Longtime Cuban dictator and architect of the 1959 Cuban revolution Fidel Castro, 90 years old, passed away this evening, November 25, 2016, at around 10:30 pm. This, according to a public announcement by his brother Raoul Castro. We mourn the loss of this brother in our human family.

Communism and socialism both refer to a society, as yet unrealized, defined by democratic citizen control of the economy and every aspect of the society. Historically, global actors established various kinds of societies that, though referred to as "communist" or "socialist," by definition were not. Such societies served to confuse the world by establishing and maintaining an incorrect popular understanding of this social model.

The former Soviet Union, or U.S.S.R., was one such society, and Cuba, calling itself Socialist, while the capitalist class called it Communist, both wrong, is another and a notable example of this kind of obfuscation. No one wants to see a brother or sister die, yet with Fidel Castro, its chief architect, gone, this global conceptual misunderstanding can, and likely will, be further rectified, allowing for people to move further in the direction of a proper understanding.

Brother Castro is one of several left-wing historical figures, notably including Lenin, Mao, and Che Guevara, who have gained an inappropriate and misguided cache, especially among young people and the broad left, as discussed about halfway down the page here.

For the Cuban people, including the diaspora, the absence of Fidel Castro will likely mark yet another initial milestone on their way to freedom.

interpretation pending

The United States saw yet another gun-based massacre in the December 2012 slaying by Adam Lanza, 20, of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, including 20 children aged 6 and 7. Since then, the entire planet has been engaged in an intense discussion: why did this mass-murder occur and what must be done to prevent a recurrence?

Issues thereto deemed relevant have included proliferation and easy access to guns, more stringent law enforcement, and the glaring deficiencies in the American mental health system. All of these analyses are incorrect, however. The cause of the Connecticut slayings, specifically, and such problems, generally, is ultimately none of these, but instead capitalism, itself, which includes the egocentric culture of capitalism. Capitalism spans almost the entire world, including nations such as China that confusingly and erroneously continue to label themselves "communist"; thus, the manifold problems of capitalism, including violence both pedestrian and horrific, occurs the world over. At the same time a gunman attacks schoolchildren in Newport, Connecticut in the United States, a knife-wielding assailant attacks twenty schoolchildren in China. Then, about three days later a young woman was gang raped and brutally beaten with a blunt object aboard a bus in India, her injuries including the injurious insertion of a blunt object into her. That same day, five polio researchers in Karachi, Pakistan were murdered, scuttling efforts to battle polio in one of the three major world regions still battling the disease.

Even injurious actions of far lesser harm and consequence are symptoms of precisely the same disease. For example, just this morning, December 21, 2012, this writer found his home and property vandalized--again. The immediate harm of such actions may be less, but a key part of their implication, that their root is nonlove, is just as pernicious as that of the greatest harms, some of which are described, above.

Clearly, then, we live in a non-loving world. Social philosopher Erich Fromm wrote that if a given economic system is not predicated upon the inherent needs of people, that economic system would fail. One of our needs, indeed our most potent, is the need for love; for people to communicate with us, interact, inquire, care, assist, guide, and indeed nurture. Yet we do not nurture each other. But why would we? We're not taught to value such a socio-existential posture, adopt it, or execute it. Moreover, the social force that is the ubiquitous, overarching, and foundational influence on everything that we do and are, capitalism, works actively in its normal operation against such nurturing. Our lives under capitalism teach us concretely that "the system" does not care for us, but instead uses us to generate profit for the tiny class of owners; indeed, as much profit as possible. Our needs are subject to their profit considerations; this is why the hungry are not fed, the naked are not clothed, the homeless are not housed, the ill are not healed, and the disturbed are not cured--unless a profit can be made. Helping another human being only if it benefits the helper, as is the case under the capitalist paradigm, especially in regard to basic human survival requirements, is obviously not love. We know this instinctively as humans.

Yet since this kind of alienated relation is essentially the only one under capitalism and thus the one that we live, implicitly and explicitly, just about every moment of every day, we experience the reality that our economic system, as decisive as it is for every aspect of our lives, is not a loving one. Most of us don't feel loved and nurtured, but for the family, and thus do we ourselves develop a basic posture of nonlove toward others. Over the long span of our lives, that's what we know, that's what we experience, that's what we feel, and accordingly, that's the behavior that we knowingly or not reproduce. Thus is the cycle of disregard, for human by human, complete.

Thomas Jefferson stated that "Money, not morality, constitutes the principle of commercial nations," and indeed you will search the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence in vain for any mention of the word "love." The United States and global systems of so-called "liberal democracy," of which capitalism is presently a key part, were simply not set up to foster love.

Given, then, that at present among our human family 1.) people commonly disregard the needs of other people, especially in the United States and other countries where capitalism is decisive, and 2.) the effects of the normal operation of our economic system of capitalism, given its overwhelming influence on every aspect of our daily lives, constitutes and implies a wholesale disregard for people, why wouldn't the consequent psycho-emotional deficits and distortions result in aberrant violence such as recurrent school shootings? The open secret that is the disregard for the mentally ill in the United States, for example, is as nefarious as it is shameful.

Mr. Lanza, the Connecticut killer, exhibited an apparent disregard for his victims, and an examination of his life will likely reveal a history of people disregarding him. The focus and hyper-priority of our present economic and consequent social system can be readily found in its very name, capital-ism. Not people-ism, helping-ism, nurturing-ism, caring-ism, or love-ism, but capital-ism, the emphasis on "capital," the resources required to begin and sustain a profitmaking enterprise. The system, in other words, is all about generating profit for a tiny class of business owners, not caring actively and holistically for each other. Thus is the imperative need to terminate capitalism, and establish a needs-based, love-oriented Cooperative Society. The planting of such new seeds would comprise the most fitting and powerful memorium possible for the child and adult victims, both, of the Sandy Hook tragedy.

See my Love link, at left, for more.

The link above leads to a brief New York Times editorial supporting the thesis that climate change is real, and likely human-caused. However, relatedly, The New York Times science page states:

Climate change, which refers to warming of the planet through the introduction of carbon dioxide or CO2 causing a wide range of pernicious effects including the acidification of our oceans, is already shifting the face of this planet and its behavior, a change that has and will continue to radically alter our human existence. Capitalism, or the Profit-System, is the cause of climate change, because its #1 imperative is the task of selling. To sell, products (and services) must be continually created and manufactured. This 1.) unceasing industrial production introduces CO2 into the atmosphere, occurring on a worldwide scale since the start of the industrial revolution over 100 years ago. In concert with 2.) the deleterious effects of the use of these various products, such as cars and trucks whose emissions also contribute to climate change, and 3.) the failure of capitalism, in large measure in its zeal to restrain costs, in monitoring its own activities for harm, capitalism has produced our current crisis of climate change.

Climate change is predicted to be devastating and likely irreversible. Thus, we must eliminate the global profit-system immediately to forestall its next profit-generated crisis. Humanity absolutely cannot survive two major crises, and if we survive just this one we'll be lucky.

See link Learn the Issues at left for further analysis under the heading "Global Warming."

Interpretation pending!

interpretation pending

interpretation pending

interpretation pending

interpretation pending

This article nicely illustrates both pernicious sides of the rusting coin of capitalism:  the utter dearth of resources to meet the needs of all people, including their need for health care, and the shameful way people treat each other, acculturated as they are in a society that does not easily meet their own needs, thus forcing them into a dog-eat-dog, law-of-the-jungle mentality and existence, that can't help but carry over into lives and attitudes, generally.

As you may know, the BOMA program addresses both of these catastrophic imbalances: it calls explicitly for 1.) a transition to an economy whose principal purpose is to meet the needs of people, and provide actualizing work activity (i.e. "employment") for the population, and 2.) a set of core social values and behavior based on the love ethic, or "brotherly love."

When profit is the focus of social and economic activity, not the needs of people, including our vital need for emergency health care, these kinds of results, and worse, should come as no surprise.

Profit, not the needs of people--including the critical need for safety--is always the principal focus of economic activity under capitalism.

Our analysis of this problem is part of our larger analysis of home ownership in America.

This article details the efforts of Goldman Sachs and other investors to take private control of the toll roads in New Jersey, and the deleterious consequences of private control of these kinds of historic public resources.

Note the two basic visions of what society is and how it should operate, illustrated in the two approaches to the New Jersey highway transportation system, presented in the article:

• A society of human beings working and operating together by cooperating in a civic and civil fraternity, or --

• A society where such cooperation is impossible, because a tiny group of owners, a kind of "ruling class," hold complete control over every resource needed to do so, and operates those resources in a calculated and exacting manner, with the singular goal of enriching itself as much as possible.

  Under such a system, every other consideration is relegated to secondary or tertiary status, or worse.

Which approach do you prefer?

Which is best for you? For people? For families? Children? Communities? Indeed, for the human race?

One Human Family asserts the overwhelming desirability of cooperation, over pernicious private ownership for sale and profit.

Join the movement of hope, optimism, and realistic social change, the movement for a Cooperative Society--and let's put these selfish and narcissistic plunderers out of business permanently! Let's build a world of peace, plenty, brotherhood, love, and cooperation--together!

This article details the efforts of the present U.S. administration to effect regulatory changes that will result in cuts to Medicaid, the federal and state program that provides health care to persons of low income.

The particular administration, Republican or Democratic, attempting to effect these cuts is irrelevant; the point is that because capitalism is a system of so-called "free-enterprise," the value system and priorities of free enterprise determine government policy--not the value system and priorities of human beings and the human race. Some administrations and governments are worse than others in attempting to advance this profit-and-money agenda--but they all do it. They have to--without a constant stream of buying and selling, and the governmental policies that support and encourage a constant stream of buying and selling, capitalism would collapse.

Can you say depression and recession?

Most people are not aware that, in fact, the United States has suffered NINE depressions in its history, and an unbelievable THIRTY-TWO recessions--so far (source: http://www.nber.org/cycles.html). Dig out your old college or high school economics textbook from the attic, and check it out for yourself; we've had depressions in the United States in the following periods:

1. 1861
2. 1865
3. 1873-79 (six years)
4. 1884
5. 1893-97 (four years)
6. 1903-04 (one year)
7. 1907
8. 1920-22 (two years)
9. And of course, the catastrophic global depression of 1929-40 (eleven years)

The U.S. also regularly suffers mini-depressions, called "recessions," in years including 1981-82, for example.

Furthermore, even when economic recovery occurs, it does not necessarily bring jobs. Over the last few years in America we've all heard about the so-called "jobless recovery." Thus, we see that even when capitalism is operating at its best, it is still often not good enough.

We, the people, clamor rightfully for health care, and our corporate-controlled government does take a stab at reforming the system to provide it. However, the so-called free-enterprise system is notoriously difficult to reform successfully, because 1.) reforms that are enacted, such as increased Medicaid spending to cover more people in need, are never enough to fully solve the problem they are meant to address, and, 2.) insofar as problems are  addressed, improvements are often impermanent and disappear or are weakened as markets and governments change--which is exactly the phenomenon we see detailed in the article above.

By contrast, a Cooperative System would provide health care to everyone as a birthright, absolutely free! In fact, under a cooperative system all goods and services would be free. Indeed, money itself would no longer exist, as it would no longer be required for any purpose.