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, April 12, 2011

Obama's Franco moment

Click here to access article by James Petras from Al-Ahram.
The basic difference between the military capability of the pro-government Libyan forces and the Libyan rebels, backed by both Western imperialists and "progressives", lies in their motivation, values and material advances. Western imperialist intervention has heightened national consciousness among the Libyan people, who now view their confrontation with the anti-Gaddafi rebels as a fight to defend their homeland from foreign air and sea power and puppet land troops -- a powerful incentive for any people or army. The opposite is true for the rebels whose leaders have surrendered their national identity and depend entirely on imperialist military intervention to put them in power. Which rank and file rebel fighters are going to risk their lives, fighting their own compatriots, just to place their country under an imperialist or neo-colonial rule?
I think that this is precisely why China and Russia decided to abstain from voting on the UN Security Council's resolution in support of a military incursion in Libya: they saw that the West's knee-jerk neo-colonialist impulses would likely backfire on them. 

 
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