Americas (South & North)

A Conference at York University about Capitalizing Power, organized by Jonathan Nitzan. In my talk, I try to relate Nitzan's "Capital as Power" framework to environmentalist thinking.

I've been gradually collecting sources on teaching without realizing it. Teaching instruction can come from some unlikely places (the likely places are Alfie Kohn, John Holt, Carol Dweck, Paolo Freire...). Here are some of mine:

Just finished reading Diego Gambetta's "Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate" (Princeton University Press 2009). One of Gambetta's contentions is that criminals face more extreme versions of the same problems people face in above-ground life. I read it thinking about the connections and differences between political activism (which is often criminalized) and crime.

I just wrote a review of Albert, Azulay, and Marty's Fanfare for the Future: Occupy Strategy at amazon:

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Full disclosure: I write for ZNet and come from this school of thought, so this is a knowledgeable review, but not an 'objective' one.

I have been updating my Writings Archive (see the tab above) and making sure that all of the links are working, putting copies of the material published elsewhere into this blog so it's all searchable and such. Part of this is re-posting work that hasn't been on the internet in a long time, so it's been interesting memories.

One of the most was this photo essay from Palestine in the summer of 2002, 10 years ago now.

Another is

While these aren't the worst things in the world, a couple of things from the world of information and journalism that were surprising enough to me, even though I think I ought to be pretty hardened to these things by now.

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Through Wikileaks' twitter feed, I saw this story about one of the founders of the Pirate Bay - a statement, by one of said founders, Peter Sunde. Lots to find outrageous in here, but one aspect of the story that Sunde quoted was amazing:

Hello friends. We at En Camino put this together and it has gathered signatures since the coup. We are hoping to work together to find ways to support FDD in the coming weeks and months. -Justin

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The undersigning organizations, collectives and individuals working towards a coordinated initiative of popular resistance from and with the peoples of Paraguay clearly and unequivocally declare:

I joined the International Organization for a Participatory Society.

When the landless peasants of the Carperos Campesino Movement moved on to the 70,000 hectare ranch in Curuguaty registered to Blas Riquelme, they would have known that they were risking their lives. Using the same successful methods as elsewhere in Latin America, perhaps most famously by the Landless Peasants Movement (MST) in Brazil – Curuguaty is close to the Brazilian border – the campesinos would occupy the land, hold it, and negotiate with the government. The methods – summarized in the slogan Occupy, Resist, Produce – were effective, but costly.

The key moment in many revolutions comes when police and militaries refuse to fire on crowds. But what is difficult to explain about those moments is their infrequency. Soldiers and police come from the same society as the crowds. Why do they kill them? Why are elites and authorities able to rest so comfortably in the knowledge that in the final analysis, thousands of armed men will do what they are told? I think this is one of the most important questions we can ask, and not enough of us ask it.