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, September 13, 2013

China stitches up (SCO) Silk Rd

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online.
... we have to come back to the ultimate adage of the times; while the (Washington) dogs of war bark, the (Chinese) caravan does deals.
While the Empire threatens more chaos in the Middle East, Escobar reports on all the quiet developments in Eurasia focusing on the Chinese capitalists to create an infrastructure...
..."economic belt along the Silk Road" is a supremely ambitious, Chinese-fueled trans-Eurasian integration mega-project, from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea; a sort of mega free-trade zone. Xi's rationale seems to be unimpeachable; the belt is the home of "close to 3 billion people and represents the biggest market in the world with unparalleled potential".
And the Chinese and Russians are increasingly seeing the need to collaborate to counter the imperial designs of the West. While such plans are seemingly motivated to create a "multi-polar" world, you can be certain that the future will be see deadly inter-capitalist rivalries just as we witnessed in the horrors of the 20th century world wars. Capitalist competition never remains in a benign state. Chinese and Russian capitalists are no more moral than our own or what we saw from fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan in the 20th century. That is precisely why the US Empire is now doing everything it can to thwart the plans of these rivals.

As ordinary people across the world, if we continue to be used as pawns in the rivalries between various capitalist gangs, we can only expect more wars with greater devastation, and the inevitable clash with our planet's ecosystem that is capable of sustaining human life.