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

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Sovereignty – betrayals and lies.

Click here to access article by David Malone from his blog Golem XIV.

The author's provides an exposé of the true nature of British officials' complaints about the European Union. He specifically targets recent comments by Prime Minister David Cameron (for example, see this) which reveals hidden motives of Western global elites to continue their attacks on what remains of social supports and pro-labor laws passed by west European governments following WWII, and left over from the former Soviet satellite governments .

You see, after the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-1943 it became clear to Western capitalist ruling classes that the Soviet Union would not be defeated by Germany (which, of course, is what they wanted). WWII then became a contest of empires between the Third Reich and the Anglo-American nations (soon to become an empire) to see who would dominate the capitalist world after the war. 

Following the war there was considerable popular support in Europe for pro-labor causes and more radical institutions symbolically represented and inspired by the ideologies that informed the 1917 revolution in Russia and founded the Soviet Union. Hence, Western European capitalist elites were forced to offer extensive social concessions in a form which became known as "social democracy". 

With the collapse in 1991 of the Soviet Union, which was ruled by a self-serving bureaucratic class and was not a "worker's state", Western elites confidently announced the triumph of capitalism ("end of history", "there is no alternative", etc). Since then, along with the dismantling of national impediments to business (globalization), capitalist elites in order to increase profits have gone on the attack against all social supports and pro-labor laws across the world.