Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Rising food prices leading to riots, protests, and revolts, mounting oil prices, mammoth worldwide unemployment, and a collapsed recovery — it looks like the perfect set of preconditions for a global tsunami of instability and turmoil. Events in Algeria and Tunisia give us just an inkling of what this maelstrom might look like, but where and how it will next erupt, and in what form, is anyone’s guess.
Reviewing the numbers on the Transition U.S. and U.K. sites is a useful indicator about its future growth and just how “viral” it is. Brownlee’s comment led me to peruse these sites. They show an initial increasing rate of growth and then a decelerating rate of growth
– Tunisia: People Power Succeeds Without Western Backing
– The First WikiLeaks Revolution?
– How Tunisian Facebookers Will Change Newsrooms
– Timing, success and meaning of the Tunisian uprising
– Tunisia’s military putting boot on ‘Jasmine Revolution’
– Jordanians march against inflation
Filmmaker Jon Cooksey is one funny guy, even while presenting the most serious problems facing humanity. In this fast-paced conversation, he gallops all over the map with five big problems, five big solutions, and a playful and heartfelt approach. Wacky, sobering, full of animations, with Jon in dozens of personas, “How to Boil a Frog” is a film to view and discuss with friends.
Could this be a popular revolution to topple the regime? … One thing is sure: there is a political awareness being created now among the Tunisian people and especially among the youth — a sense of historic possibility that what was deemed impossible may actually be within reach.
Across the Arab world, peoples are experiencing hope, and the regimes are afraid: all the Arab people and all the Arab regimes.
– Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali forced to flee Tunisia as protesters claim victory
– This Is The Wikileak That Sparked The Tunisian Crisis
– What’s Happening In Tunisia, Explained
The project of transforming society to use less resources, have less environmental impact, or emit less carbon, does not necessarily have anything to do with the project of making society more equal. Environmentalism != Socialism, to reduce it to a bumper sticker.
The events of a single day in three continents are a lesson in the interlocking crises that will define the decade.
When a movement for change is reduced to dreaming of a global dictatorship as the only remaining vehicle for its hopes, something has gone very wrong. For at least some elements of the climate change movement, that point has apparently arrived, and the peak oil movement could benefit from a close look at the mistakes that have driven the failure of climate change activism. With the aid of a large can of tuna and an electric can opener, the Archdruid explains.
A soil scientist considers how we might organize a truly ecological civilization:
– the critical characteristics that underlie strong ecosystems
– why societies are not adequately implementing ecological approaches
– how we might use characteristics of strong natural ecosystems as a framework to consider a future ecological civilization. (Excerpts)
America’s problem today is that almost nobody in any official position is willing to publicly recognize the real nature of the problem we face and start talking about realistic solutions. So long as our elected officials and our media continue to speak endlessly about the recovery that is supposedly underway and continue to hold out the hope that, by voting for this or that candidate, all will be well, the great charade will continue and the people will get madder and madder.
Despite blanket media coverage of Wikileaks and Julian Assange, there has been little discussion of the fact that Assange is merely one leader within a large and complicated social movement, the “free culture movement.” The present situation was predicted by visionary hackers over thirty years ago, and they set out to ensure the victory of free culture over proprietary culture, open organisation over closed, and privacy over Big Brother.
