Anyone familiar with traditional Korean food will find it hard to understand why modern Koreans ever switched to the “standard american diet” (SAD), for much of the traditional diet is amazingly good food, both from a gastronomical and a health perspective. And the traditional Korean diet just so happens to involve very little meat. The good news though, as this Yonhap News article points out, is that the return to a vegetarian diet is quickly catching on in Korea. This will be interesting to watch, because when social change happens in Korea, it really happens quickly.
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Social Movements
I am Fishead (Documentary)
Official movie description: how psychopaths and antidepressants influence our society: a provocative snapshot of the world we live in. It is a well-known fact that our society is structured like a pyramid. The very few people at the top create conditions for the majority below. Who are these people? Can we blame them for the problems our society faces today? Guided by the saying “A fish rots from the head,” the movie sets out to follow that fishy odor. What they found out is that people at the top are more likely to be psychopaths than the rest of us.…
Nine strategies to end corporate rule
Yes Magazine has put together an interesting collection of articles, written by various writers, around the question of the century: What can we do to bring an end to corporatocracy and help build a sustainable society that prioritizes human needs above corporate profits. The collection of articles can be found here. The nine strategies: 1. Amend the constitution to end corporate personhood. 2. Dive into grassroots campaigns. 3. Hold corporations accountable to our laws. 4. Get Past the Propaganda 5. Support independent media and keep the Internet free. 6. Protect the Commons 7. Vote. Protect our democracy. 8. Make your…
The Crisis of Civilization (documentary)
The Crisis of Civilization is a documentary feature film investigating how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system. Weaving together archival film footage and animations, film-maker Dean Puckett, animator Lucca Benney and international security analyst Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, offer a stunning wake-up call proving that ‘another world’ is not merely possible, but on its way. The film consists of seven parts which explore the interconnected dynamic of global crises of Climate Catastrophe; Peak Energy; Peak Food; Economic Instability; International Terrorism; and the Militarization…
The Kony controversy
In the middle of the two or three-day period in which the Kony 2012 went viral, a note was posted on this blog linking to the video and recommending support for the campaign to arrest Kony. The world is now witnessing a viral explosion of criticism of the Kony 2012 video, which also deserves some comment. Aljazeera has devoted a section of its website to what it calls the “Kony Debate,” though it is less a debate than it is a collection of complaints against the film. Nonetheless, it is probably the single best source of information for understanding the criticisms…
A Call Against Arms (Aljazeera report on Jeju naval base)
In a tiny village on a small island off the coast of South Korea an entire community is taking on the might of the South Korean navy and government to contest the construction of one of the region’s largest naval bases. The village of Gangjeong on the island of Jeju has fewer than 2,000 inhabitants but it has become the epicentre of growing discontent over one of the world’s biggest arms races. The South Korean government is adamant that the Gangjeong naval base, which it began constructing in 2007, will strengthen national security. But those opposed to it fear that…
KONY 2012
KONY 2012 is a short, powerful, and highly controversial film allegedly made to draw attention to the heinous crimes of Joseph Kony and to mobilize people around the world to do what they can to help bring this monster of a human to justice. For a brief moment, the film became an internet sensation and catapulted its director, Jason Russell to fame, until articles like this one from Adam Branch surfaced, accusing Russell of dangerous ignorance and turning his fame into global notoriety.
Video: Poor America
While it is by some criteria the richest country on the planet, the US now has 1.5 million children without a home, 50 million people without health insurance, and growing communities of people living in the sewers underneath its glittering cities. This short documentary called Poor America, produced by the BBC, is a revealing, disturbing, but refreshingly frank look at just how bad times are in the US.
Progressive movements in the US
The Occupy Movement received a lot of attention in 2011 and it was indeed one of the most promising signs that although the economic and political system is profoundly unjust and has been hijacked and corrupted by corporations that quite literally own the country, the game is not completely over. The people are down but not thoroughly defeated, and we are now witnessing a reawakening of political consciousness. The lesson of the movement is simple and profound: if people unite, they can resist the corporate takeover of their country and instead democratize it. Within and alongside the Occupy Movement are…
Video: The Story of Broke
Annie Leonard has done it again. The Story of Broke is a nice follow-up video to her massive hit the Story of Stuff. It focuses on the economic choices that sustain the dinosaur economy and the political choices people have to create a sustainable future. She has a real talent for taking a complex issue, boiling it down to its essentials, and presenting it in a lively and entertaining fashion. You can watch the Story of Broke either on her website or here.
Video: Capitalism is the Crisis
This description for Capitalism is the Crisis comes from the website for the film: The 2008 “financial crisis” in the United States was a systemic fraud in which the wealthy finance capitalists stole trillions of public dollars. No one was jailed for this crime, the largest theft of public money in history. Instead, the rich forced working people across the globe to pay for their “crisis” through punitive “austerity” programs that gutted public services and repealed workers’ rights. Austerity was named “Word of the Year” for 2010. This documentary explains the nature of capitalist crisis, visits the protests against austerity measures, and…
Advancing animal rights
It’s a small step, but a step in the right direction. All 27 countries of the European Union recently agreed to ban the inhuman practice of raising chickens in cages that are too small for them to flap their wings. Peter Singer provides a nice description of this modest but significant advance here.
Greenpeace gets China to drop GE rice
How they did it is an amazing story, with implications for other environmental causes and progressive movements. You can read about, straight from the horse’s mouth here.
Save Jeju Island
As this article by Matthew Hoey indicates, the protest movement against the military base on Jeju Island in South Korea is the “absolute front line of the struggle for international peace, and is increasingly gaining recognition as such in the minds of leading scholars, activists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).” According to Hoey, peace activists see the Save Jeju Island campaign as an entirely winnable cause for peace with significant international implications. The following short video by Hoey gives some background on the military base and the resistance movement. To learn more about the movement and how you can contribute to it, visit…
Containing China
Recent headlines from Democracy Now describe the US plans to increase its military presence in the Philippines and the growing opposition movement there. Renato Reyes, spokesperson for the New Patriotic Alliance, states that: “We are very opposed to the plans to re-align and deploy more U.S. troops in the Philippines, and we are very aware that this is in line with the U.S. strategy to build up its armed forces in Asia to counter China. And we feel that the Philippines might be caught in the rising tension between the two countries if we allow the U.S. to base their troops in…
Ron Paul
Ron Paul is a very interesting figure in American politics. Progressives love his foreign policy but hate his economic plans and his positions on domestic issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and health care. Conservatives, on the other hand, love Paul’s domestic agenda of reducing the size of the government, lowering taxes, and abolishing the Federal Reserve, but they seem to hate his non-interventionist foreign policy. So Paul has been received differently by different political groups, but even among liberals and progressives, Paul has generated a significant amount of controversy. Consider Kathy Pollit’s recent essay, which outlines the reasons why…
Economic and environmental crises
Interesting comments from Naomi Klein on the Occupy Wall Street movement. She makes a connection between the economic and environmental crises that is worth repeating–that they are really two sides of the same crisis or two consequences of a single cause, namely, corporate capitalism. A system based on greed and growth inevitably destroys its own base, whether that be the workers on whose spending power the economic system depends or the natural ecosystem on which all life depends.
The CBC emulates FOX
The following is a CBC interview with Chris Hedges on the Occupy Wall Street movement. The obnoxious interviewer in this segment is a man named Kevin O’Leary, a Canadian venture capitalist and “television personality.” In this brief and hostile interview, Hedges provides an astute analysis and description of the Occupy Movement and also correctly points out that O’Leary’s insults and aggression make the CBC no different from FOX News. Unlike FOX, however, the CBC is a public broadcaster. Americans merely have to tolerate FOX; Canadians are actually paying for the CBC with their taxes.
Situationism and “The Protester”
Dan Hind, author of The Return of the Public and The Threat to Reason and this year’s winner of the Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize, expressed his opinion on Situationism and the Occupy Movements in AlJazeera’s Opinion Space. While the whole article is worth reading, here are some quotes: In the years after the World War II, the US and Western Europe saw unprecedented rates of sustained economic growth. Food and accommodation were cheap and working people could afford a vast range of novel commodities – electronic gadgets, cars, new styles in furniture and opportunities for leisure. Decades of war, depression and social…
Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston
On October 22 Noam Chomsky addressed the crowd at the Occupy Boston Movement:
Democracy Now
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