DON’T MESS WITH FIREFLY!
How sci-fi fans made a campus safe for free speech (featuring Neil Gaiman)
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Thank You Anarchists →
At its core, anarchism isn’t simply a negative political philosophy, or an excuse for window-breaking, as most people tend to assume it is. Even while calling for an end to the rule of coercive states backed by military bases, prison industries and subjugation, anarchists and other autonomists try to build a culture in which people can take care of themselves and each other through healthy, sustainable communities. Many are resolutely nonviolent. Drawing on modes of organizing as radical as they are ancient, they insist on using forms of participatory direct democracy that naturally resist corruption by money, status and privilege. Everyone’s basic needs should take precedence over anyone’s greed.
Through the Occupy movement, these assemblies have helped open tremendous space in American political discourse. They’ve started new conversations about what people really want for their communities, conversations that amazingly still haven’t been hijacked, as they might otherwise might be, by charismatic celebrities or special interests. But these assemblies also pose a problem.
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Forbes: St. Louis Doesn't Suck! →
St. Louis has its problems like anywhere else, but there’s a lot to like: good schools, nice parks, great public institutions, competitive sports teams, strong corporate base, the world’s largest mustache (Gateway Arch), and plenty of places that make delicious beer.
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LittleSis: a free database of who-knows-who at the heights of business and government →
LittleSis is a free database detailing the connections between powerful people and organizations. We bring transparency to influential social networks by tracking the key relationships of politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated institutions.
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Romney's Billionaire Sugardaddy Threatens BBC Investigative Reporter "We have a File on Palast" →
Last Monday, a call came in to BBC Television Centre, London, from the office of Mitt Romney’s billionaire backer and “advisor” Paul Singer.
Singer, top donor to the Republican Senate Campaign Committee had a message for the news chiefs at the prestigious broadcaster:
“We have a file on Greg Palast.”
I bet they do.
The purpose of the Singer call was clear: to smear the reporter whose broadcasts from Africa for BBC Newsnight, The Guardian and Democracy Now! had identified Singer as a “Vulture,” a speculator profiteering from misery, mayhem, corruption and civil war.
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Defying Police Blockade, Boston’s Occupy Builds a City →
Occupy Boston establishes a city-within-a-city with the help of MIT developers.
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The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis →
This short theoretical paper elucidates a plausible theory about the Global Financial Crisis and the role of senior financial corporate directors in that crisis. The paper presents a theory of the Global Financial Crisis which argues that psychopaths working in corporations and in financial corporations, in particular, have had a major part in causing the crisis. This paper is thus a very short theoretical paper but is one that may be very important to the future of capitalism because it discusses significant ways in which Corporate Psychopaths may have acted recently, to the detriment of many. Further research into this theory is called for.
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Doulas Rushkoff nails OWS' past and future in an essay written for the human microphone at Zucotti Park →
I am humbled and honored to be amplified by your voices.
You are not fighting against people, but against a machine.
It was put in place over 500 years ago.
By a wealthy elite – trying to repress a booming peer to peer economy.
Those people are all dead, but their program lives on.They invented an operating system called central currency.
People who used to trade directly,
were now forced to borrow money from the king’s bank.
At interest. -
Cognitive Biases in Times of Uncertainty →
We live in a world of increasing pressure and uncertainty, driven in large part by digital technology infrastructures. These marvelous infrastructures bring us unprecedented connectivity and opportunities to better ourselves.
That is a core paradox of our life in the 21st century: our new infrastructures create both opportunity and pressure. The pressure comes from intensifying competition as people previously marginalized in our global economy master these infrastructures and compete for jobs and markets that were previously secure franchises. More importantly, the pressure also comes as those in the core of our economy cling to practices and institutions that were designed for another world and struggle to remain successful in a world that requires new practices and institutions. The turmoil we see around the world today is a vivid illustration of this paradox.
