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, May 30, 2017

The CIA’s Cloddish ISIS Attack on Duterte

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook
The terrorist siege in Marawi City is blatantly a desperate Washington try to topple the very popular (80% popularity in polls) Duterte, who successfully won the Presidency last June over a US-backed Mar Roxas, a US-educated former Wall Street banker. Since taking office Duterte has made bold and quite courageous steps to steer the former US Colony towards a Eurasian alliance with China and Russia as his major supporters. In Beijing in October last year, Duterte met China’s Xi Jinping and signed numerous trade deals with China. ....

Since then Duterte has sought closer ties with Russia as well, in a further effort to bring his nation out from under the yoke of a de facto US control. This does not sit well with the circles of the so-called Deep State in Washington –the CIA and their nefarious friends. Should the US lose the Philippines, it would pose a devastating strategic geopolitical loss to the US military containment strategy against China and Russia in the Pacific. Devastating.
One might fault Engdahl for making allegations without providing sufficient supporting evidence, but how many decades of experience with Empire-funded "terrorist" armies with after-the-fact supporting documentation do we need that to verify the role played by the CIA and other Western secret agencies? Empire strategists discovered long ago the usefulness of terrorist armies to serve the Empire's interests by toppling uncooperative governments abroad, and using domestic "terrorist" events to suppress opposition at home to their policies. I have followed the writings of Engdahl for at least 10 years and I trust his analyses far more than than reports from media corporations all of which serve the criminal gang of capitalist ruling classes of the Empire.