February 2015 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

free e-book Mapping the Global Transition to the Solar Age
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '15

22 Feb '15

via hazel henderson: my 56-page e-book Mapping the Global Transition to the Solar Age is sub-titled “From Economism to Earth Systems Science , Foreword by NASA Chief Scientist Dennis Bushnell ( co-published by UK Inst. of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales and Tomorrow’s Company ( London, 2014) free and downloadable from www.ethicalmarkets.com ( click on cover , top right) . -- 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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can the net drive movements ?
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '15

22 Feb '15

Can the Net Drive Social Movements? by LOUIS PROYECT Largely through the writings and public addresses of David Graeber, Marina Sitrin, John Holloway and others, “horizontalism” became a buzzword to describe various movements over the past fifteen years or so that were inspired by the Seattle protests and marked by direct democracy, communications through the Internet, militant tactics, and a belief that occupations of public spaces could prefigure a future, more just world. Ideologically, anarchism and autonomist Marxism loomed large—understandably so since the “verticalism” of the old Left seemed to have run its course. As is so often the case, movements and institutions that appear to contradict each other can often be resolved on a higher level. In this instance, given the exhaustion of “horizontalist” initiatives over the past couple of years, an analysis of the contested ideological terrain is more necessary than ever. As a major contribution to the debate, I cannot recommend Todd Wolfson’s “Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left” highly enough. If you read an excerpt <http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/13/the-birth-of-the-cyber-left/> from the book’s introduction on last weekend’s CounterPunch, you will understand that the book is directed to the activist left and is not the typical academic work despite the author being a member of the Rutgers University faculty and the book being published by the University of Illinois Press. Eminently readable, *Digital Rebellion* is a mixture of reporting and theory all designed to move beyond the horizontal-vertical duality and achieve a synthesis that draws from the best of both worlds. While the words Syriza and Podemos cannot be found in its pages (and of course Podemos was born after the book was published), their presence looms over its pages. As political parties, they were midwifed by the occupations of the horizontalist left–so much so that at least one well-known autonomist has broken ranks and come around to seeing the benefits of wielding state power, hitherto something seen as anathema. Jerome Roos of Roar Magazine, an autonomist stronghold, gave an interview <http://syriza.net.gr/index.php/en/pressroom/228-jerome-roos-what-happens-in…> to Syriza in which he said that “Syriza’s radical internationalism is uplifting and a positive contrast to the neoliberal cosmopolitanism of the business class.” These are welcome words indeed. Wolfson examines the origins of Indymedia, its trajectory and final implosion as a kind of symbol of the promise and limitations of “horizontalism”, a term that is simply shorthand for a fairly coherent and carefully worked out strategy for the mass movement. As an activist himself who contributed time and energy to Indymedia, it is clear that he was committed to its success and not just an outside observer passing judgment. One might add that if the rest of academia was half as dedicated, the left would be in much better shape today. He begins by chronicling the tragic death of Brad Will <https://archive.org/details/infamia_en_oaxaca>, an Indymedia activist who died with a videocamera in his hands in Oaxaca, Mexico while filming poor people protesting. Even after the cops shot him in the chest one minute before the video ends, the camera rolls on. Indymedia was more than a people’s Internet-based news alternative to the capitalist media. It was a movement that incorporated many of the ideas that were prevalent in the Global Justice movement and that continued into Occupy Wall Street. With chapters all across the world, Indymedia tried to strike a balance between local autonomy and group cohesion—no easy matter. Chapter four, titled “Structure: Networks and Nervous Systems” goes into considerable and fascinating detail about how young activists tried to develop an organizational model that was geared to the grass roots movements they participated in. The chapter begins with a telling epigraph by Alex Ross, Hillary Clinton’s Senior Adviser for Innovation at the State Department: “The Che Guevara for the twenty-first century is the network.” The chapter begins with some of Wolfson’s brisk reporting on the role played by Indymedia at the February 15, 2003 protest in Philadelphia against the war in Iraq. In contrast to the capitalist press that habitually undercounted the number of protesters and relegated coverage to the back pages, Indymedia rose to the occasion and provided on-the-spot reports all across the world. It was this type of response that would ultimately inspire an outlet like Vice Magazine that despite its rough around the edges appearance (and ironically perhaps because of it) could attract billions of dollars from investors. For young people, something like Vice is the anti-Brian Williams even though the corporations that made him possible are circling Vice like buzzards, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. (We should never forget that Murdoch bought the *Village Voice* in1977. For him, profits count more than politics.) Coverage of February 15th was carried out by Independent Media Centers (IMC), the local group of media activists that were the counterpart of branches in my Old Left SWP that were controlled down to the tiniest political and organizational detail by party headquarters in New York. If someone farted at a meeting in Houston, the national office would conduct an investigation to expose the smeller. Indymedia was determined to avoid such a verticalist straightjacket. The solution was to create a network of IMC’s that had no “national office”. For those committed to a non-centered network, there are various options on how to implement it ranging from the relatively centered star structure (not a star in the sense of Katy Perry but a formation that has a central hub that distributes information throughout the network) to the all channel network that lacked a center. Indymedia went with the all channel network, something that befits the anarchist mood of many of its participants. A combination of organizational dysfunction and political unclarity led to a serious crisis in 2002, one that would have long-lasting effects on Indymedia. It erupted after the Ford Foundation offered a grant intended to fund regional conferences. When the Argentine IMC heard about this, they raised bloody hell since the Ford Foundation was in cahoots with the CIA, responsible for assisting the dictatorship in Argentina that killed tens of thousands of their countrymen. The Ford Foundation also spent money to corrupt the Black Panther Party and the Global Justice movement. Reading this account brought me back to the days of my board membership in Tecnica, a volunteer program for Nicaragua that relied heavily on foundation grants. We applied for but never got money from the Ford Foundation. There was little fear in Tecnica that we would “sell out” since most of the people in the leadership were case-hardened revolutionary socialists who took inspiration from Lenin boarding a German imperialist train to return to Russia in 1917. But for Indymedia it was an acid test. Instead of grappling with the political questions of funding, everything turned on the question of organizational procedure with some arguing against the Argentines on the basis that the Ford money would go to local chapters. How dare anybody challenge local autonomy? After months and months of wrangling over the question on listserv’s, the fight ended with very little sense of a satisfactory resolution. Ironically, it was the use of the Internet that frustrated their hopes. The technology might have helped to link people up across continents but at a certain cost. One participant in the debate put it this way: “The globe spanning email lists are mostly useless for this sort of thing. It would be a good thing to refrain from using them for any sort of conflict resolution. *Face to face is where life happens. It is real. Virtual life has little power. It is empty*.” In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a kind of techno-optimism that failed to anticipate how such a crisis could develop. Wolfson refers frequently to Manuel Castells, arguably the most breathlessly enthusiastic of all the Internet prophets. He is particularly excited by the idea that the Internet could create the conditions for a “leaderless movement” as if our problem is leaders rather than influence. Frankly, I miss having someone around like Martin Luther King Jr. That is obviously why he was assassinated. While by no means engaged with technical schemas, Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau developed a brand of Marxism that was hospitable to the horizontalist agenda. They argued that the working class was no longer the agent of change and proposed “radical democracy” as an alternative to obsolete notions of socialist revolution. The agent of change would now be disparate social movements united on the basis of having a common enemy and deploying a “swarm intelligence” to overcome the elites. It was the theoretical equivalence of the title of Paul Kingsworth’s study of the Zapatistas: “One No, Many Yeses”. Since Mouffe and Laclau, as well as many of those they influenced from John Holloway to Hardt/Negri, were icons of the new networked movements that eschewed electoral politics that were regarded as either useless or reactionary, it is of some interest that they are regarded as the intellectual forefathers of Syriza and Podemos according to Dan Hancox whose “Comments are Free <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/09/ernesto-laclau-intelle…>” article in the Guardian maintained: Throughout his academic career, most of which he spent as professor of political theory at the University of Essex, Laclau developed a vocabulary beyond classical Marxist thought, replacing the traditional analysis of class struggle with a concept of “radical democracy” that stretched beyond the narrow confines of the ballot box (or the trade union). Most importantly for Syriza, Podemos and its excitable sympathisers outside Greece and Spain, he sought to rescue “populism” from its many detractors. The operative term here is “narrow confines of the ballot box”. If you think in terms of irreconcilable opposites, the growth of Syriza and Podemos can appear confounding but only if you cannot see their connection to the street protests that shook Greece and Spain for the better part of a decade. It was to the everlasting credit of Alexis Tsipras and Pablo Iglesias to see the need to create parties that could challenge the ruling class on its own terms, namely the right to control the state on behalf of the exploited and the dispossessed. The occupations, protests, general strikes, and even the violent combat in the streets were incapable in and of themselves of putting people back to work but they were like bombardments that weakened the enemy’s defenses to the point that its fortress could be overrun. Todd Wolfson’s book is a serious and well-researched case for reconnecting the new network-based movements with older traditions of struggle such as the labor and civil rights movement with an emphasis on the working class. While nobody would ever discount the brilliance of populist slogans that drew a line between the one percent and the ninety-nine percent, as timely in its way as the Bolshevik’s “Peace, Bread and Land”, the strategic emphasis must be on building parties that can unite people in struggle throughout society and ultimately on a global basis. While most of his book extols the great accomplishments of Indymedia and the Global Justice movement, he makes sure to put forward his criticisms in no uncertain terms: While every cycle of protest comes to an end, it is important to mark the breakthroughs and the problems with Indymedia and the larger Cyber Left’s logic of resistance organized around horizontality. The core logic and strategy of the Cyber Left played a significant role in the inability of the Global Social Justice Movement to build long-term power. I will point to four interrelated, core problems: (1) a retreat from class and capitalism as analytic and political categories, (2) a tendency toward technological determinism, (3) an anti-institutional bias, (4) no emphasis on political education and leadership development. The first problem is that contemporary social-movement theorists and activists of the Cyber Left tend to downplay capitalism and class as central analytic categories. This tendency developed because of the perceived problems with the praxis of Marxism as it operated in actually existing communist nations and communist and socialist movements. As someone who has written numerous articles on the actually existing socialist movements, including for CounterPunch, I will end this article on a contrarian note and defend Lenin, a symbol for many of everything that is wrong with “verticalism”. To a large part, this is not poor Lenin’s fault but the fault of those who created the monstrosity called “Leninism”. Earlier in this article I referred to Hilary Clinton’s aide describing the network as the Che Guevara of the twenty-first century, which taken at face value might encourage young leftists to sign up for Microsoft training classes posthaste. In fact, it was Che Guevara’s mistake to schematically apply rural guerrilla warfare as if Cuba could be cloned in Bolivia. This is the same mistake that was made with “Leninism”. For nearly eighty years the left tried to imitate Lenin’s party, even to the point of incorporating an iconography that made no sense to an American worker. What would a hammer and sickle mean to someone working on a computer-controlled lathe or in the cab of a five-ton John Deere tractor? Lenin had essentially the same problem in the early 1900s that the left has a century later, namely how to organize the scattered radical movement into a formidable power that could confront and ultimately defeat the enemy. His hope was that a newspaper called Iskra could do the job. Referring to the need for a newspaper that was nation-wide in scope, he wrote in “What is to be Done”: Does this not clearly illustrate our amateurism? Does this not clearly show that our revolutionary organisation lags behind the spontaneous growth of the movement? If the same number of issues had been published, not by scattered local groups, but by a single organisation, we would not only have saved an enormous amount of effort, but we would have secured immeasurably greater stability and continuity in our work. If Lenin were alive today, I doubt that he would go near any left group that had hammers and sickles festooning their newspaper or website. It is also likely that he would also avoid any described as “Marxist-Leninist”. He would probably warn against the use of a newspaper when the Internet was available, especially when the class enemy was also moving away from print. But the priority would be on uniting people and not on technological determinism as if Facebook pages could ever take the place of a well organized and politically steeled working class. They certainly will interpenetrate each other on the long, difficult but necessary task of abolishing private ownership of the means of production but in the final analysis it is the unified and class-conscious workers movement that will change history. -- 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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cyberleft and digital rebellion
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '15

22 Feb '15

The Birth of the Cyber Left by TODD WOLFSON In an instant, the immaterial aspects of the financial capitalist system melted away, as the tightly held logic of neoliberalism came crashing inward. The world watched with fear and awe as the collapse of the speculative markets quickly exposed the entire financial system, and foundational institutions— imbued with all of the power and majesty of global capital—crumbled before our eyes. The price of the hubris, however, went beyond the boardrooms of Lehman Brothers, and in a few short months the grim realities of the crisis took a vicious toll on working people. Families lost their houses to fore- closure, elderly couples lost their life savings to the rapacious market, and working people lost their jobs and livelihood to the aggressive greed of an unchecked financial system. In the shadow of the growing economic disaster, which unjustly meted out punishment on the most precarious, political leaders stepped in with massive bailouts, engineered by the very people who created the crisis, in an effort to save banks deemed “too big to fail.” And in time, as our collective memory waned, these same political leaders fixed their gaze on the meager support system of the poor and working class, demanding austerity budgets and calling for shared sacrifice. The sacrifice, however, was not shared, as the market rebounded for the few, while the growing legion of poor and work- ing people were left to shoulder the burden of the twenty-first century’s first global economic and human crisis. While the financial collapse has heaped untold misery on the working class, this crisis, like those before it, has also presented real political opportunity. As people suffer and injustice reigns, trust in state power and financial markets has evaporated, and the ties that bind us to the current social and political configuration have loosened. With this social dislocation comes the possibility for uprising. The Great Refusal, as Herbert Marcuse (1991) once called it, has begun to show itself, as organizers, activists, and everyday people across the world respond to the economic crisis and growing specter of poverty and inequality. In this “post-collapse” moment, we have witnessed new forms of organizing and protest that have rekindled the radical imagination. Beginning in 2009, communities from Cairo, Tunis, and Reykjavik to Santiago, Athens, and New York rose up, redrawing the political landscape and in some cases rebalancing the political scales. In some of these rebellions, dictators and their corrupt systems were swept asunder; in others, the struggle continues to this day; and in others still, a new narrative emerged that challenged the neoliberal logic that socializes risk while privatizing profit. While the character of each of these struggles is distinct, some critical commonalities bind this cycle of resistance together as a diverse but singular moment of rebellion. Traits like the creative use of new media and social networks in resistance, the desire for meaningful democratic participation, the physical and virtual occupation of space, and the leadership of young people, who increasingly face dwindling job prospects and growing student debt. These patterned attributes help to form the silhouette of a new figure of resistance, a new sociopolitical formation. *D**i**g**i**ta**l Rebellion *is an attempt to map the underlying logic of this new figure of resistance as it has materialized across the world. I undertake this mapping exercise through a historical and ethnographic analysis of the Global Social Justice Movement from 1994 to 2006, with a particular focus on the indymedia movement. While indymedia and the Global Social Justice Movement precede the contemporary moment of struggle by less than a decade, in many ways the tactics and strategy of resistance in that period already seem quaint, as activists waged their fights using bullhorns, bulky Web sites, monodimensional mobile phones, and black balaclavas instead of Guy Fawkes masks. However, much like objects in a rearview mirror, the Global Social Justice Movement is much closer than it appears. It is my contention that the logic of struggle that developed through that period offers the necessary tools to understand the mental terrain of occupiers and Cairo combatants today. At this broad level, extending the cyclical theory of social movements, in *Digital Rebellion * <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0252080386/counterpunchmaga>I argue that historical and sociocultural patterns connect different periods of political protest. Specifically, I argue that the patterns of struggle in a particular period are best understood as developing, in an ideal sense, through a multilateral dialogue between social-movement actors and both the past and present. Examined from one perspective, social movements and social-movement actors are in conversation with the corporeal world in which they exist. Viewed through this materialist lens, we can see that a particular logic of resistance emerges in response to the social systems and social world of which it is a part. Thus, in the era of Fordist capitalism, revolutionary movements formed large centralized party-like formations that mirrored the economy of scale that was the dominant episteme of the time. Correspondingly, in the contemporary moment of informational capitalism, activists forge nimble, networked formations as a facsimile of the networked society they exist within. In this sense, movements both challenge and integrate, sometimes unconsciously, different elements of their social environs. The logic of resistance in a particular moment, however, does not develop in a straightforward conversation between activists and their physical present. Instead, the logic and vision of resistance in a particular period2 also develop in dialectic tension with history, and specifically the previous stages of resistance. Along these lines, the Old Left and New Left were in constant, though sometimes hidden, dialogue3 about issues of structure, strategy, and composition, and as I argue throughout this book, contemporary social movements are also in dialogue with the history of resistance that has preceded it. This premise forms the theoretical underpinning of this book, which is that in order to appreciate the social-movement logic of a particular moment, one must understand this triangulated interaction between social-movement actors; the materialist present; and the long, unfolding history of resistance. Using this lens, we can then begin to trace the commonalities and differences between the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and Students for a Democratic Society, on the one hand, and the Global Social Justice Movement or Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand. *Defining and Historicizing the Cyber Left* To get analytic purchase on the transformations in contemporary social movements, I introduce the term *Cyber Left**.* Through this concept, I contend that we are on the cusp of a new stage in left-based social movements, enmeshed with the changing nature of new digital technologies and the globalizing economic order. I use the term *Cyber Left *to historicize this emergent mode of movement building, and I argue that the way activists have employed communication tools (from the Internet to cell phones) has shifted spatial and temporal configurations within movements, creating new possibilities for organizational structure, democratic governance, and media strategy. With the growing fervor of technological utopianism coming on the heels of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, the use of the term *cyber *is admittedly complicated. To this end, I want to make clear that I do not use *cyber *to argue that social movements have moved online, nor do I suggest that social life has been transformed solely by the networking power of Facebook or Twitter, nor do I argue that this shift in the operations of social movements is necessarily positive. In fact, the most successful movements are still driven by face-to-face relationships, trust, analysis, a strong understanding of local concerns, leadership development, and on-the-ground organizing, as I discuss throughout this book. Instead, I use *cyber *as a descriptive term to define the novel set of processes and practices within twenty-first-century social resistance that are engendered by new technologies and in turn have enabled new possibilities for the scale, strategy, structure, and governance of social movements.… While I use the term *cyber *to capture the new dynamics in contemporary movements, this is a study that is focused on chronicling the American *left**.*5 Historians of the American left generally speak of two central phases of social- movement history in the United States. The Old Left, from the early twentieth century to the end of World War II,6 was influenced by Marxism and the Bolshevik Revolution7 and principally focused on trade unionism, the development of political parties, and the central antagonism between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. In the postwar period, the U.S. government waged a war on critical Old Left institutions like the Communist Party, and this, alongside the horrors of Stalinism, led to the eventual collapse of the Old Left. Out of the ashes of the Old Left, however, the civil rights movement emerged and acted as a critical bridge to the New Left.9 In the 1960s, New Left institutions such as Students for a Democratic Society developed on the heels of the civil rights movement, while being shaped by Mao’s peasant-based revolution in China. Challenging the dogma of the Old Left, New Left activists questioned the central role of class and the industrial proletariat, articulating a host of concerns from gender and racial equality to ending the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism.10 The New Left in turn led to the birth and growth of the nuclear-disarmament movement, the environmental movement,11 the gay- rights movement,12 and later stages of the feminist movement. Following these two broad stages of social movements, I contend through this research that we are seeing the outlines of a new phase, the Cyber Left, that has taken the shape of a globalized, digitized, radically democratic net- work formation. This new stage of resistance is grounded in the experiences and insights of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Mexico. In1996, the EZLN made a widespread call to activists, revolutionaries, and media makers to forge “a collective network of resistance against neoliberal- ism” and “a network of *communication*among all our struggles.” Out of this call and the vision and relationships it established came indymedia, People’s Global Action, the World Social Forum process, and many other networks and institutions that mark the initial stage of this period of struggle. This is excerpted from *Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0252080386/counterpunchmaga>. *Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press <http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/89cmd2yt9780252038846.html%C2%…> ” . *Todd Wolfson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. Trained as a socio-cultural anthropologist, his research focuses on the convergence of new media and social movements and he is author of numerous articles on social movements. Todd is also co-founder of the Media Mobilizing Project, which uses media and communications as a strategy for building a movement of poor and working people in Philadelphia and beyond. Todd is also on the leadership team of Progressive Philly Rising and he sits on the board of the Taxi Workers Alliance of PA. Todd’s research and community work has been supported by the Knight Foundation, Social Science Research Council, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the Dodge Foundation amongst others.* *** Todd Wolfson's "Digital Rebellion" -- 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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death by social media
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '15

22 Feb '15

(all at *Counterpunch)*(The excellent singer David Rovics laments: "In the 1990s, with the development of the internet – websites, email lists – there was an explosion of communication that made the underground press of the 60’s pale in comparison. Most people in places like the US virtually stopped using phones (to actually talk on), from my experience. Many people who never wrote letters or much of anything else started using computers and writing emails to each other, and even to multiple people at once. Those very few of us who were in the habit in the pre-internet era of sending around regular newsletters featuring our writing, our thoughts, our list of upcoming gigs, products or services we were trying to sell, etc., were thrilled with the advent of email, and the ability to send our newsletters out so easily, without spending a fortune on postage stamps, without spending so much time stuffing envelopes. For a brief period of time, we had access to the same audience, the same readers we had before, but now we could communicate with them virtually for free. This, for many of us, was the internet’s golden age – 1995-2005 or so.") Death by Ten Billion Status Updates How Facebook Killed the Internet by DAVID ROVICS Facebook killed the internet, and I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of people didn’t even notice. I can see the look on many of your faces, and hear the thoughts. *Someone’s complaining about Facebook again. Yes, I know it’s a massive corporation, but it’s the platform we’re all using. It’s like complaining about Starbucks. After all the independent cafes have been driven out of town and you’re an espresso addict, what to do? What do you mean “killed”? What was killed?* I’ll try to explain. I’ll start by saying that I don’t know what the solution is. But I think any solution has to start with solidly identifying the nature of the problem. First of all, Facebook killed the internet, but if it wasn’t Facebook, it would have been something else. The evolution of social media was probably as inevitable as the development of cell phones that could surf the internet. It was the natural direction for the internet to go in. Which is why it’s so especially disturbing. Because the solution is not Znet or Ello. The solution is not better social media, better algorithms, or social media run by a nonprofit rather than a multibillion-dollar corporation. Just as the solution to the social alienation caused by everybody having their own private car is not more electric vehicles. Just as the solution to the social alienation caused by everyone having their own cell phone to stare at is not a collectively-owned phone company. Many people from the grassroots to the elites are thrilled about the social media phenomenon. Surely some of the few people who will read this are among them. We throw around phrases like “Facebook revolution” and we hail these new internet platforms that are bringing people together all over the world. And I’m not suggesting they don’t have their various bright sides. Nor am I suggesting you should stop using social media platforms, including Facebook. That would be like telling someone in Texas they should bike to work, when the whole infrastructure of every city in the state is built for sports utility vehicles. But we should understand the nature of what is happening to us. >From the time that newspapers became commonplace up until the early 1990’s, for the overwhelming majority of the planet’s population, the closest we came to writing in a public forum were the very few of us who ever bothered to write a letter to the editor. A tiny, tiny fraction of the population were authors or journalists who had a public forum that way on an occasional or a regular basis, depending. Some people wrote up the pre-internet equivalent of an annual Christmas-time blog post which they photocopied and sent around to a few dozen friends and relatives. In the 1960s there was a massive flowering of independent, “underground” press in towns and cities across the US and other countries. There was a vastly increased diversity of views and information that could be easily accessed by anyone who lived near a university and could walk to a news stand and had an extra few cents to spend. In the 1990s, with the development of the internet – websites, email lists – there was an explosion of communication that made the underground press of the 60’s pale in comparison. Most people in places like the US virtually stopped using phones (to actually talk on), from my experience. Many people who never wrote letters or much of anything else started using computers and writing emails to each other, and even to multiple people at once. Those very few of us who were in the habit in the pre-internet era of sending around regular newsletters featuring our writing, our thoughts, our list of upcoming gigs, products or services we were trying to sell, etc., were thrilled with the advent of email, and the ability to send our newsletters out so easily, without spending a fortune on postage stamps, without spending so much time stuffing envelopes. For a brief period of time, we had access to the same audience, the same readers we had before, but now we could communicate with them virtually for free. This, for many of us, was the internet’s golden age – 1995-2005 or so. There was the increasing problem of spam of various sorts. Like junk mail, only more of it. Spam filters started getting better, and largely eliminated that problem for most of us. The listservs that most of us bothered to read were moderated announcements lists. The websites we used the most were interactive, but moderated, such as Indymedia. In cities throughout the world, big and small, there were local Indymedia collectives. Anyone could post stuff, but there were actual people deciding whether it should get published, and if so, where. As with any collective decision-making process, this was challenging, but many of us felt it was a challenge that was worth the effort. As a result of these moderated listservs and moderated Indymedia sites, we all had an unprecedented ability to find out about and discuss ideas and events that were taking place in our cities, our countries, our world. Then came blogging, and social media. Every individual with a blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, etc., became their own individual broadcaster. It’s intoxicating, isn’t it? Knowing that you have a global audience of dozens or hundreds, maybe thousands of people (if you’re famous to begin with, or something goes viral) every time you post something. Being able to have conversations in the comments sections with people from around the world who will never physically meet each other. Amazing, really. But then most people stopped listening. Most people stopped visiting Indymedia. Indymedia died, globally, for the most part. Newspapers – right, left and center – closed, and are closing, whether offline or online ones. Listservs stopped existing. Algorithms replaced moderators. People generally began to think of librarians as an antiquated phenomenon. Now, in Portland, Oregon, one of the most politically plugged-in cities in the US, there is no listserv or website you can go to that will tell you what is happening in the city in any kind of readable, understandable format. There are different groups with different websites, Facebook pages, listservs, etc., but nothing for the progressive community as a whole. Nothing functional, anyway. Nothing that approaches the functionality of the announcements lists that existed in cities and states throughout the country 15 years ago. Because of the technical limitations of the internet for a brief period of time, there was for a few years a happy medium found between a small elite providing most of the written content that most people in the world read, and the situation we now find ourselves in, drowning in Too Much Information, most of it meaningless drivel, white noise, fog that prevents you from seeing anywhere further than the low beams can illuminate at a given time. It was a golden age, but for the most part an accidental one, and a very brief one. As it became easy for people to start up a website, a blog, a Myspace or Facebook page, to post updates, etc., the new age of noise began, inevitably, the natural evolution of the technology. And most people didn’t notice that it happened. Why do I say that? First of all, I didn’t just come up with this shit. I’ve been talking to a lot of people for many years, and a lot of people think social media is the best thing since sliced bread. And why shouldn’t they? The bottom line is, there’s no reason most people would have had occasion to notice that the internet died, because they weren’t content providers (as we call authors, artists, musicians, journalists, organizers, public speakers, teachers, etc. these days) in the pre-internet age or during the first decade or so of the internet as a popular phenomenon. And if you weren’t a content provider back then, why would you know that anything changed? I and others like me know – because the people who used to read and respond to stuff I sent out on my email list aren’t there anymore. They don’t open the emails anymore, and if they do, they don’t read them. And it doesn’t matter what medium I use – blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Of course some people do, but most people are now doing other things. What are they doing? I spent most of last week in Tokyo, going all over town, spending hours each day on the trains. Most people sitting in the trains back during my first visit to Japan in 2007 were sleeping, as they are now. But those who weren’t sleeping, seven years ago, were almost all reading books. Now, there’s hardly a book to be seen. Most people are looking at their phones. And they’re not reading books on their phones. (Yes, I peeked. A lot.) They’re playing games or, more often, looking at their Facebook “news feeds.” And it’s the same in the US and everywhere else that I have occasion to travel to. Is it worth it to replace moderators with algorithms? Editors with white noise? Investigative journalists with pictures of your cat? Independent record labels and community radio stations with a multitude of badly-recorded podcasts? Independent Media Center collectives with a million Facebook updates and Twitter feeds? I think not. But that’s where we’re at. How do we get out of this situation, and clear the fog, and use our brains again? I wish I knew. *David Rovics is a singer/songwriter based in Portland, Oregon.* -- 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: BANDUNG+60 CONFERENCE INDONESIA OCTOBER 2015
by Michel Bauwens 22 Feb '15

22 Feb '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Darwis Khudori <darwis.khudori(a)univ-lehavre.fr> Date: Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 5:01 PM Subject: BANDUNG+60 CONFERENCE INDONESIA OCTOBER 2015 Dear friends of School for Wellbeing, I am pleased to inform you that we are organising a conference of commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the 1955 Bandung Asian-African Conference that will take place in Indonesia on October 26-31, 2015. Like five years ago, we will move from Yogyakarta, to Bandung and Jakarta. The theme of our conference is "BUILDING SOVEREIGNTY, PREVENTING HEGEMONY : The Challenges for Emerging Forces in the Globalised World." See http://www.bandungspirit.org/ The concept, planning and programme of the conference are prepared by a SCIENTIFIC BOARD consisting of academics from Africa, Asia, Europe and other parts of the world. See its composition at http://www.bandungspirit.org/spip.php?article78 The conference will be organised in plenary sessions and 5 parallel seminars following the 5 pillars of sustainable development. The seminars and their coordinators are : CULTURE : Mr. Adams Bodomo, Ghana/Austria (Prof. Dr., Linguistics/African Studies, University of Vienna). ECOLOGY : Mr. Yukio Kamino, Japan (Dr., African Studies/Ecology, OISCA, Tokyo). ECONOMY : Mr. Rimawan Pradiptyo, Indonesia (Dr., Economics, Gadjah Mada University). POLITICS : Ms Lin Chun, China/UK (Dr., Political Sciences, London School of Economics). RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY : Mr. Jean-Jacques Ngor Sène, Senegal/USA (Assoc. Professor. Dr., History, Chatham University). Different from a common academic conference, our conference is an expression of a collective-participative-collaborative work. Every seminar is prepared by a working group open to those concerned, interested and willing to participate in the conference as a "process" instead of merely an "event". In addition to the 5 working groups, a special working group will be dedicated to FINAL DECLARATION/CHARTER/MANIFESTO under the coordination of Mr. Lazare Ki-Zerbo, Burkina Faso/France (Dr., Philosophy, International Committee Joseph Ki-Zerbo for Africa and Diaspora). If you wish to participate in a working group or to stay informed of the conference preparation, please, send to me and/or to Bandung Spirit Secretariat <secretariat(a)bandungspirit.org> your name, your academic fields if you have any, your academic titles if you have any, your institutional affiliations if you have any, your country of residence and your email address and your working group choice. I look foward to hearing from you and thank you for your kind attention and collaboration. Yours faithfully, Darwis KHUDORI darwis.khudori(a)univ-lehavre.fr ;emdeka(a)free.fr -- 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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Re: [P2P-F] Support campaign for our mission in Word Social Forum 2015
by Michel Bauwens 21 Feb '15

21 Feb '15

with pleasure! 2015-02-21 18:45 GMT+07:00 Valeureux Sybille Saint Girons < sybille(a)valeureux.org>: > Merci de nous soutenir ! > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLFq9Ytdyjg&feature=youtu.be > > http://www.helloasso.com/associations/valeureux/collectes/-changer-la-monna… > S* > > ------ > Sybille Saint Girons > Présidente et co-fondatrice de Valeureux > > +33 (0) 663 541 967 > > > lanceur de la plateforme > ___________________________________________ > La fabrique participative d'outils, jeux et processus d'Actualisation de > Richesses en bien commun pour les communautés. > > > Ensemble, contribuer à l'émergence, à la reconnaissance et au partage de > toutes les forme de richesses au service de la Vie. > > ___________________________________________ > > > > > > etoiledejoie > > > > > -- 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: Modern Feudalism, Two Cases
by Michel Bauwens 21 Feb '15

21 Feb '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bob Reuschlein <bobreuschlein(a)gmail.com> Date: Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 9:18 PM Subject: Modern Feudalism, Two Cases To: Link to send to others by: https://bobreuschlein.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/modern-feudalism-two-cases/ *Modern Feudalism, Two Cases* by Dr. Bob Reuschlein What happens when an advanced civilization breaks down and leaves feudalism in its wake? One case is when the global temperature changes and new areas are favored while other areas are left behind. The other case is when an advanced civilization becomes an empire and the erosion caused by high levels of military spending steadily reduces the civilization into a lower state of existence. CLASSIC FEUDALISM Classic feudalism or medievalism refers to the down period in European development between the end of the Roman Empire and before the Renaissance of the Modern Era. With the overrunning of the well organized society by barbarians, the breakdown was replaced with rampant warlord militarism leading to many fiefdoms dominated by castles with motes. The lord would give protection to those working the land in his or her castle at night and from time to time as these workers were called serfs. The lord serf relationship features high income inequality. The lack of intellectual development as martial skills are instead rewarded leads to a lack of what we in the developed world call progress in the sciences. The church steps into the void in scientific progress and becomes a dominant institution. ROLE REVERSAL Just as one great religion rose at the peak of the Roman Empire, Christianity, another great religion, Islam, rose at the peak of the Byzantine Empire. As the Western European world was in decline, the Arab world was in ascendancy with the invention of algebra, the zero, and the spreading of Islam across the Southern Mediterranean and into Eastern Europe and Asia. The reaction to all of that was the Crusades. Then the tide turns with the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, as Christianity once more became ascendant. The reaction to all of that were the rejection of colonialism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The recent attacks on the president for mentioning the Crusades in the same breathe as the current religious extremists just goes to show how determined to be wrong the right usually is. The Middle Age world warming that favored more Northerly Europe over the more Southerly Middle East lead to the Crusades, which lasted about as long as the farming in Greenland, both ending as the world cooled. The first Crusade when it reached Asia Minor, now called Turkey, descended on a town there where every man woman and child were killed. It turned out they had unwittingly chosen a Christian community. So the Crusades of yesteryear did not lack in barbarity in comparison to today’s religious militants. MODERN EMPIRE DECLINE Today’s America seems ascendant in every way on the world stage, but the rot from within is well advanced. While China and India graduate ten times the engineers the US does, we send our best talent into financial schemes on Wall Street. As the rich get richer and the middle class fails to obtain pay raises at all, we devolve more and more into a lord serf relationship society. Indeed, the military seems the only way out for many in poor white rural communities. When the technology manufacturing sector is in decline and the retail and service sectors are ascendant, that is the surest sign of a declining empire. When 4% of the world’s population houses 25% of the prisoners, crime is at epidemic rates in America. When America has the highest homicide, prisoner, mental illness, teen birthrate, and obesity rates in the developed world, surely it is because of high income inequality and militarism, as shown in my tables in the Empire Economics presentation listed second immediately below: More on the climate change scenario: https://www.academia.edu/4485586/CIVILIZATION_Changes_with_Climate More on the empire decay scenario: https://www.academia.edu/4044446/EMPIRE_ECONOMICS_Peer_Review_AWARD Dr. Peace, Dr. Bob Reuschlein, Real Economy Institute best contact to ask Bob to speak to your group: bobreuschlein(a)gmail.com to leave message: 608-230-6640 for more info: www.realeconomy.com (*Real Economy* and/or *Peace Economics* free pdf on request by members of the press) An archive of this two year press release campaign can be found at: http://bobreuschlein.wordpress.com/ -- 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: What is your soul's agenda?
by Michel Bauwens 21 Feb '15

21 Feb '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Timothy Wilken, MD <timothy.wilken(a)gmail.com> Date: Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 3:10 AM Subject: What is your soul's agenda? To: Timothy Wilken <timothy.wilken(a)gmail.com> Dear fellow souls, Neal Donald Walsh has a coined a new phrase "soul's agenda" for what Mark Gafni calls your "unique call." The idea of "souls agenda" or "unique call" is that every human has a higher purpose for being on earth then just surviving or for just being happy. They are here to accomplish something of great importance to themselves, their family, their community for humanity and the earth. If they hear their "call" -- if they prepare themselves to answer their "call" -- if they answer their "call," then they will experience their life as much more enlightened and make a *difference* for themselves, their community and for life and the planet itself. In Walsch's language, we need to discover our soul's agenda, and then make all our choices from that agenda. If we do, we will discover that our survival, earning our living, having great relationships, making a difference, will all occur as a side effect of following our soul's agenda. You can hear it today here <http://evolvingwisdom.com/nealedonaldwalsch/livingfromyoursoul/online-semin…> . I have listened to much of it, and am finding it so enormously valuable, that I paused the recording of Walsh's talk to inform as many as I can of the opportunity to hear it. Love Timothy -- 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: Guerrilla Translation 2.0 has relaunched!
by Michel Bauwens 21 Feb '15

21 Feb '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Stacco Troncoso <Staccotroncoso(a)guerrillatranslation.com> Date: Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 12:28 AM Subject: Guerrilla Translation 2.0 has relaunched! To: Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> Hello Michel! We finally did it – Guerrilla Translation has relaunched! Our 2.0 version has lots of great new features. The most important to know about is that we’ve split our content into two separate sites, Spanish <http://www.guerrillatranslation.es/> and English <http://www.guerrillatranslation.org/>. It’s more logical for readers, but that’s not all we’ve done. So, you're actually present on both sites! Here’s a link to your bio and your posts in the Spanish version <http://www.guerrillatranslation.es/category/autores_colectivos/michel-bauwe…>, and here it is in the English version <http://www.guerrillatranslation.org/category/authors-collectives/michel-bau…>, you're everywhere! We've also added a lot of reworked static content, including (at last!) donate and services pages to make the whole thing self-sustainable. I'm gonna promote the English version heavily in some 3 hours or so, I'll tag you on FB and twitter so you can share. Gus -- 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: asia times article
by Michel Bauwens 21 Feb '15

21 Feb '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Adam Arvidsson <adam.arvidsson(a)unimi.it> Date: Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 6:16 PM Subject: asia times article To: Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> Michel , a friend and colleague (former phd student) wrote this, I think its very interesting for the whole discourse on bottom up P2P/pirate economy in Asia. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-02-180215.html Adam Arvidsson Associate Professor Department of Social and Political Sciences University of Milano via Conservatorio 7, 20122 Milano +39-0250321209 adam.arvidsson(a)unimi.it -- 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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