OR Books

DO THE RIGHT THING…

Find out the real story of Global Warming:

THE GLOBAL WARMING READER

DO THE FUN THING…

Wild stories by great SF writers on climate change:

WELCOME TO THE GREENHOUSE

The Globe and Mail, Canada’s foremost source of national news, urges businesses to keep it simple in this age of eCommerce and the proliferation of hand-held navigation.

There’s some irony in the fact that, in 2011, an age of super-fast computers and ubiquitous broadband connections, there’s more reason than ever to keep websites simple and focused – low-tech, even.

But with ever-more consumers browsing the Web on small, handheld screens rather than big ones, and search engines more and more at the centre of the consumer’s daily life, a new set of pressures is acting on modern site design. For small businesses looking to take their websites one step forward, here are three factors to consider…

We knew it all along.

Full article here.

—Posted by Morgan

Waiting for the man’s memoirs? could be a looong time. Get the WikiStory here and now:

http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/wikileaks/

“The effects of the ongoing WikiLeaks are cumulative––sort of like mercury poisoning––and reveal much about how dreadful many of our policies, especially regarding the war in Afghanistan, have been. With insight and clarity, Micah Sifry explores the red-hot spot where politics and the Internet intersect. An indispensable resource for the future fight over secrecy and openness.” —Arianna Huffington

(Although personally we wouldn’t compare WikiLeaks to “mercury poisoning”: it’s not creating the poison, but allowing it to seep out. Free Bradley!)

— Posted by John

We all miss opportunities to speak out against injustice. Even among friends it’s tough to do.

Imagine how much more difficult it is for those who are part of the U.S. military or State Department—who, in the face of massive disapproval (or worse) from their colleagues, speak up and register their objections to brutal treatment of prisoners.

OR Books-author-to-be Larry Siems (“The Torture Project”; December publication), the head of PEN American Center’s Freedom to Write Program, along with his writing partner Jameel Jaffer (of the ACLU) recently called for such people to be honored in a N.Y. Times op-ed.

On July 3, the Times editorial page itself joined in, calling for the Obama administration to honor government employees who dared buck their bosses’ orders to do the illegal, immoral and downright stupid (who won’t confess to being the Wizard of Oz if s/he is waterboarded, electrocuted, etc., etc.?). Skip the editorial, but if you’ve a moment, the op-ed is worth reading: it makes us consider what makes real heroes.

— Posted by John

is with some good old-fashioned civil disobedience.

This from OR author Bill McKibben:

“Friend—it’s the fourth of July, and after a year that saw the highest temperatures ever recorded, and the wildest weather, I’m trying to do the most patriotic thing I can think of. I hope you get a moment to read the attached letter, and if you’re so moved, visit tarsandsaction.org to sign up. Thanks for taking a look, and happy Independence Day—all best, Bill McKibben”

Letter is as follows:

“I want to let you know about something happening at the end of the summer—something hard, something important. We’ll be staging (very) civil disobedience for two weeks from August 20 through Labor Day weekend outside the White House, in an effort to persuade the administration to block plans for a giant pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta all the way to Texas.

Last week ten of the continent’s leading writers, scientists, and indigenous activists—from Wendell Berry to Jim Hansen to Naomi Klein and Tom Goldtooth—signed a letter I’d written asking people to come for the protest. That letter laid out the basic rationale: the Alberta tar sands is the second-largest pool of carbon on the planet, and the so-called Keystone pipeline is key to exploitation, a fifteen hundred mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the continent. If it gets developed, in Jim Hansen’s words, it’s “essentially game over the climate.”

And though there’s a huge amount of corporate money behind the pipeline plan, this is one disaster we can stop. That’s because President Obama this time gets to make the call all by himself, without the Congress getting in the way—he has to sign, or reject, a so-called ‘certificate of national interest.’ Even though the president has done some damaging things recently (this winter he opened a huge swath of federal land in Wyoming to coal-mining, the carbon equivalent of opening 300 new power plants) we think he still wants to do the right thing for the climate. Just last month his EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, explained that one reason they’d had trouble passing good legislation was because “they’re not marching on Washington the way they did on Earth Day in the 70s.” She’s right—time for us to step up. Many of us will be wearing the Obama buttons that have been in the closet since the last election; we badly still want to believe in the promise of that skinny young Senator from Illinois.

Anyway, if you think you might be able to come, you can sign up here. The plan is to have a new group of people each day for two weeks trespass on the sidewalk in front of the White House. We don’t know what exactly will happen, but in the past protesters have usually been fined and released—chances are you’d be two days in Washington, one preparing and one participating. We’re modeling the action on one that the group Transafrica mounted outside the Washington embassy in the 1980s, and that Nelson Mandela later said had played a key role in raising awareness about apartheid. We want people to be “serious in dress and demeanor.” If you think you can’t keep your emotions under control, this is not the action for you—one goal is to demonstrate who the radicals really are (the guys that are changing the composition of the atmosphere).  We’ll have training for everyone involved.

I know it’s asking a lot, and I know it’s not for everyone. Getting arrested, even in a gentle and civil fashion like this, is a big step. But I wanted to make sure you knew about it. You can read some of the early press here, and you can find an essay I wrote last week here. (It asks: if we expect Brazil to guard the rainforest, then why isn’t North America supposed to keep these tar sands safe and secure?). If you have the time and the resources and feel called to make the trip, it would be wonderful to see you.

Bill

p.s.—there’s one other thing I’ve been saying to people, which is that I don’t want college kids to be bearing all the burden here. It’s those of us who have been pouring carbon into the atmosphere for decades that have the most reason to be there, I think.
p.p.s.—if you can think of friends or networks to pass this on to, please do!”

— Posted by John