“utopia requires its residents to behave like robots”, Nicholas Carr
Warning that “American democracy in endangered,” Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday proposed a constitutional amendment to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that allowed unrestricted and secret campaign spending by corporations on U.S. elections. The first constitutional amendment ever proposed by Sanders during his two decades in Congress would reverse the narrow 5-to-4 ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Commission.
Show your support – sign the petition at http://sanders.senate.gov/savingdemocracy
As we all know, the United Nations was founded “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The words can only elicit deep regret when we consider how we have acted to fulfill that aspiration, though there have been a few significant successes, notably in Europe.
Source: Sydney Peace Prize, Noam Chomsky ABC Mary Kostakidis
Consistent with Muste’s “revolutionary pacifism,” the Sydney Peace Foundation has always emphasized peace with justice. The demands of justice can remain unfulfilled long after peace has been declared. The Santa Cruz massacre 20 years ago can serve as an illustration. One year after the massacre the United Nations adopted The Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which states that “Acts constituting enforced disappearance shall be considered a continuing offence as long as the perpetrators continue to conceal the fate and the whereabouts of persons who have disappeared and these facts remain unclarified.”
The massacre is therefore a continuing offence: the fate of the disappeared is unknown, and the offenders have not been brought to justice, including those who continue to conceal the crimes of complicity and participation. Only one indication of how far we must go to rise to some respectable level of civilized behavior.
http://www.vimeo.com/32935433
Nov 172011
The Filter Bubble: How the hidden web is shaping lives: Pioneer in online campaigning Eli Pariser lays bare the forces controlling our online lives and argues for a new vision of a freer web.
In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google’s change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years-the rise of personalization. In this groundbreaking investigation of the new hidden Web, Pariser uncovers how this growing trend threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society-and reveals what we can do about it.
Stanford visiting fellow Evgeny Morozov on The Net Delusion.. “by falling for the supposedly democratizing nature of the Internet, Western do-gooders may have missed how it also entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder—not easier—to promote democracy”
Author Gar Alperovitz is a Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the Univ. of Maryland, a Founding Principal of The Democracy Collaborative. More at Capital Institute and Community Wealth
Nov 022011
Poor people and communities of color are the most impacted by the dramatic ecological crises currently facing our planet.
In April of this year, Movement Generation and the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center convened nearly 30 activists and organizers representing various grassroots and social justice organizations from throughout California to participate in a two-week Liberation Permaculture Design Course.
Filmed by Patrick O’Conner of Oaklandsol.org for permaculture.coop
Liberation Permaculture, a framework and design science that invokes the traditional knowledge of land-based peoples, provides organizers with a methodology to resist systems of oppression through building resiliency in our communities. It is a means to prepare oppressed communities for the oncoming environmental disasters while building the world we want and need now.
Come hear these course participants report back about how they are implementing Liberation Permaculture into their organizing work and how it can provide us with a critical framework for the necessary and just transition from a carbon, consumption, and profit-based economy to the participatory and life-affirming, need-based society we envision for the future.
Presentations will be provided by individuals representing Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project, Urban Tilth, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, Ella Baker Center, Catalyst Project, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, Communities for a Better Environment and others.
Source: Oakland Local
Oct 312011
The Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral has resigned in protest over the proposed removal by force of the Occupy London protesters.
Occupy Jesus
Oct 172011
Occupy Berkeley October 15th
Oct 152011
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