Europe – Nov 21
– Economists Say Europe Facing ‘Lost Decade’
– Eurozone Crisis Q&A
– Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not
– Resources for Understanding the Crisis in Greece
Politics
Connecting the Occupy Movements and the Spanish May 15th Movement
Three elements have made the global movements of 2011 so powerful and different. 1) the extraordinary capacity to include all types of people 2) the impulse to move beyond traditional forms of the protest and contention, so as to create solutions for the problems identified 3) the horizontal and directly participatory form they take.
In the second phase of these movements, the focus shifts from acts of protest to instituting the type of change that the movements actually want to see happen in society as a whole. The capacity to create solutions grows as the movements expand in all directions, first through the appearance of multiple occupations connected among themselves, and then through the creation of—or collaboration with—groups or networks that are able to solve problems on a local level through cooperation and the sharing of skills and resources.
Occupy – Nov 21
– Growing Protest Repels Troops in Cairo
– Mellower Occupy Movement Grows in the Suburbs
– How is Occupy Wall Street “like” an API / Tim Pool acting as eyes and ears for thousands
– Occupy Maine and decentralization
Islands in an Expanding Sea
The following is the text of an address by Richard Heinberg to the Moana Nui Conference in Honolulu, November 12, 2011. Honolulu was concurrently hosting the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Conference; as a response to that secretive international trade meeting, the International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala Ka Po collaborated to organize Moana Nui.
Cool ideas – November 21
-Come together: Could communal living be the solution to our housing crisis?
-US millionaires say ‘raise our taxes’
-Brightfarms reduce supply chain … to about 10 vertical metres!
-Can a Clothing Factory Stay Competitive While Paying Workers a Living Wage?
Occupy – Nov 20
– An Uprising With Plenty of Potential (Tea Party strategist, professors, Cornell West)
– Here’s what attempted co-option of OWS looks like (Glenn Greenwald)
– Lobbying Firm’s Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine OWS
– Should the Occupiers Stay or Go?
Climate & environment – Nov 20
– Investment firm to encourage Arctic drilling
– Climate change: there is no plan B
– Battle to Save an Unsung Fish Critically Important to Ocean’s Ecosystem (menhaden)
– Obama’s Re-election Strategy Is Tied to a Shift on Smog
– BBC drops Frozen Planet’s climate change episode to sell show better abroad
Occupy – VOICES – Nov 20
– Awesome (lightshow on Verizon Building in NYC)
– Occupy and anarchism’s gift of democracy
– Occupiers: We’re Already Changing Politics
– OWS-inspired activism
– Corporate change of heart: “The Brotherhood of Man” (video)
United States – Nov 21
– The Keystone Victory
– NYT: Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census
– Zoobombing in Portland, Oregon (video of off-beat bicycle event)
– NassimTaleb: End Bonuses for Bankers
A world in protest
The global demonstrations of 2011 both highlight the reality of economic system-failure and reveal its linkages to the crisis of resource constraints. The result is a measure of the scale of change needed over coming decades.
This Changes Everything: How the 99% Woke Up
Something happened in September 2011 so unexpected that no politician or pundit saw it coming.
Charles Eisenstein on growing “the bright side of the Force”
Charles Eisenstein, the author of Sacred Economics, gave this inspiring talk to Occupy Wall Street, which is actually about growing “the bright side of the force”. This Star Wars inspired theme I couple with “the handicap principle“, which has a “bright” and a “dark” side; the selfish and the cooperative. Animals generally use just one of these forces in gathering acceptance and status, while humans are capable to use both or choose one. Or they don’t actually choose, they use the part of the force which is easiest to achieve within the current design of our societies. Unfortunately we have chosen to grow “the dark side of the force”, today growing these evil powers mainly through the ideologies of modernism and capitalism. As a result, community is almost gone.
