40 Inspirational Speeches In Two Minutes

Only 3 women though.

Link Loving 24.03.11

• Fantastic resource – 10 steps to a hard-hitting media team.
• Japan nuclear firm admits missing safety checks at disaster-hit plant. Justin McCurry.
• Why isn’t someone in charge of the war against Libya? Max Fisher.
• How to feed the world by 2050. It ain’t about growing more. Samuel Fromartz.
• Germany’s solar panels produce more power than Japan’s entire Fukushima complex. Christopher Mims.
• Want to know how to run community insulation programmes? Green For All has a great new report.
• Nice interactive map of the global cities of the future. McKinsey.
• What pisses you off?

United We Rise

Beautiful and strong.

“I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others’ happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these things cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say “Do not despair.” The misery that has come upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to these brutes who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle and use you as cannon fodder! Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men—machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are men! With the love of humanity in your hearts! Don’t hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness!

You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to the happiness of us all. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us unite!”

This Is How You Do An ‘Issue’ Rap

• Real anger
• Real policy detail

GENIUS

Link Loving 23.03.11

• What’s really happening in Whitehall; the war between politicians and civil servants. The Economist.
• How to facilitate virtual meetings.
• How not to convince a climate sceptic. New Scientist.
• The idea that we’re all in this together is taken down by the Economist.
• How an Icelandic bank HQ has become a hub for start-ups since the crash. Doors of Perception.
• How to evaluate the effectiveness of an ‘issue’ film like The End Of The Line. Brilliant stuff from GoodFilm.
• Did Britain try to assassinate Lenin? BBC.
• Dalia Ben-Galim on the million unemployed young people – and the six million Brits in dead-end jobs.
• Paul Krugman explains the attacks on Elizabeth Warren – they’re meant to block credible consumer protections. When you challenge power, it fights back.
• How celebrities are making meditation hip.

The Internet Isn’t Just For Protestors – It’s For The State Too

A brilliant extract of Evgeny Morozov’s talk at the RSA. How governments in Thailand, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China are using online tools to suppress protest, and rather than having to torture you to see your protestor network, they just look at your Facebook friends.

Some lovely little visual jokes too (mice using mini-humans to control a computer, ‘Mous’low’s heirarchy of needs etc.)

Full talk here.

Link Loving 22.03.11

• Stephen Hale looks at how development NGOs work together, and how they can do it better.
• Wangari Maathai asks whether the revolutions in north Africa can spread south? No – because of a lack of national over tribal identity, the regressive army and lack of access to information.
• Richard Graves on disasters and resilience.
• Bryan Farrell on how Wisconsin has strengthened ties between labour and environment.
• Turning that desk job into a game. But ultimately, it’s still a desk job.
• Left Outside has a nice piece wondering why the mainstream media is so bad.
• Cults of personality.
• Nick Pearce thinks that Cameron’s reorganisation of Number 10 makes no sense.
• Governments can do little to build civil society directly but much more to strengthen the conditions in which civil society can build itself. Michael Edwards.

Wanted: Robin Hood Road Trip Buddy

I’m looking for a road trip buddy between April 4th and 17th to drive our van for Robin Hood Tax campaign, and help out with campaigning on the road.

All food + accommodation covered, and you’ll meet some amazing people en route – everything from local campaigners fighting to save their local public services, people who run alternative banking systems like credit unions, and lots of local press people. Lots of potentially good experience for campaigning and video work too.

We’ll be hitting: London, Kent, Brighton, South West, Bristol, Birmingham, Oxford, South Wales, Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, and Newcastle.

Comment below if you’re interested – and please spread the word!

Gene Sharp

This NY Times profile piece on the renowned non-violence expert Gene Sharp is now slightly old – but very much worth a read.

He’s sometimes known as the Machiavelli of civil disobedience, and reading his books on strategy certainly reveal a seasoned thinker and practicioner. His latest, From Dictatorship to Democracy has been read widely by movement leaders in the Middle East, especially Egypt, and the lessons learned from previous struggles are evident.

This short list of the necessary sources of political power are worth baring in mind for campaigners mapping out power.

The principle is simple. Dictators require the assistance of the people they rule, without which they cannot secure and maintain the sources of political power. These sources of political power include:

• Authority, the belief among the people that the regime is le- gitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it;
• Human resources, the number and importance of the persons and groups which are obeying, cooperating, or providing assistance to the rulers;
• Skills and knowledge, needed by the regime to perform spe- cific actions and supplied by the cooperating persons and groups;
• Intangible factors, psychological and ideological factors that may induce people to obey and assist the rulers;
• Material resources, the degree to which the rulers control or have access to property, natural resources, financial resources, the economic system, and means of communication and transportation; and
• Sanctions, punishments, threatened or applied, against the disobedient and noncooperative to ensure the submission and cooperation that are needed for the regime to exist and carry out its policies.

Link Loving 21.03.11

• Beijing won’t follow Tunis and Cairo, but change is still under way. Goubin Yang.
• Thomas Carothers debunks the myths surrounding the Arab world’s new governments.
• Eight teens were given the chance to create their own curriculum, and the results have been transformative. Susan Engel.
• Media diet advice from Tom McGeveran in the Atlantic.
• Phillip Rawls on how some US states could delay or cancel primaries. Political obsessives scream NOOOO!
• Entire movies get a colour bar code. Very cool. Cool Infographics.
• India is the world’s largest arms importer. Joshua Keating. Though Pakistan is buying a lot of guns too.
• Richard Gowan looks at what Ban Ki-Moon needs to change in his likely second term.
• Arjan van Houwelingen on the differences between the Arab revolutions and post-Cold War revolutions. EU membership potential being one of them.