Politics

ODAC Newsletter – Dec 9

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OPEC head Abdullah El-Badri warned European leaders on Wednesday against imposing sanctions on Iranian oil, stating that the 865,000 barrels a day which goes mostly to Southern Europe would be difficult to replace. Global supply is already tight and oil prices remain stubbornly high despite the chronic Euro-crisis…

Occupy Blog: The Spanish Election Rejection

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The streets of Barcelona appear deceptively calm at first sight. Fashionable people stroll the streets, shopping bags in hand, while others stop to drink a glass of wine at a sidewalk cafe. These luxurious images project a sense of prosperity onto the streets of Barcelona, but underneath the surface, a struggle rages. The 15 May Movement that captured the global imaginary just six months ago and encouraged people all across the world to occupy public space and hold massive democratic assemblies is no longer limited to the central square. Now, they are everywhere.

Good news from Brussels?

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The news overnight from Brussels is that the 17 euro countries, led in this particular respect by France, have refused to allow the UK to exclude itself from their emerging plans to regulate financial transactions. And this sticking point may well limit the influence of the UK on the development of the central Eurozone programme of fiscal harmonisation.

Behind the Durban Blame Game

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Why did the Durban climate talks fail? Ultimately, the culprit is the near-universal pursuit of economic growth. All the major players want growth: the US, because it’s still pulling out of a recession; China, because it knows 10 percent annual growth can’t go on forever, but is trying to avoid a hard landing; Europe, which is trying to pull out of its sovereign debt spiral. The US and China, in particular, know that fossil fuels have given them growth in the past, and are especially reluctant to give them up now.

Climate – Dec 9

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– NYT’s Andrew Revkin: Naomi Klein’s Inconvenient Climate Conclusions
– Obama Will ‘Reject’ Attempt to Restart Keystone XL
– David Roberts: The brutal logic of climate change
– The 1 Percent and the Fate of the Earth

US college student shames US climate delegation in Durban

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Abigail Borah, a Middlebury College student and climate activist from the United States, was ejected from a plenary session at the COP17 climate summit this morning after interrupting introductory remarks by US chief negotiator, Todd Stern. Her statement was met with loud applause from the crowd. Stern later shifted his position — or at least his language — on a timetable for a new set of international talks.

Economics – Dec 8

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– Mandelbrot Beats Economics in Fathoming Markets
– OECD inequality report: countries across the developed world are getting less equal
– Financial Times prints bank proposals from Occupy Wall Street
– ‘Crowdfunding’ Legislation Would Allow Businesses And Start-Ups To Use Internet To Find Investors, Access More Capital
– The Other 99 Percent: How the US Compares

From the farm to the occupation

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This land will live again. It will live in America’s countryside, in her mountains and rivers, as well as in her cities. To me, that’s what the Occupy movement is all about—finding ways for all living things to thrive. And for those of us in the grassfed farming community, that’s what we’re all about too, even if we don’t all agree with protests.

Who Are The 99%? Occupy Research aims to find out

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Since the start of Occupy Wall Street, a recurring question in the media and among the Occupiers has been: precisely who among the 99% is taking to streets around the world to protest economic inequality? The simple answer–that it’s a wide array of citizens from different backgrounds who are disenfranchised from the political and economic systems that benefit a very small elite–isn’t particularly useful for a burgeoning social movement. Many journalists and academics have attempted to paint a more definitive picture of the Occupiers, scouring tweets and hashtags, aggregating data from their armchairs. But this approach is in opposition to Occupy’s intentionally horizontal organizational structure, which prizes consensus among large groups of Occupiers and aims to let no voice go unrepresented.