As businesses increasingly embrace a not-for-profit culture, an end to overconsumption on a finite planet could finally be in sight. But given the huge lobbying power of vested interests, it will remain impossible to create a truly sustainable world until the illegitimate power of corporations is held in check.
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The international political system changes. Sometimes it changes in accord with hegemonic design. The dynamic history of America’s global development project, and its necessary relationship with sweeping international change, has marked changing global order since the end of World War II. Today, however, there exists the increased reach of multinational corporations, and many transnational actors; they also alter the international political landscape. These entities operate with great autonomy. They work within a largely unregulated, anarchic international space.
When protests in Hong Kong exploded people looked for US involvement. It was not hard to find. The overt intrusion of the US is available in budgets, documents and websites; the covert involvement has not yet been uncovered but is no doubt there. What does US involvement mean for the credibility of the protest movement and the future of Hong Kong?
Soon after children start noticing differences between others and themselves, they’re old enough to believe they’re superior or entitled in some ways. These feelings come naturally, and are reinforced by adults as children learn social behaviors by comparing attributes and values so they can fit in with, or be seen apart from, certain others in society. This is all instinctual to some degree and a normal part of life. To make the case for instinct and superiority, think about what anyone would consider when choosing a partner for a serious or long-term relationship.
Dennis Trainer Jr. (of AcronymTV.com) recently appeared on Abby Martin’s “Breaking the Set“.
Mr Trainer spoke about the anniversary of the Occupy Movement and was suggesting the Movement now focus its efforts on the issue of climate change. I think he was mistaken.
Professor Chris Williams says a solution to the climate crisis requires a restructuring of the global economy, but when the last opportunity to do so came after the 2008-9 financial crisis, world leaders saved the banks instead.
E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered was aptly subtitled, for when one thinks of the discipline of Economics, one tends to think of a discipline in which people decidedly do not matter! Rather, one thinks of the discipline as concerned with an abstract, hypothetical “world” in which the efficient use of resources and price-setting are what’s of interest.
Late last winter at Vancouver’s Maritime Labour Centre, city councillor Geoff Meggs spoke at the launch of a regional union-backed social justice organization called the Metro Vancouver Alliance. Meggs is a long-time anchor of the British Columbia labour movement. In the 1980s, he was the editor of the fishers’ union newspaper and the personal editor for the legendary Canadian communist Ben Swankey. In the ’90s, he was a high-level adviser in the B.C. NDP government.
Susan Rice has just completed her visit to Beijing to prepare for Obama’s November visit. She arrived as the envoy of the President of the Indispensible Nation and was greeted at the very highest level by Xi Jinping himself, president of one of the many Dispensible Nations.
Susan probably conceives this as an advance visit in more ways than one since Beijing is the final scheduled stop on the U.S. Empire’s march through Eurasia – after sacking Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Russia. Or so the plan goes.
