More on this crowdfunding campaign via http://goteo.org/project/expedition-freedom?lang=en Petros writes: “there are groups which last for years, getting more and more integrated, achieving their goals, performing, holding together. How do they do it? What are their secrets? This is just what we want to uncover, and share the knowledge with everyone. The work has started already:… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2013"
Book of the Day: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Away from Democracy
* Book: Bob McChesney. Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Away from Democracy. From the Author: “The book is a political economic examination of the digital revolution based upon 15 years of research. The book provides considerable detail but also an overarching analysis and argument, so it is intended for anyone concerned with… Continue reading
Protest Analysis (6): John Robb’s take on recent open source protests
Republished from John Robb: “We’re seeing protests everywhere. From Brazil to Turkey to Egypt. What’s going on? Here’s some thinking. Once ignited, open source protest is hard to stamp out. Open source protest is usually focused on a single overarching goal. In most recent cases, it’s a call for a government that isn’t corrupt. “No… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Complementary Currencies for Sustainability
Gill Seyfang, Principal Investigator, explains the research project: “New research to study the growth and diffusion of complementary currencies (new forms of money) around the world, and produce policy and practice lessons to harness these grassroots innovations for sustainability. This two year research project is led by Gill Seyfang at UEA and funded by the… Continue reading
How Does Justice Come to the Economy?
[This (republished) address from 11/30/2010 at the GLS bank Christmas meeting of the “Fair and Regional Charter” is translated abridged from the German on the Internet, www.fair-regional.de,] By Johannes Mosmann: “I was invited to speak about the question what justice in economic life can mean, what the word “fair” implies when we speak of “fair… Continue reading
Reporting from the second international complementary currency conference
Excerpted from RUBY VAN DER WEKKEN of the Helsinki Timebank: (the second part of this article deals with the issue of time bank taxation, we’ll return to it separately) “Between 19-23.6.2013 the second international complementary currency conference took place in The Hague, Holland. These five days (two academic days, one policy makers day, 2 practitioner… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Pocket Neighborhoods
* Book: Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating a Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World. By Ross Chapin. Excerpted from an interview with the author, conducted by Jessica Conrad: How does the commons influence your work as an architect? My goal as an architect is to help people see how to connect and contribute to their surroundings—to the… Continue reading
Protest Analysis (5): Towards a new style of political organization for commons-oriented mobilizations ?
Image by Olmo Calvo Madrilonia/@PinkNoiseRev Translated by Stacco Troncoso, edited by Jane Loes Lipton –Guerrilla Translation! Original text in Spanish The 15-M movement seems to be at an impasse, unsure of how to make use of its multiple victories and enormous public support. To break out of this situation, numerous organizations, assemblies and collectives are… Continue reading
Examples of the Peer Production of Public Functions
Excerpted from Yochai Benkler: “A major path of intervention of decentralized, voluntaristic systems is a set of efforts to use peer-based approaches to work around nonfunctioning or imperfect state institutions. These models are the mutualist equivalent of the “privatization” movement that sought, and continues to seek, to remove public actions from the responsibility of governments… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Resilience
* Book: Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back. Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy. Free Press/Simon and Schuster (UK by Headline Books), 2012. “Resilience” explores why some systems, people, organizations and ecosystems are able to persist, and even thrive, amid disruption. It is the culmination of a three-year journey my co-author, Ann-Marie Healy and I undertook… Continue reading
Protest Analysis (4): The role of social media in the recent Turkish mobilizations
An overview excerpted from Karin Alexander: “statistics from Turkstat suggest that a relatively low percentage of the population is online in Turkey – less than 50 per cent (the corresponding figure for Britain is 80 per cent according to OFCOM). However, it seems that those that are online are very active, particularly on social media,… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Community Energy Pioneers in Finland
* Article: Martiskainen, M. (2012) Savings through renewables – Community Energy Pioneers in Finland, The Heating and Hotwater Industry Council Journal, Issue on Community Energy, March 2012 “Problems caused by climate change and rising energy prices have meant that households and communities are seeking new ways in which to tackle their increasing energy consumption and… Continue reading
Protest Analysis (3): Dispatch from the #BRevolution in Brazil
Republished from Carolina in Take the Square: “The sleeping giant is waking up. Brazil is awakening from the Fake Progress Dream of the 1%. Brazilians are taking the streets, but the media only talks about macro politics. Brazilian youth-and-not-so are demanding other economic, civic and social ways. But the media hides the facts: political assemblies… Continue reading
Book of the Day: The Essentials of Economic Sustainability
* Book: John Ikerd. The Essentials of Economic Sustainability. “In his new book The Essentials of Economic Sustainability, John Ikerd addresses the basic principles and concepts essential to economic sustainability. Some of these concepts are capitalist, some are socialistic, and others are general principles validated by philosophy or common sense. What results is a synthesis:… Continue reading
Protest Analysis (2): How Las Indias analyzes the recent mobilizations
This time, the press doesn’t insist on putting the focus on technology, distributed social communication, and how they have transformed social mobilizations. It seems that now, twelve years after their first warnings, that’s assumed. And the use of drones by the protesters in Istanbul played an major role, because, as we’ll see, it will surely… Continue reading
Problems and Limitations Encountered in the Commonification of Public Services
Excerpted from Tommaso Fattori: * Problems with wholesale cooperative self-production of certain public services : “In the cooperative model of commoning, the service is run by the community through organizational structures comprising only user-members (one should not forget that there are also cooperatives which serve almost exclusively non-members, and these are forms which have little… Continue reading