Cooperativeresearch.org in jeopardy

Due to financial difficulties, the Center for Cooperative Research (CCR) is in jeopardy, and absent immediate intervention they will be forced to discontinue operations.

The small but dedicated group at CCR has tirelessly contributed their time and money to develop a revolutionary information resource, but now, because of a lack of public support, they may be forced to shut down. Over the past three weeks they have been running a desperately-needed fundraiser, but the drive, which ends today, has failed to raise the funds necessary to continue CCR’s operations.

In debt nearly $15,000 from last year, and needing an additional $29,000 for this year, the site’s goal was to raise about $44,000 in 21 days. Ending today, the drive has raised less than $9,000, which doesn’t even cover past expenses.

This is extremely disappointing to say the least.

Cooperativeresearch.org is more than a website; it is a crucial public tool with the potential to change information-sharing forever. They put it best:

Imagine an online database that people can use to get every single detail about every single important event relating to issues like the weaponization of space, depleted uranium, Venezuela, Bolivia, 911, the US and Iraq, peak oil, US development of non-lethal weapons for crowd control, genetically engineered crops, neoliberalism, the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the ports scandal, the Bush administration's assault on the environment, suppression of renewable energy technologies, the IMF, the World Bank, the credit bubble, US covert activity in Central Asia, the derivative bubble, war profiteering in Iraq and elsewhere, and so-on. Now imagine, that this same database contains detailed information on thousands of powerful individuals, corporations, and organizations. Now stretch your imagination even further and envision that this database has information about all the relationships that exist between these entities and events. Finally, imagine that all of the data can be rendered as highly readable chronologies capable of being filtered according to topic, person, organization, corporation, keyword, and other types of criteria—and—that the website has the capability to generate customizable, scalable "context" timelines on any event with the click of a link. How significant would it be to have such a tool? Think about it for a second. It would essentially be an intelligence database maintained by members of civil society to monitor the activities of powerful interests—corporations, government officials, and the like.

With this capability, people such as ourselves—dedicated to the cause of providing accurate information about the affairs of the world—will become a force to reckon with. Having this resource will dramatically improve the productivity of independent journalists, researchers, and alternative media organizations. It will be politically and economically significant because it will enable grassroots efforts to compete on a near equal footing with private industry while contributing to and enriching the intellectual commons.

If you have benefited from CCR’s work and if you recognize the site’s potential, then please visit their fundraiser page and make a donation. If anybody deserves our support, it is them.