background preloader

Global Protests

Facebook Twitter

Global map of protests: 2013 so far | News. Some Thoughts on the Causes of Mass Protest | Dart. A lot of ink has been spilled of late about what causes mass protests, and what connects episodes of protest across different countries. Economic inequality, unemployment, corruption, middle-class rage, youth, social media…the lists go on. Availability bias and selection bias are real problems in many of these on-the-fly analyses. Often, we see mass protests erupt in one country, search our minds for relevant examples, and then deduce the causes of those events from the things we notice they have in common. The set of potentially relevant examples is constrained by our memory, which is usually pretty limited. At the same time, the supposed relevance of those other examples is often affected by their emotional salience, which, in turn, is influenced by the amount and kind of news coverage they received. Local structural features don’t determine whether or not societies will experience specific types of political action, but they do shape a society’s propensity for them.

Like this: Occupy Worldwide. "Les populations désirent ardemment se faire entendre" Youphil: Peut-on parler du réveil des sociétés civiles, à l'image du printemps arabe, des Indignés européens et de la Marche pour la Paix au Mexique? Philippe Ryfman: On ne peut pas parler de réveil, ou d'éveil. Cela sous-entend qu'à un moment de leur histoire, les sociétés civiles se sont endormies et ont progressivement disparu. Je préfère plutôt parler d'émergence des sociétés civiles. Les populations désirent ardemment se faire entendre et peser sur la politique de leur pays. Youphil: Quels sont les facteurs qui provoquent la mobilisation des sociétés civiles dans le monde arabe ou en Europe? P.R: Je pense tout d’abord qu’il faut être très prudent quand on met sur un pied d’égalité les évènements qui se déroulent dans le monde arabe et en Europe. Les facteurs sont donc aussi différents.

Youphil: Mais ils contestent tous les pouvoirs en place… P.R.: Tout à fait, mais cette contestation est logique. Il existe néanmoins certaines similitudes. Place Tahrir le 4 mars 2011 (via gr33ndata) Global protests. Historys shifting sands - Opinion - Al Jazeera English - StumbleUpon. For decades, even centuries, the peoples of the Arab world have been told by Europeans and, later, Americans that their societies were stagnant and backward.

According to Lord Cromer, author of the 1908 pseudo-history Modern Egypt, their progress was "arrested" by the very fact of their being Muslim, by virtue of which their minds were as "strange" to that of a modern Western man "as would be the mind of an inhabitant of Saturn". The only hope of reshaping their minds towards a more earthly disposition was to accept Western tutelage, supervision, and even rule "until such time as they [we]re able to stand alone," in the words of the League of Nations' Mandate. Whether it was Napoleon claiming fraternité with Egyptians in fin-de-18e-siècle Cairo or George W. Bush claiming similar amity with Iraqis two centuries later, the message, and the means of delivering it, have been consistent.

Trading places But something has changed. Foundations sinking into the sands? From top to bottom. Occupy demands: Let's radicalise our analysis. There's one question that pundits and politicians keep posing to the Occupy gatherings around the country: What are your demands? I have a suggestion for a response: We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands. The demand for demands is an attempt to shoehorn the Occupy gatherings into conventional politics, to force the energy of these gatherings into a form that people in power recognise, so that they can roll out strategies to divert, co-opt, buy off, or - if those tactics fail - squash any challenge to business as usual.

Rather than listing demands, we critics of concentrated wealth and power in the US can dig in and deepen our analysis of the systems that produce that unjust distribution of wealth and power. This is a time for action, but there also is a need for analysis. Rallying around a common concern about economic injustice is a beginning; understanding the structures and institutions of illegitimate authority is the next step. Empire: Immoral, illegal, ineffective. Plusieurs manifestations en soutien aux anti-Moubarak à travers le monde. The Shocking, Graphic Data That Shows Exactly What Motivates the Occupy Movement | Occupy Wall Street. October 23, 2011 | Like this article?

Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. What are the Occupy Wall Street protesters angry about? The same things we’re all angry about. The only difference is the protestors turned their anger into public action. Occupy Wall Street lit the embers and the sparks are flying. Now is not the time for wonky policy solutions, as the media meatheads are calling for. 1. (click for larger version) The productivity/wage chart says it all. 2. (click for larger version) Actually the top tenth of one percent. 3.

(click for larger version) As women entered the workforce, family income made up for some of the wage stagnation. 4. (click for larger version) To add financial insult to injury, the richest of the rich pay less and less each year as a percentage of their monstrous incomes. 5. (click for larger version) When the rich become astronomically rich, they gamble with their excess money. 6. (click for larger version) To The Barricades! » Article » OWNI.eu, Digital Journalism. In 1848, from Paris to Prague and Berlin to Budapest, Europe was on the brink of revolution. Behind the surprising strength of the uprisings was a novel technique of street protest that gave the people a tactical advantage over their governments. To all observers it appeared as if the old order would be overthrown. “The most audacious dreams were to be fulfilled,” wrote Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, “the old politics of the kings had vanished; a new one, the politics of the peoples, was coming into life.”

Barricades transformed the narrow, windy streets of 19th-century Europe into fortresses of discontent. Marc Caussidière, a participant in the Paris rebellion, describes the scene: “The insurgents were in the streets … scaffolding and masonry of houses in the course of construction or under repair were cast into the middle of the road; rafters, blocks of stone, wheelbarrows, were jammed between formidable walls of paving stones.” ” These human barricades were nonviolent. #Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts—Coming to a City Near You | Wired Magazine. Art: WK Interact Let’s start with the fundamental paradox: Our personal technology in the 21st century—our laptops and smartphones, our browsers and apps—does everything it can to keep us out of crowds. Why pack into Target when Amazon can speed the essentials of life to your door? Why approach strangers at parties or bars when dating sites like OkCupid (to say nothing of hookup apps like Grindr) can more efficiently shuttle potential mates into your bed?

Why sit in a cinema when you can stream? Why cram into arena seats when you can pay per view? And yet: On those rare occasions when we want to form a crowd, our tech can work a strange, dark magic. Everyone in edmonton enfield woodgreen everywhere in north link up at enfield town station 4 o clock sharp!!!! Bring some bags, the note went on; bring cars and vans, and also hammers. By five in the afternoon, he was on the streets of Enfield Town, along with a handful of police.

Pages: 1 234567View All. A hidden world, growing beyond control (Printer friendly version) Monday, July 19, 2010; 4:50 PM The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work. These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight.

After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine. The investigation's other findings include: * An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances. An alternative geography This is not exactly President Dwight D.