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

Monday, February 2, 2015

Venezuela: a Coup in Real Time

Click here to access article by Eva Golinger from CounterPunch. 
There is a coup underway in Venezuela. The pieces are all falling into place like a bad CIA movie. At every turn a new traitor is revealed, a betrayal is born, full of promises to reveal the smoking gun that will justify the unjustifiable. Infiltrations are rampant, rumors spread like wildfire, and the panic mentality threatens to overcome logic. Headlines scream danger, crisis and imminent demise, while the usual suspects declare covert war on a people whose only crime is being gatekeeper to the largest pot of black gold in the world.
The Empire directors have unleashed a propaganda war against the government of Venezuela in our media, and we can only imagine what they are up to inside Venezuela. Besides the NY Times, The Atlantic, and NPR mentioned in the article, there appears to be a broad-base propaganda attack being launched in the US and Britain to smear the government of Venezuela. I've found similar articles in liberal media such as The Guardian and the Huffington Post. I find it hard to believe that this coverage is purely coincidental.

One antidote to this Empire propaganda is this piece from Venezuela Analysis by Cory Fischer-Hoffman which reports on views of ordinary Venezuelans. They appear to be much smarter about the Empire's intentions than they were in the years before the CIA engineered coup attempt in 2002