Vrije Consumenten

Archive

The original chronology of the newsarticles shows the news
as a "biography" of the world through the eye of the consumer

The index below gives an overview of the same articles
related to each of the twelve necessities of life

01 Religion
01 200906 Dalai Lama
02 Arts & Culture
02 200901 Joseph Beuys
02 200701 Shelley Sacks
03 Science & Research
03 200902 Darwin
04 Education
04 200910 Life(s)long learning
04 200903 CCN New Name is PERL
04 200805 CCN Conference in Tallinn
05 Medicare
06 Food Clothing Environment
06 200908 Gaia Logica
06 200810 Buzz about bees
06 200711 From Club of Rome to Al Gore
06 200710 Cradle2Cradle
07 Housing
08 Money & Banking
08 200912 Keynes / Income
08 200911 Adam Smith / WFTO
08 200809 Money
08 200803 Ethical Banking
08 200804 Subscription
08 200801 Conference Economy and Growth
09 Travel & Transport
10 Communication
10 200905 News in the Making
10 200709 Talk of the Day
10 200707 News
11 Justice & Politics
11 200907 Nicanor Perlas
11 200904 Culture Politics and Economy
11 200812 United Nations 60
11 200811 Obama president
11 200802 Ralph Nader Consumer Advocate
12 Association
12 200608 Dialogue Dialogue
13 Consumer Governance
13 200909 Big Picture
13 200810 Homework to do
13 200807 Monitor / Outlook
13 200806 Another World is Possible!

December 2009

Keynes and the issue of labour and income

Keynes is in the picture again worldwide! John Maynard Keynes already indicated in 1929 that our necessities of life, at least the basic ones are always there whatever crisis occurs! If you don't have the opportunity to buy them, life is coming to an end and so the economy! The process of producing and consuming has to go on, and so the system of financial registration of wealth and the division of it has to be well organized! Keynes indicated that government should spend more when the economy goes downward. In fact he says that we have to take care for enough buying prower. But why not complete social security - or even better - the whole incomedivision system for everybody in the world?

How much is enough?
(Keynes' biographer Robert Skidelsky in November 2009)

The economic downturn has produced a wider critique of “growthmanship” – the pursuit of economic growth or the accumulation of wealth at all costs, regardless of the damage it may do to the earth’s environment or to shared values. John Maynard Keynes addressed this issue in 1930, in his little essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.” Keynes predicted that in 100 years – that is, by 2030 – growth in the developed world would, in effect, have stopped, because people would “have enough” to lead the “good life.” Hours of paid work would fall to three a day – a 15-hour week.

Keynes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
Keynes' biographer www.skidelskyr.com/books

November 2009

From Adam Smith to WFTO - fair trade as the key to a sustainable world

All players in the field are now moving towards a new worldeconomy where transparency, dialogue and fair pricing will be the basis for more wealth AND more wellness. That's what Adam Smith really meant: free trade for the benefit of ALL.. And money as the most transparant means to registrate. Where the (world)economy is the playing ground for the division of labour to get the 1+1=3 effect. Where we are consumers AND producers at different moments of the week or in different places on the world.

Especially in the role of consumers we have the biggest responsibility because we are the ones who ask the questions or give the mandate or the command for a product or service. And do the last check and pay the bill. Of course we did that already since thousands of years, only became conscious of that since we entered the 21st century.

Wealth of Nations / Adam Smith www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-intro.htm
Wealth and Poverty of Nations / David Landes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_and_Poverty_of_Nations
World Fair Trade Organization / WFTO www.wfto.com
About the Quality of Life / Peter Daub PDF (klik hier...)

October 2009

Life(s)long learnin...

Consumer education is now introduced by Consumers International to governments worldwide for implementing in school curriculums, the place where all our knowledge of economy starts! And although this website about twelve necessities of life gives a good overview, in reality every situation is of course a complex of many issues and many many people involved. That's the reason why the artist Joseph Beuys gives it the name "Soziale Kunst" (social art), why Schiller is writing about "Spieltrieb" (playground) and about the ethical education of mankind, and why Shakespeare says: "The whole world's a stage and every human being a merely player".

Where we as human beings are looking to the world of organizations around us in a threefold way (with head, heart and hands): to the world of culture (religion/art/science/education/ communication), the world of human relations (human rights/consumer rights/justice/politics and international relations), and the world of the economy (all activities where we create all our wealth together with all the other people of the world), it is in the economical aspects where things become most concrete until and including the financial bookkeeping of it all.

And to keep in touch with the big picture while acting in every single daily situation ("think globally-act locally"), it is easy to recognize that we all play our "roles" in that polarity created to gain more efficiency as consumer and/or producer (or trader or banker in between to connect those two). And that the main issue is quality of products/services as the basis for the quality of our life.

And according to Shakespeare we can have a feeling of friendship towards each other in recognizing each others role rather than thinking about the struggle for life and looking for lowest prices only! Dialogue and subscription are the best tools for bridging this gap plus a meeting or an annual report each year to evaluate the relation.

For our own lifelong learning process it can be very handy to registrate (only) our most interesting information, meetings and monthly payments on an A4 sheet with twelve columns or on the rear side of a matchbox. That's what managers do, that's the most simple basis for lifelong learning in consumer governance!

September 2009

kabbala - macrokosmos microkosmos
Robert Rotar 1926-1999

Blueprints and Roadmaps. Darwin, Buber and Steiner about the big picture.

Everyone's own blueprint is the inner motivation for everyone's own biography! That's what the philosopher Martin Buber is telling us about the development of the human individuality. But what about mankind? What is interesting to know about our common history, our common problems now, and especially our common future yet to be created? That's the most interesting question now in the year of the philosopher Charles Darwin, at the beginning of the 21st century where we all turned into the age of maturity!

Darwin simply thinks that it is a matter of struggle for life only and then hope for the best. The philosopher Rudolf Steiner was not satisfied until he found out that the human being is able to see his/her own biography through former lives on earth. And to understand how the blueprints and the roadmaps of all people are forming a big picture which is quite similar to the individual biography. In a nutshell: humankind has entered the 21st century! We all can experience now that we are stepping into maturity, that we are also talking within organizations more mature than ever before, and we can observe that globalization is a living process of human relations itself!

Looking into the reality of history and the developments today we can feel a beginning of understanding that the human being has all the creative power to unfold his/her own "blueprint" via all possible "roadmaps"! We're free to choose! But the same is also relevant for everyone else and even for humankind as a whole including the whole nature and cosmos. Because we all live in the same house, in the same infinite but nevertheless common place called cosmos. And so we also have to talk about responsibility. In cultural, social and economical sense we have to find out how we can shape together the best world possible.

And for those who love mathematics: "the proof is in the pudding"! If astronomers found out that the solar system itself is in a continuous spiral on its way towards the stars of Hercules. When it is possible to see our own (world) biography in the Akasha Chronicle which is likely to be that same spiral. And when we recognize spirals in flowing water, structures of trees, and our own DNA, then we can also understand WHY all the roadmaps of our lives are spirals as well! Always swinging between left and right, lighter and darker times, sometimes backward, but most of the time forward! We can proof this by looking back: the problems of today we couldn't solve ten years ago, so we are growing every day, also humankind as a whole! The old game of mother Goose on a board with 63 steps (9x7) shows the biography of the individual and of humankind. That's the bigger picture!

August 2009

From Theory to Praxis! Trial and Error towards Good Governance

Thinking and talking are over, try-outs and start-ups in all possible directions are now filling up the news! Good governance in the making: for consumers and civil society, producers, professionals in marketing and trade, bankers, politicians and all their organizations as well! Fair Trade changed their name into World Fair Trade Organization WFTO, an important step to be better recognised on a worldwide scale! Teacher-training in Consumer Education will be financed for the next three years, by the EU/Brussels, the Ministry for Education in Norway and many others. The Consumer Citizen Network based at Hedmark University in Hamar, Norway, is from now on called: the Partnership for Education and Research in Responsible Living: PERL. Our organization is very glad to be one of the more than hundred partners again!

The UN Food and Agricultural Organization FAO in Rome have released their report, announcing that biological agriculture is efficient to feed the world. In the Netherlands the book Gaia Logica was released about the basics of sustainability by professor Kees Zoeteman. It describes all the "layers" of the biosphere we're living in, in time and in space, based on the oldest and most modern knowledge of mankind. Wouter van Dieren, member of the Club of Rome, says it already in his foreword: after Fridjof Capra's Tao of Physica this book will be a worldwide bestseller

July 2009

Globalization is recognizing the threefold character of the human being
Nicanor Perlas for President in the Philippines

In the second sentence of the US Declaration of Independence of 1776 it is called: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". In the French Revolution we hear the words Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, recognizing our freedom in cultural life, equality among each other in all aspects of human (and consumer) rights, and fraternity where we are working together in the economy, which is global per definition. This month it has been 220 years that the French Revolution of 1789 took place; in France and in many other countries "Quatorze Juillet" was celebrated.

In the Philippines Nicanor Perlas announced this month to run for President in 2010, due to many people who asked him to. He believes that now it is the time for good governance to tackle cultural, political and economical problems in a globalizing world whereever possible. Because of his lifelong research and experience in the threefold character of the human being and the human society, he will certainly give a big push towards innovative thinking in globalization! Nicanor Perlas may inspire us to be creative in the shaping of our cultural life, as a citizen and as a consumer, as a politician or as a producer in the 21st century!

Biography (publications)

Perlas has written over 300 articles and monographs including an international best selling book, Shaping Globalization: Civil Society, Cultural Power, and Threefolding, translated in over 9 languages. (English ISBN 9789719223306) He was technical writer of the Philippine Agenda 21, the official government blueprint for sustainable development in the Philippines as well as technical writer of Sustainable Integrated Area Development (SIAD), A Framework for the Localiation of Philippine Agenda 21. Both were written for the Presidential Council for Sustainable Development.top.

Nicanor Perlas also has been a resource Person and keynote speaker in over 70 global conferences and 130 national conferences on a range of cs including culture and societal transformation, integral sustainable development, globalization, technology, corporate social responsibility, science and spirituality, second scientific revolution, multiple intelligence, safe energy, good governance, global warming, social threefolding, strategic microfinance, direct democracy and many other topics.

Perlas has been consultant and adviser to UN agencies, Philippine official delegations to the United Nations, government and donor agencies, and civil society organizations including colleges and universities in the area of human development, organizational transformation, appreciative inquiry, integral sustainable development, civil society, multiple intelligence and other areas of work.

The whole world at the kitchentable!

Barack Obama as one of the most important new Coordinating Executive Officers in a globalizing world! Since more and more people are talking at the "kitchentable" called internet we are now in a world where everybody is learning to be a worldleader him/herself (...... for 1 / 6.000.000.000 part). And Obama could well be a very good coordinator because he lived in different countries and shows to be interested in the people not only as voters but as future clients!

Perhaps he already read the book The IBM Way, how they became one of the most excellent companies in the world by listening to clients first. They called it "business on demand" foreseeing already that the 21st century would be the beginning of an economy of question and answer. Interesting is also how people act and react worldwide! People see each other more and more as citizen, as consumer, but also .... as friend and colleague in solving world problems together. The whole world at the kitchentable!

Example of a kitchen-question, see this pdf...

October 2008

Homework...

There's a lot of homework to be done by everybody and all organizations worldwide! The new standards for Corporate Social Responsibility ISO 26000 are discussed in Santiago (Chili) and will be published in 2010. UN/UNEP and Global Reporting Initiative GRI are working together about new guidelines for financial institutions and climatechange. The debates for the next 4 years of US policy will start next month and be revealed in the State of the Union in January 2009 which in this globalizing world will still be an important indicator of the direction the world will sail, although... the whole world is now on board ship !!!

Consumer organizations discussed at the OECD conference in Paris this month about consumer education. Consumers International in London welcomed their new Director General Mr Joost Martens, bringing a lot of experience from all corners of the world during his work for Oxfam. The European consumers organization BEUC in Brussels started with masterclasses for professionalizing staffmembers of consumer associations in media presentation, lobbying, consumer law, and management.. For all participants (including us) also a great challenge to go for more international networking to exchange experiences!

In the greatest workshop of all called "world" we see debates become more and more dialogues! But if it is biofuel versus food, solar versus nuclear energy, or biodiversity versus gmo, dialogues are going towards the bottom of the problems towards full transparancy! And thanks to internet, thanks to modern journalists as moderators, and thanks to consumers/citizens working in civil society organizations all discussion have become worldwide discussions! Also the discussion about the bees...

The Buzz about Bees ...

Even de problem about the vanishing bees (30-70%) in the western industrialised world called colonial collapse disorder CCD was on CNN television this month! And even Prince Charles is fighting for their survival in a worldwide action to save the bees from GMO crops, see www.mellifera.de . In the same way that agriculture had to turn into an efficient but now also more organic and dynamic direction - or let's call it allround - agriculture in this 21st century, also the beekeepers have to upgrade their working methods and not use their honey-bees as working bees alone anymore! Because organic beekeepers don't have these problems! Their bees have a stronger immunity against diseases because they can live their own lives (more natural materials, normal distance between honeycombs, etc) and be as almost as productive. See also the website of organic consumers in the USA www.organicconsumers.org/bees. As consumers we should therefore ask more and more for honey delivered by bees kept on a more natural way, called organic honey. And pay the right price for the work that bees and beekeepers do for us! It is now or never to bee or not to bee! Also for our own survival because our agriculture is depending on their buzzzzzzy work! See article below.

Mellifera e.V. - Centre for Organic Beekeeping
Mellifera e.V. is an independent non-profit-making association. Since 1985 we have been pioneering and developing sustainable ecological concepts for beekeeping. With research projects, seminars and publicity Mellifera e.V. is heading the discussion on beekeeping matters including the care and management of colonies and dealing with illnesses. Our Centre is running the Fischermühle apiary with approx. 150 hives for research and training purposes. Mellifera e.V. introduces lay people to the fascinating world of bees, informs about their endangerment and makes sure there is a public political debate about the future of beekeeping.

Fascinating topics in the beekeeping center Fischermühle On a world-wide level apiculture is caught in an existential crisis the true proportions of which are covered up by drugs and the feeding of sugar. The causes are manyfold. Without measures of the beekeeper most bee colonies would be destined to die. In Germany wild bees do not survive any more. Many other pollinating insects are threatened or already extinct. Keeping bees has become a challenge, in many respects taking the beekeeper to his limits.

The conventional measures of the beekeeper are often a strain on the bees. Mellifera e.V. is interested in an appropriate way of keeping bees, not only in an organic approach to combating illnesses. We link holistic perspectives and working closely with the bees with practical concepts and scientific work. The Centre offers a place to meet for non-dogmatic exchange and professional further training. Mellifera e.V. works with a net of partner organisations caring for bees and other pollinating insects.

There is no way back to 'the good old times'. It is necessary for all social forces to work together on as large a scale as possible and to carry a common responsibility for the bees. You as an individual can also help. You are warmly invited to participate.

The Buzz About Bees
The breathtaking book of Jurgen Tautz / University Wurzburg / Germany / is now also available in English! The Buzz about Bees / ISBN 978-3-540-78727 / $ 40,-

www.bienenforschung.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de

September 2008

Money makes the world go around...

But how about the people on that fast spinning globe? Can we still hold each others hands and not fall? In 1994 the painting of Edvard Munch called The Cry was stolen from the museum in Oslo, seven years later in 2001 the twin towers in New York collapsed because of a terrorist attack and we heard all the cries in reality. And now again seven years later the crisis in the money system worldwide recording the outcries on the floors of all the stock exchanges....! An incarnation from a "spiritual vision" to a heartbreaking outcry of the world that globalization has to become a fair (world trade) playing field, to the financial crisis now which is a culmination of too much freedom for egoism. Where freedom belongs to our thoughts and culture, and where fairness belongs to our relations, personal national and international, for all our economical needs we need to work together to get the best results and not for our incomes alone.

All the results of our economy have to be redistributed again one way or another, for which we constructed all the social systems, taxes, subsidies, sponsoring, price discrimination, development aid untill remissions since the emancipation of people from old family ties in the centuries behind. However this building process is not ready yet and the results we can see now in the exploding and imploding incomes worldwide into the biggest polarity possible! That's NOT realistic and NOT human, and even NOT efficient! Which is now also realised by most of the six billion consumer/citizens worldwide in a globalizing world more and more feeling to be one big family. Which in fact we are since Adam met his girlfriend Eve...

Interesting is the fact that this discussion was already underway since about two years! About basic incomes and top salaries many seminars and conferences were about looking for arguments and new ways to deal with the question of distribution of wealth. Even for the billions of poorest people at the "bottom of the piramid". And parallel the cooperation of worldpopulation in the creation of (our own) wealth. At the conferences of the OECD in Brussels in november 2007 and the conference at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands this issue was discussed under the title "Beyond GDP" (Gross Domestic Product is a measure of all production) or: from welfare to wellness, from quantity to quality, by calculating economic processes in a better and more sustainable way.

Because of the fact that consciousness is an irreversible process we may have high hopes for good solutions towards a better worldwide "social contract" in incomes and spendings, in work and wealth. See also our publications / about the quality of life (pdf)

July / August 2008

This month we give you our annual overview of all 12 areas of consumer governance so that you can "connect the dots" again between all activities of mankind. The consumer is living in a world where all products and services play a role in his/her daily life. So as a consumer we have to overlook the whole "theatre" to recognise all the different roles played by ourself and others as consumers, producers and all kinds of traders and moderators in between, AND the play as a whole!

Consumer360 Monitor
tendencies in the worldnews
Update July / August 2008

01 Religion

"From globalise to cosmosize" / understanding needs helicopterviews / From clash of civilizations to meet & greet / individuality and spirituality

Especially religion is an area where we ourselves as consumers have to be active in finding the roots of all spirituality! Find our own "lifelines" instead of listening alone (to our producers/moderators - priests, rabbi's, imams, guru's, sjamaan, Darwin, or even our best friend). Also Pope Benedictus in Colonia Germany already told the youth of the 21st century: "....it's not any more about religion and faith in the old fashioned way, but from now on it's all about ..... how credible are YOU?" From the old religions - through materialism of the past four, five centuries and secularisation nowadays - the human being is on its way to find his/her own free destiny! As individual, as citizen, as consumer. "Connecting the dots" with spirituality (again).

02 Art

Art from outside watching to inside activity / art as a tool in daily life / social relations / building organizations

Arts become more and more part of daily life itself. Jeder Mensch ein Kunstler - Every human being a (co-) creator (professor in modern art and especially social art Joseph Beuys always repeated). Worldwide all schools also recognised the arts as a training instrument for creativity more than making fine things alone! Even big organizations discovered that one day of painting, dancing or sculpting in clay can be a very profitable learning process for building better relations and better organizations. Transforming ideals into realities is an ever ongoing creative proces of trial and error, thinking - arguing - willing, not only when working on new products but also working on new relations, workprocesses, new laws, and all other issues concerning änother world "in the making".

03 Science

Making the unvisible visible / from microscope and dna to visualizing through projective geometry, flowforms or cristallization / and further

The science must go on! For science in general we need new ways of research! The natural sciences have led us into the physical world. But for a real understanding of plants, animals and human beings we need the scientific fenomenologic methods that Goethe developed (Urpflanze or living principle for the world of all plants, Typus or character for the animals/groups, Biography for the individual human being). These researchmethods also form the bridge to the higher forms of science, looking into the spiritual worlds, by strengthening our thinking, feeling and willing (head/hart/hands) in imagination, inspiration and intuition. This was our comment on the website of the World Science Forum in Budapest 2005.

04 Education

Every child worldwide / from individual development to a better society / consumer education and lifelong learning

All kids to school according to Millenium Development Goals of the United Nations is in progress but will take longer than expected (81% - 87% from 1990 - 2004)
Since the turning point of the centuries also quality is more and more recognised in developing individual possibilities instead of training the old knowledge alone. See Rudolf Steiner, Montessori, Dalton and others. And last but not least life itself (consumer as autodidact) is a playing field for all kinds of learning and discovery! Lifelong learning not only for new jobs, not only for consumer education, but also as a discovery journey through infinity and eternity!

05 Medicare

Less patents for more medicins worldwide / clear water first

More than one Millenium Development Goal of the United Nations is focussed on health and healthcare. Developing conciousness that biological and local food-production is the first step for surviving and get on our feet here on earth, all kinds of medicare are neccesary first to survive the sicknesses of the past such as hunger, war and bad water supplies. More and more organizations, governments and producers are now working on new ways of a better distribution of healthcare and medicins worldwide. Using the wealth of nations for the health of nations. Globalisation of healthcare first, pay later...

06 Food

Biological food in the lift / gentech to be contained / new energy / restoring sustainability

Getting the whole world family sitting at the table and have a decent meal is the most important Millenium Development Goal of the UN. When we re-arrange incomes or only spend 3 percent of all our army budgets for this we can start eating and even not need to go to war anymore at all! The other 97 % we can use then for all kinds of other activities! The old economic principle of choosing between producing butter or bullets! And of course gentech is interesting for scientists and some medicare but not for food! Biological food is now in the lift, the EU has even started a promotion campaign! Now we can go "culinair" following the Eurotocques top-cooks!

Other issues underway are the discussions about gentech, about nanotechnology, about the honeybees, about the biofuel, climate and clear water. Agriculture, environment, energy and commodities are parts of nature as a whole. Solar energy and hydrogen are on the move, so we can hope to restore sustainability and climate in time. The new wave is Cradle2Cradle! New commodities as carbon can follow-up iron and aluminium. Nature itself in all aspects is in the centre of all discussions today!

07 Housing

Experiments experiments / organic architecture in the making / tangent lines and projective geometry as a tool

After so many styles of architecture through the ages we ended in the most materialistic form ... the cube. The most non-spiritual mathematical structure of the salt cristall. represented in the Dead Sea! But it gave us the utmost freedom to think about sculpture, architecture, furniture and gardening. And today we're really in the middle of experimenting and discovering how lines, structures, surfaces, colours and materials give us the finest views, feelings and inner forces to work and live! The turning point towards living (organic) architecture was made by Frank Loyd Wright and Herzberger. In the magnificent House on the Waterfalls the connection between living inside and nature outside is made visible and became a real experience! In the multi-cubic office building of Centraal Beheer Assurance Company in Apeldoorn Netherlands the architect Herzberger opened up all cubes to make relations possible between all people in the building. From container building to social networks! The beginning of using mathematical tangents not yet visible as in organic architecture, but already full-scale experience! The organic style today became worlwide fame with the ING Bank headquarters in Amsterdam (Bijlmer), built in a network of ten tower-structures which was also the most energy-efficient building in the wordld. This year it was chosen by the public as one of the most beautifull buildings.

08 Money

Sustainable investing / worldwide bookkeeping / one stocks-exchange and perhaps worldmoney in due time / wto and fair trade

Money is a mirror of all activities in society based on division of labour. To achieve more benefits for all we divide all our labour in specializations and exchange all the products and services again. The administration system is called money. When products or services are not available or not in time the value (price) changes to make exchange possible in the end. All other issues as international relations between countries, ethical labour, fair trade etc are manipulations or corrections on this process. The worldwide standard for financial reporting IFRS, a world currency in the making, the globalization of trade in the WTO discussions now, IMF and Central Banks together in Basel, and of course the Global Reporting Initiative GRI for good corporate governance will have the result that the world economy will become highly transparant and show us the real prices. New York and Amsterdam Stock Exchanges also merged last year, and Asia will follow in some years to make one worldmarket for stocks. About fair trade and the whole discussion about dividing the wealth between two dollar a day and ten million a year can then become fully transparant how to look at the colours of the spectrum in between and how to talk about the right for a REASONable income for everybody.

09 Travel

World is getting smaller every day / from tourism to ecotourism to private projects / Meet & Greet

When oil will be replaced by solar energy in H2O tanks (prognosed within ten years by Durch students of the University of Delft this summer who designed a hydrogen racing car) the travelling possibilities will be almost unlimited for everybody. Together with the internet people will be able to communicate and meet&greet by wire and tyre! And the oil can be used for other products, tires, asfalt and plastics, anti-noise walls can dissapear in the landscape to give a clear view on the horizons again, and with carbon cars the world can use steel for railways only. But who wants to go by train then?

10 Communication

Internet and mobile / citizen journalists / alternative newsmedia / multi media

Although talking one-to-one is the basis of communication and telepathy the long distance variant of it, internet is the main route for all our communication today. And beyond that it is a medium also for all written information and can be used as archive as well, plus all kinds of applications in technique, design and our daily work in all different aspects. But even further it became a "tool" voor everybody to become a citizen journalist, private researcher, a lifelong learning student, and a worldwide activist if neccesary. Research, surgery, spaceshuttles, warfare and the rise of democracy worlldwide, fair trade, world currency and financial reporting worldwide in the end. Communication has everything to do with exchange of information (systems) parallel to trade and travel and between people. But direct communication as writing and reading, travelling and talking will always be there as the basic communication route for ALL twelve sense-organs!

11 Law and politics

International diplomacy and crises mediation / participative democracy / europe as a test / proposals of citizens

Politics and diplomacy at work in the 21st century! No longer citizens are waiting for actions of actiongroups but rather start an action themselves via internet. Since 9/11 and the first three years after that where a kind of black&white thinking came up, people began to cooperate in all organizations more and more. The World Watch Institute spent the whole issue of their State of the World 2004 to the consumer/citizen! In 2005 the UN started with the Decade for Education in Sustainable Development DESD 2005-2014. The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil and the Economic World Forum in Davos Switzerland started up talking. And the systems of money, stocks, trade and financial reporting went globalizing too. Parallel to the cultural and economic globalization also political democratization went global. The EU referndum as an exemple, but also initiatives as PressNow to help papers, radio- and tv stations emerge in all countries, and last but not least the International Crisis Group that went into action to solve problems, moderate and start projects to prevent war. The same procedure in official governmental strategies is called 3D - defense- diplomacy - development.

12 Association

All kinds of human relations / consumer-trade-producer relations / consumerorganizations

Multimedia, forums, and finally choosing our own networking are the three steps in modern time to create all kinds of associations to reach our cultural, social or economical goals. In cultural and social life we know it since centuries that people come together. But consumer-trade-producer relations including the finance of projects is very new! The rise of all kinds of consumer associations is also the proof that mankind has entered maturity in the 21st century!

June 2008

Another world in the making - Consumer, freedom and responsibility

The tone has changed! In all directions we can hear and see people taking action more and more! After all the thinking and talking conferences and workshops have now titles such as "from thinking to action" and alike. This year there is a clear tendency to DO things, even by trial and error. Although it still takes a lot of talking and writing, the "tone" and the "intentions" have changed significantly.

In the Netherlands for instance there was a concrete conference about tuning in all the different methods of medicare, we were visitor at a very constructive discussion in the Upper House about defense-diplomacy-development or 3D strategy in Afghanistan, we listened to the presentation at the SER (Social Economical Council) of their report about new ways of financing agriculture biodiversity and landscaping in the Netherlands and in Europe, listened to the speech of Alexander Rinnooy Kan about globalising and sustainability at the Club of Rome, and read the speech of the bee-keepers association in parliament about the crisis of the disappearing bees. But also the discussions about the FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius about food-supplements etc became more "overheated" while approaching the implementation in 2009. And the teachers who were overheated by government-rules became now cooling down by taking over again the management of their own jobs.

Internationaly we see discussions more and more looking for pragmatic solutions, action, building bridges to go forward one way or another. In trade, in sustainabilty, in crisis management, in working together between countries and continents to build a global village. The introduction in 2005 of the International Finance Reporting System IFRS, the connecting of stock-exchanges and the Euro as a pioneer of a worldwide "greenback" in the making are signals as well.

And last but not least the Internet and the exchange of knowledge worldwide by open courseware for instance by the Massachustes Institute of Technology in Boston USA. Their website counts 80.000 pages free knowledge and even the possibility to be "in the classroom" via webcam! The MIT was also the University where Meadows and Forrester started the Club of Rome in 1971 and foresaw that globalising is a creative process which needs the responsibility of all of us 6 billion consumers to restore sustainabilty while (and sometimes before) going on! Cradle2Cradle sounds like a magic solution, but that will take time. But why not ask ourself daily: .... how sustainable am I?

Annual Report 2008 / Jan - May

Most important development in the world was the OECD conference in Paris "Beyond GDP" followed by a conference at the University of Tilburg in The Netherlands January 10 about the neccesary trend in thinking from Wellness to Well-being. If this is the breakthrough in our thinking then we can hope for another world! Because thinking about the quality of life - of ourself AND of all the others - is in fact our everyday starting-point in decision-making!

But even more urgent is of course the present foodcrisis! Although the development in the quality of food and organic foodproduction is booming, the quantity-problem is even getting worse! Hopefully the experience of world politics in problemsolving will be strong enough to overcome the foodcrisis! Especially now becomes visible that ....... "a reasonable income is a right" !

As Free Consumers Association we are now more and more active in workshops, seminars, and in innovative projects such as "professionalizing" consumer-trade-producer dialogue and of course the ongoing conferences on consumer education of the Consumer Citizen Network, this year in Tallinn Estonia.

Last but not least our english website is almost ready for readers worldwide!

Peter Daub
chairman

May 2008

Fifth CCN International Conference on Consumer Education / Olympia Hotel, Tallinn Estonia

We were in Tallinn / Estonia 5-6 May for the fifth yearly conference of the Consumer Citizen Network CCN about consumer education to be implemented on schools worldwide in the coming years. The CCN is working together with the EU program for Lifelong Learning and the UN Decade for Education in Sustainable Development.

The Consumer Citizenship Network is an interdiciplinary network of educators, researchers and civil-society organisations, (including UNESCO, UNEP and Consumers International) who recognize the pressing need for constructive action by individuals in order to achieve sustainable consumption and global solidarity.

The Consumer Citizenship Network has, since 2003, developed interdiciplinary approaches to central issues dealing with the balance between material and non-material well-being and with how one can translate ethical values into everyday practice through concientious participation in the market. CCN2 also brings toghether expertise in the fields of citizenship-, enviromental- and consumer education to further develop research and good practice for teaching and assessing consumer citizenship education. The CCN is a Socrates Erasmus 3. Network consists of 133 institutions in 37 countries. www.hihm.no/concit.

April 2008

One idea - two awards!

A card for clients who are willing to pre-finance their part of the stock they are going to buy in the month ahead, is in the making for the whole organic branch in The Netherlands! Two shopowners with similar ideas became the Golden Pear Innovation Prize 2008. The Green Passage in Rotterdam and Buys&Ko in Wageningen had developed different but quite similar ideas.Together with the branch-organizations who gave the prize they will now develop it further to introduce the cardsystem nationwide.

March 2008

Why Bank Ethically?

Your money – Your choice

When most people think of a bank, they think of the organisation that keeps their money safe and secure until they need it. When most people decide who to bank with, they consider the rate of interest they will receive, the services they will benefit from and how easy will it be to access their money. What most people don’t think about is how that bank then invests their money when they’re not using it.

A bank’s core business is to use the money savers deposit, to lend it to someone else. With most banks you don’t know who’s using and benefiting from your savings. Instead the bank is in control of your money and decides who they will lend it to and what that money will be used for. But if you ask the bank what they’re doing with your money they won’t tell you.

A Transparent Bank

Triodos Bank is different. We only lend to organisations which create real social, environmental and cultural value such as charities, social businesses, community projects and environmental initiatives. Each one is a practical, well-grounded initiative dedicated to social aims which benefit the community, care for the environment, respect human freedom and develop individual talents and capacities. As part of our commitment to transparency we publish a Project List, which details all the activities that we finance in the UK and Ireland at the time of printing.

Positive or Negative

Many financial organisations, from high street banks to pension providers now offer funds and schemes where you can save and invest your money ethically, partly in response to the success that ethical pioneers including Triodos Bank have had. Most ethical investments use negative lending criteria. This means that the organisations that they lend money to cannot be involved in malevolent activities such as child labour, large scale environmental damage or the arms trade. But Triodos Bank has a different approach – the enterprises we invest in are all actively pursuing social, environmental and cultural goals, not just avoiding negative activities.

With a Human Approach

While Triodos provides opportunities for people to save and enjoy a reasonable rate of interest, a growing number of social enterprises need to finance their development. Many charities, social businesses, community groups, environmental initiatives have a wide range of socially valuable and innovative projects which need access to credit. They need a banking partner which understands the way they work, recognises and supports their values, and can work with them to find the right financial arrangements for their needs.

Triodos Bank co-workers use their expertise and judgement to assess each loan application on its own merits, analysing a project’s social, environmental and cultural ‘added value’ as well as its financial performance. We have a genuinely human approach to banking, sharing the values of the enterprises we support and taking the time to visit and understand each one. As a result, we support a wide variety of initiatives in many sectors, all over the UK and Ireland, reflecting the growing strength and diversity of the social economy.

Making a Real Difference

Saving with Triodos Bank means that people in all parts of the UK and Ireland can develop and build organisations which enrich their community and safeguard the environment – building a more sustainable future for us all.

Source: Triodosbank United Kingdom www.triodos.co.uk
Espanol: Triodosbank Madrid www.triodos.es

Februari 2008

February 24. Ralph Nader - world famous advocate and frontrunner for consumer rights announced his plan to go for president! In the NBC television interview Meeting the Press he said .............

Twenty-four percent of the American people are satisfied with the state of the country, according to Gallup. That's about the lowest ranking ever. Sixty-one percent think both major parties are failing. And, according to Frank Luntz's poll, a Republican, 80 percent would consider voting for a independent this year. Now, you take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut, shut out, marginalized, disrespected and you go from Iraq to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts, getting a decent energy bill through, and you have to ask yourself, as a citizen, should we elaborate the issues that the two are not talking about? And the--all, all the candidates--McCain, Obama and Clinton--are against single payer health insurance, full Medicare for all. I'm for it, as well as millions of Americans and 59 percent of physicians in a forthcoming poll this April. People don't like Pentagon waste, a bloated military budget, all the reports in the press and in the GAO reports. A wasteful defense is a weak defense. It takes away taxpayer money that can go to the necessities of the American people. That's off the table to Obama and Clinton and McCain.
I came to Washington over 40 years ago to help improve my country and started a lot of citizen groups who did that. That was a time you had a hearing in Congress, regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration would be more responsive--Auto Safety Agency, EPA. That's a time Nixon, because he heard the rumble of the people, and he was the last president to really fear liberals enough to change his position, signed OSHA, signed EPA, had a health plan that he didn't really believe in, had a minimum income plan to abolish poverty, and then it started.
Around 1979, the doors started closing on the citizen groups. So my concern, Tim, comes from, to give you statistics quickly, 58,000 workers who die every year from work-related diseases and trauma on the job; 65,000 people according to EPA who die from air pollution; over 100,000 people who die from adverse effects of medicines; 250 people a day who die from hospital-induced infections; and all the fraud, waste and abuse that's eating at the heart of the family budget, aggravating them. They can't get answers to their questions. They're thrown into huge debt. Now they're losing their houses while Wall Street speculators laugh all the way to the bank.
That's where my concern comes from. And I hope it's shared by a lot of people around the country. I hope a lot of people will be gathered around the country to establish Congress watchdogs in every district, a thousand people--we want to hear from every congressional district---
to show the American people how easy it is to turn the Congress around if people are organized. Fifteen hundred corporations get their way by--from a majority of 535 members of Congress. We're millions of people out there, and we simply have to, for the sake of our children and grandchildren, and the state of our nation in the world, we have to mobilize in that manner, and that's what that, that Web site is all about.
It's not just a Web site. It's a gathering center, www.votenader.org .

January 2008

ECOnomics in the 21st century

As the producers of copiers Ricoh are advertising with this new creative way of reading the word eco-nomics, so is the discussion about a sustainable future on the Global Action Day of the World Social Forum on January 26 worldwide, and in Davos at the World Economic Forum. But also in all the discussions about "Beyond GDP" in Brussels and Tilburg Netherlands about the new indicators towards growth of wealth (quality of life) instead of economic growth only.

Campus Tilburg University Netherlands
Conference Beyond-GDP

December 2007 / Annual Report

The year 2007 was full of activities and new developments. A new website, again hundreds of small catalist-actions such as comments, articles, networking, lobbying, joining discussions at many seminars and congress workshops, and last but not least following the world news to serve our members looking 360 degrees around the horizon to all twelve working fields in the world!

Strategically we worked more and more on priorities as quality of life, new ways in science, innovative initiatives and helping in the search for solutions in different problem-situations. And we started seminars and masterclasses in different cities in Holland and abroad! In Sofia Bulgaria we gave our first workshop in the Consumer Citizen Network CCN where teachers are preparing programmes for consumereducation on schools and universities worldwide, in connection with the UN Decade for Sustainable Development. In our workshop we worked on the issue "Consumer, Arguments and Producers".

In the world around us a lot of positive developments are going fast forward! Al Gore showed us the way in handling the Climate. Cradle2Cradle (see Google) is the new way for 100% sustainability. And Professor Pralahad wrote his famous marketing bestseller The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid about producing for the two billion poorest consumers as the new emerging markets! Globalising is going on!

Our plans for 2008 are to complete the english pages on our website and to globalise also! Our new (extra) name is consumer360.org to be remembered more easily, but especially to show the essence of the consumer-management-information-system. The image of the twelve daily needs produced around the horizon of our world!

PS For the bees who cannot speak for themselves we want to cry out for them that the global problem of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) is a problem for us all! The bees are dying of too much efficiency in bee-keeping, in the US and also in Europe up to 70% have died instead of the normal rate of 20% in winter times. And so we are loosing our girlfriends AND the basis of our agriculture!

So: buy more biological honey! (See also the breathtaking bestseller Phanomen Honigbiene - not yet in english - written by professor Jurgen Tautz and with 180 color photos isbn 978-3-8274-1845-6 and go to www.beegroup.de and watch the trailer video of BeeMovie!) Or Google to CCD Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD BEES in english or your own language. Save the bees!

The new subtitle of our association is: "forum for active consumers and innovative initiatives"!

Peter Daub
chairman
consumer360.org

November 2007

Investing in Knowledge is Investing in the Future!

This was the credo at the World Science Forum in Budapest-Hungary this month where they focused this time on environment and future generations. Read a bit in their long evaluationtext to feel about what scientists think about it today www.sciforum.hu
At the Mining Conference in Delft-The Netherlands the header of the website was: Knowledge to Power the Future. We heard a lot about sustainability now on the same spot - a masterpiece in architecture - where we joined in 1972 the founding of the Dutch branch of the Club of Rome, now at last taken seriously after Al Gore told us to look around into the real world! www.mv.tudelft.nl/lustrum

Aula Technical University
Delft, Netherlands

And for the future generation now on our schools there was a report presented by the social economic council to the minister of education about internships for students for meeting the future-in-the-making now in our businessworld, governments and civil society www.ser.nl
And even we ourselves made a new start with two series of workshops in Amsterdam and Zoetermeer about "consumer governance".

October 2007

ISO 26000, Consumers International, Cradle to Cradle, and more

All consumer unions around the world gathered in Sydney this month at the 18th annual congress of Consumers International. Hot item was of course the development of the new ISO 26000 standard for social responsibility which will be launched worldwide in 2009. But many many other items were discussed of course. See www.consumersinternational.org (Consumers International was launched in 1959 in the Netherlands on initiative of Consumentenbond and many others, as Int Org of Consumer Unions IOCU).

# About sustainability is the best option given now by all the projects of Cradle2Cradle worldwide which are the most concrete examples of how to get the world sustainable (again). In the USA and China Ford and Nike changed whole productionlines already. A big pilot cityproject will be launched now in Venlo, Netherlands. See Google, Wikipedia, or the book itself written by William (Bill) Donough and Michael Braungart: Cradle to Cradle - Remaking the Way we make Things ISBN 0865475873.

# In bio(dynamic) foodchains plans are developed to professionalize client cards and pre-financing that piece in stock which will go to our own household by our purchases during the month. A way to become more associated with the whole chain of production to consumption (an old idea also of Consumer360 which we co-developed in different projects together with Triodosbank in the eighties, but which obviously becomes relevant only in the 21st century.....)

# In England and Holland discussions are ongoing about probable integrating alternative directions in medicare when based on professional basis.

September 2007

Talk of the Day

No great events in September but a lot of talking about everything! We were at a debate about the essence of warfare in Amsterdam, and next month about warfare and civilians organized by the Red Cross in the Peace Palace in The Hague. Since 9/11 everybody worldwide became aware that war and peace has everything to do with everybody!

We made a testdrive in the Honda Civic Hybride (smooth!) and read about BMW (fast!) in big advertisements about hybrid and hydrogen in the near future. And that electric power transmission has no technical limits for high speeds for trains and cars as well. China is thinking more thoroughly about sustainability, Korea is opening up a litlle bit, the US takes a litlle bit back of its authorithy and joins the debate, in the Middle East some problems have to be solved yet. African countries are in the picture now and will join the world economic stage soon. Consumers worldwide become more and more conscious of living in the same "village"!

July / August 2007

News in the making - interesting developments ahead!

More interesting than the hottest news of course is the expected news ahead! What news is in the making, which developments and trends are ahead, and can we see them already? In the same way as reading Agatha Christie life itself can be read as a thrilling story in which we ourselves are the players! As Shakespeare wrote for "As you like it" now performed in the open air theatre of Diever www.shakespearetheaterdiever.nl in Holland: "The world's a stage ...... and all consumers and producers are merely players". www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/all-world-s-stage ........

And: invisible consumers and producers are becoming more and more visible! Of all twelve economic areas FINALLY the most earthy - food and agriculture - is appearing in full spotlight on the worldstage now! A little book appeared about the whole processing of money in the chain from consumer to producer working towards an economy of question and answer. (Geld verbindt de BD-voedselketen / Money connects the biodynamic foodchain / Jan Saal / 2,50 / overige uitgaven / www.gezichtspunten.nl / only in Dutch yet). It describes in an enthousiastic way how we can make the best connections and personal relations with our producers in buying the products cash and pin, saving and investing - call it prepaid - in stocks of the shops in the chain, and making new developments possible in research and education by subsidizing. After the developments of the paper baskets with fresh crops from the countryside this is the phase of professionalizing the relations between consumers and producers into the 21st century. For insiders: This book also finds its roots in 1980 when Triodosbank was founded, projects in many shops started together with many consumers, then students, some of them now CEO's in the foodchain! Jan Saal is now director of the school for educating farmers and chairman of Demeter International in Holland, organization for biodynamic agriculture. See www.demeter-bd.nl or www.demeter.net The Triodosbank itself www.triodos.nl is now also present in Bristol www.triodos.co.uk Brussels www.triodos.be Frankfurt www.triodos.de and Madrid www.triodos.es and working together with banks worldwide in microfinancing projects. After being helpers then with the start of Triodosbank for producers and consumers, the writer of this newsarticle (Peter Daub) specialized since then in consumer issues and consumer organizations and founded the Vrije Consumenten Vereniging / Free Consumers Association in 2001. This year we chose our new (extra) name Consumer360 www.consumer360.org as our new international name.

More special news in the making is of course visible in all kinds of discussions about genetical modified food and medicins, about the great deathtoll of bees worldwide caused by the artificial beekeeping the last hundred years. The worldwide conference of beekeepers is next month in Melbourne www.apimondia2007melbourne.com But also Mac Donalds is now switching to ecological food! Perhaps all initiatives together worldwide give us a climate change in the right direction again? In the 21st century globalization shows that now everybody is a pioneer! The news is in the making every second of the day in every corner of the world! Of all developments in our 360 degrees world we see that everybody is aware of globalization now and wishing to be involved more and more! The new TV broadcasting station Independent World Television IWT www.therealnews.com started this month! Independent because it is financed by consumers only! A station where everybody can ask questions and make contributions in the search for news!

June 2007

Invisible consumers and producers

In a globalized economy only our own imagination can make consumers and producers to a real experience. Two interesting presentations are trying to make us aware of our own responsibility to "see" our worldwide neighbours as consumers and/or producers.

Shelly Sacks, professor at the Oxford Brooks University presents an artistic social sculpture of dried bananas combined with production numbers to make visible for us consumers the producers of bananas on the Windward Islands. See www.exchange-values.org or ISBN 978-3-928780-66-7 Exchange Values - Images of invisible Lives or at the exposition untill August in the Goetheanum, Dornach Switzerland.

Best business book of the year is published by Professor C K Prahalad about the greatest yet invisible market opportunities in the 21st century: the 4 billion other consumers in the world! The Fortune of the Bottom of the Pyramid ISBN 9780131877290.

May 2007

Long-term (positive) developments in a nuttshell

Most of the time we give the news about the most interesting items, but this time we give you again a kind of overview of all twelve areas. Although in every area so many interesting developments are to be reported we try to concentrate on the main upward trends. And the biggest reason to be positive is that more and more people every day are thinking, talking and acting towards solutions. And that's by definition an irreversible process!

religion / from clash of civilizations to meet & greet / understanding needs helicopterviews / from globalise to cosmosize ...
art / art from outside watching to inside activity / art as a tool in daily life and for new social relations and building organizations ...
science / getting the unvisible visible / from microscope and dna to planetary foodquality visualized in cristallization / and further ...
education / every child worldwide / from individual development to a better society / consumer education and lifelong learning ...
medicare / less patents for more medecins worldwide / clear water first ...
food and nature / gentech to be contained / biological food in the lift / new energy / restoring sustainability ...
housing / experiments experiments / organic architecture in the making / tangent lines and projective geometry as a tool ...
money / sustainable investing / worldwide bookkeeping, stocks and perhaps worldmoney in due time / wto and fair trade ...
transport / world is getting smaller every day / from tourism to ecotourism to private projects ...
communication / internet and mobile / citizen journalists / alternative newsmedia / multi media...
law and politics / international diplomacy and crises mediation / participative democracy / europe as a test / proposals of citizens ...
associations / all kinds of human relations / consumer-trade-producer relations / consumerorganizations ...

March / april 2007

www.Consumer360.org
Website freeconsumers

We launched our new international name www.Consumer360.org as a picture of what is meant by all-round "consumer governance". We hope you will agree with us that it is a good description of how we as consumers want to know everything, to talk about everything and to be able to make the best possible choises.

The existing names freeconsumers.org and vrijeconsumenten.nl will remain available as well.

Interesting to know is that the .com domain existed already as a name for the yearly congress for producers in packaging. One of the most important communication-carrying lines between producers and consumers! Another interesting newsitem this month is that the Dutch government will take initiatives to make sustainable production know-how an export issue of great importance!. The old VOC (Dutch East India Company) in the other direction! Bringing back the science and experience made possible by the delivery of all the products in the 17th century! Hopefully with lots of profit for all people worldwide!

February 2007

Consumer governance in action

Saying no to Europe in a first round triggered all Europeans to go into debates now in February and in March (Berlin) about how to go forward! Thinking, debating and asking the best questions IS consumer governance towards those who do the government issues. And of course only if it is continued as a lifelong process and includes the checking of the answers! Only participating democracy is true democracy. Participating is also the right word in all other associations where consumers and producers are in a continuing dialogue about products and services. About quality, quantity and price. About guarantuee. And about payment, delivery and use. Participating by asking the questions especially about (inner) quality, and paying the right price in the right time. All questions asked in the last decades are now resulting in more and more positive actions of producers. For instance insurances for all kinds of medical treatment, teachers developing new lessons themselves, researchers going beyond the natural sciences looking for ALL knowledge! So that we can ask even better questions in the next round!

January 2007

What is consumer governance?

As we saw this month at the World Social Forum in Nairobi, the World Economic Forum in Davos, and in the Netherlands how the new government in Holland and the EU were discussed, all signals were about understanding and especially about promoting consumer governance! People themselves as consumer-citizens are more and more taking seriously their role in asking the questions, but also their responsibility for their choises. But consumer governance also means dialogue with producers, government or educators, with marketing, science and last but not least check and double-check! Consumer governance has to do with all the same items as every manager has to work on. In a world where all labour is divided we are delegating or in fact asking to each other "to do the job for us". And only DIALOGUE can bridge the gap again which we invented ourselves by dividing and delegating all those jobs: in space in time and in expertise!

December 2006 / Annual Report

The smallest website about the biggest issue: consumer governance!

After 5 years we're still a small organization but that has everything to do with the character of our association! Catalyzers ARE always small by definition, they only try to help forward the bigger issues! But in 2007 we will introduce our new website and start with more lectures and seminars. And of course also continue in writing comments, joining discussions and social forums, indirect lobbying via consumer organizations, and networking by matching information between organizations, press-agencies and individuals.

In 2006 we gave seminars in consumer governance at the Dutch Social Forum and at Nyenrode University. We joined conferences about consumer education in Hamar/Norway, Berlin/Germany and Utrecht/Netherlands. And we were listening and discussing at several meetings with lectures of ministers and members of parliament. Plus seminars about microfinance, about alternative moneysystems, (Lietaer), and the introduction of his book Globalisation that works by Joseph Stiglitz in Amsterdam.

Comparing with other general and special consumer organizations we are focussed on management information as a tool itself. How can we as individuals oversee and understand the whole worldeconomy and ourselves in the middle of it? With the 360 degrees overview of consumerorganizations we all have to deal with, it has become much easier to find our way and to prepare our decisions. With the different pages of our website with "open courseware" information, search-options and a newpage in which we try to analyse the main issues, daily information becomes easy to read! In working out these things during lectures and seminars we experienced how everybody became aware of that as an eye-opener.

To write about all 200 actions this year would take pages. To get a broader insight of our activities see our former annual reports. An overview of the developments in consumer governance worldwide over the last few years is also given in our newspages.

November 2006

Another World is Possible! Everybody is Creative!

This is what Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), the most famous modern artist of the 20th century, already said over and over again. Until February 2007 there is now a great exibition in Moyland Castle / Germany www.moyland.de about the materials he used to explain all unvisible things. Social relations, thoughts, feelings, and world tendencies in economical, social and spiritual human behaviour can be made visible by all kinds of materials to symbolise and wake up conciousness and will to change. Solutions are always creative actions and everybody is creative him/herself to do something to help to make a better world (Jeder Mensch ein Kunstler! Everybody an Artist!). And all those possible other worlds can be discussed January 20-25 in Nairobi Kenya during the next World Social Forum www.worldsocialforum.org! And to get an even better look around what's going on around the world you can also login on the new worldwide televisionchannel which is totally financed by the viewers only: the Independent World Television IWT www.iwtnews.com starts with an interview with Naomo Klein! So we can all start the year 2007 with many new tools for our heads, hearts and hands!

September / October 2006

Worldwide discussions about disconnecting income and labour

First this: what counts most for us all as a human being is the quality of life! Isn't it? Everything we choose in doing things ourselves, or buying products or services from others (producers government or cultural institutions) is to maintain or increase the quality of our life in the way we decide it to be quality! So the quality of life is always priority number one. And so the quality of products and services. But why are still so many products so poor in quality, unsustainable or even dangerous?

Because all labour is still connected to income! This system which was introduced a few centuries ago and later promoted by Adam Smith has driven the economy in a positive way. But also shows to be counterproductive to quality because income (quantity) was in fact the priority instead of quality. But the worldwide discussions now are revealing the truth that producing is only an economic issue. And talking about who needs what in a (world)family is an issue between all people, not only the producers! As we can see in all social sytems developed in the 20th century arranging finance for children, students, sick or jobless people and elderly (and for holiday or sabattical).

The discussions worldwide now about basic income and/or top wages are only the beginning of thinking about this! When all forms of income will be arranged between ALL people in the future, then, yes then the producers can really go for sustainability and quality! Then also visible in terms of bookkeeping, because everybody then has the money to pay for quality.

July / August 2006

Dialogue, dialogue

The dialogue between consumer-citizens (civil society), governments and business is more and more going on as a matter of course. Especially in focusing on the essence, the quality of products and services. Based on all the questions asked in recent years we see now a minister talking about taste of food together with top-cooks, milk factories selling fresh milk from cows living outdoors, german top carmakers introducing hydrogen cars. Trade talks emerging to fair trade talks, microfinance for small entrepeneurs worldwide, conflictmanagement in international relations. The world has become a coffee-house! Dialogue was also the special focus of one of the co-founders of Triodosbank. Dr A H Bos (Lex) discovered in his seven years of research tshat dialogue has everything to do with facts versus opinions, and goals versus 'roadmaps'. About facts and goals you need to agree, about opinions and the ways to work it out you are going into dialogue. Lex inspired thousands of people in governments and multinationals worldwide with his enthousiasm and profesionalism! He helped us all to find the basics of communication between people with the utmost respect for the individual freedom. Lex was also the mentor of our initiative! He died July 30 at the age of 81 and is still our mentor!

Literature: Forming judgements. A path to inner freedom 87-89303-42-3 Dynamische Urteilsbildung 3-258-06874-7 La formation du jugement dans la vie sociale 2-852248-260-6 Oordeelsvorming. Een weg naar innerlijke vrijheid 90-73310-32-6 For training and advise go to: www.dialoog.net