Chris Cook explores how reality based action can lead to a resilience economy For thousands of years the toxic combination of the inexorable mathematics of compound interest on debt and private ownership of the commons (particularly land) have led to the unsustainable concentration of wealth in the hands of the […]
Remember “Frankenstein foods”? From time to time the Daily Mail veers erratically onto the side of environmentalists and hippies to rail against Genetically Modified Organisms and their appearance on our dinner plates. Tony Blair tried to woo the bio-tech companies behind GMOs despite widespread distaste for eating tomatoes with fish […]
Now that the tents are (mostly) gone, what do we find? Yet another millionaire’s budget, with tax cuts for the rich paid for by the poor. Widening gender inequality. Creeping corporatisation of health, education and welfare. Crony donors and lobbyists pulling all the strings. My activist journey began with the […]
What amounts to being radical in society today? Returning to the library after a lecture by David Harvey on “Rebel Cities”, I do have to ask myself the question – who are we rebelling against, and what for? Harvey makes good points: the proletariat of the Left may not look […]
At a discussion on “the future of capitalism” at the Guardian Open Weekend on 24 March, a case was made by one of the panelists – Will Hutton – for what he called “good capitalism”. This is one that encourages private entrepreneurship but subordinates the market to the broader needs […]
After the (so far) successful opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, attention has shifted to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry over 500,000 barrels of tar sands crude per day across hundreds of British Columbia rivers to the pristine coast. Getting less attention is the already operational […]
I strode towards St Pauls’ Cathedral, wearing a small green paper hat, green tights, and clutching a cardboard bow and arrow. A call went up from somewhere in the small crowd of similarly-dressed people around me: “Robin Hood!”, followed by the mass response “Oo-de-lally!”. The overall Sherwoodian effect was only […]
Activists involved with UK Uncut, Occupy, community organisations and trade unions are about to launch a nationwide campaign – called PAY UP – against highly profitable UK companies that pay some of their staff only the bare minimum. CEO pay, and the focus on the top 1% gained a lot […]
Money is an expression of power relations. The current financial crisis reflects a much deeper crisis, which has to do with the exhaustion of the late twentieth century model of development. By model of development I mean a combination of technology, patterns of production, consumption, communication, infrastructure, and a specific […]
Background If the World is a book, it is written by power. If the political movements of the poors are so far incoherent, it is because they are responding to an incoherent world. If the world has become incoherent, it is because the kind of power that rules tends to […]