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, October 19, 2012

Cameron and the celebration of slaughter

Click here to access article by John Westmoreland from Counterfire (UK). 

The author exposes the lies used to support the fake patriotism often parroted by agents of the One Percent to glorify their horrible wars of the 20th century, and to prepare ordinary people for new ones.
The commemoration of the onset of World War I is a project that needs to explode in Cameron’s face. It is a blatant attempt to hijack our history and attempt to make political capital out of a mass slaughter that should have led to the complete overthrow of the system that caused it.
As I see it, there are three basic reasons that this class of people promotes wars:
  1. Inter-capitalist rivalries for access to, and control, of resources and markets.
  2. Threats to capitalist rule from left wing and popular movements.
  3. Destruction of the capital of the above enemies to stimulate demand from, and profits for, the winning capitalist powers.