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A Brief Visit to the End of the World
People mostly want the same thing, and many of us already have it, but we don’t really notice it.
I have no way of confirming this, but I bet that if you could interview people across different centuries and cultures, asking them what they wanted most, you would notice a distinct theme in their answers.
Some people would want great riches or power. Others would say they want something very specific: to invent a particular thing, or for a particular person to love them, or to win a gold medal or give an Oscar speech.
But I suspect most of them would say they want something like this:
I want to be able to do my work and spend time with my friends and family, free to live my own values in relative peace. I just want a fair chance to pursue love and happiness, and a stable, humble life.
You could call this “The Peacetime Dream”, a life with the normal share of ups and downs—necessarily including heartbreak, health issues, setbacks and disappointments—but which isn’t defined by war or persecution. Almost universally, people want basic stability and basic freedom, and to someone who doesn’t have those things they are clearly the best things in the world.
But to someone who does have those things, their greatness is not so clear. It’s easy to forget, or never notice at all, that many or most of us already have this state of affairs, more or less—certainly most people who read blogs in their spare time.
It’s also easy to forget that many (or most?) of history’s humans never had the Peacetime Dream. I wonder how many billions of individual human lives have been lived under tyrannical regimes, forced servitude, or during a war or a plague, or maybe all of those things.
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A Prescription for Peace and Prosperity
A Prescription for Peace and Prosperity
The question is often asked: “What can we do?” Here is a prescription for peace and prosperity.
We will begin with prosperity, because prosperity can contribute to peace. Sometimes governments begin wars in order to distract from unpromising economic prospects, and internal political stability can also be dependent on prosperity.
The Road to Prosperity
For the United States to return to a prosperous road, the middle class must be restored and the ladders of upward mobility put back in place. The middle class served domestic political stability by being a buffer between rich and poor. Ladders of upward mobility are a relief valve that permit determined folk to rise from poverty to success. Rising incomes throughout society provide the consumer demand that drives an economy. This is the way the US economy worked in the post-WWII period.
To reestablish the middle class the offshored jobs have to be brought home, monopolies broken up, regulation restored, and the central bank put under accountable control or abolished.
Jobs offshoring enriched owners and managers of capital at the expense of the middle class. Well paid manufacturing and industrial workers lost their livelihoods as did university graduates trained for tradable professional service jobs such as software engineering and information technology. No comparable wages and salaries could be found in the economy where the remaining jobs consist of domestic service employment, such as retail clerks, hospital orderlies, waitresses and bartenders. The current income loss is compounded by the loss of medical benefits and private pensions that supplemented Social Security retirement. Thus, jobs offshoring reduced both current and future consumer income.
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Top 10 Activist Errors
Top 10 Activist Errors
The number one error, engaged in by the majority of people, is failing to be an activist. The world’s going to hell, countless situations can be easily improved, lives can be saved, and most people just sit there and do nothing. Others actively work to make matters worse. So, if you’re working for peace and justice, you’re among the tiny minority that’s pretty much got the big stuff right. If constructive criticism drives you into despair, please stop reading this article right now and just continue what you’re doing with your life. You have my gratitude.
If you’re open to hearing some suggestions, for whatever they may be worth (and yes, of course, this list of errors will exclude those that I am myself guilty and unaware of), read on:
1. ELECTIONISM. We need elections but do not now have them in the United States, not at the federal level. Working for election reforms is one of the most important things anyone can do. But taking time off from activism to focus on elections is the biggest waste of resources we engage in. Election reform will come through creative nonviolent activism, education, organizing, media, disruption, resistance, and protest. It won’t come through elections. Registering voters is not activism. Creating automatic registration, as just done in Oregon, is activism. Please stifle your compulsion to ask me who I’m voting for. You don’t ask me if I want to win the lottery. (I do, but I will not buy a ticket or devote my life to staring at one.)
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Is Peace or War at Hand?
Is Peace or War at Hand?
King World News illustrates this article with photos. If you enjoy visuals, go here:http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-world-now-cusp-total-war/
At this time we do not know the outcome of the meeting in Moscow between Merkel, Hollande, and Putin.
The meeting with Putin was initiated by Merkel and Hollande, because they are disturbed by the aggressive position that Washington has taken toward Russia and are fearful that Washington is pushing Europe into a conflict that Europe does not want. However, Merkel and Hollande cannot resolve the NATO/EU/Ukraine situation unless Merkel and Hollande are willing to break with Washington’s foreign policy and assert the right as sovereign states to conduct their own foreign policy.
Unless Washington’s war-lust has finally driven Europeans to take control over their own fate, the most likely outcome of the Putin-Merkel-Hollande meeting will be more meetings that go nowhere. If Merkel and Hollande are not negotiating from a position of independence, one likely outcome after more meetings will be that Merkel and Hollande will say, in order to appease Washington, that they tried to reason with Putin but that Putin was unreasonable.
Based on Lavrov’s meeting in Munich with the Europeans, the hope for any sign of intelligence and independence in Europe seems misplaced. Russian diplomacy relied on European independence, but as Putin has acknowledged Europe has shown no independence from Washington. Putin has said that negotiating with vassals is pointless. Yet, Putin continues to negotiate with vassals.
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China opposes US plans to supply arms to Ukraine — Foreign Ministry
China opposes US plans to supply arms to Ukraine — Foreign Ministry
People in eastern Ukraine now are more in need of peace rather than weapons, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said commenting on the US plans
BEIJING, February 9. /TASS/. China is against Washington’s plans to provide Ukraine with weapons, the country’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Monday.
“China calls for the political settlement of the crisis in Ukraine as this meets the interests of all the sides. People in eastern Ukraine now are more in need of peace rather than weapons,” the diplomat stressed, commenting on the US plans.
Beijing welcomes and supports the active mediation efforts, which have been recently taken by the parties to ease tensions in eastern Ukraine and resolve the crisis by political means, she said.
China urges all the sides to refrain from any actions that could lead to an increase in confrontation or affect the negotiation process, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson said.
“China will continue playing a constructive role in the political settlement of the crisis in Ukraine,” the diplomat said.
Last Sunday, the New York Times newspaper reported that the Unites States considered supplying arms to Ukrainian forces. The Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokesman, Alexander Lukashevich, said last week Moscow was seriously concerned by these plans.
