Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Wedding Favor Chapstick

Ho pubblicato sul manifesto del 1° dicembre un articolo sul tema Il lavoro bene comune

THE COMMON GOOD WORK


The combined effect of globalization, economic crisis and climate change (three interdependent processes) if it threatens the survival of our planet, surely the human society. We are entering a time of great upheaval: the environmental, economic, geopolitical. May open the way for huge disasters, the proliferation of wars, to affirm increasingly authoritarian regimes, the worsening of living conditions of billions of human beings. But major upheavals also involve major changes: in which there is room for prospects who until a few years ago might have seemed utopian. For this we need to think back to the big, dare to take new routes, we are confident that what we are trying to do it, and under conditions very different ways, millions and maybe billions of others like us, and that our paths will meet .

Thirty years of unchallenged dominance of the "unique thought" they locked the ruling classes around the world in an eternal present, making them incapable of any development broad. Truth and ability to think in the future have remained the preserve of those who rebelled against the existing state of things.

Those who look to the future from the perspective of a different world now knows, in general terms, many things about how the world must change to survive and allow everyone to live better. They are "things" relating to energy (energy efficiency and renewables), agriculture (organic, multicolturale, multifunctional) and food sovereignty, the full recovery of waste and waste management, land conservation. They all tend to km0 practices (ie, involving a gradual rapprochement of production and consumption), each of which has an indispensable social, equity-oriented and welcoming. We know we have borrowed from the planet Earth for future generations and to manage a portion (usually the one where we live) on behalf of all. We are not, that is, and do not consider ourselves "masters in our house." Our concept of sovereignty is different: it is called autonomy, self-government, sharing.

practices of the movement in recent years have grown more and more variations of this approach and knowledge of those in local contexts, including their highly differentiated, but their reference to a global thought, those practices are not in danger of falling into a Corporate localism no breath and no outlets. This version of a global thinking locally is obviously easier (or less difficult) on issues concerning land use, because the local dimension is intrinsic: it is not the case was first practiced by planners and investment particularly issues such as housing, water management, waste, mobility, culture, public spaces.

this decline is more difficult when it concerns large flows of planetary materials, semi-physical goods which are and remain the essence of industrial production. For this, around the so-called green economy, ie the conversion environment dell’apparato produttivo permane una sostanziale ambivalenza. Molti dicono: “la green economy la sta già facendo, o si metterà presto a farla, il capitale; per salvaguardare i suoi profitti”. Non è così. Anche se la fa, e quando la fa, il grande capitale di green economy ne fa poca: troppo poca; tanto è vero che non riesce a darsi regole che permettano di frenare la corsa del pianeta verso il baratro dei cambiamenti climatici. E la fa male; sfruttando quanto più può lavoratori e ambiente (l’esempio più perverso di questo approccio è forse quello degli agrocarburanti). Noi invece dobbiamo agire perché di green economy se ne faccia molta (e presto; prima che i guasti del pianeta diventino irreversible) and well: that is facing problems in their social dimension.

"Good" means that the work must not be subject to this transformation, but an actor, along with other actors who contribute to the social structure of a given territory. For this work is the true frontier of ecological conversion. For many this is the recent acquisition: the job is a "common good" it said Fiom, under the pressure of the employment crisis - and blackmail Pomigliano - and made it the centerpiece of the event on October 16. E 'claim challenging.

But what is a common good? I think we should shy away from any classification, upon a closed catalog, defined once and for all. Because the boundary that demarcates the area of \u200b\u200bcommon property is mobile, it is the result of a permanent dispute - which sometimes leads to fighting, sometimes in an organized and planned, and more in all three things - to rob a privately run use values \u200b\u200bthat can be shared. But the result of this process is not the acquisition or restoration of the property disputed in the area of \u200b\u200bpublic property, even if often but not always, this is an unavoidable step. Because it means sharing public participation in the asset management contended: in forme che dipendono, sì, dalla sua natura e dalle sue dimensioni; ma anche, e soprattutto, dall’intensità dell’impegno della “cittadinanza attiva”; o di una sua parte. Per questo forse nessun bene sarà mai veramente “comune” fino in fondo; ovvero, ci sarà sempre la possibilità di rendere più intenso e profondo questo suo carattere.

Ora, affermare che il lavoro è un bene comune è una proposizione che riguarda certamente, e in primo luogo, la salvaguardia della dignità del lavoro e dei diritti che una società deve garantire ai lavoratori; ma significa anche, e soprattutto, che le modalità in cui il lavoro viene impiegato, le finalità di this use and, consequently, such a product (good or service) of that work are issues that can, and should, first of all involved to see the workers themselves, but also the whole community that insists on the territory in which that work is intertwined: whether depends on them for the income it generates, whether they bear the environmental burden that it entails. Simply stating that connection to see how far we are - and how we are moving away - from a world where work is actually a common good. But also that the inclusion of work in the "catalog" of common property is, like all others, a process and not an acquisition ultimately, a work in progress that proceeds in stages, for advanced and backward, and that probably will never end.

But the work is, however, the true frontier of environmental conversion of production and consumption patterns. It 's a frontier that few of us - of who is involved in projects and in struggles for land conservation and cohabitation - is featured in its own right (unlike the case of the millions of farmers and thousands of rural communities engaged in claim and pursue their own self-government).

It 's easy - and sacred to me - say, less pollution, less traffic, fewer cars. But it is difficult to say to workers of a car factory in crisis. Yet it is here that should be pass. And you can do it only looked forward, and subjecting them to verify their involvement, their suggestions, an alternative proposal. The importance of the story of Fiat's Pomigliano is this. They are certainly in play, and safeguard the dignity of labor rights and health of workers: all things without which democracy will disappear. But placed between the end some of the Termini Imerese and the weakening of the Mirafiori equally certain, and in front of a blackmail that says "give me everything for nothing, then we'll see," everyone understood, although few have acknowledged explicitly - and not always their fault, but for the difficulties associated with finding, more than others, on the frontier of the work - the game that you play is much higher and not just about which models and how many cars each plant should produce. The real question is: in Italy there are still factories capable of producing cars? And how many? And for how long? And if you were to shut down, as has been suggested, may develop industrial production in Italy that have more chance of success? Maybe because they represent the future, why do not harm the environment because they can benefit from a local market, without forcing workers to compete with other workers, to the sound of declines, in a race relentlessly toward getting worse? And how to engage in a kind of turning workers than factories and communities of the territories to which they refer? (Www.guidoviale.blogspot.it)

A D H D More Condition_symptoms

Tre articoli del manifesto sono entrati nel merito delle mie proposte relative alla riconversione ambientale

The Italian neoambientalismo

Alberto Asor

In a recent article (poster, November 7) Guido Viale invites us to "change from below." Try to put as directly as possible on its wavelength. For more than four years direct, coordinate, assist (the variety of benefits depends on the tastes and circumstances) a unique organization, which is called: Network of Committees for the Defence of the territory (which is also Association for two years, regolarmente «registrata» come tale). Sulla singolarità di tale organizzazione conviene soffermarsi un momento, perché ne deriva tutto il resto del ragionamento.
La Rete nasce dalla scelta spontanea e volontaria di un certo numero di Comitati di base, legati a loro volta all'identità di alcune battaglie locali (locali, ma non necessariamente di limitate dimensioni: basti pensare a casi come il sottoattraversamento Tav di Firenze o l'Autostrada tirrenica), di federarsi stabilmente in una sorta di mappa organizzata delle esperienze e delle strategie. La costituzione della Rete ha favorito l'incontro dei Comitati con alcune volonterose forze intellettuali, che ne rappresentano al tempo stesso la struttura di servizio e un luogo di originale strategic processing. The two moments are not minimally dissociated and do not relate to each other in a kind of new hierarchy of power (often, the development strategy was created during construction even within a single committee, perhaps especially noticeable) . The network of committees, understood and practiced in this form, is what we are used to define "neoambientalismo Italian," to distinguish it from past experience (for charity, positivissima) of other environmental groups more centralized and hierarchical.
The Network was created and propagated mostly in Tuscany, but it has hooks and links with situations in Liguria, Veneto, Umbria, Marche, Rome, Lazio. Talk with other Associations (Our Italy, Legambiente, WWF), from time to time by meeting and distinguished. He has excellent relationships with Fai. He recently opened a channel for discussion and exchange with another motion, but different SIMILAR, "Stop the use of the land ', this, in turn, especially in Piedmont and Lombardy (and elsewhere). But the experiences of committees are active everywhere in Italy. Indeed, more accurately, there are hundreds around, ranging in size from microscopic to supermassimi (notav of Val di Susa). Sometimes bordering or be integrated with other similar experiences (Water Forum); authoritatively invade the institutional field (list "to another city," well-established the City Council of Florence).
In short, the Committees for the defense, variously organized and coordinated, are a new form of thinking and living the Italian democracy. Even the mere fact that we, in fact. But some further argument can be made. The obstacles to change from below - to return to the indication Avenue - are, judging from my experience, and multiple variables, but three stand out anywhere, anytime. They are: 1) The endless and intractable conflict, large or small, with strong powers of the economy, speculation and exploitation that occur in many ways, from the overtly delinquent than Puttanesca institutional, 2) the weakness of response to a large part of the public, and most of the major means of an upset and maybe dying (but still deadly) development model (still Viale) and 3) the almost total deafness in relation to these issues from part of all (again for brevity: all, but I could also specify) political forces at national level. The first should be the natural enemy of every defense, the preservation of cultural heritage in general a good quality of life. The other two, however, occasional enemies, episodic and therefore potentially recoverable: but how? But when?
Because these two objectives, which are crucial, and it will be realized approaching, we need the second (here express the collective opinion of the web) give the battle acceleration both cultural and political environment (the combination is less formal here than elsewhere). The battle revolves increasingly around the notion of "common good" (let me recall in this connection my article published in December 2008 on the Republic): The cultural and artistic heritage, the environment, the landscape must be understood in letter, like air and water, as an inalienable heritage of human generations present and also, perhaps most importantly, future (see, also, studies and legislative proposals developed in stages by Stefano Rodota). On this basis, a volta acquisito e diffuso, si possono basare una nuova cultura e una nuova politica, intese anch'esse nel senso più vasto.
In una recente riunione (Roma, 6 novembre) del Consiglio scientifico di cui la Rete si è dotata e della sua Giunta (illustrati, l'uno e l'altra, dalla presenza di molti dei più prestigiosi studiosi e specialisti del settore), sono state assunte due iniziative che si muovono nel senso predetto. La prima è la convocazione di una Conferenza nazionale dei Comitati che si occupano ovunque di difesa del territorio: l'obiettivo potrebbe esser quello di creare, non una Rete nazionale, ma una Rete di Reti, coerentemente con lo spirito del neoambientalismo, che non prevede, né in loco né fuori, rapporti hierarchical direction. The second is the start of the preparation of a great conference, which is also national, themed on what we define succinctly: "The disaster of Italy," where to convey in terms of both analytical report must be proactive in planning, the great intellectual resource of the Committee together and intertwined with that of many scholars and specialists who have accompanied it, and we hope to get stronger and even more in the near future.
Growing from the bottom so you can, but only if we contextualize and organize on a broader strategic horizon, the countless local outbreaks. The "leap of scale" is necessary because each of them become stronger, expanding the popular consensus around him and pressing in a much more influential on the political forces, local and national also changing, in passing, nature. While studying ways to take out the corpse of Berlusconi, and at the same time open the maneuvers to ensure the indefinite perpetuation of Berlusconi, one of the ways this could be more serious and responsible to ensure, together with the essential safety of the area Italian, also a leap forward for our entire democracy.


Ideas antiecologiche (also) of the left

(Enzo Scandurra)

In published in Il Manifesto, 17 November (The neoambientalismo Italian) Alberto Asor resumed consideration of Guido Street (The Manifesto of Nov. 7) about the ways of change (in production, development model) - that can only Viale Starting from the bottom up - providing some considerations about the obstacles that are opposed to this change. Today, a growing media coverage of new clean technologies such as solar, wind, photovoltaic, which goes towards a new kind of real business. The impression is that the development - this malsviluppo - remains an independent variable to be implemented, if anything, not through the use of fossil fuels, but alternative energy. Along this road is my opinion that is not produced any new and real change, but only a course correction that, sooner or later, returns to being orthogonal to the environment. In fact, in Viale not escape the fact that the production of alternative energy should take place concurrently with a new ruling class and their use in a wide spread of individuals and communities so as to produce a change in lifestyle also anthropological and individual behavior. Moreover the same problem exists for the disposal of waste is now known that the collection is not just a technical option, but even before that, cultural and anthropological (by recycling one realize that we drop and how we live). The current pattern of consumption and lifestyles (at least today in the West) is not sustainable even if you replace all fossil fuels with clean energy consumed. In addition, renewable energy sources are never enough (at least today) to replace the current energy needs. So what? Here is who takes over the centrality of the cultural issue. Eat less and better, or otherwise, is a recipe for the future. In this perspective, the use of renewable energy sources is, as in the case of recycling, to trigger a "cultural revolution" which aims to become the abandonment the current model of development towards more sober lifestyles in harmony with the environment. But this, precisely, is the more effective the more settled communities of choice (see the example of the volcanic mothers "of Terzigno). Also in this perspective, the virtuoso role of the area is strategic: from inert physical support to make these parasitic dwelling place, land community, place of production itself. But let that Article; Asor argues that there are three obstacles to change from below and the first of these three: "The endless and irremediable conflict [...] with the strong economic powers, of speculation and exploitation "is, than the other two (the ideology of development and lack of political forces on the environmental issue) the natural enemy of every defense, the other two being" instead, enemies occasional, episodic and therefore partially recoverable. " Well, I think, while sharing the view of Asor, that if the first obstacle cited is a tenacious resistance to change even the second obstacle mentioned by him (which for simplicity I call the ideology of development), is an equally tenacious enemy first. We are truly convinced that the ideology of development, this development has come to the end of the line? Paradoxically, it seems to me that the alleged purpose of this model is more in fact than in the ideas of the people. In fact, many of the disasters disastrous in Italy and outside the country objectively prove that this model of development now produces a very high level of aggression towards the environment, such as to threaten the natural ecosystems to support life. However, from the cultural point of view (and even more politics) are so imbued with this ideology to be hard to think that there may be different ways of being. Implicitly does a kind of automatism that anthropological abandon this road would regress into the past of underdevelopment. The ideas and habits (Even if wrong and groundless) are tough to die (just like Berlusconi) and tend to persist even when the conditions have changed now that they have produced, in the meantime, if you do not say new ideas and new habits more compelling and more appropriate change. I'm talking about, so to speak, of that thing called by Gregory Bateson "ecology of ideas." Bateson used to say that if we are to achieve an end, so to speak, then even the ecological resources that we use to achieve that end must be as environmentally friendly. Many of our behaviors left guilty of this vice, a sort of division (antiecologica) between thought and action whenever, for example, administrative body (left) believes (and decide accordingly) that do great work, celebrate important events, make our cities like Barcelona or Paris or Dubai, is a sign of modernization. All this to say that in the large conference announced (and welcome in the Italian) by Asor on "disaster Italy", it might be appropriate to leave the space and opportunity to talk about the disastrous consequences to our ideas antiecologiche (no less harmful for fossil fuels) that lodge in the left well. Ideas such as: competition, efficiency, effectiveness, modernism, innovation, speed (high speed) .. and the list is very long to want to hanging out.




An economic and social alternative
Giorgio Cremaschi



The terrible evolution of the political crisis, more and more divorced from any substantive content, further emphasizes the need, at least outside the palace, there is against the real crisis in the country.

Guido Viale Fiom proposed to discuss specifically the ecological reconversion of the productive system and the dominant pattern of consumption. I believe that today the issue should be put on the agenda of social struggles and movements in progress.
Not that this medium is so easy to practice. It 'obvious, in fact, that the flight of the policy in the abstract of all is also the result of his inability to master the economic and social crisis. What is getting worse, particularly in Europe, and is adding together three crises. A production and development model, which is a stagnation of the economy in western countries is determined by a drop in its growth and production of traditional products. A social crisis, which is driven by a growing and increasingly dramatic inequality of wealth distribution. A fiscal and financial crisis that is reflected both in private and public debts.
While China and the countries of new growth, albeit at huge environmental and social prices continue Development, Europe accumulates with all the crises. So it is much easier to continue to blather of "reforms" that actually conceal counter-social and have good space in Italy reactionary philosophy of Marchionne, who just proposed to revive the old model of development based on production with a much more restricted and brutal social selection.
In Italy, almost certainly in Europe, an economic recovery that absorbs the contradictions and imbalances of the crisis there will be. Hence the triumph of brutal social recipes, privatization of water, school and all the commons, the destruction of collective bargaining, the questioning of what remains of the welfare state, whose sole purpose is to decrease the social basis of the current development model. Which leads to the folly of pushing the competitiveness and productivity as a function of growth and exports. Objective logically absurd if pursued by all and socially devastating. Objective that necessarily requires a purely authoritarian model of labor relations, as explained Pomigliano. Although the persecution of immigrants, the police state that guarantees are part of this super-dramatic reaction to the crisis.
In Italy, in particular, the liberalism that seeks to select a faithful continuation of the current development model, in the full knowledge that the growth for all, even in the most biased and unfair, and there never will be again.
For this event on October 16 and all the more radical social struggles are not true partners in terms of programs, in Italian politics today. They can also win at the moment, as he wrote for Terzigno Avenue, but then face to the wall of a system hang. The radical popular stop the liberal regime, but then it starts again as before. The anti-union bullying
Marchionne serves to mask the fact that Fiat will never return to Italy in production volumes of the past, that only a niche production will be given to our paese, fondata su un numero ristretto di operai appositamente selezionati e disposti a tutto. La newco, la nuova società che la Fiat vuole imporre a Pomigliano e probabilmente in tutto il gruppo, diventa un modello per tutta l’Italia. Ovunque si vuol passare a una newco sociale e produttiva che abbandona una parte del paese a sé stesso e seleziona sulla base del ricatto, della fedeltà e della disponibilità coloro che devono perpetuare il modello di sviluppo.
Tutte le lotte di resistenza, leva indispensabile per cambiare, oggi reclamano così un progetto economico sociale ecologico alternativo. Tutto si tiene, ma da dove partire allora? Io non credo che basti il ritorno alle economie locali che propone Guido Viale. Le lotte locali sull’ambiente, as well as rights, as well as at work, immediately throw the community against mechanisms and national and supranational powers. The sheer strangeness of the two articles appeared in this newspaper, signed by Alberto Asor, the first on the political crisis, the second on the local networks for homeland defense and the environment, now shows that wherever the split between needs and reality policy, is evident everywhere. If the target we set ourselves is not the pure or replace Berlusconi with Marchionne Montezemolo or similar, it is clear that the archipelago of struggle which is now in Italy and was found Oct. 16 in Rome together with the Fiom requires a unifying platform sociale e politica che è estranea, come sostiene anche Viale, alle attuali classi dirigenti. Una piattaforma che deve toccare le tasse, la finanza, la spesa pubblica, le politiche industriali, gli interventi pubblici nell’economia, la conoscenza, il pubblico e il privato, i diritti dei lavoratori, la distribuzione della ricchezza, la garanzia del reddito e di una reale parità dei diritti.
La riconversione ecologica dell’economia si intreccia con questo processo. Si possono produrre e comprare meno auto se si riduce l’orario di lavoro, se si lanciano programmi di investimento pubblico che costringano il sistema a consumare e a produrre trasporto pubblico al posto di quello privato. Questo richiede ingenti risorse che non possono be found that taking away the money to the rich. Social issues and ecological issue, rights and equality, today they are closely related and immediately, do not touch a piece of the crisis without being involved in the crisis of the whole system. There are reformist solutions to the current crisis, at least in the sense that today the word has taken on in politics.
The strength of the reaction, the continuous return of Berlusconi and Berlusconi, stem from the fact that the alternative is either radical change or regression and social selection.
So I think we should have the courage to propose a real economic and social alternative to the current policy, which will reclaim the spirit, not the contents of the plan CGIL labor Di Vittorio fifties. Fiom, who played with 16 October a widespread feeling in many parts of the country, can perhaps aim at promoting more ambitious operation, the construction of such a plan, making him born of the marriage between knowledge and experience of free movements. It is worth trying to build an alternative platform to the pure conservation and restoration of the existing system. A platform that drive conflict and waste social pacts and select a new leadership for the coming years. This for me is to build a real alternative to Berlusconi and Berlusconi. But here we return again to the political crisis, the Left and the unions Italian.

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ho pubblicato su il foglio di venerdì 26.11 una recensione del libro di Marco Panara, la malattia dell'Occidente

Marco Panara, economic columnist of the Republic, published a book on the relationship between the "value of work", the economic crisis and the difficult recovery in developed countries (the West's disease, Yale University Press, pp. 151, € 16). The text is written in plain language and accessible. The intent is informative: globalization has made the world's largest at the same time (because it has expanded to many emerging spaces of the market) and smaller (because the information technology and telecommunications and transport revolution was mainly due the introduction of the container have canceled or drastically reduced distances). To make the cost of this process were mainly the workers of the West, ritrovatisi to compete with millions of workers from emerging markets, now able to produce the same things in many areas with lower wages, poorer working conditions and welfare does not exist . Hence the migration of many products to Southeast Asia and Latin America, which has forced the workers of the "rich" countries to stop the race to be the "welfare" of the postwar years (the so-called "Thirty Glorious") and to accept more and more precarious working conditions, a systematic curtailment of welfare and, above all, a drastic reduction in the share of GDP attributed to the employee. To hide and compensate for the latter factor has developed in the West, since the "revolution" tatcheriana, that economy of the debt which caused the "bubble" burst in 2008. The "raw material" of the bubble consists of the sales rate, the spread of credit cards, the "loans for honor, but especially from mortgages (whether subprime, that is hardly redeemable, or not) that for a decade have allowed millions of "consumers" to access not only to a new home, but also in new loans due to the apparent, and in fact fictitious increase in the value of their homes, yet to be paid. But on this "side" was then built a castle, made possible by the policies of deregulation, because of financial derivatives, which at the time of the explosion of the bubble has jeopardized the entire global economic system. So many governments have been forced to borrow ever had done to save the financial system, while the crisis is then transmitted to the 'real economy', first with the stalemate of production, then with the occupation, which was not end in sight, partly because governments, already heavily in debt, can no longer be used in counter-cyclical government spending.


So much for the reconstruction of the dynamics of the crisis has important innovations compared to many other publications on the subject. But the upstream and downstream of this analysis Panara raises the issue of "work value". What is meant by this expression is unclear. The book lacks an explicit distinction between what is true, at market prices, the performance of those who work and what value, low-priced market, what the worker produces. Sometimes it seems that the two values \u200b\u200bare inextricably linked, are sometimes rather seriemente apart, why inserted between them, and in many different forms, the pension, but that is primarily the gain of money with those who produce il danaro, cioè della finanza, che per Panara è la vera fonte di distorsione del mercato. C’è nel libro una fiducia mai argomentata in un mercato “efficiente”, che nella ricostruzione dei fatti non si incontra mai, né in Italia, dove niente funziona, né nel resto del mondo. Perché la finanziarizzazione del mercato è, sì, ciò che ha portato al disastro attuale, ma anche ciò che ha sostenuto la domanda senza la quale non ci sarebbe stato né lo sviluppo dei paesi emergenti, né la pace – o la stagnazione? - dei paesi debitori, su cui si è retta la globalizzazione. Vero è che quando passa alle terapie per restituire valore, non solo economico, ma anche e soprattutto social, work, Panara, along with recipes obvious as a major commitment to training and support for innovation, it identifies a third, crucial: "Keep in the loop part of the resources that come out every year." Panara gives the example of renewable energy sources, but the same applies to almost all areas that have a strategic value in view of a conversion of the entire production environment: agriculture, nutrition, mobility, land management, waste management. It is not a recipe for protectionism unrealistic, but that of a "reterritorialization" of production, closer with a radical overhaul of the rules of the market, of their consumption on the premises or their use.