Hundreds of communities around the world have created new currencies over the last few decades, trading millions of dollars’ worth each year. In Canada, at least Calgary, Toronto, and BC’s Salt Spring Island are taking part. While only the Bank of Canada can print paper to serve as legal tender, it’s perfectly lawful for any Canadian community to make its own alternative currency as long as it records transactions and files taxes — which means this currency needs to be exchangeable with the national dollar.

By their design, community currencies force people to spend locally, and usually quickly. They often stand as pillars of community-led attempts to rejuvenate depressed economies, such as  Totnes and Brixton Pounds in the UK’s Transition Towns, and Argentina’s wide adoption of the Crédito during its 1999 economic crisis. Most are managed by nonprofit organizations, who sell them in exchange for legal tender (one Canadian dollar buys one Calgary Dollar, for instance). The managing NPOs frequently have a surplus of funds (often from business participation fees or expired non-redeemed notes) that are funnelled into community projects or customer discounts. For example, 10 percent of all spent Toronto Dollars is donated to local charities, while the German chiemgauer, which started as a school project, has raised €100,000 for charities.

via “The 100-Mile Dollar” by Alina Konevski | The Walrus Blog.

Hopefully he isn’t sued for copyright infringement. :(

Kazakhstan’s shooting team has been left stunned after a comedy national anthem from the film Borat was played at a medal ceremony at championships in Kuwait instead of the real one.

The team asked for an apology and the medal ceremony was later rerun.

The team’s coach told Kazakh media the organisers had downloaded the parody from the internet by mistake.

The song was produced by UK comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for the film, which shows Kazakhs as backward and bigoted.

The original Borat movie offended the Kazakh authorities
Footage of Thursday’s original ceremony posted on YouTube shows gold medallist Maria Dmitrienko listening to the anthem without emotion and finally smiling as it ends.

Coach Anvar Yunusmetov told Kazakh news agency Tengrinews that the tournament’s organisers had also got the Serbian national anthem wrong.

via BBC News – Borat anthem stuns Kazakh gold medallist in Kuwait.

I am sorry Australia, but your government seems to have failed it’s responsibility to you again. First it sides with the Japanese in their illegal whale hunting in their own waters, and then demonizes the people who stop them. Then it attacks free speech to restrict access to content that it finds distasteful (like hardcore porn and such), has tried to pass an actual censorship law, and now is trying to claim that it is in the best interest of the people to keep negotiations of an agreement which would impact every single one of them, a secret:

“Disclosure of the documents while the negotiations are still in process, would, in my view, prejudice, hamper and impede those negotiations to an unacceptable degree,” wrote [Attorney-General’s Department senior legal officer] Purcell. That would, in my view, be contrary to the interests of good government — which would, in turn, be contrary to the public interest.”

via Australian Gov’t: Not In The Public Interest For The Public To Be Interested In Secret Anti-Piracy Negotiations | Techdirt.

Considering my involvement with various filesharing websites, and my anti-US Government position. I see this coming to Canada soon, and it scares the hell out of me (they have already done it with the Casino site guys). How could a country be so subservient to another country that they are willing to sell out their own citizens?

Richard O’Dwyer, the UK-based ex-administrator of the video linking website TVShack will be extradited to the US to face copyright infringement charges. Despite public outrage Home Secretary Theresa May approved the extradition order today. The 23-year-old student has never visited United States, but now faces several years in a US prison.

Last year Richard O’Dwyer was arrested by police for operating TVShack, a website that carried links to copyrighted TV-shows.

Following his detention in the UK’s largest prison, the site owner fought a looming extradition to the US, but without success.

After a UK judge gave the green light to extradite the student two months ago, Home Secretary Theresa May officially approved the request from US authorities today.

via “Pirating” UK Student to be Extradited to the US | TorrentFreak.