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, April 12, 2012

What's goin' on at the Turkish-Syrian border?

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online. 

He uses three sources for his description of Turkish border activity in support of the Free Syrian Army: two videos and a report produced by the Saban Center at Brookings Institute, a major think tank for political operatives of the One Percent.

I found the first video to be of rather poor quality and confusing, but the 2nd one from RT was much better and clarified what he described in the article.

The third source is a Saban Center document describing the policy alternatives of the US government in relation to Syria. I read it, and it's all about regime change. Mearsheimer and Walt described the Saban Center in their book entitled The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy as follows:
It is hard to imagine that a research institute funded by Saban and directed by Indyk is going to be anything but pro-Israel. To be sure, the Saban Centre occasionally hosts Arab scholars and exhibits some diversity of opinion. Saban Center fellows – like Indyk himself – often endorse the idea of a two-state settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. But Saban Center publications never question US support for Israel and rarely, if ever, offer significant criticism of key Israeli policies. Moreover, individuals who stray from the Center’s line do not remain for long, as former NSC official Flynt Leverett’s brief tenure there illustrates.
This is another illustration of the powerful influence Zionist figures ("Israeli firsters") have over US foreign policy.