This past week was the idfa in Amsterdam, a documentary film festival. It was great, and I saw some really good ones, and am considering reviewing my criteria for a good film (guns, explosion and good looking women).
On Monday I saw Poison Fire a film about gas flaring in Nigeria. Another of those thinks that reminds you that the current economic system is very deeply flawed. Big oil multinationals drill for oil in Nigeria and when the oil comes up, it brings with it a lot of gas. This gas makes the oil difficult to transport, so the companies burn it off in huge gas flares. This is while Nigerians have very few opportunities for fuel for cooking. And of course the flaring leads to huge health problems for the people living nearby. Shell in particular has been taking to court a number of times in Nigeria over the flaring and has been ordered to stop flaring. They haven't, but now a case is being brought to a Dutch court ... we live in hope!
On Wednesday I saw a film that wasn't on the festival, but was shown by Greenpeace NL. It was called The Deadline and was about pirate fishing off the cost of Africa (New Guinea in particular). It was interesting to learn about pirate fishing, but more to see again how much work goes into a Greenpeace campaign, to end with just one action. I've bought a copy of this one, so if you'd like to see it, let me know the next time I'm on my way to you.
**oh, and speaking of piracy, check out this Sunday Herald article for a really interesting take on the recent increase in piracy off the coast of Somalia**
On Thursday it was Let's Make Money, a film about the world economy and how CRAZY it is. The best quote? An government official from Burkina Fasso saying that if subsidies like the US subsidy on cotton were not ended, the people of Africa would invade Europe, even if they built a wall 10 metres high to keep them out (Kein mensch ist illegal!). Me and Zeina were cheering :-)
On Friday I saw Sea Point Days, a documentary about Sea Point (yes, in Cape Town) and it left me with the biggest smile on my face. A really positive look at SA, and showed of some of SAs best sides!
Saturday was a weird one called A Complete History of My Sexual Failures. A (rather useless) guy going back and interviewing all his ex girlfriends on why they dumped him. It also involved him being whipped by dominatrix and taking 6 viagras. Pretty funny at times. And led to a good discusion between me and Tamar on assholes and what constitutes an asshole. The randomness of the conversation was also fed by the fact that about 4 hours previously I had eaten more baked goods than could strictly be called necessary and then gone to a party where Mel had shown what the snack table would look like in heaven (mint and feta bread? yes please).
Today was the last one and a really good one about plastic called Addicted to Plastic. Not nearly depressing enough to be called a good environmental documentary in my book. Well, seriously it was very good at not getting too crazy about the fact that the pacific ocean is more or less a plastic soup, and showing some really good examples of people working on plastic waste.
So a good week of documentaries and now for the next two weeks I've got meetings most days. Then it's holidays in SA, which I am really looking forward to!
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
lost glove found glove
I went for a long ride on Sunday and during the taking off my jacket, putting on my jacket and taking my gloves off and putting them back on and putting them in the pockets of my jacket I lost one. Really cool gloves that Holle bought for me at Globetrotter.
So what good is one glove? Not very much and I was very frustrated that I would have to throw away a perfectly good glove and go and buy 2 more. However, I related my story of woe to anyone and everyone who would listen, and what do you know, Ilona said that she had a glove that some one left at her house.
So she bought it in, and it was the right hand (in both meanings of the word). So now I have too slightly different gloves, warm hands and a warm heart.
So what good is one glove? Not very much and I was very frustrated that I would have to throw away a perfectly good glove and go and buy 2 more. However, I related my story of woe to anyone and everyone who would listen, and what do you know, Ilona said that she had a glove that some one left at her house.
So she bought it in, and it was the right hand (in both meanings of the word). So now I have too slightly different gloves, warm hands and a warm heart.
When not getting arrested isn't good...
Last Saturday I wanted to join some friends in stopping e-on building a coal power station in Rotterdam. We were going to camp outside the power station on Friday and then slowly escalate our prescene until we entered the site on Monday and locked on to machinery etc. to stop the construction of the power station.
I had a meeting on Friday, so was planning to join my hundred odd friends on Saturday, but as I was preparing to catch the train out to Rottterdam, I got a call saying that the had already entered the site and were busy getting arrested.
Oh well, hopefully next time I'll be able to confront the enforced violence of a system intent on destroying the planet.
I had a meeting on Friday, so was planning to join my hundred odd friends on Saturday, but as I was preparing to catch the train out to Rottterdam, I got a call saying that the had already entered the site and were busy getting arrested.
Oh well, hopefully next time I'll be able to confront the enforced violence of a system intent on destroying the planet.
The Premises of Endgame
Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.
Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.
Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.
Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.
Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.
Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.
Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it's not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.
Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.
Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation.
Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These "rich" claim they own land, and the "poor" are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.
Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.
Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I'm not sure how I'd make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.
Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.
Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God's eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.
Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won't frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.
Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.
Premise Nineteen: The culture's problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.
www.endgamethebook.org
Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.
Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.
Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.
Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.
Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.
Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it's not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.
Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.
Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation.
Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These "rich" claim they own land, and the "poor" are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.
Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.
Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I'm not sure how I'd make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.
Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.
Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God's eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.
Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won't frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.
Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.
Premise Nineteen: The culture's problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.
Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.
www.endgamethebook.org
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
What I ate today
Because James doesn't care, I hope there is somebody out there who might...
Today I ate:
I big bowl of porridge with raisins and apple (I ate this in two sittings, one at home on my blue couch and the other infront of my computer at work - and it was still warm)
Two sticks of celery - a bit limp, but fine when cut into sections
Three sandwiches (or butter hams in Dutch) one with Marmite and two with cheese, mustard, tomato and spinach
A brownie (kindly donated by Tamar to the cause)
3 grapes
1 naartjie
2 small pieces of chocolate
2 really big bowls of pasta, pickled onions, tomato, pesto and feta
1 man siyed portion of cookies and vla
Good feed (with apologies to Al)
Today I ate:
I big bowl of porridge with raisins and apple (I ate this in two sittings, one at home on my blue couch and the other infront of my computer at work - and it was still warm)
Two sticks of celery - a bit limp, but fine when cut into sections
Three sandwiches (or butter hams in Dutch) one with Marmite and two with cheese, mustard, tomato and spinach
A brownie (kindly donated by Tamar to the cause)
3 grapes
1 naartjie
2 small pieces of chocolate
2 really big bowls of pasta, pickled onions, tomato, pesto and feta
1 man siyed portion of cookies and vla
Good feed (with apologies to Al)
Monday, November 03, 2008
Follow my blog
If you've got a blogger or google account, you can follow my blog. Check the link below right.
Basically Training
This past weekend I attended the Basic Action Training. It was in short, one of the most fun weekends ever!
The training started at 8pm on Friday night, and after having a scenic tour of North Amsterdam at night I eventually arrived at about 20:20. We started with an introduction and a slide show and short movie about some great Greenpeace actions. Check this out if you want to know what I'm talking about:
I couldn't tell you everything that went on, but it involved ropes boats and plenty action.
The Dutch warehouse is absolutely amazing with all sorts of equipment and loads of protective clothing. I learnt loads, and met some really amazing people. A professor of mine once told me that if I went into the type of work I'm in I would meet loads of nice people. It has proved correct a million times over, people who care about the future of the planet, people and life are amazing. The took us into what is often seen as a rather exclusive club and handed over the reigns completely. They were always there to help out, but where never patronising and never once tried to limit any of us. They merely said know your limits and admit when you are uncomfortable. Such a fantastically liberating approach to education. Most of what I learnt I learnt in reflection, and while I sometimes wish I had more information to do a "better" job, I think the lesson was all the more stronger having tried things and got them wrong.
Good times all round.
The training started at 8pm on Friday night, and after having a scenic tour of North Amsterdam at night I eventually arrived at about 20:20. We started with an introduction and a slide show and short movie about some great Greenpeace actions. Check this out if you want to know what I'm talking about:
I couldn't tell you everything that went on, but it involved ropes boats and plenty action.
The Dutch warehouse is absolutely amazing with all sorts of equipment and loads of protective clothing. I learnt loads, and met some really amazing people. A professor of mine once told me that if I went into the type of work I'm in I would meet loads of nice people. It has proved correct a million times over, people who care about the future of the planet, people and life are amazing. The took us into what is often seen as a rather exclusive club and handed over the reigns completely. They were always there to help out, but where never patronising and never once tried to limit any of us. They merely said know your limits and admit when you are uncomfortable. Such a fantastically liberating approach to education. Most of what I learnt I learnt in reflection, and while I sometimes wish I had more information to do a "better" job, I think the lesson was all the more stronger having tried things and got them wrong.
Good times all round.
EDMing it
On Thursday of last week I was privileged to attend the Executive Directors Meeting of Greenpeace in Berg en Dal in the Netherlands.
I was taking minutes, something that I don't find particularly easy, but luckily I had a very interesting subject to be minuting! Hearing all the EDs introducing themselves in all their different languages brought it home to me how diverse Greenpeace is and how it really does span the globe. To be united with fellow humans behind such a great cause was really moving.
I then of course spent the rest of the meeting getting over myself and shamelessly introducing myself to as many EDs as I could get my hands on!
Sitting on the train home I felt tired, but happy to be where I was. I am so happy to be working for a cause that I really believe in and am more than happy to put so much of my energy into.
I'm going to go away and try and find something to complain about for the next post (well actually the next post is already, so it'll have to be the übernächste).
I was taking minutes, something that I don't find particularly easy, but luckily I had a very interesting subject to be minuting! Hearing all the EDs introducing themselves in all their different languages brought it home to me how diverse Greenpeace is and how it really does span the globe. To be united with fellow humans behind such a great cause was really moving.
I then of course spent the rest of the meeting getting over myself and shamelessly introducing myself to as many EDs as I could get my hands on!
Sitting on the train home I felt tired, but happy to be where I was. I am so happy to be working for a cause that I really believe in and am more than happy to put so much of my energy into.
I'm going to go away and try and find something to complain about for the next post (well actually the next post is already, so it'll have to be the übernächste).
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