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 21, 2016

Facing Turkey, Europe chooses suicide

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from Voltaire Network
By signing an agreement with Turkey to slow the influx of refugees – which happens to be illegal in international law – the leaders of the European Union have taken a step further in their pact with the devil. A large part of the 3 billion Euros annually allotted to Ankara will serve to finance support for the jihadists, and as a result will increase the number of migrants who are fleeing the war.
This French intellectual covers a lot of ground to support his thesis as expressed in the headline. Although I have posted some of his articles on my website, others have not been posted because of what I considered to be inadequate translations and thus would not be well understood by Americans. I am posting this piece because Meyssan draws on his extensive body of work and other solid sources to portray the irrationality from a European perspective of not only the recent agreement regarding refugees but most of the policies of Europe's ruling class. 

However, must we conclude that European leaders are stupid as Meyssan seems to suggest in the headline? This pattern of rule which he documents suggests to me that European leaders, and the European ruling class that they represent, have been so thoroughly integrated into the US-led Empire that they are really serving the Empire and identify with its global hegemonic orientation. 

We see another excellent example of portraying European leaders as stupid in a briefer article entitled "Is Putin Weaponising Stupidity?" by Rob Slane from his blog TheBlogMire.