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

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Beijing Vs DC: The Battle for Southeast Asia

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook

Ever since the rise of first the British, and a few decades later, all Western capitalists in their countries where the harnessing of steam power to power machines gave capitalist production enormous advantages in producing goods cheaper than the older skilled craftsmen in other countries, production was oriented not to supply the real needs of the host countries, but used imperialistically to accumulate wealth and, above all, power over foreign lands in the hands of a very few Euro-American capitalists. 

You see, the capitalist system, because of its foundation on individual ownership of a social means of production, is not designed to serve the real needs of people but to supply wealth and power to a tiny class of people known as capitalists.

Nothing really has changed except that 21st century capitalists, instead of openly using gunboats, now prefer to use the most sophisticated propaganda and bribery to leaders of targeted nations, and propaganda to the general population in their host countries, to provide cover for their actions in pursuit of power and wealth. Cartalucci reports of the difficulties that the Empire is having with China while pursing these these policies and actions in southeast Asia.