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

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Among the Thugs

Click here to access article by Vijay Prashad from CounterPunch

Prashad reports on the background of the fellow who built the garment factory in Bangladesh that recently collapsed killing around 400 people, and how all associated parties have scrambled to disown him. It seems that sociopathic persons everywhere find lucrative opportunities to exploit workers to serve the profit interests of capitalists, but when things go wrong they, like old clothes,  are easily discarded .
The day before the collapse of the building...Rana was informed about cracks in the walls. Three thousand two hundred people worked in five factories in this building. “The building has minor damages,” he told the press. “Nothing serious.” Local inspectors, an anaemic bunch in the face of such institutionalised thuggery, had warned that something terrible might happen. Such people are not taken seriously in neo-liberal times. They are the ones who warn of calamities and are said to misjudge the dynamic of history. When the “accident” occurs, as it did the next day, it is these soothsayers who are ignored in the flurry of reportage that wants to suggest that this could not have been foretold, or of establishment voices that would like to point to this Rana as the main culprit and not the system of which he is essentially a minor pillar.