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

Monday, March 25, 2013

Kerry Demands Iraq Stop “Arms Flow” to Syria even as US Arms/Funds Al Qaeda

Click here to access article from Land Destroyer.

The article essentially describes another example of unintended consequences of imperial actions. The US imperial masters after the successful and criminal invasion of Iraq set up what they thought would be a compliant puppet government overwhelming dominated by Shiites. It appears that this was done in part out of retaliation against the Sunni-based Bath party that previously led Iraq, but mostly as a divide and rule strategy to promote inter-sect antagonisms. (Giving the Iraqi Kurdistan province nearly complete autonomy was a part of this strategy.) Imperial masters seemed to have overlooked the fact that Shiites are dominant in other Empire adversaries in the Middle East: Iran and Syria. Now it appears that Iraqi Shiites have been assisting their fellow Shiites in Syria, and the imperial masters are hypocritically crying "foul".