I read this today on MSNBC website:

"WASHINGTON — The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty (...) some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year"

I love the 60s and 70s but how sad is it to see that the U.S. has lost 40 years when it comes to wealth distribution... because this is the real problem in the U.S., there is money, but it is still way too much concentrated in the super-rich hands.

Joe Bataan is one of the most talented Latin-Soul crooner from the 60/70´s
One of his best song is a cover of the Nina Simone To be young, gifted and brown song.

In this moment of political campaign in the USA, I could not help the direct reference to Barack Obama and share this amazing track:

Joe Bataan - Young, gifted and brown

For those who want to dig deeper, another amazing compilation (with comprehensive inliner notes and photos) from
FANIA remastered series

The 70s, last decade of innocence before we crossed the ultimate border,
the border of LIFE?

In 1980, in the "Diamond vs Chakrabarty" ruling, the United States Supreme Court held that that a live, human-made microorganism is patentable subject matter.

1987 : a genetically modified Oyster is patented

12 april 1988 : first genetically modified mouse patented

Jan. 1998 : Delta and Pine Land Co. designs a "repressor gene" that impedes reproduction of any seed it modifies, stopping natural reproduction like a contraceptive but IN the ADN. Monsanto buys the company 2 months after the public patenting.

This repressor gene is straitgh away inserted in the ADN of all Montsanto seeds to make them a PERISHABLE PRODUCT and not anymore a nature's creation, ruled by the essencial nature of LIFE : it's ability to freely reproduce, out of any logic.
And of course, it is easy to imagine the huge profits made when all peasants to go the "supermarket" to buy seeds instead of doing what has been done since 15.000 years : save seeds from one season to replant them the following one!..

Slowly but surely the meaning of LIFE is being altered. The market and its logic of profit, embodied by firms like Monsanto, Novartis, Limagrain, Celera, etc and the lobbies behind, argue that this is always for the sake of man (and especially the thirld world man) that we get rid of natural seeds and go for sterile, and supposedly pesticide proof ones (this pesticide resistance is another big environnement issue by the way).

The arguments are not only questioned on a pure scientific standpoint, but above all they open the door to arguments in favor of

massive patenting of LIFE, and now HUMAN LIFE.

Patented genes on human ADN are in course
A new race of human will emerge after a few generations (of modified reproductions), leading to PERFECT HUMANS?


The 60s and 70s were big decades of progress as for civil rights, when societies started to realise the dangers many greedy industries or politician had led us to.

The 80s and the 90s were dominated by the non-stop expansion of the market, with little concern for the meaning and consequences of it

Time to wake up again and oppose resistance to the slow but certain domination of market and profit logic into our lifes, and now in the ESSENCE OF LIFE


a good reading on these issues, by Jeremy Rifkins (Al Gore conselor among other things)

http://www.amazon.com/Biotech-Century-Jeremy-Rifkin/dp/0874779537

Crisis?

In the 70s the main economic fear was inflation (Inflation, that eroded purchase power day by day, was a recurrent issue in 70s music by the way).

In 1979, Paul Volker was appointed chairman of the Federeal Reserve Bank (the FED) and reappointed in 1983 by the superbad Reagan.
Paul Volker broke inflation for the first time in US and world´s economy, through a strict monetary policy, leading to low interest rates too.

This could have been a great step forward for the people...

27 years later the question is : who benefited it?
Companies and their shareholders? or the people?
On the one hand companies have outrageously increased their profits (check the S&P 500 increase since 1981).
On the other hand the middle class is worlwide stuck and didn´t see it purchase power increase in real terms, despite low inflation.
With low inflation + deregulation the financial sphere could grow protected, and distribute credit like never before.

The same happened with globalisation and free trade. Initially a good idea, it just eventually served the interests of large corporations who used it as a way to delocate and at the same time blackmail the manpower they couldn´t get rid of in their territories.

Since demand is not driven by salaries anymore, credit took over as the only way to maintain demand and feed companies. Who pays : the people, again..

Enough said : companies and their shareholders have been the only winners since these post-70s economic big bangs that were meant to change the world

VOTE
(DEMOCRATS)

THINGS MUST CHANGE

POWER TO THE PEOPLE