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

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Russia Under Attack

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from World News Trust. 

While this former member of the Reagan administration never connects political events to the underlying system of capitalism notwithstanding his occasional references to a "neoconservative agenda", he does provide useful analyses of world political events. The "neoconservative agenda" merely refers to the natural stage in the evolution of capitalism to a global phenomenon. 

Capitalists function very much like street gangs who strive to control communities in order to secure territories within which they can commit petty crimes. US Empire capitalists are one such gang that strives to control the entire world to secure it for their crimes in the form of banking scams, exploitation of labor and the environment, etc. (See "Mafia Principles and Western 'Values'" section in Marshall's "Empire Under Obama".)

In this article he correctly identifies the various subversive ploys by the Empire to undermine Russian power and influence in the world. He also sees that corporate media cannot function in any manner like free and independent journalism which, of course, has never existed under class-structured societies. However, in his analysis there are the familiar "evil-doers" called neoconservatives who are responsible for this latest crisis. 

That is very a very naive perception. This would become obvious if we could magically disappear the US capitalist led Empire. Then we would merely see the rise of Russian and Chinese capitalists trying to do the same. This is also obvious if you look at the history of capitalism through the lens of independent historians.