P2P-Foundation
Threads by month
- ----- 2026 -----
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2025 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2024 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2023 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2022 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2021 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2020 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2019 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2018 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2017 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2016 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2015 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2014 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2013 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2012 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2011 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
February 2014
- 21 participants
- 90 discussions
Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: [Bulletins] Searching for the Union: The workers' movement in China 2011-13
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '14
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '14
22 Feb '14
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Marco Berlinguer <marco.berlinguer(a)gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 3:50 PM
Subject: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: [Bulletins] Searching for the Union: The
workers' movement in China 2011-13
To: Networked Labour <networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org>
FYI
m.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: China Labour Bulletins <clb(a)clb.org.hk>
Date: 2014-02-20 12:55 GMT+01:00
Subject: [Bulletins] Searching for the Union: The workers' movement in
China 2011-13
To: marco.berlinguer(a)gmail.com
Click here to view this message on the web.
<http://www.clb.org.hk/en/content/searching-union-workers%E2%80%99-movement-…>
Searching for the Union: The workers' movement in China 2011-13
China's workers have emerged over the last few years as a strong, unified
and increasingly active collective force. Workers have time and again
demonstrated the will and the ability to stand up to abusive and arrogant
managements and to demand better pay and working conditions.
However, workers are still hampered by the lack of an effective trade union
that can maintain solidarity, bargain directly with managements and protect
labour leaders from reprisals. As a result, workers are turning to labour
rights groups that can advise and support their collective actions while,
at the same time, demanding more of the official trade union and putting
pressure on it to change.
In China labour Bulletin's new research report on the workers'
movement<http://www.clb.org.hk/en/sites/default/files/Image/research_report/Searchin…>,
published today, we examine this evolving relationship between the workers,
the trade union and civil society and look at how the government is
struggling to respond to rapid social and economic change.
CLB recorded 1,171 strikes and worker protests from mid-2011 until the end
of 2013, about 40 percent of which were in manufacturing industries
particularly hard hit by the global economic downturn and the decline in
China's economic growth during this period. Factory workers staged protests
when they were cheated out of their wages and overtime payments, when their
bonuses and benefits were cut back and when the boss refused to pay the
social insurance premiums mandated by law. Workers also went out strike to
demand higher pay, equal pay for equal work, and proper employment
contracts.
Outside the factory: Transport workers staged strikes over high costs,
cumbersome regulations and unfair competition; teachers protested at wage
arrears, low pay and attempts by the government to introduce a
performance-based salary system in schools, and sanitation workers, some of
the poorest-paid in China, staged numerous strikes and protests in
Guangzhou and eventually won a long-overdue raise.
Local governments often got dragged into these disputes and responded with
a mixture of conciliation and coercion, putting pressure on both sides to
reach a consensus speedily. The police intervened in about 20 percent of
the protests recorded by CLB and occasionally conflicts erupted, leading to
beatings and arrests.
Some local trade union federations did respond positively to workers'
demands for support but despite attempts by the new Communist Party
leadership in Beijing to energise the All-China Federation of Trade Unions,
it remained inert and stuck in the past. Nevertheless, China's workers will
continue to push for more effective trade union representation and greater
workplace democracy. And in so doing, they will lay the groundwork for a
more stable and sustainable economy in which ordinary workers can finally
share in the benefits of the "economic miracle" they helped to create.
Searching for the Union: The workers' movement in China
2011-13<http://www.clb.org.hk/en/sites/default/files/Image/research_report/Searchin…>is
published today as a 50-page downloadable file. This is CLB's fifth
sequential report on the workers' movement dating back to the Year 2000.
All reports are available on the Research Reports
page<http://www.clb.org.hk/en/research-reports>of our website.
*For more information about this new report and the work of China Labour
Bulletin please contact CLB's Communications Director Geoffrey Crothall:*
*Office telephone: 852 2780 2187 Mobile: 852 6402 1530 <1530> Email:
gcrothall(a)clb.org.hk <gcrothall(a)clb.org.hk>*
Bulletins <http://en/newsletter/bulletins>
Unsubscribe from this
newsletter<http://www.clb.org.hk/en/newsletter/confirm/remove/10d4048ba95710t39>
_______________________________________________
NetworkedLabour mailing list
NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org
http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0
Fwd: important, on the many fake photographs circulated by the right in Venezuela
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '14
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '14
22 Feb '14
I hope these photo comparisons come through,
it's an excellent case study of massive media manipulation circulated via
social media,
Michel
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Oscar Sevilla Alvarez <oscar.sevilla(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2014-02-20 20:54 GMT-05:00
Subject: Fwd: Rv: MÁS FOTOS MANIPULADAS EN LA DESINFORMACIÓN SOBRE VENEZUELA
To:
Fotos movidas por la derecha venezolana, en la oposición. Ojo que algunos
medios españoles sirven a todo esto.
---------- Mensaje reenviado ----------
¡Alucinante!
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=180977
Manipulación de fotos de Venezuela
Luigino Bracci Roa<http://www.rebelion.org/mostrar.php?tipo=5&id=Luigino%20Bracci%20Roa&inicio…>
Alba Ciudad
[image: pedroalvarez-torturadofalso]
*Arriba a la izquierda:* Tuitero opositor divulga foto de supuesto
estudiante venezolano golpeado por "fascistas asesinos" del PSUV. *Derecha:* La
foto corresponde a Unai Romano, joven retenido, golpeado y torturado en
2005 por la policía española.
Decenas de imágenes circulan en estos momentos en redes sociales y medios
de comunicación de diferentes países, como forma de alegar que existe una
"cruel represión" por parte de los cuerpos de seguridad venezolanos contra
los manifestantes opositores. Alba Ciudad recopila algunas de estas
imágenes como forma de ayudar a desmontar esta campaña de mentiras contra
Venezuela. Todas las imágenes pueden ampliarse y descargarse haciéndoles
click.
Compartir:[image:
Twitter]<http://twitter.com/share?url=http://albaciudad.org/wp/index.php/2014/02/la-…>[image:
Facebook]<http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://albaciudad.org/wp/index.php/201…>[image:
Google+]<https://plus.google.com/share?url=http://albaciudad.org/wp/index.php/2014/0…>[image:
Email]<?Subject=Vea%20las%20im%C3%A1genes%20de%20supuesta%20brutalidad%20policial%20en%20Venezuela,%20que%20en%20realidad%20son%20fotos%20viejas%20en%20otros%20pa%C3%ADses&Body=%20http://albaciudad.org/wp/index.php/2014/02/la-primavera-photoshop-medios-y-tuiteros-opositores-utilizan-decenas-de-imagenes-de-represion-policial-en-otros-paises-para-alegar-que-ocurren-en-venezuela/>
*Texto: Luigino Bracci, Alba Ciudad*
[image: A través de Twitter se divulga una foto de una joven abrazando a un
policía.]<http://albaciudad.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/BgfHvlvCMAAn5F-.jpg>
Haga click en la imagen para ampliarla
- *Arriba a la izquierda:* Tuitera opositora Daniela Frías divulga una
foto de una supuesta estudiante venezolana a punto de llorar, tratando de
abrazar a un policía. "Tú y yo somos venezolanos, mi pana", dice el texto
del tuit.
- *Derecha: *La imagen en realidad corresponde a hechos ocurridos en
Bulgaria en el año 2013.
[image: BgY-BzdCUAA7H3B]<http://albaciudad.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/BgY-BzdCUAA7H3B1.jpg>
Haga click para ampliarla
- *Arriba a izquierda:* Tuiteros opositores presentan imagen de supuesta
estudiante venezolana tomada por el cuello y siendo arrastrada por guardias
nacionales. "Que esta foto dé la vuelta al mundo".
- *Derecha:* La imagen corresponde a estudiantes reprimidos en Chile en
octubre de 2011<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/10/2011106181758485239.html>
.
[image: cadena-tachira2]
Haga click en la imagen para ampliarla
- *Arriba a la izquierda:* Tuitero asegura que realizaron "una inmensa
rolo de cadena que hicieron en Táchira" contra Maduro, con personas tomadas
de la mano con franelas color amarillo, símbolo del partido derechista
Primero Justicia.
- *Derecha:* La imagen corresponde a una cadena humana realizada en
Cataluña, España, en septiembre de
2013<http://www.elperiodicoextremadura.com/noticias/espana/miles-catalanes-parti…>
en pro de la independencia de dicha región de España.
[image: amandag]<http://albaciudad.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/amandag.png>
Haga click en la imagen para ampliarla
- *Arriba a la izquierda:* Este domingo en la tarde, la actriz Amanda
Gutiérrez tuiteó la foto de un hombre supuestamente siendo obligado a
practicar sexo oral con dos policías, dando a entender que era un
estudiante apresado, torturado y violado por oficiales venezolanos.
- *Derecha:* La imagen corresponde a una página para adultos radicada en
los Estados Unidos. La foto tuiteada por Gutiérrez estaba recortada, pues
los "policías" (en realidad actores porno disfrazados) tenían un uniforme
con la palabra "POLICE". La actriz se disculpó y borró el tuit, aduciendo
que "me fuí de bruces ante la
indignación<https://twitter.com/amandagutierrz/status/435164232636985345>
de
lo que se 'presume' que han vivido los estudiantes presos".
[image: clarin1302]<http://albaciudad.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/clarin1302.jpg>
Haga click para ampliar
*Arriba:* La portada del diario impreso argentino Clarín del 13 de febrero
de 2014 colocó la imagen de una persona con un fusil y dio a entender que
era uno de los "chavistas armados ayer, en Caracas (...) actuaron grupos
parapoliciales que, según testigos, dispararon a la multitud". Dieron a
entender que estas personas son responsables de dos muertes ocurridos el
día anterior. La realidad es que la persona mostrada era un efectivo del
CICPC (policía científica venezolana), protegiéndose de la quema de 5
vehículos de dicho cuerpo policial realizada por opositores violentos, a
pocos metros de la entrada de su sede en Parque Carabobo (Caracas). Otros
diarios y páginas web, como Infobae y El Mundo de España, hicieron actos
similares omitiendo la leyenda original de esta foto de la agencia
EFE<http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/02/12/album/1392245581_7…>:
"Miembros de la CICPC caminan frente a un vehículo incendiado durante una
marcha convocada por la oposición, en Caracas (Venezuela)."
[image: estebangerbasi]
Haga click en la imagen para ampliarla
- *Arriba a la izquierda:* El tuitero opositor Esteban Gerbasi tuiteó la
imagen de un estudiante siendo baleado con perdigones a una distancia
inaceptablemente corta. "¡Dictadura! Para muestra un botó", escribió.
- *Derecha:* La imagen corresponde a manifestaciones en Río de Janeiro
en junio de 2013 (ver aquí, foto
10<http://forbesindia.com/aperture/slideshow/snapshots-of-the-fortnight-(jun-1…>),
y la hizo pasar por imágenes de la "dictadura" en Venezuela.
[image: gn-perro]
Haga click en la imagen para ampliarla
- *Arriba a la izquierda:* Numerosos tuiteros publicaron la foto de
efectivos de seguridad pateando a un perro, escribiendo: "La Guardia
Nacional no perdona ni a los perros. ¿Será que el perro es un fascista
nazi?"
- *Derecha:* Miembros de la Misión Nevado alertaron que la foto
corresponde al perro griego
Loukanikos,<http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loukanikos> que
acompañó las protestas anticapitalistas en dicho país europeo, alegando que
era un perro maltratado por la Guardia Nacional Bolivariana en Venezuela.
[image: Haga click para verla más
grande]<http://albaciudad.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Bgo1qIOIYAAbR6z.jpg>
Haga click para verla más grande
- *Arriba a la izquierda:* Tuitero asegura que un niño fue herido en la
localidad de Táchira por "huestes bolivarianas".
- *Derecha:* La cruda imagen de un niño herido llorando mientras es
atendido, en realidad corresponde a
Siria<http://www.teletica.com/Noticias/17502-La-crisis-de-refugiados-sirios-es-la…>,
país que pasa por una profunda guerra civil.
[image: Bgph0x8IEAA1BFu]<http://albaciudad.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Bgph0x8IEAA1BFu.jpg>
Haga click en la imagen para ampliarla
- *Arriba a la Izquierda:* Tras aparecer el domingo 16 de febrero junto
al Presidente Maduro, el escritor Leonardo Padrón y numerosos tuiteros
acusaron a José Navarro, trabajador del Metro golpeado por manifestantes
el viernes, de formar parte de una farsa; alegaron que tenía el collarín al
revés.
- *Derecha:* Las fotos suministradas a través de Esteban Trapiello
muestran que no es así, y que determinados modelos collarines se pueden
usar de esta manera.
[image: Esto ocurrió en abril de 2013, pero se sigue tuiteando con
insistencia: la periodista Ludmila Vinogradoff, en la página web del diario
español ABC, tuiteó fotos de una mujer siendo arrastrada por oficiales de
policía, aduciendo que eso ocurría en Venezuela. Los hechos, en realidad,
ocurrieron en Egipto en
2011.]<http://albaciudad.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/BgZaCJxCEAAOLC2.jpg>
Haga click en la imagen para ampliarla
- *Izquierda:* la periodista Ludmila Vinogradoff, en la página web del
diario español ABC, tuiteó fotos de una mujer con el torso semidesnudo,
siendo arrastrada por oficiales de policía, aduciendo que eso ocurría en
Venezuela.
- *Derecha:* Los hechos, en realidad, ocurrieron en Egipto en
2011.<http://www.elconfidencial.com/mundo/2011/12/19/una-mujer-con-velo-deja-al-d…>
La
Sra. Vinogradoff borró el artículo, pero en otro reconoce el
error<http://periodistas-es.com/ludmila-vinogradoff-cuenta-aunque-sea-mentira-que…>
. Esto ocurrió en abril de 2013, pero se sigue tuiteando con
insistencia.
Fuente:
http://albaciudad.org/wp/index.php/2014/02/la-primavera-photoshop-medios-y-…
--
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0
Fwd: [projectvrm] One-click micro payments, membership monopoly, monied "like" button
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '14
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '14
22 Feb '14
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tom Crowl <culturalengineer(a)gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 11:00 AM
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] One-click micro payments, membership monopoly,
monied "like" button
To:
Cc: Andy Oram <andyo(a)oreilly.com>, Peter Cranstone <
peter.cranstone(a)3pmobile.com>, Dan Blum <dan(a)respectnetwork.net>,
ProjectVRM list <projectvrm(a)eon.law.harvard.edu>, Michel Bauwens <
michel(a)p2pfoundation.net>, John S James <jj(a)replicounts.org>, Kevin Cox <
kevin.cox(a)edentiti.com>, David Brin <davidbrin(a)sbcglobal.net>, Douglas
Rushkoff <rushkoff(a)gmail.com>
*Linked below a very worthwhile history of governance as well as its
problems and pitfalls. In my opinion no VRM solution can take hold w/o
addressing the declining power of citizenship.*
*Can the Internet democratise capitalism?*
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/02/21/can-the-internet-democratise-capitalis…
>From the piece:
"The Internet is a wonderful leveller. But democracy requires a great deal
more than mere 'levelling'. Primarily,* it requires political institutions
that enable the economically weak to have a decisive say on policy against
the interests of the rich and powerful." *
"Citizenship (including formal liberties) is distributed liberally to all
citizens... but its reach is confined to a small political sphere; a sphere
which is increasingly losing out to a separate economic sphere where all
the capacities to change people's lives (for better or for worse)
congregate but where citizenship is irrelevant."
*Tom Crowl*
http://CulturalEngineer.blogspot.com
On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 8:42 PM, Tom Crowl <culturalengineer(a)gmail.com>wrote:
> Thanks for your comments. Though correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you
> meant to address them to my reply...
>
> *Tom Crowl*
> http://CulturalEngineer.blogspot.com
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 9:43 AM, William Dyson <william.dyson(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Andy
>> Thanks so much for your reply and wonderful observations !!!
>>
>> I have a deep background in Political Philosophy and Public Policy. I
>> come from a life of struggle and poverty in the United States.
>>
>> I have been writing code/developing for over 15 years.
>> 10 years ago I developed one of the first micropayment systems for the
>> music industry while living in Europe. It was itunes before itunes existed.
>>
>> I also have a background in "Capital" markets having been a technical
>> consultant for private investment banks in Europe and the United States.
>>
>> I have devoted my life to creating technology that brings about CHANGE
>> that is outside of current dominant frameworks of politics and economics.
>>
>> I understand the issues around "* NO generally useful civic-oriented,
>> neutral vehicle has emerged to my knowledge" *and have of course made
>> sure that this issue is addressed in the efemurl platform
>>
>> All Power to All of the People
>>
>> William
>>
>>
>> 10. We Want, Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice, Peace,
>> and* People's Community Control of Modern Technology *
>>
>> Follow me on efemurl <http://efemurl.com/?action=timeline&username=eugenedebs>
>>
>> On February 21, 2014 at 9:14:47 AM, Tom Crowl (culturalengineer(a)gmail.com<//culturalengineer(a)gmail.com>)
>> wrote:
>>
>> Andy, William,
>>
>> RE both of these endeavors (and others similar)
>>
>> http://www.decentproject.eu/
>>
>> http://www.efemurl.com
>>
>> Great ideas BUT...
>>
>> Without a functionality not available elsewhere... they'll have a very
>> difficult road building sufficient penetration to have an effect. (in other
>> words reach a tip-over point whereby its growth becomes self-reinforcing).
>>
>> The couple of times I've attended the PdF (Personal Democracy Forum)
>> there have always been a number of endeavors seeking to accomplish similar
>> things. There have been some small successes... (Like MeetIUp)...
>>
>> *But NO generally useful civic-oriented, neutral vehicle has emerged to
>> my knowledge. *
>>
>> While the Internet industry has become a fiefdom for privately held
>> landscapes (e,g, Facebook and Twitter are landscapes as are other
>> transaction platforms) finding the balance between the public and private
>> good seems beyond their understanding or interest...
>>
>> *The micropayment is the key to what must be a 'public' piece of the
>> Internet landscape.*
>>
>> And is the catalyst for such a community-oriented platform.
>>
>> Its nature requires scale* from the start... a Manhattan Project for
>> community involvement... perhaps unfortunately requiring the co-operation
>> of both the Internet and Financial sectors. (In other words... to effect
>> change ... as Robert Frost said: "The way out is always through").
>>
>> But both these sectors are unfortunately incredibly self-satisfied and
>> confident of their own nobility and engagement in "God's Work"... and hence
>> incredibly resistant to self-examination.
>>
>> P.S. Its not just about funding candidates and causes... but rather
>> altering the user's relationship to and understanding about money,
>> governance, scale and their position in this new landscape... as well as
>> their own responsibility in these areas. Moreover, in time I believe it
>> will lead to LESS money in politics, MORE transparency, more
>> self-organization for local community purposes... and finally less of a 'White
>> Collar Government<http://www.amazon.com/White-Collar-Government-Economic-American-Politics/dp…>"
>> forming a natural counter-force to the excessive wealth concentration which
>> has always been a death knell for Enlightenment-oriented societies. Sadly,
>> solutions may rely upon some of those who benefit by the problem.
>>
>>
>>
>> *Tom Crowl*
>> http://CulturalEngineer.blogspot.com
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Tom Crowl <culturalengineer(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> *The reason for the connection between currency and democracy (in my
>>> mind at least):*
>>>
>>> Is rooted in how both are connected to *decision*. A decision is an
>>> intention + an action
>>>
>>> Whether for an individual or a civilization... aside from chance and
>>> physical circumstance... survival is solely determined by decision.
>>>
>>> No matter the basis of that/those decision(s).
>>>
>>> Money at root is a technology for creating chains of decision made
>>> necessary by scale (where people don't know or trust each other).
>>>
>>> Democracy is a technology (or more properly some collection of
>>> technologies) for making certain collective decisions.
>>>
>>> Money creation... the methods for its introduction into a social body...
>>> as well as its use in advocacy and support... are ALL political acts.
>>>
>>> This is tied into some of the reasons that for five years I've been
>>> stating that the natural conjunction between the essential need for a
>>> speech-related micropayment... which naturally leads to a unified core...
>>> can also function as a tool for association... AND form a natural home for
>>> alternative currencies...
>>>
>>> The only difference with the endeavor you cite is that I feel its more
>>> practical to build this neutral civic hub from traditional currencies...
>>> and I didn't know or use all the computer jargon back in '08.
>>>
>>> And when I see the crap the industry falls over for its very
>>> disappointing to see what's not being looked at.
>>>
>>> Decision Technologies: Currencies and the Social Contract
>>>
>>> http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/07/decision-technologies-currenci…
>>>
>>> Capability ENABLES Responsibility
>>>
>>> http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2008/10/capability-enables-responsibil…
>>>
>>>
>>> *Tom Crowl*
>>> http://CulturalEngineer.blogspot.com
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 11:00 AM, Andy Oram <andyo(a)oreilly.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I wonder whether anyone on this thread is following this initiative:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.decentproject.eu/
>>>>
>>>> I don't see a why to search archives for the group. Here is a key
>>>> description of the project from one of their slides:
>>>>
>>>> D-CENT will develop an open, federated and decentralised social
>>>> networking platform for large scale collaboration based on
>>>> integrating successful open-source codebases that enable to share in
>>>> real-time open data, democratic decision making, and digital
>>>> currency for the social good.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure why the combine democracy and currency--but it fits
>>>> exactly with what Tom has been talking about, funding candidates and
>>>> other campaigns.
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0
Fwd: Strategic Climate Activism: Resist - and build a cooperative, democratic economy
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '14
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '14
22 Feb '14
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tom Atlee <cii(a)igc.org>
Date: Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 5:29 PM
Subject: Strategic Climate Activism: Resist - and build a cooperative,
democratic economy
To: Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net>
Tom Atlee's Co-Intelligence Journal . The Co-Intelligence Symbol . What
this message is about: The climate crisis is far more than an environmental
Like<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-758275de8dd627ce50ee8ff6dafe9a3…>
Tweet<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-adfe687d50b1ea34c1f9d1121fa0304…>
Pin<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-aaf1b5832227b420d78723c3289c9de…>
+1<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-f26c514fd556848ec9aa9f8fc9d9c5c…>
[image: Sacred Economics Chart Clip1]
Tom Atlee's Co-Intelligence Journal
[image: Cii-logo-smaller]<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-fe4d8da8b2f3a96cf2a1a14718e3223…>
. The Co-Intelligence Symbol .
*What this message is about: The climate crisis is far more than an
environmental issue. Adequately ramping up efforts to address it will
require prioritizing a climate-justice movement which taps the potent
activism of struggling peoples for whom social change is and has always
been a matter of survival. In addition to resisting destructive forces,
this approach will involve wholesale development of economic democracy,
including "cooperatives and worker-owned businesses, community-development
financial institutions, community land trusts, local agriculture and
community-owned renewable energy, as well as efforts to reconceive
corporations and redefine economic growth". Such actions unjust corporate
dominance, build local community resilience to deal with climate shocks,
and nurture grassroots power to transform systems that urgently need
transforming.*
Strategic Climate Activism: Resist - and build a cooperative, democratic
economy<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-624ee17f5da80eee04a20f217104c8b…>
[image: 220px-Yin and Yang.svg]
Resistance & Cooperation
Dear friends,
The summary above will hopefully whet your appetite for the remarkable
articles below. The main one which I have included in full, promotes with
compelling logic the need to merge the climate movement with the economic
democracy movement. From Occupy to Climate
Justice<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-783293bbf12dff8ac923085bf10b3eb…>was
written by Wen Stephenson a few weeks ago. Stephenson also wrote the
powerful article featured in my recent post Climate Journalism, Climate
Passion, Climate Conscience and
Action<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-16a44034167b8cd75d069a1067c5c30…>
.
I also highly recommend two other articles to deepen our understanding of
what Stephenson is talking about.
*1. Chris Hedges' remarkable prophetic critique of modern society, The Myth
of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies
<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-9d4526293d08b29702a73cf7bed7959…>*
Tapping the allegory of Moby Dick, Hedges offers a passionate defense of
resistance as a source of existential meaning in times like ours, quite in
addition to any hope or impact we may promote through our acts of
resistance. These times demand a certain "sublime madness" of standing up
to both power and nihilism, asserting what is right because it is right.
*2. Stephanie Van Hook's insightful essay The Limits of Non-Cooperation as
a Strategy for Social Change
<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-69ff5cec514e60e600a1e9199990557…>*
Hook takes us one step further, embracing noncooperation while calling us
to radically expand our natural inclination to cooperate. Civil
disobedience may be vital, but it is insufficient to transform society.
Transformation becomes increasingly possible as we develop greater
understanding of cooperation and how to tap it in powerfully creative ways.
The Co-Intelligence Institute offers many approaches to promote our
understanding of the practical applications of cooperative power -
especially in politics,
governance<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-44abea9efecb086a02cae31723d9ed9…>,
and economics<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-f3e30c225cef558894f0f54833cfe1b…>,
as well as group
activities<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-7d76180d51d39ca921a3e8915ea7042…>of
all kinds.
Coheartedly,
Tom
= = = = = = = = =
*From Occupy to Climate Justice
<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-1024e7c625ee5ffc6511c29fe90c2ef…>*
*There's a growing effort to merge economic-justice and climate activism.
Call it climate democracy.*
Wen Stephenson
February 6, 2014
*(As usual, there are many links in the article online at the URL above.)*
It's an odd thing, really. in certain precincts of the left, especially
across a broad spectrum of what could be called the economic left, our (by
which I mean humanity's) accelerating trajectory toward the climate cliff
is little more popular as a topic than it is on the right. In fact,
possibly less so. (Plenty of right-wingers love to talk about climate
change, if only to deny its grim and urgent scientific reality. On the
left, to say nothing of the center, denial takes different forms.)
Sometimes, though, the prospect of climate catastrophe shows up
unexpectedly, awkwardly, as a kind of non sequitur--or the return of the
repressed.
I was reminded of this not long ago when I came to a showstopping passage
deep in the final chapter of anarchist anthropologist David Graeber's "The
Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement", his interpretive
account of the Occupy Wall Street uprising, in which he played a role not
only as a core OWS organizer but as a kind of house intellectual (his
magnum opus, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, happened to come out in the
summer of 2011). Midway through a brief discourse on the nature of labor,
he pauses to reflect, as though it has just occurred to him: "At the
moment, probably the most pressing need is simply to slow down the engines
of productivity." Why? Because "if you consider the overall state of the
world," there are "two insoluble problems" we seem to face: "On the one
hand, we have witnessed an endless series of global debt crises...to the
point where the overall burden of debt...is obviously unsustainable. On the
other we have an ecological crisis, a galloping process of climate change
that is threatening to throw the entire planet into drought, floods, chaos,
starvation, and war."
These two problems may appear unrelated, Graeber tells us, but "ultimately
they are the same." That's because debt is nothing if not "the promise of
future productivity." Therefore, "human beings are promising each other to
produce an even greater volume of goods and services in the future than
they are creating now. But even current levels are clearly unsustainable.
They are precisely what's destroying the planet, at an ever-increasing
pace."
Talk about burying the lead. Graeber's solution--"a planetary debt
cancellation" and a "mass reduction in working hours: a four-hour day,
perhaps, or a guaranteed five-month vacation"--may sound far-fetched, but at
least he acknowledges the "galloping" climate crisis and what's at stake in
it, and proposes something commensurate (if somewhat detached from the
central challenge of leaving fossil fuels in the ground). That's more than
can be said for most others on the left side of the spectrum, where climate
change is too often completely absent from economic and political analysis.
It's unclear what explains this reticence about the existential threat
facing humanity, beginning with the poorest and most vulnerable people on
the planet--unless it's that the implications of climate science, when you
really begin to grasp them, are simply too radical, even for radicals.
Two years ago, the International Energy Agency reported that corporations
and governments must shift decisively away from new long-term investments
in fossil-fuel infrastructure--such as Keystone XL and any number of other
projects--within five years, meaning by 2017, in order to avoid "locking in"
decades of carbon emissions that will guarantee warming the planet, within
this century, far more than 2°C above the preindustrial average, the
internationally agreed-upon red line. But on December 3, the eminent
climate scientist James Hansen, recently retired as head of NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, and seventeen co-authors released a study in
the journal PLOS ONE confirming that the United Nations-approved 2°C
ceiling has no real basis in science, only politics, and would itself set
in motion "disastrous consequences" beyond humanity's control.
Instead, according to Hansen and his co-authors, we should do everything we
can to stay as close as possible to a ceiling of 1°C. Given that we've
already warmed about 0.8°C in the past 100 years (with still more "baked
in" as a result of the climate system's lag time), you would be correct in
concluding that the time frame in which to act is vanishingly short--and
that the scale of action required is epically large. On our current
trajectory, with global emissions still rising, we're headed to at least
4°C this century. Even to have a shot at the 2°C goal, global emissions
must peak by, say, 2020, and then plummet to near zero by mid-century. That
may appear unlikely, but as Hansen et al. write, "There is still
opportunity for humanity to exercise free will."
Anyone who is committed to the hard work of bringing deep structural change
to our economic, social and political systems--the kind of change that
requires a long-term strategy of organizing and movement-building--is now
faced with scientific facts so immediate and so dire as to render a life's
work seemingly futile. The question, then, becomes how to escape that
paralyzing sense of futility, and how to accelerate the sort of grassroots
democratic mobilization we need if we're to salvage any hope of a just and
stable society.
A lot of people I know in the climate movement think the left, and the
economic left in particular--pretty much the entire spectrum from mainstream
liberals to Occupy radicals--has not yet taken on board the scale and
urgency of the climate crisis. Not really. Not the full, stark set of
facts. At the same time, mainstream climate advocates, wanting to broaden
the climate movement, are told that they have too often been tone-deaf on
issues of economic justice and inequality. How to reconcile these? How to
merge the fights for economic justice and climate action with the kind of
good faith and urgency required to build a real climate-justice movement?
I don't know anyone who has all the answers, but I do know a few people who
are at least asking the right kinds of questions, starting the necessary
conversations and actually working to connect climate and economic-justice
organizing across the country. As it happens, more than a few of them were
engaged in Occupy. (David Graeber should be proud.) They point to a
convergence of movements for economic democracy and climate justice, and
show us what a trajectory from Occupy to something new--call it climate
democracy--might look like.
Equally important, they're acting with the kind of urgency, and commitment
to civil resistance, that the crisis demands. They know there can be no
climate justice without economic justice, but they also know there won't be
any economic justice--any justice at all--without facing up to our climate
reality, simultaneously slashing emissions and building resilience. They
know the "climate" part of "climate justice" cannot be an afterthought,
some optional add-on to please "environmentalists." Because this shit is
real. And the game is far from over. No matter what happens in terms of
climate policy in the next few years--and the prospects are not
pretty--current and future generations have to live through what's coming.
------------------------------
Rachel Plattus was speaking to a roomful of college students and recent
grads at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, where
they'd gathered for a weekend in late October along with some 8,000 other
young activists at Power Shift, the biannual national convergence of the
youth climate movement. Rachel is the 26-year-old director of youth and
student organizing for the New Economy Coalition, based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. By her side was 35-year-old Farhad Ebrahimi, who serves on
the NEC board and who founded and runs the Boston-based Chorus Foundation,
which supports grassroots climate and environmental-justice organizing in
communities around the country.
I know Rachel and Farhad from the Boston-area climate movement, and I was
tagging along with them and their colleagues at Power Shift. It was strange
to see the two of them in front of a room at a high-tech convention center;
in the past year I've been more apt to see them in church basements and
community-organizing spaces, leading nonviolent direct-action trainings, or
on the streets leading protests against tar sands pipelines and coal-fired
power plants.
"I met Farhad at Occupy Boston," Rachel told the hundred or so young people
who'd come to hear about the intersection of climate and economic justice
(a strong showing, given the dozens of concurrent breakout sessions offered
at Power Shift). "We spent a lot of time there a couple years ago, and it
was a transformative experience for a lot of us."
Two important things came out of her Occupy experience, Rachel explained.
First, she and several friends who had been "radicalized on climate
issues," including Farhad and her NEC colleague Eli Feghali (who was also
in the room), decided to form an organizing collective "to do resistance
work around climate justice." At the same time, she began thinking
seriously about the central question raised by Occupy but never really
answered: "If you're so angry at this system, if all the people here have
been wronged by the system, what are you proposing that we do instead?"
While she and her friends wanted to keep organizing resistance, she said,
"I found myself looking for a way to have an answer to 'What do you want
instead?'" She dove into the worker-ownership movement in Boston and tried
unsuccessfully to start a worker co-op with some friends.
It was around this time, in late 2011 and early 2012, that she started
talking with Bob Massie, a longtime social-justice and environmental
activist, ordained Episcopal priest with a doctorate from Harvard Business
School and, among other things, the initiator of the Investor Network on
Climate Risk. Massie had recently been hired to head the New Economics
Institute, which merged early last year with the New Economy Network to
form the NEC. Rachel began to realize, she told her Power Shift listeners,
that the kind of work going on in the "new economy" or "solidarity economy"
movement--with things like cooperatives and worker-owned businesses,
community-development financial institutions, community land trusts, local
agriculture and community-owned renewable energy, as well as efforts to
reconceive corporations and redefine economic growth--is challenging the
dominant and unsustainable corporate capitalist system. And not simply
rejecting that system, she emphasizes, but "creating new economic
institutions that are democratic and participatory, decentralized to
appropriate scale so that decisions are made at the most local level that
makes sense and, rather than only prioritizing one thing--the maximization
of profit--prioritizing people, place and planet."
"New-economy innovations are occurring all over the country, bubbling up,"
Massie told me. "What they lack is mutual awareness, mutual support and
mutual connectivity." There's potential for real transformation, he
believes, in providing those connections. "As people become aware of each
other, their frame of reference about what's happening, and what could
happen, changes. They realize all these problems are linked--but all these
solutions may also be linked." He points to what happened recently in
Boulder, Colorado, where voters approved a grassroots energy initiative, by
a two-thirds landslide, to move the city from a big, corporate,
coal-dominated utility, Xcel Energy, to a publicly owned municipal utility
that will expand renewables at the same or lower rates.
When I followed up with Rachel back in Cambridge, I pressed her to explain
how she connects the new-economy work--which seems to represent real
progress, at least in pockets around the country--with her work organizing
nonviolent resistance to the fossil-fuel industry. First, she pointed out,
"in a civil society that is essentially owned by multinational
corporations, driven to maximize profit over all else, to engage in
building these parallel economic institutions is to engage in civil
resistance."
But even more, she suggested, in the merging of climate justice and
economic democracy, it's the democracy part that may ultimately matter
most. Rachel understands that the kind of deep, systemic change envisioned
by the new-economy movement is no doubt a long-term, evolutionary process,
on a time scale out of sync with our climate emergency. But she argues that
grassroots economic democracy, actually organizing to create those
alternative institutions, can also build a base of political power in the
near term, at the local level, which is not only where all politics has to
start but all resilience as well--something we're going to need plenty of in
the years ahead.
Rachel told me that she knows a lot of people who are focused primarily on
the economic-democracy piece--and yet, she added "almost all of them
recognize the level at which that also plays into climate issues, how we
build resilient communities." She pointed not only to something like the
community-owned energy initiative in Boulder, but to projects like the
Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in the Roxbury/North Dorchester
neighborhood of Boston, which has brought a racially diverse, low-income
community together around fair and affordable housing, community economic
development, food justice, education and youth empowerment. The initiative,
she said, is "building relationships, making sure the community is there,
people interacting with each other in the kinds of ways we need people to
be interacting with each other.... Occupy did that, too. Being part of
participatory democracy, in all its forms, does that: it gives people the
skills and capacities they need" to help build a social movement. Rachel
noted that NEC will launch an initiative this year to expand and strengthen
organizing among its coalition members around racial and economic justice.
And yet, I asked, where's the climate crisis in that picture? What happens
to communities like Roxbury and Dorchester, where people are already
struggling, if we don't urgently build the kind of grassroots power we need
to shift the politics of climate and deal head-on with the crisis?
"We have to be willing to tell the truth about what the dangers of climate
change are," Rachel said, "and how we balance immediate economic survival
with longer-term survival. We have to be willing to be honest about those
things. But we also have to recognize when we're building power toward
addressing the climate crisis--even if people aren't calling it the
climate-justice movement."
------------------------------
Farhad Ebrahimi stood in front of the room at Power Shift wearing a gray
hoodie with the words Kentuckians for the Commonwealth printed across it.
He was talking about what he'd learned since diving into climate work in
2006 and seeing even the most inadequate national legislation die in
Congress in 2009 and 2010. What was missing, he and others began to see,
"was any sense of building political power, any sense of a social movement,
and the intersectionality of climate justice and other social-justice
movements." Through his young foundation, Chorus, he decided to start
supporting grassroots organizing in frontline communities, those already
bearing the brunt of the fossil-fuel industry. One of the first places he
went was Kentucky.
"We went to look at the extraction stuff going on, mountaintop removal," he
said, "and we saw that the folks who were trying to fight the coal
companies, stop them from blowing up their mountains, were also doing great
work around energy efficiency and renewables--and when it was tied together
with this resistance work, it was actually much more effective."
He learned about Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a statewide independent
grassroots group that's been working for more than thirty years on
democratic reform and economic and environmental justice. KFTC does far
more than work on coal and environmental health issues, central as those
are in eastern Kentucky, where the group has its strongest base.
Confronting climate change is the first plank of the KFTC platform, but
much of its work is on local and regional economic development, tax-justice
issues, mass incarceration and voting rights, as well as worker
cooperatives, local agriculture, and community-owned and -distributed
renewables.
The folks at KFTC frame all of these as essential parts of a "just
transition" from the old, extractive, exploitative economy to a new, more
democratic clean-energy economy. The idea is that even as they build
grassroots political power, they're also creating real economic
alternatives to fill the void left by the coal industry. KFTC has
established its presence in state politics. In 2010, as part of its
strategy to move rural electric cooperatives away from overdependence on
coal, the group helped prevent the East Kentucky Power Cooperative from
building a new coal-fired plant and reached an agreement with the utility
to explore energy efficiency and clean-energy alternatives. Last year, KFTC
convened the Appalachia's Bright Future conference, which influenced the
agenda of a major Eastern Kentucky "summit" in December, called by Governor
Steve Beshear, a Democrat, and Republican Congressman Hal Rogers, to
jump-start an economic transition in a region reeling from the loss of
coal-industry jobs.
In the face of our climate reality, Farhad told me back in Boston,
"economic transition is inevitable." In Appalachia, as coal declines, it's
already happening. The question is: "Will the transition be just or not?"
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, he noted, is part of the recently formed
Climate Justice Alliance, a national collaborative effort among more than
thirty-five organizations committed to grassroots organizing in frontline
communities, especially communities of color. Its recently launched Our
Power Campaign focuses on three "hot spots": in the Black Mesa region of
the Navajo Nation, led by the Black Mesa Water Coalition; in Detroit, led
by the East Michigan Environmental Action Council; and in Richmond,
California, led by the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and Communities
for a Better Environment. Each of these groups is not only fighting the
local impacts of fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure--coal mines and
power plants in Arizona, a coal plant and oil refinery in Detroit, and the
massive Chevron refinery in Richmond--but just as much, applying principles
of economic democracy to work toward more sustainable and resilient local
economies in struggling communities.
Jihan Gearon, executive director of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, grew up
on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. She told me that their approach to
climate is "holistic," addressing not only emissions as they move away from
coal but also adaptation--especially as water becomes scarce--and economic
transition. "We are not content with parts per million of CO2reduced," she
said. "We also want to ensure that we protect health, water and jobs as we
reduce CO2."
In any likely scenario, Farhad asked, "what are we going to need, no matter
what? Local political power and local resilience." We won't get where we
need to be politically on climate change, at the national and international
levels, "without real local base-building," he added. And if we don't get
anywhere at the national and international levels, "well, then, we're going
to need the local work in place so that we can take care of each other as
the old way of doing things slips away."
Farhad and Rachel both like to think of this work as having three essential
pieces. The first is resistance: saying "no" to a corrupt, oppressive,
extractive system, whether through legislation and litigation, at one end
of the spectrum, and nonviolent direct action or mass protests at the
other. The second is "replacement": creating the alternatives, which can
itself be a form of resistance, as Rachel noted. And the third essential
piece is resilience.
"So we're trying to go from 'no' to 'yes,'" Farhad said, "but it's gonna be
a really fuckin' rough ride. It's gonna be a rough ride because of climate
change. But it's also gonna be a rough ride politically and economically."
Resilience becomes crucial, but so does social justice, because the two are
intimately linked. Resilience requires strong communities--and there's no
real community without social justice.
"We have this journey, this transition, that we have to make," Farhad told
me. "And we have to figure out how to organize so that we're not only going
toward 'yes,' but we're doing it in a way that's equitable." Kentuckians
for the Commonwealth, he pointed out, is important right now because of how
it intervenes in Kentucky politics, organizes communities and fights the
big coal companies. "And when the climate changes and what grows there
changes and how they can live there changes--they're going to need that
ability to act collectively to deal with all of that as well."
Farhad thought of another example. "Occupy Sandy happened not because
people responded to Sandy really well; it was because the relationships and
tool sets were already built through Occupy Wall Street."
David Graeber argues in The Democracy Project that Occupy reawakened the
radical imagination in this country. To the extent that's true, it's
possible that the merging of climate justice and economic democracy can
matter in a similar way--reawakening the sense of democratic possibility and
grassroots power in our communities. But Occupy did something else, too: it
reminded us of the sheer speed and unpredictability with which unrest can
explode across the country, taking everyone (including the organizers) by
surprise.
In Cambridge, I asked Rachel if she agreed that much of the economic left
has yet to take on board the full magnitude and urgency of the climate
crisis. "I mean, the climate movement has barely taken it on board," she
replied. "There are a lot of folks, even in the climate movement, and
certainly in the economic left, who haven't even made the decision to take
on the reality of it--and to recognize that this fight, [which] for them was
never really about survival, all of a sudden is."
When that recognition finally comes, anything could happen.
"It's interesting," Rachel said, "because there certainly are parts of the
left, not the liberal elite, but parts of the left"--like those, she pointed
out, who have fought their whole lives for racial justice--"for whom being
engaged has always been about survival."
"There is a deep, rich tradition of organizing for survival," Rachel said.
"In fact, it's the only thing that's ever worked."
Copyright (c) 2014 The Nation--distributed by Agence Global
[image: ***]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
site: http://www.co-intelligence.org<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-1bc5cd2501bd7685dd5e0b3b065c7de…>/
blog:
http://tomatleeblog.com<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-f061dc87e8f928e3ca3d7be3dc97e9d…>
Read Empowering Public
Wisdom<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-5d4c6a1e972b7d8567c356aafb9e15d…>,
The Tao of Democracy<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-d6eb873800a03c40c855d03edf4be15…>and
Reflections on Evolutionary
Activism<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-465776cae2bf43baee11f17ccd67a7b…>
Please support our work. Your
donations<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-8ed54c6a6ae95615191272f7ef50893…>are
fully tax-deductible in the U.S.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Prefer plain text?
This format is what I am now using for all my messages. *If you wish to
receive my messages in plain text format* send me an email at with "Revert
to plain text format" in the Subject line.
[image: ***]
[image: 1px]
(c)2014 Co-Intelligence Institute | PO Box 493, Eugene, OR 97440
Web Version<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021546-120bbbe3523234c2fc615200f0a1e2d…>
Forward<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021547-5832414187a0763264874a6132ac6f8…>
Unsubscribe<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021547-10795de4bfbe5e8090b0117dbdd6069…>
Powered by *Mad Mimi* (R)
<https://go.madmimi.com/redirects/1393021547-e6494138667a0c229975049b19b1b48…>
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Francois Houtart <houtart(a)hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 9:07 AM
Subject: FW: [aepf] Beyond the Local
To: Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net>
Intersting rflexions.
François
Email:[email protected]
Fundación Pueblo Indio del Ecuador
Calle Ruiz de Castilla N. 26-92
170520 - Quito ECUADOR
Tel. (593) (2) 32.12.100 (593) 09.69.55.06.40
Rue Kelle, 192/6 - B-1150 Bruxelles
Tel. (32) 476.31.50.53
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 12:01:55 +0800
From: cgebro(a)gmail.com
To:
Subject: [aepf] Beyond the Local
[image: Socialist Project - home] <http://www.socialistproject.ca/>
*The B u l l e t* <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/>
Socialist Project * E-Bulletin No. 937
February 17, 2014
[image: Socialist Project - home] <http://www.socialistproject.ca/>
<< Previous <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/936.php>
Home <http://www.socialistproject.ca/>
Today <http://www.socialistproject.ca/today/>
1 <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/937.php#comments>
Next <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/938.php> >>
The Contradictions of Localism
An Interview with Greg Sharzer
*Jordy Cummings (JC):* Your book is called No Local and it is an immanent
critique of inward looking reactions to neoliberal capitalism. One poignant
episode you recount surrounds urban agriculture, and the idea that we've
come to a really problematic situation when poor people are encouraged to
grow their own food in addition to working their jobs and raising their
kids. What is the political or strategic problem with localism? What are
your thoughts, for example, on campaigns like "Occupy the Economy" and so
forth?
*Greg Sharzer (GS):* First I'd like to quickly define some terms. 'Local'
is a space distinct from larger regional, national and international
spaces. But it's also relational, a moment in the global capital circuit.
It's amorphous, changing depending on what you're measuring: political,
social, economic, and so on. 'Localism' is the fetishization of scale. It's
assigning some positive benefit to a place precisely because it's small.
It's impossible to be anti-local, unless you're against units of
measurement. But I think it's a mistake to think that small is always
beautiful. Localism assumes 1) local economies are fairer than global
economies, 2) local spaces are autonomous from, and therefore more open to
democratic control than larger spaces, and 3) the political project of
revolutionary socialism is dead or, more accurately, never existed in the
first place. I think these problems mean that localist schemes for change,
such as community gardens, local currencies and transition towns become
pieces of the broader capitalist economy, no matter how sincerely their
participants may wish to change it.
Because of these problems, I think localism is a way to avoid, rather than
confront capitalism. Most localist schemes assume from the outset that
capitalism can't be changed wholesale, so it's better to make piecemeal
reforms around the edges. Occupy The Economy says the capitalist system is
the problem - not so controversial for left-localism - but goes further and
says the heights of industry, the banks and industrial corporations - need
to be taken over and run for the benefit of all of us. Therefore I wouldn't
call Occupy localism. They're far more ambitious than a transition town and
resemble the socialist industrial democracy schemes of 100 years ago.
Beyond the Local
But Occupy's problem is idealism. Their occupation will be accomplished by
everyone showing up at corporate headquarters and discussing democracy.
They even call for activists to set a date. After that, socialism (though
they're careful to avoid that word) will be accomplished... through a
constitutional amendment! Apparently capitalists and politicians have a
long history of giving up their power voluntarily, and general strikes
happen when everyone decides to walk off the job. This doesn't engage with
the real history of the labour and socialist movements, which show that you
need to win specific victories in different workplaces and community
campaigns, while organizing political alternatives that fight to extend
those victories.
If Occupy represents extra-local activism, I can see why some people feel
localism is more realistic. But the kernel of truth in Occupy the Economy
is that localist schemes don't challenge either state or capital
effectively. We need to ground dreams of revolution in effective strategy,
not only to figure out concretely how to build fighting social movements,
but to convince those drawn to localist schemes that we can go beyond the
local.
*JC:* Structurally speaking, it seems that localism involves some aspect of
commodity fetishism, in particular in its co-optation of opposition within
capitalist social property relations. Would you make a practical
distinction between localist political activism, such as those involved in
urban agriculture, food security and so on, and the more obvious examples
of ethical consumerism, such as "fair trade," alternative currencies and
the like.
*GS:* In No Local, I distinguish between pro- and anti-market localism. The
latter is about making capitalism fair and ethical, which I don't believe
is possible. I think those involved in urban agriculture and food security
activism are often far more anti-market, seeing serious problems in how
capitalism treats the food supply and looking for solutions. I think the
former are simply wrong; I agree with much of the latter critique but I
don't feel setting up alternative economies are the best way to go.
Both strategies can naturalize capitalist social relations, separating
economics from politics and believing that the latter can be 'fixed'
without the former - or, as Marx accused Proudhon, taking the good from
capitalism and dropping the bad. In that sense, both pro- and anti-market
localism suffer from commodity fetishism, mistaking the world of things for
the world of people. Pro-market localists believe capitalism can be fixed
if things are distributed more ethically. Anti-market localists take
existing production relations as fixed and seek change at the margins. I've
always found this a little tragic, since localism is about bringing agency
back to people. But as I point out in the book, I think part of what forms
localism is pessimism that union and party organizing can restrict any of
capital's rights.
And yet there are important differences between these approaches: people
seeking anti-market localist alternatives want the same sort of fundamental
change that socialists want. We just differ on how to achieve it. For me,
this requires mass, democratic unionization, particularly among
agricultural workers, regulation and controls on existing supply chains as
steps toward nationalization, and of course, worker control over industry
as a long-term goal. I think many anti-market localists would be open to
those ideas.
*JC:* Can you get into the theoretical, or analytical problems with
"localism" as part of a project toward eco-socialism or environmental
justice. I know people, for example, in Vermont, who are not necessarily
"politicized" aside from being "progressive" in the American sense, voting
for Sanders, etc. - and they grow their own food and other supplies, raise
their own animals. I remember mentioning your book to a friend down there
and he said to me "Of course we're not changing the world, we're just
trying to raise our families," and pointing out that for every person who
raises chickens, grows corn, that takes money out of the agri-business
complex. When you were interviewed in North
Star<http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=6926>,
commenters pointed out the plethora of local co-operative businesses that
are a significant part of the economy in the UK. What is wrong with these
kinds of arguments, and what is the concrete role of these rural types? Can
we find a balance between talking about the "idiocy of rural life" on one
hand, and the romanticist and moralistic rusticism of some quarters on the
other hand?
*GS:* To take your last question first, absolutely, industrialism vs.
romanticism is unhelpful. However, I'd argue that's precisely what the
utopian forbearers of localism did by mistaking capitalism, a system of
extraction of surplus value from workers' labour, for its consequences in
industrial society. Instead they looked back to a mythical time of petty
commodity production. So we need to understand capitalism much more
precisely, in order to figure out what to do about it.
So on economics... I've received many comments along the lines of, "You say
that local alternatives are impossible, but here's an example of a project
or genre of projects that has been viable for years." Invariably these are
projects supported by the fierce determination of local activists, who have
managed to carve out a space - say, for a cooperative or community garden -
by mobilizing progressive local politicians, or conducting enough community
mobilization that these projects get a level of stability. In which case,
saying 'no' to the local is just contrarian, a denial of the facts.
People who want to make their lives better by growing their own food or
meeting their neighbours should do so. Workers need to lower the cost of
reproducing their labour power. And I appreciate the honesty of your
friend, who knows he's not changing the world. It's when people start
assigning undue political significance to localism that I think it should
be questioned. It's not a question of whether cooperatives are possible -
clearly they are - or whether they can make life better for some workers -
clearly they can. The resilience and creativity of social enterprises are
not in question: their capacity to serve as a base for anti-capitalist
organizing is.
"
The resilience and creativity of social enterprises are not in question:
their capacity to serve as a base for anti-capitalist organizing is. "
To maintain themselves, they have to make the same kind of compromises that
a private firm makes, cutting back in times of recession, rationalizing
production and so on. They may not be malign about it, they may spread the
costs around more fairly rather than making swingeing cuts, but the
discipline that all social enterprises face is imposed by the marketplace,
not bad bosses. Politically, these schemes are contradictory: they provide
a lesson in social production, and Marx saw them demonstrating "how a new
mode of production naturally grows out of an old
one<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27.htm>."
But he didn't see them as revolutionary agents; the fundamental antagonism
between capital and labour still has to be addressed through political and
economic action.
It's impossible to socialize capitalism without confronting the
powers-that-be. Saying that workers could build alternatives to capitalism,
without taking its vast productive capacity away from the capitalists, is
like saying that capitalist power is voluntary. It implies people can
choose how to participate in the global economy. But by definition,
capitalism means workers are alienated from the means of production: the
social wealth they produce is stolen from them, taken into private hands,
and used against them. If it's not, if workers aren't coerced by enclosure,
and the mass of dead labour set up to suck living labour from them, then we
don't even have capitalism, just some form of expanded reproduction.
And then the political question... How do we organize this confrontation?
We need to 1) identify the central relationship of coercion - workers are
forced to sell their labour power to survive and 2) build people's
confidence to resist and transform it. Instead of these, I see localists
encouraging belief in the power of local schemes to outcompete capitalist
enterprise and transform capitalist economies through the agglomerating
power of a good example. This is not only challenged by the history of
capital centralization and concentration, it opens the door to co-optation.
Lately, the ruling class has become very good at localizing, because it's
another way to devolve responsibility for cutbacks to local
administrations, while imposing new forms of market discipline at the micro
level. We don't need to stop making local change; we need to consider how
local economic schemes fit into political strategy.
Everyone has the right to say, "The community garden or local currency I
participate in has made me aware of how capitalism works and given me the
courage to resist," and they're correct. Motivation, as I make clear in the
book's introduction, is highly individual. However, Marxists believe that
people's ideas change through struggle. It's only the experience of
collective organizing and mass resistance that builds people's confidence
to run society themselves. If we're going to run the factories and offices
democratically, like Occupy the Economy wants, we need to fight to make
them our own, not try and set up spaces away from them. And, because
capitalism is a political as well as an economic system, we need to engage
in all struggles - anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-nuclear, etc. - where
capital is trying to make life worse. In other words, there is a choice:
it's not 'you build your farm, I'll build my social movement,' and let's
meet in the pub afterwards.
Gezi Park community garden. [Photo: Pelin
Tan<http://tanpelin.blogspot.ca/2013/06/a-politics-of-collective-action-life-in…>
]
This is not an abstract problem. For example, during the protests in Gezi
Park in Istanbul, some protesters set up a community garden there. It would
be sectarian foolishness not to celebrate the diversity of tactics that led
to a garden being planted there. However, some questions remain. How did
the gardening tactic resonate with people, particularly after the ferocity
of state repression? Some organizers suggested that the garden was the work
of 'middle class' activists who were swept aside when the mass of people
came into struggle. Is this true, and if so, how did the activists use it
to reach out to workers?
As I write, the protesters have just been cleared from Taksim Square in
Istanbul after weeks of breathtaking occupation. I can guarantee the kind
of political discussions that the movement began are breaking down mental
blocks to socialism much faster than years of painstaking social
enterprise-building.
*JC:* I'm wondering if you can mention aspects of localism that play a
dialectical role, that is to say, both support and subvert capitalism?
*GS:* Yes. Every small project is a set of property relations partially
removed from capitalism. Internally, it can refuse to replicate hierarchal
work relations, and distribute goods via a direct exchange or scrip scheme.
Yet, as I mentioned above, the scheme is embedded in a global market in the
commodity labour power, which means it has to adapt to it by lowering
wages, speeding up work or finding a client base willing to pay more for
goods that other capitalists can produce more cheaply. I think
non-capitalist schemes can also signal capital that a previously
non-commodified space is now commodifiable, like the demonstrated link
between artist squats and gentrification. So capitalist social relations
get buttressed. I'm deliberately leaving out "the power of a good example"
as an example of undermining capitalism, because I don't think it's at all
clear that a good example works in the way proponents intend. When projects
adapt or fail, they lend credence to the idea that there is no alternative.
*JC:* What about a set of social property relations that is neither
capitalist nor socialist, in the schematic senses of a society of market
compulsion on one hand, and of free-association and disalienated labour on
the other?
*GS:* I don't think so, if we conceive of the world market in a Marxist
sense as a system of global attempts to reduce the cost of socially
necessary abstract labour time (SNALT). The problem with localist,
non-capitalist, Proudhonist, etc. schemes is they assume that they get to
decide whether their project is capitalist or socialist. Capitalism doesn't
allow that kind of autonomy: it operates outside the control of a
multinational corporation or national market, let alone an individual firm.
Socialist property relations are an oxymoron: appropriating the means of
production means breaking the power of the state that enforces capitalist
property rights. Before that, we can have varieties of capitalist power
relations - for example, state capitalism, where property is monopolized by
a ruling elite dedicated to forms of redistribution. But social property
relations imply that the global market no longer coerces firms to achieve
SNALT. I could see circumstances in which a redistributive state subsidises
social enterprises which don't meet SNALT with revenues from other sources:
for example, Venezuela using oil revenues to support reclaimed factories.
But is it non-capitalist to use one segment of the circuit of capital to
partially remove another segment? Can a change in the mode of production be
made through appropriating rents? Maybe, although I don't see how this is
sustainable in the long run. I think Manuel Larrabure's
work<http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/787.php>on Venezuelan
worker cooperatives is very useful for pointing out the
strength and limitations of this strategy.
There's a temporal aspect to this: certainly, mass struggles throw up
examples of workplaces and institutions freed from capitalist property
relations. When workers seize a factory and it no longer produces for the
world market, that can't be described as capitalist. But that's temporary:
the struggle must continue to overthrow the state, or be thrown back so
that seized enterprises still have to meet SNALT. A strike is not about
creating social property relations, but about disrupting capitalist ones.
If strikers generalize their action and begin to create forms of dual
power, producing for distribution by local workers' councils, for example,
that could be 'in between.' But it's in between precisely because it's not
stable, and either capital or labour must win.
The question of struggle is what saves this discussion from dissolving into
the semantics of how one defines capitalist property. If people are
fighting capitalist social relations, new forms of production, distribution
and association are born - not from the blueprints of participatory
economics but from the practical questions involved in running liberated
cities and countries. The point is that these relations are in motion,
according to the rhythm of class struggle. You can't create non-capitalism
away from the political question of movement-building. Those attempts to
break out will be re-incorporated.
Finally, this relates to Marxism directly. Marx fought against mechanical
materialism, which states that people are just products of history and
structures. This missed people's active role in making history. Against the
fatalism of some forms of political economy, localism has stressed agency,
which is a good thing. But the problem is it's idealist agency: if we have
the right ideas, we can reshape the world simply by demonstrating them.
Socialists can't re-emphasize mechanical materialism as a response. Rather,
we need historical materialism: an understanding of how people make history
on the terrain provided for them.
Political economy is determinist in the sense that it sets the terrain upon
which we act, one of the conditions Marx referred to when he said 'we act
upon a world not of our own making.' The question is not one of rejecting
determinism entirely; that way lies voluntarism and ultimately lifestylism.
Rather, it is a question of figuring out how much determining power capital
has; or, put another way, the relationship of political economy to the
working-class. The ruling class uses dead labour to control the living and
so has tremendous power, but it's not total: capital still needs fresh
living labour to mobilize the machines and create surplus value. This is
the potential power of the working-class: capital needs it. And it's why
schemes for social change that ignore how to mobilize workers, setting
examples for them instead, miss the fundamental antagonism at the heart of
capitalism.
*JC:* I'm wondering how you would gauge the position of the
petit-bourgeoisie. Is localism petty-bourgeois, and as well, can you tell
me how you would define "petty bourgeois"? And on the terms of
actually-existing petty bourgeois interests, does localism contradict their
interests in the same sense as it does for the working-class? If we accept
that there is a petty-bourgeoisie, not in the Poulantzian "new middle
class" sense, but in the sense of small entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, and
indeed farmers, how is localism indeed damaging to their own interests? Or
is there a "petty bourgeois at all"?
*GS:* In No Local, I use Erik Olin Wright's analysis to describe the petty
bourgeois as a group trapped between workers and capital. This is wrong,
because a middle layer is too vague a concept to be of any analytical, let
along strategic use. Worse, if we introduce new classes with the same
analytical weight as labour and capital, the labour-capital antagonism
disappears, along with Marxism. This is one of the unhappy side-effects of
the 'creative class' thesis, although even before that, there were decades
of 'new middle class' theorizing: replace the relationship to the means of
production with occupations, or even shopping habits, and the list of
middle classes is endless. In 1995, after much of the new middle classes
debate ended, Robert Weil came up with a useful characterization: the petty
bourgeois is a class that acts as both capital and labour. Their highly
specialized knowledge is their capital, which they control and use to
appropriate surplus value - their own surplus value. But they don't produce
or own enough to stop working and become a real capitalist.
This fits very well with the definition of localism as petty bourgeois. The
tension that comes from embodying the capital-labour antagonism personally
causes a desire for classlessness. In turn, this causes a desire for small:
to return to a mythical artisanal economy where the world-historical
pressures to accumulate and resist exploitation aren't arrayed against you
inside your own head. I think it's impossible to understand localism
without understanding it as an ideology, not just an economic philosophy,
though of course this ideology has material roots.
It doesn't damage the petty bourgeois's own direct interests, because those
interests are to avoid class conflict and escape the constant need to
accumulate and alienate. But it damages those members of the working-class
who also want to escape (which is nearly everyone), and whose natural
instinct toward class solidarity gets blunted in favour of small-scale
communitarianism. A philosophy of solidarity and confrontation can also
sweep up the petty bourgeois along with the working-class - in any urban
revolution, the small shopkeepers often side with the revolutionaries.
Given the historical weakness of the left, that's been reversed: the
working-class is presented with the petty bourgeois point of view. It
resonates because nothing else is on offer at the moment, and the hope of
being petty bourgeois remains an elusive dream for workers, sustaining
millions of people in their daily drudgery or unemployment with the false
hope of freedom.
*JC:* You make use of Marxist rent theory, it seems we are both big fans of
the third volume of
Capital<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/>.
Can you give us an explanation of rent theory and how it connects to these
issues? How is it useful to you? And how has it been used incorrectly? I've
always thought how one conceives rent theory is informed by how one sees
the origin of capitalism, am I right to see this?
*GS:* I claim no expertise on rent theory, but as Neil Smith once said to
me, nobody who claims to get it actually does. It's one of the hardest
parts of Marx's theories, because it's not intuitive. Anyone who works
'gets' exploitation; but how is that connected to land?
I attempted to reintroduce rent because it seemed that Marxists stopped
talking about it in the 1980s. Yet capitalist exploitation still has to
take place somewhere. Rent is the theory of how social barriers to
investment create temporary advantages for capitalists. These may appear as
physical barriers, like a fertile or well-located plot of land. But if one
capitalist owns a better piece of land than the other, the second one can
apply enough capital to change her land until it's just as good.
The point is the barriers to capital flow are social, and the social
barriers of ownership seemed to be just as important today - even more so,
given the global push toward urbanization. So I think it's impossible to
understand how urban development happens without understanding rent, the
extra money gained by landowners from situating production on their
property, which other capitalists can't immediately recreate.
Another way of putting this is that land is not outside the capital
circuit. And this is important for localism, because there's this idea that
urban agriculture is somehow protected from capitalism by virtue of its
small size. But urban farms have to compete with other capitals far more
than rural capitals do: the competition for land use in cities is intense.
If we can understand how rent is generated, we can understand how
developers make space for urban gardens as a way to raise the value of
their condominium towers, for example. We can also avoid the naive notion
that poor, ex-industrial places like Detroit are outside of capital because
of all their spare land. In line with radicals there, I'd argue it's
precisely the new lands created by long-term economic crisis that makes a
place like Detroit so useful to capital. There is no outside to capital: it
keeps finding new ways to destroy 'inefficient' property or commons, like
Detroit's bankruptcy.
This is not to say things like community gardens are impossible; of course
there are many places where they're not only possible but approved by
municipal administrations. But my point is that those places are shielded
from rent pressures by particular circumstances. They're temporary, at
least in the medium term (witness the pressures on the greenbelt in Seoul,
for example), and can't be replicated everywhere. For example, Havana
turned its spare land into farms because it had no property market. That's
not going to work elsewhere on a grand scale.
*JC:* If local solutions are merely defensive at best, what should
socialists be doing about the environmental crisis? One position holds that
a lot of eco-socialist discourse relies on what is called "catastrophism";
myself, I'm sympathetic to the position of Henwood, McNally and other
contributors to that book [Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of
Collapse and Rebirth<https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=501>].
On the other hand, there are those who accuse those who critique
catastrophism of underrating the importance of the ecological dimension of
our struggles, even to the point of denigrating their centrality? On both a
strategic and theoretical level, where do you stand on this debate?
*GS:* Rather than saying all ecological struggles are local, I'd say
they're spatial. They're always rooted somewhere, which allows people
directly affected to shape them - recent activism against tar sands
pipelines and fracking are great examples of this. However, eco-struggles
are the best example of the limits of localism. On the one hand, capital
always 'lands' somewhere, it's never dematerialized. When workers producing
a key component of a car go on strike, they can bring the entire production
process to a halt, even if the factories are widely scattered. When
indigenous people blockade a single pumping station on a pipeline, they can
stop the entire project - the company can't exactly build a new pipeline to
go around them. The path-dependency of capital gives local direct actions
tremendous disruptive power.
On the other hand, a pipeline isn't the result of a local business. Oil
companies can bring a lot more pressure to bear on local campaigns
precisely because they're extra-local, like when Enbridge Pipelines Inc.
gave $44,000 to the police, at the same time as they need police to protect
their property. Local actions need to be scaled up, so that capital can be
fought on many fronts: financially, politically, direct action, and so on.
I don't think this is controversial, but what I'm arguing is that the
implicit, sometimes explicit, message of localism is: "stop there." If
there is any confrontation, don't make it too big. Start locally to
outcompete or detach from capital.
Put more abstractly, space is not a substitute for social relations.
Starting small still poses the same questions of power that mass movements
pose, and to challenge, restrict and defeat the extra-local powers trying
to shape localities, we need to get big. The way not to do this is by
terrifying people with catastrophe. The north pole officially became a lake
a few days ago: there's plenty of reason to be afraid. But fear is a
demotivator: making that fear existential - the entire basis of our
civilization is being undermined! - is a sure-fire way to get people to do
nothing at all. It's remarkable that a movement based on strict adherence
to local or micro-economies and politics - such as intentional communities
and even some transition towns - relies on such sweeping generalizations
about the state of the world and human nature.
In response to catastrophists, I guess I'd say: "OK, we agree that
capitalism is destroying the planet. What's the best way to stop it?"
Detaching and forming more egalitarian, green-friendly communities is
premised on the old 'propaganda of the deed' - build it and they will come
- model. But capitalism ensures most people are too busy or desperate
trying to survive to drop it all and participate in these new models. At
which point, catastrophists can go one of two ways: be absorbed with
building a better life for themselves right now, or consider strategically
how to gain allies. That means speaking to people where they are, about
what they're concerned about. Leadership comes from supporting and
empowering people to solve their actual problems, not telling them to
abandon those problems and focus on planning for the end of the world -
whether that end is posed as sweet revenge, our collective doom or a chance
to build a new society.
The question of our ecological survival is political, not technical. That
means reframing our struggles. Rather than saying, "Runaway global warming
is going to drown all of us and lead to mass die-off of flora and fauna and
us, so stop the pipeline," it means saying, "The poor safety record of
pipeline companies mean that, when spills happen, toxic chemicals are going
to destroy your homes, playgrounds and the health of your loved ones." Both
are true: only one poses concrete political questions for those living near
a pipeline.
*JC:* We've seen a general discrediting of the dominant forms of left
organization - top-down vanguard parties; formless affinity groups;
bureaucratic social democracy? What kind of organization do we need to be
building on the Left in order to move beyond these concerns, and move
beyond localism and toward class struggle? Barring full-scale international
socialism, something on the distant horizon, what can be done on the level
of national states? Of course there can be no "socialism in one country" or
delinking, but isn't it incumbent upon us to suggest new kinds of
organization without falling into a pattern of "stagism"?
*GS:* Part of localism's appeal is to stop fussing with theory and
organizational models and just get on with doing what you can, right now.
But this conceals a pessimism about the prospect for left victories. It
takes collective struggle off the agenda and leaves capital free to impose
itself. This is a natural reaction to the constant assault of austerity,
which have succeeded thanks to 30 years of neoliberal defeat for the
workers' movement in the Global North. Without an organized left to get
involved with, the appeal of DIY is much stronger: why bother with
discussions about long-dead revolutions when you can rejuvenate a traffic
island by planting vegetables on it? There's a parallel trend which crosses
left and right, and that's to focus exclusively on the mechanisms of power
- again, tempting now that we know the NSA is reading and watching
everything. But these are not only hidden theories of powerlessness - a
concession to the nihilism that capitalist triumphalism feeds on. They miss
the exciting developments on the left.
For example, the recent and continuing crisis of the British SWP is a
reference point for English-speaking leftists, at least, and I've been very
impressed with the rethinking of the International Socialist Network and
others. They've identified the centrality of anti-oppression politics, not
just paying lip service to gender or race; the need for pluralism; and a
sober assessment of the left's recent history, as starting points. And of
course, there's been the recent mass explosions of struggle in Turkey,
Brazil, Egypt and elsewhere. They raise incredibly exciting questions about
strategy, dual power, and how to raise demands that can draw layers of
people into sustained political campaigns. I think the job of socialists is
to learn from and be inspired by these movements, and figure out how their
lessons can be applied elsewhere. For the first time in many years, we see
the prospect of mass resistances breaking out across the globe, due to
highly specific local conditions on the one hand, and the overarching logic
of capitalist austerity on the other. Suddenly the old question of: how do
we organize this into something that can last, and that can make real
gains? - makes sense again.
I read 'stagism' as an attempt to cut off a revolution's momentum, declare
its limits to be national borders and impose a new elite to manage it all.
All social movements have stages; but equally, they can leap through
different scales and inspire other movements in remarkable ways, the Arab
Spring being the most recent example. I think that's the best argument
against stagism: showing concretely how learning from, and contributing to
international movements can help change our own societies.
This is another word for a global network of socialist parties, which seems
to be a tremendously unfashionable concept these days. But I don't see how
we can get around it. Capital is internationalized, and although it's just
as internally divided as ever, its various factions can muster
international resources - legal, financial, military - that a left party in
one country can't fully counter. The working-class still exists in ever
more precarious, gendered, racialized forms, and yet with the vast
potential for unity. The advanced sections of the working-class still need
political organization. Without extra-local political organization, capital
can play these sections off against each other.
*JC:* What kind of struggles exist right now that link the local with the
global? What are their limitations and what are their advantages? If we are
to say of course "no local," how can we situate, in general, globality,
without falling into the trap of Hardt and Negri?
*GS:* I would define a linking struggle not only in terms of scale, but
also as one that reveals social relations. Again, the anti-tar sands
movement is a good example of this: fight a pipeline and you end up
fighting multiple levels of government, the police and multinational
corporations. You confront the legacy of colonialism in Canada and the USA.
It's a truism to say that every local struggle contains the seeds of global
ones - but the keyword there is 'struggle.' Raising chickens, growing your
own vegetables, processing your own biofuel is not struggle. (Unless the
land you're doing it on is wanted by a developer, in which case the
non-capitalist alternative has to quickly learn how to confront
capitalism.) A local struggle has to confront some aspect of capitalist
power, and through that campaign raise the confidence of its participants
to fight back, and provide a way to self-educate participants in the
nuances of organizing.
Hardt and Negri's failure lies in ignoring the strategic questions that
movement organizing has posed since the dawn of capitalism, in favour of a
celebration of an amorphous global multitude. Years ago I saw Michael Hardt
speaking on why we need a theory of love as the basis for a political
movement - not in an ethical sense, he apparently meant it strategically.
This convinced me that strategy matters, and that strategy, in turn, rests
on an understanding of how capitalism must expand and go into crisis.
Without a close engagement with that dynamic, and what actual people are
doing about it - fighting police brutality, the high costs of living,
dictatorships, and so on - we lose a sense of what the questions are and
can follow generations of idealist utopians, trying to impose our own order
on the world based on what's in our heads and hearts at the moment. I'd
argue what these traditions share is a rejection of the relationship
between deterministic capital and working-class agency. Without that
fascinating, studiable and actable anchor, we can suggest any version of
local or global we want.
This is the key advantage of a social movement that looks beyond the local
to understand what it's fighting and who its allies are. It is firmly
grounded in the real world, not in the world we'd prefer to live in right
now. This is the opposite of closing off possibilities. The real world
poses impossibly rich questions, both in analysis and action. For example,
what sparked the deposing of Morsi in Egypt, and what should the role of
the Left be in it? Various accounts have suggested it's a revolution, a
counter-revolution, or both. 'What side are you on?' is still the most
important question, and by questioning localism, I'd like to see people
start asking themselves that again. Quickly followed by asking themselves
what the sides look like, what motivates them, and how our side can win. *
Greg Sharzer has a Ph.D. in Political Science from York University in
Toronto and is currently affiliated with the Institute for Social Sciences
at Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, South Korea. He is the author
of No Local <http://www.zero-books.net/books/no-local>.
Jordy Cummings is a labour activist and Ph.D. candidate in Political
Science at York University. He is Interventions editor at Alternate Routes:
A Journal of Critical Social Research
<http://www.alternateroutes.ca/>where this interview first appeared.
<< Previous <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/936.php>
Home <http://www.socialistproject.ca/>
Today <http://www.socialistproject.ca/today/>
Next <http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/938.php> >>
Comments
#1 *Rod Kueneman* 2014-02-18 04:59 EST
*No Local*
It seems increasingly likely that the level of climate change and energy
supply disruption will be so serious and arrive so rapidly that the place
of the local needs to be rethought. Marx was working on an ecological
platform which had been stable for 10,000 years. It is now destabilizing
and all bets are off for the future on our horizon. The future prospects
for capitalism and our species are less than assured. Consider the
following research summaries of climate changes underway.
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Henry Oswald <team(a)sharelatex.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 6:30 AM
Subject: ShareLaTeX is now open source!
To: michelsub2004 <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com>
Hi michelsub2004 ,
We're pleased to announce that ShareLaTeX is now open source, and you can
grab the code on Github <https://github.com/sharelatex/sharelatex>!
ShareLaTeX is a web-based real-time collaborative LaTeX editor, and you can
now run your own local version where you can host, edit, share and compile
your LaTeX documents. We're still 100% focused on running the hosted
version at http://www.sharelatex.com, but we want to be more flexible in
how you can use ShareLaTeX, and give something back to our wonderful
community.
[image: ShareLaTeX editor]
We're starting by open-sourcing the core parts of ShareLaTeX, including the
editor, the project and document storage systems, and the backend LaTeX
compiler that we use. This is only the beginning of our open-source journey
though, and we will be open sourcing much more soon. (We still need to
review our back-end code and write documentation for the other parts.)
Motivation
Our main motivation for ShareLaTeX has always been to improve the
efficiency of scientists and students around the world. Open sourcing our
code base is a natural way to make sure that we can help as many people as
possible.
As a small team, we're constantly receiving feature requests that we'd love
to implement but don't have the time. We've also had a lot of offers from
willing volunteers who we've had to turn away because we didn't have a
framework for people to contribute. We hope that by open-sourcing
ShareLaTeX we can empower our brilliant community to help improve
ShareLaTeX in the ways that you want, without having to wait for the two of
us to work down our todo list.
A lot of people have asked to host ShareLaTeX internally due to company
guidelines or data privacy concerns. We don't have the resources to support
licensed installs at the moment, but we also hate having to say no. With an
open-source version of ShareLaTeX, now anyone who wants to run it locally
can.
We are still continuing to work on ShareLaTeX full time, and we expect that
the time we have to work on new features will only increase in the coming
year. (We are starting to look for a front end developer/designer to join
our distributed team. If that sounds interesting then please get in touch
at team(a)sharelatex.com.)
Contributing
If you run into any problems with downloading and setting up ShareLaTeX,
please let us know on our issue
page<https://github.com/sharelatex/sharelatex/issues>
.
ShareLaTeX is written in CoffeeScript (and occasionally JavaScript), and
our back-end runs on Node.js. Regardless of your experience, we would love
to help you get to know the ShareLaTeX code base, and help you contribute
your first patch. The code can be found on
Github<https://github.com/sharelatex/sharelatex>,
and an overview of all open issues can be found
here<https://github.com/orgs/sharelatex/dashboard/issues>.
We've got some issues marked as 'good for beginners', but don't let that
constrain you! We also have an open chat
room<https://www.hipchat.com/g1nJMcj7b>for discussing development.
Please drop in if you have any questions, or
just say hi.
There are also ways to help that aren't all about coding. The whole site
could do with the caring touch of a *designer*, or if you speak a language
other than English, then you could help to *translate* ShareLaTeX. There is
LaTeX *documentation <http://www.sharelatex.com/learn>* that needs
improving, and we're always keen for *bug reports
<http://github.com/sharelatex/sharelatex>* from anyone using the site.
If you would like to discuss this news please head over to our announcement
blog post<https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2014/02/21/sharelatex-is-now-open-source.ht…>
.
Regards,
Henry <https://twitter.com/henryoswald> and
James<https://twitter.com/thejpallen>
ShareLaTeX Co-founders
Unsubscribe<https://www.markdownmail.io/unsubscribe/714c6de9e5d20b2911391815d4b9e26a796…>
Sent using MarkdownMail.io <https://www.markdownmail.io>
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit6/papers/BenPeters.pdf
"Why wasn't there a Soviet equivalent to the US ARPANET? Building on fresh
archival evidence, this paper examines several surprising leads: one, that
the first
person anywhere to conceive of and propose a national computer network for
civilian use appears to have been the Soviet cyberneticist and Engineer
Colonel
Anatolii Kitov; two, that Soviet economic cybernetics tried repeatedly but
did not
succeed in building such a network; three, that the collective failure
comes in part
due to unregulated bureaucratic competition and infighting over resources
within
the Soviet state and academy (while the US ARPANET and French MINITEL
networks initially benefited from centralized state subsidy) and in part
due to the
untenably comprehensive and hierarchically decentralized design in vogue
among
Soviet cybernetists in the 1960s. The fact that cybernetics was a
discursive
vehicle for reform-oriented science in the early 1960s makes its failed
contributions that much more culturally poignant. These and other ironies
are
explored."
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert Steele <robert.david.steele.vivas(a)gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 1:44 PM
Subject: Important Book, Review, Urge Your Attention (& Vote)
To: Robert Steele <Robert.David.Steele.Vivas(a)gmail.com>
I have published the following review that may be slightly modified over
the next few days, but believe I have extracted the value and the relevance
for the general good.
<http://www.amazon.com/The-Peoples-Advocate-America%C2%92s-Fearless/dp/16190…>
The People's Advocate: The Life and Legal History of America's Most
Fearless Public Interest
Lawyer<http://www.amazon.com/The-Peoples-Advocate-America%C2%92s-Fearless/dp/16190…>
[image: 5.0 out of 5 stars] *6 Stars on Substance, 3 Stars on Presentation
-- Needs a New Publisher*, February 20, 2014
By
Robert David STEELE
Vivas<http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1S8AJIUIO6M9K/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pdp>
*This review is from: The People's Advocate: The Life and Legal
History of America's Most Fearless Public Interest Lawyer (Hardcover)*
This book was tough going -- even eye-glazing. I have never, in the
thousands of books I have read, seen a starker contrast between prodigal
son brilliance and Nobel level performance being presented, and the worst
possible least useful presentation format. The table of contents is devoid
of information. 4 parts, 31 chapters titled (I do not make this stuff up)
Chapter One through Chapter Thirty One. I strongly recommend that the
author find a new publisher and immediately restructure the book into
coherent segments associated with the below highlights, add a timeline,
photographs, glossary, snap-shots of each key case including lessons
learned and future issues unresolved, snap-shots of key people, and a new
epilogue that connects the quarter century of path-finding by the author to
the quarter century of civil war in the USA that is now beginning, courtesy
of 9/11 (allowed to happen), Department of Homeland Security,
FEMA-Halliburton concentration camps and railway cars with shackles, urban
blimps, drones, and street corner camaras, and the two-party tyranny
(executive, legislative, and judiciary) that no longer represents We the
People in any manner. [My views on the alternative to be fought for can be
found online at We the People Reform Coaltion.]
I hope that introduction got your blood boiling. This is a book for smart
people who care about the Constitution, the Republic, and America the
Beautiful -- the America of good people with big hearts and strong souls
who do the best they can while trapped amidst a complex of corrupt systems
that now include most labor unions, most non-profits, and most religions --
all the safety nets are gone. It is not an easy read but it could be the
most important book you could read right now, as we prepare for the
2014-2020 civil war between the 99% and the 1%. For a sense of where I see
Danny Sheehan in modern US history, see my review of Arsonist: The Most
Dangerous Man in
America<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983644608/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>.
Danny Sheehan's is to the second American revolution as James Otis was to
the Founding Fathers. The 1% and their political bi-opoly (the best of the
servant class in the eyes of the 1%) are the target for a massive
apolitical cross-cultural uprising rooted in natural law, social justice,
and common sense.
The book cannot be fully appreciated without first understanding that the
author has been a major player in every fundamental Constitutional case
having to do with public agency -- the sovereignty of the public versus the
assumption by the "government" that it has inherent powers once reserved
for kings, and that the citizens "donate" (abdicate) their powers once they
"elect" said government. I highly recommend Wikipedia's biography on
Daniel_Sheehan_(attorney). This -- or the timeline below -- is what should
have opened the book in the first place. I take the trouble to do this
because the value of this book lies with the next generation, the
generation now in college and graduate school (or unemployed and
unOccupied), not in the generation that rose with Danny and failed to beat
down New York money, Texas energy, and the Nazi hydra combined with elite
embrace of drugs, money laundering, and pedophilia, among other high crimes
against the Republic.
Major Case Timeline
In re Pappas (First Amendment)
Eisenstadt v. Baird (reproductive freedom)
1970 JD from Harvard Law School, Joined Cahill Gordon
Branzburg v. Hayes
U.S. v. Caldwell
Attica inmates, Committee of Observers
State v. Byrd (Black Panthers false accused of bombing conspiracy)
New York Times Co. v. U.S. (First Amendment, Pentagon Papers)
1972 McGovern campaign, helped strike down voter registration laws
Rockefeller Commission (Police Department corruption, Frank Serpico
testimony)
Joined F. Lee Bailey
Defended F. Lee Bailey
Watergate (leading to Nixon's impeachment & resignation)
1973 Entered Harvard Divinity School focusing on Comparative Social Ethics
1974 Leave of absence to help ACLU
Associated Student Body v. University of Wyoming (First Amendment, Last
Tango in Paris)
In re Slaughterhouse Five (First Amendment)
Morton v. Mancari (validated preferential hiring of Native Americans)
1973 Wound Knee (all vindicated)
1974-1975 Returned to Divinity School
Potter Box model for ethical decision-making
Began synthesis on how world views make facts irrelevant in political
discourse
1975 Became Chief Counsel for Jesuits USA
Daniel and Philip Berrigan
Dick Gergory
Benjamin Spock
David Abernathy (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)
1977 Karen Silkwood (included CIA and Keen smuggling of nuclear materials
to Israel)
1979 Founded Christic Institute (rooted in Teilhard de Chardin)
Three Mile Island
Greensboro Massacre (KKK)
American Sanctuary Movement (Catholic sanctuary of Salvadoran refugees)
1986 Aviragan v. Hull (Iran-Contra) exposed CIA's "enterprise" for global
unconstitutioinal activities
Christic Institute shut down by combination of corrupt executive, corrupt
judiciary, and corrupt legislature
1990 Elected to lead Romero Institute
Col James A Sabow USMC murder by Mariines for CIA at El Toro
1994 John E. Mack defense of academic freedom (extraterrestial encounters
by humans)
United States Library of Congress investigation into extraterrestials (and
probably to the Catholic Church also)
1999 Director New Paradigm Project State of the World Forum (Mikhail
Gorbechev)
2001 Disclosure Project (those with direct knowledge of UFOs)
Developed talk on Philosophical and Theological Implications of the Human
Discovery of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence
2005 Lakota People's Law Project (rescuew of 3,000 children seized)
And now to the book itself.
The personal history is both necessary and revealing and truly provides
context for the entire book. It took me a full reading to appreciate the
page 3 statement that this is the story of a generation, the JFK generation
fighting the national security state mentality of the WWII generation (good
people) that allowed its government to be hijacked by bad people. I totally
share with the author the view that the assassination of JFK closed the
door on the socio-economic and ideo-cultural reforms being advanced in the
1960's.
SIDENOTE: I have reviewed most of the books on JFK and where I differ with
Danny is in not blaming the excathedra CIA "enterprise" for the
assassination it carried out, but rather the combination of Texas energy,
New York money, and Italian crime that came together to snuff out the
greatest leader of the conscious world. George Bush Senior was in Dallas,
working for the "enterprise," and I earnestly pray that he and Howard Hunt
will one day appear before a Truth & Reconciliation Commission. See among
others:
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It
Matters<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439193886/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>
Someone Would Have
Talked<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/097746573X/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>
Dark Legacy <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002Q79WMM/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>
Two elements of the personal introduction I find riveting. First is his
account of how he discovered first hand the corruption of the average US
Senator, and the second his his quote, on page 60, of Henry Kissinger
telling his Harvard class that the US is "authorized to lie, cheat, steal,
and kill to gain access to the strategic raw materials that below to other
nations..." Kissinger never changed -- years later, while in the White
House, it is now known that he said, to general laughter, "the illegal we
do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer."
The author accomplished more by the time he was 30 than most do in a
lifetime. I note with interest that his first encounter with illegal
wiretapping by the US Government against US citizens occured when he was 26
years old.
Page 151 gets to the heart of the matter: "emergency does not create
power." The executive cannot be allowed to claim inherent powers (Congress,
not the executive, is "the government" in a Republic), citizen rights are
not "donated" or abdicated once an election takes place, and the elite
cannot violate the laws of the land. Which is of course what we have today
with a national security state that uses secrecy to commit treason on a
daily basis.
Among the many reasons this book is a 6 star book (in my top 10% -- see all
my reviews across 98 categories at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence
Blog) is perhaps the greatest possible accomplishment of all: a lawyer
representing justice with intelligence and integrity. I am fascinated by
the constant presence in this book of social justice and the author's
long-running reflections on utilitarianism versus intuitionism, and his
appreciation for the importance of Reverend Witherspoon of Princeton
University in shaping the morals of the Founding Fathers such that natural
law and the rights of man served as the foundation for the US Constitution.
It was during the Silkwood case that the author learned that there was a
"private" national intelligence network, the Law Enforcement Intelligence
Unit (LEIU), and that federal signals intelligence and wiretapping
capabilities were routinely deployed, illegally, in support of private
enterprise (e.g. the private nuclear industry sneaking nuclear capabilities
to Israel with CIA cover). I concur with the author's conclusion that
nuclear power should not be in private hands, and would add to that my view
that neither intelligence nor the military should be staffed with
contractors burdended with massive conflicts of interest and lack of
accountability even more severe than the present lack of accountability
that the US national security "enterprise" enjoys.
I am stunned to learn that the foundation for DHS and FEMA's venturing into
domestic concentration camps and hundreds if not thousands of rail cars
pre-equipped with shackles (these are my current facts, not the author's)
can be found in Ronald Reagan's tenure, at which time illegal immigrants
were deliberately conflated with "terrorists" and substantial funding and
planning earmarked for being able to round up 5,000 or more, overnight, if
needed.
I learn that aircraft running drugs into the USA for the US Government have
special call signs that place them off limits to interception. Talk about
impeachable crimes at the highest levels!
The author's account of Iran Contra is focused mostly on Carl Jenkins and a
few others. As it happens I was in El Salvador in 1979-1980 and on the
Central American Task Force (CATF) with Alan Fiers in 1986, and am one of
the fortunate innocents who was not indicted -- I was working on the legal
side of CATF throughout. So I am fascinated with all of this, and I have to
disagree with the author when he names Ted Shackley as the head of the
"enterprise." Ted -- I met him once -- was a civil servant, not a rogue
elephant. What he did he did thinking he was serving a higher master with
authorization directly from the White House. At least that is how I see it.
My three reviews below offer more perspective, along with the fourth book
that I have avoided reading but have in the line-up.
Spymaster: My Life in the
CIA<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1574889222/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>
BLOND GHOST <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671695258/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine
Explosion<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1888363932/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>
The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and
the World <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616082844/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>
For my insider perspective search for < Search: Seven CIAs [Steele on the
Record] >.
It is in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra case that the author comes of
age. I am impressed by a direct account from the author of how Senator John
Kerry got bought off his investigation with a promise of the Vice
Presidential nomination in 2000 (in other words, the Republican or heavy
side of the two party criminal enterprise made a deal with the Democratic
or light side of the two party criminal enterprise so that both could avoid
making it clear to the average US citizen that the government was in enemy
hands)
QUOTE (485): "The lesson was clear: accountability declines as the
magnitude of ther crime and the power of those charged increase."
The Iran-Contra investigations that were suppressed from public revelation
also disclosed the existence of the Nazi hydra that collaborates with out
of control elements of the CIA and I believe also the FBI and DEA, to run
drugs into the USA to create off-budget wealth. See among other books I
have reviewed:
The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a
Century<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0930852435/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>
To understand the the Nazi subversion of the US military in partnership
with the evangelicals, look for this online report from one of my
counterintelligence colleagues:
Mongoose: 20130309 Added Transcripts for Mrs. Kay Griggs Interviews --
"German Disease" Across USMC & US Army Special Operations + Treason RECAP
QUOTE (497) Joseph Burkholder Smith, CIA: "I hope that your generation can
stop these bastards. Because ours never did."
QUOTE (511) Ross Perot: "You know, Dan, as long as these guys are in
operation, no man can truly call himself president."
PRECISELY. That is why I ran briefly for President, creating We the People
Reform Coalition, one possible combination of alliances and ideas that can
displace the two-party tyranny and reinstitute the rule of law in the USA.
The author treats the Catholic Church with kid gloves, only once venturing
into the Knights of Malta and the long-standing secret relations among the
Catholic elite, the US national security state, and certain other parties.
I'm find with that. Apart from observing that only the Quakers, Seventh Day
Adventists, and Muslims do not represent a religious counterintelligence
threat in the USA, I would, as a lapsed Colombian Jesuit altar boy who once
knew the mass in Latin, be glad to leverage the secret societies of the
Catholic Church against the other secret societies, as we begin what will
be the most important chapter of modern American history, the battle for
the soul of the Republic.
Two more quotes that represent the SIX-STAR value of this book:
QUOTE (562-563): "Walsh pointed out that the unlawful, unethical, and
unconstitutional conduct undertaken by CIA operatives and other covert
operations agencies in our executive branch in the name of 'anticommunism'
between 1947-1977 (uncovered by congressional investigators in the
aftermath of the Watergate burglary) had been repeated by the men who had
created and operated the off-the-shelf enterprise--but this time they had
committed their acts in the name of 'antiterrorism.'"
QUOTE (563): "Walsh essentially warned that these covert operations, and
the zealots who ran them, constituted a clear and present danger to the
constitutional order of our democracy."
The other reason this is a SIX-STAR book is because of its deeply ethical
nature (not an attribute often asssociated with lawyers trained and
employed in the USA). The author is still hung up on the left-right
political axis, but he makes a very important point when he calls out the
progressives and the left in general for failing to draw the line.
QUOTE (593): Twenty two years after the end of the Cold War, the leadership
of the American liberal community still has not deigned to identify such as
set of ethical principles. Instead, they have virtually abandoned the field
now that the threat of communism has disappeared."
The author goes on to fail John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama in
relation to the above. I certainly agree -- Kerry, Clinton, and Obama have
the ethics of a pimp in Tijuana and hardly qualify as presidential material
(but then the same is true of everyone on the right from Newt Gingrich on).
America is about to enter into a civil war rooted in the public abdication
of its responsibility to be informed engaged citizens. We cannot blame the
rats that we allow to over-run the ship of state. We must take ourselves in
hand. This book is not only the summatiion of the first half of Danny
Sheehan's life. It is the window into why and how he and others, including
myself, will fight the second half of the battle for the soul of the
Republic.
Semper Fidelis,
Robert David STEELE Vivas
INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability
(2012)
PS Amazon allows me ten links. With a certain sense of humor, I refer the
reader to all my six star reviews at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligene
Blog but here is the last link: a good Catholic spy who did what he was
told to do, very very well, and now does this for Wall Street. I would
trust him to clean up CIA if and when we have an honest government what
*wants* an honest CIA.
Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's
Story<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374130329/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk>
*Permalink
<http://www.amazon.com/review/R1A1P2QGG2QQDC/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN…>*
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0
19 Feb '14
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Francois Houtart <houtart(a)hotmail.com>
Date: 2014-02-19 15:50 GMT-05:00
Subject: FW: "Derrière ces étudiants se cache l'opposition putschiste"
Un bon article sur le Venezuela.
FH
Email:[email protected]
Fundación Pueblo Indio del Ecuador
Calle Ruiz de Castilla N. 26-92
170520 - Quito ECUADOR
Tel. (593) (2) 32.12.100 (593) 09.69.55.06.40
Rue Kelle, 192/6 - B-1150 Bruxelles
Tel. (32) 476.31.50.53
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 09:02:44 -0800
From: carlostablada(a)yahoo.com
Subject: Fw: "Derrière ces étudiants se cache l'opposition putschiste"
To: jlaguardia(a)cubarte.cult.cu; francoishoutart(a)gmail.com;
houtart(a)hotmail.com
On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 1:53 PM, Salim Lamrani <
salim.lamrani(a)univ-reunion.fr> wrote:
Voici mon interview au journal EL WATAN à propos de la situation au
Venezuela.
Merci de diffuser.
Amitiés,
Salim
http://www.elwatan.com/hebdo/etudiant/derriere-ces-etudiants-se-cache-l-opp…
*Derrière ces étudiants se cache l'oppo**sition putschiste*
le 19.02.14 |
*Salim Lamrani, Docteur ès Etudes ibériques et latino-américaines que nous
avons interrogé sur les événements du Venezuela, exprime à El Watan
étudiant une opinion alignée. Il considère pour sa part que les Etats-Unis
jouent un rôle majeur dans la déstabilisation du Venezuela. Et que les
étudiants contestataires ne sont pas représentatifs de l'ensemble du monde
universitaire.*
*-Selon vous, quel serait le poids réel en termes de représentativité et de
mobilisation des étudiants protestataires ?*
Les actuelles manifestations au Venezuela sont une inquiétante réminiscence
des événements d'avril 2002 qui avaient débouché sur un coup d'Etat contre
le gouvernement démocratiquement élu du président Hugo Chávez. Rappelons
qu'en 2002, des protestations similaires organisées par la droite
vénézuélienne avaient fait plusieurs victimes aussi bien parmi les
partisans du gouvernement que parmi ses détracteurs. La suite est connue de
tous : une partie de l'armée en connivence avec les médias privés du pays
et l'opposition radicale ont rompu l'ordre constitutionnel et imposé une
dictature qui n'a heureusement duré que 48 heures grâce à la mobilisation
massive du peuple.
Il ne faut pas se voiler la face, derrière ces étudiants - qui sont loin
d'être représentatifs de l'ensemble des étudiants du pays - se cache
l'opposition putschiste et antidémocratique - soutenue politiquement et
financièrement par les Etats-Unis - qui a toujours refusé d'accepter la
volonté populaire depuis 1998. Le but est de déstabiliser le pays afin de
justifier par la suite un coup de force. Etant donné que la droite
vénézuélienne est incapable depuis 1998 de prendre le pouvoir par la voie
démocratique, elle opte pour la violence.
*-Quelle est la part de légitimité à l'aspiration démocratique dans la
contestation des étudiants qui manifestent dans les rues de Caracas contre
la <<vie chère et l'insécurité>> ? Est-on devant une nouvelle confrontation
qui oppose l'opposition libérale aux chavistes, accusés
<<d'absolutisme>> par* *jeunes
interposés?*
Dans l'histoire de l'Amérique latine, aucun gouvernement n'a disposé d'une
aussi grande légitimité démocratique que celle d'Hugo Chávez, qui avait
remporté 16 scrutins sur 17 en 15 ans. Pourtant, il était massivement
décrié par les médias occidentaux qui en ont présenté une image
caricaturale, loin de la réalité du processus bolivarien. Il me semble que
la manière dont les médias occidentaux présentent la Révolution
bolivarienne constitue l'un des plus grands échecs du journalisme. L'actuel
président, Nicolás Maduro, a été élu lors d'un scrutin démocratique reconnu
par les plus éminentes institutions internationales, de l'Union européenne
en passant par l'Organisation des Etats américains et le Centre Carter.
Depuis son arrivée au pouvoir en avril 2013, il y a eu deux processus
électoraux et il en est sorti vainqueur en toute transparence. L'insécurité
et la vie chère sont un prétexte pour justifier des actes violents. Il est
curieux de noter que les taux de criminalité les plus élevés se situent
dans les Etats gouvernés par l'opposition. Quant à la vie chère, elle est
due en grande partie aux spéculateurs qui accaparent des produits de
première nécessité afin de créer artificiellement des pénuries. Les
autorités ont pris des mesures actives pour lutter contre ces dérives qui
constituent de graves délits. Parler d'<<absolutisme>> au Venezuela, dans un
pays où 80% des médias sont privés et où l'opposition contrôle de larges
secteurs de l'économie n'est pas sérieux.
*-Le Venezuela est-il en train de vivre un printemps latino ou est-ce un
énième épisode de ce qu'on appelle la <<Guerre froide 2.0>> ? Quel serait le
rôle réel des Etats-Unis dans les événements qui secouent le Venezuela?*
La démocratie vénézuélienne est en grand danger du fait des activités
violentes et subversives de l'opposition. Le pouvoir se gagne dans les
urnes et non pas par le crime. Les Etats-Unis jouent un rôle majeur dans la
déstabilisation du Venezuela. Il s'agit-là du cinquième producteur mondial
de pétrole et l'arrivée au pouvoir de Chávez a permis au pays de retrouver
sa souveraineté politique, économique et énergétique. Désormais, les
richesses nationales sont destinées à la majorité et non plus uniquement
aux multinationales étasuniennes et à l'oligarchie pétrolière du pays.
*-La division politique qui marque le Venezuela depuis l'arrivée de Chavez
a-t-elle fini par scinder la jeunesse vénézuélienne en deux camps qui
s'affrontent avec deux notions antagoniques de la <<révolution>>?*
Aucun gouvernement vénézuélien n'a autant fait pour la jeunesse du pays que
celui d'Hugo Chávez et Nicolás Maduro, que ce soit en termes d'éducation,
de santé, d'accès à la culture et aux loisirs. Les manifestations de
certains étudiants - l'immense majorité procédant des classes aisées du
pays - ne sont pas représentatives de l'ensemble du monde universitaire. La
Révolution bolivarienne, les 80% de la population qui n'avait pas voix au
chapitre auparavant.
*-Comment conjecturez-vous la suite des événements ? Y a t-il un risque
d'enlisement vers une situation d'instabilité sécuritaire dans la région?*
Toute l'Amérique latine a condamné les violences au Venezuela et rejette
les tentatives putschistes de l'opposition. Les institutions sont fortes au
Venezuela et les dirigeants ont 15 ans d'expérience dans la lutte contre la
subversion. De toute manière, l'Amérique latine n'acceptera jamais un autre
11 avril 2002 (coup d'Etat contre Chávez).
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Petz <ravenwyn(a)gmail.com>Subject: Cibervoluntarios Challenge
To: Mark Petz <ravenwyn(a)gmail.com>
Dear Mark :)
I hope everything is fine and all your projects are successful. Sorry to
bother you, but I thought you might like to join our challenge :) We have
just launched a crowdfunding campaign in the Globalgiving platform to
create a free online platform of cybervolunteers to support 50 little NGOs
around the world and I think you can give us a hand. Please, join the
challenge and spread the word! :P
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/cybervolunteers-platform-for-ngo/
Of course, feel free to share it on your network and / or people who think
they can help us. We'll be very grateful
This is the cybervolunteers challenge explained in a one minute video:
http://bit.ly/1cLp16p
I hope you like the idea
Any question feel free to share with me
All the best
Yolanda
--
Un abrazo
Yolanda
-----------------------------------------
Yolanda Rueda Fernández
Fundación Cibervoluntarios
Telef: +34 91 5422900
Móvil: + 34 609783272
skype: yolandarueda
@cibervoluntario / @ciberyolanda
-------------------------------------------
"La información contenida en este mensaje y/o archivo(s) adjunto(s) es
confidencial/privilegiada y está destinada a ser leída sólo por la(s)
persona(s) a la(s) que va dirigida. Si usted lee este mensaje y no es el
destinatario señalado, el empleado o el agente responsable de entregar
el mensaje al destinatario, o ha recibido esta comunicación por error, le
informamos que está totalmente prohibida, y puede ser ilegal, cualquier
divulgación, distribución o reproducción de esta comunicación, y le
rogamos que nos lo notifique inmediatamente y nos devuelva el
mensaje original a la dirección arriba mencionada. Gracias".
--
*Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no
record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..*
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
#82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
1
0