Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Thailand Floods 2011: Water Swamps Two-Thirds Of Country

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, October 15, 2011

Thailand Floods 2011: Water Swamps Two-Thirds Of Country

Click here to access article from Associated Press via Huffington Post.

For weeks, water has coursed down key rivers from northern Thailand in a slow-motion catastrophe, overwhelming a national system of dams and dikes. Several days ago, floods transformed Ayutthaya into one of the country's worst disaster zones, navigable in some districts only by boat.

Images of calamity in Ayutthaya and elsewhere have fed fears that skyscraper-filled Bangkok could be engulfed by the weekend. Panicked residents of the capital cleared supermarket shelves to hoard bottled water and dried noodles, while luxury hotels packed sandbags around their perimeters.

This latest catastrophe caused by extreme weather is affecting wide areas in southeast Asia. It has received very little coverage in US mainstream media. Could it be that the mad pursuit of profits under capitalism is hazardous not only to economies, but also to the planet's stability? Is it becoming all too obvious? The thought control agents of the one percent, also known as mainstream media, can't allow you to even consider such thoughts.