Australian Social Forum

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Image: niccolo and egj in Brooklyn

Its almost a year since I originally proposed the Australian Social Forum (no doubt I am not the first to do so, but there is nothing active as far as I can tell)

The Melbourne Social Forum has agreed to auspice the domain www.AustralianSocialForum.org.au  which is now assigned and active.

Join the website and the Australian Social Forum Strategy project www.australiansocialforum.org.au/projects/asf-strategy 

WARNING There are a few bugs to fix - JPEG image uploads into profiles and blog links. 

Also, key research to be done especially around formal aspects of the World Social Forum proces: 10 objectives of WSF, 21 actionable themes, WSF memory and documentation, Charter, process etc. Am hoping Hilge can give me the WSF Crash Course.

I have been in the USA and now Europe researching a permaculture workers-cooperative and am about to go to the UK to do some more permaculture research: Gaia Permaculture, Permaculture TV, Permaculture Cooperative.

Also, in the UK, I will be attending the Climate Camps (probably Scotland and England) and hopefully catching-up with World and European Social Forum activists such as Merlin and Hilge

Also hoping to get involved in the education and democracy aspects of the Climate Camps, as education in the Australian Social Forum process. London, Scotland and Wales. 

Credits:

• Website hosting is provided by Dan Rossi of Electroteque of Sydney Australia
  
• Software support is hosted by now independent OpenCore lead-tech Ethan Jucovy of Social Planning in Brooklyn.
• Huge thanks to Paul Winkler and others from the OpenCore-Dev mailing list that have been super-patient while we travelled up the learning curve of OpenCore installation, configuration and now bug fixes and releases. 

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The Earth has been wrecked by global corporate capitalism and modern industrial consumer society and international finance has been driving this process.

Ever since the counter-revolution of the late 70s and early 80s elites have been working to create markets that benefit the narrow interests of private power.

What is now generally known as Carbon Finance, or Carbon Trading or Emissions Trading, has been developed as a market alongside health care, education, science, and all kinds of public utilties such as information, water, electricty, food etc

Some good starting points

• Corporate Climate Coup, David F Noble

Meanwhile, following an indigenous uprising in Chiapas in January, 1994, set for the first day of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. the anti-globalization movement erupted in world-wide protest against market capitalism and corporate depredation, including the despoiling of the environment. Within five years the movement had grown in cohesion, numbers, momentum and militancy and coalesced in designated “global days of action” around the world, particularly in direct actions at G8 summits and meetings of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the new World Trade Organization, reaching its peak in shutting down the WTO meetings in Seattle in November, 1999. The movement, which consisted of a wide range of diverse grass-roots organizations united in opposition to the global “corporate agenda,” shook the elite globalization campaign to its roots. It was in this charged context that the signatories of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. which had been formulated by representatives from 155 nations at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, met at the end of 1997 In Kyoto and established the so-called Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through carbon targets and trading. The Kyoto treaty, belatedly ratified only in late 2004, was the sole international agreement on climate change and immediately became the bellwether of political debate about global warming.

The first campaign, which took shape in the late 1980’s as part of the triumphalist “globalization” offensive, sought to confront speculation about climate change head-on by denying, doubting, deriding, and dismissing distressing scientific claims which might put a damper on enthusiasm for expansive capitalist enterprise. It was modelled after and …  Read Moreto some extent built upon the earlier campaign by the tobacco industry to sow skepticism about mounting evidence of the deleterious health-effects of smoking. In the wake of this “negative” propaganda effort, any and all critics of climate change and global warming have been immediately identified with this side of the debate.

The second positive campaign, which emerged a decade later, in the wake of Kyoto and at the height of the anti-globalization movement, sought to get out ahead of the environmental issue by affirming it only to hijack it and turn it to corporate advantage. Modelled on a century of corporate liberal cooptation of popular reform movements and regulatory regimes, it aimed to appropriate the issue in order to moderate its political implications, thereby rendering it compatible with corporate economic, geopolitical, and ideological interests. The corporate climate campaign thus emphasized the primacy of “market-based” solutions while insisting upon uniformity and predictability in mandated rules and regulations. At the same time it hyped the global climate issue into an obsession, a totalistic preoccupation with which to divert attention from the radical challenges of the global justice movement. In the wake of this campaign, any and all opponents of the “deniers” have been identified - and, most importantly, have wittingly or unwittingly identified themselves - with the corporate climate crusaders.

• Junk Cap and Trade, Ralph Nader

If President Barack Obama wants to stop the descent toward dangerous global climate change, and avoid the trade anarchy that current approaches to this problem will invite, he should take Al Gore’s proposal for a carbon tax and make it global. A tax on CO2 emissions — not a cap-and-trade system — offers the best prospect of meaningfully engaging China and the U.S., while avoiding the prospect of unhinged environmental protectionism

• Carbon Trading is the Next Sub-Prime

 The row over the working of the European Union’s emissions trading scheme intensified last night when EDF Energy warned that speculators risked turning carbon into a new category of sub-prime investment.

Vincent de Rivaz, the chief executive of the UK arm of the French-owned gas and electricity group, said politicians and regulators needed to revisit the way the ETS was working and whether it was bringing the results they wanted. “We like certainty about a carbon price,” he said. “[But] the carbon price has to become simple and not become a new type of sub-prime tool which will be diverted from what is its initial purpose: to encourage real investment in real low-carbon technology.”

Green campaigners have long been critical of the way the emissions trading scheme was set up, but it is unusual for a leading industry figure to cast doubt on it, as power companies lobbied hard for a market mechanism to deal with global warming.

• Carbon Trading a scam, James Lovelock

  Europe’s carbon trading scheme has proved to be “disastrous” and a “scam” in which companies have profited with no effect on emissions, a leading politician and a scientist said yesterday.

The environmentalist James Lovelock — who developed the Gaia theory of the planet as a “living organism” — and the former environment minister, Michael Meacher, said that market approaches to green issues, such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), were destined to be distorted by business pressures. Lovelock described similar market mechanisms that attempt to put a price on “services” provided by the natural world as akin to “slavery”.

• Democratic process is underminded by lobbying of corporations and only way is direct action and protest

Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. “The democratic process doesn’t quite seem to be working,” he said.

Syncretic Practice to Applied Scientific Synthesis

Gaia Permaculture is an ecological design and operation system for human symbiogenesis with Gaia. It applies traditional and modern concepts and technologies to human interaction with the planet. It is a ecological design framework for the age of the Anthropocene.  The Gaia Permaculture synthesis scales permaculture practice up from the local - home garden, small and broad scale farm, evo-village and eco-burb, transition town up to larger organisational groups such as bio-regions, states, continents and planetary systems.

Gaia Permaculture is a new synthesis conjoining the ideas and practice of the Gaia Hypothesis, created by James Lovelock, and co-developed with Lyn Margulis, and the ecological design system of Permaculture, as created by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, and developed by many practioners, but especially the creator of the Transition Towns concept, Louis Ronney and popularised by Rob Hopkins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns

Gaia Permaculture is the application of the principles and practices of the ecological design and management system of Bill Mollison and David Holmgren applied to planet-scale problems such as peak oil, climate change, corporate-malfeasance, global justice. By coordinating the local implementation of sustainable agriculture, appropriate technology, human settlements Gaia Permaculture works from local to global solutions. Gaia Permaculture seeks to work within the natural planetary physiology of the Gaia hypothesis and works counter to high-tech geo-engineering solutions. Gaia Permaculture is based on practical geo-engineering applications such as sequestering carbon pollution in Bio-Char as suggest by Lovelock. 

Gaia Permaculture’s prime directive is to stablise planetary ecosystem design and management so that human permanent culture can be realised. The primary task is the stablisation of atomspheric C02 by sequestration in soil and ecologies and the reduction in emissions via other strategies of the Transition Movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_innovation_network

Lovelock’s Biochar Proposal

The most serious problem of Gaia Permaculture design is excess atmospheric carbon dioxide. To which Lovelock makes the vital connection between carbon or organic farming and C02 emissions.  

The C02 atmospheric concentrations are such that we can override the precautionary principle and are able to fulfil a core criteria of Ecological Systems Engineering and Management. “Given our current level of ignorance, only intervene when necessary, and then only to the extent required, in complex systems.”

Lovelock proposes the use of Biochar to sequester carbon pollution as humanities last chance to save itself from mass human mortality. In an interview with New Scientist

 So are we doomed?

There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO₂ down quite fast.

Would it make enough of a difference?

Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO₂ is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won’t do it.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.500-one-last-chance-to-save-mankind.html?full=true

Modern biochar production can be combined with biofuel production in a process that is energy-positive(exothermic)—producing 3-9 times more energy than invested, is carbon-negative—withdrawing CO₂ from the atmosphere and rebuilds geological carbon sinks^[12]. This technique is advocated by prominent scientist James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis, for mitigation of global warming by greenhouse gas remediation.^[13]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar#Carbon_sink_potential_and_soil_co-benefits

Carbon Farming Today

Organic farming is based on the concept of building living soil ecologies by natural processes of composting, no-dig or low-tillage and the increasing carbon content in soil, plants, fungus, micro-organisms and ecosystems generally.

Darren Doherty and other leading permaculture-related activists are running Carbon Farming Courses across the USA during 2009. http://permaculture.biz/education/courses.php?courseCategoryID=7

• Terry Gompert & Kirk Gadzia (Holistic Management)
• Dr. Elaine Ingham & Paul Taylor (Soil Food Web)
• Darren Doherty, Brock Dolman, Brad Lancaster, Scott Pittman & Penny Livingston-Stark (Broadacre Permaculture)
• Howard Yana-Shapiro PhD & Warren Brush (Effective AID)
• Michael G. Smith & Justin Kirmse (Natural Building)
• Joel & Daniel Salatin (Pathways to Relocalisation)
• & TBC Paul Stamets (Fungi)

Australian permaculture and natural farmer, Darren Doherty and others such as Allan Yeomans http://www.carbonfarmersofamerica.com/Yeomans1.htm, have formed a consortium called Carbon Farmers of America.

Paul Stamets in his book Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms describes permaculture techniques for fungi that could provide food, medicine and carbon security. http://www.fungi.com/mycotech/permaculture.html

Linked with local, honest, non-speculative carbon finance carbon markets and carbon farming could sequester enough carbon to avoid the worst climate change scenarios.

Quite literally, organic farming, and permaculture could save the world, as well as feed and heal it.

What is Permaculture ?

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies. It was first developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications. The word permaculture is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

Permaculture education

Permaculture is now accredited training in Australia. This Accredited Training Program has been largely developed by Robyn Francis and others.

Permaculture media ecosystem

Permaculture media consists of Permaculture Activist (USA), Permaculture Magazine (UK), numerous books and DVD’s

Permaculture doctrine

Permaculture as New Age cult

Permaculture business franchise

Permaculture science 

‘I wrote the manuscript , which was based partly on our constant discussions and on our practical working together in the garden and on our visits to other sites in Tasmania… I used this manuscript as my primary reference for my thesis, which I submitted and was passed in 1976.’ (Mulligan and Hill, 2001:203)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Holmgren#Life_and_work

Permaculture as social movement

Permaculture engineering

Permaculture as global management system

Permaculture as liberation for world’s poor

Permaculture as cultural imperialism

Permaculture as international aid

Permaculture as gardening & farming system

Permaculture as counter-culture

“Bill Mollison calls himself a field biologist and itinerant teacher. But it would be more accurate to describe him as an instigator. When he published Permaculture One in 1978, he launched an international land-use movement many regard as subversive, even revolutionary.” Scott London

http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/mollison.html

Permaculture as alternative culture

Permaculture as trendy lifestyle

Many baby-boomer’s subscribe to narrow definitions of permaculture and consider their

What is Gaia ?

Metaphor

Science

Movement

New Age cult

Brand

Richard Branson’s Gaia Capitalism, Japanese car, online community

Canon

Permaculture & Gaia

Schumacher College with Plymouth University offers a Masters in Holistic Science which combines Transition Movement application with Gaia theory, some of the course is taught by Lovelock and Hopkins.

The Living Earth: Gaia, Complexity and Chaos Theories

In this module, students work with the concept of emergent self-organisation to understand how the health and well-being of individual organisms, biotic communities and entire ecosystems contribute to the health of Gaia: planet Earth as an integrated whole.

Applied Holistic Science: Social Ecology, Design and Planning

Holistic science can contribute to the understanding of human affairs and to the development of an ecologically, culturally, economically and socially sustainable society. This module seeks to translate the theory of holistic science into a vision of a sustainable future.

Since 2007/08 students have been required to engage with Transition Town Totnes (TTT) as a means of applying holistic science in the world. Students may opt for one of two ways of collaborating with TTT or the Transition Town Network (TTN):

http://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/courses/msc-holistic-science 

Gaia Trust and Eco-Villages

The Gaia Trust has been a major source of funding and support for the Eco-Village movement. http://www.gaia.org/gaia/gaiatrust/permaculture/ http://www.gaia.org/gaia/ecovillage/

The Gaia University is a private online educational organisation that teaches Gaia and permaculture ideas and applications. http://www.gaiauniversity.org/english/index.php?lang=en

In the permaculture literature, Gaia theory is integrated into the 3 principles of Earthcare, Peoplecare & Fairshare.  

• Earthcare – recognising that Earth is the source of all life (and is possibly itself a living entity — see Gaia theory), that Earth is our valuable home, and that we are a part of Earth, not apart from it.
• Peoplecare – supporting and helping each other to change to ways of living that do not harm ourselves or the planet, and to develop healthy societies.
• Fairshare (or placing limits on consumption) - ensuring that Earth’s limited resources are used in ways that are equitable and wise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture#Energy

Status of the Gaia Hypothosesis

Sir Crispin Tickell in the 46th Annual Bennett Lecture for the 50th Anniversary of Geology at the University of Leicester in his recent talk “Earth Systems Science: Are We Pushing Gaia Too Hard?” stated “as a theory, Gaia is now winning.” [2]

At the Third Gaia Conference in 2006 ” approached Gaia Theory as both science and metaphor as a means of understanding how we might begin addressing 21st century issues such as climate change and ongoing environmental destruction.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis#Third_Gaia_conference

He continued “The same goes for the earth systems science which is now the concern of the Geological Society of London (with which the Gaia Society recently merged). Whatever the label, earth systems science, or Gaia, has now become a major subject of inquiry and research, and no longer has to justify itself.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis#Gaia_hypothesis_in_ecology

Permaculture Movement

Adam Fenderson: Could you give us your definition of permaculture and tell us a little bit about your role in its creation and evolution?

David Holmgren: Permaculture is a design system for sustainable living and land use. It came out of awareness about the limits of resources, especially the energy crises of the 1970s. The work started between myself and Bill Mollison when I was a student in environmental design in Tasmania. Since then permaculture has spread around the world as a grassroots movement of activists and designers, teachers, land managers—both gardeners and farmers. It’s also connected in to a very broad church of sustainable alternatives in sustainable building, alternative currency, ideas, eco-villages—many diverse areas.

“It started from the premise of looking at the redesign of agriculture using ecological principles, but it extended out from that to the redesign of the whole of society using those principles. The foundation text was Permaculture One which was published in 1978, a joint work between myself and Bill Mollison. The biggest development of permaculture applications was then Bill Mollison’s Designer’s Manual, which he published in 1988. And then more recently my new book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, has taken those ideas to a broader frame of reference, away from just talking about land management and practical issues to dealing with the fundamental underlying principles behind permaculture and the link to resource limits, especially energy peak.”

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/524

“What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet. We don’t know what details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturists are one of the critical gangs that are doing that.”

Dr David Suzuki geneticist, broadcaster and international environmental advocate

 

Perennial Polyculture

“In Perennial Polyculture Farming, Seeds of Another Agricultural Revolution? By: James A. Dewar, atRAND James Dewar presents arguments in favor of perennial polyculture farming as a positive contribution to a wide variety of global problems and suggests actions that should be taken to explore that promise further.

He explains perennial polyculture farming and differences between it and annual monoculture farming.

He explores its association with reversing environmental degradation; redressing the loss of biodiversity; reducing worldwide hunger, malnutrition, and energy use; and improving the health and education of women and children.

He also explores the feasibility of perennial polyculture farming. Perennials, as opposed to annuals, produce flowers and seeds more than once in their lifetime. In addition, perennial polycultures with mixed intercropping have continual ground cover throughout the year.

While a good deal of work remains to be done to develop the promise of perennial polycultures, there is reason to believe that the promise is real, that it is particularly salient with respect to Africa — the region that could most use the promise of perennial polycultures — and that there are many elements already in place to make that promise a reality. Only lacking are greater recognition of the role that perennials could play and the will to include them in the future of agriculture. ”

http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP179/

The Transition Movement 

The Transition Movement is the confluence of a number of movements; Peak Oil, Relocalisation, Transition Towns, Anti-Globalisation and earlier waves of permaculture.

A Transition Initiative is a community (lots of examples here) working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this BIG question:

“for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?”

http://www.transitiontowns.org/

http://transitionus.ning.com/

http://transitionaotearoa.org.nz/

New Sustainability Paradigm 

Gaia Permaculture matches the New Sustainability Paradigm as outlined below; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Transition

” Great Transition is a vision created by the Global Scenario Group of how humanity could create a civilization that reflects egalitarian social and ecological values, affirms diversity, and defeats poverty, war, and environmental destruction. ^[1] The elements of the Great Transition vision are increased human interconnectedness, improved quality of life, and a healthy planet.

Great Transition scenarios are, in contrast, transformative scenarios. Their defining feature is the ascendancy of a new suite of values – human solidarity, quality of life, and respect for nature. Conventional Worlds scenarios see capitalist values maintained and only market forces and incremental policy reform trying to curb environmental degradation. Barbarization is a set of possible futures in which environmental collapse leads to an overall social collapse. The Great Transition is a pathway that finds humanity changing its relationship with the environment. It has two variants: Eco-Communalism and New Sustainability Paradigm.

Eco-Communalism is the adoption of a lifestyle that turns to non-material dimensions of fulfillment – the quality of life, the quality of human solidarity, and the quality of the earth. It is a highly localist vision favored by some environmental subcultures and is a strong theme within the anti-globalization movement.

New Sustainability Paradigm sees globalization not as a threat to be resisted, but as an opportunity for forging a new category of consciousness – a global citizenship that understands humanity’s place in the web of life and its link to the fate of the earth.

The New Sustainability Paradigm endorses many of the ideals of Eco-Communalism with its plea for new human values and empowered communities. It rejects rampant consumerism, seeking improved human well-being through material sufficiency for all. It seeks a world where the quality of human knowledge, creativity, and self-realization – not the quantity of goods and services – signals development. It embraces equality, empowerment, and deep respect for nature. It recognizes plural paths to modernity, and welcomes regional diversity in expressing such values as freedom, equity, democracy, and sustainability. It champions subsidiarity, the principle that decision-making occurs at the most decentralized level possible.

The New Sustainability Paradigm seeks to shape the character of global civilization. It sees the planetary phase of civilization as an opportunity. Rather than retreat into localism, it validates global solidarity, cultural cross-fertilization and economic interdependence.

Scaling Permaculture 

In an email post, Australian-English clean tech entrepreneur, Mitra, challenged the Oceania mailing list to “scale permaculture”.  This challenge is partly being met by such initiatives as Transition Towns and the Transition Movement.

Homes & Suburbs

There are many examples of homes designed or retrofitted to permaculture principles. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Gardening Australia TV series and its magazines Gardening Australia and Organic Gardener feature many permaculture homes & gardens.

Presenter: Joshua Byrne & Peter Cundall, 19/02/2005

In 2004, Josh Byrne set up a permaculture garden in his suburban backyard in Perth. In this episode of Gardening Australia, Josh travels to Peter Cundall’s garden in Northern Tasmania to chat about the different gardening techniques each of them use. We revisit how Josh planned, established and developed his garden and look at the many aspects that make up his permaculture garden including building a chook shed and run, planting the verge garden and establishing a wetlands area.

http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1305187.htm

One of the original eco-burbs, or ecological suburbs, is Village Homes in Davis California. Bill Mollison in the TV documentary, praises Village Homes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmW4nIgjkb4&feature=related

David Holmgren talks of the positive potential to retrofit the suburbs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTYe8WloF1U

Farms

David Holmgren on ABC’s Landline http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTUaSelgIlc&feature=related

One of the most accomplished broad-acre permaculture farm designers and practiioners is Darren Doherty.

Towns

Transition Towns

Cities

Transition Cities - US

other older examples ?

Abu Dabhi

Bio Regions

The Planetary Phase of Civilization 

Biomes

Biomes are climatically and geographically defined areas of ecologically similar climatic conditions such as communities of plants, animals, and soil organisms, ^[1] and are often referred to as ecosystems. Biomes are defined by factors such as plant structures (such as trees, shrubs, and grasses), leaf types (such as broadleaf and needleleaf), plant spacing (forest, woodland, savanna), and climate. Unlike ecozones, biomes are not defined by genetic, taxonomic, or historical similarities. Biomes are often identified with particular patterns of ecological succession and climax vegetation (quasi-equilibrium state of the local ecosystem). An ecosystem has a habitat and a biome is a major habitat type. A major habitat type, however, is a compromise, as it has an intrinsic inhomogeneity.

RAND Corporation’s report, Perennial Polyculture Farming, Seeds of Another Agricultural Revolution? By: James A. Dewar http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP179/ sketches and outline of a corporate global management system based on perennial polyculture via organising around biomes. However, countrary to the corporate system of management in the RAND report, permaculture practicioners have pointed-out;

Corporate capitalist agribusiness must NOT be conflated with permaculture.

Permaculture is fundamentally an ethical framework based upon Care for the

Earth, Care for People, and Surplus Share; none of which modern capitalist

structures fulfill in slight comparison with what is possible or what is

done in non-capitalist, non-centralized economies like parecons

(parecon.org)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd60nYW577U

perennial polyculture may be utilized without going through the

organizational modes of permaculturally implied systems. ”

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2009-January/032610.html

Gaia

The New Sustainability Paradigm

Climate War

just like the Cold War framework was containment, the new Climate War framework will be sustainment… as in the US counter-insurgency manual.. supply of basic services for life directly from the military, indeed the disaster capitalism complex

3 options/pathways

1. Sustainment:  a permanent environmental war economy, corporate-state military industrial globalised sustainability, eco-terrorism will be the ultimate crime, Red-Green the new Communism, Gaia or some other kind of organised religious green theocracy/technocracy the state religion

2. Apocalypse: revelation at the end of the world, what will go wrong and why and what we should do

3. Liberation:  Liberation ecology, Sacred Gaia, Generative Gaia, Gaia Permaculture

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=FHy5Ev8yg20C&pg=PT156&lpg=PT156&dq=sustainment+counter+insurgency&source=web&ots=03gqEL1V0C&sig=kVfxJMQgjFa9crZScofTMseAcPw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

my intuition is that a green technocracy will convert the world capitalist system (which is based on the military industrial system anyway) into a sustainable world military industrial system with a focus on carbon trading and ecosystem services financialisation, privatisation, genetically modified organisisms, nuclear power, (some renewables), massive surveillance, geo-enigneering, social engineering, and a massive epansion of the entertainment and other de-carbonised, service based industries where complex growth can still occur. In Revenge of Gaia Lovelock talks about a new low-carbon economy where most people live in cities and spend their time eating GMO fungi and entertaining themselves consuming digital and de-carbonised services… Lovelock is closely connected to various conservatives and captains of industry and has a big effect on the UK environmentalists such as Monbiot and also the new scheme Kyoto2 www.kyoto2.org. Kyoto2 is market bases, advocates GMO, nuclear, geo-engineering… and is backed by many ‘radicals’. It contains 4 quotes about climate change by Margaret Thatcher ! 2 more than Lovelock. The UK environmental movement is being subsumed by the Vote Blue Go Green campaign of the Tories under David Cameron which is an front for the broader green consumerism. Kind of a UK equivalent to the guilt-free green Governator in California.

 Thomas J Friedman, new book, NY Times “The inflection point is near”, emails to Chomsky, forumulation

Apocalypse

Hansen, Lovelock, worst-case

Sustainment

military industrial sustainability, a continuation of the totalitarian agriculture of the levant and the Pharoahs

Gaia global national socialism = Global Fascism = global sustainment = global military industrial sustainability

emails, Chomsky, Minq Li, Albert, Leahy

Liberation

the struggle for liberation from the imperial industrial slave complex, ancient and modern and a return to principles of perennial polyculture and non-hierachial forms of pre-industrial civilisation

Jensen, What a Way to Go, Zeitgeist, anarchism

Liberation Ecology

http://books.google.com/books?id=IZtEtNflDowC&dq=sacred+gaia&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=hKnnEAEBEs&sig=7C_SjlWfvlGNFdSqnmTAYjtqdTw&hl=en&ei=Fli_Sd_fJZPaMY-48a4N&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

Eco-inter-faith

the potential for a new enlightenment, the revelation at the end of the world of the apocalypse…

Gaia Permaculture 1.0

how do we start ? Gaia Permaculture designs for Biochar, the Amazon, Australia, the USA, the UK

the 50 Year Farm Bill, ecological and indigenous rights from El Salvador, my emails

Cue the Green God ?  

Gore Vidal… avoiding the new green bought priesthood, the Carbon Dictarship (Flannery) and the Disaster Capitalism (Klein) of monstrous proportions

Climate Change and Gaia Permaculture

learning from the ancients - Hamlets Mill

Gaia Bible

see Revenge of Gaia

The Peoples History of Gaia

Aboriginal peoples, and homo sapiens sapiens have been on Earth for 200 000 years… so must of experience 2 or 3 glacial-interglacial changes.. the current climate change, or climate war, is not new… but will we survive ? will we have our apocalypse ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_environmental_events

Recommendations of Gaia Permaculture

The Internet is 20 years old in March 2009 http://www.webguild.org/2009/03/happy-birthday-to-the-internet.php and provides a model for the development of a set of Gaia Permaculture Technical Recommendations.

These technical recommendations would allow a global, decentralised and inter-operable development of Gaia Permaculture designs and applications.

The technical recommendations would evolve via democratic knowledge management processes through various phases. http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/tr

W3C follows these steps when advancing a technical report to Recommendation.

1. Publication of the First Public Working Draft.
2. Last Call announcement
3. Call for Implementations. Note: The Director MAY permit the Working Group to skip this step if the entrance criteria for the next step have already been satisfied.
4. Call for Review of a Proposed Recommendation.
5. Publication as a Recommendation.

The Political Economy of Gaia Permaculture

Mollison’s Complex Influence

According to Mollison, permaculture has always been more than a gardening system, and is a system of human settlements within the three basic principles of Earthcare, Peoplecare and Fairshare.

“an integrated system of design co-developed with David Holmgren that encompasses not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture and ecology but also economic systems, land access strategies and legal systems for businesses and communities.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mollison

Indeed the early Permaculture One & Permaculture Two books are scattered with references to Mao Tse Tong and other political revolutionairies. At the APC9 (9th Australian Permaculture Convergance) Mollison told a story of his early days at the University of Tasmania as an academic in the late 60s. I paraphrase from memory ”All the communists I knew in Tasmania, where all rich with nice houses, including some famours gardeners (Peter Kundall of Gardening Australia)… the communists used to say to me, Bill, why dont you become a communist ?.. I would say to them, NO, why dont you become an ecologist !”. David Holmgren alluded to a similar theme in Mollison’s political past when he described the plaque on Mollison’s Hobart home as reading “The People’s Republic of .(cant recall).. Sreet”.

The Mollisonian permaculture doctrine was firmly a solutions-based approach to ecological design. In otherwords, no negative direct action such as protests, as general disengagement from politics and economics and a tendency to go it alone, back to the Earth or the land.

This suited many of the affluent baby boomers in the global north that could afford to buy land and subsidise experiments in low impact subsistence farming. This was part of a much larger back-to-the-land movement towards the end of the New Left and hippie era of the early 70s.

For many, the Permaculture Design Certificate 72 hour intensive course was a quasi-religious experience. Especially those PDC’s delivered by Bill Mollison, whose charisma, genius and story-telling are legendary.

However, its almost a truism that there are more x-permies than there are active pracitioners. For many this is simply due to factual errors in the permaculture canon. A positive take would be that the science of permaculture is poorly developed and the engineering even less so. Conceptually there is almost universal agreement, increasingly even from deep with the Establishment, which traditionally opposed much of the permaculture canon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-the-land_movement

David Holmgren

At APC9, in conversation at a session, David Holmgren spoke of his family history of being a second generation social activist.

‘I wrote the manuscript, which was based partly on our constant discussions and on our practical working together in the garden and on our visits to other sites in Tasmania… I used this manuscript as my primary reference for my thesis, which I submitted and was passed in 1976.’ (Mulligan and Hill, 2001:203)

Transition Towns Movement

Permaculture Inc.

James Lovelock

Gaia Permaculture as Technical Recommendations for Liberation Ecology Design

Global Justice Movement

Via Campesina etc

Gaia Permaculture as Ecological Engineering

Ecological engineering is an emerging of study integrating ecology and engineering, concerned with the design, monitoring and construction of ecosystems. The design of sustainable ecosystems intends to integrate human society with its natural environment for the benefit of both.^[1]

Mitsch and Jørgensen^[3] were the first to define ecological engineering and provide ecological engineering principles. Later they refined the definition and increased the number of principles^[7]. They defined and characterized ecological engineering in a 1989 book and clarified it further in their 2004 book (see Literature). They suggest the goal of ecological engineering is: a) the restoration of ecosystems that have been substantially disturbed by human activities such as environmental pollution or land disturbance, and b) the development of new sustainable ecosystems that have both human and ecological values. They summarized the five concepts key to ecological engineering as:

1. it is based on the self-designing capacity of ecosystems,
2. it can be a field test of ecological theory,
3. it relies on integrated system approaches,
4. it conserves non-renewable energy, and
5. it supports biological conservation.

Bergen et al.^[8] defined ecological engineering as:

• utilizing ecological science and theory,
• applying to all types of ecosystems,
• adapting engineering design methods, and
• acknowledging a guiding value system.

Ecological engineering involves the design, construction and management of ecosystems that have value to both humans and the environment. This engineering discipline combines basic and applied science from engineering, ecology, economics, and natural sciences for the restoration and construction of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The field of ecological engineering is increasing in breadth and depth as more opportunities to design and use ecosystems as interfaces between technology and environment are explored.^[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_engineering

Science

Systems Lithosphere Bioshpere Noospehere etc

Gaia

management concepts

Permaculture

concepts

scales

Earth Systems Engineering and Management

Over the past five years, the concept of Earth Systems Engineering and Management has been developed by a few individuals. One of particular note is Braden Allenby. Allenby holds that the foundation upon which ESEM is built is the notion that “the Earth, as it now exists, is a product of human design”.^[3] In fact there are no longer any natural systems left in the world, “there are no places left on Earth that don’t fall under humanity’s shadow”.^[4] “So the question is not, as some might wish, whether we should begin ESEM, because we have been doing it for a long time, albeit unintentionally.

The issue is whether we will assume the ethical responsibility to do ESEM rationally and responsibly”.^[3] Unlike the traditional engineering and management process “which assume a high degree of knowledge and certainty about the systems behavior and a defined endpoint to the process,” ESEM “will be in constant dialog with [the systems], as they – and we and our cultures – change and coevolve together into the future”.^[3] ESEM is a new concept, however there are a number of fields “such as industrial ecology, adaptive management, and systems engineering that can be relied on to enable rapid progress in developing” ESEM as a discipline.^[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_systems_engineering_and_management

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/531/

Patterns

Principles

scale

Pathways

Gaia Permaculture and the Earth Systems Sciences

Designs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecopath

Coverage

Next Steps

Conculsion

References

Gaia Peace Atlas

 The ‘In the Hot-House’ festival combines the celebration of music, art, craft, dance, films and food with an exploration of the environmental and social challenges that exist in our own backyards and around the world.  Learn how to take action on climate change as some of the best of Melbourne’s environmental and community groups show you ‘What you can do’ and present alternatives perspectives on the crises facing us today.

Festival Launch

Friday 17th April, 6.30 pm - 9.30 pm Room 11.01 (11th Floor)

Victoria University City Campus, 300 Flinders St

The Festival opens with a public forum led by engaging and passionate speakers to open the mind, warm the spirit and give us hope of a better tomorrow with positive solutions to climate change. Entry $2

Forum Speakers include:

• Tanya Ha - Television presenter, environmentalist and successful green lifestyle writer
• David Spratt - Co-author of Climate Code Red, co-founder of Carbon Equity
• Kirsten Laursen - Victoria Eco Innovation Lab’s policy research manager
• Mosese Waqa - Pacific Islands Network

Vic Uni Location: Melways Map 43 H9,  Google Map & Parking.  Short walk from Flinders Street Station.

Weekend Festival

Saturday 18th April 10 am - 9 pm & Sunday 19th 10 am - 5.30 pm

CERES Community Environmental Park, Cnr Roberts & Stewart st, East Brunswick

The festival program continues at the picturesque and inspiring CERES Environmental Park. The program is busting at the seams and consists of art, music, workshops, food, drink, films, children’s entertainment and much more including the premiere performance collaborative performance project with two Moreland based schools, Voices of our Future.

Festival Highlights Include:

• Music from The Conch, Orkeztra Glasso Bashalde, Radiant City and more.
• Collaborative art projects across the site including Photography, Sculpture and Found Art with contributions from the ‘Outsiders Guide’, Sudeep, Ero, Peter Hutchinson and more coming
• ‘Voices of our Future’ schools drama performance
• Children’s Clown, face painting and kids workshops
• Food and drink from local and sustainable companies, including the infamous Good Brew beer bike
• Workshops on a wide variety of subjects from environmental issues, open source technology, radical craft, alternative thought, green renting, Slow living and activism. Run a workshop or see workshop schedule
• Community stalls to inform and educate. Apply for a stall or view confirmed stalls
• Film night showcasing short films on environmental and social issues (6.30pm, Sat 18th)

Tickets at gate: One day concession $5.00 / Full $10, Two days concession $10 / Full $15, Film night $2

CERES Location: Melways Map 30 B-7,  Google Map, Public Transport Tram 96 Bus 503 & bike, & Parking only at Cretan Brotherhood Car Park on cnr Stewart & Nicholson St.

Event Partners

The Melbourne Social Forum would like to thank the following event partners.

  For more information about the festival, contact us

The first Australian Social Forum Workshop will be probably April, in Melbourne and hosted by the Melbourne Social Forum.

Late in 2008 I was contacted by the goodly folks at the Melbourne Social Forum about being involved in a workshop in Melbourne on establishing an Australian Social Forum.. 

I imagine the workshop will involve members of the Melbourne Social Forum, and others, and will allow a open and broad discussion around the issues and action items.

Clearly the convergance of economic, financial, ecological and social crisis mean an Australian Social Forum would offer the disparate and fractured movement of movements a space for education and organising.

I will be in Melbourne from probably from March onwards.

I am studying Distance Education Environmental Science with Southern Cross University (Lismore) and possibly also the Permaculture APT program out of Nimbin. 

Its going to be a challenge orchestrating a number of different projects simultaneously.

Anyone who is interested in attending or feeding into this process, please contact me or the Melbourne Social Forum direct.

cheers

-N

Permaculture TV is a project of the Media Cooperative Pilot being founded by Nicholas Roberts

Permaculture TV has two language editions English and Latino

“The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children”

Bill Mollison, co-founder of Permaculture, 1990

“What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet. We don’t know what details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturists are one of the critical gangs that are doing that.”

Dr David Suzuki geneticist, broadcaster and international environmental advocate

Contact

Nicholas Roberts email nicholas@themediasociety.org | Skype niccolor

Summary

1. Permaculture.TV will work to creating educational and documentary video that will empower self-help by increasing food security and community resilience in a time of economic and ecological crisis.
2. Permaculture.TV is a website that features online video’s of people making home, school and community gardens around the world.
3. Permaculture.TV is a media cooperative project that uses web video technology to educate the community about grass-roots solutions to sustainability such as gardens in schools, community gardens, home gardens, healthy eating and lifestyles.

About Permaculture

Permaculture is a broad-based and holistic approach that has many applications to all aspects of life. At the heart of permaculture design and practice is a fundamental set of ‘core values’ or ethics which remain constant whatever a person’s situation, whether they are creating systems for town planning or trade; whether the land they care for is only a windowbox or an entire forest. These ‘ethics’ are often summarised as;

• Earthcare – recognising that the Earth is the source of all life (and is possibly itself a living entity- see Gaia theory) and that we recognise and respect that the Earth is our valuable home and we are a part of the Earth, not apart from it.
• Peoplecare – supporting and helping each other to change to ways of living that are not harming ourselves or the planet, and to develop healthy societies.
• Fairshare (or placing limits on consumption) - ensuring that the Earth’s limited resources are utilised in ways that are equitable and wise.

Modern thought about permaculture began with the issue of sustainable food production. It started with the belief that for people to feed themselves sustainably they need to move away from reliance on industrialised agriculture. Where industrial farms use technology powered by fossil fuels (such as gasoline, diesel and natural gas), and each farm specialises in producing high yields of a single crop, permaculture stresses the value of low inputs and diverse crops. The model for this was an abundance of small scale market and home gardens for food production, and a main issue was food miles.

Aim

Global multi-platform media cooperative

From November 2008-January 2009 a Media Cooperative Pilot Project will be run by Nicholas Roberts and Cameron using the Octapod Association as a base to develop the self-sustaining Media Cooperative. The main 5 sub-projects will be

Projects

1. Media Cooperative - media democracy, democratic and civic media, state of media generally, social media and participation age, and the feasibility of establishing a global multi-platform media cooperative. The economics and politics of media in Australia and the world, the concentration of ownership, the propaganda model of the mass media, including the new media. The state of community media.
2. Coop Australia - the state the cooperative sector in Australia, stories from the frontlines of Australian cooperators, the history of Australian cooperation, the effects of neoliberalism, the last 30 years, responses to the current economic and polotical situation
3. Permaculture.TV - a rich media, video, audio and text multi-platform media project about the permaculture movement worldwide. It’s effects locally and globally.
4. EcoBurb.TV - ecological suburbs, information, people, products, topics, stories from the suburban renaissance via community gardens, street revivals, public transport, urban gardening. Stories about the retrofitting of homes and gardens, individually and collectively.
5. WorkerCooperatives.com - the local and global worker coooperatives scene. The stages, players, dramas, comedy, tragedy and hope of the process where people take control of their own destiny by taking over their work places, and creating democracy in their own workplaces. Looking at worker cooperatives in Spain, South America and the USA. Broadly looking at the solidarity economy and a response to the wreckage left by the financial and ecological crisis
6. Australian Social Forum

Tools

• Blogs - Wordpress (mainly), blog modules in Drupal
• Portals - Drupal, Plone
• Social Planning - OpenPlans
• Project Portfolio Management: Project.NET
• Project Design and Tracking - Trac
• Semantic Content Management - Semantic Media Wiki + Halo extensions
• Google Analytics - Big Brother Google
• Web CEO - search engine optimisation etc
• Civic CRM - online campaign management
• Skype - internet telephony
• Asterix - internet telephony

Place

Operations based at Octapod Association in Newcastle. Home to This Is Not Art, Culture Hunter and other creative projects.

Field trips and site visits via my antique chariot.

Schedule

NOTE: Development should be content and story driven, this is a media cooperative project and NOT a tech cooperative. Start collecting stories, video, audio, text NOW ! ! !

Quickly develop prototypes, proposals, presentations and get sponors and stories for production and development during quiet period during Crhistmas holidays.

Startup

2-8 Nov - Week 1 - Basic websites up BLOG + Blip or Molognum - Broad proposal written and submitted to various stakeholder email lists, especially permaculture tv

9-15 Nov - Week 2 Keystone stories started, proposals & presentation written for each project, software installed and basic prototypes developed

16-22 Nov - Week 3 Full-quality TV interviews done, across all 5 properties

23-29 Nov - Week 4

30 - 6 Dec - Week 5

7 - 13 Dec - Week 6

Holidays - research, post production, preparation and build, new content and products to be released for new year

14 - 20 Dec - Week 7 -

21 - 27 Dec - Week 8

28 - 3 Jan - Week 9

4- 10 Jan - Week 10

Back to Work - and World Social Forum ?

11 - 17 Jan - Week 11

18 - 24 Jan - Week 12

Approach

• story driven - get stories and concept going - interesting content, looks good, leverage existing code-bases and platforms to develop prototype quickly
• open, democratic, participatory, worker-owned and controlled, cooperative

• many of the social media sites are owned by corporate media, we aim to be solidarity economy version of a new media corporation

Assumptions

Principles

• open - Yahoo’s Open Strategy, Wikipedia’s radical transparency etc
• participation - participation age, sharecropping the long tail, parecon, workers cooperatives, peer to peer production

Paramaters

Background

Visions

Goals

I am developing the idea further of a permaculture workers cooperative

permaculture is a world wide, grass-roots movement, and with economic and ecological crisis forcing many from work and home, permaculture offers practical tools and systems for regaining life support systems

I have made some connections with the Green Worker Coop in NYC, see below, and am hoping that its feasible to incubate the permaculture workers cooperative and permaculture tv there or at least use te Green Worker Coop as a model

http://www.greenworker.coop

in short; the global Permaculture Worker Cooperative will have a website that is a kind of social network, a Facebook or Myspace for permaculture workers cooperation, this online network, will faciliate the on-the-ground networking and cooperation amongst permacuture workers and cooperators

the Permaculture Worker Coop website and online social network will contain the following elements;

• people
• projects
• wiki pages
• video
• audio
• blogs
• maps

I have independently registered the domains permacultureworker.coop, DOMAIN NOT LIVE permaculturecooperative.org DOMAIN NOT LIVE and permaculture.tv BETA *amongst others*

I am hoping to model the web aspect of the project on the Livable Streets project also running out of NYC, using the same open source software, called The OpenPlans Project

• http://www.streetfilms.org/
• http://www.livablestreets.com/projects/ 
• http://www.openplans.org/

we also had great success with this OpenCore Plone based software at the European Social Forum, the and is being used by the World Social Forum, which hosts this blog, the beginning of organising for the Australian Social Forum

• http://openesf.net/ - Istanbul 2010 European Social Forum
• http://openfsm.net/ - Belem, Brazil, Jan 2009 World Social Forum
• http://www.australiansocialforum.org    TBD ?? ? ?  Australian Social Forum

I think its absoluteley imperative that this project be global in scale, not be tied to any national identity, be grassroots focussed and centred on the permaculture worker…

I have been working as a volunteer with the media center, the interpretation systems team and the memory project  at the ESF in Malmo Sweden and am hoping to get across to NYC

 ESF 2008 - Another Europe is Possible

•   http://www.esf2008.org
•   http://www.flickr.com/photos/esf2008/

 

as you know, permaculture is a world wide, grass-roots movement, and with economic and ecological crisis forcing many from work and home, permaculture offers practical tools and systems for regaining life support systems

another world is possible

-N

I have just finished volunteering with the Nordic Organising Committee on the European Social Forum 2008.

As a forum it was a great success. Thousands of participants from all over Europe, and importantly the world, involved themselves in around 300 events, 220 of which where interpreted by the Babels organisation using the ALIS system (Alternative Interpretation System).

The forum effectively ended with a massive demonstration and parade, that for the first time brought the entire forum together. The atmosphere was lively and optimisitic. Families and the people of Malmo participated or witnessed the demo as it wound through town.

The most cohesive community at the forum was Latin America and their cooperators in the Kvarnby Folk School based in Malmo. The Latin America area, Jesus Park was a reliable and living space for information, nourishment, community and life.

For many, the most valuable experiences where the new personal relationships and networks, while the formal ESF process is beginning to publish many outcomes.

By corporate conference standards, the ESF2008 had many problems; transport, accomodation, coordination, information etc. However, when put into the context of the extremely low cost of particpation and the resources available, the ESF 2008 was an amazing success.

My personal involvement was volunteering with ALIS, the media center and the documention and memory projects. This basically meant the ALIS system and boothe set-up and dismantling, the creation of training videos and photographs for technicians and interpreters and generally helping the phenomenally hard working ALIS set-up team lead by the Australian Kajute, with close support from another Australian Robin and a super-Swede Karen.

In the area of documentation and memory I helped produce some ALIS training, created a basic image archive on a professional Flickr account and begun but didnt really use Blip.TV and YouTube.

Jonas lead the documentation, memory, registrations and media center team and I helped him set-up an excellent media center, that was used to host a radio program and was used a meeting place and low key media center by various people.

Many of the left media in Sweden, where accredited press operating out of the Press Center, working for a range of left and independent media. Newspapers of unions, the Left Party, social democracts etc

At the media center we didnt see many Indymedia, with a notable exception from the UK.

The ESF Action Network, a parrallel organisation independent of the ESF Nordic Organising Committee, attracted many of the young and more radical left.

I also had the pleasure of becoming friends with Dimitris, an Athenian who developed and administered the main ESF 2008 website, has a hand in OpenESF.net and also volunteers on the excellent Indy.gr Greek independent media website.

Another new friend was Ethan, the tech lead, from The Open Plans Project, whose sofware runs the excellent Livable Streets project in NYC, the OpenESF and OpenFSM websites.

I also got to met and exchange information with a skilled and experienced hacker (in the true sense) MC who explained a great deal about the Swedish anarcho syndicalist or libertarian socialist union SAC.

As I wrap-up in Malmo, Sweden, I have been trying to bootstrap some cooperative projects.

Amongst the tech guys there is interest in techology cooperatives.Thanks to the Drupalcon is Szeged, Hungary, I met Jim from the Chicago Technology Cooperative and he connected me to some great work being done in tech worker cooperatives in the US. For instance HOWTO guide for tech freelancers to form a worker coop co-authored by Jim for the Freelancers Union .

After some glib conversations around a media workers cooperative iith some Swedish left media types, I feel like I have hit a wall, though I am still inspired to do it.

I still havent unpacked the propoganda model as it applies to left or liberal or independent media. Project Censored has done some excellent work extending the propaganda model to the liberal or progressive media, and a young English academic studying in Griffith University, Michael J Barker, has also done important work on the effect of liberal foundations on the left, independent and liberal media.

In short, I am not sure I know where to go with the concept of a multi-platform media cooperative.It needs to happen, but its a more complex and difficult problem than I can solve. Right now, I am thinking of spending time with the Project Censored people in Sonama County.

The last cooperative project, is a Global Permaculture Workers Cooperative. I have had initial contact with the Green Workers Cooperative in the Bronx in NYC which incubates such cooperative projects. I am trying to bootstrap that project, and somehow will fly to NYC this weekend for a bloc party.

The lessons;

• Europe is not perfect, but has great traditions of social democracy, solidarity and civilization that are worth fighting to protect and develop
  
• Latin America is organised, confident and a resource for the theoretical and tired left in Europe, North America and Australia.
• The media and the web are fragmented
• Task or process management is a serious bottleneck in organising events such as the ESF
• And, of course, another world is possible, and indeed, many of the elements and aspects already exist, its a matter of weaving a fabric through struggle, hard work, skill and creativity.
• I almost forgot, do I still want to organise an Australian Social Forum. As the Swedish say, absolut!
  

Climate change is not anarchy’s football Aug 22 2008:

George Monbiot: In seeking to put politics ahead of action, Ewa Jasiewicz is engaging in magical thinking of the most desperate kind

Time for a revolution

Aug 21 2008:

Ewa Jasiewicz: There can be no state solutions to climate change: governments won’t give up the powers that leads to environmental ruin

One of the many advantages of writing a column for a major corporate newspaper, is having a headline editor. George Monbiot’s latest blog is a kick in the head for those for whom anarchist ideas, as expressed in events such as Climate Camp, are an animating vision. Insulting, inaccurate and hypocritical. Headline, teaser and body. 

Anarchists

Emma Goldman, the anarchist wrote “Nietzsche was not a social theorist, but a poet, a rebel, and innovator. His aristocracy was neither of birth nor of purse; it was the spirit. In that respect Nietzsche was an anarchist, and all true anarchists were aristocrats.”

Aristocrats 

George Monbiot is the mainstream media go-to guy for the voice of radicalism in the UK. He has global brand name recognition and celebrity. His essays are powerful and timely. Arguments are informed, cohesive and articulate. Polemics are eloquent and convincing. Prose is poetic. His rebellion against his own genetic and cultural Conservative, Tory and French ancien regime capital A aristocracy, is repeatedly and forcefully exorcised, in an impressive body and stream of work. Essays, talks, activism, books, TV shows, blogs. But unlike Nietzche or Chomsky, where is the innovation ? Sure Monbiot is a good journalist. But he has no big ideas of his own. He is a communicator and not really a thinker. 

Scientific and Social Revolutions 

Unlike the anarchist (more correctly anarcho-syndicalist or libertarian socialist self-described fellow-traveller) Noam Chomsky, who has made significant original contributions to science in the areas of linguistics, cognitive science and computing theory, George has published little on science despite his higher training as a zoologist.

If only politicians had science training he huffs in television interviews.

Chomsky’s combination of innovation and political activism, through writings on US Foreign policy, and long-time interest in libertarian socialism or anarcho-syndicalism gives his science and politics a cohesiveness that Monbiot lacks.

One could ask, if only scientists (or journalists with science degrees) had a politics degree then science could be more pragmatic. Hogwash.

Hacks 

George’s best seller; Age of Consent, advocates a global democratic system, where globalised formal systems of democracy catch-up to the globalisation of the economy (and by default politics) by financial capital and corporations.

In that almost evangelical book, Monbiot once again dismisses anarchists as unrealistic and therefore dangerous

Ernest Hemmingway during the Spanish Civil War admired the Communists and their discipline and wished it applied to the anarchists (or more correctly the anarcho-syndicalists) but for himself his attitude and style was anything but the smart uniforms and pyramid command structure of Stalin’s commisars.

Ernest wanted anarchism for himself, but communism (or more correctly authoritarian state-socialism) for everyone else.

Anarcho-Syndicalism Works 

New research from the Spanish Civil War, suggests that anarchist run industry was more efficient than under Franco OR the Communists. The anarcho-syndicalist system of government through a federation of worker cooperative controlled democratic industry.

Interestingly the 7th largest corporation in Spain today is the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, started by a Catholic priest in the Basque country, just after WW2.

In Sweden today, the largest union in the country and also the largest union in the government itself, is an anarcho-syndicalist union, the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden

Why is Anarchism Vital ? 

“In seeking to put politics ahead of action, Ewa Jasiewicz is engaging in magical thinking of the most desperate kind”

 Perhaps that should read 

“Anarcho-Syndicalism Sustainability vs Corporate-State Sustainment: in seeking to put politics ahead of action, George Monbiot is engaging in magical thinking of the most dangerous kind.”

Events like Climate Camp are successful precisely because of these anarchist systems of organisation.

So does Spain and the Basque country which is supported by the Mondradon worker cooperative, the Swedish government and its infiltration by an anarcho syndicalist union.

One also could argue that online communities like Wikipedia are essentially workers cooperatives operating within a anarcho-syndicalist paradigm.

Futures for Climate Change

 In the Corporate Climate Coup, by social historian David F Noble; 

Over the last decade and a half we have been subjected to two competing
corporate campaigns, echoing different time-honored corporate
strategies and reflecting a split within elite circles.

The issue of climate change has been framed from both sides of this elite divide,
giving the appearance that there are only these two sides. The first
campaign, which took shape in the late 1980's as part of the
triumphalist "globalization" offensive, sought to confront speculation
about climate change head-on by denying, doubting, deriding, and
dismissing distressing scientific claims which might put a damper on
enthusiasm for expansive capitalist enterprise.

It was modelled after and to some extent built upon the earlier campaign by the tobacco
industry to sow skepticism about mounting evidence of the deleterious
health-effects of smoking.

In the wake of this "negative" propaganda effort, any and all critics of climate change and global warming have
been immediately identified with this side of the debate.

The second positive campaign, which emerged a decade later, in the wake of Kyoto
and at the height of the anti-globalization movement, sought to get out
ahead of the environmental issue by affirming it only to hijack it and
turn it to corporate advantage.

Modelled on a century of corporate liberal cooptation of popular reform movements and regulatory regimes,
it aimed to appropriate the issue in order to moderate its political
implications, thereby rendering it compatible with corporate economic,
geopolitical, and ideological interests.

The corporate climate campaign thus emphasized the primacy of "market-based" solutions while insisting
upon uniformity and predictability in mandated rules and regulations.
At the same time it hyped the global climate issue into an obsession, a
totalistic preoccupation with which to divert attention from the
radical challenges of the global justice movement. In the wake of this
campaign, any and all opponents of the "deniers" have been identified -
and, most importantly, have wittingly or unwittingly identified
themselves - with the corporate climate crusaders.

David F Noble, formerly of MIT, is a controversial but sometimes brilliant scholar. What I think he is explaining are 3 options for the future.

Apocalypse 

This is the business-as-usual scenario. I wont repeat the litany of doom.

Needless to say, despite the greenwash this is where we are heading now. The future looks very, very grim. Apocalyptic. 

I can understand Monbiots paniced urgency.

In Noami Klein’s Shock Doctrines she describes the rise of the disaster capitalism complex. The logical organic growth for the military-industrial-entertainment complex. 

Sustainment

Susatinment is the military term for maintenance. It is the military-industrial equivalent to sustainability. Indeed, the latest US Counter-Insurgency Manual leads with Sustainment. By the supply of the logistics of life, after a disaster, like war hell-disaster, you win the peace by building bridges, schools, sewers. That is after you destroyed it. The disaster capitalists win bothe ways. They win destroying. They win by rebuilding and maintining. What they build, is a corporate-state system. It is Haliburton, Pizza Hut, Subway, Blackwater, Subway, the World Bank & IMF, Disney and Fox News. 

Obviously, climate change  - and its effects - have the potential to create such panic, that solutions like nuclear power, bio-fuels, synthetic biology and genetically modified organisms, corporatisation & privatisation, new oil exploration - will become very, very easy to sell.

 My hope, is that activists like Monbiot, who are spooked by the Apocalypse scenario do not become Sustainment Commissars where everything is justified by the danger of climate change. As Tim Flannery - who David F Noble also critiques as politically naive - writes, the future Carbon Dicatorship might diktat that people’s numbers are the problem, and that they simply must be eliminated. 

Even if all the greenwash where true, and the high-tech, corporate state solution to sustainability, sustainment where possible and at all stable, at what cost ?

It would be a freakish world, far-removed from nature and humanity. Walmart organics and News Corp climate camps.  

Liberation 

The third option, the one that Monbiot considers unworkeable “anarchy”,  what Naomi Klein calls “people’s (re)construction” and what Chomsky calls “indepenent and integrated development” many people call A Revolution of Liberation. A revolution that leads to freedom.

 You sense Liberation at Climate Camp, or a grass-roots organisation, the democratic revolutions of South America, the radical direct action of Sea Shepard. the independent democratic media projects online such as Wikipedia. You can also find it in the global justice movement.  

World Social Forum

 In reality the corporate-state solution of Kyoto was driven by global, grass-roots action. 

Meanwhile, following an indigenous uprising in Chiapas
in January, 1994, set for the first day of the implementation of the
North American Free Trade Agreement. the anti-globalization movement
erupted in world-wide protest against market capitalism and corporate
depredation, including the despoiling of the environment.

Within five years the movement had grown in cohesion, numbers, momentum and
militancy and coalesced in designated "global days of action" around
the world, particularly in direct actions at G8 summits and meetings of
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the new World Trade
Organization, reaching its peak in shutting down the WTO meetings in
Seattle in November, 1999.

The movement, which consisted of a wide range of diverse grass-roots organizations united in opposition to the
global "corporate agenda," shook the elite globalization campaign to
its roots. It was in this charged context that the signatories of the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. which had been formulated by
representatives from 155 nations at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, met
at the end of 1997 In Kyoto and established the so-called Kyoto
Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through carbon targets and
trading. The Kyoto treaty, belatedly ratified only in late 2004, was the sole
international agreement on climate change and immediately became the
mibellwether of political debate about global warming. 

­

Revolution from the bottom-up: the only thing that ever has worked

 Â­Let me end by quoting that great anarchist aristocrat

• The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must – namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved, or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.
  — Noam Chomsky 2:41:40

• At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, and sympathy and concern for others; or alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control.
  — Noam Chomsky 2:40:53

Perhaps George should talk less and read more, or he might find himself, like his ancestors, having to flee from a revolution that he doesn’t understand or approve of.