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, January 22, 2013

War on terror forever

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online.
And the winner of the Oscar for Best Sequel of 2013 goes to... The Global War on Terror (GWOT), a Pentagon production. Abandon all hope those who thought the whole thing was over with the cinematographic snuffing out of "Geronimo", aka Osama bin Laden, further reduced to a fleeting cameo in the torture-enabling flick Zero Dark Thirty. 
Welcome to the next sequel of the never-ending war on terror as described with much sarcasm by Escobar. He delights in pointing out the abundance of hypocrisy, deceptions, and delusions of the Empire builders. Well, isn't it better to laugh than to cry over the latest war crimes of the Empire? Actually, I do both. It seems that humor provides a "spoonful of sugar", and makes the reporting and reading of war crimes easier to swallow.