Forum Post: Excellent series on America's 13 serious "deficits" - well worth the read - and TransitionUS

Some of the best media coverage on #ows (ironically?) is on Aljazeera. There's a 4-part Canadian-produced video called "Meltdown" that gives good background on the 2008 financial crisis, at http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/2011914105518615434.html

And then Paul Rosenberg has written, with a great example of intellectual inter-disciplinarity of which we could all use more, a series of articles called "America's 13 Deficits" which he ties to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

They start with money, but after that there's much more for thought.

America's deficits: financial deficits (long-, medium- and short-term), federal, state and local; physical deficits, infrastructure, ecosystem services; structural/functional deficits, sustainability, time/jobs and equality deficits; cognitive and political deficits, democracy, imagination, critical thinking. Stuff here for a good workshop! http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/2011109112727162598.html

If capitalism is the problem, consumer society is its biggest symptom, that we've been taught and seduced to be. So it's worth looking at some efforts at re-designing a society that's not built on credit, shopping, stuff, status and success based on stuff, and the "freedom" to "just do it." The Transition movement recognizes the connections among a global cheap-goods economy built on fossil fuels, the serious problems our consumption is causing for the world's ecosystems on which we depend for air, water, soil, climate stability, pollinators, forests, fish and all the amazing "ecosystem services" we're not taught about in school, and our fossil-emissions that are melting the poles and changing the climate. Like "occupy" there are Transition groups happening all around. Maybe there's one near you. http://transitionus.org/

The new occupation is to build something different.