Monthly Archives: March 2011
UniCommon: The rebellion of living knowledge
An extraordinary season of struggle, beyond Uniriot, which has been several things: the will to compose different political cultures, the desire of conflict and the innovation inside and against the university reformed by Bologna Process. The attempt of building up a new experimentation outside of any reassuring identity, but creating a new network able to change and being changed by the richness of discussions and the unquestionable reality of the struggle that cross us.
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“Our name is Knowledge Liberation Front, and we’re your crisis!”
Pirate Utopias
During the ‘Golden Age’ of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, crews of early proletarian rebels, dropouts from civilization, plundered the lucrative shipping lanes between Europe and America. They operated from land enclaves, free ports; ‘pirate utopias’ located on islands and coastlines as yet beyond the reach of civilization. From these mini-anarchies – ‘temporary autonomous zones’ – they launched raiding parties so successful that they created an imperial crisis, attacking British trade with the colonies, and crippling the emerging system of global exploitation, slavery and colonialism. Read more about “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death”.
If It Sounds Too Good…
What You Need to Know, but Don’t, About Privatizing Infrastructure
States and cities are being told that they can fix their budgets and have money left over by leasing their infrastructure for 50, 75 or even 99 years. It sounds great, even miraculous. But we all need to slow down and do our homework, because the rule “If it sounds too good to be true, it is” still applies, and there are good reasons why state and local governments should not want any part of these deals. Read more
Commons and Power
At the International Commons Conference November 2010 in Berlin, there was also a workshop on Commoning through the Crisis: creating commons power and resisting enclosures and cooptation: “Power, therefore, is an important analytical tool in understanding social change”. See also in German: Silke Helfrich: Mit Big Society haben Commons nix gemein
April ’11, Rome: Conference on Water Commons
The Conference “Common Goods of Humankind: The Referendum Against Water Privatisation in Italy” will take place in Rome on the 28th an 29th of April. Read more