Hope2012


Critiques of the Status Quo and Calls To Action

The Virtues of a Disorganized Resistance – Etresoi

American opposition movements have always focused on the notion of organization. It has always been their goal to organize the people. Their hope has been to wield the collective power of the disaffected, downtrodden, and exploited as a single unit against the concentrated power of the ruling class. While their hope has been noble, their methods have been foolish. Organized resistance has many drawbacks. These drawbacks have seldom been discussed by the opposition. I believe that the only effective resistance is a completely disorganized, decentralized, and leaderless opposition.

Human Nature Is the Enemy of the State – ThereAreNoSunglasses 7/20/09

A must-read

The Earth Is Hiring: Paul Hawken’s Inspiring Commencement Speech – Alternet 6/11/09

“Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.”

Taking Shorter Showers Doesn’t Cut It: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change – Alternet 7/13/09

The Machinery of Hopelessness – Dprogram.net 5/19/09

Hopelessness isn’t natural. It needs to be produced. To understand this situation, we have to realize that the last 30 years have seen the construction of a vast bureaucratic apparatus that creates and maintains hopelessness. At the root of this machine is global leaders’ obsession with ensuring that social movements do not appear to grow or flourish, that those who challenge existing power arrangements are never perceived to win. Maintaining this illusion requires armies, prisons, police and private security firms to create a pervasive climate of fear, jingoistic conformity and despair. All these guns, surveillance cameras and propaganda engines are extraordinarily expensive and produce nothing – they’re economic deadweights that are dragging the entire capitalist system down.

The Coming Insurrection – Adbusters 7/14/09

Revolutionary movements do not spread by contamination, but by resonance.

The Five Stages of Collapse – Energy Bulletin 11/11/08

A consise and well thought out article that briefly lays out the probable course of the United States.

Let’s Stop Kidding Ourselves: Ten “Big Duh” Realizations about Our World That Need to be Stated – Natural News 6/23/09

Capitalism Under Assault – AdBusters 7/23/08

Prepare to Disengage - Global Research 7/25/09

Change in the 21st Century: Let’s Bring Love and Revolution Together – Alternet 7/24/09

Radical activist for more than sixty years, Boggs says a new generation of change-makers have embraced the idea of love to bring about revolution.

Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America – BoingBoing 7/16/09

Who Should Resist, and Who Will Become Serfs? – Alternet 4/7/09

What if things just keep getting worse? – Metafilter 1/28/09

Lots of links

Humans Seem Hell Bent on Committing Mass Suicide — But There’s Still Hope – Alternet 5/15/09

Despite the endless human capacity for denial and self-destruction, the Earth can still be saved. But we must act now.

Dot Earth: Green Revolution, Values Revolution – NYTimes 5/1/09

Is a second green revolution without a values revolution sufficient?

Evil as the absence of empathy – Dissident Voice 7/26/08

For a New Green Society – via Metafilter 4/2/09

For a New Green Society Manifestos on bright green environmentalism. Bright green environmentalism, which is comparable to technogaianism, stands in contrast to light green environmentalism, which focuses on lifestyle changes, and dark green environmentalism, which focuses on political changes; sustainable technology. [via mefi projects]

That’s No Angry Mob, It’s a Movement – TruthOut 3/28/09

You’d think there would be a modicum of contrition but mostly it has been deny, deny, deny combined with shivers of revulsion as an angry citizenry freely expresses its opinion. Former Clinton SEC chairman Arthur Levitt sniffed to The Wall Street Journal this week, “It has reached extremes of incivility that are intolerable,” and on Friday the Journal editorially wrung its hands over “political Torquemadas” who would dare to prosecute Wall Street executives.

What the Antiwar Movement Should — and Shouldn’t — Do Now – Alternet 11/18/08

In the wake of Obama’s victory, the antiwar movement must be ready to identify new pressure points or it risks losing credibility and relevance.

Ashley Smith : Which Way Forward for the Antiwar Movement? – CounterPunch 6/26/08

Finding Our Collective Voice – The Progressive 1/14/09

Robert Roth : Can We Create a Movement for Change? – CounterPunch 11/28/08

Now Is the Time to Shake Up Society at the Roots -  Alternet 1/15/09

Millions can be inspired to oppose the status quo in this crumbling economy. It’s time to make big demands based on big ideas.

Non-Violent Response to US Sponsored Wars of Aggression – Global Research 9/25/09

Why Are We Unable To Resist? – Rense 10/4/09

Whether Secession or Nullification.We All Want Freedom and Independence – Lew Rockwell 9/1/09



Art & Resistance: Political Art in the 21st century
October 26, 2009, 6:04 pm
Filed under: Miscellaneous, art, collapse, community, consumerism, interesting, peace, politics, protest, resistance

Anti-War Voices: Art as Resistance – Global Research 9/8/09

Songs of Survival and Hope – Dissident Voice 4/9/08

Songs about liberty – Guardian, UK 4/8/09

From Crass to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, artist Mark Titchner selects a soundtrack to state control, corruption and the struggle for freedom

Phone is Tapped (And I Don’t Care): old-timey string band song about surveillance – BoingBoing 1/27/09

David Rovics: Songs of Social Significance

Protest and politics – Guardian, UK 3/11/09

1,000 must-hear songs: Are you happy with our list of political tunes? Here’s your chance to protest

Bread & Puppet: Cheap Art and Political Theater out of Vermont

GUERRILLA – INTERVENTIONIST – SOCIAL – POLITICAL Art Links - Washington University in St Louis

Are you following Banksy yet?

WWII propaganda posters remixed for WWIII – Boing Boing 7/7/09

Frugal Green Living: Posters for the Movement - Treehugger 11/11/08 

Graffiti & Street Art - Washington University in St Louis

Anti-Bush Graffiti – 25 countries, 6 continents – Matador Pulse

[analysis] Street Art in Revolutionary Venezuela – VenezuelAnalysis 7/30/09

Reverse Grafitti in San Francisco: Dirty Art - Treehugger 6/13/08

The Reverse Grafitti Project in San Francisco is creating environmental art by cleaning up dirt and grime from walls. In the video above, you can see them making a 140 feet long mural in the Broadway tunnel. It shows native species of native plants that would be living in the area of that tunnel if it wasn’t currently the city’s downtown.

Seeds of Change: sf anthology of stories confronting important social issues – BoingBoing 8/13/08

Dystopian Evolution: Imagining an Envirogeddon - via Metafilter 7/7/08

Dystopian storytelling is pillar of Western narrative tradition, but this decade has seen a significant shift in the way our apocalypse is told. Orthodox tales of government tyranny are giving way to visions of humans running helpless in the wake of environmental meltdown. From the plausible to the fantastic, most of this fiction remains hauntingly real while the non-fiction can get downright scary. In 2008, the 20th anniversary of climatologist James Hansen’s landmark speech before Congress, popular art is beginning to reflect an increasingly bleak public sentiment on the future, playing out some of our worst nightmares. It may be that these writers and directors are wishing for the end of the world, but even so, they are certainly giving voice to the creeping feeling that indeed, we might not make it.

Ghost luxury hotels, half-built and rotting in the desert – Boing Boing 4/23/08

Contemporary city photoshopped with war-scenes from history – BoingBoing 1/29/09

Anti-war veterans deploy 4,171 toy soldiers at gas station - Raw Story 11/17/08

City Room: Pranksters Spoof The Times - NYTimes 11/12/08

Human Shrub Attacks English Town - Treehugger 7/13/09

A masked man, dressed like a creature from the swamps has been filling empty planters and baskets with brightly-coloured marigolds and begonias. He was last seen wandering the streets carrying a sign saying “Save the Roses” after Colchester, England council threatened to bulldoze its rose beds to save money. He waved a banner urging people to “save his brothers the shrubs, and sisters the roses”. Now he has returned to carry out random acts of planting throughout the town

B’eau Pal: the Yes Men Offer the Refreshing Taste of Toxic Disaster - Treehugger 7/17/09

“The unique qualities of our water come from 25 years of slow-leaching toxins at the site of the world’s largest industrial accident.” One swig and you’re whisked away to Bhopal, India where in 1984 an explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide factory killed thousands and released a health nightmare that still persists. B’eau Pal bottled water (“not fit for human consumption,” by the way) is not the first time the Yes Men have wagged a shaming middle finger at Dow, the company that bought Union Carbide and denies responsibility for the disaster’s fallout

Eco-protesters get creative – Raw Story 1/31/09  

Protestors Paintbomb Rakon Corporate Headquarters – WUFYS 1/23/09

This video shows a protest against a firm Rakon which exports components for munitions to the U.S. used by Israeli military (including ’smart bombs’).

God Hates Signs protest waged against Westboro Baptist Church  - BoingBoing 10/29/08

 

Political art is as diverse as its’ creators.  Link to more in the comments!



US & International Economic News Round-Up

News Americas Bolivia summit adopts new currency - Al Jazeera 10/18/09

Asian Leaders Eye EU-Style Bloc  - BBC via Cryptogon 10/23/09 

Latin America plans US dollar replacement - PressTV Iran 10/18/09 

Russia and Iran Now OFFICIALLY Talking of Dumping Dollar for International Trade - Washington’s blog 10/18/09

Senior Australian Politician Warns About U.S. Debt Default Within the Next Few Years - The Age, Australia via Cryptogon 10/23/09

Bailout May Cost $23.7 Trillion - Huffington Post 10/21/09

Hank Paulson Held A Secret Meeting With Goldman Sachs In Moscow - Cryptogon 10/21/09

Real Estate Collapse Entering New Phase: Banks Refusing to Repossess Abandoned Homes, or Even File Foreclosures  - Cryptogon 10/19/09

Losing their lifeline – 7,000 a day - CNN 10/22/09

As the Senate debates whether to extend unemployment benefits, more than 200,000 jobless Americans are set to see their checks stop in October.

Top 10 States make up 55 Percent of United States GDP. 6 of the top 10 States have Unemployment Rates over 10 Percent. - My Budget 360 10/25/09

Revised formula puts 1 in 6 Americans in poverty - AP / Yahoo 10/20/09

A revised formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations show that approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government’s official figure.

The disparity occurs because of differing formulas the Census Bureau and the National Academy of Science use for calculating the poverty rate. The NAS formula shows the poverty rate to be at 15.8 percent, or nearly 1 in 6 Americans, according to calculations released this week. That’s higher than the 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million, figure made available recently under the original government formula.

How a Crashing Dollar Hides Trends - Prison Planet 10/22/09

Many Americans have a hard time wrapping their mind around a declining currency or the hidden tax that is inflation. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve understands this and for decades has exploited this issue to slowly siphon off the buying power of the U.S. dollar. Openly they tell the public that they are for a strong dollar policy but every action they take is guided to slowly debasing the currency. Take for example the current stock market rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 56 percent from the March lows. A stunning rally only seen one other time in history and we would need to go back to the 1930s for that. Yet at the same time, we have seen a collapse in the U.S. dollar. That is why oil, even though demand is relatively the same, is now back near $80 a barrel. 

Russia drops $22.5bn BoNY Mellon lawsuit  - Financial Times, UK 10/22/09

Russia has dropped its $22.5bn lawsuit against Bank of New York Mellon after agreeing an out-of-court settlement

Citi starts closing Mastercards without warning - MSNBC 10/21/09

Possible Credit Dislocation: Be Warned  - Market Ticker 10/23/09

I am hearing repeated anecdotes from multiple areas that foreclosed property held by banks with multiple full-price offers that include a financing requirement are being sold instead to people with actual cash at radical reductions from that price. This implies that these financing contingencies are regarded as not only potentially no good but factually no good, as if the banks know for a fact that the credit pipeline will (not might), within weeks or months (in the time required to close), disappear. There is no other rational explanation for this behavior. 

Even the Fed Doesn’t Want to Hold U.S. Dollars  - Prison Planet 10/23/09

The above chart shows the dollar’s performance since the Fed announced its Quantitative Easing program in March. This chart tells us two things:

Americans just got 15% poorer on the world stage thanks to Ben Bernanke

A currency crisis is in the works (and perhaps already starting) 

Getting Started In War Tax Resistance - War Tax Boycott 10/22/09

Thank you for your interest in war tax resistance. If you decide to register and resist, you will join a long line of courageous resisters, from Henry David Thoreau’s time to the present. Many of us are angry and frustrated by the U.S. government’s military actions around the world, and it often seems as if there is not much we can do about it. War tax resistance is a powerful way to resist the state and oppose its harmful actions. By conscientiously resisting taxes, you take a solid step towards refusing to be a part of the destruction. Our military can only harm people when citizens allow it. If enough of us withhold from war and pay for peace, we can stop the harm.

National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee  - NWTRCC.org

The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) is a coalition of groups from across the U.S., formed in 1982 to provide information and support to people involved in or considering some form of war tax resistance (WTR). Affiliate organizations and individual supporters are joined together in a common struggle for a more just and peaceful society. We oppose militarism and war and refuse to complicitly participate in the tax system which supports such violence. NWTRCC sees poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, economic exploitation, environmental destruction and militarization of law enforcement as integrally linked with the militarism which we abhor.