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, December 4, 2012

Not black-and-white: The chess game behind the recent Gaza-Israel war

Click here to access article by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya from Russia Today. 

I have a great deal of respect for this sociologist and journalist who has specialized in the current politics of the Middle East. No one is omniscient, but he is exceptionally well informed, honest, and affirms the values of social justice. 

In this article he tries to untangle the complicated geopolitical strategies of various players in the region against the background of the Empire's general strategy of divide and conquer used to divide Sunnis from Shia Muslims. We have seen the latter strategy occasionally revealed in various reports during the occupation of Iraq dating back to 2005 when British soldiers were discovered dressed as Arabs. 
The divide in the Middle East is not a sectarian one between Shiites and Sunnis, but fundamentally political. The alliance of the predominately Sunni Muslim Palestinian resistance movements and the Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanon’s largest Christian political party, with predominately Shiite Muslim Iran and Hezbollah should defuse such a perception that the US and its allies are trying to cultivate.
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