London Truth Action closes
Travelling provocateur Gareth Newnham has 'closed' London TA.
In the email quoted above he says the primary reason was 'attempts to reinvigorate the group were ignored' but in his reply to the forum he says the two main reasons were 'lack of funds' and '9/11 is only a small part of our greater battle imo'.
He's Jon Gold's mate, the 'civil disobedience' guy. Typical that he cites a lack of funds when his sign can't have cost more than a pound and taken more than 5 minutes to make. And I have to say the photo of Newnham being dragged off by the plod looks fake and crap to me, so I wasn't suprised to find all the fake comments on the thread above lauding it as 'iconic', 'stunning' etc.
Apparently Newnham is now promoting more government myths in the form of the Malthusian 'Transition Towns'. Here's the end of part one 'Where are we?' of the Great Transition Initiative's defining essay 'The Great Transition'.
"The horrific terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath provide a vivid real-time example of historical branching. “9/11” was a rip in time that defined a “before” and “after,” a cultural short-circuit that revealed deep global fissures and interrupted complacent attitudes. At one level, it revealed a strain of pan-Islamic fundamentalism that violently rejects the modernist project itself. As a fanatical fight for purity and against any form of assimilation, it cannot be palliated. At the same time, the despair and anger that is the seedbed for extremism has been brought to the world’s attention like never before, exposing the contradictions and failures of global development.
Certainly the world will not be the same after 9/11, but the ultimate implications are indeterminate. One possibility is hopeful: new strategic alliances could be a platform for new multinational engagement on a wide range of political, social and environmental problems. Heightened awareness of global inequities and dangers could support a push for a more equitable form of global development as both a moral and a security imperative. Popular values could eventually shift toward a strong desire for participation, cooperation and global understanding. Another possibility is ominous: an escalating spiral of violence and reaction could amplify cultural and political schisms; the new military and security priorities could weaken democratic institutions, civil liberties and economic opportunity; and people could grow more fearful, intolerant and xenophobic as elites withdraw to their fortresses.
In the critical years ahead, if destabilizing social, political and environmental stresses are addressed, the dream of a culturally rich, inclusive and sustainable world civilization becomes plausible. If they are not, the nightmare of an impoverished, mean and destructive future looms. The rapidity of the planetary transition increases the urgency for vision and action lest we cross thresholds that irreversibly reduce options—a climate discontinuity, locking-in to unsustainable technological choices, and the loss of cultural and biological diversity. Postponing the rectification of how we live together on this planet could foreclose the opportunity for a Great Transition."
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history of the future
Here's another load of shit from the last part of the above essay
The denouement of naïve market euphoria came in 2001 with the horrific “9/11” terrorist attacks on the citadels of global financial and military might—the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States. This traumatic rip in the culture of complacency awoke the world to the depths of anger fermenting among those exposed to globalization but excluded from it. The desperation of billions was revealed as a fertile seedbed for indoctrination and fanaticism by cynical self-styled Islamic fundamentalists. Where an arrogant West seemed to offer little more than indignity, transnational Islamist organizations could offer the salvation of martyrdom in the armies of global Jihad. Terrorism, too, had gone global.
At the time, it was widely feared that the terrorists would succeed in sparking a spiral of violence as the United States, joined at least passively by virtually all the nations of the world, hit back hard with its War on Terrorism. But instead—and this is the central irony of this period—the international mobilization brought a more mature and realistic form of market-driven globalization. At first, two polar theories on the root cause of terrorism were proffered too much modernism and not enough. On the one hand, militant fundamentalism, with its violent rejection of tolerance and pluralism, was understood as the dying gasp of traditionalism as it resisted assimilation into the modernist project. As such, it could be exterminated but not palliated. On the other hand, terrorism revealed a great anger on the streets of third-world cities that indicted the failure of modern development, not its success. A globalization that tantalized a global underclass with images of prosperity, but failed to provide opportunity, was surely a recipe for anger and violence.
Correspondingly, the nations of the world, acting in coalition and through the United Nations and other intergovernmental bodies international, adopted a two-prong “carrot and stick” strategy.
The “carrot” took the form of major new initiatives to modernize poor countries and bring the moderating influence of market institutions to the masses. The “stick” was the elimination of hard-core fanatics and their organizations through coordinated covert action and, as needed, military assault. Both elements were partially successful. The War on Terrorism gradually destroyed the capacity of global terrorism to mount sustained large-scale attacks. However, sporadic violence, a sense of peril and heightened security became a way of life as the romance of martyrdom drew an endless trickle of alienated youth.
racist and deluded environmental neoliberalism
thank you, thank you, Jameson!!!!
my beloved local CSG is getting involved in this with "transition teams." I had not given it much attention, thinking it was just another sustainability project, get off oil, buy local, etc. i wonder if half of them have read through this essay...