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, August 10, 2013

Beyond the fanning of US militarism in Africa

Click here to access article by Horace Campbell from Pambazuka.

Professor Campbell exposes another liberal commentator as one who advances the imperialist agenda in Africa along with Jeremy Scahill and other liberals.
Why is it the case that many Western analysts and critics would oppose global militarism but directly or indirectly fan the flame of U.S. militarism in Africa? It is well known among the U.S. forward planners that one of the many roles of the offshoots of the Western military-financial-information complex is to reproduce information conducive to supporting the Pentagon and its chokehold over the population of the United States. .... Many journalists and commentators writing about U.S. Africa Command, U.S. War on Terror in Africa, and the broad U.S. military engagement with Africa adopt a tone that reinforces the flimsy justification of U.S. militarism in Africa. Commentator and writer Nick Turse of TomDispatch committed this very error in his article, ‘The Terror Diaspora: The U.S. Military and the Unraveling of Africa.’ 
In a 2011 article Dr. Stuart Bramhall has confirmed my long held suspicions about these sources.  She has uncovered well documented evidence that much of what passes for left media coverage, including "Democracy Now!", in the US is funded, at least in substantial part, by right-wing non-profit institutions such as the Ford Foundation, Council on Foreign Relations, other CIA front organizations, and various liberal foundations. Such funding acts as a constraint on how far they will go to reveal the dirtiest secrets of our ruling class.