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

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Efforts to Prosecute Blackwater Are Collapsing

by James Risen from The NY Times. 

This to me illustrates rather dramatically how you can't win through US courts when the interests of the capitalist ruling class is involved. I argued this yesterday in relation to efforts to reform the US Constitution. 

The privatization of war has become a prime tool of this class in order to hide their war crimes, crimes against humanity, and to enrich themselves.
Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against Blackwater Worldwide personnel accused of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cases are beginning to fall apart, burdened by a legal obstacle of the government’s own making.

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