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, September 12, 2014

West's Antics Pushing Russia closer to China

Click here to access article by editors of China Daily.

For the global Ninety-Nine Percent to really make sense of this article, and many others like it, one must translate capitalist language into real ordinary language, especially whenever reference is made to various nations or block of nations. For example in this paragraph:
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization [, an organization of capitalist gangs located in Asia,] of course, is no military alliance, and even less a rival of NATO [, the military arm of the US-led capitalist gang]. Its member states [capitalist gangs] however, are closely watching the US [capitalist gang]-Russian [capitalist gang] match being played out at the western end on the great Eurasian continent. Some, like the Central Asian states [gangs] are essentially ducking, hedging, or running for cover. China [The Chinese gang], which seeks to defend its own core interests in East Asia and the Western Pacific, looks at the current Russian-American [capitalist gang] competition through the prism of its own relations with Washington and Moscow [each of these gangs].
Now we are beginning to see the emergence of a much vaunted multi-polar world of capitalist gangs, however it is not the rosy, tolerant competition foreseen by otherwise very astute geopolitical analysts like William Engdahl or independent journalists like Pepe Escobar. Instead we are witnessing the cutthroat attacks on each other for world dominance much like we saw in the 20th century's world wars.

There is no possibility for cooperation among cancers, and capitalism functions much like a cancer which eventually metastasizes. One must win out over the other until the whole corpus of humanity is destroyed. In contrast to the early 20th century, we now live in an age in which capitalist gangs possess nuclear weapons; and there is little reason to doubt, when push comes to shove, that they will use them. If somehow we miraculously escape a nuclear holocaust, we still have climate destabilization to worry about given capitalism's addiction to growth which requires more burning of fossil fuels. 

Are we now witnessing the final days of us humans who appear to be so flawed by a childish worship of authority and so easily distracted by the latest i-Gadgets and mindless entertainments that capitalist authorities give us?  Are we in the global Ninety-Nine Percent going to either passively accept the fate that awaits us, or worse, join in with our respective capitalist authorities in their mad quest for dominance? Or, are we going "to take arms against a sea of troubles [caused by capitalist elites and their system], and by opposing end them?" To be, or not to be is the final question that we are all faced with now.