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Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

2 February - Blogs I'm Following

English: Sunspots and global atmospheric tempe...Image via Wikipedia
Otpor!Otpor! (Photo credit: DamjanBNZ)
GasLandGasLand (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)
 Sunset in Sweden
 Citizen Outrage into Citizen Reform
CITIZENS across the country have expressed their outrage over the Citizens United v. FEC decision, which allows unlimited corporate campaign spending and negates campaign finance reform laws. This decision was based on the misdirected – really, ludicrous – notion of Corporate Personhood, the idea that corporations are entitled to the same constitutional rights as human beings. 
Ultimate Civics and POCLAD have joined the Campaign to Legalize Democracy in a concerted effort to amend the US Constitution and restore democracy in the United States. This grassroots campaign identifies four objectives to achieve this goal:

  • To firmly establish that money is not speech
  • To affirm that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
  • To guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
  • To protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments.
Global Nonviolent Action Database

Strategizing For A Living Revolution

Cynical outsiders were skeptical when Otpur activists claimed not to have a leader, when the young people said they were all leaders and shared responsibility for their actions and their common discipline. What the skeptics overlooked was the power of strategy as a unifying force, taking its place beside the rebel energy and the lessons of recent history that the young people shared. Otpur activists didn't need an underground commander giving them their marching orders because they shared a strategy they believed in; they were happy to improvise creatively within that strategic framework.

The young people who started Otpur had a clear conception of how domination works. They saw their society as a pyramid, with Milosevic and his cronies at the top, in alliance with business owners, party leaders, and generals. The direction of power was typically top-down, and included both obvious repression (the army, police, secret police) and subtle repression like a monopoly of the media and school curricula. Here's where Otpur activists diverged from conventional wisdom about power. They noticed that each layer of domination was in fact supported by the layer below; that the orders that were given were only carried out because those below were willing to carry them out.

Rather than buy into the top-down version of power that Milosevic wanted them to believe, they decided instead to picture Serbian society as organized into pillars of support holding up the dictator. If the pillars gave way, Otpur believed that Milosevic would fall.

Since the top power-holders depend on the compliance of those beneath them to stay on top, Otpur's strategy was to weaken the compliance and finally to break it. First, Otpur needed to ask: which are the pillars of support needed by the dictatorship? Then: what are the tactics that will weaken those pillars?

Activists in other countries can follow this methodology to begin to create their strategy.3

Vote Rocky
 

Josh Fox arrested for trying to film Pavilion WY fracking contamination hearing

'Gasland' Film Director Arrested at US Capitol Hearing

 14 Feb 2010  Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html#ixzz1lFZxlsMV

29 Jan 2012  Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

China says 'no' to genetically engineered rice
 
www.greenpeace.org
 
It took seven years, teams of young campaigners and hordes of devoted supporters, but September 2011 the Chinese government finally said it was suspending the commercialisation of genetically-engineered (GE) rice.
 
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Posted by opit at 11:46 AM
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