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, March 1, 2014

Ukraine: "Go West, Young Man" (or Dr. Strangelove's Revenge)

Click here to access article by Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers from TruthOut.

 The authors provide a good analysis of the games the Empire directors are playing in Ukraine which are much like the games they've played elsewhere. It seems that the Ukrainian people are between the devil (Russia) and the deep blue sea of the Empire.

 But the liberal authors can only imagine one alternative which they make brief reference to: 
The alternative would be for a strong government to tax away their natural resource rents and use it to subsidize industrial revival.
This alternative, of course, ignores that the ruling capitalist class has grown so powerful and arrogant with having complete ownership of government institutions and the construction of an Empire that they no longer fear anyone. This was expressed so well by one of their leading members who acknowledged back in 2006 that "there is class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Well, they now think they've won. So, why in the world would they want to tax themselves? To paraphrase a famous quote from one great corporate sponsored president, "its the system, stupid!"
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