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

Friday, February 13, 2015

HSBC and the upside-down world of austerity politics

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution. 

The headline refers to this news report:
This week it was revealed that HSBC — Europe’s biggest bank — has been actively running and propagating a massive tax evasion scheme through its Swiss subsidiary, allowing some of its wealthiest international clients to hide over $120bn in undeclared assets in 30.000 secret Swiss bank accounts.
Roos goes on to explain this represents one of two major systemic methods the rich use to keep wealth trickling up from the bottom to them. By putting these thefts in a larger, more meaningful framework, Roos leads us to a real solution--system change.
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