Why do our political leaders assume that they have authority to lead us into wars that we don’t want? There are two primary reasons: 1) They believe they have a mandate from the masses. This is often a fallacy. Even where our leaders have been elected through the ballot box the truth is that, to a greater or lesser extent for each country, we live in a pseudo democracy. In reality, many decisions are dictated by hidden corporate forces behind the scenes. They lobby politicians with the lure of vast sums of money, and even have an unhealthy ability to dictate to the media which version of ‘truth’ they should print. In effect, much political policy is formulated at the behest of international oil companies, water and electricity suppliers, corporate food giants (such as Monsanto) and the likes. If you don’t believe this, read Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (see the relevant memes in our Timeline). It takes no great leap of imagination to see that a nation state’s decision on whether or not to go to war can be prejudiced by such pressures. There is, after all, enormous wealth to be made out of the machinery of war and the spoils of the victor, to say nothing of the banking merchants that fund them. Of course, many countries don’t have the safety net that even a pseudo democracy affords, and are at the mercy of the self-oriented, sometimes insane, whims of dictatorships. 2) They have a wider and deeper knowledge of world issues than most members of the public. This is an undeniable fact: after all, our leaders have privileged access to insider knowledge derived from face to face meetings with other political and religious leaders, as well as the specialist knowledge of experts in the fields of economics, science, social demographics etc. The problem here, however, is that we can’t rely on our leaders to use this knowledge wisely. Going back to point 1, their decisions will often be influenced by corporate lobbying, personal self-interest, or just plain bloody mindedness. Where we have democracies, therefore, they are inherently flawed. Some would say that the whole concept of democracy is unworkable and that only anarchism can lead the way to a fairer society. Until we arrive at either a true, honest, democracy, or a workable form of anarchism, it’s up to all of us to educate ourselves as much as possible on world matters, both at global and regional levels. It’s not enough to simply read what we are fed in the mainstream media; we need to look further afield at the works of investigative journalists such as Greg Palast, and alternative news sources around the internet (such as Russia Today) which, even if they have their own agendas to follow, might at least help to balance what we’re fed by our television moguls and the broadsheets. We also need to inform ourselves as much as possible in the fundamentals of science, spirituality, economics and the like. We must not forget the importance of history either, because it sets the context in which the actions on today’s world stage are shaped. The more we educate ourselves, the more we can weaken the hold that our political leaders have on us in relation to point 2 above; the better we will be able to see through any lies and deceit, and defend ourselves from being shepherded into pastures where the grass is just green enough to keep us complacently within the pens that richer, more powerful people have kindly designed for us. Global Fightback will work with other activist sites to help fulfil this objective. Remember that this is a resource for you, both here and on the website (which we hope to grow into a massive resource over the coming years), and your contributions are most welcome. Please spread the word.
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 13:17:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015