February 20, 2013

Harvesting Justice: Transforming the Global Food Supply Chain -- Food Sovereignty By Beverly Bell

http://www.nationofchange.org/harvesting-justice-transforming-global-food-supply-chain-food-sovereignty-1361118189


"Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt in defiance of the British Empire's monopoly on this resource critical to people's diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain's rule over India. The act of 'making salt' has since been repeated many times in many forms by people's movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: César Chávez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement -- one that spans the globe -- seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems, with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt."

So began a statement from the People's Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty from the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit in 2010, which launched a national movement. So, too, begins a weekly blog series adapted from Other Worlds' hot-off-the-press, 140-page book: Harvesting Justice: Transforming Food, Land, and Agriculture Systems in the Americas. The book is the result of five years of interviews and on-site research from throughout the hemisphere, describing strategies to win food justice and food sovereignty. It draws from more than 100 cutting-edge successes, grassroots alternatives, and inspiring models. An appendix offers hundreds of ways to get involved.

From community gardens to just global policy, a national and global movement is growing to reclaim food, land, and agricultural systems from agribusiness and put them back in the hands of citizens. A common thread links innovations and successes happening simultaneously around the globe: a vision of a society that values life and the earth over profit. In the U.S., the parts of the movement have often worked in isolation from each other, but in fact they are all pieces of an inseparable whole. Together, they address:

The ability of all to eat adequate and healthy food;
The well-being of the land, air, and waters;
The fair wages, rights, and health of those who plant, harvest, produce and prepare our food;
The need to restore and protect small farms and local food systems;
The ability of Native and traditional peoples to control their own land, grow their own food, and preserve their own cultures;
The need to privilege the rights and needs of women, as the world's primary food producers and providers;
The right of every nation to control its own food and agriculture; and
An end to corporate control of food and agriculture, including an end to trade rules and international agreements that put profit first.

The group that released the "make salt" manifesto has since formalized itself into the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance. A mix of farmers, farm workers, organizers, Native community leaders, Washington policy analysts, and immigrants' rights advocates, the group brings to the U.S., for the first time, a political demand that has long been seminal in the global South and parts of Europe: food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is a prerequisite for health and justice for all people, food, agriculture, and Mother Earth. It is an expansive set of principles, policies, and practices which ensure the right of everyone to ecologically sound, sustainably produced and harvested food. They also ensure the right of people and nations to democratic control over their food and agriculture systems....

RIGHT ON!

February 18, 2013

See how Michigan universities' growing net assets compare to tuition increases

http://www.freep.com/article/20130218/NEWS06/302180018/1317/headlines/See-how-Michigan-universities-growing-net-assets-compare-to-tuition-increases-%28database%29

Tuition at Michigan's universities is up 11.7% from the 2008-09 school year. Over the same period, the total unrestricted net assets of those schools as increased by 52.4%.









UniversityAscending/ 2012-13 tuition/2012 unrestricted assets/2009-10 tuition 2009 unrestricted assets/ 2008-09 tuition /Change in tuition/Change in unrestricted assets

All universities $10,870.00 $4,136,507,067.00 $9,394.08 $2,945,581,475.00 $8,833.15 15.71% 40.43%

Central Michigan $10,956.00 $279,700,000.00 $9,248.00 $196,100,000.00 $8,190.00 18.47% 42.63%

Eastern Michigan $9,048.00 $29,300,000.00 $8,399.00 $65,600,000.00 $8,091.00 7.73% -55.34%

Ferris State $10,710.00 $118,300,000.00 $9,480.00 $84,500,000.00 $9,000.00 12.97% 40.00%

Grand Valley $10,330.00 $170,095,000.00 $8,845.00 $120,226,000.00 $8,400.00 16.79% 41.48%

Lake Superior State $9,671.00 $4,840,117.00 $8,315.00 $1,901,844.00 $7,925.00 16.31% 154.50%

Michigan State $13,211.00 $772,000,000.00 $11,383.00 $564,000,000.00 $10,691.00 16.06% 36.88%

Michigan Tech $14,448.00 $8,646,427.00 $12,278.00 $9,884,730.00 $11,616.00 17.67% -12.53%

Northern Michigan $8,766.00 $89,105,865.00 $7,510.00 $78,727,901.00 $7,128.00 16.72% 13.18%

Oakland $10,706.00 $145,330,000.00 $9,188.00 $96,676,000.00 $8,427.00 16.52% 50.33%

Saginaw Valley $8,120.00 $41,393,000.00 $6,900.00 $32,120,000.00 $6,492.00 17.68% 28.87%

University of Michigan* $13,819.00 $2,526,000,000.00 $12,400.00 $1,539,745,000.00 $11,738.00 11.44% 64.05%

Wayne State $10,989.00 $9,319.00 $232,000,000.00 $8,751.00 17.92%

Western Michigan $10,536.00 ($48,203,342.00) $8,858.00 ($75,900,000.00) $8,382.00 18.94% 36.49%

Sorry about the format....Demeter

February 16, 2013

Weekend Economists Struck By Stars, Moons, Meteors February 15-18, 2013

Well, this is an interesting weekend. We have "stars" falling over Chelyabinsk, Russia:

Isn't Technology Wonderful? We the People can record and broadcast LA police "indiscretions", massive Bill of Rights violations, real-time fraud, and now, galactic events, without anyone from the 1% getting between us.

So, let's keep that information flowing! Post what you've found HERE, this weekend!

February 14, 2013

“We aren’t known for torturing people any more. In the Obama era, we’re known for killing them.”

http://americablog.com/2013/02/obama-drones-and-death.html

I want to make this discussion of drones and the Obama kill list as brief as possible — first, because each of the news-facts speaks for itself, and second, because there are many important implications to all this, each of which could be a long piece in itself.

So first some background, then the news, then a taste of several implications.

Background — Obama likes his drones

more at link

February 14, 2013

The police state implications of Obama’s assassination program

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/02/07/pers-f07.html

The Obama administration’s recently-leaked “white paper” on the assassination of US citizens, and the actions carried out on the basis of the arguments it advances, must be taken as a dire warning to the working class in the United States and around the world. The democratic rights of the people are in grave peril. The American ruling class, steeped in lawlessness and violence, is moving toward dictatorship.

The administration’s frontal assault on democratic rights and constitutional protections—asserting the “right” of the president to unilaterally and secretly order the state murder of American citizens—is undeniably grounds for impeachment. The crimes of Richard Nixon, who nearly 40 years ago resigned the presidency rather than face impeachment and removal from office, pale in comparison to Obama’s assertion of unconstrained executive powers.

The pseudo-legal arguments of the Justice Department memo, recalling the Bush administration’s infamous torture memoranda, boil down to the following:

The president and the military-intelligence apparatus, based solely on their own internal deliberations, have the power to assassinate any US citizen who they decide is a leading member of Al Qaeda or its “associated forces.” This power has no geographic boundaries. Nor can it be limited by any form of congressional or judicial oversight. The White House and its military/intelligence advisers are judge, jury and executioner....

February 14, 2013

Obama repeals Magna Carta, asserting powers our forefathers denied to Kings

http://fabiusmaximus.com/2013/02/07/obama-kill-list-assassinate-48595/

Summary: The Republic is at war against an adaptive foe that seeks its destruction. Not al Qaeda, which might no longer exist in meaningful form, but internal foes seeking its overthrow. That they’re moving incrementally, small steps slowly growing larger with each success, only masks the boldness of their goals. It’s the quiet coup. Here we look at the latest chapter in the war, the most recent rip torn in the Constitution.

As the America-that-Once-Was evolves into the quite different New America, the identity of those responsible becomes increasingly clear. It’s us. Our disinterest in working the Founders’ machinery of self-government. Our passive acceptance of Empire and plutocracy. Saddest of all is our abandonment of America’s ideals, the end point of a thousand year-long struggle.

These things are all seen in our reaction to President Obama’s white paper granting himself powers not seen in Anglo-American history since the Stuart Kings. Limiting the Monarchs’ right of arbitrary arrest and punishment of their subjects took 450 years, from the first tentative agreement in Magna Carta (1215) to its achievement in the English Civil War (1641-1662). Now, with our complaisance, Presidents Bush Jr and Obama have erased much of that progress.

Two provisions of Magna Carta deserve our attention today, a gift to us from the Barons of 13th century England.



Our ancestors spent much blood, sweat, and tears between that day at Runnymede and the meeting in 1878 at Philadelphia. The liberties provided by the Constitution were won over those 30 generations, by the unruly Saxons and Normans of Medieval England — and the Founders, jealous of their liberties and willing to fight for them. In the decade since 9-11 we’ve thoughtlessly thrown away political structures that took centuries to build...

February 13, 2013

Billionaire Banker Bandit Likely to Become Next Commerce Secretary By Greg Palast

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14493-billionaire-banker-bandit-likely-commerce-secretary

A parade of media reports this week name Penny Pritzker as Obama's prime choice for Secretary of Commerce. No longer will criminal bankers have to lobby the administration - because now they'll have one of their own in the Cabinet.

We never heard of this guy Barack Obama until 2004. Less than three years before taking the presidency, he was in the Illinois state senate, a swamp of scammers, backhanders, and party machine tools - not a stellar launch pad for the White House. And then, one day, state Sen. Barack Obama was visited by his fairy godmother. Her name is Penny Pritzker.

Penny's from Heaven?

Pritzger's net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic wand in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago.

Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust - at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior's depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama's South Side district lost their homes.

Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators so she could get away with this crap...MORE AT LINK

This article is based on the New York Times bestseller: Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, by Greg Palast with comics by Ted Rall. Available for a donation to Truthout.org.

DELICIOUS, SMEARING GOSSIP AND SCANDAL...MUST READ!

February 8, 2013

Weekend Economists Writing Like the Dickens, February 8-10, 2013

Regardless of how it started, the phrase lives on. Here's a Caroling Group riffing on the theme:



But no one or nothing is more entitled to the phrase than--WEE'S BIRTHDAY BOY OF THE WEEKEND--200 YEARS YOUNG---MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY TO



Charles John Huffam Dickens ( 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.

Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens left school to work in a factory after his father was thrown into debtors' prison. Although he had little formal education, his early impoverishment drove him to succeed. Over his career he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, 5 novellas and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

Dickens sprang to fame with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens went on to improve the character with positive lineaments. Fagin in Oliver Twist apparently mirrors the famous fence Ikey Solomon; His caricature of Leigh Hunt in the figure of Mr Skimpole in Bleak House was likewise toned down on advice from some of his friends, as they read episodes. In the same novel, both Lawrence Boythorne and Mooney the beadle are drawn from real life – Boythorne from Walter Savage Landor and Mooney from 'Looney', a beadle at Salisbury Square. His plots were carefully constructed, and Dickens often wove in elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers. YOU COULD SAY JK ROWLING IS HIS LITERARY DESCENDANT, IF NOT AS POLISHED....

Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, is one of the most influential works ever written, and it remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. His creative genius has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to G. K. Chesterton and George Orwell—for its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. YES, WELL, TIMES WERE SIMPLER THEN. LESS FOCUSED ON THE NEUROTIC...

BUT FIXATED ON THE PROFIT MOTIVE! POST WHAT YOU'VE GOT.

February 4, 2013

Noam Chomsky: The Paranoia of the Superrich and Superpowerful

http://www.alternet.org/world/noam-chomsky-paranoia-superrich-and-superpowerful?page=0%2C3&akid=10008.227380.SGDRV6&rd=1&src=newsletter788532&t=5&paging=off

...I merely mention that to illustrate that in the intellectual culture, even at what’s called the left liberal end of the political spectrum, the core principles haven’t changed very much. But the capacity to implement them has been sharply reduced. That’s why you get all this talk about American decline. Take a look at the year-end issue of Foreign Affairs, the main establishment journal. Its big front-page cover asks, in bold face, “Is America Over?” It’s a standard complaint of those who believe they should have everything. If you believe you should have everything and anything gets away from you, it’s a tragedy, the world is collapsing. So is America over? A long time ago we “lost” China, we’ve lost Southeast Asia, we’ve lost South America. Maybe we’ll lose the Middle East and North African countries. Is America over? It’s a kind of paranoia, but it’s the paranoia of the superrich and the superpowerful. If you don’t have everything, it’s a disaster...

JUST A TASTE...ANOTHER MUST READ

February 4, 2013

No Austerity Has Helped Any Economy

http://truth-out.org/news/item/14311-no-austerity-has-helped-the-economy

...“All your money are belong to us” — the song of the predator class

...Very Serious People only listen to each other. In other words, the poor darlings are just deluded, bubbled, sealed from understanding...Those whom he (KRUGMAN) calls Very Serious People, I call Our Betters. This difference in language (between his and mine) is indicative of the difference in analysis between Krugman and people like me. The language “Very Serious People” speaks to their role as pundits, opinion-generators and insider-echoists. “Our Betters” speaks about their power role — the role these people play in running our lives (at the Obama and Robert Rubin level) or in serving those who run our lives (at the David Gregory and Joe Scarborough level).

In other words, it’s certainly true that the baronial class and its servants and administrators listen only to each other, and thus reinforce in each other the comforting cover story that they’re only doing what’s in our ultimate good.
But the baronial class is also the predator class and they know precisely where the benefit (for them) always lies. This is the predator class in operation:



The Predator Class in action. If you added the Top .001% to this chart, it would have to be taller than you are.

If you added the Top .1%, the Top .01% and the Top .001% to that chart, you’d need a chart as tall as your room.

What the chart calls the “Highest Fifth” includes what I call the “retainers” — administrators, enablers (that’s you, CNN producers) and professionals needed to keep the system working. Everyone else is workers, and look what their hard work got them.

All of the gains of worker productivity (the harder smarter computer-enabled work of the lowest four-fifths) have gone into the pockets of the highest fifth and especially the very top earners. Note that these are individual incomes, not corporate incomes; as I’ve argued elsewhere, the corporation is just the collection device, the force extender, for the CEO class that wholly controls it; shareholder-ownership is the comforting cover story.

This is what James Galbraith calls “the predatory state” — and he means that economically. The predatory state is a state that enables and is controlled by economic predators, extremely wealthy vampires who feed on their fellow citizens. Galbraith (my emphasis):



...It’s that predatory feeding that produces policies, promises and pronouncements like these that Krugman describes:



..My advice — dare to be bold, progressives. This game has a fourth quarter, and we’re in it. At some point, the predator will destroy all the prey and then die. Justice for the beast perhaps, but no fun for the already dead.

SO MUCH MORE...A MUST READ!