From Oakland Institute Read the Press Release In Walking on the West Side: the World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict, a report released in July 2014, the Oakland Institute exposed how international financial institutions swooped in on the heels of the political upheaval in Ukraine to deregulate and throw open the nation’s vast agricultural sector… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2015"
A New Alignment of Movements?
In September 2014, the Commons Strategies Group convened a three-day workshop in Meissen, Germany, of 25 policy advocates and activists from a variety of different economic and social movements. The topic of the “deep dive”: Can leading alt-economic and social movements find ways to work more closely together? Can there be a greater convergence and… Continue reading
Call for papers: The Hybrid City DATA TO THE PEOPLE
Source: http://uranus.media.uoa.gr/hc3/?page_id=41 ABOUT Hybrid City is an international biennial event dedicated to exploring the emergent character of the city and the potential transformative shift of the urban condition, as a result of ongoing developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) and of their integration in the urban physical context. It aims to promote dialogue and… Continue reading
Assessing the Greece / Eurogroup negotiations (2): a positive evaluation by Tom Walker
This battle is a very long way from over. There are more key moments this week, and no doubt there are many weeks and months of crunch points still to come. The last thing we should be doing is abandoning Syriza because it hasn’t fulfilled all our hopes in the first few weeks after its… Continue reading
Assessing the Greece / Eurogroup negotiations (1): a negative evaluation by Stathis Kouvelakis
The Syriza government will thus have no choice other than to administer the Memorandum framework. The small changes it can make will certainly be improvements, but they will not succeed in transforming the totally disastrous economic and social situation. This will disappoint the hopes and expectations that the popular electorate placed in Syriza. A negative… Continue reading
To Make Hope Possible Rather Than Despair Convincing
Last week I gave an opening lecture at Hampshire College at the launch of its new center for civic activism, the Leadership and Ethical Engagement Project. It was a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how colleges and universities could engage more directly with changing the world — and how the commons could help open up… Continue reading
CAPS Consultation Meeting at Net Futures 2015 Conference
The P2P Foundation is a partner in P2Pvalue which will be presenting at the CAPS Consultation Meeting at Net Futures 2015 Conference on 25 March 2015 in Brussels. P2Pvalue looks at value creation in P2P communities. Source: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/collective-awareness-platforms-sustainability-and-social-innovation-caps-consultation-meeting Come and join us for the CAPS consultation meeting on 25 March 2015 in Brussels. You will… Continue reading
Debating the degrowth alternative
Giorgos Kallis, a prominent scholar on ‘degrowth’, recently wrote an essay that was the subject of debate among members of the Great Transition Initiative network. Below is a comment from STWR’s Rajesh Makwana that responded to the following theme of discussion: is degrowth, as currently formulated, sufficiently rigorous and inclusive to offer the theoretical legitimacy… Continue reading
Tools for Collective Labor Action in the Gig Economy
SARAH KESSLER reports on how “Workers and activists are creating new tools” for labor organizing in the mis-named ‘sharing economy’: The first tool she discusses is Dynamo: “Milland took her gripes to a new platform called Dynamo, which was created by Stanford PhD candidate Niloufar Salehi as part of her research into collective action online…. Continue reading
Guerrilla Translation: Welcome Back, and Looking Forward
Reposted from GuerrillaTranslation.org, my partner Ann Marie Utratel describes Guerrilla Translation’s journey in the last year and gives an overview of our new websites and our plans for 2015. We know it may have seemed as if we’ve been inactive, or even as if we’d given up. Nothing could be further from the truth, so… Continue reading
Reforming the Monetary System in Greece (2) – The Tethered Money proposal by Shann Turnbull
Earlier this week we featured an article by Chris Cook originally published by Pieria.co.uk. Today we feature a response to that article by Shann Turnbull. Dear Michel et al Like Proudhon, Gesell, Fisher and Keynes I do not favour a currency that carries out the role as a store of value today or… Continue reading
The Problem of Debt as We Reach Oil Limits
By Gail Tverberg. Original post here. (This is Part 3 of my series – A New Theory of Energy and the Economy. These are links to Part 1 and Part 2.) Many readers have asked me to explain debt. They also wonder, “Why can’t we just cancel debt and start over?” if we are reaching… Continue reading
The New Greek Government Endorses Commons-Based, Peer Production Solutions
All attention in Greece and global financial circles has been understandably focused on the new Greek Government’s fierce confrontation with its implacable European creditors. Less attention has been paid to the Government’s plans to help midwife a new post-capitalist order based on commons and peer production. A commons colleague, John Restakis,wrote about this possibility a… Continue reading
Beyond the market-state: decentralising power in a sharing society
At a time when governments are failing abysmally to mitigate climate change, reduce inequality or end poverty, the key to creating a more equal and sustainable world is establishing participative forms of political engagement at all levels of society – from the local to the global. In an era of politics characterised by unconstrained corporate… Continue reading
Snowden Reacts as Documentary about his Leaks wins Oscar
Edward Snowden wrote to ACLU on seeing the news on television: “When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I’m grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received. My hope is… Continue reading
Full speed ahead with GNU-Social!!
GNU-Social can become the basis of a whole new free software on distributed architectures, and we want to make our contribution. Almost five years ago, thanks to the Garum Fundatio, we began the development of our first program based on a distributed server architecture: Bazar. There were two objectives: on the one hand, to give… Continue reading