Occupy Southend are getting badly misrepresented by the media (should we have been surprised?). Labels like 'anti-captialist' (sounds a bit worrying - like they are all SWP malcontents) and 'opposing social injustice' - a bit bland, it would be hard to find someone to disagree with that as being a noble aim but as social injustice has always been with us the natural reaction of most people is why is it worth disrupting everyone with it right now?
However the very first item on the Occupy LSX Initial Statement:
The current system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives; this is where we work towards them.
Occupy Southend has adopted the same statement terms with a few local variations. The fact that it starts with "The current system is unsustainable" is what groups like Transition Towns have been warning about for years. Serious problems caused by us trying to live an exponentially increasing lifestyle on a finite planet are no longer some problem for our grandchildren to solve by waving some magic wand of 'science', it is a doom we are ACCELERATING towards even though it is already in sight.
This is a global emergency, we only have a very few years, maybe just months, to turn things around now. I am not just talking about global warming, although that will add its own problems to the mix.
Is it that our leaders do not want widespread panic? Understandable but maybe a bit of genuine panic is what we need just now!
I do not have the solutions, as anyone with half a brain knows that there is no magic bullet for this. Turning round a global economy to be sustainable is going to take a massive effort of will and of self control.
I must admit though that it is driving me crazy that I can at least see the road we have to go down to find any chance of survival.
1. Get world leaders to come clean to their people that living on a finite world that is near running on empty for some resources is a genuine predicament.
2. Get a 'wartime spirit' of co-operation to find solutions to this, but WITHOUT finding someone to go to War against (like Iran) - we all live on this earth together, we are all in this together. A resource consuming war is what will seal our doom in double quick time!
3. Recognise that vested interests that stand in the way of this - within the '1%' need to be stripped of their power. We cannot have the salvation of the human race conducted as a 'for profit' activity. It is too urgent for all the attendant bickering.
I for one think the survival of the human race justifies slightly inconveniencing a few churchgoers!
Don't fancy this road? Ok, the most likely alternative is a series of ever more desperate wars as the increasing population fights to survive. As blowing stuff up and then building more of it at great expense will divert resources away from e.g. massive scale solar power deployment it spells DOOM for almost all of us.
Not interested in these? Want things to stay as they are, come on don't fool yourself you know things are just not going to go back to the way they were 10 years ago. Self delusion is very dangerous.
Showing posts with label occupy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label occupy. Show all posts
Monday, 27 February 2012
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
New Facebook Group - Occupy Leaflets
I have started a new Facebook group called Occupy Leaflets.
It may seem a little old fashioned to some in this Internet age but a great way to reach people and make them think is still the printed word.
I am proud to say that I went on the Occupy LSX March on Parliament on November 5th. I treasure the flyer I was given. Information about the march on one side and the Occupy LSX initial statement on the other. It was a bit crumpled from being in my pocket but I laminated it to save it for posterity.
What we need is leaflets like this that accomplish on a single sheet of paper, explaining something about the Occupy movement and how the rest of the 99% need to wake up and join us before it is too late.
My idea is to have a wiki to contain down-loadable leaflet designs in open source file formats with Creative Commons licensing. These can then be taken by anyone with a printer and a desire to 'do their bit' in the form of running off a few hundred copies of a statement they can themselves believe in.
The Occupy movement needs to grow. There will always be the 'head in the sand' types who do not want to be disturbed from their football or shopping but we need to gain the majority of the people who do care about what is going to happen to them in the very near future.
I think leafleting if done well could have a great impact in reaching that goal - a democracy with so many voices that are part of it that the leaders and vested interests have no choice but to listen. "There are more of us than there are of you".
If you share this view and want to get involved in creating these leaflets or using them once created then join the group!
It may seem a little old fashioned to some in this Internet age but a great way to reach people and make them think is still the printed word.
I am proud to say that I went on the Occupy LSX March on Parliament on November 5th. I treasure the flyer I was given. Information about the march on one side and the Occupy LSX initial statement on the other. It was a bit crumpled from being in my pocket but I laminated it to save it for posterity.
What we need is leaflets like this that accomplish on a single sheet of paper, explaining something about the Occupy movement and how the rest of the 99% need to wake up and join us before it is too late.
My idea is to have a wiki to contain down-loadable leaflet designs in open source file formats with Creative Commons licensing. These can then be taken by anyone with a printer and a desire to 'do their bit' in the form of running off a few hundred copies of a statement they can themselves believe in.
The Occupy movement needs to grow. There will always be the 'head in the sand' types who do not want to be disturbed from their football or shopping but we need to gain the majority of the people who do care about what is going to happen to them in the very near future.
I think leafleting if done well could have a great impact in reaching that goal - a democracy with so many voices that are part of it that the leaders and vested interests have no choice but to listen. "There are more of us than there are of you".
If you share this view and want to get involved in creating these leaflets or using them once created then join the group!
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
Why all this is important, perhaps the most important thing you will have seen...
There was a news story on Slashdot just before Christmas that the Occupy movement that has managed to mobilise tens of thousands of people across the USA seems to have had little impact in Silicon Valley and the other 'High Tech' enclaves. I can sympathise to some extent with this attitude, if you have skills (as I do) that are at the moment in high demand then you have at the back of your mind 'I will always find something else' even if your current employer runs into financial trouble.
There is something deeper going on here than the grumblings of an increasing number of 'have nots'. What has grown up over the past hundred years or so is an economy based on bigger and bigger corporations with bigger and bigger investment needs which in turn has lead to more powerful banks and financial institutions to supply those needs. The upsides of all this investment is the modern world we now take for granted. Cheap manufactured goods to make our lives much easier than those of our great grandparents were.
There is however a big downside to this abundance. Corporations and Banks have no 'conscience' they are in fact legally obliged to take a course of action that maximises the profit for their owners. The only way for this 'greed' to be restrained is either by legislation (with the corporation equally obliged to try to find loopholes because of its duty to the shareholders) or by the greed of different corporations pulling in different directions. The positive side of the latter is competition that keeps prices down, but only to those consumers who have the power of choice. The darker side of this is a form of open warfare. We see this as all the stupid squabbles over Intellectual Property that corporations waste court time with.
What is more serious is that the self interest in the corporations of keeping things 'the way they are' means that humanity is not getting told the truth that it urgently needs to hear.
The truth is we are running out of time really fast. What I am just skirting over here you can found in detail by Googling for "The crash course".
This video is a very condensed form of the course that Chris gave to the Gold Money Foundation conference:
The simple truth is that we are a world of exponential growth, as our beloved leaders keep saying that growth is what we need to get us out of the current ''temporary difficulties'' with the economy, so that does not sound too bad, does it?
The problem with exponential growth is that even if the rate of growth stays the same the amount of growth is always accelerating. If you are in a speeding car and the brick wall you are heading for is a mile or so away the fact that the driver has his foot hard down on the gas is not that concerning. But how about if that brick wall is just 50 ft away? We are living on a world of finite capacity. Our now 7 billion population is way above what the carrying capacity of the earth would be without our wide scale use of fossil fuel energy.
The bad news is that there is not an infinite amount of this fossil fuel. In a way that is a good thing because we would inevitably make our atmosphere unbreathable if we did just carry on turning it into CO2!
The other bit of bad news is that with a growing population and growing demands for 'the better life' (who can blame us?) our need for energy is growing exponentially too. However as the amount of fossil fuels on the earth is finite the rate of discovery of new reserves has been slowing down for decades now! The ones that are found and go forward to production are progressively more expensive to exploit. The cost of the energy that is needed for the modern world is always rising.
A few years ago you could dismiss this if you wanted a closed mind as all just theory, but signs of the change that is upon us are now so obvious in our economy that only the truly foolish will continue to ignore them.
What of corporations? As they are obliged to run themselves for the profit motive it is hard to see how they can be expected to start taking that foot gently off the gas and help steer the human race if not away from the danger, at least on the optimal course through it.
What is needed is some other way to organise the human race other than the capitalist oligarchy we seem to have at present.
The Internet gives us the chance to get enough people educated to make 'for the good of all' decision making possible. The danger we are facing is just as real as if there was a comet heading on a crash course for Earth, and the urgency is just as great.
The Occupy movement is proposing we try for a fully inclusive global democracy.
The first stage of this is to make sure that the whole world is made to pay attention long enough from the distractions of football & fashon to realise we have a real and urgent problem here. One grave enough that all the long established vested interests that have kept things the way they are need to be questioned and have the light of truth shone on them.
I think you are probably fed up with hearing politicians say this because their sincerity is dubious but "we are all in this together" - unless you know of any Oligarchs that have built themselves a fleet of space ships! The earth has finite resources, that is a fact, not an opinion.
The idea that we all have to come to the hard choices together and take collective responsibility for those choices is not an ideal - but what are the alternatives?
Have some despotic oligarch make the decisions for you (in their, not your, best interests)?
Just share out the world's resources equally? A socialist utopia but doing it literally would never work (if you disagree with me I would be glad to expand my reasons as another post). We need a system that still motivates people to work but does not create 'non human' entities that do not have the well-being or even survival of the human race as part of their aims!
I do not pretend to have the solution to this, as many as possible of the 7 billion of us should talk about it though, you never know what new, better way, someone is going to come up with!
There is something deeper going on here than the grumblings of an increasing number of 'have nots'. What has grown up over the past hundred years or so is an economy based on bigger and bigger corporations with bigger and bigger investment needs which in turn has lead to more powerful banks and financial institutions to supply those needs. The upsides of all this investment is the modern world we now take for granted. Cheap manufactured goods to make our lives much easier than those of our great grandparents were.
There is however a big downside to this abundance. Corporations and Banks have no 'conscience' they are in fact legally obliged to take a course of action that maximises the profit for their owners. The only way for this 'greed' to be restrained is either by legislation (with the corporation equally obliged to try to find loopholes because of its duty to the shareholders) or by the greed of different corporations pulling in different directions. The positive side of the latter is competition that keeps prices down, but only to those consumers who have the power of choice. The darker side of this is a form of open warfare. We see this as all the stupid squabbles over Intellectual Property that corporations waste court time with.
What is more serious is that the self interest in the corporations of keeping things 'the way they are' means that humanity is not getting told the truth that it urgently needs to hear.
The truth is we are running out of time really fast. What I am just skirting over here you can found in detail by Googling for "The crash course".
This video is a very condensed form of the course that Chris gave to the Gold Money Foundation conference:
The simple truth is that we are a world of exponential growth, as our beloved leaders keep saying that growth is what we need to get us out of the current ''temporary difficulties'' with the economy, so that does not sound too bad, does it?
The problem with exponential growth is that even if the rate of growth stays the same the amount of growth is always accelerating. If you are in a speeding car and the brick wall you are heading for is a mile or so away the fact that the driver has his foot hard down on the gas is not that concerning. But how about if that brick wall is just 50 ft away? We are living on a world of finite capacity. Our now 7 billion population is way above what the carrying capacity of the earth would be without our wide scale use of fossil fuel energy.
The bad news is that there is not an infinite amount of this fossil fuel. In a way that is a good thing because we would inevitably make our atmosphere unbreathable if we did just carry on turning it into CO2!
The other bit of bad news is that with a growing population and growing demands for 'the better life' (who can blame us?) our need for energy is growing exponentially too. However as the amount of fossil fuels on the earth is finite the rate of discovery of new reserves has been slowing down for decades now! The ones that are found and go forward to production are progressively more expensive to exploit. The cost of the energy that is needed for the modern world is always rising.
A few years ago you could dismiss this if you wanted a closed mind as all just theory, but signs of the change that is upon us are now so obvious in our economy that only the truly foolish will continue to ignore them.
What of corporations? As they are obliged to run themselves for the profit motive it is hard to see how they can be expected to start taking that foot gently off the gas and help steer the human race if not away from the danger, at least on the optimal course through it.
What is needed is some other way to organise the human race other than the capitalist oligarchy we seem to have at present.
The Internet gives us the chance to get enough people educated to make 'for the good of all' decision making possible. The danger we are facing is just as real as if there was a comet heading on a crash course for Earth, and the urgency is just as great.
The Occupy movement is proposing we try for a fully inclusive global democracy.
The first stage of this is to make sure that the whole world is made to pay attention long enough from the distractions of football & fashon to realise we have a real and urgent problem here. One grave enough that all the long established vested interests that have kept things the way they are need to be questioned and have the light of truth shone on them.
I think you are probably fed up with hearing politicians say this because their sincerity is dubious but "we are all in this together" - unless you know of any Oligarchs that have built themselves a fleet of space ships! The earth has finite resources, that is a fact, not an opinion.
The idea that we all have to come to the hard choices together and take collective responsibility for those choices is not an ideal - but what are the alternatives?
Have some despotic oligarch make the decisions for you (in their, not your, best interests)?
Just share out the world's resources equally? A socialist utopia but doing it literally would never work (if you disagree with me I would be glad to expand my reasons as another post). We need a system that still motivates people to work but does not create 'non human' entities that do not have the well-being or even survival of the human race as part of their aims!
I do not pretend to have the solution to this, as many as possible of the 7 billion of us should talk about it though, you never know what new, better way, someone is going to come up with!
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