Within the state, without the state

The WSF 2011 will take place in Dakar, Senegal. This is why from mid-January bus and car caravans will start their journey to Dakar from several places in Africa and Europe. When talking about government in this context, it is useful to distinguish between local authorities and the national (or federal) state. Demba Moussa Dembele, coordinator of the Forum for African Alternatives, a senegalese organization, pointed out that the municipal government of Dakar has a particularly good relationship with the movements. “The mayor is one of us”, he said, adding that the mayor has worked on themes like the foreign debt and Economic Partnership Agreements. One of the ways through which the organizing process might increase its autonomy vis-à-vis the Senegalese government is the creation of a South-based transnational organizing committee for the Dakar WSF. It remains to be seen how this and other new proposals will function in practice, but today it does seem that the process is advancing through learning. Read more

The Future of ‘The Commons’: Neoliberalism’s ‘Plan B’ or the Original Disaccumulation of Capital?

The current issue of new formations contains an interesting article on “the future of the commons”:

The ‘commons’ has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last fifteen years, from a word referring rather archaically to a grassy square in the centre of New England towns to one variously used by real estate developers, ‘free software’ programmers, ecological activists and peasant revolutionaries to describe very different, indeed conflicting, purposes and realities. I believe that this resurgence of ‘commons’ thinking is due to a confluence of two streams coming from opposing perspectives.

Read more: Caffentzis: Future of the Commons

Land grab fears for Ethiopian rural communities

A controversial new farms policy has led to a political clampdown in a remote lowland region of Ethiopia. The government of Meles Zenawi is pioneering the lease of some three million hectares of land over the next five years, an area the size of Belgium. The policy is targeting massive lowland areas mostly in the west and south-west of the country. These are regions populated by smaller minority ethnic groups. The government denies conducting any repression, and says instead that its policy is aimed at lifting local people out of poverty. Foreign investors in Gambella include Chinese, Indian and Saudi firms. The Saudis alone say they are hoping to produce as much as a million tonnes of rice per year, most of it for their own domestic market. Read more (BBC, 16.12.2001)

Image Collection Palastine 1917-1918

Sorry, only in german language: A collection of more than 1.500 photographs mostly taken from airplanes that have been shot by bavarian air force soldiers on the base of their cooperation with the Ottomanic Empire. The Bavarian State Archives digitalized and published the pictures in very high resolution. I can not find any hint about the license the images are published under. See more

Commons – a big issue in India..

IASC2011, the 13th (!) Biennial Conference of the International Association for Study of the Commons, taking place on january 10th to 14th in Hyderabad, India, will take a critical look at the interface between human and natural systems, Commons in particular, to build on our understanding on the elements and interconnectedness that sustain life, collective action and our future. The Conference will contribute rich lessons and principles for managing local, complex, as well as Global Commons such as international arrangements to respond to climate change. Read more

Facebook alternative Diaspora now online alpha-testing

Diaspora is an open-source Facebook alternative. The idea got so much buzz on the crowdsourced micro-funding site Kickstarter, that they were able to turn a goal of raising $10,000 in 39 days into $200,000 from 6,500 backers in the same timeframe. But with such high expectations, you have to deliver. And many expressed doubts that the small team of college students could do that. Read more

Climate Conference in Mexico doomed to failure

La Via Campesina: “COP 16 is doomed to failure”

The sixth Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 16) is already seen as a failure that will affect the future of humanity, as its only result will be to strenghthen the intention of TNCs (Trans-National Corporations) to divert money away from the climate crisis” stated Alberto Gomez from La Via Campesina international coordination.

Berlin Commons Conference

The International Commons Conference connected about 150 leading figures in commons-based studies and activism for a multidisciplinary, international conference in Berlin, Heinrich Böll Foundation. The general objective was to emerge with a set of principles and long-term goals that can foster the planning and development of commons based organisations and policy as well as their networking capacity. Read more about the outcomes of the conference.

See also: Workshop report: Commoning through the Crisis: creating commons power and resisting enclosures and cooptation

Free PDF Reader

Many websites advertise commercial PDF readers to read PDF documents.  Imagine a sign on a motorway telling you that you can only use a certain car to use the motorway… So the Free Software Foundation has now started a campaign against non-free software advertisements on public websites. Free PDF readers are available at PDFreaders.org