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

Friday, September 6, 2019

Robert Mugabe: The national liberation hero who was demonized for trying to make liberation meaningful

Click here to access article by Canadian Stephen Gowans from his weblog. 

Gowans points to Western corporate media coverage of the life of recently deceased Mugabe, leader of Zimbabwe's struggle to maintain economic independence from the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, as another illustration of how such media corporations and capitalist interests of the Empire (profit & power) reports such efforts. He begins his essay this way:
It seemed almost inevitable six years ago that on the day Western newspapers were filled with encomia [def.] to the recently deceased South African national liberation hero, Nelson Mandela, that another southern African hero of national liberation, Robert Mugabe, would be vilified. “Nearly 90, Mugabe still driving Zimbabwe’s economy into the ground,” complained one Western newspaper. [my link insertion]

Mandela and Mugabe were key figures in the liberation of black southern Africa from white rule. So why did the West overflow with hosannas for Mandela and revile Mugabe? Why was Mandela the ‘good’ national liberation hero and Mugabe the ‘bad’?