The final piece from END:CIV is both a reality check and a call to arms. Can we really expect the power structures to change their destructive ways by asking nicely? Do we have unlimited time to stop the destruction of the planet? The answer to both questions is no. If we are serious about defending the biosphere and abolishing the institutions responsible for the hyper exploitation of the land, we have to become a resistance movement and go beyond “feel good” symbolic actions.
Some of the most celebrated social justice victories of the 20th century are attributed to the great pacifists of our time, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. This constitutes a historical whitewash, as these “victories” were achieved when the state weighed its options and chose the lesser of two evils: the pacifists. In this segment Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Aric Mcbay, Harjap Grewal, Gord Hill and Peter Gelderloos deconstruct the Gandhi myth and show us why militant action plays an important role in movements of resistance.
As environmentalism becomes mainstream, corporations and well funded environmental organizations work hand in hand to divert the public’s efforts into market driven solutions.
With runaway climate change looming in the horizon, we must ask ourselves what are the tactics we are going to use to stop the destruction and take us beyond symbolic gestures.
As environmentalism becomes mainstream, corporations and well funded environmental organizations work hand in hand to divert the public’s efforts into market driven solutions.
With runaway climate change looming in the horizon, we must ask ourselves what are the tactics we are going to use to stop the destruction and take us beyond symbolic gestures.
(en) Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new president will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight. American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and hope for the best. But is anyone prepared for the worst?
Meet Michael Ruppert, a different kind of American. A former Lost Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, he predicted the current finacial crisis in his self-published newsletter. From the Wilderness, at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial. Director Chris Smith has shown an affinity for outsiders in films like American Movie and The Yes Men. In Collapse, he departs stylistically from his past documentaries by interviewing Ruppert in a format that recalls the work of Errol Morris and Spalding Gray.
Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead. He draws upon the same news reports and data available to any Internet user, but he applies a unique interpretation. He is especially passionate about the issue of "peak oil," the concern raised by scientists since the seventies that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuel. While other experts debate this issue in measured tones, Rupperts doesn't hold back at sounding an alarm, portraying an apocalyptic future. Listening to his rapid flow of opinions, the viewer is likely to question some of the rhetoric as paranoid or deluded, and to sway back and forth on what to make of the extremism. Smith lets viewers form their own judgments.
Collapse also serve as a portrait of a loner. Over the years, Ruppert has stood up for what he believes in despite fierce opposition. He candidly describes the sacrifices and motivators in his life. While other observers analyze details of the economic crisis, Ruppert views it as symptomatic of nothing less than the collapse of industrial civilization itself.
(cz) Monolog byvaleho policisty, novinare a spisovatele Michaela C. Rupperta - muze, ktery tvrdi, ze jeho varovani nejsou konspiracni teorie, ale konspiracni fakta. Blizi se opravdu velky neodvratny energeticky a ekonomicky kolaps nasi civilizace, nebo jsou to jenom prehnane paranoidni predstavy? Kolaps je natoceny pomerne minimalisticky a stylem pripomina napriklad filmy Errola Morrise ( www.csfd.cz/herec/8727-morris-errol/ ). Coz mu ale na pusobivosti neubira, ba naopak. Znepokojivy a zhavy kandidat na nominaci na Oskara za rok 2009.
As I type this, leaders from the biggest industrialized nations are meeting in Copenhagen to discuss a possible treaty to diminish worldwide carbon emissions. As reported last month, it is already known that no deal will be reached during these talks. Many scientists say time is running out and others say it’s too late. Meanwhile in Canada, the forces of capitalism and industry are moving full force to extract the last bits of oil from the Alberta tar sands. The insanity of this project perfectly exemplifies Premise 10 from Derrick Jensen’s “Endgame”
(en) J. Ellul, The Technological Society, Intro: "The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, technology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods ralionally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity. Its characteristics are new; the technique of the present has no common measure with that of the past." (p. xxv)
"Capitalism did not create our world; the machine did. Painstaking studies designed to prove the contrary have buried the obvious beneath tons of print. And, if we do not wish to play the demagogue, we must point out the guilty party. 'The machine is antisocial', says Lewis Mumford. 'It tends, by reason of its progressive character, to the most acute forms of human exploitation.' The machine took its place in a social milieu that was not made for it, and for that reason created the inhuman society in which we live. Capitalism was therefore only one aspect of the deep disorder of the nineteenth century. To restore order, it was necessary to question all the bases of that society — its social and political structures, its art and its way of life, its commercial system." (p. 5)
In 1950, Ellul finished his manuscript La Technique ou l'enjeu du siecle (The Technological Society), his seminal analysis of the way technology shapes every aspect of society. As contemporary thinker, he was strongly influenced by Kierkegaard, Marx and Barth. After a live, in which he wrote close to fifty books, Ellul died in the summer of 1994, at the age of 82.
The team of ReRun Produkties visited Ellul in 1990. During five subsequent days, long interview sessions were held with him in his old mansion in Pessac. The Betrayal by Technology is one of the very few existing filmed recordings of Jacques Ellul speaking.
(sk) Documentárny film o "technológii". Vrátane rozhovorov so spisovateľom a anarchistom menom Jacque Ellul.
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