¡Stop the Megaloads Now!

Monstrous machines over wild and scenic Idaho and Montana highways will destroy the wilderness and roads

Geoff Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio School

http://www.ted.com

Some kids learn by listening; others learn by doing. Geoff Mulgan gives a short introduction to the Studio School, a new kind of school in the UK where small teams of kids learn by working on projects that are, as Mulgan puts it, "for real."

BBC Speechless As Trader Tells Truth: "The Collapse Is Coming...

... and Goldman Rules The World"

Interesting words from this young guy, named Alessio Rastani, aired on mainstream TV...

September 26 2011
Copyright by BBC News

Richard Wolff with Anthony Arnove, Conversation, 13 Sep 2011

Richard Wolff spoke about the current economic crisis and its major impacts on our society, and then engaged in an onstage conversation with Anthony Arnove. This event is part of the Lannan In Pursuit of Cultural Freedom series.
Source: http://www.lannan.org/events/richard-wolff-with-anthony-arnove/

Chris Hedges on the work of Sheldon Wolin, 17 May 2011

Chris Hedges, who has written, "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug," is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and publishes a regular column on truthdig.com. Hedges spoke about Sheldon S. Wolin and his latest work, Democracy Incorporated.

Sheldon S. Wolin, born in 1922, is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He taught political theory for 40 years at Oberlin College, the Universities of California, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles, Princeton University, Cornell University, and Oxford University. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Democracy and a former regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His books include Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Thought [1960] and Tocqueville between Two Worlds [2001]. Wolin's propheticism about U.S. political life seeks to recognize the fugitive character of democracy in order to retain its reformative power, encouraging local and particular modes of political participation which can resist the totalizing tendencies of statist power. His newest book, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, is a devastating critique of the contemporary government of the United States--including what has happened to it in recent years and what must be done if it is not to disappear into history along with its classic totalitarian predecessors: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia. "With his fundamental grasp of political theory and restless spirit to get at the essence of what threatens modern democracy," Rakesh Khurana writes, "Wolin demonstrates that the threats to our democratic traditions and institutions are not always from outside, but may come from within."

Occupy Wall Street (FULL) Interview with Chris Hedges

greekcabanaboy

Wonderful interview with Chris Hedges this morning on the 9th day of the protest on wall street.

Occupy Wall Street (FULL) Interview with Chris Hedges Part 2
http://youtu.be/io8RLacFjlo

Occupy Wall Street (FULL) Interview with Chris Hedges Part 3
http://youtu.be/-xSPIjuSRKo

Occupy Wall Street (FULL) Interview with Chris Hedges Part 4
http://youtu.be/u2OxlfIDrCE

Occupy Wall Street (FULL) Interview with Chris Hedges Part 5
http://youtu.be/FwGkve3phvo

El decrecimiento como alternativa

Carlos Taibo es profesor de Ciencia Política y de la Administración en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, donde también ha dirigido el programa de estudios rusos del Instituto de Sociología de las Nuevas Tecnologías. Es autor de una veintena de libros en castellano, en su mayoría relativos a las transiciones en la Europa central y oriental contemporánea.

Interview with psychologist Philip Zimbardo (Eugene Paashuis, VPRO Backlight 2011)

http://www.lucifereffect.com/

Psychologist Zimbardo conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment in the seventies. The goal was to research the influence of circumstances on the behaviour of people. Zimbardo was also called as a specialist witness for the security guards of the Abu Graib prison in Iraq. In this interview he talks about all these subjects.

Time for Change (Bregtje van der Haak, VPRO Backlight 2010)

Meet the new revolutionaries of the Do-It-Yourself cultures in Barcelona, Tallin and Jakarta. They are modern day heroes. They do not wait for political parties or institutions to change their world; they simply do it themselves, by creating new local currencies, by working in social networks or by simply robbing the banks and redistributing their money.

The world economy is in crisis and public trust in financial institutions has hit rock bottom. As commercial banks were bailed out with billions of taxpayers money and continued to practice their old vices, many people lost faith in bank managers and politicians. They got angry at the speculative financial system that brings extreme wealth to a few and instability and unemployment to many.

Could this dissatisfaction lead to social change? Can we imagine viable alternatives? Backlight goes on a worldwide search, with sociologist Manuel Castells and philosopher Peter Sloterdijk.

Taking Control of Our Money

Our sovereign currency and credit has been usurped for private gain instead of public good. Let's take back control of our money from Wall Street and build prosperity on Main Street by creating state, county, and municipal public banks. Public tax monies should be leveraged by public officials, not speculators and swindlers. Check out http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org for more information.

Meltdown - The men who crashed the world

AlJazeeraEnglish

The first of a four-part investigation into a world of greed and recklessness that brought down the financial world.

SR 27 Bank of California

A bill to form a blue-ribbon commission to study the feasibility of a state-owned bank for California has suddenly and unexpectedly cleared both houses of the California legislature and now awaits Governor Jerry Brown's signature. Californians need to contact the Governor and urge him to sign this, the first successful public banking initiative in nearly 100 years.

Dr. Michael Hudson: "Debt Deflation in Europe and America"

Guns and Butter - September 14, 2011 at 1:00pm

Click to listen (or download)

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/73344

European banking crisis causing a constitutional crisis of the European Central Bank; Germany; the myth of Social Security in the US.; bank balance sheet crisis; food, fuel and climate crisis; the super congress; debt deflation; FHA lawsuit against the banks; criminalization of the financial sector; Modern Monetary Theory; the coming lost decade; debt cancellation.

World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over

                       

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

The government could raise $700 billion by either taking half of everything earned by the bottom 50% or by raising the marginal tax rate on the top two percent.

Especulación alimentaria / Food speculation

Magnífica explicación sobre la causa de la especulación alimentaria, el aumento de los precios de los alimentos y como consecuencia, el aumento del hambre en el mundo.

Produced by WEED http://www.weed-online.org/

Food speculation mainly takes place at commodity derivatives exchanges, which are especially large in the US but also growing in the EU. Even though these exchange can have a value for agriculture, they can also be dangerous. Especially through increasing participation of finanical speculators like banks and funds, food prices more and more become a financial asset and an object of profit maximization. This can cause price distortions and increases - and thus hunger for millions. More information can be found in the article The speculator's bread. Also many scientists, analysts and public institutions have come to the conclusion that speculation can negatively influcence commodity prices (see list).

Billion Dollar Bill

www.renegadeeconomist.com

Let him show you how aid deals really work...

In short poverty is manmade by amoral people like Bill. Growth at all costs - and this is how you fuel it.

It is not conspiracy -- it's structural economic behaviour locked into Western Foreign Policy and therefore the global economy. It's branded aid but really its neo-colonialism.

Nicole Foss aka Stoneleigh - A Century of Challenges - Peak Oil & Economic Crisis

http://localfuture.org

Peak Oil & Economic Crisis - Nicole Foss aka Stoneleigh - Q and A 

http://youtu.be/eKMnBeZzLqk

Nicole M. Foss is co-editor of The Automatic Earth, where she writes under the name Stoneleigh. She and her writing partner have been chronicling and interpreting the on-going credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of our current multi-faceted predicament. The site integrates finance, energy, environment, psychology, population and real politik in order to explain why we find ourselves in a state of crisis and what we can do about it. Prior to the establishment of TAE, she was editor of The Oil Drum Canada, where she wrote on peak oil and finance.

Most recently, Foss ran the Agri-Energy Producers' Association of Ontario, where she focused on farm-based biogas projects and grid connections for renewable energy. While living in the UK she was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where she specialized in nuclear safety in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and conducted research into electricity policy at the EU level.

Her academic qualifications include a BSc in biology from Carleton University in Canada (where she focused primarily on neuroscience and psychology), a post-graduate diploma in air and water pollution control, an LLM in international law in development from the University of Warwick in the UK. She was granted the University Medal for the top science graduate in 1988 and the law school prize for the top law school graduate in 1997.

Foss believes that resource limits (peak oil) and the collapse of global Ponzi finance are a "perfect storm" of converging phenomena that threaten to trigger wealth destruction, social discontent, and global conflict. The consequences for unprepared individuals and families could be dire.

At her presentation, Foss will discuss the many converging factors that are contributing to the predicament we face today, and how individuals can build a "lifeboat" to cope with the difficult years ahead. She explains how our current financial system is an unsustainable credit bubble grounded in "Ponzi dynamics," or the logic of the pyramid scheme. She warns that most people are woefully unprepared to face the consequences of the devastating deflation that is now unfolding.

What makes this crisis different from past financial calamities?

Foss argues that this crisis has developed in the context of the fossil fuel age, an age which will prove to be a relatively brief period of human history. She says that we have already seen oil reach a global production peak, and other fossil fuels are not far behind; and while there is still plenty of fossil fuel in the ground, production will fall, meaning that there will be less and less energy available to power the economy at prices afford to pay.

She continues that societies have gone through boom and bust cycles before, examples include: the Tulip Mania, the South Sea Bubble and the "Real" Great Depression of the 1870s; but most people in the Western world today will face this crisis without the knowledge or means to provide the basics of their own survival. Our industrial system has nearly destroyed the individual capacity for self-reliance.

Foss argues that individuals and communities that take steps now to prepare stand a much better chance to thrive in a changing world.

This is part one of a keynote talk delivered to the 2010 International Conference on Sustainability: Energy, Economy, and Environment organized by Local Future nonprofit and directed by Aaron Wissner. This portion of the talk is provided with permission of Ms. Foss. To view the rest of the copyrighted talk, visit: http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com

Manfred Max-Neef: El mundo en rumbo de colisión

"No olvides compartir la info, si te ha gustado, en redes sociales y/o demás sitios en la WorldWideWeb."

Sitio Web: max-neef.cl/​

El Premio Nobel Alternativo de Economía (Right Livelihood Award) Manfred Max-Neef ha indicado que con el dinero que se ha usado para “salvar” a los bancos de la situación financiera actual habría dado “600 años de un mundo sin hambre”. El creador de los ‘Principios de Economía Descalza’ y la ‘Teoría del Desarrollo a Escala Humana’ recuerda que “Ese es el mundo en el que estamos. Acostumbrado a que nunca hay suficiente para los que no tienen nada pero sobran los recursos para satisfacer las necesidades más superficiales”. Su pensamiento sigue claramente las lineas del Small is Beautiful del economista inglés Schumacher.

Conferencia en la Universidad Internacional de Andalucia titulada “El mundo en rumbo de colisión” (bajo la convocatoria Luzes Diálogos en La Rábida). Es una clase magistral de las relaciones entre economía y medio ambiente.

Su Hipótesis del Umbral, sostiene que a partir de determinado punto del desarrollo económico, la calidad de vida comienza a disminuir; transformando la felicidad relativa de las personas en soledad y alienación. Es por eso que la búsqueda de Max-Neef son propuestas para la puesta en práctica de un desarrollo a nuestra escala, de una economía que roce la tierra, basado en la idea de que “en la naturaleza, todo sistema vivo crece hasta un cierto punto en el que detiene su crecimiento, pero no detiene su desarrollo. El desarrollo puede seguir infinito, pero el crecimiento no”. Max-Neef es un pensador pragmático que busca con sensatez un desarrollo sostenible, sencillo y palpable, antes que la especulación desmedida que no reconoce límites en su ambición.

Postulados de la Teoría del Desarrollo a Escala Humana:

1- La economía está para servir a las personas y no las personas para servir a la economía.
2- El desarrollo tiene que ver con personas y no con objetos.
3- El crecimiento no es lo mismo que desarrollo y el desarrollo no requiere necesariamente de crecimiento.
4- Ninguna economía es posible al margen de los servicios que prestan los ecosistemas.
5- La economía es un subsistema de un sistema mayor que es finito, la biosfera y por lo tanto, el crecimiento permanente es imposible.

"Mi conclusión a estas alturas, de 77 años de acumulada juventud, es que … si viven toda la vida haciendo lo que les conviene, es una vida bastante miserable. Ustedes no tienen que hacer lo que les conviene, ustedes tienen que hacer lo que tienen que hacer. Eso es lo único que les dará la satisfacción cuando lleguen a viejos… haber sido consecuentes consigo mismos … La gente que sabe exactamente para dónde va, es la que nunca descubre nada, porque se da lo que llamo la obsesión del punto fijo: estoy aquí y tengo que llegar allá, y en consecuencia, todo lo que hay entremedio se percibe como obstáculos que deben ser superados … Y es en esos presuntos obstáculos que está toda la aventura de la vida. Entonces me la paso con anteojeras en una vida pobre. El consejo es derivar en estado de alerta, y derivar no es dejarse llevar por la corriente. "

Bill Marsh/The New York Times
Sources: Robert B. Reich, University of California, Berkeley; "The State of Working America" by the Economic Policy Institute; Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics, and Emmanuel Saez, University of California, Berkeley; Census Bureau; Bureau of Labor Statistics; Federal Reserve