<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div>Is this what you mean Peter: </div><div><br></div><a href="http://www.commonssense.it/emend/european-charter-of-the-commons-eng/">http://www.commonssense.it/emend/european-charter-of-the-commons-eng/</a><div><br></div><div>We did indeed start to compile a draft text and discussion material here: </div><div><a href="https://globalcommonscharter.titanpad.com/1">https://globalcommonscharter.titanpad.com/1</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>This is globally open to anyone who like to contribute to the wiki-writing (ideally multi-lingual) process. </div><div><br></div><div>Next monday we will have a workgroup meeting over skype to discuss core issues and before that we will try to send around an appealing invitation. However whoever feels to join please do so without waiting invite; this as an totally open peer to peer commoning process; </div><div><br></div><div>note in your agenda that we meet next Monday, at 16:00 UK Time, on Skype. </div><div><br></div><div>My skype ID is orsan1234 if you add me and call (or Ellen, or Anna) you can join the call. </div><div><br></div><div>Best, </div><div><br></div><div>Orsan</div><div><br></div><div> <br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 1 July 2016 at 15:49, peter waterman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:peterwaterman1936@gmail.com" target="_blank">peterwaterman1936@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-size:small">Orsan<br><br></div><div style="font-size:small">I have an idea there is some kind of Charter of the Commons online somewhere. I'll try to find it. But if I can't, why don't you draft one.<br><br></div><div style="font-size:small">Peter W<br></div><div style="font-size:small">Charter Lover<br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 1:11 PM, Orsan Senalp <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:orsan1234@gmail.com" target="_blank">orsan1234@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div class="h5"><div dir="auto"><div><br></div><div>What needed is a commons program designed and carried out by the emancipatory forces struggling to unite in the global south (transnationally located in east-west-north-south). </div><div><br></div><div>Inter-networks of local, national and global communities needs to form defacto global 'unState'; based on self-organized and direct-democratic economic, cultural, decision making, and execution bodies. </div><div><br></div><div>Wsf can play a crucial role, as well as a most radical commons charter (a global Magna Charta) movement demanding end of domination of elite-ruling classes, their yoke on all the commons, means of production, culture, and sources of social power. </div><div><br></div><div>... </div><div>Orsan </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>On 01 Jul 2016, at 13:01, Orsan Senalp <<a href="mailto:orsan1234@gmail.com" target="_blank">orsan1234@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div><span></span></div><div><div><br>I recently shared a draft translation of Sultan-galiev's ~1929 article in which he described the nature of slaver-master relationship build consciously by the West towards the East during the colonial period. </div><div><br></div><div>In the so called post-colonial era however, as middle classes has become skeleton for ruling power structures within the Western stable capitalist Nation-states (which are clonned in the periphery) European and broader Western consumer-worker aristocracy of the past did become center of gravity in the new post-colonial imperial value extraction, accumulation by exploitation. It's asthetic, individualizm, and economics has spread by clonned of nation state structures and given the legitimacy of all mass killings, wars, genocides in the service of capitalist accumulation at the world level... We experienced in the 20 and 21cc transnationalization of production, classes, and the state system out of which global south - global north framework emerged. West and East expanded all over the world so to say. </div><div><br></div><div>In case Europe, and the West collapse and the center of gravity of the Global North's imperialism over the global south things can even go worst. So for the sake of global emancipation and liberation of humanity what needs to fall is, with its translocal and transnational structures, the entire rule of the global north over the global south. <br><br></div><div>Orsan</div><div><br></div><div><br>On 30 Jun 2016, at 14:04, Orsan Senalp <<a href="mailto:orsan1234@gmail.com" target="_blank">orsan1234@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div><br>Agree with your questioning and solutioning. :) </div><div><br></div><div>I have a different set of networked and self-organized 'unstate' 'uninstitutions' as part of translocally transnationally forging of rebuildng-struggle but rest sounds good to me. </div><div><br></div><div>Orsan<br><br></div><div><br>On 24 Jun 2016, at 21:59, Michel Bauwens <<a href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">michel@p2pfoundation.net</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr">interesting, here are some questions of my own:<div><br></div><div>* would a more neoliberal, anti-workers EU, be better for African nations .. is the collapse of Greece and all its human costs, good for the majority of the African population</div><div><br></div><div>* what is the evidence that European neoliberal oligarchies, and their terms of trade, would be more friendly towards these populations without the EU and the countervailing power of European social movements ?</div><div><br></div><div>* what is the evidence that new imperial forces, if the power of Europe would collapse, would be more friendlier (in the beginning, there seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm of the African elite towards China, is that still the case ?)</div><div><br></div><div>My own inkling would be to answer in a negative way, i.e. a further neoliberalisation of Europe would not be a good thing for anyone</div><div><br></div><div>Nevertheless, I am not very optimistic about the attempt by Varoufakis and DIEM, althought it probably must be tried, as it would require a wholesale progressive electoral revoluton in the whole of Europe, while a left-right polarisation seems so much more likely .. Second, if such a mobilisation was the case, wouldn't it be better to recreate European and other multilaterial structures, on a wholly different footing as the current neoliberal institutions ? (and agreeing with the author, such a re-organization would seek fair trade, not unfair free trade)</div><div><br></div><div>my own bias would be to work at the transnational level, using direct links between European, African and other populations, see: <a href="http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Why_the_P2P_and_Commons_Movement_Must_Act_Trans-Locally_and_Trans-Nationally" target="_blank">http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Why_the_P2P_and_Commons_Movement_Must_Act_Trans-Locally_and_Trans-Nationally</a></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 9:41 PM, Orsan Senalp <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:orsan1234@gmail.com" target="_blank">orsan1234@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><div><br></div><div><br>Begin forwarded message:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><b>From:</b> Toussaint Losier <<a href="mailto:toussaint.losier@gmail.com" target="_blank">toussaint.losier@gmail.com</a>><br><b>Date:</b> 24 Jun 2016 16:24:54 GMT+2<br><b>To:</b> Debate is a listserve that attempts to promoteinformation and analyses of interest to the independent left in South andSouthern Africa <<a href="mailto:debate-list@fahamu.org" target="_blank">debate-list@fahamu.org</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> <b>[Debate-List] You Talk About the Collapse of Western Civilisation as If It Would be a Bad Thing</b><br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><p>written prior to today's referendum results ...<br><span title="2016-06-23"></span></p><p><span title="2016-06-23">June 23, 2016</span>
</p><h1><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/23/you-talk-about-the-collapse-of-western-civilisation-as-if-it-would-be-a-bad-thing/" rel="bookmark" target="_blank">You Talk About the Collapse of Western Civilisation as If It Would be a Bad Thing</a></h1>
<p>
<span>by</span> <span><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/tre4ameyuhuc/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kalundi Serumaga</a></span>
</p><p>Former Greek Finance Minister Yiannis Varoufakis’ crusade to help
save the 60 year old European Union from a growing potential
disintegration is intriguing. He, and the other activists talk
ultimately about the collapse of Western civilization, an<a href="https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/60764" target="_blank">d more so as if it would necessarily be a bad thing</a>. Some of us –for whom the world is a catastrophe already-, are not so sure.</p>
<p>Coming from a far left perspective, Dr Varoufakis argues that the
purpose of the campaign is to prevent the emergence of something worse.
That such a rescue mission will inevitably also bolster the economic
system upon which the EU rests, not to mention many of the super-rich
who derive disproportionate benefits from it, is regarded as a necessary
evil.</p>
<p>This could be a mistake.</p>
<p>Certainly, an unraveling of the EU, even partially, would be
momentous, particularly in terms of the economic impact on lives and
communities there. Those arguing for its preservation –especially those
on the Left of the political spectrum- are probably also correct about a
resultant vastly increased risk of a return to the earlier pan-European
penchant for large-scale war and extreme intolerance as methods of
managing political problems.</p>
<p>However, if the matter of the future of the EU continues be treated
as a matter for its member states and their citizens alone, then these
advocates of progress will find they have become the advocates of the
very evils they seek to strike down. Dr Varoufakis may well find himself
committing the same kind of betrayal of which he accuses his former
boss (Greek Prime Minister) Alex Tsipiras: sacrificing a pig or two so
the big bad corporate wolf does not blow the whole house down.</p>
<p>Varoufakis’ country was able to freely elect a government of its own
choice, to speak on its behalf against the new economic regime. By
contrast, much of the same measures, when brought to Africa by the same
EU and its other partners, were agreed to by stealth with the resident
dictator/election cheat running the state, and then imposed, without
much debate, if any, on the population. What is more, some of these
measures have now been in effect for so long (over twenty years in
Uganda, where I come from), that the have become the norm for many in
the population, intelligentsia included.</p>
<p>The EU is a global power in its own right. <a href="http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/september/tradoc_113340.pdf" target="_blank">It is the major trading partner</a>
for a whole host of states, many of which were created by European
countries during their empire phase. The vast majority of them, now
collected in the African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) also form the bulk of
the Least Developed Nations list.</p>
<p>The family of trade agreements between the EU and the ACP region are
the direct descendants of trade pacts made between then EU’s own
ancestor known as the European Commission, and the various fledgling
regional trade blocs throughout the South. In <a href="tel:1974" value="+661974" target="_blank">1974</a>, a major sit-down was
held where all such blocs were grouped as the ACP region, and all such
Agreements became the Lome’ Convention.</p>
<p>Renamed today as Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) their primary
features is a lopsided arrangement greatly favouring the EU,
particularly through preserving European agricultural subsidies while
eliminating ACP ones, and also forcing open the ACP agricultural sector
to foreign domination, and commodity dumping.</p>
<p>“These trade and investment agreements serve the interests of
multinationals and undermine the legal sovereignty of participating
countries. Not only do EPAs hinder the development of many Africans,
they lead to growing inequality, violence and migration.” Ugandan trade
activist Yash Tandon, author of<em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1939293812/counterpunchmaga" target="_blank"> Trade is War</a></em>, explains.</p>
<p>Today, the seventy-nine member ACP is locked into a 2000-2020 EPA
with the EU, and thousands of young African economic migrants from
bankrupted farming and fishing families are making the dangerous
crossing to try and enter the Eurozone.</p>
<p>While it is clear that something has fallen apart, this side of the
matter seems wholly absent from the European parties on all sides of the
ongoing debate. They talk about the EU’s economic crisis, and the
African migrant crisis, as if they are two completely unrelated things.</p>
<p>Western economic policy has never just been a matter of skill. It has
always been a matter of power. The current global world order was
created out of a half-millennial process of the powerful imposing their
vision of how things should be, on the weak.</p>
<p>If it were simply a question of implementing knowledge then perhaps Queen Elisabeth would not have had to <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/69678/Angry-Queen-asks-Why-didn-t-anyone-see-the-credit-crunch-coming" target="_blank">ask the Professors at LSE why none of them saw the crash coming</a>.</p>
<p>This is how unequal “trade” (for lack of a more precise word) comes
in to help resolve some of the glaring contradictions contained within
Western economic assumptions: From where will new actual value be
created to pay off the ever-lengthening line of credit being extended to
the general population? Is it reasonable for societies with massively
shrinking manufacturing bases to expect to live to the same, or even
better, material standards that existed before the contraction? If your
economies are not producing as much new actual value as they did a few
generations ago, then what exactly is keeping your currencies “strong”?</p>
<p>Any African wishing to amuse a group of western thinker-activists,
could try explaining to them how what appears as trade on their end of
the contract looks very much like sophisticated looting on the
African/ACP end. This assertion is often met with derision.
Nevertheless, there is <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-mother-of-all-bubbles-huge-national-debts-could-push-euro-zone-into-bankruptcy-a-692666-2.html" target="_blank">a lot of data and anecdote now available</a>
to show how the gap between what Western economies actually make, and
what they actually spend, is bridged by the relentless forcing down of
the prices of the basic commodities and labour that they are able to
extract from the “developing” world.</p>
<p>Pro-EU activists must ask themselves: who bears the real cost of keeping the European Union together?</p>
<p>The EU’s EPAs EU backstop a whole pattern of economic relations
planted through colonial violence. Large areas of fertile ACP land are
still given over to the production of crops consumed largely in the
west, at prices fixed in their commodity exchanges.</p>
<p>In that context, the EU members, individually and collectively, have
done much to shape the contemporary economic landscape in Africa and
elsewhere. And guess what? Much of it has been in the form of the very
“austerity” economic policies that Varoufakis has heroically battled
against both as Finance minister, and after, as Europeans began
discovering what Africans have been living with for a generation.</p>
<p>The EU is a vast political safety device formed after the 1939-1945
war that Europeans started. It is based on the notion that it may be
harder to start a fight with someone with whom you are locked in a tight
embrace. What began as an initiative toward integrated trade in certain
key commodities has grown in to complex political and economic system
taking in much of the wealthier parts of the European landmass.</p>
<p>In practical terms, this means a greater likelihood of western
commercial interests driving war in the oilfields of the Middle East,
rather than another one over the <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/90197677#MINERAL%20WEALTH%20OF%20LORRAINE.%20They%20secured%20the%20largest%20deposit%20of%20iron%20ore%20in%20Europe.%20and%20the%20second%20largest%20in%20the%20world.%20The%20soil%20of%20the%20lost%20provinces%20has%20made%20Germany%27s%20for%20tune.%20She%20has%20derive" target="_blank">vast mineral wealth of the Alsace-Lorraine region</a> . It is the ultimate outsourcing.</p>
<p>The campaign argues for keeping the EU together, but while
fundamentally reforming it so that its bureaucracy becomes more
democratically accountable to its populations, particularly in economic
affairs.</p>
<p>But to us non-Europeans, it would appear that the campaigners’ real
complaint is that social democratic compact between the rich and the
poor countries and economic social classes that was ruptured with the
onset of austerity measures across Europe following the Western 2008
banking collapse, is not being respected.</p>
<p>Dr Varoufakis accuses the wealthy European economic classes of in
fact using the economic crisis as an opportunity to abandon the
decades-old social democratic obligations under the cover of a
fictitious “need” for austerity programmes.</p>
<p>As an African living within an EPA, I believe that no European
discussion on how best to recover their economic prosperity, and what
then to do with it, will be legitimate and ultimately productive, unless
Europeans (and in particular, the former colonial powers in western
Europe) also address the basis upon which they acquired and maintain
that prosperity in the first place.</p>
<p>Trade indeed is still war, and a direct continuation of the “first
real First World War” (1520-1550) when the then European powers fought
each other to grab the Americas and first real “Second World War”, when
even more European powers scrambled against each other and Asians and
Africans for more real estate. <a href="https://nassirhassan.wordpress.com/tag/the-effect-of-the-cold-war-on-third-world-countries/" target="_blank">We saw it again during the 1947-1990 “Cold War”</a>,
which, apart from serving as an excuse to impede the many struggles for
progress and emancipation, was anything but “Cold” in the <a href="http://www.coldwar.org/articles/70s/SomaliaEthiopiaandTheOgadenWar1977.asp" target="_blank">African</a> and <a href="http://www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/vietnam_conflict.asp" target="_blank">Asian</a> theatre.</p>
<p>For the ACP region, with ongoing conflicts over arable land and
“blood minerals” being fuelled by Western demand and implemented by
western-friendly warlords (sometimes masquerading as heads of state),
“there is no past, everything is still happening” to quote native
Australian Elder Banjo Clarke.</p>
<p>Short of such a fuller discussion, the “save the EU” campaign will
risk looking more like an attempt to put Humpty Dumpty back together
again, instead of first asking him to think about why, given his
fragility, he decided to perch himself so high up on a wall to begin
with. Africa, along with the entire ACP region will be expected to
retain their “proper” place as a poorer trading partner, so as to help
guarantee a certain standard of living for even the poorest </p></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></div></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div><span class="">_______________________________________________<br>
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<br></span></blockquote></div><span class=""><font color="#888888"><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/o8s52g2y905rq6w/WatermanGmailSignaturePanel%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20Updated.docx?dl=0" target="_blank"><b>Click here for Peter's recent writings</b></a><br><font size="1"><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><b><font color="#ff0000"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"></span></font></b></span></font><br></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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