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

Thursday, June 12, 2014

So You Want A Thatcherite Revolution? Free Trade, Corporate Plunder And The War On Working People

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from his blog East by Northwest.

This Britisher who resides in India looks at the recent election of a neoliberal Prime Minister as a part of the radical transformation of capitalism from a nation-based operation to a global operation. To accomplish this, our neoliberal masters must destroy any national restrictions on their activities while preserving borders only to contain and control working people. While the global capitalist elite are fully conscious of this project, the vast majority of the world's populations have little idea of what is going on. The latter are kept in ignorance through massive media campaigns of disinformation and distractions as the elites engage in secret negotiations. Meanwhile they are burdened with austerity policies, unemployment, and debt; and, when necessary, whipped into submission by military and police violence.
The increasing global takeover of agriculture by powerful agribusiness, the selling off of industrial developments built with public money and strategic assets, such as energy sources, ports and airports, and secretive corporate-driven trade agreements represent a massive corporate heist of wealth and power across the world. Through their financial institutions and corporate entities, the world’s super rich regard ‘nations’ as population holding centres to be exploited whereby people are stripped of control of their livelihoods for personal gain. Whether it concerns rich oligarchs in the US or India’s billionaire business men, corporate profits and personal gain trump any notion of the ‘national interest’.