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.

Adaptive Co-Management

Collaboration, Learning, and Multi-Level Governance

By Derek Armitage, Fikret Berkes and Nancy Doubleday

About the Book

In Canada and around the world, governments are shifting away from regulatory models for governing natural and cultural resources. New concerns with adaptive processes, feedback learning, and flexible partnerships are reshaping environmental governance. Meanwhile, ideas about collaboration and learning are converging around the idea of adaptive co-management.

This book provides a comprehensive synthesis of the core concepts, strategies, and tools in this emerging field, informed by a diverse group of researchers and practitioners with over two decades of experience. It also offers a diverse set of case studies that reveal the challenges and implications of adaptive co-management thinking and synthesizes lessons for natural and cultural resource governance in a wide range of contexts.

Adaptive Co-Management is not only a timely book but also a useful concept for resource governance in a world marked by rapid socio-ecological change. It will be of interest to researchers, environmental practitioners, policy-makers, and students in fields across the political and environmental spectrum.

The Inner Workings of the Monetary System

A review of Ellen Brown's book
By Stephen Lendman

This is the first of several articles on Ellen Brown's superb 2007 book titled "Web of Debt," now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells "the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free." Given today's global economic crisis, it's an appropriate time to review it and urge readers to digest the entire work, easily gotten through Amazon or Brown's webofdebt.com site. Her book is a remarkable achievement - in its scope, depth, and importance.

In the forward, banker/developer Reed Simpson said:

"I have been a banker for most of my career, and I can report that even most bankers (don't know) what goes on behind (top echelon) closed doors....I am more familiar than most with the issues (Brown covered, and) still found it an eye-opener, a remarkable window into what is really going on....(Although many banks follow high ethical practices), corruption is also rampant, (especially) in the large money center banks, in one of which I worked."

"Credible evidence (reveals) a world (banking) power elite intent on gaining absolute control over the planet and its natural resources, including its subservient human (ones)." Money is their "lifeblood," and "fear (their) weapon." Ill-used, they can "enslave nations and ensure perpetual wars and bondage." Brown exposes the scheme and offers a solution.

Debt Bondage

What president Andrew Jackson called "a hydra-headed monster...." entraps entire nations in debt. Financial commentator Hans Schicht listed how:

• by making concentrated wealth invisible,


• "exercising control through leverage(d) mergers, takeovers" or other holdings "annexed to loans;" and


• using a minimum of insider front-men to exercise "tight personal management and control."

Powerful bankers want to rule the world by creating and controlling money, the very lifeblood of world economies without which commerce would cease. Professor Henry Liu calls the monetary system a "cruel hoax" in that (except for government issued coins) "there is virtually no 'real' money in the system, only debts" - to bankers "for money they created with accounting entries....all done by a sleight of hand," only possible because governments empowered them to do it.

The solution is simple but untaken. As the Constitution mandates, money-creation power must "be returned to the government and the people it represents." Imagine the possibilities:

• the federal debt could be eliminated, at least a more manageable amount before it mushroomed to stratospheric levels;


• federal income taxes could as well; entirely for low and middle income people and at least substantially overall;


• "social programs could be expanded....without sparking runaway inflation;" and


• financial resources would be available to grow the nation economically and produce stable prosperity.

It's not pie-in-the-sky. It happened successfully under Abraham Lincoln and early colonists. More on that below.

Brown's book explains that:

• the Federal Reserve isn't federal; it's a private banking cartel owned by its major bank members in 12 Fed districts;


• except for coins, they "create" money called Federal Reserve notes, in violation of the Constitution under Article I, Section 8 that gives Congress alone the right "To coin (create) money (and) regulate the value thereof....;"


• "tangible currency (coins and paper money comprise) less than 3 percent of the US money supply;" the rest is in computer entries for loans;


• money that banks lend is "new money" that didn't exist before;


• 30% of bank-created money "is invested for their own accounts;"


• banks once made productive loans for industrial development; today they're "a giant betting machine" using countless trillions for high-risk casino-type operations - through devices like derivatives and securitization scams;


• since Andrew Jackson's presidency (1829 - 1837), the federal debt hasn't been paid, only the interest - to private bankers and other owners of US obligations;


• the 16th Amendment authorized Congress to levy an income tax; it was done "to coerce (the public) to pay interest to the banks on the federal debt;"


• the amount has mushroomed to about $500 billion annually and keeps rising;


• creating money doesn't cause inflation; it's "caused by banks expanding the money supply with loans;"


• developing nations' inflation was caused "by global institutional speculators attacking local currencies and devaluing them on international markets;"


• it could happen in America or anywhere else just as easily; and


• escaping this trap is simple if Washington reclaims its money-issuing power; early colonists did it; so did Lincoln.

As long as bankers control our money, we'll remain in a permanent "web of debt" and experience cycles of boom, bust, inflation, deflation, instability and crisis. Yet none of this has to be nor repeated and inevitable bubbles - created by design, not chance, to advantage empowered "moneychangers," much like today with its fallout causing global havoc.

Prior to the Fed's creation, the House of Morgan was dominant in contrast to the early colonists' model. Operating out of Philadelphia, the nation's first capital, it favored state-issued and loaned out money, collecting the interest, and "return(ing) it to the provincial government" in lieu of taxes.

Lincoln used the same system to finance the Civil War, after which he was assassinated and bankers reclaimed their money-issuing power. Wall Street's "silent coup (was) the passage of the (1913) Federal Reserve Act," the most destructive ever congressional legislation, thereafter extracting a huge toll amounting to permanent debt bondage with national wealth transference from the public to private bankers - with most people none the wiser.

Continue reading here