Activism

#OccupyWallStreet – Oct 2

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– Occupy Wall Street: FAQ
– The Bankers and the Revolutionaries (NYT’s Nicholas Kristof gives it a thumbs up)
– Keep It Simple, Keep It Real
– Declaration of the Occupation of New York City (official statement)
– A Tale of Two Rallies
– Coverage by Guardian, BBC, NY Times
– Young activist covers Occupy Boston

#OccupyWallStreet and the new forms of revolt

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– NYT: Wall Street Occupiers, Protesting Till Whenever
– We Are the 99 Percent – protestors tell their stories
– The Nuts and Bolts of #OccupyWallStreet
– The Danger of Simplicity
– Leninist assumptions and cult hierarchies
– Murdoch and Berlusconi: the fall of two media empires and the network multitudes

The overburden: Review of “The Last Mountain”

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The film The Last Mountain has it all: a human story of ordinary citizens fighting a soulless and unaccountable coal corporation; an urgency as the last mountain in the Coal River Valley is eyed by Big Coal for surface mining; a history and context for the people’s claim to the rights of the commons; activism in the form of petitioning the government as well as civil disobedience; the role of business, profit, labor and economy as labor power is eroded and corporate profits soar; the eco-system, heritage, and culture of the region; and a new way forward proposed by the people themselves. It’s the best documentary I’ve seen on mountain top removal. But really, it’s about so much more and has come together perfectly as a gestalt, a meme for our times.

The Last Mountain, June 2011, 95 minutes, Dada Films, Directed by Bill Haney.

Abandoning the middle class, governments lose legitimacy

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People who care about climate change and peak oil have long despaired of convincing their national governments to take decisive action or even, in some cases, to acknowledge that there’s a problem. Now, the world’s democracies seem to be losing the confidence of their citizens to deal with the economic crisis too.

Review: The Global Warming Reader, edited and introduced by Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben’s latest book is a well-chosen and arranged collection of climate-related writings by the likes of James Hansen, Al Gore and George Monbiot, which McKibben edits and introduces. Significantly, the book contains writings by Inhofe and his ilk as well, the better to understand “the lines of attack climate deniers have used over and over,” in McKibben’s words,

Denmark’s new government more green than red

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(Social-democrat Helle Thorning-Schmidt was just elected Denmark’s first female prime minister.)

Often visitors to Denmark express respect for our wind mills and green initiatives. Our country is mentioned in documentaries and international news for our sustainable solutions and bicyclists. The truth is, for the past ten years we have been showing off efforts of the Social Democratic 1990s. Since then Denmark has been left behind by other Scandinavian and European countries on being green.

But with the new elections Denmark is now back among the most ambitious of nations. And the first half of 2012 the new Danish government will hold Presidency of the Council of the European Union. So, see you in a second, green Europe.