"Democracy is not what governments do, it's what people do." Howard Zinn
Nobody does it quite like Bill Moyers when it comes to tactically tapping into every iota of symbolism and synchronicity in his news reporting. In a syncopated and copacetic precursor to the largest global act of collaboration in the history of Planet Earth, Moyers interviews Howard Zinn, whose documentary, The People Speak airs tonight on the History Channel.
Lest we forget, both Moyers and Zinn remind us that Democracy is NOT a Spectator Sport!
Global Day of Action = Over 3000 Climate Change Demonstrations
Lyt vær venlig. خاطر داري غوږ. Ecouter s'il vous plaît. कृपया ये-ले-ले. Listen Please.
The Concert for Bangladesh, Madison Square Garden. 1971. (See Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971)
"It is not North vs. South, or East vs. West, it is traditional village life versus modern, centralized, hierarchical, industrial, consumerist society," says environmental and social activist Hayduke in a recent article Degrowth Time Has Come.
Hayduke references Miguel Valencia's speech Liberating the Social Imagination to Liberate Our Villages last Wednesday at Klimaforum09's Degrowth Seminar as honing in on the "ultimate futility of attempting to prop up an unsustainable world view."
"Valencia's speech," he writes, "should be plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the world, distributed as broadsheets on every street corner, read aloud at peace, environmental and social justice gatherings everywhere. This is the voice of the future and the dying wail of "Civilization" brought to account for its profligate ways."
No kidding! If the first week of COP15 tells us anything, it is this: The People Are Speaking. They want a real deal. One that returns power to the people.
Excerpts from 'The Speech"
Our villages and cities are dying because of intense development. Everywhere in México, the same force is at work. It weakens our villages, sickens and kills their inhabitants. It destroys our communities and makes a mockery of our traditional commons. Year after year, it causes the loss of support capacities: water tables, streams and lakes, groves, rainforests, and seas. It constantly impoverishes our country's fauna and flora.
This force is modernization. It is an undeclared war waged against nature and the people's commons. In its name, the landscape is tainted with actual monocrops such as corn, barley, and palms, and also with monocrops of urban sprawl, channels, and pylons. All towns are more and more invaded by pavement, pipes, autos, noise, advertisements, commercial franchises, and WalMart stores. The peasants and town residents observe helplessly how in a few months there is the building of underpasses for freeways, big parking lots, huge malls, and industrialized housing. In a few hours they see how their public parks and gardens, sidewalks, and squares are filled with used plastic bottles or bags, aluminum cans, printed matter, and debris of metal, glass and plastic.<</p>
The One Dimensional Man, denounced by Herbert Marcuse in the '60s, is now present everywhere in the world. Techno-scientists presently conduct high risk experiments using nuclear energy, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics, in such a manner “to make humans an endangered species,” according to Bill Joy, the great American computer scientist. The global economy has conquered the mind of modern man and commands his life, needs, desires, and beliefs. The idea of scarcity, essential to economic thinking, saturates contemporary thinking. Nowadays, because of economic ideas, multinationals and states face a Shakespearean dilemma “to grow or not to be” -- as economy implements the ugliness, gigantism, and accelerated change that now subdue the modern world.
A cultural revolution emerges when men and women work together for the rebirth of their village, town or community, when they expand the realm of gratuity and solidarity, when they are blessed by the love for nature, altruism, cooperation, luddism, autonomy and beauty.
This cultural revolution begins in our minds, the moment when we become aware, as Baruch Spinoza did, that simple poor life constitutes in itself a source of light to inspire us to understand the different dimensions of poverty and our own potency; that the joys of frugal or poor life permit us to liberate a strong desire to live free to our natural limits and avoid external affections or imaginations that diminish or inhibit this desire and our capacities. And he says to let reality teach us this truth in order to comprehend the world as it is here and now; in that way we can liberate ourselves from all forms of servitude and acquire a freedom rooted in need; thus, we can find good responses to very difficult questions.
We have to discover and respect the essential link between desire and reason, for the good deployment of our own potential, to facilitate the creation of societies based in freedom and respect for everybody’s singularity. Spinoza said that “weakness solely consists in letting external things conduct our lives and decline what demands our nature in itself." Centuries latter, Gandhi said: “Freedom can be achieved through inner sovereignty”
Climate change, peak oil, and high risk technologies can easily bring harsh, painful, corrective changes in our villages in the coming years. But joyful, pleasant transformations will come from the discovery of our inner power and potential while we voluntarily adopt a frugal, poor, simple, and slower life.
The Ice Bear ---
And so, as we enter Week 2 of COP15, as Copenhagen awaits the arrival of the global elite, I cannot help but see the world through the eyes of the melting Copenhagen Ice Bear. S/he is weeping inside, awaiting the arrival of the 'big guns', those who, jetting in too late, will only see her skeleton. If they even venture into Hopenhagen at all.
December 8. I left the Copenhagen Bear with a lump in my throat this morning... he looks amazing ... !!! From the other side (from the Video Juicer) the skeleton is really coming through... it looks both frightening and compelling! I feared that people would take fright once they saw the bear starting to melt away but far from it! People do really get the issue and understand the dynamic art that is developing drip by drip and touch by touch in front of them!
There are such obvious parallels with the climate change issues, the scientists are saying that it reflects their science like a glove... it talks about the cyclical warming of the planet, the human contribution to climate change, the bronze coming through the ice conducts the heat as does the big black arctic albeit a very different one when the ice goes... SO many exact parallels.
... sculpture is after all a powerful language that does cross boarders, understandable by all.
The people who are streaming to the sculpture are understanding these messages
Dec. 13. The team has been flying high and working their socks off over the last few exhausting days! After the success of the Copenhagen Bear Toby and I had to rush back to England to repeat the whole wonderful process in Trafalgar Square! .... Today I flew back to Copenhagen with Toby to meet up with Equiterre, French Canadian partners of Ice Bear, we will be taking a bear across Canada in January… more on this exciting development shortly. The Copenhagen bear is looking FANTASTIC!!! Sculptor Mark Coreth, The Ice Bear Project blog
Imagine the voice of George Harrison resounding through the streets of Copenhagen. On the airport runways as the world dignitaries arrive. Inside the 'hallowed halls' of the Bella Center. Winding and whining through Christiana, out over the harbor. Harrison supposedly consulted the I Ching before writing this song, which is based on the idea of relativity. A few verses did not make the final cut.
A demo recorded in Harrison's house included this verse:
I look at the trouble and see that it's raging,
While my guitar gently weeps.
As I'm sitting here, doing nothing but aging,
Still, my guitar gently weeps
Still another verse, released on Anthology 3:
I look from the wings at the play you are staging,
While my guitar gently weeps.
As I'm sitting here, doing nothing but aging,
Still, my guitar gently weeps.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps,
George Harrison, The White Album, 1971. Eric Clapton lead guitar solo.
I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know why nobody told you
How to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you
I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don't know how you were inverted
No one alerted you
I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all...
Still my guitar gently weeps
Yes my guitar gently weeps on weeps on weeps on
Photocredits
Copenhagen Global Day of Action by Robert vanWaarde
Global Day of Action in Copenhagen - Denmark by Robert vanWaarde
Ice Bear by Iucundus
COP 15 Day 3 - Copenhagen Ice bear is melting by Haja Nirina.
Copenhagen Bear Day 6 by freitag06
Climate Bottom Meeting. Christiana, Copenhagen by Matthew McDermott
Peoples' Climate March - Copenhagen, December 12 by powless
J+6 Global Day of Climate Action / 12 dec 2009 by wwf_france
We will not die quietly by Robert vanWaarden