NGO "ANOTHER WAY" (STICHTING BAKENS VERZET), NETHERLANDS, SUSTAINABLE INTEGRATED SELF-FINANCING DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS AND ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT TECHNOLOGIES

“The environment cannot be separated from the human condition but is one essential complement of sustainable human development. The processes of globalization that are so strongly influencing the evolution of society need to be directed towards resolving rather than aggravating the serious imbalances that divide the world today.” United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Global Environment Outlook 2000., Nairobi, 1999, Chapter 1, Conclusions. [ Overview in English.]

In their paper The network of global corporate control (Swiss Federal Institute of technology (ETH), Zurich, October, 2011), authors Vitali S. et al work from a list of 43060 trans-national corporations with a network of 600.508 nodes and 1.006.987 ownership ties. They determine that “transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to “a small tightly-knit core 75% of them financial institutions] that cumulatively hold the majority share of each other.” This dominant strongly connected component or SCC in which every member owns directly and/or indirectly shares in every other member (on an average with 20 other members) contains 1347 nodes. The top control holders within this core can be seen as an economic “super-entity” in the global network of corporations. “Nearly 4/10 of the control over the economic value of TNCs [transnational corporations] in the world is held, via a complicated web of ownership relations, by a group of 147 TNCs in the core, which has almost full control over itself……..Only 737 top [control] holders accumulate 80% of control over the value of all TNCs. This control is “ten times bigger than what could be expected on the basis of their wealth.”

Click here to see the list of the top 50 control holders.

(Letter to the Ruling Class, attributed to Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota (USA), Daily Kos, Article 966698, Berkely, 13 April, 2011..)

"You control our world. You’ve poisoned the air we breathe, contaminated the water we drink, and copyrighted the food we eat. We fight in your wars, die for your causes, and sacrifice our freedoms to protect you. You’ve liquidated our savings, destroyed our middle class, and used our tax dollars to bailout your unending greed. We are slaves to your corporations, zombies to your airwaves, servants to your decadence. You’ve stolen our elections, assassinated our leaders, and abolished our basic rights as human beings. You own our property, shipped away our jobs, and shredded our unions. You’ve profited off of disaster, destabilized our currencies, and raised our cost of living. You’ve monopolized our freedom, stripped away our education, and have almost extinguished our flame. We are hit… we are bleeding… but we ain’t got time to bleed. We will bring the giants to their knees and you will witness our revolution!

Sincerely,

The Serfs."

Look at the following slide :

02. Some factors linked with poverty.

Think about the 7 points listed on the slide.

Answer the following questions, taking notes:

1. Opinion.

What, do you think, does “monetisation of the economy” mean?

2. Opinion.

What, do you think, is a “ production chain” ?

3. Opinion.

Which activities do you think are productive ,and which ones do you think are unproductive?