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

Sunday, October 19, 2014

The Havoc and Fantasy of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’

Click here to access article by Karel van Wolferen from his blog. 
The protracted overthrow in the course of 2010 of the first cabinet formed by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) does not at first glance resemble what happened in Kiev on January 22nd 2014 – when Victoria Nuland & Co triggered, aided, and abetted an anti–Russian coup d’état. No snipers were involved. No deaths. No civil war against Japanese citizens who had supported a reformist program. It was a gentle overthrow. But an overthrow it was even so.
While our attention has been focused elsewhere on events generated by the imperialist Empire, we may have overlooked similar, but less dramatic events, in Japan. With such a history of violence and subversion, Wolferen warns a European audience about the perils of following the lead of the Empire and sitting...
...idly by while [a] generation of politicians at the top responds to the seduction of a power that once represented the good guys, and was the main architect of the post-World War II relatively peaceful and relatively stable world order. It is seductive for Europeans to sit back and allow that power to continue taking the lead. Shared values, and all that sort of thing. How can one argue against such a perspective on planetary political reality today?
Think again.