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

Friday, January 25, 2019

US-Led Efforts to Overthrow Maduro Spurred by Business Interests, Not Democracy

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left. 

Gowans places the astonishingly arrogant recognition of another figure as President of Venezuela in the context of the US past history of interventions throughout Latin America: in order to restore a government that is favorable to US commercial interests. But I think it is much more than that.

As I have argued in the recent past, the directors of the transnational capitalists aligned with the US-led Empire are seeing a reverse in their domination of the nations on our planet, and they feel very threatened. The the threats they are coming from several directions: domestic opposition, international opposition led by Russia and China, and the threat that global warming poses for their system that has brought so much wealth and power to them. Like a wounded beast, they are becoming more irrational about slashing out at their imagined and real enemies. In short, they are now very dangerous with their control of vast armies, weapons, and most especially, nuclear weapons. 

Never before has it been necessary for ordinary people of the lands that the evil Empire controls to oppose their actions in order to save all of humanity from even more desperate actions that could lead to a nuclear war catastrophe in the short run and to the ultimate destruction of our biosphere on which all human life (and many other species) depends.