muted ability to recognise when and where positive change is occurring.

Tedium and black magic: the trouble with Energy Descent Action Plans (EDAPs)

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At the heart of the current Transition Town process is the creation and implementation of the so called Energy Descent Action Plan for each locality. The Totnes group spent two years — 2 whole years! — on creating their EDAP. I am not the first person to wonder if the time, effort and money could not have been more profitably spent on actually “doing energy descent.”

America: origins of an empire

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To understand how America’s empire works and why its fall is imminent, it’s useful to trace the trajectory of its rise. That’s a complex matter, because the United States may be a single political unit but it’s never been a single culture or country, and its empire emerged out of a long struggle between competing visions of national expansion. To understand those, it’s necessary to begin with the early days of European settlement — and the demographic cataclysm that preceded it.

Review: Petroplague by Amy Rogers

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We have a brand-new entrant to the oil-eating-bug-runs-amok tradition: the self-published novel Petroplague. It’s a Crichton-esque thriller written by microbiology professor-turned author Amy Rogers, who says she aims to “blur the line between fact and fiction so well that you need a Ph.D. to figure out where one ends and the other begins.” The plot involves a batch of experimental, oil-hungry bacteria inadvertently loosed upon Los Angeles, which proceed to wreak a near biblical swath of destruction. Part ecology lesson and part cautionary tale, Petroplague is an entertaining entrée into the subject of oil depletion and its implications for society, human health and the environment.

‘An excess of democracy’

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Occupy and the direct action movements of today have much in common with the radical movements of the 1960s/70s. Both stress cultural as well as economic and political equality and insist on the possibilities of self-government. Can the new generation move beyond the successes and failures of the past, to develop an alternative political economy?

Commons activism goes global

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Let me start by giving a brief speculation about why people from so many backgrounds are embracing the commons. First of all, it is a way for people to assert the integrity of their existing communities, or to try to reclaim that integrity. The commons also provides a way to assert a moral relationship to certain resources and people that are endangered by market forces. It’s a way of saying, “That _________ (water, air, software code, cultural tradition) belongs to me. It is part of my life and identity.”

Our co-owned future

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The explosive force of Occupy Wall Street—and more than a thousand other local efforts—offers hope that a movement committed to long-term change might one day achieve a fundamental transformation of the American political-economic system. Quietly, a different kind of progressive change is emerging, one that involves a transformation in institutional structures and power, a process one could call “evolutionary reconstruction.”

Tactics and strategy at the Strait of Hormuz

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About a month ago, when Iranian officials started venting the idea of closing the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, Western media was prompt in reviewing the events of 1981. At that time, Iranian forces mined the Strait and engaged commercial vessels with rubber speedboats in what was largely seen as a pathetic attempt to control the area. The media seems to think that Iranian officials are talking about using similar tactics today. In reality, the military technology deployed by Iran in the region is completely different today, creating a strategic scenario totally different from that of 30 years ago.

How empires fall (including the American one)

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The movements of 2011 like Occupy and Arab Spring gave new life to the whole tradition of nonviolent action and revolution. It may be the nature of such nonviolent movements that they come as a surprise, because at their very root seems to be a sudden change in the hidden sphere of the human heart and mind that then becomes contagious. It’s as though below the visible landscape of politics, whose permanence and strength we characteristically overestimate, there’s this other landscape we rather pallidly call the world of opinion.