politics – 350orbust

Iceland To The Rest of The World: There Are Alternatives

July 25, 2012 by Christine

Hordur Torfarson, one of the architects of the quiet but powerful Icelandic revolution, which forced the government of Iceland to resign after the banking crisis of 2008, and kicked out the IMF representatives from the country, is now teaching meta-modern democracy throughout Europe. Here he shares his advice to the Greeks, which is also applicable to every Western “democracy” at this time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH0_JQW–gc&feature=player_embedded]

More links:

Interview with Iceland’s President, Olafur Grimmson, from CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition, from December 11, 2011: Click here. (interview starts 9 minutes in)

We Are The Many

November 14, 2011 by CPP

Occupy yourself with this powerful video by Makana, a popular Hawaiian recording artist. At the APEC summit in Hawaii this past weekend Makana made a bold and courageous statement. He was enlisted to play a luau on Saturday night for leaders gathered in Obama’s birthplace, Honolulu, for the annual summit (the APEC countries are currently formulating plans for a Pacific free-trade pact). During the supper, Makana sang a marathon version of this song (40 minutes of it) with his jacket open to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Occupy With Aloha”. Makana told AFP:

“I was pretty nervous. In fact I was terrified. I kept thinking ‘what are the consequences going to be?‘ It was incredibly comical. I was terrified but also enjoying it.“

Makana said the song prompted awkward stares from a few of those present but the Obamas appeared too absorbed with their guests to notice what was happening.

Guests at the supper included Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, with an accompanying heavy security presence. As Makana sang, about 400 protesters including anti-globalization and native Hawaiian rights activists staged a protest march toward the dinner site but turned back after encountering the smothering security.

Inspired by the anti-capitalist movement that began with the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations in New York, the song denounces Washington politicians, corporate greed and what he sees as an unfair American economic system.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3BYw4xjxE&feature=colike&mid=52&fb_source=message]

We Are The Many

Ye come here, gather ’round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who’ve trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage

From underneath the vestiture of law
The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw
At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw
And until they are purged, we won’t withdraw

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

Our nation was built upon the right
Of every person to improve their plight
But laws of this Republic they rewrite
And now a few own everything in sight

They own it free of liability
They own, but they are not like you and me
Their influence dictates legality
And until they are stopped we are not free

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

You enforce your monopolies with guns
While sacrificing our daughters and sons
But certain things belong to everyone
Your thievery has left the people none

So take heed of our notice to redress
We have little to lose, we must confess
Your empty words do leave us unimpressed
A growing number join us in protest

We occupy the streets
We occupy the courts
We occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

You can’t divide us into sides
And from our gaze, you cannot hide
Denial serves to amplify
And our allegiance you can’t buy

Our government is not for sale
The banks do not deserve a bail
We will not reward those who fail
We will not move till we prevail

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

We are the many
You are the few

Click here to download the song for free.

Watch Makana on Democracy Now.

The Occupy Movement: A Puny Little “Ant” That’s Messing With The Corporations’ Way Of Life

October 25, 2011 by CPP

“You let one ant stand up to us, then they ALL might stand up to us. Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLbWnJGlyMU&feature=related]

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Rabble.ca: Occupy Canada Weekly News

Just a Mom, Here For A Better World For My Kids

October 19, 2011 by CPP

More links:

The Global 99 Percent March In Hundreds of Cities Worldwide For Social and Economic Justice

How Wall Street Occupies Washington

Response to Norway Horror: Faced With Inhumanity, We Must Be More Human

July 25, 2011 by CPP

The contrast between Norway’s response to the brutal terror attacks last Friday and that of the United States after 9/11 couldn’t be starker. Imagine if President Bush had instead said, like Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, “Our answer is more democracy, more openness to show that we will not be stopped by this kind of violence.” How many brutal and unnecessary deaths of innocents could have been avoided in Afghanistan and Iraq? Canadians like Maher Ahar (361 days in Syrian detention), Abdullah Almalki (more than 22 months in Syria), Ahmad El Maati (two years, two months and two days in Syria and Egypt) and Muayyed Nureddin (34 days in Syria) wouldn’t have had their lives disrupted forever by illegal deportation to, and torture in, Syria by the U.S. And the list could go on and on.

Several commentators have pointed out that the “politics of hate” that the killer, Anders Behring Breivik, subscribes to, has moved from the fringe to the mainstream in recent years in both Europe and North America. Political scapegoating and demonizing of opponents is increasingly common place in Canada and is certainly endemic in the United States right now, as demonstrated by the rise of the tea party movement and the current impasse on raising the debt ceiling led by a Republican party intent on opposing President Obama no matter what the cost to their nation.

It is in this kind of atmosphere that a mentality that threatens climate scientists’ lives could thrive. It’s the kind of atmosphere that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News International, has fostered over the last three decades, Fox “News” being one of the most obvious and influential examples of this in North America. In the “politics of hate” world, it’s okay to spend trillions of dollars on wars that kill and maim and not on okay to spend billions on healthcare and clean energy.

Norway is showing us that there is another way to respond to haters. Norwegian Erik Abild wrote in Al Jazeera yesterday:

In Norway, many politicians and people state that “today we are all AUF” (the name of the youth party). And we are. Just as we all were Japanese when the earthquake struck, or as we all are Somalis when we read about famine. This feeling of community is a part of being human. And this communality, the shared experience of humanity, is essential to hold onto. In the face of inhumanity, we have to be more human. Because there is only this one world, brutal and beautiful, and we only have one fragile life to make our difference in the world we all share as home.