The healing power of the community

AFRICA: Disruption opens up for the capitalists a new display of power and new income: People, society and nature are reduced to raw material. The author Achille Mbembe's horizon is always the widest possible – the cosmic, earth-historical and planetary. Africa, despite all harrowing problems, is being called forth as a vibrant world center that still has powers in reserve, a teeming wildlife and a wealth of cultures.

FUTURE: Are we moving towards an international society that takes care of those who fall outside the established working life – and wisely converts today's military industry towards civilian tasks? It is possible that the new BRICS may point the way away from current Western ideology.

THE GLOCAL: Citizens' councils can revitalize Europe. Their success depends both on their ability to strengthen the EU's participatory political processes, and on greater responsiveness to citizens' local communities. Here we look at how the first "European Commons Assembly" provided an opportunity for information-based political reforms together – based on social and ecological sustainability.

Criticism of modernity: The neoliberal "happiness dispositive's" imperative of happiness regards pain as a failure, a weakness. The pain has become dumb, and consequently speechless and meaningless. But is the consequence that the neoliberal paradigm of freedom is disintegrating?