When most people hear the word “infrastructure,” they think of roads and bridges or water systems and communications towers. But infrastructure is important in the food business, too. Barns, refrigeration, warehouses, loading docks, retail locations, distribution companies—all are part of the food system’s infrastructure. FULL No direct link, apologize… just hit the “infrastructure” link on [...]

Below are examples of what is readily available on economizing during hard times, and on personal debt liquidation. The thing is, people are interested, and are about to get more interested. A lot of the practices that some of us suggest ought to become routine are not there. What are some of those things (I’ve [...]

What is to stop U.S. banks and their customers from creating $1 trillion, $10 trillion or even $50 trillion on their computer keyboards to buy up all the bonds and stocks in the world, along with all the land and other assets for sale, in the hope of making capital gains and pocketing the arbitrage [...]

“The rule of no realm is mine, but all worthy things that are in peril, as the world now stand, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair, or bear fruit, and flower again in the [...]

Worth a read in its entirety is this practical, well-informed piece by Maude Barlow. She takes up a theme that has been expressed at FS more than once: the need to cross-connect the environmental and social justice movements, and the essential unity of the two political efforts.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A poet, an economist, and a biologist walk into in a barn in Kansas and start talking. What do you get when you cross their ideas? Answer: Hybrid vigor. FULL

Year before last, De made me a gift of a copy of David Cayley’s interviews with Ivan Illich, assembled in a book entitled The Rivers North of the Future – The Testament of Ivan Illich, with an excellent forward from Charles Taylor. De had introduced me to Illich at some point during a very active [...]

I’ve upgraded FS to the latest stable WordPress release — as of tonight. This broke some features very temporarily (15 min or so late Westcoast time). –de

Just threw this phrase out on Facebook, and it has a nice ring to it. Here’s a policy fantasy to go with it: The legal cancellation of all existing debt on a given day. Given where you are right now, or where people you know are right now, would this be a plus or a [...]

On September 10, 2010 in the Pitt Meadows district of Vancouver, Canada, a 16-year-old girl was drugged and then gang raped while a group of people watched. A 16-year-old boy took photos of the crime scene and posted them on Facebook, and within hours the images went viral, spreading across the Internet like wildfire. FULL