September 2014 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Fwd: ZNet Commentary: Pete Dolack: Clean Water as an Impediment to Corporate Profits
by Michel Bauwens 19 Sep '14

19 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: ZCommunications <no-reply(a)zcomm.org> Date: Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 9:29 PM Subject: ZNet Commentary: Pete Dolack: Clean Water as an Impediment to Corporate Profits To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…>. Pete Dolack: Clean Water as an Impediment to Corporate ProfitsZ Communications Daily Commentary An Australian mining company insists its “right” to a guaranteed profit is superior to the right of El Salvador to clean drinking water — and an unappealable World Bank secret tribunal will decide if that is so. Drinking water is the underdog here. It might be thought that Salvadorans ought to have the right to decide on a question as fundamental as their source of water, but that is not so. It will be up to a secret tribunal controlled by corporate lawyers. And as an added bit of irony, the hearing began on El Salvador’s Independence Day, September 15. Formal independence, and actual independence, alas, are not the same thing. The case, officially known as *Pac Rim Cayman LLC v. Republic of El Salvador* <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…>, pits the Australian gold-mining company OceanaGold Corporation against the government of El Salvador. OceanaGold is asking for an award of $301 million because the Salvadoran government won’t give it a permit to open a gold mine that would poison a critical source of drinking water on which millions depend. OceanaGold — or, more specifically, its Pacific Rim subsidiary, which it bought in November 2013 — has spent only a small fraction of the $301 million. That sum isn’t an attempt to recover an investment; it represents the amount of profits the corporation alleges it would have pocketed but for El Salvador’s refusal to give the company a permit. (El Salvador has had a moratorium on new mining permits since 2008.) So here we have an increasingly common scenario under “investor-state dispute mechanisms” — environmental laws designed to safeguard human and animal health are challenged as barriers to corporate profit. Not simply to recover an investment that didn’t pan out, but supposed future profits that a company claims it would have earned. Should El Salvador prevail, it would still have lost because it will spend large sums of money to defend this case, money that could have been used for the welfare of its people. An added insult in this case is that it is being heard not under one of the “free trade” agreements that elevate corporations to the level of (or above) a country, but under an El Salvador law passed by the former Right-wing government that has been since reversed. Pacific Rim originally sued El Salvador under the Central American Free Trade Agreement, but the case was dismissed because Canada, where Pacific Rim had been based before its acquisition by OceanaGold, is not a party to CAFTA. But the tribunal allowed the suit to be re-filed under an El Salvador law that granted corporations the same right to sue in secret tribunals ordinarily found only in “free trade” agreements. *Lawyers for corporations sit in judgment* The tribunal judging El Salvador is known as the International Centre for the Settlement of Investor Disputes (ICSID) — an arm of the World Bank. Neither the public nor the press are allowed to witness ICSID hearings and there is no appeal to its decisions. Under the “investor-state dispute mechanism,” governments legally bind themselves <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> to settle “disputes” with “investors” in the secret tribunals. Cases are decided by a panel of three judges selected from a roster. The judges are appointed to the roster by the national governments that have signed on to ICSID. Because ICSID, similar to other arbitration panels, does not have rules against conflicts of interest, most of the judges are corporate lawyers who specialize in representing corporations in these types of disputes. To provide just one example, one of New Zealand’s selected judges is David A.R. Williams, who is currently representing Philip Morris in its suit <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> seeking to force Australia to overturn its tobacco regulations, which were ruled legal by Australia’s High Court. The three judges in this week’s hearing are V.V. Veeder of Britain, Brigitte Stern of France and Guido Santiago Tawil of Argentina. Mr. Veeder and Mr. Tawil are veteran corporate lawyers; the former has carefully omitted any mention of who his clients are in his CV <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…>, while the latter’s bio page boasts <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> he has assisted in the privatization of Argentina’s assets while representing corporations in several industries. To put that in some perspective, an austerity program was imposed in the early 1990s in conjunction with selling off state enterprises at below-market prices. This fire sale yielded $23 billion, but the proceeds went to pay foreign debt mostly accumulated by the military dictatorship — after completing these sales, Argentina’s foreign debt had actually grown. <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> The third member of the tribunal, Ms. Stern, is an academic regularly called on to arbitrate investor-state disputes. One of her previous rulings awarded Occidental Petroleum Corporation <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> $2.3 billion against Ecuador because Ecuador had canceled an Occidental contract over a dispute in which the tribunal agreed that Ecuadoran law had been violated. The oil company was in the wrong but was given a windfall anyway! Among the precedents these three ICSID judges will consider are separate rulings ordering Canada to reverse bans on PCBs and on the gasoline additive MMT, both dangerous to human health, because the bans hurt corporate investments. *Didn’t meet its obligations, but so what* The former Right-wing Arena government of El Salvador in 1999 passed a law enabling “investors” to sue the country in ICSID, thereby circumventing the local judiciary, as part of its effort <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> to encourage foreign investment. A subsequent Right-wing government yielded to public pressure in 2008 by issuing the mining-permit moratorium, and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) administrations of Mauricio Funes (elected in 2009) and Salvador Sanchez Ceren (elected in 2014) have kept the moratorium in place <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> . In addition to the general moratorium, the Salvadoran government cites not only environmental and health concerns specific to the mine, but also says Pacific Rim has failed to meet its legal obligations nor has it secured more than a small fraction of the local permissions it must have to develop the land it seeks to mine. Some observers fear that a ruling in favor of OceanaGold could lead to violence in a country in which 70,000 were killed in a civil war a generation ago. Luke Danielson, a researcher with the Sustainable Development Studies Group, told the Inter Press Service <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> news agency: “This mining project was re-opening a lot of the wounds that existed during the civil war, and telling a country that they have to provoke a civil conflict in order to satisfy investors is very troublesome.” Local communities are shut out of arbitration forums like ICSID, but it is community organizing that is responsible for the, so far, successful pushback against environmentally destructive mining. The National Roundtable Against Metallic Mining, or “La Mesa,” is an organization of civil society groups that has led the opposition to OceanaGold. Several corporations have prospected in El Salvador’s inland highlands areas since the Right-wing Arena government passed the law allowing investors to sue in ICSID. A now closed mine in the area, on the San Sebastian River, operated by the U.S. company Commerce Group, left behind water too dangerous to touch, never mind drink. The El Salvador Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources tested the river and found cyanide levels nine times above <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> the maximum allowable limit and iron levels more than 1,000 times the maximum allowable limit. So polluted is the river that it runs yellow, orange or red <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> at times. Mining for gold is a process that uses large amounts of dangerous chemicals in the extraction. A *National Geographic* blogger, Vladimir Pacheco, writing about OceanaGold’s <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> proposed mine, reports: “The cyanide-leach processes at the company’s El Dorado mine will use approximately 900,000 liters of water a day. In comparison, it would take 30 years for an average Salvadoran family to use that amount of water. … Will water needed for the project aggravate the already perilous state of water access in the country? A study by the Ministry of Environment found that only two percent of the rivers contain water that can be made fit for human consumption, or used for irrigation or recreational activities and in another study the Global Water Partnership warns that water supply in El Salvador is hovering on the threshold of 1,700 cubic metres of water per person per year, the upper limit for the definition of water stress.” *Fighting back but at a cost* La Mesa has continued its struggle against mining and for the ability to decide its own pattern of development despite the violence that often seems to accompany mining. Three anti-mining activists were murdered <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> in a six-month span in 2009. A report on Salvadoran activists <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> published last year by Common Frontiers, a Canadian coalition, said: “The fact that the government of El Salvador stopped issuing mining permits to companies was a real boost for their movement but at the same time it brought a significant shift in Pacific Rim’s tactics towards them. The company is accused of utilizing kidnapping, intimidation and even murder against community members opposed to the mining project.” OceanaGold, which now owns Pacific Rim, did not address these charges in its glossy *Fact Book 2014*, but did have this to say <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> : “We have a staunch commitment to making sure our operations enrich, empower and improve the lives of our stakeholders, by creating a positive, long-lasting legacy that respects human rights and delivers enduring benefits and opportunities beyond the life cycle of our operations.” [page 28] The Philippines Commission on Human Rights might beg to differ. In 2011, the commission recommended that the Filipino government revoke <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> OceanaGold’s license to operate because of “alleged violation of the rights of the indigenous people of Barangay Didipio in Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya,” including forced evictions. (The license was not revoked, and the mine is operating.) La Mesa calls OceanaGold’s suit <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> “a “direct attack against the sovereignty and legitimate right of the Salvadoran population to reject an industry that is a threat to our lives.” This history is not likely to be under consideration by the ICSID tribunal. It is not known when it will hand down a decision, although it is likely to be at least several months. Two fundamental questions that can’t be avoided are: Does a community have the right to make decisions on its own development? Do multi-national corporations have the right to a guaranteed profit without regard to the cost imposed on communities? That such questions must be asked — and that “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second are increasingly common answers — is emblematic of dictatorship, not democracy. ZCommunications, 18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA, USA, 02543 Unsubscribe <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> | Manage Subscription <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> If you'd like to unsubscribe and stop receiving these emails click here <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/unsubscribe?upn=V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58Na…> . -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan 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/

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Programme of the ADAM Final Symposium on distributed network architectures (Paris, 2-3/10)
by Francesca Musiani 18 Sep '14

18 Sep '14

Dear colleagues, It is my pleasure to share the programme of the final symposium of the research project ADAM - Distributed Architectures and Multimedia Applications, taking place in Paris, October 2-3, 2014. The programme is also available on the ADAM project website at http://adam.hypotheses.org/1956. *Attendance to the symposium is free of charge. Please inform the organizers of your presence (for one of the two days, or both), by writing to francesca (dot) musiani (at) gmail (dot) com.* Kind regards, and hope to see some of you in Paris, Francesca --- *« Reclaiming the Internet » with distributed architectures: rights, technologies, practices, innovation* *Final Symposium of the ADAM project (October 2-3, 2014, MINES ParisTech, 60 boulevard Saint-Michel, 75006 Paris)* *Thursday, October 2* 10-10:30am. Arrival of participants/Registration 10:30-10:45am. Introduction/Welcome: *Cécile Méadel, Alexandre Mallard & Francesca Musiani* (CSI MINES ParisTech) 10:45-11:30am. Keynote #1: *Dominique Boullier* (SciencesPo). *Cosmopolitical network architectures* 11:30am-1:30pm. Session #1: “*Case Studies in Decentralization”* *Nicolas Bertrand* (Utopia/IRIT) & *Julien Rabier* (FFDN). Introducing a new framework for digital cinema transport: The DCP Bay *Nick Lambert *&* Benjamin Bollen* (Maidsafe.net) The SAFE Network, a new, decentralized Internet *Jean-Christophe Plantin* (University of Michigan/Université de Technologie de Compiègne). ‘Unicorns exist, but only in the Google office’: promises and perils of web data for research *Maya Bacache* & *Julia Cagé* (Télécom ParisTech). Pair-à-Pair: les véritables enjeux économiques Discussant:* Ksenia Ermoshina* (CSI MINES ParisTech) 1:30-2:30pm. Lunch (on site, provided) 2:45-3:30pm: Keynote #2: *Niva Elkin-Koren* (University of Haifa). *Beyond Design: The Role of Law in Distributed Architectures* 3:30-5:30pm. Session #2: *“Decentralization: ‘Code is Law’ Revisited?”* *Argyro Karanasiou* (Bournemouth University). Law Encoded: Towards a Free Speech Policy Model Based on Decentralised Architecture *Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay* (Institute for Communication Sciences, CNRS, & LSE). Peer-to peer as a design principle for law: distribute the law *Primavera De Filippi* (CERSA CNRS & Berkman Center). Ethereum: the quest towards a decentralized social system – when ‘dry code’ meets ‘wet code’ *Roberto Caso* & *Federica Giovanella* (Università di Trento). Liability issues in Wireless Community Networks Discussant: *Danièle Bourcier* (CERSA CNRS) 5:30-6:15pm: Keynote #3: *Panayotis Antoniadis* (ETH Zurich). *Local networks for local interactions: four reasons why and one way forward* *Friday, October 3* 9:30-11:30am. Session #3: *“Futures of Decentralization”* *Paris Chrysos* (ISC Paris, Mines-Télécom). Can the Internet become distributed again? The limits of network approaches *Christian Sandvig* (University of Michigan), *Paul N. Edwards* (University of Michigan), *Jean-Christophe Plantin* (University of Michigan, Université de Technologie de Compiègne), *Carl Lagoze* (University of Michigan). Histories of future networks: Exit, voice and loyalty in alternative infrastructures *Jeffrey Andreoni* (Nottingham Trent University). Digital Gerrymandering: how wireless communities will redraw social, political and geographic boundaries *Annie Gentès* & *François Huguet* (Télécom ParisTech). Translocal devices-as-infrastructures-networks, alternative practices, tactical networks: toward resilient media or empowerment tools? Discussant: *Valérie Schafer* (ISCC/CNRS) 11:30am-12:15pm. Keynote #4: *Vincent Toubiana* (CNIL). *Is a decentralized Internet better for privacy?* 12:15am-1:15pm. Lunch (on site, provided) 1:15-3:15pm. Session #4: *“The Decentralization of Everything?”* *Darryl Farber* (Pennsylvania State University). Architecting Evolving Sociotechnical Interdependent Infrastructure Systems *Sarah Gold* (Central Saint Martins). Alternet Rules *Graham Meikle* (University of Westminster). Distributed Citizenship and Social Media *Harry Halpin* (W3C/MIT) & *Alexandre Monnin* (INRIA). The Decentralization of Knowledge Discussant: *Eric Dagiral *(Université Paris Descartes) 3:15-4pm. Keynote #5: *Geert Lovink* (HvA Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, NL). *Social Media Alternatives Before and After Snowden* 4-4:15pm. Conclusions & Wrap-Up: *Cécile Méadel, Alexandre Mallard *&* Francesca Musiani* (CSI MINES ParisTech) -- Francesca Musiani Postdoctoral researcher Ecole des Médias et du Numérique de la Sorbonne <http://www.emns.fr/> 20, rue Berbier-du-Mets 75013 Paris, France & Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation <http://www.csi.mines-paristech.fr/>, MINES ParisTech/CNRS 60, Boulevard Saint-Michel 75272 Paris Cedex 06, France Co-Chair, ESN-IAMCR <http://iamcr.org/s-wg/cctmc/esn> | Outreach officer, GigaNet <http://giga-net.org> Projet ANR ADAM - Architectures distribuées et applications multimédias <http://adam.hypotheses.org/> Internet Policy Review @ HIIG Berlin <http://policyreview.info/> Personal website <http://www.csi.mines-paristech.fr/People/musiani/> | Twitter <https://twitter.com/franmusiani>

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#PeerProduction License" Vs ( updating ? ) #GeoLibertarianism , #Mutualism , #Distributism , ...
by Dante-Gabryell Monson 18 Sep '14

18 Sep '14

Synergies possible ? Can, for example, certain licenses such as forms of Peer Production Licenses http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License be adapted for forms of GeoLibertarianism ( or Mutualism, or Distributism , ... ) in a way that updates the notion of commons, and income through labour ( knowledge as commons , automation, ... ? ) in some of these ideologies ( midst others ), ideologies seem to have developed when production may have been more dependent on land, or when ( older notions of ? ) labour was still much more central to production ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism *Geolibertarians consider land to be the common property <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_property> of all humankind. They say that private property is derived from an individual's right to the fruits of their labor. Since land was not created by anyone's labor, it cannot be rightfully owned. Thus, geolibertarians recognize a right to secure possession of land (land tenure), on the condition that the full rental value be paid to the community. This, they say, has the effect of both giving back the value that belongs to the community and encouraging landholders to only use as much land as they need, leaving unneeded land for others.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_%28economic_theory%29 ...

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Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Accelerating Capitalism, or Coding emancipatory modes of production?
by Michel Bauwens 18 Sep '14

18 Sep '14

dear Orsan, would be great if you could some write up of this for our p2p blog !! thanks for considering it, Michel ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 4:01 PM Subject: [Networkedlabour] Accelerating Capitalism, or Coding emancipatory modes of production? To: "networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org" <networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org > This is a new book curated by Matteo Pasquinelli: http://matteopasquinelli.com/algorithms-of-capital/ The book is based on the #Acclerationisty politics. Anyway the above link is to Italian version. Yet most of the articles are already online in English. I paste the links to English versions below: #Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek http://syntheticedifice.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/accelerate-manifesto-for-a… Reflections on the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics by Toni Negri: http://syntheticedifice.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/riflessioni-sul-manifesto-… Mattoe Pasquinelli: “To Anticipate and Accelerate: Italian Operaismo and Reading Marx’s Notion of Organic Composition of Capital”, Rethinking Marxism journal, vol. 26, n. 2, 2014. :http://matteopasquinelli.com/anticipate-an [another goed one from Matteo: “The Power of Abstraction and Its Antagonism. On Some Problems Common to Contemporary Neuroscience and the Theory of Cognitive Capitalism”,Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism, Part 2. Berlin: Archive Books, 2014.: http://matteopasquinelli.com/power-of-abstraction/] Red stack attack! Algorithms, capital and the automation of the common – by Tiziana Terranova: http://quaderni.sanprecario.info/2014/02/red-stack-attack-algorithms-capita… To be honest #Accelerationist manifesto sounded to me like a call for a Kautskian and Plekhanovian politics 2.0, to hunt down the global networked captialism by leading it to a trap. Though it sounds exciting, to hear about the anger and hope hope of getting away with the system, Though I always had trouble with the idea to realize something first to be able to transcend it -even though the imagery is to push the target down from the cliff. It sounds like a good and crazy idea. Though I partly semphatize with McKenzie Wark's critics here and think that there is anither way to hack capitalist mode of production: #Celerity: A Critique of the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics: http://syntheticedifice.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/celerity-a-critique-of-the… Here is how I would formulate a part of the code needs yet to be put in algorithms: I agree with many others who think global working class is currently making it self through ongoing and intensifying struggles. In my opinion any form of self-organisation of the global working classes needs to be, simultaneously very well grounded, transnational, and global. It also needs to be open to all the working people, so free [gratis and accessible] to enter and leave, designed as modularly integrated organized networks linking workers [including hacker-, academic-, art-, sex-. ... so on workers], social-environmental-cultural-informational-sexual justice activists. Adoptable principles, in form of the 'code', which can be pre-determined, as well as the coding process itself needs to be very well documented, totally open and accesible to local, workplace, neighbourhood, issue based, activist or other forms of political collectives. In a way similar to Anonymous, 15M, Occupy, Gezi. or other decentralized forms, but with more structured and open working protocols, as it is in FLOSS projects, or grassroots and worker cooperatives. It sould not be including membership, service, representation type logics that leads to reproduction of disempowerment for the involving nodes. It should not be organized by intellectual activists from out side in, and from top down towards the working class. With an opposite perspective, it should be designed by volunteer participation based on self-governing and representation principles. It should be able to put forward creative, assertive and effective direct non-violent mass action, which makes fun of and ridicule the target by allowing the formation of collective intelligence. Therefore active peer to peer self-learninig should be the core cultural production and learning principle. Instead of having teachers who must show the right and enlightented road to the candidate working class members, who needs to get a self-consciousness, a global and networked labour union should be providing working people with the access to the tools, resources and key networks that would make self- empowerment easily possible. By linking spaces where continious open exchanges take place and carry the energy from one space to other. Utilizing How to(s), Do it Yourself and Do it With Others guides, in online and real world context, by FLOSS communication tools as well as mass-action tactics it would replace top down (issue-anger-action) organizing model, which would allow self-articulation, respectful and collaborative working praxis by harmonized through peer to peer digital communication -where possible and desirable, as well as face to face and secure meetings, cultural and recreational events cultural events. It should be collaboraing with other organizations, creative and productive projects that undermines capitalist mode of production and develop the algorithms and codes of alternative modes, as operating systems that could replace capitalism. Such global network needs to grow by linking existing radical networks groups of activists, hackers, organizers, makers, DIY groups, squatters, eco-willages, diggers, immigrants, asylum seekers, solidarity networks, and so on. In a way all nodes could associate with the globally networked ties, while keeping their autonomy. So instead of #Accelerate motto, i would suggest some thing like: "All empower one, one empower all!" Orsan _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan 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/

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Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Turkopticon helps the people in the 'crowd' of crowdsourcing watch out for each other—because nobody else seems to be.
by Michel Bauwens 18 Sep '14

18 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 3:11 PM Subject: [Networkedlabour] Turkopticon helps the people in the 'crowd' of crowdsourcing watch out for each other—because nobody else seems to be. To: "networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org" <networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org > Thanks to Geert Lovink, for letting me be aware of these very intereting projects. Comrades are developing an online platform and digita tools that are helping Amazon Maniacal-Turk's digitally enlaved workers to get strength. This is first one, the Turkopticon: http://turkopticon.ucsd.edu/ Turkopticon helps the people in the 'crowd' of crowdsourcing watch out for each other—because nobody else seems to be. Almost half of the Mechanical Turk workers who wrote their Bill of Rights demanded protection from employers who take their work without paying.Turkopticon lets you REPORT and AVOID shady employers. snoogiebug from turkernation says, "if you do not have this please get it!!!! it does work and is worth it !!" Turkopticon Firefox Turkopticon Chrome How Turkopticon works: Turkopticon adds functionality to Amazon Mechanical Turk as you browse for HITs and review status of work you've done. As you browse HITs, Turkopticon places a button next to each requester and highlights requesters for whom there are reviews from other workers. Bad reviews let you avoid shady employers and good reviews help you find fair ones. You can view reports made against requesters with a quick click. As you review HITs you've completed, are there HITs you weren't fairly paid for? Turkopticon adds a button that lets you review requesters from your "Status Detail" page. Other Turking resources: Turker Nation MTurk Forum CloudMeBaby Forum mTurk Grind forum mTurk List MTurk wiki on the MTurk subreddit Hide requesters script: for Greasemonkey; for Google Chrome List of useful Turking scripts and add-ons from the HITsWorthTurkingFor subreddit Turking tips from the MTurk subreddit Notes for requesters: "Low cost, high quality" is a myth; you must pay for quality And this is the related Dynamo project DYNAMO, http://www.wearedynamo.org/ which ressonates a lot with the ideas we have been developing with SaysUs. Both Frank Kashner and comrades from Dynamo will be in New York, as far as I understood, at the Digital Labour: SWEATSHOPS, PICKET LINES, AND BARRICADES event (http://digitallabor.org/) I hope these two projects will find a way to build a synergic collaboration. Just wanted to share with the rest of you. Orsan _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan 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/

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Fwd: [members] Fwd: [caps.projects] Join the Collective Intelligence for the Common Good Workshop in London on September 29-30
by Michel Bauwens 18 Sep '14

18 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: <n.gilbert(a)surrey.ac.uk> Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 2:43 PM Subject: [members] Fwd: [caps.projects] Join the Collective Intelligence for the Common Good Workshop in London on September 29-30 To: members(a)lists.p2pvalue.eu For information. Is anyone able and interested in attending? (I still can’t get my head round the idea that you can organise a meeting like this and send out invitations 10 days before the event, expecting people to come! I am of course already booked up for these days). Best wishes Nigel Begin forwarded message: *From: *Stephanie Albiero <stephanie.albiero(a)sigma-orionis.com> *Subject: * *[caps.projects] Join the Collective Intelligence for the Common Good Workshop in London on September 29-30* *Date: *18 September 2014 08:26:37 BST *To: *<caps.projects(a)caps2020.eu> *Cc: *Anna De Liddo <a.deliddo(a)gmail.com> Dear all, The Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/>, partner of the CATALYST <http://www.catalyst-fp7.eu/> project, will be hosting a workshop on Collective Intelligence for the Common Good, to take place on September 29-30, 2014 in its London Campus. Envisioning the work that falls into the heading of Collective Intelligence for the Common Good in an extremely broad way, the event will seek to *establish an Open Research and Action Community Network*, aiming at creating synergies and thus allowing joint-work with practitioners and researchers from all relevant fields. The workshop is on the way to be a great success with more than 20 speakers already in the programme and a large number of high-profile academics and researchers coming from all over the World to discuss hot topics. On this occasion, we would like to invite you to register and attend. Moreover, you will be given the opportunity to shape a part of the programme, so don’t miss the chance to submit your paper about an issue you would like to discuss there! For more information, consult the dedicated page <http://events.kmi.open.ac.uk/catalyst/> and for registration, click here <http://events.kmi.open.ac.uk/catalyst/register.php> Stay tuned as the agenda will soon be released! Kind regards, Stéphanie [image: Sigma Orionis] [image: Sigma Orionis] *Stéphanie Albiero* | Deputy Project Manager Tel. +33 / (0) 493 001 550 www.sigma-orionis.com | Linkedin <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/st%C3%A9phanie-albi%C3%A9ro/20/b5/b71> | Skype: stephaniealbiero [image: Sigma Orionis] Connecting research to innovation and markets ________________________________________________________________ Professor Nigel Gilbert, ScD, FREng, AcSS, Professor of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK. +44 (0)1483 689173 Surrey is 38th in QS World University Rankings for Sociology http://goo.gl/xvo77W -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan 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/

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Fwd: Your Video-Presentation at Degrowth 2014
by Michel Bauwens 18 Sep '14

18 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Severin Caspari <Severin_Caspari(a)web.de> Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 2:58 PM Subject: Your Video-Presentation at Degrowth 2014 Dear Speakers, i’m a member of „ecapio“, one of the film teams at the recent Degrowth-Conference in Leipzig. I’m writing you to announce that all videos are online (http://ecapio.org/) and to thank you again for your cooperation. I hope you’re all content with your Video. Please let us now if you have any complaints or questions. It’s our aim to spread the word about degrowth and related issues and projects. So it would be great if you could help us promoting the videos. Just send an email to your colleagues and friends or put the Video on your personal website or the website of the projects and organisations you are associated to. The fastest way to find your video is to scroll down our Degrowth-Playlist at Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvC1N7eykugbWMmyHEi-jLNiCZGcFKIFu Thanks for your help and see you next time. Severin —————————————————— follow Ecapio: facebook.com/ecapiovideos twitter.com/ecapiovideos youtube.com/ecapiovideos -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan 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/

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Fwd: Police Militarization
by Michel Bauwens 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

have written about police militarization in the past. We built a research tool that makes it easy to visualize and filter state-by-state acquisitions of military gear by law enforcement. Feel free to use it as an embed or just as a research tool. Here's the link: https://us-military-gear.silk.co. Thanks for reading. Regards, -- Kyle McCarthy Community Outreach www.silk.co / @silkdotco <http://www.twitter.com/silkdotco> ᐧ -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan 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/

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Fwd: The Entrepreneur Who Wants to Save Paradise - The Atlantic
by Michel Bauwens 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Week (Assai) <dew(a)assai.com.au> Date: Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 4:06 AM Subject: The Entrepreneur Who Wants to Save Paradise - The Atlantic To: Michael Bier <michael.bier(a)chl.org.au>, Michel Bauwens < michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/the-entrepreneur-who-wa… The Entrepreneur Who Wants to Save Paradise Artilio Sanchez is a rancher in a remote region of Patagonia, the alluring land in the south of Chile and Argentina. To reach the end of the nearest dirt road, he has to row a small boat across a glacial river and then ride his horse for two hours. One recent morning, he sipped maté, a South American tea, and leaned against the wood-stove of his cabin. Conversation turned to what everyone in Patagonia is talking about: Conservación Patagonica, the latest addition to the world’s largest private conservation project. When I mentioned the man behind all these parks, American billionaire Douglas Tompkins, Sanchez scoffed, asking whether Tompkins was “the guy who’s breeding lions.” Just a little to the north, Guido Vargas stared out his kitchen window. “He wants the water,” Vargas told me. “There’s more freshwater here than anywhere else in the world. They’re going to ship it to China.” Later, in a town right on the border of one of Tompkins’s parks, Raquel Sepuilveda stood outside the post office. “I knew the valley when it was productive, and now it’s dead,” she said. “Now it’s the future refuge for the Jews. It’s the promised land for them.” Fifteen years ago, in the June 1999 issue of *The Atlantic*, William Langewiesche wrote <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/06/eden-a-gated-community/…> about Tompkins’s first major venture into conservation in Chile, describing both Tompkins’s idealistic vision and the infamy that had already shrouded him. The hostility only has only grown as his conservation empire has expanded. Rumors now range from the conspiratorial to the phantasmagorical: Tompkins is creating a second Israel in South America; he is siphoning off the world’s last freshwater resources for other American millionaires; he is building bunkers for a pending nuclear war. No one seems to believe what Doug Tompkins and his wife, Kris, are actually doing: They have purchased enough land in Chile and Argentina to equal an area the size of nearly two Rhode Islands, and they plan to donate these ice-coated peaks, red-rock canyons, and coastal volcanoes to the respective governments in the form of national parks. They have protected more land than any other private individuals in history. In the United States, Tompkins’s name is rarely recognized until it is linked to one of the two apparel companies he founded: Esprit and The North Face. In Chile, however, mentioning his name can bring rage to the faces of even the most apolitical people. Kris’s name is less recognized and less reviled in the region, even though she is her husband’s partner in his conservation work. Before she became a full-time philanthropist, she made her own fortune as CEO of the outdoor apparel company Patagonia. Since leaving their industry jobs, the Tompkinses have started a host of organizations aimed at protecting the wild: The Foundation for Deep Ecology, Conservación Patagonica, Fundación Pumalín, Fundación Yendegaia, The Conservation Land Trust, and Tompkins Conservation. In 2004, Conservación Patagonica acquired the Chacabuco Valley and has since been turning it into what the Tompkinses call the Future Patagonia National Park. It is this 178,000-acre plot of land that everyone in the region is now talking about. Once they bought it, the Tompkinses began their efforts to restore the land to the state it was in before humans exploited it. They sold almost all the 30,000 sheep and 3,800 cows that came with the property. They built several large stone buildings with wide, divided-light windows and pitched copper roofs. Their employees and volunteers removed more than 400 miles of fencing and pulled plant after plant of invasive species out of the ground. Meanwhile, gauchos and locals in town puzzled at the couple’s desire to build stone mansions and bring back wild species. Tompkins’s tendency to drop out of the sky in his small red and white plane and his insistence that all guests and employees take their shoes off inside his buildings only added to the mystery. Few in neighboring towns were quick to trust their eccentric new neighbor—the organic farmer, the WASPy backpacker, the amateur architect, the billionaire entrepreneur, the high-school dropout, the former ski racer, the grizzled mountaineer, the bold whitewater kayaker, the daring bush pilot, the audacious land-grabber, the radical environmentalist, the would-be savior of the Patagonian wilds—Douglas Tompkins. Animals of Aysén: A horse grazes next to the Lago General Carrera, the second-largest lake in South America; llama-like guanacos wander through the Chacabuco Valley Before his days of Cessnas and large-scale conservation, Tompkins dropped out of high school and never went to college. In his late teens, he joined the Sierra Club and wandered west. He rock-climbed around Northern California, and was once picked up hitchhiking at Lake Tahoe by a woman, Susie, who became his wife that same year. His adventures took him south before his big move: He is now credited with being the first to paddle down 21 previously undescended rivers in Chile. His most famous journey south was material for the documentary *Mountain of Storms*, in which he drove a Ford van from California to Argentinean Patagonia with the Funhogs, a group of climbers that included the founder of the Patagonia clothing company, Yvon Chouinard. The Funhogs headed toward, and eventually climbed, Fitzroy, a mountain that had been climbed only twice before and whose silhouette is now the Patagonia company’s logo. Between his traveling, climbing, skiing, and surfing adventures, Tompkins sold outdoor gear through a small company he and a friend had created, The North Face. The Grateful Dead played live at the shop’s 1966 opening in San Francisco. A Bob Dylan poster hung in the display window. Tompkins sold the company two years later for $50,000 and eventually joined his then-wife in the fashion industry with the company that would become Esprit. His environmentalism remained strong throughout his years in the fashion world. He and Susie brought Esprit employees on rafting trips to listen to lectures by Earth First! activists. Tompkins’s conservation ethic expanded significantly in the 1970s and ’80s, during what his foundation describes as a “self-guided immersion in ecological literature.” With no college degree, he took a literary journey through the works of writers like Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Robinson Jeffers, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and Gary Snyder. The Tompkinses often cite one particular Berry passage, which challenges the notion that human needs should come first: “We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.” The work of Arne Naess especially engaged Tompkins. Naess was a Norwegian philosopher most famous for first coining the term “deep ecology” at a talk in 1972 and in a paper the following year. The “deep” refers to the “deep questioning” the “deep ecology” movement advocates. Unlike the kind of environmentalism that supports technical fixes and “business as usual,” deep ecologists hope to challenge values and practices in society—especially the overuse of technology and the fixation with economic growth. Over a decade after Naess first uttered the term, he and another writer, George Sessions, celebrated John Muir’s birthday by camping in Death Valley, California. During this trip, they encoded the beliefs of deep ecology in eight principles. These central tenets declare that humans have no right to reduce the richness and diversity of life forms except to satisfy emphatically *vital *needs. They state that the human population must decrease for the well-being and flourishing of the nonhuman world. They also state the need for a shift in basic economic, technological, and ideological structures in order to reduce the human interference in the nonhuman world. The final principle states that “those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.” Tompkins was so influenced by these ideas that, by the late 1980s, he had come to believe that the consumer culture he had helped promote with The North Face and Esprit was contributing to the environmental destruction he hoped to fight. He decided to implement what he saw as the necessary changes. Tompkins sold his stake in Esprit for an estimated $125 million and resolved to, as he puts it, “stop selling people things they don’t need.” Tompkins moved to a small farm on one of his first park projects in Chile: Parque Pumalín. Unlike the yellow, rolling hills of low brush in the Chacabuco Valley, Pumalín covers 715,000 acres of dense and wet forest, carved by deep fjords, with mountains that drop steeply to the sea and islands that splatter across the surrounding bay. While living in Pumalín, he often flew to another small farm he had purchased to the south of it. It is one of his and Kris’s “agricultural restoration projects,” where they repair and redesign degraded farms, building organic ones in their place to offer a model for neighboring farmers to emulate. During one such effort in the early 1990s, a visiting friend, Peter Buckley, the former CEO of Esprit who has since founded a variety of environmental activist organizations, came along. They soared together over the coast from the farm back to Pumalín, and as they flew over the lake-dotted coastline, navigating over a colossal snow-covered volcano, Volcán Corcovado, Buckley exclaimed at the beauty. Tompkins asked Buckley, “Why don’t we buy that place?” Buckley looked down at the Tic Toc river winding into the sea below and replied, “Why not?” They eventually bought 208,000 acres in 1994, adding more a few years later. Much of the land surrounding theirs was federally owned. In 2004, Tompkins suggested to Chile’s then-president, Ricardo Lagos, that the Chilean government donate this federal land, along with Tompkins’s private land, and join the areas. Those 726,000 acres now comprise Corcovado, Chile’s sixth-largest national park. A footbridge in the Pumalín park One of Pumalín’s entrances is now in the town of Amarillo, where a few park rangers like Erwin Gonzalez are readying the park for turnover to the Chilean government. Gonzalez is a young man from Santiago with jeans and rubber boots who gave me a tour of the park in his pick-up truck. We started in town, where the Tompkinses have engaged in what the park materials call “Village Beautification.” “Every detail you see on the houses was designed by Tompkins,” Gonzalez explained, pointing at a lacy maroon trim decorating the roof of a small A-frame house. These “beautified” houses don’t belong to Tompkins. Amarillo simply happens to be a town at the entrance to Pumalín, so Tompkins has made a point of beautifying it. Through his work, one house made out of a shipping container with a chimney jutting out of its front window became a yellow-painted cottage with a white picket fence, a white entry porch, and white gingerbread fretwork. Tompkins has also beautified the homes of the neighbors, as well as the town’s gas station, school, supermarket, and bus shelters. “The people were a little hesitant,” Gonzalez told me. “A gringo shows up and tells us our town is ugly? But now it’s going well.” As Gonzalez indicated, Tompkins has taken many of the decisions about the design of these renovations into his own hands—the patterns of the houses’ trim, the colors of their fences. “We ask, but it’s a little guided,” Gonzalez said, explaining their process with each home-owner. “‘How about we do these colors? These will make it beautiful. Does that sound good to you?’” Gonzalez drove us out of town and into the park. He pointed out different campsites and parking lots amid the wet forest, explaining Tompkins’s process: Tompkins would draw a sketch of what he imagined for each aspect of the park—from the bends in the trails and roads to the arrangement of a campsite’s picnic tables and benches. Gonzalez and his colleagues would then build as fast as they could according to these drawings. Tompkins would later return to see his ideas embodied and give his stamp of approval or rejection. Rejection, in this case, might mean that Gonzalez and the other rangers had to scrap the progress they’d made and begun building anew. Like many of Tompkins’s employees, the executive director of Conservación Patagonica, Nadine Lehner, once described this obsessiveness to me. “That’s the thing about Tompkins,” she said. “He’s an abstract thinker, but he also brings it down to ‘Where should the toilet paper go?’ with a sense that that really matters.” Gonzalez drove through the moss-cloaked forest for a couple of hours before taking the road that led us out of the park and back to town. The strip of pavement ribboned across an open field of grass below the cloud-feathered hills. On the side of the road sat Tompkins’s tiny plane. Gonzalez stopped the car, jumped out, and picked up a carton of gasoline that one of the workers had littered on the grass. “Doug would get mad,” he explained as he shut the car door. Gonzalez mentioned that Tompkins often dropped out of the sky without warning—he had just been there on Monday. We walked into the office, and found Tompkins staring at his computer at one of the desks. Tompkins is a slight man with wisps of white hair, bushy gray eyebrows, and deep-set dark eyes. He is smaller than I had previously imagined, and has a softer voice; I found myself whispering. When I asked him to speak with me about his various organizations, Tompkins became impatient and told me, “We have a website, you know.” But when I told him I was interested in deep ecology and wanted to know the roots of his conservation work, his eyes brightened, and he leaned back in his chair, launching into what would prove to be a long discussion about humanity’s “collision course” with nature. He began with an apocalyptic vision. “We’ll be here on a sand dune with Norwegian rats and cockroaches,” he told me, beginning eye contact that rarely broke for the next hour. “Those seem to be the creatures that can survive, which isn’t ideal.” A trail in the Pumalín park; a small rowboat on the Baker River On the desk in front of us, the screensaver on Tompkins’s MacBook cycled through aerial shots of ice-coated mountains and twisting fjords and rivers, close-ups of birds and hikers in rubber boots. “We’re not believers in the myth of progress,” he continued, his lecture unfolding without pause. “This requires systemic analysis and gives us an entirely different view of development. It’s common sense that the world has gone awfully wrong. We need a major rethink of what development means.” At one point, Tompkins’s eyes drifted behind me. He switched from English to Spanish mid-sentence in order to advise one of the office employees hanging a framed picture of a puma in one corner of the office. “A little bit higher,” Tompkins said. “And I think that color is off.” The framed picture came down. “Look at how fast technology is developing,” he said. “Everyone says, ‘They’ll think of something. They’ll think of something to solve every crisis, they’ll solve waste with something. It’ll be digital and fly through the air.’” He paused and asked if I had a cell phone. I nodded sheepishly, my only participation during Tompkins’s hour-long lecture. “I don’t have a cell phone because I know how horrible it is,” he said. “Using your cell phone is like putting your head in a microwave every day. “What are they going to do now that the economy and everyone is addicted to and dependent on technology?” he continued. According to Tompkins, Steve Jobs had believed in the myth of progress and used to publish ad campaigns with a long list of the reasons why computers were going to revolutionize the world. When Jobs would come over to Tompkins’s house for dinner, Tompkins would tell him that his campaign had mentioned only 5 percent of what computers were doing—he’d forgotten to mention the other 95 percent that encompassed the harm they caused. “It’s like God,” Tompkins said. “When they’re growing up, if you tell kids God exists, they believe it. It’s the same with the techno-cultural society. They believe in it—that it’s the road to paradise, that there are no limits.” He raised his eyebrows, deepening the lines in his forehead. “A lot of people, in your generation in particular, are starting to see where it’s going. The organic food movement, the Occupy movement—they’re all trying to pull the brakes. The environmental and social-justice movements, less so. They still want progress so they can spread the wealth around after,” he said. He placed particularly skeptical emphasis on the word “progress.” A gaucho named Leonardo stands outside his home in Valle Colonia. While many of the region’s gauchos live in simple one-room wood cabins in the forests, the Tompkinses have built their new park infrastructure in stone. These large stone buildings have stirred particular unrest and suspicion around the Chacabuco Valley. When I challenged the regional rumors about the Valley—especially that Tompkins was building a second Jewish homeland—people would lift their eyebrows and ask, “Well, if he’s building a park, why does he need such fancy houses?” While in Cochrane, the town nearest to the Valley, I met a café owner, Teresa Catalan. We started talking about the Valley, and she found pictures of the stone buildings on Google Images to show me. “See?” she said, looking from me to the screen. “It bothers me that they call it the Patagonia Park because there’s no Patagonian identity in it. You see the buildings and it looks like you’re in London! It’s the same in Amarillo—what they did to the houses there. It’s not Patagonian. It looks like you’re in Germany.” A young lawyer who worked at the park for several years, Josefina Ruiz, called the park “an island” in Aysén, the region where it is situated. “How can you have someone who talks about localism—he’s invited to universities to talk about the local economy—and he wouldn’t be recognized in Cochrane?” she said, talking about Tompkins. “He never goes to the supermarket there. He comes in on his little plane and goes to his house, then goes to Santiago and stays in a hotel, then leaves.” The local distrust is largely fueled by the sensitivity of the place where the new park sits. In its ranching days, the Valley was home to the third largest sheep ranch in Chile. It was Belgian-owned, but it employed numerous Chilean workers; the town of Cochrane originally formed to house families who had moved there. After Tompkins bought the land, the exodus of sheep and cows from the Valley caused bitter resentment. Conservación Patagonica has employed plenty of locals, but the work of weeding invasive plants and removing fences doesn’t tap into the same sense of regional identity as shearing sheep and running cattle. This past October, resentment toward the new Tompkins park gave way to resistance: Ranchers from neighboring towns protested by the façade of the stone restaurant in the Valley. They drove their trucks onto the grassy front yard, barbecued several lambs over an open fire, and shouted into megaphones about gringos in general and the Tompkinses in particular. They wore wool sweaters, leather boots, and ubiquitous gaucho-style berets called *boinas*. Tompkins never showed his face, but the ranchers stood their ground on his all day. Stickers on trucks depicted a silhouetted gaucho in a woolen poncho riding on horseback below snow-topped mountains and vivid blue skies, evoking the romantic landscape the protestors call home, full of granite spires and teal lakes, renowned for its winds and frequently referred to as the end of the world. Several posters read, Patagonia Sin Tompkins, or Patagonia Without Tompkins. “Patagonia Without Tompkins” stickers on trucks in Cochrane Weeks after the protest, the group that organized it, La Voz de la Patagonia, held a bingo fundraiser in town. During the event, one of the Voz organizers began a Powerpoint presentation at the front of the room and read aloud the group’s seven objectives*. *Children continued screaming and running around the room, adults continued talking and demanding empanadas from the flushed women in the kitchen. No one seemed to care about the group’s goals. At one point, though, a picture of the protest held in the Valley flashed across the screen. Immediately, the room filled with energy, attention, and applause. Clearly, attendees could rally behind an anti-Tompkins campaign. Applause broke out again whenever Tompkins-related goals arose. Some of these popular group objectives were “Reject the massive purchases of land by foreigners,” “Reject conservation on productive land,” and “Request the state to restore the ranch in the Chacabuco Valley to the children of the Baker [River] as a productive livestock area.” This last goal garnered the most fervent applause. While most attendees were there to halt the gringo land grab and bring sheep back to the Valley, the leaders of La Voz had a few other goals in mind for the group. The objectives ignored by the crowd contained thinly veiled support of the controversial HidroAysén—a massive five-dam project that the Chilean government had suspended <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/06/dam-project-chile-patagon…> in 2012 after massive nationwide protests. One objective read, “Support all private investment that means development for our people”; another touted “permanent benefits for the region if HidroAysén, or other hydroelectric or mining projects, go through in those places.” When La Voz first began in 2013, it was more up front about its agenda: It originally had “hydroelectricity and development” as a subtitle on one of its stickers. The sticker, which featured a poncho-clad, silhouetted gaucho, evolved to read, “La Voz de la Patagonia: Intervening for Our Aysén Heritage.” In its effort to win support, HidroAysén has created local radio programs, grants and scholarships for students and small businesses, and door-to-door campaigns. The company funded a celebratory “day of the sheep.” Since Tompkins is locally loathed, HidroAysén supported La Voz when it began presenting itself as a popular uprising against his conservation work. After that, La Voz gained momentum more quickly. After only a month or two in existence, the group collected 1,000 signatures of support. (Around 3,000 people live in Cochrane.) Many Voz supporters I met were, in fact, against the dams; they believed that the group’s focus was Tompkins, and denied HidroAysén’s influence on the organization. Some of those people were against Tompkins for the same reasons they were against HidroAysén: Both were outsiders. “To me, they’re the same,” said Marcos Millahonu, a young man from Cochrane who attended the Voz protest in the Valley. “They are both private parties with private interests. One doesn’t want the dams because it’d interfere with his property, and the other wants to build dams to make money.” The public relations director of HidroAysén, María Irene Soto, is a middle-aged woman with wrists adorned in bracelets and eyes lined in kohl. I have met her on two occasions. Both times, she began by reciting the details of the dams. She talked about the small size of the floods, the mere handful of families who would be displaced, and best of all, the fact that the dam would last 500 years. Then, she steered our conversation toward Tompkins, saying that the only reason there was such massive local, national, and international resistance to the dams was because one rich gringo had singlehandedly financed the campaign against the project. “The people don’t like Tompkins,” she said. “And the people can’t defend themselves because he’s very powerful.” Hearing her speak, one would hardly have guessed that she represented a largely Italian and Spanish-owned energy company whose multi-billion dollar dam project would have halted two wild rivers and sent the energy they generated more than 1,000 miles to the north, leaving none of it in the region. (The Chilean government ultimately rejected the proposal this summer.) “It’s hard to fight with Tompkins,” she continued, shaking her head. “There’s no way.” On María’s Twitter account, she has a picture of the president of La Voz, Carlos Olivares, sitting by a woodstove and looking at the group’s book of signatures. I met Olivares in Cochrane’s plaza a few days after the bingo fundraiser. He is a balding, sturdy man with a straightforward quality that kept his gait quick and his conversation to the point. He insisted that he was vocalizing the needs of the people, especially the gauchos—representing those who could not represent themselves. He described the Valley as the most fertile land in the region, emphasizing that it wasn’t fair for so many other gauchos to have to scrape by on ranches high in the mountains where grass hardly grew when the Valley was left “unused.” Carlos doesn’t want the land to be gazed at; he wants it to be grazed. -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan 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/

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Fwd: "The Map - How To Out Your Local Economy" by John Rogers
by Michel Bauwens 17 Sep '14

17 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Rogers <info(a)valueforpeople.co.uk> Date: Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 5:11 AM Subject: "The Map - How To Out Your Local Economy" by John Rogers To: John Rogers <info(a)valueforpeople.co.uk> Hello, My new pamphlet has just been published exclusively as an e-book on Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/shop/john-rogers/the-map-how-to-out-your-local-economy/… Please purchase and review the pamphlet. Here is a short review extract to whet your appetite: I believe that Austerity is an unfounded, unnecessary and dangerous idea. But it is not going away any time soon. On the other side of Austerity is Sustain-Ability, our ability to sustain an abundant life for all. We need to pool our collective resources and do more with what we have. Too much of our existing local economy remains invisible, unknown and not working at capacity. It needs ‘outing’. The ‘sharing’ or ‘collaborative’ economy shows us one way to do this. New websites pop up every week offering a platform for you to buy, sell, barter, gift, share, hire, rent, lend or swap. Most of these sites are limited to exchanges between consumers and businesses and do not focus on single regions. The Map described here unlocks the whole regional economy with all its players: individuals, businesses, voluntary groups and local government. Imagine an online map of your region that shows households, businesses, voluntary organisations and government agencies. It shows what they need and what they want to share. Imagine Google Search plus Google Maps meets Facebook, with eBay mashed up with Kickstarter and Loyalty Points, available online and on the move, all focussed on your home region. It is a social and economic network that can scale down to a single postcode and up to regional level. Although it doesn’t yet exist as described here, it is called The Map. Imagine you’re looking for a babysitter. You log on to the Map App on your smartphone that connects you to The Map. It quickly shows you where the babysitters are in your area. Imagine your small business is looking for part-time help. The Map App helps you find reliable workers when you need them. Imagine you are an amateur football club looking for coaches. You can find volunteers via the Map App. Every person and every group needs something and has something to give. The Map allows people to show up, show off, connect, cooperate, compete, give, share, borrow, lend, swap, tip, buy, sell, raise funds, review, complain, criticise, rate, recommend, praise… The Map provides a network for the good times, a safety net for the bad times and a permanently open space for all to contribute. It creates a true ‘free market’ that is local and cross-sectoral. The world is getting ever more connected. Entrepreneurs are creating new applications to bring us together and share every day. Smartphone use in the UK may reach nearly 100% by 2018. More and more gadgets will be able to talk to each other via the Internet. We will programme our devices to automatically find best offers and to order goods and services such as taxis, books, etc. The Map uses this connectivity to enhance existing regional networks. It provides incentives for people to share what they have to benefit everyone, to do more with less. The Map can help us to realise this grand ambition. And it can only do that if it: - enables investment in everyone and their ideas, talents and energy - creates new sources of local production - brings out the best that everyone has to give to others. The Map can help us to grow a society and economy far superior to the narrow-minded, cramped view of Austerity and help us realise the goal of Sustain-Ability. Best regards John Rogers -- John Rogers Value for People - training and consulting for local currencies http://bit.ly/Currency_Consult http://bit.ly/John_Rogers_Goodreads Skype: jroger01 Tel: +49 (0)6667 918769 (Germany) -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan 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/

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