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, June 3, 2010

Western leaders are too cowardly to help save lives

by Robert Fisk from The Independent. 

This famous journalist observes that the leaders of the Western nations have lost all moral integrity in their refusal to condemn Israeli murderous actions against the relief convoy and to defend the human rights of Palestinians. Now, only when it is the lives ordinary people from all over the world who are attempting to save Palestinian lives do we hear, at most, expressions of "regret" from European leaders.
...it is a fact that it is ordinary people, activists, call them what you will, who now take decisions to change events. Our politicians are too spineless, too cowardly, to take decisions to save lives.
From the Guardian, this statement by US Vice President, Joe Biden: "So what's the big deal here?" 

I am very moved to note that the remaining vessel, the Rachel Corrie MV--named after another ordinary woman who was from my State of Washington here in the US and who was killed by Israelis while defending the homes of Palestinians--is resuming the attempt to reach Gaza with humanitarian supplies.

Because of events like this and the ongoing destruction of the Gulf of Mexico, due to the obsession of corporations to secure more oil, that I am thoroughly convinced that world leaders have utterly failed to govern under the system of representative democracy. 

Under the power of capitalist systems, representative democracy has turned into total fakery--a facade behind which people who own the economy hide and control our lives like puppeteers who manage our every move. We, as ordinary people, cannot allow this to continue if our existence is going to survive in any form other than pure barbarism. It falls upon us, as ordinary people, to take back control of our societies from those among us who have usurped that control and, in the process, prevent the destruction of human and many other life forms.