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

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Spanish Civil War and Syria (II)

Click here to access article by Michael Jabara Carley from Strategic Culture Foundation.
If the conflict in Syria is not a civil war fought by Syrians, but a proxy war fought largely by foreign terrorists, then the western narrative justifying intervention falls to pieces. In a proxy war, the Damascus government and its leader Assad become patriots and defenders of the nation besieged by foreign aggressors.
I think Carley spends far too much time on a few pieces that appeared in Western media which compared the war in Syria with the Spanish Civil War. I have never seen this expressed before and the comparision is obviously totally erroneous. 

What I think is particularly valuable about this piece is the evidence he assembles to support his argument that it is a proxy war fought by various nations who have strong interests in the Mid-East using mostly imported mercenary terrorist forces. The House of Saud is the main culprit because it has vast wealth which it uses to finance such forces. And, of course, the Empire directors often encourage the use of their services to destabilize countries in the region that pursue courses that do not mesh well with the interests of the Empire and its heavily fortified outpost called Israel.