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, July 21, 2011

The Invisible Army

Click here to access article by Sarah Stillman from The New Yorker.
More than seventy thousand “third-country nationals” work for the American military in war zones; many report being held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by subcontractors who operate outside the law.
This treatment of foreign workers by the Empire's operatives illustrates how they intend to place all working people everywhere in the world in indentured and debt servitude to secure their profits and power. And they will succeed if all of us sit dazed in front of the boob-tube and passively swallow all their propaganda and be diverted by their packaged entertainment.