You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.
Detective Lester Freamon.

The European Union is one of the most cryptic and opaque political insitutions, much more than some of the governments and states that is comprised of. That opacity includes the European Union budget, its subsidies, and how and to whom this money is distributed, which is very hard for citizens to understand.

Some journalists, transparency NGOs and analysts have started Follow The Money, to shed some light in the way money is spent and given by european institutions. This site builds upon the work of farmsubsidy.org, which used laws of access to information and new transparency rules on financial regulation in the EU to report on who was getting the farm subsidies money.

FollowTheMoney.eu aims to make it easier for European citizens to understand the EU budget: how it gets decided, where the money comes from and how it is spent. FollowTheMoney.eu comes from journalists, researchers and activists who want to make the European Union work in a more transparent and accountable way.

The team has released a companion to farmsubsidy.org, called fishsubsidy.org. This time, obviously, the focus is on money granted to fishing industries.

You can find issues where some action is needed, as well as events to attend and participate in the front page of Follow The Money. If you are really into transparency and budgetting and want to get involved with this project, you can find more about becoming part of the team in the about page.

This project was found via Furilo.

We are a grassroots, web-based community dedicated to chronicling and resisting corporate attacks on democracy, worker’s and human rights, fair trade, business ethics and the environment. Our shared goal of a more informed and conscious consumer is being accomplished via this website: a vast database of easily searchable corporate and political info designed to aid responsible citizens, progressive thinkers and activists.

Ethical Consumerism is an important movement toward corporate reform, through which individuals recognize their own role in systems of oppression, and take personal steps toward resistance and positive change.

They site rates the performance of a company in five different areas or issues: workers’ rights, human rights, environment, political influence and business ethics.  Knowmore was conceived and founded by independent hip hop artists B. Dolan and Sage Francis.

Find how you can participate in this project.

These issues span over many subjects and areas, which are reflected in a breadth of competences and opinions. There are no leaders, nor members. We Rebuild is simply an international chaotic event, and our actions can not be predicted in detail.

Who are we? There really is no “we”, because we are also you. When acting as We Rebuild, we put all personal or political views aside, focusing on our target – rebuilding the world and saving the internets.

See a FAQ here.