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, July 22, 2015

Europe’s Stark Choice: Resignation or Revolution?

Click here to access article by "Don Quijones", a British ex-patriot living mostly in Spain, from his blog Raging Bull-Shit

In the wake of the defeat of the Greek people by the European branch of the capitalist Empire, this author sees Europe as a whole heading for defeat. Like the Greeks, they will be confronted by a stark choice of suffering "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" by surrendering to bankers and assorted capitalists, or "by opposing [with a revolution] end them" but risking a "thousand natural shocks" or even death.
...the global financial system’s days are already numbered. In short, the system is already buckling under the combined weight of unsustainable debt, unpayable pension schemes and a derivatives market whose total value dwarfs global GDP by magnitudes that exceed all human logic.

The question is, once it does collapse, who’s going to pick up the pieces and rebuild a new, more sustainable system in its ashes? Will it be us, the people, or will it be the same bankers, central bankers and heavily compromised political half-wits that got us here in the first place? Will we bravely stake our claim to a new future, or resign ourselves, in fear and despair, to the global bankers’ dystopian nirvana?

Whatever choice Europeans make in the coming months and years, one thing is clear: the human, social and economic costs will be tremendous either way. For the unpleasant truth is that we have allowed ourselves to be lead so far down the rabbit hole of perpetual growth and exponential debt that reemerging into the light of day will take years — perhaps even decades — of collective struggle and sacrifice.