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

Friday, December 21, 2012

For whom the Syrian bell tolls

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online.

I nominate this Brazilian journalist as journalist of the year, if not decade. He reduces major war criminals and chaos creators to the crazed, barbaric fools that they are. Once again in Syria we see the triumph of the Empire operatives in creating chaos by using any means necessary, even the most barbaric, to destroy another society. Who knows where their criminal actions will end, how many lives will be lost, how many families ruined? 

It is a hugely dangerous strategy that the Empire's One Percents are pursuing by destroying not only societies abroad, but also in their own nations. They are truly drunk on capitalist-corporate based power which they firmly believe is superior to that of all societies, and they are determined to destroy any society that stands in their way, and force the rest to work for them for slave wages.