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, August 6, 2013

US auditor finds taxpayer money flowing to Taliban, Al Qaeda - but Army refuses to act

Click here to access article by Dan Murphy from The Christian Science Monitor
The US military has been ignoring warnings that its spending in Afghanistan is funding Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And John F. Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), appears to have had enough.

He issued a blistering cover letter with SIGAR's quarterly report to Congress today that called into question what "appears to be a growing gap between the policy objectives of Washington and the reality of achieving them in Afghanistan."
This report should raise so many questions, but unfortunately it will never be reported to Americans in mainstream media. The referred to gap between official policies and actual practices indicates much more than simple incompetence. Empire practices in Afghanistan suggest that Empire directors are applying a destabilization strategy, a close relative of the Salvador Option, to maintain chaos in that tragic country with an added benefit to US war and construction contractors. Chaos serves the overall strategy of Empire dominance over the MENA region and Afghanistan to insure access to their resources.