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

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Russian Warning Shots

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from Voltaire Network. 

Sometimes it appears that Meyssan is championing Russia and Putin as suggested by this piece. If so, this is a very misguided effort. I do not subscribe to the proverb that "an enemy of my enemy is my friend". It appears that, once again as seen in the 1930s, capitalist ruling classes are lining up in a contest for dominance. We, the people of the Earth, cannot permit this to happen or we will be the "last generation".
What is actually at stake in Syria is not whether Bashar al-Assad will be able to democratize the institutions he has inherited or whether the Wahhabist monarchies of the Gulf will succeed in destroying the last secular regime in the region and impose their sectarianism, but to determine the lines of separation between the emerging power blocs of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization)