Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Kill List: Smashing the 'B' in BRICS

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 16, 2016

Kill List: Smashing the 'B' in BRICS

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Sputnik International.

So every coup is now literally allowed in South America; indirect attacks to the Brazilian currency, the real; bribing local comprador elites with the backing of the global financial system; a concerted attempt at the implosion, simultaneously, of the top three economies: Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela. SOUTHCOM went so far as to produce a report on “Venezuela Freedom” earlier this year, signed by commander Kurt Tidd, which proposes a “strategy of tension”, complete with “encirclement” and “suffocation” techniques and allowing to mix street action with a “calculated” use of armed violence. Echoes of Chile 1973 do apply.

South America is now arguably the prime geopolitical space where Exceptionalistan is laying the bases to restore its unrivalled hegemony — as part of a multi-dimensional, geo-finance war against the BRICS bent on perpetuating the unipolar world.

It appears that this excellent Brazilian journalist is losing his faith in a "multipolar" capitalist world as he witnesses the attacks on Brazil's mild form of social democracy. What is happening in Brazil and many other nations of South America is a perfect illustration of the truth that there can be no compromises with capitalism, most especially the virulent advanced form of capitalism, known as neoliberalism, that is driving the aggressive policies of the US-led Empire.

Capitalist ruling classes throughout South America have been thoroughly integrated with the Empire's and together they are dedicated to the Empire's neoliberal plan to rule the entire world. The lesson that Escobar and many other progressives have yet to learn is that there can be no permanent compromises made with capitalist ruling classes. The latter must have their private ownership of economies taken away from them and put into the hands of the people. Only then can humans have a socially just world free from wars.

I fear that we may have already run out of time to free the world of the capitalist cancer that is now destroying its host planet Earth. But since we don't know this for certain, let us proceed with the most promising solution--revolution! Actually, I would work for a revolution anyway to punish those who caused our extinction along with so many other species.