Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Pakistan flood catastrophe: West gives `billions for killing, little for life'

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

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Pakistan flood catastrophe: West gives `billions for killing, little for life'

by John Passant from International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

The sharp contrast between the aid the US is giving to Pakistan to allay the terrible suffering from the recent floods and the military spending in the "war on terror" shows, once again, that the Empire's real intentions in this war is the domination of that area of the world.

In this article the author argues that the US ruling class is not only terrorizing the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also the earth's ecological system. We can expect "blowback" from newly recruited "terrorists" as well as from a damaged ecological system in the form of more extreme weather incidents.