Politics

Is #OccupyWallStreet the Millennial Generation’s WTO?

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There are now tens of thousands of so-called Millennials who—for likely the first time ever—are having the life-changing experience of standing up and demanding change, of marching in the streets, of getting beat on and pepper-sprayed by the police, of getting misportrayed and vilified by the media,… and of coming back and keeping at it, and seeing their actions pay off.

And there are maybe millions of Millennials who are not on the streets but are watching on TV people just like them having these experiences — and don’t doubt for a second that they’re being affected too .

#Occupy is proving to be their first big political roar. Watch out.

The compost candidates

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Something special is happening in France. A nationwide campaign will be launched next week by the Colibris movement for the 2012 Presidential Elections – but without a charismatic leader. The campaign, instead, is for everyone to be a candidate – for a new kind of politics.

In their language and tone-of-voice Les Colibris are like the Transition Movement, but different. They are like Occupy Wall Street but different, too. This is surely healthy. The movement for a global democracy is an ecology, not a single homogeneous movement.

“We know that an election won’t change society” says the Colibris manifesto [colibris is the French for hummingbird]. “For a real transformation, things have to change at the bottom and involve everyone amongst us.”

Making sense of the protests through a post-growth lens

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The world has recently seen protests on Wall Street, rioting in London, and tension in other parts of Europe as it deals with insolvent debtor nations. Mass confusion is in the air.

…Among all the mass confusion, steady-state theory might help us account for not only the the economic problems, but also the ideological divide.

Dear Occupy Wall Street

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Right now, I know that things are tense. I know that you’re waiting for the word on whether or not you will be evicted from Liberty Plaza tomorrow, from the beautiful occupation you’ve built right in the the belly of the beast of global corporate power. I know that you are worried that there will be police violence, or another mass arrest. I know this because right now, I’m reading news reports about what you’re doing from across the globe, and talking to people sitting in the square, even though I’m thousands of miles away. You see? The whole world is watching. You did that. Whatever happens tomorrow, the whole world will be watching the New York authorities try to clean the people of America off the sidewalks of Wall Street.

Pluto’s Republic

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One of the enduring tropes of Western intellectual culture, dating back to Plato’s time, is the notion that there must be some way to force people to make the right collective decisions whether they want to do so or not. Magic — the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will — is one of many resources that have been applied to this end. The thought of doing this as a way of dealing with our society’s abject failure to respond intelligently to peak oil, though, leads into a thicket of overfamiliar problems.

#OccupyWallStreet from your kitchen

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I’ve received a number of queries from young moms and others who want to know what they can do to support the #OccupyWallStreet movement even though for logistical reasons — particularly having little kids —they can’t get to New York, D.C. or even a local event. The rising tide of sympathy for good old fashioned, red, white and blue American protest is a refreshing addition to our national conversation. It’s great to know how many people back the protests, how many more are finding ways to actually physically be in one location or another to lend their voice to the chorus, and how many will do what they can from the sidelines.

The peak oil crisis: contagion

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With every passing day it is becoming more apparent that the crisis of the depletion of cheap oil has become deeply enmeshed in the European debt crises. … Concern over the course of the Greek debt crisis has been roiling the foreign exchange and equity markets of late taking oil prices along for a rather wild ride. Last week we had London oil below $100 a barrel, but renewed optimism, or as it is now known, “risk appetite,” soon sent London oil back up over $111 where it continues to methodically eat the heart out of the OECD economies. London oil has now been above $100 a barrel for the last nine months and so far shows no signs of collapsing to the fabled $60 a barrel level as it did three years ago.