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, July 12, 2010

Oops, I tweeted again

from Asia Times Online. 

The author seems to take an excessively cavalier approach to this news item which illustrates, one again, the power of the Zionist lobby in the US to stifle dissent in any form if it doesn't please the governing class of Israel. However, the author is focusing on the larger topic of freedom of expression made more available by internet technology versus the use of the latter by governing classes to stifle dissent.
Political faux pas are here to grow exponentially in an invasive era where privacy is being battered on an unprecedented scale via linked information networks. The Internet leads the trend as a double-edged sword, ie as a liberator from the stranglehold of conservative governments, traditional newspapers and magazines, and as an equally potent weapon in the hands of peeved establishments that now have tweets as smoking guns to discipline loose cannons.