Politics

Is global warming an election issue after all?

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Conventional wisdom has it that the next election will be fought exclusively on the topic of jobs. But President Obama’s announcement last week that he would postpone a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election, which may effectively kill the project, makes it clear that other issues will weigh in — and that, oddly enough, one of them might even be climate change.

The pipeline decision was a true upset. Everyone — and I mean everyone who “knew” how these things work — seemed certain that the president would approve it.

Occupy – Nov 14

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– Seattle Ex-police chief: Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street
– Man Outed As Undercover Cop At Occupy Oakland Condemns Police Brutality, Supports The Movement
– #OccupyWallStreet: A Leaderfull Movement in a Leaderless Time
– Iraq vet: Penn State, my final loss of faith (in the leadership of his parents’ generation)
– Crimson Front: On Occupy Harvard
– Hawaiian musician with ‘Occupy with Aloha’ T-shirt plays 45-minute protest song for Obama at summit… and no one notices (video from Makana)

Local currencies, Transition Councils and Declarations of Food Independence: it must be the October Transition podcast!

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Here’s the second Transition podcast. The idea with these is that they will explore some of the stories from the month’s “Round up of what’s happening in the world of Transition” in greater depth. So, this month we hear from Brixton about the latest developments with the Brixton Pound, from the Wiltshire town whose Town Council just voted to become a Transition Council, and from the Yorkshire valley that recently declared independence from the global food system.

Privatising public space

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By privatised public space, I mean that space which appears to be a public space (a square or a lane, for example) is in fact owned and controlled by a private landowner (or sometimes managed privately for a public owner.) Either way, different rules apply. It’s a trend which has been driven along by private sector regeneration schemes, and reinforced by a plethora of increasingly contentious public order legislation. But it is all but invisible.

Transitioners debate how to engage Occupy movement

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…[T]he Occupy movement reminds Transitioners that we can’t adequately address peak oil and climate change without democracy and fairness in the economy. Their blogger then goes on to recognize that Occupiers have picked up on their own some of the open ways of the Transition movement: decision-making by consensus and making cooperative action plans to increase community resilience. But not all Transitioners agree that Occupy is a good angle for local groups devoted to making their communities more resilient.

Ten ways the Occupy movement changes everything

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Before the Occupy Wall Street movement, there was little discussion of the outsized power of Wall Street and the diminishing fortunes of the middle class. The media blackout was especially remarkable given that issues like jobs and corporate influence on elections topped the list of concerns for most Americans.

Occupy Wall Street changed that. In fact, it may represent the best hope in years that “we the people” will step up to take on the critical challenges of our time. Here’s how the Occupy movement is already changing everything.

Throwing out the master’s tools and building a better house

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This movement is winning. It’s winning by being broad and inclusive, by emphasizing what we have in common and bridging differences between the homeless, the poor, those in freefall, the fiscally thriving but outraged, between generations, races and nationalities and between longtime activists and never-demonstrated-before newcomers. It’s winning by keeping its eyes on the prize, which is economic justice and direct democracy, and by living out that direct democracy through assemblies and other means right now.

Occupy – Nov 11

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– Occupy movement plans spring offensive as momentum stalls
– Matt Taibbi: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests
– Starhawk et al: Open letter to the Occupy movement: why we need agreements
– Vandana Shiva: The 99 Percent
– At Occupy Protests, Bearing Witness Without Preaching

An open letter to ALL 100% of us

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Think about it! We’ve been presented with a win-win opportunity to build on the Occupy Movement. And — really — don’t we all share the “Occupy” vision of a kinder, more sustainable world?

If together we could see everyone as part of the 100%, rather than as “we-versus-them” confrontational camps, then perhaps we can all actually make a difference.