Surviving Capitalism (Not) : US, China ready to each assert power in Pacific

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

Friday, March 7, 2014

US, China ready to each assert power in Pacific

Click here to access article by Naoya Yoshino and Gakku Shimada from Nikkei Asian Review.

You may have forgotten about "Obama's pivot" to China in all the turmoil going on in Ukraine, but the Empire's directors have not.

Updating its global strategy, the U.S. Defense Department announced the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) on Tuesday, which calls for deploying more naval vessels to the Pacific.

On Wednesday, the Chinese government unveiled a record defense budget for 2014. The country is steadily building up its military strength to counter the U.S. military's "pivot" to Asia and to forge a relationship of equals with the U.S.

Oh boy, ain't life grand? Now we can look forward to more tension--as if we didn't have enough already to worry about. Well, as long as you have capitalist ruling classes vying for control over markets, resources, and cheap labor to support their addictions to wealth and power, what else could you expect?