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

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Corporate Colonialism: The Winners and Losers of Global “Free” Trade

Click here to access article by Don Quijones from Raging Bull-Shit. 

Here are more disaster stories related to the international pro-corporate agreements advertised in corporate media as "free-trade agreements" which have voided the gains made in each country by workers for more than a century. That, of course, has been their purpose. As billionaire Warren Buffett announced nearly eight years ago:
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.
Read the rare candid words printed in a major Wall Street news source written a little over two years ago.
Yes, folks, America really is under attack daily. We are fighting on the defense in an historic class warfare. Yes, the Rich Class really did start this war. And yes, they really are winning, big-time. And yes, they are addicted to winning at all costs, to get richer and richer just for the sake of getting richer and richer.
They have no conscience about the collateral damage done to the rest of Americans. They’ve lost their moral compass. In short, they will fight this war to the death, yours, theirs, even the death of America. Bet on it: Because more is never enough for America’s morally bankrupt Rich Class.
The fact that such words appear in ruling class publications indicates to me that they hardly care about hiding their victories. They feel in absolute control of most of the world. The corporate news broadcasts that I've been viewing lately look like they were produced by a ministry of propaganda. Even while watching NBC's coverage of the Olympics I was bombarded with Putin as a Russian evil-doer commentary because he is getting in the way of Empire ambitions in Syria and Ukraine. 
The NBC host noted how Ukrainian athletes at the games were showing their concern for their country's political unrest, and tied what was going on there to Vladimir Putin's Russia. Costas said the Sochi Olympics had gone off better than many people feared going in, "all of which is truly wonderful, but should not serve to obscure a harsher or more lasting truth. This is still a government which imprisons dissidents, is hostile to gay rights, sponsors and supports a vicious regime in Syria — and that's just a partial list." While the games' may burnish Putin's reputation in some eyes, "no amount of Olympic glory can mask these realities," he said. [from Huffington Post]
Thus, I have the disturbing feeling that they have finally, and irrevocably, won the war. For some strange reason, I still feel compelled to fight back.