Peer2Politics

“A basic income is in a way a minimum claim to resources, with each person using this to claim the resources most important to them. The fact a basic income is given regardless of work, makes it that much more clear it exists as such a claim on resources based on the shared right to such resources.

“While “big data” has enormous potential, the potential is for evil as well as for good. In promoting a “data revolution” as part of any monitoring and accountability mechanism attention must be given to privacy and rights issues. Miniaturization enabled broad participation as shown by the use of mobile cameras to document human rights violations or convene demonstrations during the Arab uprisings. Independent producers can use cheap handheld cameras to create movies able to compete with those from huge Hollywood studios. But “big data” requires harnessing big computing capabilities, so big that they are out of the reach of most civil society organizations and even of most developing countries.

“All major international development organisations, from the World Bank over the ILO and the European Commission, plan to promote social protection in all developing countries. This may seem bizarre, since, at the same time, social protection mechanisms are being dismantled in the region where they first came about: Western Europe and Scandinavia. It is important to know, then, that words do not have the same meaning for all, and the ‘social protection’ of the World Bank is not the same as ‘social protection’, let us say in Sweden. In other words, there are no ‘welfare states’ emerging in Africa. But these plans are now being implemented and social movements have largely been absent from the debates. Where are the alternatives? What can we do to avoid social protection being at the service of markets?

EFF’s Coders’ Rights Project protects the efforts of programmers and developers engaged in cutting edge exploration of technology in our world. The work of security and encryption researchers is critical for asafer future, yet many legitimate practitioners face challenges under laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and other computer crime laws from around the world. With education, legal work, and involvement in the community, the Coders’ Rights Project builds upon EFF’s work protecting innovation and the rights of curious tinkerers and hackers pioneering on the digital frontier

“Food as a purely private good prevents millions to get such a basic resource, since the purchasing power determines access and the price of food does not reflect its multiple dimensions and the value to society. With the dominant no money-no food rationality, hunger still prevails in a world of abundance. Hunger is needlessly killing millions of our fellow humans, including 3.1 million young children every year, condemning many others to life-long exposure to illness and social exclusion. This paper argues this narrative has to be re-conceived and a binding Food Treaty, based on a commons approach to food, will create a more appropriate framework to work together towards a fairer and more sustainable world. The eradication of hunger no later than 2025 would be the main objective within a broader framework whereby food and nutrition security shall be understood as a Global Public Good. Within the treaty framework, those governments that are genuinely determined to end hunger (a coalition of the willing) could commit themselves to mutually-agreed binding goals, strategies and predictable funding. The paper presents the rationale to substantiate the treaty, as well as objectives, provisions and a possible route map for the process.”

Do we need another Internet Bill of Rights? Fabio Chiusi talks to a number of experts about Italy's new project.

Welcome to the 'Global Justice and the Environment'. We want to tell you about our original research on global environmental justice project website.

“Admit it: you don’t really read the endless terms and conditions connected to every website you visit, phone call you make or app you download. But every day, billion-dollar corporations are learning more about your interests, your friends and family, your finances, and your secrets, and they’re not only selling the information to the highest bidder, but also sharing it with the government. And you agreed to all of it. This disquieting exposé demonstrates how every one of us is incrementally opting-in to a real-time surveillance state, click by click- and what, if anything, you can do about it.”

While gains have certainly been made toward a more inclusive, egalitarian society over the half-century since Martin Luther King delivered his iconic I Have a Dream Speech (as part of the March for Jobs and Justice in Washington, D.C.), in many respects – particularly in economic matters – there has been little or no progress at all. Indeed, by certain measures equality has significantly diminished in the US. Accompanying a minimum wage that, when adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was in 1968, and wages that – except for the wealthy – haven’t risen in decades, the economy has polarized wealth to a greater degree than ever, reducing the economic classes more and more to two – rich and poor – and squeezing the middle and working classes into little more than a memory in the process. In among other places, this lack of change is observable in the fact that it’s five decades later and people are still talking about jobs – coveting jobs as though jobs were those necessities and luxuries that work is obtained to secure.