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, February 20, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, February 20, 2020

One likely wouldn't be able to understand the Middle East conflicts without this journalist. And one wouldn't likely understand this article without having following events closely in the Middle East for over 30 years. Capitalists of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire have viewed this region, which is rich in fossil fuels, as a strategic factor in their obsessive desire to rule the world. 
Ordinary Americans, coping with rising inflation, particularly health-related costs (see the next posted article), and tenuous employment do not have the time to understand even the details of this long history. They are focused on surviving. In this vacuum of understanding, Americans, and others throughout the Empire, have also been brainwashed on a massive scale by media corporations, Hollywood films, and schools to believe that their countries were fighting terrorism in the Middle East.
Americans have been the target of the transnational capitalist Empire as much as nations in the Middle East. Although they have been manipulated by home grown terrorism perpetrated by agents of the Empire, Americans and other ordinary people in the nations of the Empire have not suffered terrorism on a much larger scale--terrorist Jihadi armies. These were organized by agents of Empire and their allies,  and suffered by nations in the Middle East who have opposed the Empire. And, Americans don't understand the devastating effects of economic sanctions on the lives of ordinary people in the Middle East.
However, for those Americans, who have had the time and followed closely the events in the Middle East from more independent sources for the past many decades, this article is priceless toward their understanding of the current scene today in that unfortunate region.
There are growing concerns within the party apparatus and much of the corporate elite that wins for Sanders in Nevada and South Carolina could set him up for victories on Super Tuesday that would make his nomination unstoppable. The response of the corporate media and the party establishment has been twofold: to promote the candidacy of Bloomberg and launch new political provocations aimed at derailing the Sanders campaign.
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