"We did not weave the web of life, we are merely strands in it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves.” ― Chief Seattle. Awestruck Wanderer is written and edited by Eduardo Carli de Moraes, journalist, philosopher and musician. Write to me: awestruckwanderer@gmail.com. Cheers, fellow earthlings!
To the Last Drop: Canada’s Dirty Oil Sands. Filmmakers: Niobe Thompson and Tom Radford. “Gripped in a Faustian pact with the American energy consumer, the Canadian government is doing everything it can to protect the dirtiest oil project ever known…”
“Petropolis” by Peter Mettler. A documentary about the tar sands in Alberta which also happen to be the world’s 2nd largest oil reserve. This movie shows aerial views on what the extraction process has done to the wilderness.
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Naomi Klein Arrested Protesting Tar Sands Outside White House
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by Gil-Scott Heron
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and
skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Mendel Rivers to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mays
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
on reports from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the right occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so god damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally screwed
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb or
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash or Englebert Humperdink.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
“The next time you hear someone say ‘no one gives a shit about climate change’, show them this photo.” Mother Jones (This post on Facebook has reached in a few hours more than 20.000 shares, 40.000 likes, and counting…); learn more at http://bit.ly/XGiGr3. Photo by Michael Polard, at the People’s Climate March, New York City, September 21st 2014. More than 300.000 people were there!
“Marcos is gay in San Francisco, Black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Isidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10 pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains. Marcos is all the exploited, oppressed minorities resisting and saying ‘Enough’. He is every minority who is now begining to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He makes the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable – this is Marcos.”
Amnesty International: Arrest of 10 people in Pakistan suspected of the attempted assassination of Malala signifies the need for better protection of human rights defenders. http://bit.ly/1tRAZIb
Noami Klein portrayed by Vogue: “Born in Montreal in 1970, Klein grew up the daughter of left-wing American parents who moved to Canada because of the Vietnam War and continued their progressive politics there: Her mother, Bonnie Sherr Klein, was part of Canada’s first feminist film studio, while her father, Michael Klein, M.D., built innovative public health centers.
Over the last decade, Klein’s research trips—to Indonesia, Poland, Gaza, Sri Lanka, New Orleans after Katrina, et cetera—and her frequent public appearances have often kept her and Lewis in different places, many of which aren’t pleasant. Klein was reporting for Harper’s in Baghdad in 2004, for instance, when the occupation in Iraq descended into terrifying bloodshed. She says it’s the scariest place she’s ever been.
It will be released soon the film of This Changes Everything,a documentary aimed at people who won’t read her book. Both book and film strike a delicate balance between stoking the energizing fear of impending disaster (“I’ve seen the future,” Klein says, “and it looks like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina”) and offering a glimpse of hope…” – Read it all here
5 Crucial Lessons for the Left From Naomi Klein’s New Book
You can’t fight climate change without fighting capitalism, argues Klein in This Changes Everything.
BY ETHAN COREY AND JESSICA CORBETT
In her previous books The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) and NO LOGO: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs (2000), Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein took on topics like neoliberal “shock therapy,” consumerism, globalization and “disaster capitalism,” extensively documenting the forces behind the dramatic rise in economic inequality and environmental degradation over the past 50 years. But in her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (due in stores September 16), Klein casts her gaze toward the future, arguing that the dangers of climate change demand radical action now to ward off catastrophe. She certainly isn’t alone in pointing out the urgency of the threat, but what sets Klein apart is her argument that it is capitalism—not carbon—that is at the root of climate change, inexorably driving us toward an environmental Armageddon in the pursuit of profit. This Changes Everything is well worth a read (or two) in full, but we’ve distilled some of its key points here.
1. Band-Aid solutions don’t work.
“Only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed.”
Much of the conversation surrounding climate change focuses on what Klein dismisses as “Band-Aid solutions”: profit-friendly fixes like whizz-bang technological innovations, cap-and-trade schemes and supposedly “clean” alternatives like natural gas. To Klein, such strategies are too little, too late. In her drawn-out critique of corporate involvement in climate change prevention, she demonstrates how profitable “solutions” put forward by many think-tanks (and their corporate backers) actually end up making the problem worse. For instance, Klein argues that carbon trading programs create perverse incentives, allowing manufacturers to produce more harmful greenhouse gases, just to be paid to reduce them. In the process, carbon trading schemes have helped corporations make billions—allowing them to directly profit off the degradation of the planet. Instead, Klein argues, we need to break free of market fundamentalism and implement long-term planning, strict regulation of business, more taxation, more government spending and reversals of privatization to return key infrastructure to public control.
2. We need to fix ourselves, not fix the world.
“The earth is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the world, it is to fix ourselves.”
Klein devotes a full chapter of the book to geoengineering: the field of research, championed by a niche group of scientists, funders and media figures, that aims to fight global warming by altering the earth itself—say, by covering deserts with reflective material to send sunlight back to space or even dimming the sun to decrease the amount of heat reaching the planet. However, politicians and much of the global public have raised environmental, health and ethical concerns regarding these proposed science experiments with the planet, and Klein warns of the unknown consequences of creating “a Frankenstein’s world,” with multiple countries launching projects simultaneously. Instead of restoring an environmental equilibrium, Klein argues these “techno-fixes” will only further upset the earth’s balance, each one creating a host of new problems, requiring an endless chain of further “fixes.” She writes, “The earth—our life support system—would itself be put on life support, hooked up to machines 24/7 to prevent it from going full-tilt monster on us.”
3. We can’t rely on “well-intentioned” corporate funding.
“A great many progressives have opted out of the climate change debate in part because they thought that the Big Green groups, flush with philanthropic dollars, had this issue covered. That, it turns out, was a grave mistake.”
Klein strongly critiques partnerships between corporations and major environmental groups, along with attempts by “green billionaires” such as Bill Gates and Virgin Group’s Richard Branson to use capitalism to fighting global warming. When capitalism itself is a principal cause of climate change, Klein argues, it doesn’t make sense to expect corporations and billionaires to put the planet before profit. For example, though the Gates Foundation funds many major environmental groups dedicated to combating climate change, as of December 2013, it had at least $1.2 billion invested in BP and ExxonMobil. In addition, when Big Greens become dependent on corporate funding, they start to push a corporate agenda. For instance, organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, which have taken millions of dollars from pro-fracking corporate funders, such as Shell, Chevron and JP Morgan, are pitching natural gas as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal.
4. We need divestment, and reinvestment.
“The main power of divestment is not that it financially harms Shell and Chevron in the short term but that it erodes the social license of fossil fuel companies and builds pressure on politicians to introduce across-the-board emission reductions.”
Critics of the carbon divestment movement often claim that divestment will have minimal impact on polluters’ bottom lines. But Klein argues that this line of reasoning misses the point, quoting Canadian divestment activist Cameron Fenton’s argument that “No one is thinking we’re going to bankrupt fossil fuel companies. But what we can do is bankrupt their reputations and take away their political power.” More importantly, divestment opens the door for reinvestment. A few million dollars out of the hands of ExxonMobil or BP frees up money that can now be spent developing green infrastructure or empowering communities to localize their economies. And some colleges, charities, pension funds and municipalities have already got the message: Klein reports that 13 U.S. colleges and universities, 25 North American cities, around 40 religious institutions and several major foundations have all made commitments to divest their endowments from fossil fuel stocks and bonds.
5. Confronting climate change is an opportunity to address other social, economic and political issues.
“When climate change deniers claim that global warming is a plot to redistribute wealth, it’s not (only) because they are paranoid. It’s also because they are paying attention.”
In The Shock Doctrine, Klein explained how corporations have exploited crises around the world for profit. In This Changes Everything, she argues that the climate change crisis can serve as a wake-up call for widespread democratic action. For instance, when a 2007 tornado destroyed most of Greensburg, Kansas, the town rejected top-down approaches to recovery in favor of community-based rebuilding efforts that increased democratic participation and created new, environmentally-friendly public buildings. Today, Greensburg is one of the greenest towns in the United States. To Klein, this example illustrates how people can use climate change to come together to build a greener society. It also can, and indeed must, spur a radical transformation of our economy: less consumption, less international trade (part of relocalizing our economies) and less private investment, and a lot more government spending to create the infrastructure we need for a green economy. “Implicit in all of this,” Klein writes, “is a great deal more redistribution, so that more of us can live comfortably within the planet’s capacity.”
NINJA MEDIA RELEASES NEW WEBSITE AND EMERGES
AS ONE OF LATIN AMERICA’S STRONGEST ALTERNATIVE MEDIA EXPERIMENTS www.midianinja.org
By Eduardo Carli de Moraes @ Awestruck Wanderer
To rage against the corporate control of mass media is one thing; another, quite different and much harder to accomplish, is to really invent, build and sustain an alternative. Punk-rock screamer and political provocateur Jello Biafra – former lead singer for The Dead Kennedys – used to say: “Don’t hate the media… become the media!” This message, as I hear it, can be translated something like this: we can’t sit still on the denouncing-and-hating position, we need to struggle to be really constructive in co-building a truly free press.
In Brazil, Ninja Media has followed Jello Biafra’s advice, and in the last couple of years it emerged as a brand-new force in the country’s media landscape. N.I.N.J.A. stands for “Independent Narratives, Journalism & Action” (in Portuguese: Narrativas INdependentes, Jornalismo & Ação). During the whole extremely eventful month of June, in 2013, when hundreds of thousands of Brazilian citizens took to streets to protest a 20 cents increase in public transport fares, Ninja suddenly became hype.
The streets of Rio de Janeiro in Junho 17th, of 2013, when aprox. 500.000 “cariocas” demonstrated against public transport fare increases and police brutality (Photo by NINJA)
These mass demonstrations were colossal in size and scope; and they inaugurated a new era of mass communication, emerging in Latin America, in which civil society becomes increasingly more capable of organizing simultaneous events, aided by networking technologies and widespread use of social media. Journalism was evolving into new, mutated, cyber-communal incarnations. This new force was already acting in June 2013, as police forces and protesting citizens clashed on the streets, with huge clouds of tear gas enveloping the urban landscape in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, and several other Brazilian capitals.
We suddently discovered that Journalism was beggining to mutate and evolve into radically new, and much more democratic, forms. It’s an ongoing experience, with a vast future ahead of it, open for explorers and adventures in the art of re-creation of mass comunnication. But even mass, corporate media couldn’t ignore the power of this Ninja experiment, suddenly becoming a relevant force in the public sphere as a form of radically new Citizen Journalism: thousands of us were becoming increasingly aware that we don’t need to hate the media, we can become it; we can reclaim the airwaves (they belong to the people); we could make ourselves stronger by mirroring and reverberating our deeds and discourses through the World Wide Web, broadcasting live from the streets, with cellphones and digital cameras who were there both witnessing and acting on the political scene in unprecedented ways.
One of the most memorable scenes from the June 2013 mass demonstrations in Brazil: the roof of the National Congress in Brasília is occupied.
In this context of popular demonstrations and uprisings, Ninja emerged in Latin America’s media landscape. International sociologists and communications theorists, such as Manuel Castells, as well as foreign newspapers and TV networks, took an interest in this new phenomenon. The volunteer citizen journalists’ collective Ninja “used the recent demonstrations in Brazil’s major cities as a stage for their guerrilla approach to journalism, using smartphones and social media platforms to reach their audience” – reported Rafael Spuldar onindexoncensorship.org.
Ninja’s upsurging popularity shook the traditional media out of its elitist slumber – to the point that “even Globo, Brazil’s media colossus, has started to run ninja footage and follow stories that started with Ninja coverage”, wrote Jonathan Watts on The Guardian,which is by the way one of most renowned English newspapers and who wrote several articles about this “band of volunteer citizen journalists”, the Ninjas of Brazil’s revolution-in-media:
Back when the outburst of protest happened in June 2013, while the mass media was paralysed in perplexity with the popular uprisings (who were also against them, the corporate media and its machinery of deceit, indoctrination and lies!), Ninja was doing something quite different: it was there, at the eye of the hurricane, at the pulsating heart of the masses on the streets, broadcasting live on the Internet. Ninja unmasked contradictions and struggles as they were unfolding, in all its urgency, intensity and un-predictability. Documenting Brazil’s turmoil in amazing photographs and thrilling written articles, it soon skyrocketed in popularity and reached more than 300.000 followers on Facebook.
Ninja transmitted live from the protests and marches – including the Marijuana Marches and the Slut Walks, the demonstrations by the Landless Movement (MST) and the Homeless Movement (MTST), not to mention the resistance of indigenous populations against the advancement of ecocidal and genocidal agrobusiness and big dams such as Belo Monte… And it broadcasted images with no make-up, ideological dressing, nor censorship from advertisers and share holders.
The fact that Ninja reporters were there as witnesses also quickly transformed the political scenario completely: Ninja emerged also as a power, in Brazilian society, defending basic human rights, including freedom of expression and demonstrations, from abuses by the repressive apparatus. Since Ninja became a new player in Brazil’s power scene, the abuses and fascist practises of the Brazilian Military Police were brought to light and attention. Our police force is mainly an inheritance of the U.S.-backed Military Dictartorship, which ruled our country from 1964 until 1985. Police brutality, its murderous practices (before Ferguson had their martyr in Michael Brown, Rio de Janeiro had its own with Amarildo, murdered by Brazilian police in 2013), this practises of deadly Fascist Police State Measures were no longer easily kept concealed from public knowledge. Police violence against demonstrators, a phenomenon so common in reality as it is uncommon in the Big Media’s TV shows and mainstream magazines, was now being massively revealed.
In São Paulo, in June 2013, when the police went trigger-happy on their rubber bullets, hitting photographer’s eyes and severely hurting journalists (and kick-starting Black Bloc retaliation campaigns against banks and ATMS…), the Police’s abuses couldn’t be concealed. Citizens around the scene had emerged spontaneously as journalists, documentarists, photographers, eye-witnesses. The practise of mass incarceration during protests, for instance, was brought to ridicule: Ninja’s cameras, together with other alternative media and individual smart-phone broadcasters, showed how ridiculous were the cops excuses for emprisonment; many people were being arrested, for instance, because of possession of vinegar!
Our military police has already been declared by the United Nations and by Amnesty International as an institution stained by frequent Human Rights violations – it kills thousands of poor Brazilians each year in our cities slums and favelas, frequently justifying itself behind the pious crusade of The War on Drugs; one of the main issues of our protests are exacly the police force – usually an instituion which acts in highly racist ways, filled with corruption and bribery, with a tendency to constitute militias and mafias for vampiristic greedy profit (just watch Elite Squad, the two awesome films by José Padilha, for a handful of examples of such a fascist behavior…) – this Police Force is also what’s being protested against.
Rio de Janeiro, January 25, 2014. The avant-garde black-flag reads: “No Rights? No World Cup!”
Ninja emerged to give voice to the voiceless, to denounce abuse of power against the powerless, to be an eye-witness to some occurrences in Brazilian History whose newness really demand a new media, capable of making sense of it. Ninja emerges as a collective endeavour at building not only an alternative media, but also an alternative social reality: if you’re looking for authenticity, boldness and a will-to-truthfulness, Ninja is one the Brazilian media’s tenets to be tuned on to.
As the 2014 FIFA’s World Cup began, and the world’s attention turned massively to Brazil – and not only to the soccer arenas, but also to the turmoils and struggles of Brazilian society – Ninja Media released its new website (hosted at Oximity) and now aims to go global. A team of translators – myself included – are already working very eagerly in order to translate Ninja’s articles to English, Spanish, French, German and an ever-growing number of other languages. Please share the news, if you want to help consolidate this emerging project of independent media: Ninja is alive and kicking @ www.midianinja.org and a lot of material is already available for reading in foreign languages. What follows is but a small sample of the multi-language content already published there:
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Some members of Fora do Eixo / Brazil
ONE STEP FURTHER – MORE ABOUT NINJA @ OXIMITY: Ninja was born from a history of more than 15 years of free media production in Brazil, from experiences that go from small magazines to independent blogs of Fora do Eixo. Fora do Eixo is a network based in more than 200 cities in Brazil that develops technologies for culture, communication and content publication. Today NINJA is a decentralized network of people that use new mechanisms of production and distribution of information. It has thousands of members who are using collaboration as a way of life and as a tool to transform society.
Brazil’s capital Brasilia had a ‘warm up’ session of what can happen during FIFA World Cup games in the city this wednesday, May 28th, 2014. According to the ‘Lei Geral da Copa’ (the special legislation passed by Brazilian congress to comply with FIFA requirements during the event), the “enemies of order” – technically any citizens who live up to their right to protest and express their opinions – are prohibited to approach places pre-determined by FIFA, like stadiums and FIFA Fun Fest gatherings. Today around 3000 protesters were repressed with violence by the Brazilian State, acting to protect the FIFA standards in the preparation for the tournament. People in the surroundings described this wednesday’s event as a “spectacle of bombs and military hostility”.
The act “Copa pra quem?” (World Cup for whom?), organized by World Cup Popular Committee, the Homeless Workers’ Movement, and the Indigenous Population Organization (APIB) took over the main bus terminal in Brasilia during the rush hour. The movement promoted a staged trial where FIFA, the Brazilian Government and World Cup sponsors were judged by crimes committed in their quest for guaranteeing FIFA World Cup standards. The staged trial attracted hundreds of passengers and people on their way to work, in addition to indigenous groups from over 100 different ethnic groups from all over the country. Indigenous groups are in vigil in the Capital fighting against the advancement of agribusiness over indigenous land.
“Instead of the Government standing for the Federal Constitution and concluding demarcation of indigenous lands, it is investing billions in an event that lasts for a month, prioritizing big businesses over ancestral peoples’ Rights. For whom does the government works, ultimately?” – questions Lindomar Terena, member of APIB’s coordination.
The crowd marched to the stadium hosting FIFA World Cup in Brasilia, where the tournament trophy was being presented, in a peaceful demonstration. Children, elderly people and pregnant women were among the protesters received by the military police cavalry with tear gas bombs and rubber bullets. There was no space for dialog or negotiation as the police was determined to prevent protesters to go near the stadium.
Earlier this month Amnesty International launched a global campaign “No foul play, Brazil” urging Brazilian authorities to ensure security forces to “play by the rules” and respect everybody’s Rights to freedom of expression during demonstrations expected to take place ahead and during the tournament.
“We are not vandals, as they like to say, we are being ripped off of our land and cannot get near to this coliseum”, indigenous leaders and homeless workers complained referring to the newly built stadium. After the demonstration groups got together at the bus terminal to wrap up activities in the form of an assembly. “Tomorrow is going to be bigger”, chanted the protesters following the violent police reaction.
La vague orange. Noirs et habitants des favelas, les éboueurs s’unissent pendant le carnaval contre leur syndicat, la mairie, l’entreprise de nettoyage et la Globo (principal réseau de télévision privée). Photo: Midia NINJA.
Un an qui en paraît dix. Dix années intenses et vives. Les réseaux et la rue ont prouvé leurs liens, en créant un accélérateur de particules qui catalyse rêves et utopies en réalités. Si les luttes ont toujours existé, les conquêtes et les volontés ont gagné de nouvelles configurations. La population brésilienne fait des sauts quantiques de conscience et revient à la politique avec le goût de la participation et de l’interférence directe.
Des millions de Brésiliens sont sortis dans les rues pour les Journées de Juin, il y a un an. Ce fut un début qui ne surgissait pas de nulle part : le processus historique s’est condensé dans la pratique. Les insurrections ont germé ; ont fleuri, se sont accouplé. Le Mondial est alors arrivée. Avec lui, des événements non annoncés ou non autorisés. Pendant que le Brésil regardait vers l’intérieur, le monde observait le pays comme un horizon d’inventions. De la créativité à la volonté, nous avons montré que nous sommes capables de provoquer.
Un cycle se ferme, tant d’autres s’ouvrent. De la victoire carnavalesque des éboueurs (« garis ») aux Indiens venus s’inviter à la capitale. Le conflit ne vit pas seulement de réalités, mais aussi d’imaginaires! Et de mondes qui s’effondrent. Cette année de luttes et de renforcement des mouvements sociaux, initiée en juin 2013 et qui s’achève avec la Coupe du monde, est seulement la fin du début. Un cadre d’urgence politique s’est instauré, indépendant des choix et des processus qui vont suivre. La vague de protestations, à nouveau, fait bouillir dans les rues les principaux thèmes et débats du pays.
Tout cela est en partie le réflexe de 40 millions de personnes sortis de la ligne de l’extrême pauvreté. Mais c’est aussi le résultat de l’épuisement d’une politique institutionnelle qui a prouvé son échec : la crise de représentativité fait paraître moins fou à l’Etat de poursuivre l’extermination de la banlieue, l’isolement politique des Indiens, l’avancement de l’exploitation minière, l’inexistance de politiques de communication, le manque de sensibilité pour les enjeux culturels, la négation de la diversité, la vague conservatrice.
Mais le récit de la résistance doit gagner, une fois de plus. Pour chaque pas en arrière, deux en avant. Pour chaque Juin, de nombreuses victoires. En avant!
Victoire du MTST. Plus de vingt mille Travailleurs Sans Toit immobilisent Sao Paulo quelques jours avant le Mondial, en lutte pour un logement. Toutes leurs revendications furent acceptées. Photo: Midia NINJA.
“Another world is possible” – that’s a catchword I’ve been hearing for more than a decade, and it still sounds catchy and urgent, broad enough for a huge diversity of people and movements to gather under its motherly umbrella. In 2003, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the first World Social Forum was held, as the project of a global movement to create an alternative to the mainstream trend of globalization was gaining momentum. Rising up to confront the global dominance of corporate capitalism (always coupled with “shock and awe” politics), people all around the globe starting to voice their discontent with a system that generates vast accumulation of capital in few hands (the 1% denounced by the Occupy Movement), while causing massive empoverishment, debt and environmental destruction.
The Seattle No-WTO protests in 1999, and then Québec City’s demonstrations in 2001, and then Porto Alegre’s Forum in 2003 – this sequence of events, and the ones that followed, have shown that multitudes are willing to confront imperialism in its new encarnation as “neo-liberalism” – also known as “Free Market”, usually exported abroad by bombings and military coups (never forget: it took a Pinochet to enforce it in Chile, 1973). People are fed up of mercenary politicians, willing to sell all the public services to private interest. At the twilight of the 20th Century (an “Age of Extremes”, to quote Eric Hobsbawn’s excellent expression), and at the dawn of the 21st Century, we experienced some massive demonstrations against a world order ruled by the IMF, the World Bank, the OMC, and so on and so forth. It goes on. It’s going on right now.
The main difference I perceive between the mass demonstrations against the dominant model of capitalist globalization, on one side, and the social forums held by les altermondialistes, on the other, is this: in the first case, the focus is on protesting against the global elite (G8s and G20s, for example) and its un-democratic business decisions, made in military bunkers, surroundered by walls and riot police (we live in an age of epidemic tear-gas bombing of citizens); in the latter case, the focus is on a collective engagement to build a viable, effective alternative to our global elite’s mad ecocidal plans. That it is absolutely urgent to dethrone the New Emperor and its new clothes is nowhere stated better than in the global environmental crisis we are now confronting, and that menaces to wipe out entire ecosystems. If you are an apocalyptic freak or a nihilist, who wishes thousands of species to be extinct, all you need to do is this: nothing. Do nothing, and you’ll be siding with those who stabbing Gaia – and all living things within it, ourselves included – in her heart.
Arundhati Roy, speaking at the event held in Porto Alegre, stated that this “alter-world” wasn’t only a possibility, confined to the realm of potentialities, which may or may not come to life: “I can hear her breathing.” A Social Forum is a place where we gather to hear the Another World already breathing. And quite an interesting choice of worlds, Mrs Arundathi! To refer to the world-we-wish-to-build as a SHE sounds to my ears as an interesting concept, which suggests that too much testosterone and male-domineering-militarist culture is one of the most destructive trends in our world. This one that we need to subvert and revolutionize if Gaia, with the whole Web of Life in her bosom, is to survive this huge menace.
I believe in the fecundity of thinking about the alter-world as a she, which means a reawakening of respect for the Earth and its limites. And maybe mythology isn’t an innefective allie in our struggles if we regard our current crisis through the mythological lens of the goddess Gaia, symbol of interdependent and interelated Life, coexisting in a connected network of balanced, sustainable organisms that know themselves to be like instruments in the same symphony. She – alas! poor Gaia! – is currently ravaged by capitalism’s greedy extractivist & productivist húbris. So what we hear mostly, all around, is dissonance. A Social Forum is a place where we try, collectively, to bring back Melody and Harmony to our Civilization’s song.
Some may despise as corny and kitsch this sort of talk about “respecting Mother Nature”, but think about this: if we treat her like an exploitable whore, instead of a nurturing mother, we’ll pay a heavy price. We are already in the midst of a massive global crisis, and the prospect is that it will keep worsening as global warming produces brand-new draughts, floods, hurricanes, displacements, “climate refugees”, and so on and so forth. Here in Ottawa, 2014, the Social Forum provides its participants with hope that people coming together can join forces in order to save Gaia from this agony which she’s currently going through. Just regard her wounds and how much they’re bleeding!
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Naomi Klein’s lecture was one of the main attractions of the Social Forum’s first day, August 21. When I got at the University of Ottawa to listen to one of the contemporary journalists that I admire the most, the place was packed-full and there were no chairs left. I had to resign myself to listen to her standing on my tired legs, as if I was in a rock concert regarding a far-away stage.
In her home country, Naomi is certainly a very well-known and respected writer, pride and joy of Canada’s intellectual landscape. As the author of the quintessencial “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” – it’s safe to say it’s one of the greatest non-fiction books published in our century so far – she has earned recognition as one of the world’s leading thinkers about neo-liberal capitalism and the way it really works. She can count as some of her attentive readers and interlocutors some highly significant figures such as Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek and Arundhati Roy.
Even though she’s Canadian, Naomi Klein doesn’t deal in the cheap merchandise of demagogic patriotism. She’s clearly no fan of Mr. Stephen Harper’s policies and doesn’t fall for his jive (she’s too smart for that). “In this country, he are in the midst of an extraction frenzy”, she denounced, exposing Canada’s current practices of tar sands oil extraction, pipeline construction, high-scale fracking and mining.
She describes the “logic that sacrifices life in the altar of money” with two peculiar adjectives: “supremacist” and “psychotic”. When her new book comes out in September, “This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. the Climate” – we’ll see to what extent Naomi Klein has ventured into the diagnosis of our collective neurosis. In her Social Forum talk, she showed no signs of optimism: if we don’t change this system, she suspects, our future will be one in which “serial climate disasters will be dealt with dystopian barbarism”.
To explain what she means by “dystopian barbarism”, she mentions one of the greatest sci-fi movies produced in the last few years, “Snowpiercer” (by Korean director Joon-ho Bong). The Apocalypse on Wheels that the film portrays is one of the most poignant representations of what our Earthship may look like if we let business as usual proceed with its Earth-wrecking practises. “What we do in the next 10 years will define the fate of generations to come”, said Klein, underlining unequivocally that the doctrine of economic growth, when it disregards environmental sustainability, is a “suicidal path”.
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People’s Social Forum march throught Ottawa’s streets. August 21, 2014.
After Naomi’s thought-provoking contribution had kick-started the Forum’s multiple discussions and dialogues, it was time for us to take the streets. At least a dozen yellow school buses, packed with noisy bands of joyful and excited activists, were deployed for the transportation of the people from the University of Ottawa to the Canadian Museum of War. While police officers riding bikes stood by, just witnessing this strange gathering of colourful flags and shouting-and-cheering humans, a series of speakers adressed the crowd before the start of the march (videos coming soon!). Mr. Harper was treated as a punchbag, and the audience loved it. Leaders of labour unions, civil rights activists, defenders of First Nations (indegenous populations), all had their chance to voice their perspectives and to spark in the crowd the fires of enthusiastic democratic participation.
I must confess that I’m a sort of march-junkie – it’s one of my favorite drugs. My feelings of powerlessness get crushed when I’m embarked in the flow of a marching human stream. It almost brings tears of excitement to my face when my senses immerge in such a sea of human collective effort. It was my first day in Canada’s capital and I was about to participate in a massive take-over of Parliament Hill. Wow! Trust me, my friends: there’s no Hollywood thriller that can be provide thrills such as these. The avant-garde of this massive river-of-people – I would estimate that 10.000 people were marching – was composed of drumming and chanting First Nations representatives. Several different organizations were there adding their voices to the choir – a rainbow of diversity ranging from moderate and kitschy Nature Loving hippie-talk, to more radical, punkish and anarchist “smash the State!” utterings.
I must also confess that Ottawa’s establishment, its status quo, itsmachinery of power, its main public spaces, gave me a distasteful impression of too-much-militarism. By that I mean that military deeds seem to be celebrated much more than I think it should. It leaves in my tongue a somewhat bitter flavour to see plazas filled with statues of colonels and generals. I have also a difficult relationship with Ottawa’s monuments devoted to those who died in the battlefields – World War II or Korea, for example. Quoting from Virgil’s Aeneid, these military heroes are celebrated in Ottawa’s streets as men (they are all male!) “whose names will never be erased from History”. Methinks we should oppose the culture of militarism with the same fierceness with which we fight and despise the culture of rape, racism, patriarchy or xenophobia.
The first thing I did in the morning, for instance, was to attend to a ritual considered to be a delightul spectacle for tourists: the changing of the Guard in Parliament. Quite a boring show, if you ask me, and I couldn’t help but secretly despise those tourists who were admiringly watching this display of traditional military ritualization. In exactly the same place, in the afternoon, I could experience something much sweeter to my taste: the Social Forum’s multitude claiming its right to occupy the Parliament. After a beautiful, noisy, exciting march through Ottawa’s streets, the people gathered there to exchange ideas, to make plans for action, to chant and drum – and even to sing protest songs against the very people who work in the surrounding buildings and who are supposed to represent the people.
“Whose streets? Our streets! Whose streets? Our streets!” This call-and-response massive outcry is still ringing in my ears, still fresh in my memory, and to have experienced this has a already become so dear to my heart that I’ll carry it through life until my dying day.
This, my friends, is what democracy looks like.
A multitude of Social Forum participants take-over Canada’s Parliament in Ottawa (click to enlarge)
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TO BE CONTINUED…
Next chapter: my remarks on Cowspiracy, one of the greatest docs I ever saw.
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This was blogged by Awestruck Wanderer
from the Social Forum’s Media Center,
Ottawa, Ontario – 22/08/2014.
MY PLEA TO THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL: LIBERATE YOURSELVES BY LIBERATING PALESTINE
BY DESMOND TUTU
In an exclusive article for Haaretz.com [http://www.haaretz.com/], Desmond Tutu calls for a global boycott of Israel and urges Israelis and Palestinians to look beyond their leaders for a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land.
The past weeks have witnessed unprecedented action by members of civil society across the world against the injustice of Israel’s disproportionately brutal response to the firing of missiles from Palestine.
If you add together all the people who gathered over the past weekend to demand justice in Israel and Palestine – in Cape Town, Washington, D.C., New York, New Delhi, London, Dublin and Sydney, and all the other cities – this was arguably the largest active outcry by citizens around a single cause ever in the history of the world.
Cape Town – Marchers on their way to Parliament as they protest against Israel’s attack on Gaza. July 16, 2014.
A quarter of a century ago, I participated in some well-attended demonstrations against apartheid. I never imagined we’d see demonstrations of that size again, but last Saturday’s turnout in Cape Town [http://bit.ly/1r5DGTq] was as big if not bigger. Participants included young and old, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, blacks, whites, reds and greens… as one would expect from a vibrant, tolerant, multicultural nation.
I asked the crowd to chant with me: “We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.”
Earlier in the week, I called for the suspension of Israel from the International Union of Architects, which was meeting in South Africa.
I appealed to Israeli sisters and brothers present at the conference to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.
“I implore you to take this message home: Please turn the tide against violence and hatred by joining the nonviolent movement for justice for all people of the region,” I said.
Over the past few weeks, more than 1.6 million people across the world have signed onto this movement by joining an Avaaz campaign calling on corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation and/or implicated in the abuse and repression of Palestinians to pull out. The campaign specifically targets Dutch pension fund ABP; Barclays Bank; security systems supplier G4S; French transport company Veolia; computer company Hewlett-Packard; and bulldozer supplier Caterpillar.
Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in illegal Israeli settlements.
We have also recently witnessed the withdrawal by Dutch pension fund PGGM of tens of millions of euros from Israeli banks; the divestment from G4S by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the U.S. Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21 million from HP, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar.
It is a movement that is gathering pace.
Violence begets violence and hatred, that only begets more violence and hatred.
We South Africans know about violence and hatred. We understand the pain of being the polecat of the world; when it seems nobody understands or is even willing to listen to our perspective. It is where we come from.
We also know the benefits that dialogue between our leaders eventually brought us; when organizations labeled “terrorist” were unbanned and their leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were released from imprisonment, banishment and exile.
We know that when our leaders began to speak to each other, the rationale for the violence that had wracked our society dissipated and disappeared. Acts of terrorism perpetrated after the talks began – such as attacks on a church and a pub – were almost universally condemned, and the party held responsible snubbed at the ballot box.
The exhilaration that followed our voting together for the first time was not the preserve of black South Africans alone. The real triumph of our peaceful settlement was that all felt included. And later, when we unveiled a constitution so tolerant, compassionate and inclusive that it would make God proud, we all felt liberated.
Of course, it helped that we had a cadre of extraordinary leaders.
But what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa, economically, academically, culturally and psychologically.
At a certain point – the tipping point – the then-government realized that the cost of attempting to preserve apartheid outweighed the benefits.
The withdrawal of trade with South Africa by multinational corporations with a conscience in the 1980s was ultimately one of the key levers that brought the apartheid state – bloodlessly – to its knees. Those corporations understood that by contributing to South Africa’s economy, they were contributing to the retention of an unjust status quo.
Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of “normalcy” in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice. They are contributing to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo.
Those who contribute to Israel’s temporary isolation are saying that Israelis and Palestinians are equally entitled to dignity and peace.
Ultimately, events in Gaza over the past month or so are going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
It is becoming more and more clear that politicians and diplomats are failing to come up with answers, and that responsibility for brokering a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land rests with civil society and the people of Israel and Palestine themselves.
Besides the recent devastation of Gaza, decent human beings everywhere – including many in Israel – are profoundly disturbed by the daily violations of human dignity and freedom of movement Palestinians are subjected to at checkpoints and roadblocks. And Israel’s policies of illegal occupation and the construction of buffer-zone settlements on occupied land compound the difficulty of achieving an agreementsettlement in the future that is acceptable for all.
The State of Israel is behaving as if there is no tomorrow. Its people will not live the peaceful and secure lives they crave – and are entitled to – as long as their leaders perpetuate conditions that sustain the conflict.
I have condemned those in Palestine responsible for firing missiles and rockets at Israel. They are fanning the flames of hatred. I am opposed to all manifestations of violence.
But we must be very clear that the people of Palestine have every right to struggle for their dignity and freedom. It is a struggle that has the support of many around the world.
No human-made problems are intractable when humans put their heads together with the earnest desire to overcome them. No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it.
Peace requires the people of Israel and Palestine to recognize the human being in themselves and each other; to understand their interdependence.
Missiles, bombs and crude invective are not part of the solution. There is no military solution.
The solution is more likely to come from that nonviolent toolbox we developed in South Africa in the 1980s, to persuade the government of the necessity of altering its policies.
The reason these tools – boycott, sanctions and divestment – ultimately proved effective was because they had a critical mass of support, both inside and outside the country. The kind of support we have witnessed across the world in recent weeks, in respect of Palestine.
My plea to the people of Israel is to see beyond the moment, to see beyond the anger at feeling perpetually under siege, to see a world in which Israel and Palestine can coexist – a world in which mutual dignity and respect reign.
It requires a mind-set shift. A mind-set shift that recognizes that attempting to perpetuate the current status quo is to damn future generations to violence and insecurity. A mind-set shift that stops regarding legitimate criticism of a state’s policies as an attack on Judaism. A mind-set shift that begins at home and ripples out across communities and nations and regions – to the Diaspora scattered across the world we share. The only world we share.
People united in pursuit of a righteous cause are unstoppable. God does not interfere in the affairs of people, hoping we will grow and learn through resolving our difficulties and differences ourselves. But God is not asleep. The Jewish scriptures tell us that God is biased on the side of the weak, the dispossessed, the widow, the orphan, the alien who set slaves free on an exodus to a Promised Land. It was the prophet Amos who said we should let righteousness flow like a river.
Goodness prevails in the end. The pursuit of freedom for the people of Palestine from humiliation and persecution by the policies of Israel is a righteous cause. It is a cause that the people of Israel should support.
Nelson Mandela famously said that South Africans would not feel free until Palestinians were free.
He might have added that the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too.
A vida social é essencialmente prática. Todos os mistérios que seduzem a teoria para o misticismo encontram a sua solução racional na práxis humana e na compreensão desta práxis. [Karl Marx, 1845]
Combatendo a distorção e divulgação de notícias e conceitos falsos; Ocupando as redes sociais e denunciando moralistas e interesseiros de ocasião; Dialogando e formando amigos e conhecidos seduzidos por soluções autoritárias; Colaborando com ações e propostas conscientizadoras sobre as liberdades civis; Frequentando e defendendo os espaços plurais de produção, difusão e compartilhamento de saberes, conhecimentos e artes. RESISTA!
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