This Little Kiddy Went to Market

The Corporate Capture of Childhood

by Sharon Beder

with Wendy Varney and Richard Gosden

This Little Kiddy Went to Market investigates the way that corporations are strategically shaping children to be hyperconsumers, submissive employees, and passive, unquestioning citizens as well as feeding a burgeoning pharmaceutical industry by ensuring children who cannot be shaped are given a psychiatric diagnosis.

It covers the way that corporations are targeting ever younger children with a barrage of advertising and marketing; the way that children’s play has been turned into a commercial opportunity; and how corporations have taken advantage of childish anxieties and insecurities, and reshaped children’s very identities. It shows how school funding shortages have opened the door to an influx of corporate materials into schools aimed at inculcating consumer and business values.

The book analyses school reforms in English-speaking nations to uncover the hidden agendas behind them including: shifting of responsibility for the consequences of funding shortages to school management; turning schools into competing business enterprises where children are drilled and constantly tested; producing submissive employees with basic literacy and numeracy skills rather than developing an informed active citizenry with critical thinking skills; enabling businesses to take control of more and more aspects of schooling; and eroding the ideal and reality of public schooling.

‘A chilling assessment of modern commercial culture and how it distorts childhood, corrupts civic institutions, and endangers the planet.’

Alex Molnar, Professor of Education Policy, Arizona State University

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace : How We Got to Be So Hated

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781560254058

 By Gore Vidal

The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed too controversial to publish in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of "evil-doers?" "Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age." — Washington Post "Our greatest living man of letters."—Boston Globe "Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe."—Harold Bloom, The New York Review of Books

We can only be what we already are.
Rodrigo Ribeiro

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass

The Nation in the Global Era: Conflict and Transformation

Edited by Jerry Harris, DeVry University, Chicago

The Nation in the Global Era: Conflict and Transformation offers unique perspectives into a range of important current topics for both activists and scholars concerned with globalization. The articles combine the study of globalization as an integrated world system with the specifics of how individual nations and groups are inserted into the larger economic, social, cultural and political patterns. This essential approach seeks out those forces that create a shared world system, yet understands the multiple levels and variances under which that system develops. Chapters explore the relationship between class and state under the impact of globalization; how nations, particularly in the South, are affected by globalization; and the development of national identity and consciousness within the context of global relationships.

Contributors include: JoAnn Chirico, Ryan D. Griffiths, Magda von der Heydt- Coca, Ismael Hossein-zadeh, Kwangkun Lee, Patrick Loy, Cori Madrid, Georgina Murray, Greg Nowell, Rubin Patterson, Isaías R. Rivera, Lorena Garcia Ruiz, Ivan Savić, David Schweickart, Sandeep Sen, Jason Struna, John W. Sutherlin, Kumru Toktamis, Joshua W. Walker, Veda Ward, William Tabb.

The Dialectics of Globalization:

Economic and Political Conflict in a Transnational World

By Jerry Harris

Combining bold theortical analysis and careful empirical investigation Harris provides a critical framework to understand the political and economic underpinnings of globalization. In an unique historical approach the book examines how the revolution in information technologies and the break-up of the Soviet Union intertwined to present new global opportunities to reorganize capitalism as a unified world system headed by an emerging transnational capitalist class.

The book challenges the common view that nation states still define international relations, with the United States as hegemonic leader of the world system. Instead Harris offers a more complex analysis of world affairs that sees the current period as one of transition between nationally based industrial capitalism and a global system based on revolutionary methods of production and new class relationships. He argues this conflict appears in every country as national economies realigned to fit new patterns of world accumulation creating a host of political tensions within and between nations.

This analysis is detailed in a distinctive interpretation of the US military/industrial complex, as well as the contemporary class struggles in Germany and the emerging powers of China, India and Brazil. The book concludes by investigating alternative trends which are currently challenging the inequalities of global capitalism, unfolding a fresh approach to the relationship between the state, market and civil society.

Towards an Inclusive Democracy

The Crisis of the Growth Economy and the Need for a New Liberatory Project

Takis Fotopoulos

The collapse of "actually existing socialism", which confirmed the failure of the socialist movement to achieve a synthesis of the demands for autonomy and equality, the parallel degradation of socialdemocracy into an integral part of the neoliberal consensus, and the consequent universalisation of the market economy, have intensified the crisis which began about two centuries ago, when the system of the market economy and representative democracy were established. Thie establishment of the market economy in particular was instrumental in creating the present huge concentration of power, currently accelerated by globalisation. But, it is the concentration of power which is the fundamental cause of the present multi-dimensional crisis: political, economic, social and ecological.

On the threshold of a new millennium, the need to formulate a new liberatory project is imperative. Such a project should aim at the negation of concentration of power, and at the same time would be the synthesis, but also the transcendence, of the two great historical traditions, the socialist and the democratic ones, as well as of the radical trends within the green, feminist and autonomist movements. Today, this project can have no other content than that of an inclusive democracy and its explicit aim should be the equal distribution of power among citizens: at the political level, through direct democracy, at the economic level through economic democracy, i.e. a new form of economic organisation beyond the failed systems of the market economy and central planning, as well at the broader social level. Inclusive Democracy therefore is not a utopia but, in effect, perhaps the only realistic way out of the chronic and today generalised crisis in an effort to integrate society with polity, the economy and Nature.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Henry David Thoreau

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.
Gandhi

Evil in Modern Thought:

An Alternative History of Philosophy

Susan Neiman

Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For eighteenth-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate us from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it.

Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts--combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade--eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.

Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, this book tells the history of modern philosophy as an attempt to come to terms with evil. It reintroduces philosophy to anyone interested in questions of life and death, good and evil, suffering and sense.

Break the banks, for the good of the people

(CommonDreams.org)
By Joseph E. Stiglitz

Bailing out the big US banks has done nothing to improve them

With all the talk of "green shoots" of economic recovery, America's banks are resisting efforts to regulate them. While politicians talk about their commitment to regulatory reform to prevent a recurrence of the crisis, this is one area where the devil really is in the details - and the banks will muster what muscle they have left to ensure that they have ample room to continue as they have in the past.

The old system worked well for the banks so why should they embrace change? Indeed, the efforts to rescue them devoted such little thought to the kind of post-crisis financial system we want, that we will end up with a banking system that is less competitive, with the large banks that were "too big to fail" even larger.

It has long been recognised that the US banks that are too big to fail are also too big to be managed. That is one reason the performance of several has been so dismal. When they fail, the Government engineers a financial restructuring and provides deposit insurance, gaining a stake in their future. Officials know that if they wait too long, zombie or near-zombie banks - which have little or no net worth, but are treated as if they were viable institutions - are likely to "gamble on resurrection". If they take big bets and win, they walk away with the proceeds, if they fail, the Government picks up the tab.

This is not just theory; it is a lesson learned, at great expense, during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. In a financial restructuring, shareholders typically get wiped out, and bondholders become the new shareholders. Sometimes, the government must provide additional funds, or a new investor must be willing to take over the failed bank.

The Obama Administration has, however, introduced a new concept: "too big to be financially restructured". The Administration argues that all hell would break loose if we tried to play by the usual rules. Markets would panic. So, not only can't we touch the bondholders, we can't even touch the shareholders - even if most of the shares' existing value merely reflects a bet on a government bail-out.

This judgement is wrong. The Obama Administration has succumbed to political pressure and scare-mongering by the big banks and, as a result, has confused bailing out the bankers and their shareholders with bailing out the banks.

The Obama strategy's current and future costs are very high - and so far, it has not achieved its limited objective of restarting lending. The taxpayer has had to pony up billions, and has provided billions more in guarantees - bills that are likely to come due in the future.

Rewriting the rules of the market economy - in a way that has benefited those that have caused so much pain to the entire global economy - is worse than financially costly. Most Americans view it as grossly unjust, especially after they saw the banks divert the billions intended to enable them to revive lending, to payments of outsized bonuses and dividends.

This ersatz capitalism, where losses are socialised and profits privatised, is doomed to failure. Incentives are distorted. There is no market discipline. The too-big-to-be-restructured banks know that they can gamble with impunity - and, with the Federal Reserve making funds available at near-zero interest rates, there is ample money to do so.

Some have called this "socialism with American characteristics". But socialism is concerned about ordinary individuals. By contrast, the US has provided little help for the millions of its people who are losing their homes. Workers who lose their jobs receive only 39 weeks of limited unemployment benefits, and are then left on their own. And, when they lose their jobs, most also lose their health insurance.

America has expanded its corporate safety net in unprecedented ways, from commercial banks to investment banks, then to insurance, and now to cars, with no end in sight. In truth, this is not socialism, but an extension of long-standing corporate welfarism. The rich and powerful turn to the Government to help them whenever they can, while needy individuals get little social protection.

We need to break up the too-big-to-fail banks; there is no evidence that these behemoths deliver societal benefits that are commensurate with the costs they have imposed.

This raises another problem with America's too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-be-restructured banks: they are too politically powerful. Their lobbying efforts worked well, first to deregulate, and then to have taxpayers pay for the clean-up. Their hope is that it will work again to keep them free to do as they please, regardless of the risks for taxpayers and the economy. We cannot afford to let that happen.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University. Among many books, he is the author of Globalization and Its Discontents. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 for research on the economics of information. Most recently, he is the co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine

Carlos Taibo - En defensa del decrecimiento : Sobre capitalismo, crisis y barbarie

http://www.catarata.org/libro/mostrar/id/489

La crisis en curso apenas ha suscitado otras reflexiones que las que se interesan por su dimensión financiera. De resultas, han quedado en segundo plano fenómenos tan delicados como el cambio climático, el encarecimiento inevitable de los precios de las materias primas energéticas que empleamos, la sobrepoblación y la ampliación de la huella ecológica. En este libro se intenta rescatar esas otras crisis, y hacerlo con la voluntad expresa de identificar dos horizontes de corte muy diferente. Si el primero lo aporta un proyecto específico, el del decrecimiento, que cada vez es más urgente sea asumido como propio por los movimientos de resistencia y emancipación en el Norte opulento, el segundo lo proporciona un grave riesgo de que, en un escenario tan delicado como el del presente, gane terreno un darwinismo social militarizado que recuerde poderosamente a lo que los nazis alemanes hicieron ochenta años atrás. En la trastienda se aprecia, de cualquier modo, la necesidad imperiosa de contestar el capitalismo en su doble dimensión de explotación e injusticia, por un lado, y de agresiones contra el medio natural, por el otro.

Carlos Taibo es profesor de Ciencia Política en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Entre sus últimos libros cabe mencionar Rapiña global (Punto de lectura, Madrid, 2006), Sobre política, mercado y convivencia (Los Libros de la Catarata, Madrid, 2006; en colaboración con José Luis Sampedro), el volumen colectivo Voces contra la globalización (Crítica, Barcelona, 2008; en colaboración con Carlos Estévez), 150 preguntas sobre el nuevo desorden (Los Libros de la Catarata, Madrid, 2008) y Neoliberales, neoconservadores, aznarianos. Ensayos sobre el pensamiento de la derecha lenguaraz (Los Libros de la Catarata, Madrid, 2008).

What's Class Got to Do with It? American Society in the Twenty-first Century

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100440280

 By Michael Zweig

"Whether in regard to the economy or issues of war and peace, class is central to our everyday lives. Yet class has not been as visible as race or gender, not nearly as much a part of our conversations and sense of ourselves as these and other 'identities.' We are of course all individuals, but our individuality and personal life chances are shaped—limited or enhanced—by the economic and social class in which we have grown up and in which we exist as adults."—from the Introduction

The contributors to this volume argue that class identity in the United States has been hidden for too long. Their essays, published here for the first time, cover the relation of class to race and gender, to globalization and public policy, and to the lives of young adults. They describe how class, defined in terms of economic and political power rather than income, is in fact central to Americans' everyday lives. What's Class Got to Do with It? is an important resource for the new field of working class studies.

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. George Orwell

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
Emma Goldman

The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination

by Bernard E. Whitley, Mary E. Kite

Synopsis
This textbook by Whitley and Kite (both of Ball State U.) aims to provide undergraduate students with an overview of psychological research and theory on the nature, causes, and amelioration of prejudice and discrimination. It covers the standard topics, but was also written with the goal of covering important topics not found in similar texts. To this end, the authors have included chapters on research methods and how methods influence conclusions about the issues studied, the development of prejudice in children, and the nature of discrimination and its relationship to prejudice.

Biography
Bernard Whitley is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychological Science at Ball State University. His research focuses the role of individual difference variables in prejudice. He is author, coauthor, or coeditor of four other books. He and Dr. Kite have collaborated together on numerous research projects.

Mary Kite is Professor of Psychological Science at Ball State University. Her research focuses on stereotyping and prejudice toward women, gays and lesbians, and older adults and has published widely in those areas. She is a past president of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology and currently serves as Secretary-Treasurer of the Midwestern Psychological Association.