Mother Jones. Alternative Media. Movie Best of Lists. The top 25 must-see movies of 2012 - Den of Geek - StumbleUpon. Update: You can now find out list of the top 25 must-see movies of 2013 here.And our 25 must-see movies of 2014 are here. As 2011 draws to a close, one eye is inevitably on the treats that are lying ahead for 2012. With that in mind, we've got our line-up of, as things stands, the 25 films that are brightest on our radar. Now, a couple of disclaimers. There are films that haven't made the cut here simply because we don't know a fat lot about them yet, or at least not enough to get us fired up. Jack The Giant Killer, Rise Of The Guardians, Red Tails, Chronicle and Dark Shadows all fit into that category. Plus there are the films that we suspect will turn out strongly, but what we've seen of them so far hasn't blown us away (Brave, Skyfall).
Then there are the potential hidden gems (ParaNorman) we'll come to separately in another feature. We've also had to exclude films that have already had a release in either the UK or the US. However, that's still left us with a lot of tasty cinema.
Susan Fourtane - Finland Begins Crowdsourced Legislation. iPad for Teaching & Learning. Eurozone. Arab Spring. A year later, Bouazizi's legacy still burns. Protesters carry a coffin draped in the Tunisian flag representing martyr Mohamed Bouazizi on January 24, 2011 in Tunis, Tunisia. Former Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali (R) talks with Syrian President Bashar al- Al Assad (L) in Tunis on July 12, 2010. After three weeks of violent protests over rising unemployment rates, poverty levels, inflation and government repression, Ben Ali fleed the country for Saudi Arabia on January 14. Inhabitants of the central Tunisia region of Sidi Bouzid who slept overnight near the office of the Tunisian Prime Minister in Tunis on January 24, 2011 call for the government to resign. Tunisians hold banners during a rally on February 14, 2011 in Tunis on Valentine's Day celebrating a month of freedom.
Bouazizi's brother Salem (L), his mother Manoubia (C) and his sister Leila meet with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (not pictured) on March 22, 2011 in Tunis. A beggar walks past election posters on October 19, 2011 in Tunis. Connectivism. Technological networks have transformed prominent businesses sectors: music, television, financial, manufacturing. Social networks, driven by technological networks, have similarly transformed communication, news, and personal interactions. Education sits at the social/technological nexus of change – primed for dramatic transformative change. In recent posts, I’ve argued for needed systemic innovation. I’d like focus more specifically on how teaching is impacted by social and technological networks. What is the role of a teacher?
A teacher/instructor/professor obviously plays numerous roles in a traditional classroom: role model, encourager, supporter, guide, synthesizer. This model works well when we can centralize both the content (curriculum) and the teacher. Course content is similarly fragmented. What is the impact of conversation/content fragmentation? Traditional courses provide a coherent view of a subject. How can we achieve clear outcomes through distributed means? 1. Amplifying. Curation As A Method of Digital Teaching « All The Young (edu)Punks. The World Economy. Occupy Wall Street. OccupyLSX, unruly politics and subversive ruliness. The stay of execution granted to the Occupy the London Stock Exchange (OccupyLSX) camp outside Saint Paul’s cathedral just before Christmas is over.
The judge has now granted the Corporation of London’s request for an eviction order. This request drew extensively on accusations of unruliness, and indeed of criminality, and these clearly played a part in the judge’s decision. But we should resist attempts to conflate criminal behaviour taking place around OccupyLSX – an almost inevitable hazard in such a location, and openly recognised as a problem by camp members themselves – with criminal intent on the part of the Occupiers. This would be not merely an injustice, but a fundamental misreading of the real political significance of the form of protest that is actually exemplified by the camp outside Saint Paul’s.
So far, so unruly. But I would argue that paradoxically the real significance of the model of contestation provided by the camp lies not in law-breaking, but in rule-making. Occupy General. How Occupy Co-Opted MoveOn.org. The99spring.com If you're one of the millions of people who get emails from MoveOn.org, then you've probably heard of the "99% Spring. " Far from another clickable internet petition, it is possibly the largest attempt ever to train people in nonviolent protest techniques. Some Occupy types have criticized the effort as a scheme by Democratic operatives to co-opt their movement.
But the reality is probably the opposite: It seems that America's best-known progressive fundraising organization is now taking its cues from Occupy Wall Street. I didn't know what to think of the 99% Spring until I stopped by a three-hour training session—one of more than 900 being held nationwide this week—at a Unitarian church in San Francisco. "MoveOn needs some co-opting," says 99% Spring trainer David King, "because they got co-opted a few years back. " The session began with a slick video urging trainees to break into small groups and share their personal stories. OccupyUSA Central Sources. Militarized to Its Bones – Politics. This post originally appeared at TomDispatch. These last weeks, there have been two “occupations” in lower Manhattan, one of which has been getting almost all the coverage -- that of the demonstrators camping out in Zuccotti Park.
The other, in the shadows, has been hardly less massive, sustained, or in its own way impressive -- the police occupation of the Wall Street area. On a recent visit to the park, I found the streets around the Stock Exchange barricaded and blocked off to traffic, and police everywhere in every form (in and out of uniform) -- on foot, on scooters, on motorcycles, in squad cars with lights flashing, on horses, in paddy wagons or minivans, you name it. At the park’s edge, there is a police observation tower capable of being raised and lowered hydraulically and literally hundreds of police are stationed in the vicinity. This might be seen as massive overkill. At one level, this is all mystifying. Source: TomDispatch. Occupy Congress. NYU to add course on OWS next semester. Occupy Wall Street - Whether you’re in the 99 percent, the 1 percent or attempting to ignore the issue altogether, the Occupy Wall Street movement is a pretty enormous.
And now it is an international movement. It is still making the news daily as protesters block traffic, raise voices and make themselves heard. Just look at how the protests got started, how they’ve evolved, what their mission is. Then see how the public and government perceive them. July 13, 2011 Adbusters publishes a blog post asking for people to rally on Wall Street. The point they make is that there is no official leadership at the protests, and what the group hopes to achieve can only be decided when the entire group agrees. July 26 A website, Facebook page and Twitter profile were created for the movement..
Adbusters asks for global involvement after less than two weeks of domestic protests. August 23 The so called “hacktivists” at Anonymous debut a video to show their support for Occupy Wall Street. They also promote OWS on Twitter. Other OWS pearltrees curators. Assemblies = we__occupy. Issue Eight – 4th January 2012 | TheOccupiedTimes. Email Share 9 Email Share A New Year is a natural time for reflection and planning for change. Time magazine’s choice of ‘The Protestor’ as person of the year owes much to the gallant struggle of our brothers and sisters in the Middle East and Northern Africa - but here in the west, we too have witnessed civil disobedience on a scale not seen for a generation or more. 2011 will be remembered as the year that the people finally stood up to oppressive governments and financial systems the world over.
That struggle will continue into 2012 and beyond. There is no doubt that the Occupy movement has already achieved a great deal. For decades the ‘left’ has struggled to put equality at the centre of the political debate. We must resist any urge to think of Occupy as belonging to 2011 while there is still so much work to be done. In the US, the eviction of Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park on 15th November brought tens of thousands out onto the streets of New York.
Occupy: From Tahrir Square to Wall Street to... Student Protests in Mexico -- The Next Arab Spring? (May 27, 2012 - New America Media) Thousands of university students took to the streets of Mexico City Wednesday demanding greater freedom of speech in the country and protesting the PRI’s possible return to power... An Open Letter to the Mainstream English Media, From Montreal (May 27, 2012 - Occupy Wall Street) Thank you; you are a little late to the party, and you are still missing the mark a lot of the time, but in the past few days, you have published some not entirely terrible articles and op-eds about what’s happening in Quebec right now. Welcome to our movement... Mexicans Protest Ties Between Politics, Media (May 23, 2012 - Wall Street Journal)Thousands of students are joining a growing street-demonstration movement to protest Mexico's top two television networks, which they accuse of colluding to secure the leading presidential candidate's election this summer...
Occupy's Big Stakes on May Day: Relevance High-schoolers on strike. Occupy links. Occupy Wall Street and Foreclosures. OWS. OCCUPY: Why It Started. Who's Behind It. What's Next. OCCUPY. The movement started in early September in a small urban patch on Wall St. and soon the protests spread to other cities -- Los Angeles, Sacramento, Boston, Chicago.
It's changed the national conversation, as reflected in the discourse of politics and media. It is perhaps the story of the year. This e-book chronicles that movement so far. It reflects dozens of original pieces and hundred of liveblogs by The Huffington Post staff. We start with a look at the the roots of the movement, examining the larger issues, such as the financial meltdown and foreclosure crisis, which helped set the stage for OWS. It's clear we are only at the beginning, or as Arianna Huffington said in her introduction, "When future histories of Occupy are written, this will be just the first chapter. " Read an excerpt This book was created with BookBrewer. SF, LA Negotiating to Close Occupy Encampments. How Canada's corporate media framed the Occupy movement. The Occupy movement occupied two parallel, rarely intersecting universes in the corporate media.
In one, described frequently in the Toronto Star, occasionally in the Vancouver Sun and Globe and Mail and only once in the National Post, Occupy is a worldwide movement created in response to the growing gap between the one percent at the top of the income-and-asset pyramid and the 99 percent below. In the Occupy universe largely described by the other papers, Occupy is little more than a rag-tag bunch of ne’er-do-wells with vague—but nevertheless invalid—goals who need to get a job. Such a characterization may not be surprising given that almost all newspapers are owned by card-carrying members of the one percent. As for the most negative and hostile coverage, first place undoubtedly goes to the National Post thought collective, with Gary Mason and Margaret Wente at the Globe, and the Sun’s Craig McInnes following behind. The study did not look at alternative media.
The #Occupy MOVEMENT. Occupy the Narrative. Truthout has been covering the Occupy Wall Street movement on the ground from the first day, and we'll be there until the goals of the movement are reached. This is something different - a movement based on the idea of Justice, an idea which cannot be co-opted, crushed or subverted. While this movement for Justice continues to build solidarity around the US and around the globe, Truthout will cover it every step of the way. -TO/mr Election Countdown 2012: #Occupy Arrests From October 2011 Ruled Unconstitutional, and MoreBy Lambert Strether, Naked Capitalism | News Analysis Thousands Surround Spanish Parliament in Bid to "Occupy Congress" and Stop AusterityBy Nermeen Shaikh and Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW! Journalist Arun Gupta and Organizer Marina Sitrin on Occupy's AnniversaryBy Laura Flanders, Moyers & Company | Video Occupy the Truth: Challenging the Media's Premature Post-Mortem on OccupyBy Michael I Niman, Art Voice | News Analysis I Will OccupyBy William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed.