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

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, July 13, 2021

I was under the impression that the global food supply has been taken over by Big Ag, that is, major corporations together with their financiers in the world's banks. However, this interviewee by the name of Pat Mooney, who poses as one expert on the global food supply, presents another picture. His qualifications are listed by Fries as the following:
 
Pat Mooney is leading IPES-Food’s ‘Long Food Movement’ project. He is the co-founder and executive director of ETC Group that has monitored corporate power in commercial food, farming and health for over four decades. He is an expert on agricultural diversity, biotechnology, corporate concentration and global governance. Pat Mooney was awarded the Pearson Peace Prize in Canada and received the Alternative Nobel Prize, The Right Livelihood Award. 
 
But I was skeptical. I noted his optimism based on "The reality still is that 70% of the world’s people are living from the bounty and the work of peasant producers, fishers and others around the world who are getting food on the table." But I read another report that states "By some counts 70 per cent of the world's food is grown by small-scale peasant farmers – but at the same time some 70 per cent of the world's poor live in the world's rural areas." Then I realized many of these poor farmers are under contract with major corporations. I found another report that stated: "The act of signing a contract in an agricultural transaction itself isn’t the problem. It’s the way the industry and the corporate monopsony (def.) powers have used these contracts to primarily benefit their bottom line, and shift production risks onto farmers, that is the real problem." I'm sure Big Ag operates this way in relation to poor peasant farmers. Finally, I read that India is having an epidemic of farmer suicides.
 
So, I don't share Mooney's optimism. Consider the following: poor farmers vs Big Ag, and on top of that is the climate crisis which promises extreme climate destabilization and threatens all species on Earth, including humans. 
We have to contribute as much as possible to enabling a powerful new social and political movement to bring together the social struggles around the world; we must take part in drawing up a programme to make a break from capitalism, by putting forward solutions that are anti-capitalist, anti-racist, ecological, feminist and socialist.
 
Faced with the multifaceted crisis of capitalism and its headlong rush towards environmental disaster, trying to fix or adapt capitalism is not really an option. It would merely be a lesser evil that would not bring the radical solutions that the situation demands.
  • Teaching Children About Liberty featuring James Corbett in an interview discussion with Connor Boyack (24:48m) from his website The Corbett Report. My commentary follows:
I decided to post this video in spite of the fact that I don't agree with it in order to emphasize the differences I have with Corbett. He and his guest regard capitalism as they regard nature or the sun--as a fixed entity. They regard capitalism as the capitalist ruling class propaganda defines it: as a system that promises liberty and justice for all. Neither one has a clue about the differences between this propaganda construct and the reality of a man-made system of capitalism which inevitably serves to enrich a tiny class of owners who enjoy overwhelming wealth and power.
 
Corbett and Bayack and others of the young generation have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the propaganda of capitalism that they are becoming aware that the system is currently radically diverging from what the self-serving propaganda defines it towards a coercive system where the overwhelming number of people "own nothing and be happy" but completely powerless. 
 
Thus, the post brings out in sharp relief the weaknesses of most of the younger generation to change anything. The Corbett Report is great to learn about this divergence from its propaganda, but totally off-base (def.) regarding solutions.
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