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

Friday, February 26, 2016

Why the Arabs Don’t Want Us in Syria

Click here to access article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. from Politico. (I was remiss in not posting the article earlier in the week. Thanks to one of my followers, I was notified of its importance. I wish more of you would help me out to post such important articles.)

Because of personal affairs interfering with my time this morning, I have not been able to read all of this article; but it offers so much valid history of the Middle East and US interference in this oil-rich region. To understand the present turmoil in Syria, this knowledge is an absolute must.
Even as America contemplates yet another violent Mideast intervention, most Americans are unaware of the many ways that “blowback” from previous CIA blunders has helped craft the current crisis. The reverberations from decades of CIA shenanigans continue to echo across the Mideast today in national capitals and from mosques to madras schools over the wrecked landscape of democracy and moderate Islam that the CIA helped obliterate. 
I think that the appearance of this article together with Steven Kinzer's article entitled "The media are misleading the public on Syria" from the Boston Globe signals a shift with regard to the Empire's policy to destabilize Syria. I don't think that this is a mere coincidence. Thus, as I see it, our ruling class is preparing us for this shift by publishing these articles, which provide a very accurate and revealing history of US involvement in this region, in mainstream media outlets. Although Politico is not exactly "mainstream", I regard it as a mouthpiece for ruling class views. I think that Kinzer's article was published for a more conventional American audience while Kennedy's was targeting America's more informed intellectuals.