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

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Suicides expose stresses of China factory life

from The Globe and Mail (Canada). 

Learn more about the cheap labor that China supplies to US corporations resulting in cheap prices for consumers, but on the other hand, big profits for multi-national corporations, severe trade imbalances that require China to buy US dollars to keep the process going, which in turn, funds US wars in Asia and the Middle East and military bases everywhere in the world, unemployment in the US, de-skilling of large parts of the US workforce, housing foreclosures, and driving exploited Chinese workers to suicide. 

Ain't capitalism wonderful?!
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