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, October 23, 2015

Dirty Hands on Dirty Deals: TTIP and COP21 Shaped by Same Big Business Interests

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

This British author who resides mostly in Barcelona, Spain provides an excellent introduction to a much longer report from Corporate Europe Observatory.
Everybody who cares about issues of sustainability and human coexistence with the natural environmental is being told to invest all their hopes and energies in December’s COP21 summit. Finally the people of the world are coming together to mend their ways and build a cleaner, more sustainable planet Earth. At least that’s the pretext.

But what if it’s all bullshit?
As our capitalist masters pretend to protect us from the threat of climate destabilization, they keep on squeezing out their profits from the Earth and its workers while polluting the atmosphere blanketing the Earth and the oceans. They do this because they are addicted to profits and power. The big question is: how much longer are we going to allow this tiny group of drug addicts to continue with their profitable activities while the climate becomes increasingly unstable and prone to extremes of weather. I can just hear one of these addicts respond: "So what? We can just move to another planet after we wreck this one." 

Just today we learn of the latest monstrous hurricane off Mexico's western shore























Next it is headed for Texas and nearby areas:
Once this system moves inland, mid-level moisture and energy from it may get pulled into the south-central U.S. This may add more fuel to a heavy rain and flooding threat in Texas and nearby states this weekend.