We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

The Pacific free trade deal that's anything but free

Click here to access article by Dean Baker from The Guardian.
...the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a pact that the United States is negotiating with Australia, Canada, Japan and eight other countries in the Pacific region. The agreement is packaged as a "free trade" agreement. This label will force all of the respectable types in Washington to support it
Baker is another writer who finds that the negotiations on the TPP agreement conducted in secret by capitalist elites in these countries represents another stealth attack on consumers by multi-national corporations. Like all the other "free trade" agreements, it is an ingenious way of by-passing national regulations and political processes which often prove to be difficult for the local One Percents.
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