Connect The Dots USA : Profit By Squeezing Workers

http://www.connectthedotsusa.com/images/FavSlides/JobsWages/ProfitBySqueezingWorkers.jpg

Source : http://www.connectthedotsusa.com/

Manifestos of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture

by Navdanya International

The Manifesto on the Future of Seeds outlines ways and means to strengthen and accelerate the movement toward sustainable agriculture, food sovereignty, biodiversity and agricultural diversity and help defend the rights of farmers to save, share, use and improve seeds, as well as to enhance our collective capacity to adapt to the hazards and uncertainties of environmental and economic change.

English (EN) | Italiano (IT) | Español (ES) | Français (FR) | Polski (PL) | Português (PT) | Русский (RU) | 日本語 (JA)

The Manifesto on the Future of Food develops in detail principles on which to base the transition to a sustainable food and agricultural system as outlined in the Florence Declaration on the Global Rights to Food. Most importantly it sets out practical vision, ideas and programs toward ensuring that food and agriculture become more socially and ecologically sustainable, more accessible, and toward putting food quality, food safety and public health above corporate profits.

English (EN) | Italiano (IT) | Deutsch (DE) | Español (ES) | Français (FR) | Polski (PL)

The Manifesto on Climate Change and the Future of Food Security highlights the need to change to a productive model that minimizes the system’s vulnerability to external shocks and hazards and that contributes sustainably to mitigating the effects of climate change, based on a strong multifunctionality able to maximize the role of agriculture as a service of the ecosystem and as a tool to strengthen such system, and that guarantees family farming a pivotal role in a new system of production.

English (EN) | Italiano (IT) | Deutsch (DE) | Español (ES) | Français (FR) | Polski (PL)

The Manifesto on the Future of Knowledge Systems: knowledge sovereignty for a healthy planet makes evident that the multiple crises that face humanity today — the financial implosion and economic collapse, climate chaos and the energy and food crises — are rooted in a reductionist, fragmented and mechanical way of thinking, with the world being equated to a huge machine, free to be manipulated and improved at will. A new way of thinking is vital for the return to a balanced and healthy planet, one based on sustainability, resilience and equity. Some of the themes addressed include: corporate control of science and the merging of knowledge and power; the commercialization of knowledge and biopiracy; the need to integrate traditional and indigenous cultural knowledge with independent science.

English (EN) | Italiano (IT) | Español (ES) | Français (FR)

Source : http://permaculture.org.au/2012/08/20/manifestos-of-the-international-commission-on-the-future-of-food-and-agriculture/

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule

Open publication 

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule is a report of the New Economy Working Group produced in collaboration with the New Economy Network; it is an outcome of a series of conversations focused on building a policy agenda for transforming our money system. David Korten is the lead author; participating organizations include Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, Capital Institute, Democracy Collaborative, Green America, Institute for Policy Studies, Living Economies Forum, New Economy Network, New Rules Project, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Public Banking Institute, RSF Social Finance, and YES! Magazine.

The report calls for building a money/banking/finance system of local financial institutions that are transparent, accountable, rooted in community and dedicated to funding activities that build community wealth and meet community needs. The proposed system will look quite similar to the one that existed in the United States before the wave of financial deregulation that began in the 1960s. The How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule report briefly traces that history, outlines its devastating consequences, and presents an agenda for corrective action to change the system rules, structure, and culture.

Paul Ariès : Désobéir et grandir - Vers une société de décroissance

http://www.ecosociete.org/t126.php

Quand 20% des humains s'approprient 86% des ressources disponibles sur Terre, parler de décroissance devient une nécessité. En effet, si les six milliards d'être humains vivaient comme les occidentaux, nous aurions besoin de trois planètes. Une réalité que les nombreux remèdes à la crise économique actuelle sont loin de prendre en compte. À l'heure où le système financier et économique bat de l'aile, ce livre tombe à point. Dans Désobéir et grandir, Paul Ariès nous montre qu'il devient indispensable que nos sociétés réapprennent le sens des limites et renouent avec une primauté du politique sur l'économique.

Devant la montée des inégalités sociales et la destruction de l'environnement, l'auteur revendique le recours à la désobéissance civique pour remettre l'intérêt général et la justice sociale au centre de nos choix de société. Avoir recours à une révolte pacifiste lorsque les intérêts privés surplombent le politique est un devoir de citoyen (comme nous l'ont montré les faucheurs volontaires). Les humains doivent ainsi réapprendre à être des citoyens et à s'emparer du politique. Pour Ariès, le consom'acteur enferme encore et toujours l'individu dans un rapport économique biaisé dont il faut urgemment sortir.

Cet objecteur de croissance défend la grève de la consommation, la gratuité, les rentrées d'école sans marques, un revenu universel d'existence, entre autres choses. Il aborde sans ambages tous les sujets qui gravitent autour d'une société de décroissance conviviale, de notre rapport déstructuré à l'alimentation à l'obsession du pouvoir d'achat en passant par le retour au rationnement, ou encore les dérives religieuses et intégristes de la décroissance.

De sa plume colorée et énergique, Paul Ariès, objecteur de croissance bien connu en France, resitue le projet politique de la décroissance et propose différents niveaux de résistance collective : simplicité volontaire, désobéissance civique et expérimentations collectives. Il vient d'ailleurs de fonder le Parti pour la Décroissance. Cet ouvrage, qui rassemble plusieurs chroniques publiés dans différents journaux ou revues, nous permet d'appréhender le concept de décroissance sous un jour nouveau, grâce à la variété de sujets qu'il analyse.

Paul Ariès est professeur de sciences politiques et écrivain. Il est connu pour ses travaux sur les sectes et son militantisme contre la malbouffe et pour la décroissance. Il est l'auteur du Petit Manuel Anti-McDo à l'usage des petits et des grands, de José Bové, la révolte d'un paysan, de Putain de ta marque, de Décroissance ou barbarie, No Conso, de Manifeste pour une grève générale de la consommation et de La décroissance : un nouveau projet politique, tous publiés aux éditions Golias.

Democracy Incorporated : Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8606.html

Democracy is struggling in America - by now this statement is Almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one Economic and where state powers are conjoined and unbridled Virtually? Can the nation check excellant descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"?

Wolin portrays a country where Citizens are politically uninterested and submissive - and where elites are eager to Keep Them That Way. At best the nation has Become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear That today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns That unchecked power Economic Risks verging on total power and has excellant own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking That justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately That democracy's best hope lies in learning Citizens Themselves anew to exercise power at the local level.

Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come.

"The twentieth century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
- Alex Carey

Taking the Risk Out of Democracy : Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/32amb6ff9780252066160.html

This compelling book examines the twentieth-century history of corporate propaganda as practiced by U.S. businesses and its export to and adoption by other western democracies, chiefly the United Kingdom and Australia. A volume in the series The History of Communication, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone

"A uniquely important work on the 'ideal of a propaganda-managed democracy'."--Noam Chomsky "Illuminates how big business propaganda, waged by PR experts, subverts democracy and ensures corporate dominance."--John Stauber, coauthor of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry "A unique study of the growth and development of corporate propaganda in western democracies. . . . Timely, and useful for anyone concerned about the influence of methods of mass persuasion in undermining democracy."--Elaine Bernard, Harvard University Trade Union Program

The Bubble and Beyond : Fictitious Capital, Debt Deflation and Global Crisis

http://michael-hudson.com/2012/07/the-bubble-and-beyond

THE BUBBLE AND BEYOND describes how the fabulous expansive forces of industrial capitalism have been subverted by a predatory finance capitalism. What the FED hailed as “The Great Moderation” has left the middle class to take on a lifetime of bank debt to obtain access to housing, education to get a job, an auto to drive to it, and simply to maintain living standards that wages and salaries no longer support.

What has derailed the economy is the take-over of academic economics and politics by the financial sector in order to censor criticism and misrepresent statistics so as to give the impression that the economy can “borrow its way out of debt.” The reality is that income used to pay down today’s debt overhead is not available to be spent on goods and services. The result is debt deflation, followed by austerity and the the "fire sale" or decay of infrastructure at the national and local levels.

The most controversial claim by Prof. Hudson is that “Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be.” The question he poses is whether their non-payment will lead to worldwide foreclosures – including sell-offs of the public domain by debt-strapped local and national governments – or whether they will be written down in line with the ability to pay.

This is the economic issue that will dominate politics over the next generation. Illustrated with charts and exhibits that make it plain where money goes versus where it should go.

Michael Parenti : Democracy for the Few, 9th Edition

http://www.michaelparenti.org/DemocracyForFew.html

DEMOCRACY FOR THE FEW is a provocative interpretation of American Government. It shows how democracy is repeatedly violated by corporate oligopolies, and how popular forces have fought back and occasionally made gains in spite of the system. By focusing on the relationship between economic power and political power, discussing actual government practices and policies, conspiracies, propaganda, fraud, secrecy and other ploys of government and politics, this book stands apart in its analysis of how US Government works.

Michael Parenti has taught political and social science at a number of colleges and universities, and now devotes himself full time to writing and guest lecturing. He is an internationally known, award winning author who has published 21 books, including: God and His Demons (2010); Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (2007); The Culture Struggle (2006), and The Assassination of Julius Caesar (2003).Various writings of his have been translated into some twenty languages. His publications, including previous editions of Democracy for the Few, have been read and enjoyed by students, lay readers, and scholars, and have been used extensively in hundreds of college courses across the country. Dr. Parenti lectures frequently throughout North America and abroad. His various talks and interviews have played widely on radio, television, and the Internet. Some 300 articles of his have been published in magazines, newspapers, websites, and scholarly journals, including American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Social Research, and New Political Science. For more information, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org.