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, June 6, 2016

The UNO, the EU and Daesh schizophrenia

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from his blog Voltaire Network (France).
Intergovernmental organisations are supposed to unite the efforts of member-states in order to achieve results that they could not manage alone. We might therefore conclude that the UNO and the EU are coordinating the fight against Daesh. Instead of which, these two organisations are hindering the forces on the ground and masking state support for international terrorism.
I often have difficulties with the English translations of Meyssan's articles (from French), but this essay is much better than most. I only had a problem with the use of "occulting" in this sentence:
It would be a mistake to believe that the occulting of the documents mentioned above is the result of anti-Iraqi, anti-Syrian or anti-Russian prejudice.
I had never heard of this use of "occult" as a verb. So in place of this obscure usage, it would have been much better to have used "excluding" instead. Otherwise I think his essay is well developed with linked references to support his thesis.