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April 30, 2013 Category: Newsletter, Outreach No Comments

http://occupylondon.org.uk/archives/26589

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= News =

Category error: an error in which “things of one kind are presented as if they belonged to another” or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property.

We live in anomalous times in more ways than one. A time that rewards failure and turns poachers into gamekeepers. A time when errors, assessments and warnings go unheeded, and where willful blindness leads the way. A time when, in an environment designed to promote economic union and member solidarity, fear, suffering and despair are left to grow unchecked, and finance is discussed in religious terms. A time that absolves brutality in the name of freedom, seeks to silence in the name of civilisation, and preaches progress by choosing myths over facts.

Whether in the streets or on the steps, at pubs, kitchens, community centres and town halls, outside fire stations, in Mayfair or Canary Wharf, at demonstrations, assemblies and bookfairs, meeting online, while camping or face-to-face, we invite you to come and join us in exploring saner and more humane ways of living. Compassionate, vocal and reasonable futures. Futures of confidence, care and hope.

This is what democracy looks like.

= Event Calendar =

New events are being added all the time. Events might also be cancelled, relocated or rescheduled. Check our calendar for updates.

Local

Wednesday 1st May 2013

5:45 pm – 8:00 pm

How to continue the fight for Lewisham A&E

A film night at New Cross Learning

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/how-to-continue-the-fight-for-lewisham-a-e-a-film-night-at-new-cross-learning

Thursday 2nd May 2013

9:00 am – 5:00 pm

UK Uncut vs HMRC/Goldman Sachs

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/may-2nd-uk-uncut-vs-hmrc-goldman-sachs

Friday 3rd May 2013

8:00 am

Campaign for 33 London Underground members of staff

Edgware Rd Station (Circle Line)

www.rmtlondoncalling.org.uk/trainpeople

Friday 3rd May 2013 – Saturday 4th May 2013

8:00 pm – 12:00 am

Read It Out Loud: Roald Dahl at Steps of St Paul’s Cathedral

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/read-it-out-loud-roald-dahl-at-steps-of-st-pauls-cathedral

Saturday 4th May 2013

6:00 pm – 9:30 pm

‘The Secret City’ – Free viewing

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/the-secret-city-free-showing-this-saturday-4th-may-2013-in-bromley

Sunday 5th May 2013

2:30 pm – 8:00 pm

The People’s Kitchen at Passing Clouds

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/the-peoples-kitchen-at-passing-clouds-2013-05-05

Monday 6th May 2013

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Pointing the finger of guilt towards the banks

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/point-the-finger-of-guilt-towards-the-banks

Tuesday 7th May 2013

6:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Radical Anthropology Talks with David Graeber and others

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/radical-anthropology-talks-with-david-graeber-and-others-2013-05-07

Saturday 11th May 2013

10:00 am – 5:00 pm

London Radical Bookfair

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/london-radical-bookfair

11:30 am

Catford Town Hall

Come in outlandish garb if you want, bring pots and pans

www.CarnivalAgainstCuts.org.uk

2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Occupy Tour of Mayfair

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/occupy-tour-of-mayfair-3

Saturday 11th – Sunday 19th May 2013

Open House

Open House will run from Saturday 11th to Sunday 19th May at a London location to be revealed closer to the time. Whether you’re a council tenant facing the bedroom tax or a squatter threatened with eviction, a private renter dealing with a dodgy landlord or a member of a housing co-op fighting to survive – this space is for you.

http://openhouse2013.com

Sunday 12th May 2013

2:30 pm – 8:00 pm

The People’s Kitchen at Passing Clouds

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/the-peoples-kitchen-at-passing-clouds-2013-05-12

Monday 13th May 2013

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Feed the MP’s – 10 Downing Street

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/feed-the-mps-10-downing-street

Tuesday 14th May 2013

6:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Radical Anthropology Talks with David Graeber and others

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/radical-anthropology-talks-with-david-graeber-and-others-2013-05-14

Wednesday 15th May 2013

7:00 pm

Democracy Cafe

Cittie of Yorke pub, 22 High Holborn WC1V 6BN (by Chancery Lane tube)

NHS, Democracy and People Power

Dr Louise Irvine, chair of the Save Lewisham Hospital

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/democracy-cafe-nhs-democracy-and-people-power

https://www.facebook.com/events/461587183920638/?context=create

Thursday 16th May 2013

1:00 pm – Canary Wharf

End bank welfare! Break up the mega-banks!

Meet at the west entrance of the tube station (Jubilee line)

Almost a year since the LIBOR scandal broke, an argument is brewing about what to do with Britain’s banks.

Mega-banks are still holding society hostage – and rinsing us for all we are worth. These banks enjoy

£10s of billions of taxpayer support each year. These are the future wages of fire-fighters, anesthetists and lollipop ladies.

Banks are drinking the bank dry, and putting it on our tab. Now the new Archbishop of Canterbury has challenged George Osborne:

‘You continue to defend the idea of a small group of absolutely colossal banks… Is that lack of will to break them up not simply a recipe for a repetition of the disasters?’

The Archbishop tells it as it is. Come to Canary Wharf on the 16th and call time on the freeloading mega-banks.

breakupthebanks.org.uk

6:30 pm

Brixton fire station, Gresham Road

March to Lambeth Town Hall for consultation meeting.

http://lambethsaveourservices.org/category/stallspetitioningleafletting/

For more, please visit:

www.saveclapham.com

www.lambethsaveourservices.org

Saturday 18th May 2013

12:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Defend London’s NHS Demonstration

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/defend-londons-nhs-demonstration-18-may-loncon-keep-our-nhs-public

Sunday 19th May 2013

2:30 pm – 8:00 pm

The People’s Kitchen at Passing Clouds

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/the-peoples-kitchen-at-passing-clouds-2013-05-19

Tuesday 21st May 2013

6:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Radical Anthropology Talks with David Graeber and others

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/radical-anthropology-talks-with-david-graeber-and-others-2013-05-21

7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, SOAS

Building a Solidarity Network for London

http://socialmovement2013.wordpress.com/

Sunday 26th May 2013

>2:30 pm – 8:00 pm

The People’s Kitchen at Passing Clouds

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/the-peoples-kitchen-at-passing-clouds-2013-05-26

Tuesday 28th May 2013

6:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Radical Anthropology Talks with David Graeber and others

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/radical-anthropology-talks-with-david-graeber-and-others-2013-05-28

National

Saturday 4th May 2013

All day

The 99% Against Austerity

Nation-wide initiative (see also events in Cardiff and Edinburgh). Not organised by Occupy London but we welcome such initiatives!

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/the-99-against-the-coalition

Friday 10th – Sunday 12th May 2013

6:00 pm

Camp Frack 2

http://occupylondon.org.uk/events/camp-frack-2

International

Tuesday 7th May 2013

7:00 pm

Online meeting to organise GlobalSkillsXChange

http://globalskillsxchange.net/

= Blogs =

Miss Bad Child

http://www.missbadchild.blogspot.co.uk/

Angry Women

http://angrywomen.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/thatchers-demise/

= Call-outs, Campaigns & Petitions =

GlobalSkillsXChange call-out

Deadline 15th May

http://globalskillsxchange.net/

Justice for the 33

http://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=1713

NPower tax-dodging

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/npower-tax-2#petition

Save Clapham Fire Station

http://www.saveclapham.com/news1

= Films & Books =

‘Who Owns the Future’ by Jaron Lanier

A fascinating, hard-to-categorise book (futuristic economics? speculative advocacy? sci-phi?) that combines insights into human psychology, the nature of money and music, philosophical musings, countless anecdotes from Silicon Valley and imaginings of near-future technologies, with a clear presentation of why the world is in its current mess and how to get out of it. Expect your worldview to be, if not changed, then seriously shaken and stirred.

The starting premise of Lanier’s book is the role of information inaccuracy and asymmetry in market failures. This is not a novel idea (it lies behind the 2001 Nobel in Economics); the proposal for redressing it is. Information asymmetry and errors results in winner-take-all network structures that end up amplifying noise (errors), radiating risk outwards (to parties with less information/computational resources) and otherwise shrinking the economy. Lanier’s solution to this asymmetry is re-engineering the internet from HTML into two-way linking:

“If two-way linking had been in place, a homeowner would have known who had leveraged the mortgage, and a musician would have known who had copied his music.”

He proposes a number of ways in which this re-structuring could be attained (e.g. redundancy to protect from error and fraud) and be beneficial (e.g. faster and more efficient internet). Once universal retention of provenance is established, the second part of his proposal involves commensurate universal commercial rights over internet transactions. For this, he suggests a double-barreled pricing system:

“Each price will have two components, called ‘instant’ and ‘legacy’. The ‘instant’ part of the price will arise from agreement between buyer and seller. The ‘legacy’ component of the price will be composed of algorithmic adjustments to instant pricing that uphold the social contract and economic symmetry.”

You can think of the legacy component as royalties. A couple meet through an online matching service, end up together and remain married for x number of years. The success of their marriage helps improve the matching service’s algorithm, for which improvement (and every subsequent verification of it) they receive a nanopayment. Or I take a cool picture that ends up circulating a lot. More nanopayments. This is an area that left wide open to developments.

There are several advantages to this hybrid pricing system:

“The ‘instant’ portion of a price is vulnerable to the same old Keynesian catastrophes that have always plagued markets, but the ‘legacy’ portion is something new, only possible in an information economy, run by large computers enabled by Moore’s law. (…) The accumulated payments due to past contributions will provide a momentum to prevent stalls.”

In other words, instead of money being issued to stimulate the economy, a basic income generated by the legacy portion of nanopayments would ensure a buffer during lean times.

Risk would also be reduced and shared more equitably:

“If homeowners with mortgages had been owed something resembling royalties whenever a mortgage was leveraged, then there would not have been overleveraging. The cost of risk would have been built in from the start.”

Lanier is a strange man, waving the flag of capitalism in one hand, and describing his proposal with phrases like this in the other:

“Over time, people will hopefully adjust to the idea that you have to pay others as you would like to be paid.”

Then again, 3D-printers are just around the corner, so before long everyone will own their own means of production and capitalism as we know it will be no more…

A Consensus Handbook: co-operative decision making for activists, co-ops and communities by Seeds for Change

http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/handbook

Over a decade’s worth of experience, distilled into 180 pages. Published April 2013.

“More and more groups are using consensus to make decisions […] Occupy groups all over the world began experimenting with different ways of reaching consensus in 2011 […] awareness of the advantages of consensus are seeping into mainstream consciousness.”

The Handbook covers the philosophy, skills, tools, challenges, beauties and pitfalls of consensus; it’s aimed at both beginners and those experienced in working with co-operative decision making.

Free to download; £4.90 direct from Seeds for Change; £6 in shops.

= Food for Thought =

Post-democracy

“social democracy will require either a partial withdrawal from the international economy, with all that this entails, or a radical transformation of how the international economy works”

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/living-together/henry-farrell-post-democracy/

Economics to Save our Civilisation

http://freecriticalthinking.org/images/Documents/DailyPickings/Economics_to_save_our_civilisation.pdf

“To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

The Artist Taxi Driver, Noam Chomsky and the Boston eviction blockades → ← London Renters Event: Letdown.org.uk ‘Let Down’ | North/ East action against letting agents!