Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We speak with Ross Ashcroft about his upcoming film The Four Horsemen which explains how the world really works through interviews with 23 of our planet’s leading alternative economists, Wall Street insiders and economic thinkers. Ross describes how his desire to become a farmer led him to understand the problems of international finance and how a career in the film industry provided the catalyst to create a documentary about the global economic system.
– With Generators Gone, Wall Street Protesters Try Bicycle Power
– Chris Hedges: A Master Class in Occupation
– Financial Times: Why America is embracing protest
– ‘Occupy’ Protest at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London Divides Church
– Salon: A New Declaration of Independence
– Tom Engelhardt: OWS at Valley Forge
Wall Street is the best immediate target for a protest against financial inequity and corporate money in politics. Now, as Occupy movements pop up across the globe, Occupiers may be interested to know that big oil companies are as guilty as big banks in buying politicians and squeezing the 99%. And since today’s fiat currency is really based on oil, any reform of finance needs to take on energy too.
Last week we and other representatives of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas USA (ASPO-USA) stood on the steps of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to call for “Truth in Energy” concerning one of the most serious threats to our economy, national security, and environment: the prospect of an impending decline in world oil supply. The consequences of this milestone are far-reaching and potentially catastrophic. After a news conference at DOE, we delivered a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu summarizing our concerns and requesting answers to specific questions about DOE’s response to this monumental challenge.
We protest not only at our exclusion from the American Dream; we protest at its bleakness. If it cannot include everyone on earth, every ecosystem and bioregion, every people and culture in its richness; if the wealth of one must be the debt of another; if it entails sweatshops and underclasses and fracking and all the rest of the ugliness our system has created, then we want none of it.
There’s one question that pundits and politicians keep posing to the Occupy gatherings around the country: What are your demands?
I have a suggestion for a response: We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands.
At first glance, Jan Lundberg and Amanda Kovattana seem like unlikely kindred spirits. He’s a former oil analyst turned whistleblower and rock musician, while she’s a British-educated Thai émigré who makes her living helping people become organized. Yet their similarities run deep, beginning with a profound concern for the planet and a flair for writing. Indeed, both are indispensable contributors to one of the top news sites on energy and the environment, Energy Bulletin. Both also happen to be accomplished memoirists, and their memoirs offer rare insights into family relationships, the vicissitudes of wealth and the quandary of being an environmentalist in an environmentally apathetic age.
With more than half the world’s population living in cities we have been told that cites are where humanities future lies. At the same time, awareness of the future challenges humanity faces are growing…The cry has gone out for “sustainable cities” and urban planners the world over are responding. In most people’s (and urban planners) minds cities primarily consist of people to accommodate and methods to transport them…The problem with answering this question is that urban planners have forgotten the fundamental reason thing that allows cities to exist and that will determine their existence in future.
Occupy Wall Street will not bring about the changes that are wanted by themsleves, but it can be a force to bring about a shift from a defensive to an offensive posture, to push from radical reform rather than only amelioration at the edges.
Supportive non-occupiers can play a major role in moving in this direction. They can develop the details occupiers are accused if ignoring, organize around individual the individual concrete issues contributing to the deep discontent with the direction in which society is moving. Linking the broadly-targeting aroused occupiers to the multiple existing groups and organization already struggling for change might provide strength and energy all around.
Markets jumped on Thursday as the Eurozone patched together yet another deal to relieve its debt crisis. The high spirits saw 3% added to the FTSE amid hope that the deal will buy time to develop a permanent solution – if that is possible. Meanwhile the turbulence in the markets is being increasingly reflected in the streets through the growing Occupy movement, and continuing demonstrations in Spain and Greece…
We must now broaden the questions beyond, “How can we make sure we all get our fair share in this system,” to include: “How do we make sure we all get our fair share in the new system–a lower-carbon system–and how do we handle this transition?” Also, “What economic change can we create, and what default changes must we learn to accept?”
– Ralph Nader: Occupy Wall Street on the Move
– Rise of the Planet of the People
– Occupy Wall Street: Outing the Ringers (video – awesome 3-Card Monte analogy)
