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

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Has Washington Lost the Middle East After Qatar?

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

Engdahl sheds much needed light on the current oil and gas competition played out by all the world's major powers in the fossil fuel rich Middle East. He adds more signs that the US Empire's world hegemony project has ebbed. Can our masters who have resurrected the old cold warrior mentally accept their fate or will they use their huge stockpile of dangerous weapons in a desperate attempt to turn back the receding tide of power? That is the major question threatening human survival in the near term. Too bad that most Americans are so ignorant of this threat, and worse by being so disorganized to prevent a disastrous outcome.
It ain’t easy to be the world’s Sole Superpower today, not at all as it was, say, in the 1990’s. Not even psychopathic generals with nicknames like Mad Dog can scare others into falling back in line when Washington barks her orders. Back as recent as the 1990s it was, so to say, a piece of cake. Run a war in Yugoslavia, destabilize the Soviet Union after a long war in Afghanistan, loot the former Communist economies of all Eastern Europe. Worse still, the world seems not to appreciate Washington’s wars of destruction anymore. Now that’s real ingratitude after all that Washington has done for them in recent years…

Could it be that the American Century, viewed by future historians, will have its obituary written around the time in 2017 when Washington lost control of the “strategic prize” as Dick Cheney called the energy-rich Middle East?