opensociety

From whatever angle you approach it, the present offers no way out. This is not the least of its virtues. From those who seek hope above all, it tears away every firm ground. Those who claim to have solutions are contradicted almost immediately. Everyone agrees that things can only get worse. "The future has no future" is the wisdom of an age that, for all its appearance of perfect normalcy, has reached the level of consciousness of the first punks. 

Action map for Saturday 26th February

Ein freies Werkzeug um mit eigenen Daten (schöne) Landkarten zu erstellen. GEO Services sind eine der prominentesten Anwendungen für Open Data.

Young protesters in Yemen squared off against security forces on Sunday, and some marched on the presidential palace in Sana, witnesses said, as a third day of demonstrations sought to emulate the revolution in Egypt. The protests, organized largely by way of text messages, were the largest yet by young Yemenis, with more than 1,000 marching. And it appeared to mark a rift with opposition groups who had organized previous demonstrations that wrested significant concessions from President Ali Abdullah Saleh, including the promise that he would relinquish power in 2013.

Slavoj Žižek: There is no room for compromise. Either the entire Mubarak edifice falls, or the uprising is betrayed

A proposal to help Bank of America destroy the group and its advocates reveal a deeply lawless mindset

WASHINGTON - A fight between a group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers and a California-based Internet security business has opened a window onto the secretive world of private companies that offer to help corporations investigate and discredit their critics.

According to a new report, the Internet police are coming... and they're not wearing badges. Instead, governments are devolving enforcement powers on the 'Net to ISPs.

"Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world." -The late people's historian Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 - January 27, 2010)

Peak Oil is the point at which petroleum production reaches its greatest rate just before going into perpetual decline. In "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate," a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth productions, radio host Thom Hartmann explains that the world will reach peak oil within the next year if it hasn't already. As a nation, the United States reached peak oil in 1974, after which it became a net oil importer. Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and the other scientists, researchers and writers interviewed throughout "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate" describe the diminishing returns our world can expect as it deals with the consequences of peak oil even as it continues to pretend it doesn't exist. These experts predict substantially increased transportation costs, decreased industrial production, unemployment, hunger and social chaos as the supplies of the  fuels on which we rely dwindle and eventually disappear. Chomsky urges us to anticipate the official response to peak oil based on how corporations, news organizations and other institutions have responded to global warming: obfuscation, spin and denial. James Howard Kunstler says that we cannot survive peak oil unless we "come up with a consensus about reality that is consistent with the way things really are." This documentary series hopes to help build that consensus. Click here to watch the introductory video, and check back here for new videos each Wednesday.

Right now, according to a number of studies, we are losing about $100 billion every year because corporate America and the very wealthy are stashing their money in tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. We should be aware that in 2009, ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profits and not only did the company not pay anything in taxes, it got a $106 million refund from the IRS. We should also be aware that since 1997, we have almost tripled funding for the military. So if we are serious about reducing the deficit, those are things we need to look at-not at Social Security, not programs everyday Americans need.

The failure of social scientists to seriously question their own ideological and methodological assumptions contributes to the complex interrelationship between global ecological and individual psychological problems. Much of the literature on the tragedy of the commons focuses on saving the global commons through increased centralization and regulation, at the expense of the individual's autonomy and psychological sense of community. "Utopian" speculation in general and anarchist political analysis in particular are necessary correctives to misplaced attempts to merely rearrange the elements of the status quo rather than to radically alter it in a direction more in keeping with both survival and human dignity.

Dear Friends, In two weeks time, on February 18th, 2011, I will be 78. I know you are asking many questions on Twitter and elsewhere about what I am really like. It's something I would love to know, too! One day it will suddenly dawn on us ... maybe. The world situation is too urgent for us now to discuss trivial things, like what I eat for breakfast. We are at a point in human history when we have to wake up and realize that the only people who can save the world are us. Every hour that goes by without us doing anything about it affects us, and affects the world that we love so much.

New global research on equality, inequality, and the happiness of nations. It's an American issue.