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

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

NATO’s Expansion Would be a Huge Mistake

Click here to access article by Alexander Clackson from New Eastern Outlook.
NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made an announcement this week that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is for the first time looking to deploy its forces at new bases in Eastern Europe, in response to the Ukraine crisis and in an attempt to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from “causing trouble in the former Soviet Baltic republics”. He added that the organisations’s summit in Wales on 4 to 5 September 2014 will aim to form an agreement between NATO’s members to send forces from the military alliance to Russia’s borders.  Far from deterring Putin, this move would in fact be a grave mistake and a terrible blunder from the West.
The recent hyper-aggressive actions of Empire directors continue to amaze me. It seems to me that either the old Cold Warriors are at the helm of NATO policies or else the current directors are functioning from a sense of desperation. If you think about it, there are some astonishing similarities between the Empire and Nazi Germany. Like Germany of the 1930s, could it be that the Empire is so burdened by debts that it must pursue these aggressive policies in order to gain control of more assets to keep from collapsing? The astonishing increase of fabricated news and views in US media looks strikingly similar to the Nazi's outlandish use of fake propaganda to provide cover for its imperialism.

It appears that the heavily guarded NATO meeting in Wales tomorrow and Friday may be crucial in determining our future. I wouldn't bet on a positive result. The only way for peace and sustainability to be realized in our future is for us in the global Ninety-Nine Percent to throw off the rampaging monster of capitalism, and then construct a new system to insure peace and survival of the human species.