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

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Washington Again Underestimated the Iranian Mind

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

Engdahl fills us in on the real history of the growing US Empire since the 1973 OPEC oil embargo which was retaliation for the Anglo-American support given to Israel in the 1973 Arab–Israeli War launched by Egypt, Syria, and allies against Israel to recover territories lost in the 1967 war. 

The subsequent agreement that the US made with Saudi Arabia--almost totally ignored by established historians and conventional political analysts--was designed to recover the strength of the US dollar which was threatened by the huge expenditures of the Vietnam War. Another huge benefit is that the deal secured the Empire's domination of the Mid-East by forging a close relationship of interests between the head-chopping, medieval Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its satellites with the US Empire. These new allies plus the heavily armed (by us) state of Israel and the NATO's sinister regime of Erdogan'sTurkey insures Empire dominance of the area for many decades. Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Libya tried to pursue an independent course in their relations to the Empire, and you can see what grief that has caused them and is continuing to cause them. Engdahl tells us some of the most important parts of this history. 

I find articles like this one entitled "It's time for Washington to get out of bed with the al-Saud – Senator calls to lose al-Saud" naive in the extreme. We need war criminals like Turkey's Erdogan and Saudi Arabia's Prince Salman to play along with the Empire's numerous war planners.