Want to Sneak into U.S.? There's an App for That American College Prof Develops Cell-Phone Tool to Help Illegals Cross Border Chelsea Schilling Illegal aliens crossing the U.S.-Mexico border now have a cell-phone tool to chart the best route, find food and locate people who will help them enter the country – courtesy of a professor at a state-funded university. Ricardo Dominguez, a University of California, San Diego tenured visual arts professor and activist, designed the Transborder Immigrant Tool, an application much like a global-positioning system used in cars, to help illegals find the best locations for food, water and groups to assist them as they sneak into America.

Cooperation and Human Nature Bernard Marszalek JAS Econ Here are two excerpts from a recent news feature. "I cannot direct anybody to do anything that they do not want to do. All decision-making is by consensus." All around . . . groups organized themselves in democratic cooperatives, arranged in an anti-hierarchy. All deliberations are open -- and exhaustive. Everyone gets their say no matter how long it takes. "It is bottom-up and not top-down." Members of cooperatives will recognize these comments. In fact they are so commonplace as to be burdened with a ton of baggage. For some a smile will approach the lips in appreciation of the value of these statements. Others might feel their teeth clenching in anticipation of the seemingly endless meetings that they associate with deliberations over meaningless details. The quotes however do not emanate from a co-op board meeting. They are attributed, in a Wall Street Journal blog, to the scientists working on “the largest machine in the world.”1 That happens to be the Large Hadron Collider -- a $6 billion particle accelerator near Geneva, with thousands scientists involved in its operation.

Solidarity University in Vienna, Austria Opened A few minutes ago, the Solidarity University (kritische und solidarische Universität = KriSU) was founded inVienna, Austria. KriSU-activists revitalized rooms which are vacant since 2 years for the public. KriSU reacts on the fundamental social, ecological and economic crisis of capitalist society. It sees itself as a part of the global university protests. Elfriede Jelinek, famous Austrian writer, declared her solidarity: “I am glad to support this action, since I would support any critical initiative weakening those encrusted university structures.” An international wave of solidarity has been carrying KriSU since its start had been announced. Paul Singer, secretary of state for solidarity economy in the labor ministry of Brazil stated: “This is the first project of a real democratic, open and solidaric university. I hope, that it will thrive and become an example for a new paradigm of education in a more equal society.” Anup Dash, professor of sociology at the university of Utkal, India says: “I should first of all congratulate you on this wonderful and much needed initiative, and I am sure it will soon build up the philosophical and social foundations for an alternative knowledge system to support the great transformation of the global social order that we are all working in different ways to realize.” KriSU is working for a solidarity economy to overcome poverty and existential fears. It is open to everbody willing to produce and share knowledge in a self-managed and cooperative way, not requiring formal education degrees. “A solidarity university must not support economic growth as and in itself and competition, but has to make wealth available for everybody” emphasize activists. One of them working for an agricultural reasearch organisation in Austria states: “Time is ripe for public discussion of the responsibility of universities for the disastrous ecologic and societal conditions and for drawing consequences.” The principles of KriSu are (1) a lively connection between research, education and pracrical activities, (2) self-management, feminism, antiracism and engagment against antisemitism and islamophobia, (3) non-commercial character, (4) independence from the state, (5) education for solidarity economy and a solidarity economy of education by means of research, mediation and development of self-managed, community-oriented and cooperative ways of production.

The Brave New World of Work Armin Medosch The Next Layer This text is a first draft, trying to identify key topics for an inquiry into the new organisation of labour. It starts with a historic analysis and then explores the notion of Post-Fordism.Specific sections are devoted to cognitive capitalism, the creative industries, informational capitalism and the split between manual and mental labour. It ends with a modest proposal for an alternative path of development. The human species cannot exist without work. Even if automation is driven to absurd limits, there will always be a rest of socially necessary labour. Labour is essentially the work of self-creation of the human species. And insofar this is true, there is no fixed or permanent understanding of labour and the social relationships which it is part of and which it creates. Therefore a reassessment of labour in the 21st century is urgently necessary. We are interested in an inquiry inte the new organisation of labour not because we are obsessed with work. We also do not privilege in our analysis the wage-labour relationship. The question of labour of course implies forms of non-labour or what Marx called 'reproduction'; it implies idleness, affective labour, the labour of love, learning, experimentation and many other forms of labour which are not captured 100% by the notion of 'productive' labour in wage-labour relationships. Our interest in labour is stimulated by the sense of crisis that reaches much deeper than the recent banking crisis and the ongoing market volatility. We think that we are going through a phase of transition during which either the tracks can be laid for a future development of human civilisation that is more beneficial in its relationship with the biosphere, including our own physical and mental resources; or we are bound to suffer from further rapid cycles of accumulation of capital and collapses, of speeded up developments and of break-downs, which will cause poverty, hunger and devastation on a global scale, but inadvertently hitting the poor much worse than those living in the comfort zone of the relatively wealthy countries. We propose to undertake an inquiry which looks at the reality of living labour today. Putting labour into a central position is a methodological decision designed to counter the tendency of the reification of theories, a one-sided process of abstraction which creates false totalities.

Why Carbon Offsetting Will Not Save the Planet Mayfly Books Upsetting the Offset engages critically with the political economy of carbon markets. It presents a range of case studies and critiques from around the world, showing how the scam of carbon markets affects the lives of communities. But the book doesn’t stop there. It also presents a number of alternatives to carbon markets which enable communities to live in real low-carbon futures. Read the press release dated 1 December 2009. ‘This book is a very constructive and rigorous critique of CDM offset approaches to deal with carbon footprints. I recommend this book to any student, policy maker or administrator of climate change complexities in developed or developing countries.’ Professor Anil Gupta, Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad, India ‘If you wondered whether capitalism could ever produce the perfect weapon of its own destruction, try this heady mix of carbon fuels, the trade in financial derivatives, and more than a dash of neo-colonialism, and boom! But this book is far from resigned to that fate. After examining the case against carbon trading… the book turns to alternatives, to hope, to sanity, and to the future.’ Professor Stefano Harney, Queen Mary, University of London, UK

Turbulence 5 'And Now For Something Completely Different' Released Until recently, anyone who suggested nationalising the banks would have been derided as a ‘quack’ and a ‘crank’, as lacking the most basic understanding of the functioning of a ‘complex, globalised world’. The grip of ‘orthodoxy’ disqualified the idea, and many more, without the need even to offer a counter-argument. And yet, in this time of intersecting crises, when it seems like everything could, and should, have changed, it paradoxically feels as though very little has. Individuals and companies have hunkered down to try and ride out the crisis. Nationalisations and government spending have been used to prevent change, not initiate it. Anger and protest have erupted around different aspects of the crises, but no common or consistent reaction has seemed able to cohere. We appear unable to move on. For many years, social movements could meet and recognise one another on the *common ground* of rejecting neoliberalism, society’s old *middle ground* -- those discourses and practices that defined the centre of the political field. The crisis of the middle has meant a crumbling of the common. And what now? Will neoliberalism continue to stumble on without direction, zombie-like? Or, is it time for something completely different?

We Want the Full Loaf (not just a child support grant) Mnikelo Ndabankulu [Presentation at the Development Action Group Workshop, Cape Town, South Africa, 18 November 2009] The Slums Act The Slums Act first came to our ears as a Bill in 2006. The information about this Bill came to us indirectly through our sources. It was clear that we needed to discuss this Bill as Abahlali. M'du Hlongwa and I both went to the Government Communications to ask a copy. We had two copies and we shared these copies and we analysed the Bill. We had a number of meetings where we read the Bill together going one line by one line. Before we could get into the Bill the name of the Bill was already frustrating us as it talked about shack settlements as 'Slums'. Yes our communities are under developed and they need development. That is obvious. But they are not 'slums'. A slum is a place where there there is nothing good, where there is no survival. We immediately thought that it is wrong to call our communities 'slums'. We immediately thought that the government must recognise that our settlements are communities – communities that are underdeveloped due to neglect by the government - and that they need to be developed by that same government. They need to be made formal – not to be eradicated.

The Decade to Come Brian Holmes It was the heyday of globalization, the high point of the Internet boom and the last gasp of the New Economy: the WTO ministerial in Seattle was meant to celebrate the advent of a corporate millennium extending “free trade” to the furthest corners of the earth. Nobody on that fall morning of Tuesday, 30 November 1999, could have predicted that by nightfall the summit would be disrupted, downtown Seattle would be paralyzed by demonstrations and a full-scale police riot would have broken out, revealing to everyone what democracy really looks like and plunging the city into five days of chaos. Nobody, that is, except the thousands of protesters who prepared for months to put their bodies on the line and shut down the World Trade Organization – as well as their hundreds of thousands of other bodies across the world who learned the potentials of the networked society by participating in the far-flung renewal of leftist, anarchist, social justice and ecology movements that began in the wake of the Zapatista uprising five years before. The 30th of November was their day, our day, a tumultuous day in the streets, inaugurating a movement of movements whose resistance had become as transnational as capital.

Building a Mass Movement Save the Planet, Fight Racism Anonymous Comrade I’ve spent forty years of my life as a serious activist. I’ve been to prison as a result and I’ve also had fun. I’ve been involved in one way or another in about every “issue” to come down the left wing pike during that time. I’ve seen some changes. I haven’t seen nearly enough. I’m tied of hearing about past movements. Though I was there, I’m tired of hearing about the 60s. The suggestions I’m about to make are aimed at folks one hell of a lot younger than me. Young activists have the energy, the spirit, the strength to make things happen. Young activists have not become cynical like so many of my compatriots. I should note that I come from a framework which I would describe as anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and Marxist. For me, what we used to call the primary contradictions are race and class. It is through that prism that I view the world.